Video Transcript: Lesson 7

Welcome back. We're ready to go ahead now with this discussion of the fifth  type of religious experience, which is the experience of reading the Scripture,  reading the Word of God. That's what it's called by those of us who experience it to be that, because we experience that as being the truth about God from God.  And we see it that way, self evidently. And I want to talk a little bit about self  evidence. About the idea of self evidence, it's a long standing part of logic and  mathematics and therefore sciences for many 1000s of years that Some truths  are self evident, and what is meant by that, again, we helpful to have a definition is that we have encountered, we've experienced a truth which has three  characteristics. So here we go self evidence, a belief is self evident, first of all, if  it is not known by inference, if from any other belief, and it is experienced as  prima facie true, and It It is experienced as irresistibly true. I'm and I started right sometimes I'm going to correct that and I'm going to put it this way. This is will  be clear as to what I mean. There are exceptions to this one. So let's go through them one by one. First, it's not known by inference from any other belief. It's not  that you have this belief and because you hold that, then this one looks true, or  you infer from this that the other is true, which means you go through a process  of reasoning, you come to the other belief. It's not known that way. Now that  doesn't mean it can't be inferred from another truth, just that's any truth can be  inferred from any other. If we just put up a silly syllogism, and we could always  say God exists or the moon's made of green cheese. The moon's not made of  green cheese, so God exists. Now you have an inference. That's not why  anybody believes God exists. They don't believe God exists because the moon's not made of green cheese. That's not that doesn't work. So it's any belief can be inferred from any other. But I said it can't be known. It isn't known by inferring it  from any other so if you take the belief that 1 + 1 is 2, that is a self evident truth,  it doesn't have a proof. There's no way to get you can sit down and say, well,  here I can show you why that's true, and you spell out the steps and draw the  conclusion that 1 + 1 is 2, no, and don't. You can't do that. Nobody's ever done  it, and nobody can see why you would need to, because it's obviously true. That  is, it's it's prima facie truth, true on the face of it, you you understand the belief,  you see that it's true. You have this experience. It's not known by inferring it. It is experienced as prima facie true. And for most beliefs, when that happens, it  becomes irresistible. It simply produces the belief in you. So if I desperately  want tomorrow to be a really nice day, all kinds of bad things are going to  happen to me. If it's raining tomorrow and I jump out of bed and I open the  drapes and the rain is pouring down. It produces, in me, the belief that is raining. I don't decide to believe it's raining. It's irresistible. It's I see it raining. Okay?  Those are all examples of self evident beliefs. Now there's a long tradition,  especially in rationalist philosophy that no perceptual belief is allowed to count  as self evident. That's pure bias. Perceptual beliefs are the classic examples of  beliefs that we don't infer from anything else. When I open the curtains and I see

it's raining. I don't infer that it's raining from other pieces of information. I directly  see that it's raining and it produces the belief it's irresistible. It's prima facie true  and irresistible. Perceptual, normal perception, produces beliefs like that all day  

for everybody, all day long, every day. And there's no reason to rule out there's  no good reason to rule out perceptual beliefs. We'll come to that in some detail  in a bit. Let's think about other self evident beliefs. There are beliefs that are self evident that are perceptual, seeing that it's raining. There are beliefs that are self evident because we know them from introspection. So if I have a slight ache in  my right foot, it's self evident to me that I have a slight ache in my right foot. I  know that by introspection it and then there are other beliefs that are that are  self evident, that are memory beliefs. I know my name, address and telephone  number. How do I know them? I remember them. Is my memory infallible? No, I  didn't say it had to be infallible. I just said it's self evident, it's prima facie. I don't  infer it from anything else, and when I remember my name, address and  telephone number, it's irresistible to me that they're my name, address and  telephone number. Now there's a last kind that's long been called Rational  intuition. You heard Pascal do that we must reason must accept these intuitions  of the heart, he says, and base all its reasoning upon them. There's no  alternative. And that's another kind of intuition, and they've been called Rational  intuitions, because so many of those kinds of truths, and the people who are  working with them were working in mathematics or in logic, and they thought of  them as rational. Actually, that's a biased name. It isn't only rational intuitions.  It's not in other words, it's not only intuitions about math or logic. There are  intuitions about all sorts of other things. For example, that other people have  minds you don't see somebody else's mind with your eyes, but you believe  about other people that there are similar processes going on in them as to  what's going on in You, thought processes, disappointments, hopes, dreams.  You infer all that you you, but I'm sorry you don't infer that from observing other  people. You can't write down these descriptions and draw the inference  somebody else has a mind because it won't follow no matter what you put down. That could be true of a cleverly devised robot with no mind, but everybody forms that beliefs, belief intuitively and immediately. I've just read recently about  experiments being done with infants, and they were six weeks old, and they  respond to the human face, and they respond to a human face looking angry or  upset. They respond differently. If it look if the human face looks scared, if the  human human face is happy, smiles at them, they smile back. They but there's  already the seeds of this intuition that that these other people have minds, and  it's notoriously impossible to prove. There are lots of beliefs then that aren't just  that, aren't axioms of math and logic, but are intuitively true. So I'll just call them  the intuitively true ones, as opposed to introspection, memory and sense  perception, normal sense perception. But anytime we form a belief without  inferring it from anything else, because we experience it as prima facie true, and

we find it to be irresistibly true, most of them are. Some once in a while they're  not, but most of them are. Then in that case, we have a self evident belief. Now  those were the characteristics of self evident beliefs that everybody recognized.  That is these are the three characteristics that we can notice about our own self  evident beliefs. Right? These beliefs, however, self evident beliefs then had a lot of restrictions put on them. I mean, people telling us that self evident beliefs  were only really self evident, not if they just fulfilled the three conditions on the  board, but if they were also and here come the three restrictions. I'm going to  put these up in red. This is what a self evident belief is. But to be genuine, it has  to pass these tests. It's experienced as self evident by everybody. Now the first  time that this restriction raises its ugly head is in Aristotle. And Aristotle doesn't  say it has to be experienced as self evident by everybody, but by, but he says,  by all the experts in whatever field the self evident truth arises all the experts.  Descartes changes that. He says, if it's genuinely self evident, it will be to  anyone who is in the slightest degree rational. So every normal adult human  who can understand the belief immediately sees it to be, to be true. Self  evidently true. That's the first restriction. Second restriction also began with  Aristotle. It's a necessary truth. Necessary truth means it's a law, and this is the  reason that Aristotle and other rationalists following him ruled out normal sense  perception. 1 + 1 = 2 is a law, but looking out the window and seeing that it's  raining is not so normal sense perceptions don't count as self evident. Those  beliefs that arise from normal sense perception don't count. They're not genuine  because they're not necessary truths, right? The laws of logic, the laws of  mathematics, fine. Some metaphysical laws, fine. And finally, there's another  restriction, whatever is really whatever, let's say belief is really a 1, 2 and 3 and  1 and 2, okay, whatever fits the description that we can make by just reflecting  On are self evident truths. And then these two additions, is infallible. So this is all add on. Here's what we know by just reflecting our beliefs, self evident beliefs,  and describing how they arise. They're not inferred from anything else. They  look prima facie true, and most of them irresistibly true, though there are a few  that don't look quite right at first, then as that sinks in, somebody gets more  familiar with it, they gradually do come to see it. That can happen but, but most  of them are irresistible, and then we have these additions. Now these additions  are theories. They're guesses about self evident truths, that they also have to be these other things. They have to be recognized by everybody. They have to be a necessary truth, and they have to be infallible. This, ladies and gentlemen, is  why so many Christian thinkers, when asked, How do you know God is real?  Did not say it's self evident. When I read the Scripture that this is the truth about  God from God, that's what that's the thesis I'm going to defend here. My answer  to, can we know God is real is yes, because it's self evident that the biblical  message. Is the truth about God. From God, it's self evident. But the reason  most Christians have not said that, are these restrictions, belief in God doesn't 

pass the restrictions. Belief in God isn't self evident to everybody. Therefore it's  not self evident. Belief in God isn't the law and it's not infallible, therefore it's not  really self evident. These restrictions I'm going to show you before too long.  Stink. That's my technical term for what I will show you what's wrong with them,  but they turn out to be nonsense, and yet they are the reason that so many  Christian thinkers were put off of giving the answer. It's self evident to me when I read scripture that God is real, and instead, they were driven to give proofs of it.  The reason they thought they had to give proofs was that in the ancient world,  everybody believed that genuine knowledge was either self evident or proven.  So if they take self evident away from you, what's left offer a proof, which is also  a very bad project. I want to show you why that project is incompatible with  Christianity. So not only do none of the proofs work, the very project of making  them is an unChristian project. I'm going to argue now I'm going to show you  why those are all promises about things to come. Meanwhile, let's take a little  closer look at what's here on the board. The influence of people like Aristotle  and Descartes is just enormous. They make a mistake about this stuff, and it's  just perpetuated down the centuries by people who take it on their authority.  Aristotle didn't quite defend the everybody requirement the way Descartes did.  As I told you, Aristotle said, well, all the experts in the field will see it. Descartes  says, Anyone who's of the least degree rational, if they can understand the  belief, if it is self evident, they'll see it and agree to it. What's the proof of that  there isn't any? They just say it. You believe that it's true. They don't give an  argument. They give examples where it is true, but they don't give any example.  They don't consider any examples where it's not true, nor do they give an  argument that there can't be any we're going to look at these in in more detail,  but it's going to turn out, I can tell you this in advance, that every one of these  defeats itself that is incompatible with the other two, which means they're among the worst atrocities ever to burden an intellectual tradition. They, the rejection of  all the so all the truths that are self evident by ruling many of them out on these  grounds is what has ruined epistemology ever since these additional restrictions were thought up, and it's why we end up today with the mess that epistemology  is in. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. Theory of knowledge is in a  complete mess. Today. There's a great many people who think that there are  there is no truth. There isn't anything we know for certain. It's something that's  something you already know is false. Because you know that when you look up  the street and see the bus coming, that you better back up because or the bus  will hit you. You know that you don't just think that's probable, or it's something  that you hope or have faith in, in the loose sense of I trust for no reason. You  know it. You know very well that if somebody borrowed 20 bucks and didn't pay  it back, it's not also true that he did pay it back. You know that for sure, but these people are now saying we don't know anything for sure, not because there's  nothing like this, but because there's nothing like all of that. Nothing passes. I 

will intend to show you why these never should have been added, and we  should reject them and go back to what we can know by describing self evident  experiences or experiences of self evidency. I'm just giving you a moment to  think about all that. It's a good bit to take in. But as I said, you can always run  run the thing backward. Watch it again. Take your time. Make your notes. This is a real mess. These rejecting normal sense perception, belief in God, belief in  other minds. None of them pass these restrictions. Therefore the conclusion is  we don't know them. We we believe them, and we tend to use them, but we  don't really know which is utter nonsense and what is further utter nonsense is  every one of these? Well, perhaps we ought to take a break here, and then I'll  come back and we'll do some more of this, but once again, this is where we're  headed. Can we know God is real? Yes, by experiencing His word to be His  Word, and the truth about God from God, it's a form of self evidence, just the  way 1 + 1 is 2 looks self evident, just the way the axiom things equal to the  same thing are equal to each other. Looks self evident. It's the Scripture gives  us the truth about God from God. It's self evident that this is the truth. It's the  truth is not inferred from anything else. It looks prima facie true and its  experience is irresistibly true. We had that wonderful quote from Calvin. How do  we know scripture comes from God? Scripture bears, on the face of it, prima  facie such evidence of its truth as do white and black, of their color, sweet and  bitter, of their taste not inferred from anything else, but known for certain,  because it's self evident. So the next thing on our agenda will be that I will show  you why these don't work. Then we'll take a look at some of the proofs that  Christians have offered for belief in God. They've tried to prove that God exists,  and we'll see why they don't work, and then I will try to make clear to you why no one should ever try that project.