Reading: Self-Evidence and the Existence of God

Now, I've already said that normal perception is an example of this. It does not follow, however, that all perceptions are normal. Some perceptions that are considered normal give us one sort of appearance, and yet the reality might be something else. We're not fooled by this. From a young age, we understand that objects further away look smaller but aren't actually smaller. Similarly, when we put a stick into water, it appears bent, but in reality, it's not. Perceptions are often perspectival, dependent on where we stand or how we view things. Objects may appear bent, smaller, or further away, like how railroad tracks seem to converge at the horizon, even though they don't actually get closer together.

Very often, perception doesn't initially show us the truth of an object. However, just because railroad tracks appear to converge, or a stick looks bent in water, or distant objects appear smaller, it doesn't mean that perception is always inaccurate. We can't conclude that we can never trust it. That's point number one.

Point number two: there are other instances of self-evidence. Some principles are self-evident across various domains. For instance, almost everyone agrees with the logical truth that "1+1=2". Aristotle famously highlighted the axiom that nothing can be both true and false simultaneously in the same respect. He regarded this as the most certain of all axioms because to him, it was self-evident. Today, many still see this axiom as self-evident, though there are those who challenge it without producing genuine exceptions.

I want to suggest that the New Testament's account of how we know God operates in the same self-evident manner. To grasp this, consider how the New Testament employs the term "faith". Some critics argue that faith is just an easy way for Christians to claim knowledge without providing reasons. However, the New Testament uses "faith" in three distinct ways. Firstly, it's used to denote trusting someone else's word. For instance, if my son tells me he was hit by a car because someone ran a red light, I trust his word, even if I wasn't present. This trust is one form of faith.

Secondly, the term is used to represent the entirety of the Christian religion, as when Paul advises to remain faithful to the teachings passed down. We also use "faith" in this manner when referring to religions like the "Hindu faith" or "Jewish faith".

Lastly, and most intriguingly, the New Testament uses "faith" to signify what is self-evident and certain. This is not about mere belief; it's about absolute certainty derived from direct experience. This is what the concept of self-evidence was originally about: recognizing something as undeniably true based on firsthand experience. The New Testament authors, especially Paul, John, and the writer of Hebrews, discuss faith in this manner. They imply that genuine believers see the truth for themselves. The Christian message is self-evident, appearing as an undeniable truth from God.

So, why didn't early church members simply claim that God's existence was self-evident when questioned? Although a few might have, many sought proofs for God's existence. Intellectual giants like St. Augustine, St. Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas each formulated proofs for God's existence.

However, I want to critique this approach. Constructing a proof for God's existence seems inherently flawed. Many theologians equated God with rationality, believing that the most rational being should have evidence proving its existence. But from an Orthodox and Reformation perspective, God is not merely rational. God encompasses reason and logic because He created them. Logic and mathematical laws don't account for their own origin, and since we're told God created everything, it implies that these laws are also His creation. Consequently, God is not bound by these laws. Therefore, any proof bound by logical laws cannot prove God's existence. Instead of advocating for blind faith, I'm advocating for enlightened faith – belief based on firsthand experience of God's evident truth.

Historically, many theologians and philosophers have attempted proofs of God's existence. While these attempts were well-intentioned and often ingenious, they fundamentally misunderstand the nature of God. For instance, one popular argument begins with the principle of sufficient reason. However, these proofs, while fascinating, often fall short in capturing the essence of the divine.

There must be a cause, or explanation. Got that? This is a highly rationalistic kind of axiom for them. For everything, there must be a causal explanation. Think about that. How would you know that? How do you know there isn't anything that doesn't have a causal explanation?

I'm told that it's puzzling to some, especially physicists, that there are quantum effects that seem to pop into existence and out, and don't seem to have causes or explanations. But back in the early days of the church, nobody knew anything about that. They believed that for everything, there must be a causal explanation, because they believed another axiom. And it goes like this: the real is rational, and the rational is real. You see, that's what the AAA thinkers, the thinkers in that tradition, the Christians in that tradition, shared with their pagan counterparts, their naturalist counterparts, so that people like Plato and Aristotle believed that the ultimate reality is rational. So they're saying for everything, there must be a causal explanation.

That's premise one. Premise two: causes are always equal to or greater than their effects. Clear causes are equal to their effects, or they're greater than their effects, but you can't get more effect than what was in all the causes that produced it. If you could do that, you could get a perpetual motion machine or something like that, a machine that uses more energy than is put into it. This means the sum total of all the causes it takes to produce an effect means that there can't be more reality in the effect than in all the causes put together. It can be equal but can't be more.

Alright, we're almost done here. Premise three: Backward capital E means exists. Remember, there exists in one mind an idea of infinity. Now, this should not cause you any difficulty. But by infinity, the author here means a being with all unknown imperfections. Where have you heard that before? So by an infinite being, he doesn't mean infinitely big; he means infinitely perfect. There exists in my mind an idea of something infinitely perfect; I can think of that.

Conclusion: Therefore, there exists an infinite cause of my idea of infinity. Got that? Therefore, there exists an infinite cause of my idea. I have an idea of something with all and only perfection, something had to cause that idea says premise one. The idea can't have no cause. Whatever the cause is, it has to be equal to the effect or greater. Well, it can't be greater than infinity. So it has to be equal, right? It's not I who caused that idea. That couldn't be because whatever causes that idea has to have at least as much reality as what we're talking about. And we're talking about infinity; we're talking about all the perfections. So when I have the idea in my mind, it takes an infinite cause to put it there. So here's one idea which, if you think of it, guarantees there is such a thing as what you're thinking of. It doesn't work for any other idea, but it works for the idea of infinite perfection.

The author of this argument was a well-known Christian philosopher, whose name was Rene Descartes. A fairly bright guy, he invented analytic geometry and wrote a lot about philosophy. So what do you think of this? Does it hit you where you live and convince you, or is there some fault in this argument? I think there is, even though it's arguing for the right idea of God. It's arguing for God as a being with all and only perfection. So that saying, if I have an idea of anything with all and only perfection, there would have to be a cause that matches that idea. And in reality, the cause has to have as much reality in it as the idea; it has to be infinite. If there's an infinite cause, then God exists.

Now, pay attention because my fingers will never leave my hand. There's something wrong with this, and it's bad. You see, he starts out by saying that what exists in his mind is an idea of infinity. And the question is, what caused that? And he claims that the cause has to be infinite. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the idea of infinity is not itself infinite. Right? If I have an idea of something else that has all the perfections, that doesn't mean my idea has all the perfections. My idea isn't infinitely good or powerful or all-knowing; it's an idea of something else that could be those things. So my idea doesn't require an infinite cause. My idea is finite, even if it's an idea of something being infinite.

So what he has done is shifted the meaning here, from the idea of infinity to an infinite idea. An infinite idea would require an infinite cause. But an idea of infinity isn't infinite, and this argument falls apart. This rebuttal was only discovered after Descartes died, so he didn't have a chance to retract the argument or replace it with another. I'm sure he would have. This would be a rather large embarrassment for him. This so-called proof commits the fallacy of equivocation that shifts the meaning of a term. And therefore, it doesn't work.

Well, so, okay. That's the sort of thing people were led to do.

But the question I raised was why? Why would people feel that they had to give proofs? Why didn't they appeal to the experience of self-evidence? Why didn't they talk about faith, the way St. Paul did, and the way St. John did and the way the author of Hebrews did, as an experience that generates certainty in what it delivers?

And the answer is Aristotle put restrictions on what was allowed to count as self-evident. That's the answer. Our old friend Aristotle said, "Something is self-evident when you experience its truth directly. It's prima facie true, you don't derive it from anything else. But that experience has to meet three other conditions, because I say so."

Here are the three conditions.

It has to appear self-evident to all the experts in the field in which it arises. Everybody's got to agree. So if the self-evident truth is the truth in mathematics, it has to appear self-evident to everybody in mathematics. If it's self-evidence about God, it has to appear self-evident to all the theologians and everybody interested in religious belief if they're expert. Got it? That's the first restriction.

Only necessary truths can be self-evident. What does that mean? It means a truth that's a law. So something that we experience to be prima facie true and not derived from anything else, can be considered self-evident, provided all the other experts in this field agree with us and provided that it's a law. For example, "one plus one equals two" can be self-evident. But the existence of God can't be — that's not a law.

If it is truly self-evident, and it's a necessary truth, then it is infallible. That means we can't possibly be wrong. If we experience something to be self-evident, and all the experts agree, and it's a necessary truth, then nothing could possibly falsify this — no change in conditions in ourselves, no changing conditions in the world around us. Nothing could make this false.

That's some high claim, isn't it? Now, the really interesting thing about this is that Aristotle never gave arguments to support these three restrictions on self-evidence. He states each of them and gives examples that conform to them, but he never argues against obvious candidates that don't conform to them.

That's unlikely. Where Aristotle has good reasons for something, he usually makes them very clear. But he didn't here. Why should we think what we experience to be self-evident, is really self-evident? Especially if only all the other experts agree. Why should we think that? What if it's a matter of vote?

Then there's the consideration about all the experts. This means every expert who ever lived: past, present, or future. So how would you ever know if all the experts agree with you, even if everyone alive did? And even if there was some way to find that out, how would you ever know about all the people who had died or are yet to be born?

By the way, in the 17th century, Descartes made this even more complex. He changed it from "all the experts" to "everybody". So now everyone gets a vote on whether something is self-evident, even those with minimal rationality. And by the 20th century, it's this idea that everyone was taking as the definition of self-evidence.

What Aristotle is doing here is quite clear. He's setting up a situation where only his concept of divinity is self-evident. He's dismissing others' views, because they aren't laws or universally agreed upon. But there's no real reason to think that only laws are self-evident. If you're watching a lecture, the lecturer's image on your screen is evident to you. That's not a law, but it's self-evident.

And then, there's the infallibility issue. We can't determine in the first instance whether everyone agrees or not. Furthermore, most truths can be doubted under some imagined conditions.

So, what's my conclusion? These restrictions aren't very convincing. There's no reason we should doubt what becomes self-evident to us — that God's word comes from God — just because of Aristotle's restrictions.

A non-reductionist theory of knowledge should start with both the fact that we have intuitive knowledge and the recognition that this intuition needs correcting. It needs to be straightened out so that we truly see what is evident. Faith, as described in the New Testament, is about the experience of self-evidence — recognizing the truth of God's word.