THE DISHONESTY OBJECTION:
IS CHRISTIAN FAITH LESS INTELLECTUALLY HONEST THAN SCIENCE?
by
MARK P. W. MCEWAN
Bachelor of Education, University of Alberta, 2007

Thesis
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree of

MASTER OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
in the
FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
TRINITY WESTERN UNIVERSITY

May 2023
© Mark P. W. McEwan, 2023

IS CHRISTIAN FAITH LESS INTELLECTUALLY HONEST THAN SCIENCE?
Abstract
In light of modern science, Christianity is accused of being intellectually dishonest.
Unlike science, the skeptic claims, the Christian faith is closed to outside correction, embracing
self-defence over self-criticism, employing non-falsifiable claims, and claiming final certainty
beyond what any evidence could justify. This thesis answers the skeptic who makes this
dishonesty objection from science by comparing science and Christianity. Science self-critically
attends to nature, and theology self-critically attends to revelation. Neither can proceed if it
becomes skeptical about its own ‘object’ of knowledge. The dishonesty objection tolerates from
science what it considers dishonest from Christianity because it excludes in advance the
possibility of revealed, authoritative, and transformative theological knowledge as Christian
thinkers understand it. This objection thereby insists on guaranteeing theological knowledge to
ourselves, by ourselves—on our own terms; this demand is a “pretension ... against the
knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:5, NIV).

ii

IS CHRISTIAN FAITH LESS INTELLECTUALLY HONEST THAN SCIENCE?

For Brian Gaida
Teacher, Youth Pastor, Friend
(1964 - 2014)
“Leadership is a combination of strategy and character;
if you have to be without one, be without strategy.”1

Brian David Gaida, paraphrasing General Norman Schwarzkopf, “Brian Gaida’s Last Youth Sermon & Gaida
Tribute Video,” June 20, 2003, video, 1:24:08, https://youtu.be/ksc6yp50pEk?t=3732.
1

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Contents
Chapter 1

Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1

1.1 Research Problem ..................................................................................................... 1
1.1.1

Challenges to Christianity from Science ........................................................... 1

1.1.2

The Dishonesty Objection ................................................................................. 3

1.2 Steel-Manning the Dishonesty Objection ................................................................. 5
1.2.1

Science Is More Open to Correction ................................................................. 7

1.2.2

Science Is More Self-Critical........................................................................... 10

1.2.2.1 Methodology .............................................................................................. 10
1.2.2.2 Incentives ................................................................................................... 11
1.2.2.3 Confirmation Bias ...................................................................................... 13
1.2.2.4 Self-Criticism vs. Self-Defence ................................................................. 14
1.2.3

Science Better Embraces Falsification ............................................................ 17

1.2.3.1 Falsification and the Skeptic ...................................................................... 18
1.2.3.2 Falsification and Other Ways of Knowing................................................. 20
1.2.4

Science Is More Intellectually Humble ........................................................... 22

1.2.4.1 Scientific Confidence as Provisional ......................................................... 22
1.2.4.2 Christian Faith Preached as Final ............................................................... 23
1.2.4.3 Christian Confidence as Disproportionate to Evidence ............................. 24
1.2.4.4 Christian Faith Never Could Be Final ........................................................ 25
1.2.5

Christianity as Hypocritical Pseudoscience ..................................................... 26

1.3 The Importance of a Response ............................................................................... 27
1.4 Audience ................................................................................................................. 28

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1.5 Research Question .................................................................................................. 29
1.6 Hypothesis .............................................................................................................. 30
Chapter 2

Positioning a Response ............................................................................................. 31

2.1 Project Scope .......................................................................................................... 31
2.1.1

Not an Exercise in Positive Apologetics ......................................................... 32

2.1.2

Not a Search for Warrant ................................................................................. 33

2.1.3

Neither a Presuppositional nor Evidentialist Apologetic................................. 33

2.1.4

Not the Only Possible Response ...................................................................... 34

2.2 What Is Intellectual Dishonesty? ............................................................................ 34
2.2.1

Agreement: An Abstract Definition................................................................. 35

2.2.1.1 General Honesty and Dishonesty ............................................................... 36
2.2.1.2 Intellectual Honesty ................................................................................... 38
2.2.1.3 Intellectual Dishonesty ............................................................................... 39
2.2.1.4 Strong Intellectual Dishonesty ................................................................... 40
2.2.1.5 Weak Intellectual Dishonesty .................................................................... 41
2.2.1.6 Plain Dishonesty vs. Intellectual Dishonesty ............................................. 42
2.2.1.7 Notes on Intellectual Dishonesty ............................................................... 43
2.2.2

What the Skeptic Needs to Show..................................................................... 43

2.2.3

Disagreement: A Tale of Two Realities .......................................................... 45

2.2.3.1 Thought Experiment: Two Soldiers ........................................................... 45
2.2.3.2 What if Jesus Is the Truth? ......................................................................... 46
2.3 Revelation as an Object of Knowledge .................................................................. 48
2.3.1

God and Other Minds ...................................................................................... 49

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2.3.1.1 Thought Experiment: Flowers on the Nightstand ...................................... 50
2.3.1.2 Thought Experiment: A Solipsist Disagrees with Himself ........................ 50
2.3.1.3 Objections Roundup 1 ................................................................................ 52
2.3.2

The Nature-Revelation Analogy ...................................................................... 53

2.3.2.1 Objection: Going Nuclear .......................................................................... 53
2.3.2.2 Response: A More Modest Claim .............................................................. 54
2.3.3

Christian Faith as Dependent on the Transcendent ......................................... 56

2.3.3.1 A kata-physin Approach ............................................................................ 56
2.3.3.2 Knowledge as Dependent ........................................................................... 58
2.3.3.3 Thought Experiment: A View from Where? .............................................. 59
2.4 Revelation as Authoritative .................................................................................... 60
2.4.1

Thought Experiment: Flashlight vs. Sun ......................................................... 61

2.4.2

Ultimate Authority ........................................................................................... 62

2.4.3

The Skeptic and Divine Authority ................................................................... 62

2.4.3.1 Extraordinary Evidence .............................................................................. 63
2.4.3.2 Can There Be Evidence? ............................................................................ 64
2.4.4

Don’t Cross the Modalities .............................................................................. 67

2.5 Revelation as Transformative ................................................................................. 68
2.6 The Problem of Position ......................................................................................... 69
2.6.1

The Christian’s Position Under God................................................................ 69

2.6.2

The Christian’s Position Before the Skeptic .................................................... 70

2.6.3

Two Poles of Authority ................................................................................... 70

2.6.4

Objections Roundup 2 ..................................................................................... 71

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2.7 Summary and Next Steps ....................................................................................... 73
Chapter 3

Science and Theology as Ways of Knowing ............................................................ 74

3.1 Falsification Is Not the Only Option ...................................................................... 74
3.1.1

Falsification and Positivism ............................................................................. 75

3.1.2

Science and Personal Knowledge .................................................................... 76

3.1.2.1 Knowledge: Focal and Subsidiary ............................................................. 78
3.1.2.2 Scientific Discovery ................................................................................... 79
3.1.2.3 Responsible Commitment .......................................................................... 81
3.1.3

Scientific Revolutions ...................................................................................... 82

3.1.4

Science as Research Programs......................................................................... 84

3.1.5

Objections Roundup 3 ..................................................................................... 87

3.1.5.1 Science Is More than Falsification ............................................................. 87
3.1.5.2 A Word on Faith ........................................................................................ 89
3.2 The Adopted Philosophy of Science ...................................................................... 92
3.2.1

Science as a Knowing Project.......................................................................... 92

3.3 A Knowing Project for Each Object ....................................................................... 95
3.3.1

Theology as a Knowing Project ....................................................................... 95

3.3.2

Objections Roundup 4 ..................................................................................... 97

3.3.2.1 Correction and Self-Criticism .................................................................... 97
3.3.2.2 The Flow of Authority ............................................................................. 100
3.3.2.3 Incentives to Be Intellectually Dishonest ................................................. 103
3.3.2.4 Intellectual Humility ................................................................................ 103
3.4 Summary and Next Steps ..................................................................................... 105

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Chapter 4

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Revelation as a Unique Object of Knowledge ........................................................ 106

4.1 Theology Is More Constrained Than Science ...................................................... 107
4.1.1

A Universal Encounter? ................................................................................. 107

4.1.2

Epistemological Inversion ............................................................................. 108

4.1.3

The Noetic Effects of Sin .............................................................................. 109

4.1.4

We Are Not Objective, Innocent Explorers ................................................... 111

4.1.5

A More Critical Realism ................................................................................ 112

4.1.6

We Cannot Master Theology ......................................................................... 115

4.1.7

Objections Roundup 5 ................................................................................... 116

4.2 Theology Is More Objective Than Science .......................................................... 117
4.2.1

Transcendent and Immanent .......................................................................... 117

4.2.2

More Objective, Not Less .............................................................................. 118

4.2.3

Subjectivity as an Asset ................................................................................. 120

4.2.4

Objections Roundup 6 ................................................................................... 122

4.2.4.1 Preaching and Finality ............................................................................. 122
4.2.4.2 Proportionate Confidence ........................................................................ 122
4.2.4.3 A Dependent View of Things .................................................................. 123
4.3 Summary and Next Steps ..................................................................................... 124
Chapter 5

Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 125

5.1 The Last Roundup ................................................................................................ 125
5.1.1

Dishonesty About Science ............................................................................. 125

5.1.2

Dishonesty About Other Religions ................................................................ 127

5.1.2.1 A Failure to Investigate? .......................................................................... 128

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5.1.2.2 A Monopolized Defence? ........................................................................ 130
5.1.3

Dishonesty About Falsification ..................................................................... 131

5.1.3.1 Thought Experiment: Could One Tooth Falsify Evolution? .................... 131
5.1.3.2 Thought Experiment: Could the Bones of Christ Falsify Christianity? ... 133
5.1.3.3 Response .................................................................................................. 135
5.1.3.4 An Elaborately Constructed Delusion? .................................................... 137
5.2 A Pretension Against the Knowledge of God ...................................................... 138
5.2.1

Intellectual Hypocrisy .................................................................................... 139

5.2.2

Intellectual Prejudice ..................................................................................... 139

5.2.3

Intellectual Dishonesty .................................................................................. 140

IS CHRISTIAN FAITH LESS INTELLECTUALLY HONEST THAN SCIENCE?

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Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Research Problem
1.1.1 Challenges to Christianity from Science
One of the most salient objections to Christianity in Western culture is that modern
science has rendered it obsolete and unacceptable.1 Drawing on Christian philosopher Alvin
Plantinga’s work, this objection may be articulated as a twofold challenge. De facto objections
question “the truth of Christian belief”—the fact of the matter. De jure objections are
arguments or claims to the effect that Christian belief, whether or not true, is at any rate
unjustifiable, or rationally unjustified, or irrational, or not intellectually respectable, or
contrary to sound morality, or without sufficient evidence, or in some either way
rationally unacceptable, not up to snuff from an intellectual point of view.2
First, there is the familiar de facto (matter of fact) challenge: repeatedly, scientific
progress has overturned traditional ideas about the natural world—many of which, legitimately
or not, have been publicly associated with the Bible and Christian tradition.3 Since Christianity
has been (ostensibly) exposed as erroneous concerning nature, it must also be untrustworthy on

1

E.g., Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (2006; repr., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008). Note: Unless otherwise
noted, this thesis uses the term science in the modern sense: the study of the natural world through empirical inquiry.
This is further detailed in § 3.2.
This thesis is adapted from several of my (Mark McEwan’s) papers, including the following: “Created
Conflationism: Evangelical Antievolutionism” (essay, HIS 541, ACTS Seminaries, 2011); “Converging Lines of
Witness: Genesis and the Question of Origins” (essay, BIE 614, ACTS Seminaries, 2012); “Theology of
Scholarship” (essay, MTS 803, ACTS Seminaries, 2013); “Science and Theology: Competing Epistemologies?”
(essay, THS 672, ACTS Seminaries, 2015); “Clement of Alexandria and the Knowledge of God” (essay, THS 673,
ACTS Seminaries, 2015); “Christianity and the Postmodern Pragmatism of Richard Rorty” (essay, CAP 602, ACTS
Seminaries, 2015); and “Is Christian Faith Less Honest than Science?” (thesis proposal, ACTS Seminaries, 2019).
I have also delivered several public talks while developing this subject matter, including the following:
“Integrity, Hope, Lordship, and Legacy in Pastoral Apologetics” (lecture given for the MinistryLift Conference at
ACTS Seminaries, Langley, BC, October 5, 2013); “Christian Apologetics and Science: Is Faith Intellectually
Dishonest?” (lecture given at the 75th annual meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation, Azusa Pacific
University, Los Angeles, CA, July 22-25, 2016); “Is Christianity Less Honest than Science?” (lecture given at
Wolfville Baptist Church, Wolfville, NS, June 18, 2018); “Asymmetrical Partnership: Models of Science and
Religion Revisited” (lecture given at ASA 2018, Gordon College, Wenham, MA, July 27-30, 2018).
2
Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University, 2000), viii–xiii.
3
E.g., geocentrism, a very young earth, and the individual, de novo creation of all species of life on earth.

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less tangible matters, such as the nature or existence of God. For those who accept this
reasoning, science answers the de facto question: Christianity must be false.4
The second de jure (in-principle) challenge from science is subtler: science provides a
better way of knowing in principle—superior for accessing and assessing any knowledge. The
famous atheist Richard Dawkins expresses as much: “if there are any questions that science
cannot answer,” he wonders, “what makes anyone think that religion can answer them?”5 Here,
the challenge is not that science has disproven Christianity (de facto), but that religious faith
offers a woefully inferior means of arriving at truth in the first place (de jure).
Christian apologists have addressed both polarities of the objection from science. On the
de facto front, there are diverse positions concerning whether nature, Scripture, or both have
been understood correctly: while some push back against various findings of modern science,6
others seek to harmonize them with Christianity.7 Apologists who take up the de jure challenge
will often criticize scientism (the philosophical view that science is the only, or best, path to
knowledge) and defend the legitimacy of theological knowledge.8

4

I disagree with this conclusion, of course, but this matter is not the focus of this thesis and will not detain us here.
For a helpful explanation for why this is not a legitimate conclusion to draw from science, see Denis O. Lamoureux,
I Love Jesus and I Accept Evolution (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2009).
5
Dawkins, The God Delusion, 80. Dawkins writes about religion in general here, but I will explore this matter as it
pertains to the Christian faith in particular. For space and simplicity, the reader may take theology and religion to
refer to their Christian forms (unless otherwise noted). Where a skeptical voice has criticized religion in general, this
thesis responds to that criticism with the Christian religion in mind. Whereas theology is generally understood to be
the study of God, this project uses the term to indicate Christian theology. Specifically, theology is the knowing
project that takes God’s self-disclosure as its primary object. Theology and Christian faith are often mentioned in
place of Christianity in general because the substance of the dishonesty objection is directed at the intellectual and
faith-oriented facets of Christianity in particular.
6
“About,” Answers in Genesis, accessed June 4, 2020, https://answersingenesis.org/about/; “Our Mission and
Beliefs,” Reasons to Believe, accessed June 4, 2020, https://reasons.org/about.
7
“About Us,” BioLogos, accessed June 4, 2020, https://biologos.org/about-us.
8
E.g., J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers
Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2003), 346–50; J. P. Moreland, Love God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the
Life of the Soul (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1997), chap. 7.

IS CHRISTIAN FAITH LESS INTELLECTUALLY HONEST THAN SCIENCE?
1.1.2

3

The Dishonesty Objection
One aspect of the de jure challenge warrants further examination. Dawkins’s criticism of

religious fundamentalists introduces it well:
[They] know they are right because they have read the truth in a holy book and they
know, in advance, that nothing will budge them from their belief. The truth of the holy
book is an axiom, not the end product of a process of reasoning. The book is true, and if
the evidence seems to contradict it, it is the evidence that must be thrown out, not the
book. ... When a science book is wrong, somebody eventually discovers the mistake and
it is corrected in subsequent books. That conspicuously doesn’t happen with holy books.9
The force of Dawkins’s criticism is that there is something dishonest about how
Christians handle evidence in relation to their beliefs.10 When beliefs drawn from Scripture are at
stake, examples abound of Christians willing to dismiss or deny seemingly contradictory
evidence. So writes creation scientist Henry Morris: “There is no scientific evidence whatever
for evolution. The actual evidence is exactly what would be expected if God had created each
kind of creature in the beginning.”11 Unlike science, which is ready to follow the evidence where
it leads, the Christian faith appears to have its conclusions fixed in advance.
Several options are available for those seeking a summary dismissal of Dawkins’s
critique. One might criticize his scientism or his uncharitable portrayal of Christians and their
“holy book.” One could push back on historical and philosophical grounds: science is not, in

9

Dawkins, The God Delusion, 319. Although Dawkins explicitly speaks of fundamentalists here, this complaint
applies to Christian orthodoxy in general (especially for how I develop it going forward).
10
I am a Christian. For the sake of brevity and consistency, however, I use the first-person plural in the same way I
do when delivering an academic talk: unless it is otherwise clear from context, “we,” “our,” etc. refer to “we the
ones who are considering this problem”—which might include skeptics and Christians alike. Accordingly, I often
refer to Christians in the third person in this paper.
11
Henry M. Morris, The Long War against God: The History and Impact of the Creation/Evolution Conflict (Green
Forest, AR: Master Books, 2008), 279. I do not intend to accuse every non-evolutionary creationist Christian of
intellectual dishonesty; Christians can honestly disagree about how best to interpret the combined evidence from
Scripture and nature. See, e.g., Todd Charles Wood and Darrel R. Falk, The Fool and the Heretic: How Two
Scientists Moved Beyond the Labels to a Christian Dialogue About Creation and Evolution (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 2019); Kenneth Keathley et al., eds., Old-Earth or Evolutionary Creation? Discussing Origins With
Reasons to Believe and BioLogos (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2017). However, to deny that the evidence even
exists in the first place is another matter entirely.

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fact, an inevitably progressing monolith, but “a human cultural activity,”12 subject to false starts,
mistakes, and pride; therefore, it is unfair to hold religion alone accountable for general, human
failings that are also present in science. One might add that even though some Christians can be
dishonest about science, others would agree with B. B. Warfield, “the ablest modern defender of
the theologically conservative doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible,”13 who said, “We may be
sure that the old faith will be able not merely to live with, but to assimilate to itself all facts”—
including evolution, should it turn out to be true.14 “All truth is God’s truth.”15
One Scientific American reviewer writes that “Dawkins is frequently dismissed as a
bully, but he is only putting theological doctrines to the same kind of scrutiny that any scientific
theory must withstand.”16 Whether or not this is entirely fair, Dawkins’s charge raises a
troubling, more subtle suggestion: not merely that Christianity is dishonest about science, but
that compared with science, Christianity is shown to be intellectually dishonest itself.17
Put another way, there are two challenges implied: (a) the superficial challenge that
Christians have, at times, been slow to listen and quick to dismiss scientific evidence that
contradicts their readings of Scripture; and (b) the related, more profound challenge that
Christians have their conclusion—their devoted Christian faith—in advance, such that no amount
of contradictory evidence could ever disprove it. This second challenge raises the objection to be
addressed in this thesis: science may not be the only, or best, path to knowledge, but it is more

Arnold Sikkema, “Religion and the Science Classroom,” in Foundations of Education: A Christian Vision, ed.
Matthew Etherington (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2014), 61.
13
B. B. Warfield, Mark A. Noll, and David N. Livingstone, Evolution, Scripture, and Science: Selected Writings
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000), 14.
14
Warfield, Noll, and Livingstone, Evolution, Scripture, and Science, 165.
15
Cf. “Let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master.”
Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 2.18.
16
George Johnson, “Scientists on Religion,” Scientific American 295, no. 4 (2006): 94.
17
In § 2.2.1, I define intellectual honesty for this particular inquiry. For the moment, this definition is suitable:
“Intellectual honesty is honesty in the acquisition, analysis, and transmission of ideas.” “Intellectual Honesty,”
RationalWiki, accessed December 8, 2022, https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Intellectual_honesty.
12

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intellectually honest than Christian faith. This general objection may be termed the dishonesty
objection to the Christian faith from science, hereafter referred to as the dishonesty objection.

1.2 Steel-Manning the Dishonesty Objection
Christian apologist Paul Chamberlain rightly maintains that “we are not in a position to
respond to objections raised against our faith until we understand them and are able to express
them in a way that is recognizable by those who voice them.”18 At a minimum, this means
avoiding the informal logical fallacy of straw-manning, which consists in presenting a distorted,
weaker version of an opponent’s position and then rejecting the distortion as if it were the
opponent’s position itself. Christians in particular ought to listen before answering,19 examine
more than one side of a matter,20 consider “planks” in their own intellectual eyes first,21 and
apply Jesus’ teaching to the life of the mind in general:22
Intellectual understanding is one of the best versions of the Golden Rule: Listen to others
as you would have others listen to you. ... Put in terms of Kant’s categorical imperative,
When addressing someone else’s ideas, your obligation is to treat them as you believe all
human beings ought to treat one another’s ideas.23
If Christians are meant to “love [their] enemies” and “do good to those who hate [them],”24
kindness and hospitality toward mere intellectual opponents ought to be forthcoming.
The opposite of straw-manning is called steel-manning: “taking the views of one’s
opponent and presenting them in the strongest light possible.”25 The goals of steel-manning

Paul Chamberlain, Why People Don’t Believe: Confronting Seven Challenges to Christian Faith (Grand Rapids,
MI: Baker Books, 2011), 15.
19
Prov. 18:13. Unless otherwise noted, quotations are from the New American Standard Bible (NASB).
20
Prov. 18:17.
21
Matt. 7:3-5; Luke 6:41 (NIV).
22
See Luke 6:31.
23
Wayne C. Booth, My Many Selves: The Quest for a Plausible Harmony (Logan, UT: Utah State University, 2006),
217.
24
Luke 6:27.
25
Randal Rauser, Conversations with My Inner Atheist: A Christian Apologist Explores Questions That Keep People
up at Night (USA: 2 Cup, 2020), 5.
18

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include the following: (a) to avoid the intellectually-dishonest, self-deceptive fallacy of strawmanning; (b) to provide a fair, even improved, articulation of the opposing view, with which
one’s opponent could agree; so that (c) one’s argument might be stronger and more intellectually
honest than it would have been otherwise.
Steel-manning is not without risks. One might end up strengthening an opposing position,
giving its adherents even more reason to remain entrenched in it. “Equally disturbing is the
possibility that you might find yourself being persuaded by your own sympathetic defense.”26
However, if “all truth is God’s truth”—if Jesus is the truth27—then Christians have nothing to
fear from probing the most troubling questions: “As Christians, we’re called to a radical life of
intellectual honesty, and that includes wrestling with questions and doubt.”28
Therefore, the following sections serve a dual purpose as they focus on several
accusations, or sub-objections, inherent to the dishonesty objection: (a) to show intellectual
hospitality toward skeptical readers, and (b) to persuade Christian readers that the dishonesty
objection is implied in prominent skeptical literature and warrants a serious response. Instead of
focussing on Dawkins alone, I will refer to the general “skeptic,” who represents a steel-manned
composite of voices that criticize Christianity (often via criticisms of religion in general) along
the lines of the dishonesty objection.29 The skeptic might argue that a genuinely steel-manned
treatment would be longer, differently reasoned, etc. Nonetheless, this effort is the most potent
form of the dishonesty objection I can imagine for this space and purpose. Importantly, this work
is not intended to impugn the character of any specific person or group as intellectually

26

Rauser, Conversations with My Inner Atheist, 5.
John 14:6. For further consideration, see note in § 2.2.3.2.
28
Rauser, Conversations with My Inner Atheist, 5–6.
29
For the sake of clarity and ease of reading, I will refer to the general skeptic in masculine pronouns and to the
general Christian with feminine ones. For simplicity, I will refer to criticisms made of religion in general as
criticisms of Christianity—which they are.
27

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dishonest, nor is it meant to give the simplistic, misleading impression that each skeptical author
cited would agree with everything said by the others.
To consider what follows fairly, charitably, and honestly, Christians must silence their
‘inner apologists’ for a while. For the moment, the aim is not to ‘mentally interrupt’ these
objections but to hear them as one would want their own reasoning to be heard. If it seems like
important apologetic considerations are missing from what follows, it is because the intention
here is to fairly develop a skeptical line of reasoning to be addressed in later chapters. To be
clear, I am not suggesting that every statement below is accurate or fair, but neither am I
suggesting that each statement below is necessarily untrue or unfair. What follows (§§ 1.2.1 –
1.2.5) is a ‘Devil’s advocate’ approach, not unlike apologist Randal Rauser’s Conversations with
My Inner Atheist or C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters.30

1.2.1

Science Is More Open to Correction
The initial thrust of the dishonesty objection is that the Christian faith is not open to

correction. “When a science book is wrong, ... it is corrected in subsequent books,” Dawkins
observes, but the truth of Christianity is “an axiom, not the end product of a process of
reasoning.”31 As atheist philosopher Peter Boghossian puts it, “an atheist is willing to revise their
belief (if provided sufficient evidence); the faithful permit no such revision.”32 Thus, believers
have “started with their conclusion and reasoned backward. ... They’ve started with the idea not
only that God exists but that a very specific God exists—and they’ve asked themselves how they
know this is true. They’ve put their metaphysics before their epistemology.”33 For atheist

30

The Screwtape Letters (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1942).
Dawkins, The God Delusion, 319.
32
Peter G. Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists (Durham, NC: Pitchstone, 2013), 28.
33
Peter Boghossian in Sam Harris and Peter Boghossian, “Street Epistemology: An Interview with Peter
Boghossian,” Sam Harris (blog), November 29, 2013, https://samharris.org/street-epistemology/.
31

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philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris, “religious faith is the one species of human ignorance
that will not admit of even the possibility of correction.”34
In sharp contrast with Christianity, the scientific community is willing to see their
theories corrected and even proven wrong if that is where the evidence leads. While pride and
other vices can sometimes hinder honesty in science, there is nonetheless an awareness of
fallibility—an I-could-be-wrongness—foundational to scientific methodology when it operates
at its best.35 Physicist Tom McLeish, a Christian himself, observes, “to make science work, we
have continually to admit our own ignorance to each other. ... Nothing moves on much if we do
not pluck up the courage to ask basic questions.”36 In science, there is nothing honest or
admirable about dogmatic loyalty to a particular theory or conclusion before investigation—
focussing on discoveries and evidence to support it while downplaying, even ignoring, anything
to the contrary. Yet the Christian faith employs this very sort of double standard: “When rational
inquiry supports the creed it is always championed; when it poses a threat, it is derided. ... Only
when the evidence for a religious doctrine is thin or nonexistent, or [when] there is compelling
evidence against it, do its adherents invoke ‘faith.’”37
Prominent Christian apologist William Lane Craig employs such a double standard.
Arguing for a “ministerial use of reason,” which “submits to and serves the gospel,”38 Craig says
Christianity is not ultimately based on argument and evidence: “We know Christianity is true
primarily by the self-authenticating witness of God’s Spirit. We show Christianity is true by

34

Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004), 223.
To fairly tease out the dishonesty objection in its most potent form, we must resist the urge to prematurely dismiss
it based on examples of science at its worst.
36
Tom McLeish, Faith and Wisdom in Science (Oxford: Oxford University, 2014), 30.
37
Sam Harris, “An Atheist Manifesto,” Sam Harris (blog), December 7, 2005, https://samharris.org/an-atheistmanifesto/.
38
William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books,
2008), 47; emphasis removed.
35

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9

presenting good arguments for its central tenets.”39 “Should a conflict arise between the witness
of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument
and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa.”40
For humanist philosopher Stephen Law, Craig’s approach exemplifies an Intellectual
Black Hole: “To those trapped inside, the core beliefs may appear quite sensible. But that
appearance is illusory—a product of the belief system’s ability to disable the truth-detecting
power of reason and get its victims to embrace instead habits of thought that are deceptive and
unreliable.”41 With his conclusion in advance, Craig knows his faith is true because of the Holy
Spirit, enabling him to discount any evidence against his faith—including any evidence against
the Holy Spirit’s existence. This fails “the litmus test for reasonableness: ... anyone who wants to
know how the world is, whether in physical or spiritual terms, will be open to new evidence.”42
Notably, many Christians have been, and are, intellectually honest enough to change their
minds on issues peripheral to the central tenets of the faith, such as the moral status of slavery or
the structure of our planetary system. The problem is not that Christians dismiss objections
outright; rather, the issue concerns the very core of the faith: Christians engage with objections
without authentic openness toward the possibility that Christianity itself might be false.
In summary, a good scientist follows the evidence where it leads, but a ‘good’ Christian
remains steadfast amid arguments and evidence that challenge her faith. Genuine openmindedness—intellectual honesty—concerning new evidence requires openness toward

39

Craig, Reasonable Faith, 58; emphasis in original.
Craig, Reasonable Faith, 48.
41
Stephen Law, Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole (Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books, 2011), 10.
42
Harris, The End of Faith, 225.
40

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correction. Devoted Christian faith is not open-minded toward new, corrective evidence
concerning core ‘research questions’ such as Has God indeed spoken? or Is Jesus really Lord?

1.2.2

Science Is More Self-Critical
The epistemological disparity between science and Christian faith runs deeper regarding

self-criticism. Scientists are not merely open to correction; they seek correction by trying to
falsify reigning scientific ideas (theories).

1.2.2.1 Methodology
It would be an oversimplification to speak of a monolithic “scientific method” across
every scientific discipline.43 However, it is fair to say that self-criticism is broadly common to
science in its various forms: rigorously seeking disconfirming evidence, repeating experiments,
and relying on peer review. As such, science enjoys a “built-in corrective mechanism—
hypothesis testing—that weeds out false claims.”44 Christian biologist Dennis Venema explains:
A scientific theory ... starts with a guess of sorts ... and asks why the facts are the way
they are. The result is a hypothesis—the technical term for “educated guess.” A scientist
can use that hypothesis to form a prediction: if this is why things are the way they are,
then such and such should be the case. Then an experiment can be set up to test the
prediction, and the result will either support or fail to support the hypothesis. If the
prediction is not supported, a scientist will reject the hypothesis. If the prediction is
supported by the experiment, the scientist will fail to reject the hypothesis. Note that this
is not the same as “accepting” the hypothesis—an important distinction within science.
Accepting a hypothesis would mean that no further tests would be required. ...
In science, a hypothesis that is not rejected after many, many predictions and tests
eventually becomes a broad explanatory framework that has withstood repeated

See Hanne Andersen and Brian Hepburn, “Scientific Method,” ed. Edward N. Zalta, The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, October 5, 2020), accessed December 9, 2022,
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/scientific-method/.
44
Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, 157.
43

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experimentation and that makes accurate predictions about the natural world: in other
words, a theory.45
For atheist biologist Jerry A. Coyne, this built-in self-correction gives science “a huge advantage
over [so-called] ‘other ways of knowing,’”46 “including revelation.”47 As Harris points out,
Christianity offers no “valid mechanism by which [its] core beliefs can be tested and revised.”48

1.2.2.2 Incentives
Scientists are incentivized to be self-critical: “If a scientist can demonstrate that a popular
scientific claim is false, she can become famous, get tenure, publish her results, earn more
money, and become respected by her peers. Moreover, the more prominent the defeated
hypothesis, the greater the reward.”49 As Venema notes, “there is not a biologist on the planet
that would not dearly love to overthrow evolution and replace it with an even better theory.”50
Christians skeptical of mainstream science may object, arguing that such incentives might
motivate scientists to avoid honest self-criticism: maintaining fame and income from grants.
Indeed, scientists sometimes are “reluctant to part with theories that have made them famous,
and paradigms do get entrenched in some fields ..., for scientists are, with good reason,
conservative.”51 Yes, some scientists have engaged in outright dishonesty toward the public.52

45

Dennis R. Venema and Scot McKnight, Adam and the Genome: Reading Scripture After Genetic Science (Grand
Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2017), 4.
46
Jerry A. Coyne, Faith versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible (New York: Viking, 2015), 223.
47
Coyne, Faith versus Fact, 150.
48
Harris, The End of Faith, 31; emphasis added.
49
Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, 157. On the same page, Boghossian notes that this strongly
contradicts “the bizarre notion,” which tends to be popular in certain expressions of Christianity, “that there’s a vast
conspiracy among scientists to suppress certain lines of research.” The skeptic’s point here is not that scientists are
motivated to twist or fabricate results to achieve fame; rather, the point is that there is an incentive to be rigorously
self-critical and judicious about one’s own conclusions in science that has no parallel in Christianity.
50
Venema and McKnight, Adam & the Genome, 11.
51
Coyne, Faith versus Fact, 223. Here Coyne provides “the idea that continents don’t move” as an example of a
once-entrenched paradigm.
52
See, e.g., Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the
Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, Tenth Anniversary Edition. (New York: Bloomsbury,
2019).

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However, the key takeaway should be that the larger scientific community can be relied upon to
expose such things; “ambition and the desire to know”—science at its best—“will ultimately
lead to good science driving out the bad.”53
Notably, “even if individual scientists are motivated by fame, their fame cannot be longlasting unless their work can be replicated by others.” E.g., the Piltdown Man forgery “was
eventually exposed [by] more science. It didn’t fit with the pattern of evidence as it accumulated,
so eventually, it was revisited.”54 Likewise, it is true that “throughout all of human history the
universe was regarded as fixed and immutable[,] and the idea that it might actually be
changing”—expanding—“was inconceivable.”55 Einstein himself “was so sure that the universe
had to be static that he modified his theory to make this possible.”56 But again, science at its best
eventually overcame this entrenched paradigm. Einstein admitted that he had been wrong.57
Christian critics of mainstream science are quick to point out that the incentives for
honest self-criticism do not always function perfectly or immediately in science—for science is
not always at its best; however, the relevant point here is that if anything, the incentive for
Christianity runs the other way: “if a preacher states that the claims of his faith tradition are false,
he’s excommunicated, defrocked, or otherwise forced to abandon his position.”58 Thus,

53

Coyne, Faith versus Fact, 223.
Dennis R. Venema, in a conversation via private message with the author, February 1, 2021; e.g., Frank Spencer,
The Piltdown Papers, 1908-1955: The Correspondence and Other Documents Relating to the Piltdown Forgery
(London: Natural History Museum, 1990).
55
Gregory L. Naber, Spacetime and Singularities: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1988), 127.
56
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, 2nd ed. (New York: Bantam Books, 1998), 42.
57
Although it was resisted at first, the ostensible amenability of an expanding universe toward theism did not
ultimately prevent science at its best from honestly following the evidence: for many, an expanding universe
suggests a discrete beginning (i.e., creation), which is more readily compatible with theism than an eternal, static
universe (although even a static universe would yet lack an explanation for its self-existence). See Craig,
Reasonable Faith, chaps. 3–4.
58
Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, 157.
54

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Christianity strongly avoids genuine self-criticism. Scientists “try to prove [their own] claims
false,” while “faith leaders ... unequivocally state that their faith claims are true.”59

1.2.2.3 Confirmation Bias
Incentivized, self-critical methodology enables the scientific community to effectively
mitigate the ordinary human “tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting,
information that is consistent with one’s existing beliefs”:60 confirmation bias. Boghossian
argues that this is a severe problem for Christians:
Nearly all of the faithful suffer from an acute form of confirmation bias: they start with a
core belief first and work their way backward to specific beliefs. For example, if one
starts with a belief in Christ as divine, any discussion of evidence—tombs, witnesses,
etc.—will almost always be futile. Any piece of contradictory evidence one brings into
the discussion will never be sufficient to warrant a change in belief.
Contradictory evidence will be discarded as anomalous, offensive, irrelevant,
preposterous, or highly unlikely.61
Scientists work to minimize and counteract confirmation bias, but for Christians, it is a
mark of piety. When faced with doubts, apologists such as Craig instruct students to “take them
to God in prayer and ask Him to help ... resolve them.”62 But “asking people to ‘just pray about
it’ pushes them into a form of confirmation bias where the very act of prayer means they’ve
already bought back into the system.”63 To his credit, Craig also exhorts his readers to “pursue
[their] doubts into the ground,”64 which involves arguments and evidence—but only with
safeguards against too much intellectual honesty: doubt is not just a matter of reason, but a tool

59

Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, 157.
Bettina J. Casad and J. E. Luebering, “Confirmation Bias,” Encyclopedia Britannica, February 3, 2023, accessed
March 16, 2023, https://www.britannica.com/science/confirmation-bias.
61
Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, 72–73.
62
William Lane Craig, Hard Questions, Real Answers (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003), 35.
63
Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, 126.
64
Craig, Hard Questions, Real Answers, 41; emphasis removed.
60

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of Satan in “a battle for your very soul.”65 Reason must not “usurp the magisterial role and take
the place of the Holy Spirit,”66 whose self-authenticating witness “makes it evident to us that our
faith is true.”67 This is an exercise in self-deception, not self-criticism.
To approach the matter with intellectual honesty, minister-turned-atheist John W. Loftus
holds that “we need some sort of objective, unbiased, non-double-standard type of test in order to
investigate what we were taught to believe,” which he calls the Outsider Test for Faith.68 For
Loftus, “the only way to rationally test one’s culturally adopted religious faith is from the
perspective of an outsider, a nonbeliever, with the same level of reasonable skepticism believers
already use when examining the other religious faiths they reject.”69 This much more closely
approximates the self-critical rigour of the sciences:
When Christians examine the claim that Muhammad rode on a flying horse, they should
do so by way of a reasonable and informed skepticism, just as ... when considering claims
such as levitating Buddhists or the magical properties of Mormon holy underwear or the
existence of the Scientologists’ evil Thetans that supposedly infest our bodies. Christian
believers should examine the specific extraordinary claims of Christianity using the same
kind of skepticism. ... “Do unto your own faith what you do unto other faiths.” ...
[Believers should] subject their own faith to the same level of reasonable skepticism they
use when rejecting other faiths, which is the skepticism of an outsider, a nonbeliever.70
1.2.2.4 Self-Criticism vs. Self-Defence
Far from offering any “valid mechanism by which ... core beliefs can be tested and
revised,”71 Christianity has built-in methods of preventing any testing and correction of its core
beliefs. Harris calls this “a conversation-stopper. Religion,” he says, “is the only area of our

65

Craig, Hard Questions, Real Answers, 33.
Craig, Hard Questions, Real Answers, 38.
67
Craig, Hard Questions, Real Answers, 35.
68
John W. Loftus, The Outsider Test for Faith: How to Know Which Religion Is True (Amherst, NY: Prometheus
Books, 2013), 15.
69
Loftus, The Outsider Test for Faith, 16–17.
70
Loftus, The Outsider Test for Faith, 23.
71
Harris, The End of Faith, 31.
66

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discourse in which people are systematically protected from the demand to give evidence in
defense of their strongly held beliefs.”72 If Christians were sincerely interested in the truth as
much as scientists are, they would be just as interested in evidence against the faith as they are in
evidence for it. But instead of self-correction, Christians have developed methods of selfdefence, such as apologetics itself—a branch of Christian thought entirely devoted to defending
the faith. More generally, while a good scientist proactively and rigorously tests his views
against the evidence, the Christian is admonished not to test her God.73 It is more blessed to
believe without seeing, relying on faith instead.74 As Dawkins puts it, faith
means blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence. The story of
Doubting Thomas is told, not so that we shall admire Thomas, but so that we can admire
the other apostles in comparison. Thomas demanded evidence. ... The other apostles,
whose faith was so strong that they did not need evidence, are held up to us as worthy of
imitation.75
Believers are thus exhorted to “stand firm” in the truth of their faith,76 expecting to be seen by
outsiders as “fools for the sake of Christ.”77 After all, “the cross is foolishness to those who are
perishing.”78 Christians are taught in Scripture that their faith gives them a superior view of
things; when outsiders see their faith as foolishness, it only feeds into their confirmation bias:
The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God
but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned
only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but
such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for, “Who has known the mind
of the Lord so as to instruct him?”79 But we have the mind of Christ.80

Harris, “An Atheist Manifesto.”
Deut. 6:16; Matt. 4:7; Luke 4:12.
74
John 20:29.
75
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 30th Anniversary ed. (Oxford: Oxford University, 2006), 198; emphasis
added.
76
Eph. 6:14.
77
1 Cor. 4:10 (NRSV).
78
1 Cor. 1:18.
79
Here the Apostle Paul quotes Isa. 64:4.
80
1 Cor. 2:14-16 (NIV).
72
73

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This raises the most egregious example of systematic protection of faith from scrutiny:
biblical proclamations against false teaching. Essentially, any teacher who disagrees with the
gospel is ultimately deceived and unworthy of trust on matters of theology: they are to “be
accursed.”81 Instead of honestly questioning all the way down whether the faith is worthy of
assent, Christians ‘know’ in advance that agreement with the gospel is the very criterion for
trustworthiness: “every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God;
and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.”82
It appears that Christians are encouraged to engage in a form of the genetic fallacy:83
although they may engage with objections to the core of the faith for academic or apologetic
reasons, they can be assured that such objections are ultimately misguided (despite any incidental
merit or valid, peripheral criticism) because they are formulated by unbelieving minds, blinded
by sin. Moreover, biblical recourse to explain away unbelief is plentiful: doubters are “rocky
soil,” “blinded” by “the god of this world,” and lacking “ears to hear.”84 Skeptics have a
“pretension ... against the knowledge of God” and “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”85
The ad hominem fallacy may also apply,86 for believers are instructed to dismiss the
arguments of “wolves,” “false teachers,”87 “liars,” and even “the antichrist”:

81

Gal. 1:8-9.
1 John 4:2-3.
83
“This is the [informal logical] fallacy of arguing that a belief is mistaken or false because of the way that belief
originated.” Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 57. The use of biblical passages in this section is not
intended to commit me to a thorough exegesis, but to show that from the skeptic’s point of view, these verses may be
suggestive of the fallacies mentioned. The goal of this thesis is not to examine these passages to prove that they
commit no such fallacies. Although objections to the Bible based on alleged genetic fallacies (etc.) are not
commonly voiced by Christianity’s critics, they are a reasonable extension of the dishonesty objection (steelmanning), and they are helpful for highlighting the issue of authority, which comes to the fore in later chapters. See
§§ 2.4.3, 3.3.2.2.
84
Luke 8:13; 2 Cor. 4:4; Mark 4:23.
85
2 Cor. 10:5 (NIV); Rom. 1:18.
86
“One of the most common types of irrelevant appeals is the argumentum ad hominem, the argument directed
against the speaker rather than toward what the speaker is saying.” Robert J. Gula, Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw
Men, and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language (Mount Jackson, VA: Axios, 2007), 56–7.
87
Acts 20:29; 2 Pet. 2:1.
82

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Who is the liar except the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist,
the one who denies the Father and the Son. ...
These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive
you. And as for you, the anointing which you received from Him remains in you, and you
have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things,
and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you remain in Him.”88
With convenient, self-authenticating circularity, passages such as these affirm believers’
confirmation bias, providing grounds to ultimately dismiss skeptical objections about the core of
the Christian faith: such objections come from people who are deceived, if not evil.
Instead of honest, scientific self-criticism, Christians engage in pre-emptive criticism—
even demonization—of disagreements with their core beliefs. In science, it would be grossly
unacceptable to enshrine agreement with a given theory or paradigm, such as Newtonian
mechanics, as a final, non-negotiable criterion for whether any future discoveries or theories
were worthy of consideration. Quantum mechanics would never have been developed if anyone
disagreeing with Newton had been labelled a false scientist by definition. At its best, science
operates with incentivized, self-critical methodology; however, good Christians—at their best—
operate with incentivized, self-defensive methodology.

1.2.3

Science Better Embraces Falsification
The fact that Christian faith is so resistant to correction and self-criticism in practice (at

least for core beliefs, where it matters most) suggests that it is unassailable, or non-falsifiable, in
principle. As atheist philosopher Alex Rosenberg puts it, Christian faith is “immune to rational
objection. Often [atheists] are wasting [their] time refuting it.”89

88

1 John 2:22-27.
Alex Rosenberg, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions (New York: W. W. Norton,
2011), viii; emphasis added.
89

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Falsification plays a vital role in science, perhaps most famously articulated by Karl
Popper, a philosopher of science. For Popper, “if a theory is incompatible with possible
empirical observations[,] it is scientific [i.e., falsifiable]; conversely, a theory which is
compatible with all such observations ... is unscientific [i.e., non-falsifiable].”90 Put another way,
if a theory can be made to fit with any and all possible evidence, then it does not count as a
scientific theory; it is non-falsifiable. Dawkins expresses a Popperian view when distinguishing
science from religious belief: “my belief in evolution is ... not faith, because I know what it
would take to change my mind, and I would gladly do so if the necessary evidence were
forthcoming.”91

1.2.3.1 Falsification and the Skeptic
The ability to describe the conditions under which one’s belief would be falsified is
essential for intellectual honesty. As skeptical scientist and philosopher Victor J. Stenger points
out, skeptics of religion can do so:
Within our existing knowledge we do not have a credible reason for requiring anything
transcendent to explain anything we experience or observe. All science is provisional,
and if sufficient evidence that meets all the most rigorous scientific tests were to come
along to demonstrate the existence of a world beyond matter and energy, then
nonbelieving scientists will change their minds.92
Importantly, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”93—especially supernatural
claims—but the key is that skeptics can articulate what would be required to falsify atheism. For

Stephen Thornton, “Karl Popper,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Metaphysics Research Lab,
Stanford University, August 7, 2018), accessed March 16, 2023,
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/popper/.
91
Dawkins, The God Delusion, 320.
92
Victor J. Stenger, “The Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Christianity,” in Christianity Is Not
Great: How Faith Fails, ed. John W. Loftus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2014), 68–69.
93
This phrase was popularized by Carl Sagan in Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, directed by Adrian Malone (PBS,
1980), and it is a favourite among skeptical authors. Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, 11; Coyne, Faith
versus Fact, 119; Harris, The End of Faith, 41. This phrase is likely a rewording of a similar statement by Laplace:
90

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Coyne, a sufficiently extraordinary scene would feature Jesus’ appearance in the sky,
accompanied by angels, apostles, and healings of amputees:
If this were all witnessed by others and documented by video, and if the healings were
unexplainable but supported by testimony from multiple doctors, and if all the apparitions
and events conformed to Christian theology—then I’d have to start thinking seriously
about the truth of Christianity. Perhaps such eyewitness evidence isn’t even necessary. If,
as [Carl] Sagan suggested, the New Testament contained unequivocal information about
DNA, evolution, quantum mechanics, or other scientific phenomena that couldn’t have
been known to its authors, it would be hard not to accept some divine inspiration.94
Unlike scientists and skeptics, most adherents of the Christian faith cannot specify what it
would take to make them change their minds and abandon their faith. “While some will actually
give thoughtful responses, what you’ll hear most often is the answer of Karl Giberson,” for
whom “no data could dispel his belief in God”:95
As a believer in God, I am convinced in advance that the world is not an accident and
that, in some mysterious way, our existence is an “expected” result. Thus, I do not look at
natural history as a source of data to determine whether or not the world has purpose.
Rather, my approach is to anticipate that the facts of natural history will be compatible
with the purpose and meaning I have encountered elsewhere. And my understanding of
science does nothing to dissuade me from this conviction.96
As a purely practical matter, I have compelling reasons to believe in God. My parents are
deeply committed Christians and would be devastated, were I to reject my faith. My wife
and children believe in God, and we attend church together regularly. Most of my friends
are believers. I have a job I love at a Christian college that would be forced to dismiss me
if I were to reject the faith that underpins the mission of the college. Abandoning belief in
God would be disruptive, sending my life completely off the rails.97

“the weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness.” Patrizio E. Tressoldi,
“Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence: The Case of Non-Local Perception, a Classical and
Bayesian Review of Evidences,” Frontiers in Psychology 2 (June 10, 2011): 117.
94
Coyne, Faith versus Fact, 118–19.
95
Coyne, Faith versus Fact, 119.
96
Karl W. Giberson, Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution (New York: HarperOne,
2008), 213.
97
Giberson, Saving Darwin, 155–56.

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Thus, for Coyne, religious faith “is often maintained by social utility. ... [I]f no conceivable
evidence can shake your faith in a theistic God, then you’ve deliberately removed yourself from
rational discourse.”98
In the spirit of Loftus’s Outsider Test for Faith, atheist philosopher Matt McCormick
proposes the Defeasibility Test. He does so in response to Christian intellectuals who appear
“more deeply resolved to continue believing than they are to any principles of reasoning that
might lead them to reconsider their theism.”99
Before I or any other doubter, atheist, skeptic, or non-believer engages in a discussion
about the reasons for and against God, the believer must look deep into his heart and
mind and ask this question: Are there any considerations, arguments, evidence, or
reasons, even hypothetically[,] that could possibly lead me to change my mind about
God? Is it even a remotely possible outcome that in carefully and thoughtfully reflecting
on the broadest and most even body of evidence that I can grasp, that I would come to
think that my current view about God is mistaken? That is to say, is my belief defeasible?
If the answer is no, then we’re done. There is nothing informative, constructive, or
interesting to be found in your contribution to dialogue. Anything you have to say
amounts to sophistry. We can’t take your input any more seriously than the lawyer who is
a master of casuistry and who can provide rhetorically masterful defenses of every side of
an issue. She’s not interested in the truth, only in scoring debate points or the
construction of elaborate rhetorical castles (that float on air).100
1.2.3.2 Falsification and Other Ways of Knowing
The unassailable character of the Christian faith is made evident in their appeals to “other
ways of knowing,”101 such as one made in response to Dawkins at a science-religion conference:

Coyne, Faith versus Fact, 120. I respond to Coyne’s reading of Giberson in a footnote near the end of § 2.4.3.2.
Matt McCormick, “The Defeasibility Test,” Atheism: Proving the Negative (blog), February 5, 2011,
http://www.provingthenegative.com/2011/02/defeasibility-test.html.
100
McCormick, “The Defeasibility Test.”
101
E.g., “Science is not the only way of knowing. The spiritual worldview provides another way of finding truth.
Scientists who deny this would be well advised to consider the limits of their own tools, as nicely represented in a
parable told by the astronomer Arthur Eddington. He described a man who set about to study deep-sea life using a
net that had a mesh size of three inches. After catching many wild and wonderful creatures from the depths, the man
concluded that there are no deep-sea fish that are smaller than three inches in length! If we are using the scientific
net to catch our particular version of truth, we should not be surprised that it does not catch the evidence of spirit.”
Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York: Free Press, 2007),
229.
98
99

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21

The strongest response I heard was that I was brutally foisting a scientific epistemology
upon an unwilling theology. ... Scientific arguments ... were inappropriate since
theologians had always maintained that God lay outside science. ...
[These] theologians ... were defining themselves into an epistemological Safe Zone where
rational argument could not reach them because they had declared by fiat that it could
not. ... There are other ways of knowing besides the scientific, and it is one of these other
ways of knowing that must be deployed to know God.102
By invoking “other ways of knowing,” Christian faith insulates itself from being
corrected to the point where it cannot be falsified. This exemplifies “how an impregnable fortress
can be constructed around even a ridiculous set of beliefs, rendering them immune to rational
criticism and creating a veneer of faux reasonableness.”103 Christians have thus “created
impossible conditions” for falsification, which is “not the intellectual attitude one has when
forming one’s beliefs on the basis of reason and evidence.”104
Occasionally, Christian apologists will argue that the hypothetical discovery of the bones
of Jesus Christ would falsify their faith.105 Critically, however, they fail to state how such a find
could be verified.106 Such meagre, hypothetical vulnerability toward faith-falsifying evidence is
not enough; intellectual honesty requires seeking such evidence with the rigour of a scientist
testing a physical theory. Being able to “assimilate to itself all facts,”107 Christianity is nonfalsifiable in the Popperian sense: it can be made to fit with all possible evidence.108

102

Dawkins, The God Delusion, 183–84.
Law, Believing BS, 11.
104
Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, 61.
105
These apologists usually refer to 1 Cor. 15:14. E.g., William Lane Craig and Sean McDowell, “Can I Get a
Witness?,” Sean McDowell (blog), March 14, 2016, https://seanmcdowell.org/blog/can-i-get-a-witness; William
Lane Craig, “Would Finding Jesus’ Corpse Falsify Christianity?,” Reasonable Faith (blog), November 20, 2016,
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/would-finding-jesus-corpse-falsify-christianity.
106
I address this objection in § 5.1.3.
107
Warfield, Noll, and Livingstone, Evolution, Scripture, and Science, 165.
108
Thornton, “Karl Popper.”
103

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1.2.4

22

Science Is More Intellectually Humble
Faced with the charge that science has greater intellectual humility, Christians may point

out that scientists can be proud, biased, or dishonest. Human frailty indeed exists in all camps.
As detailed above, however, science has built-in, intentional practices to mitigate human frailty,
whereas Christianity does not. This is made clear by comparing science’s provisional, humble
nature with the confident finality of Christian preaching.

1.2.4.1 Scientific Confidence as Provisional
In the technical sense, “all science is provisional.”109 “Many theories in science are so
well established that it is highly unlikely that new evidence will substantially modify them,” but
“scientists don’t ever fully ‘accept’ them as ‘true’ or ‘proven.’”110 As discussed above, science is
“so committed to fallibilism that it enshrines within its methodology a commitment to falsify
scientific hypotheses;” thus, science “is predicated on a unique humility.”111 At its best, science
is always meaningfully aware that tomorrow’s discoveries might adjust, if not entirely overturn,
a way of looking at things widely accepted today.112
Importantly, however, this humility should not be taken to mean that every scientific
theory is equally vulnerable to change:
To say that a given scientific theory may be wrong is not to say that it may be wrong in
its every particular, or that any other theory stands an equal chance of being right. What
are the chances that DNA is not the basis for genetic inheritance? ... Any account of
inheritance that is going to supersede the present assumptions of molecular biology will
have to account for the ocean of data that now conforms to these assumptions. What are
the chances that ... DNA has absolutely nothing to do with inheritance? They are
effectively zero.113

Stenger, “The Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Christianity,” 68.
Venema and McKnight, Adam & the Genome, 4.
111
Randal Rauser, Theology in Search of Foundations (Oxford: Oxford University, 2009), 90–91.
112
See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Chicago University, 1970).
113
Harris, The End of Faith, 76.
109
110

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In fact, the provisional character of science is a strength, not a weakness:
The basis of our confidence, ironically, is the fallibility of scientists as continually
demonstrated by other scientists. ... Every significant new claim, and a lot of insignificant
ones, are sooner or later checked and almost never completely replicated. More often,
they are corrected, refined, and improved on—assuming the claims aren’t refuted
altogether. Because of this error-reducing process, the further back you go from the
research frontier, the more the claims have been refined, reformulated, tested, and
grounded.114
Scientific theories are thus not provisional in a vacuum, as though they might change due
to the passage of time alone; rather, they are provisional with respect to the relevant evidence. A
cosmologist might assign an extremely high confidence value to a heliocentric view of the solar
system—to the point where it would be personally irresponsible to hold out for substantial
change—but even if he colloquially speaks of it as “a scientific fact,” he never has the licence to
dismiss tomorrow’s discoveries in advance. To claim that sort of final, invulnerable certainty
would be to declare independence from nature as a source of knowledge. All science is
provisional in that no scientist ever ‘graduates’ from paying due attention to nature.

1.2.4.2 Christian Faith Preached as Final
The epistemological arrogance of the Christian faith, neither held nor proffered
provisionally, contrasts with the intellectual humility of science. Christianity is averse to outside
correction and genuine self-criticism: any public voice disagreeing with the faith—despite any
valid points—is ultimately blinded by sin, self, or Satan. Add to this the Great Commission: “Go
into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”115 An intellectually honest Christianity
would be as interested in evidence against the faith as in evidence for it. Instead, by appealing to

114
115

Rosenberg, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, 20.
Mark 16:15.

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ancient texts, traditions, and subjective spiritual experiences, the Christian message is preached
to non-believers with an air of finality and authority that exceeds what anyone could have.

1.2.4.3 Christian Confidence as Disproportionate to Evidence
The dishonesty objection takes a particular exception to faith, which is essentially
“pretending to know something you don’t know”:116 “if one had sufficient evidence to warrant
belief in a particular claim, then one wouldn’t believe [it] on ... faith. ‘Faith’ is the word one uses
when one does not have enough evidence to justify holding a belief, but when one just goes
ahead and believes [it] anyway.”117 By faith, Christians illicitly bridge the gap between whatever
modest probability the evidence properly affords them—e.g., forty or sixty percent—to the
inflated, one-hundred-percent confidence that Christianity is true: “as such, faith is
an irrational leap over the probabilities.”118
Christian faith is thus antithetical to the intellectual humility and restraint of science
described above, which for some, is better exemplified by atheism:
Atheism is nothing more than a commitment to the most basic standard of intellectual
honesty: One’s convictions should be proportional to one’s evidence. Pretending to be
certain when one isn’t ... is both an intellectual and a moral failing.119
For their “obfuscation, rationalization, insincerity, and perhaps even outright dishonesty,”120
Boghossian thus chides theologians who
verbally dance around ... [the fact] that faith is an epistemology, and cloud ... [the fact]
that the word faith is used (in religious contexts) when higher confidence values are

116

Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, 24.
Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, 23.
118
John W. Loftus, “Victor Reppert Now Says He Doesn’t Have Faith!,” Debunking Christianity (blog), October 30,
2012, https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2012/10/victor-reppert-now-says-he-doesnt-have.html; emphasis in
original.
119
Harris, “An Atheist Manifesto;” emphasis added.
120
Peter Boghossian, “Faith, Epistemology, and Answering Socrates’ Question by Translation,” in Christianity Is
Not Great: How Faith Fails, ed. John W. Loftus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2014), 82; emphasis added.
117

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25

assigned to propositions than the evidence warrants, [and] yet proudly proclaim ... that
people should live their lives based upon their faith-based beliefs.121
Even allowing for a generous measure of supporting evidence, the Christian faith’s final,
authoritative, non-provisional attitude is egregiously disproportionate. For all its success, science
is intellectually humble enough to stop short of declaring independence from future discoveries;
for all its problems, the Christian faith has the audacity to preach that very thing, dismissing in
advance all possible future contrary evidence. “Faith replaces wonder with epistemological
arrogance disguised as false humility. Faith immutably alters the starting conditions for inquiry
by uprooting a hunger to know and sowing a warrantless confidence.”122

1.2.4.4 Christian Faith Never Could Be Final
It should be clear that the final certainty exhibited by Christians is epistemologically out
of reach. With perhaps more humility than most, apologist John G. Stackhouse Jr. admits that
“no one can possibly list, let alone understand, much less master, the range of ideological options
on offer. ... Thus the claim that ‘my ideology is superior to all others’ proves immediately
difficult, if not flatly impossible, to demonstrate.”123 As with any other area of life, religious faith
must reach beyond incomplete knowledge:
Steve cannot know for certain that this canoe bobbing by the dock will still float once he
gets in it, but he cannot be “mostly convinced” and stay with most of his weight
committed to the canoe while reserving some of his weight for the dock. To enjoy the
canoe, he has to get all the way in. He has to make a commitment. He has to exercise
rationally based faith.
... Parents of small children can never have an evening out if they refuse to trust any
baby-sitter. A woman would be a fool to refuse to marry her beloved until the marriage
had been somehow guaranteed. Life for us humans means risk, and the wise person is the

Boghossian, “Faith, Epistemology, and Answering Socrates’ Question by Translation,” 82; emphasis in original.
Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, 43.
123
John G. Stackhouse Jr., Humble Apologetics: Defending the Faith Today (Oxford: Oxford University, 2002), 12.
121
122

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26

one who does not seek certainty, but seeks instead adequate reason to believe the best
alternative available.124
Stackhouse could be describing science, which also makes intellectually humble,
provisional commitments in the light of rigorously sought, adequate knowledge. If his canoe
springs a leak, Steve opts for another; if experiments show a scientific theory to be incorrect, the
scientist moves on. So also, with religion, even if today’s portion of evidence and argument
suggests a balance in favour of Christianity, no one can know what evidence might come to light
tomorrow. It would be one thing to recommend their religious tradition, along with any evidence,
to non-believers as one possible, tentative option. But Christians do not merely suggest a
possibly adequate ‘canoe’; instead, the Christian canoe is presented as perfect for all—and it is
apparently evil to point out potential leaks or suggest alternatives.
Science models epistemic humility in many ways, proceeding provisionally even though
it deals with the observable world. Dealing with traditions about intangible, immaterial things,
Christian faith should be less confident than science. However, just the opposite is true:
evangelism goes well beyond evidence by preaching the gospel as the final truth.

1.2.5

Christianity as Hypocritical Pseudoscience
Christianity condones and participates in intellectual behaviour that falls well below the

standards of scientific intellectual honesty. If the situation were reversed, Christian apologists
would not tolerate any of this from skeptics: being utterly closed to correction, embracing selfdefence instead of self-criticism, employing non-falsifiable claims while feigning falsifiability,
or claiming final certainty beyond what any evidence can justify.

124

Stackhouse, Humble Apologetics, 107; emphasis in original.

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Christian apologists thus require skeptics to be more intellectually honest than they,
themselves, are willing to be. The skeptic is to suspend his reservations and assumptions all the
way down to honestly assess arguments and evidence for Christianity. Still, the Christian will not
authentically do the same: from her holy book, she ‘knows’ in advance that the skeptic is
‘deceived.’ A double standard is evident, especially given Christians’ great admiration for former
atheists who have become Christians after scrutinizing their own beliefs.125
Far from living up to scientific honesty, the Christian faith has more in common with flatearth theories, alternative medicine, and other pseudoscience. Such approaches
tend to ignore counterevidence or reject it with special pleading; embrace unfalsifiable
claims (“It won’t show up in double-blind tests,” equivalent to “You can’t test God”);
accept questionable data as “proof”; argue that the scientific method doesn’t apply to
their claims; reject replication and verification by outsiders and skeptics; and refuse to
consider alternative hypotheses. Above all, ... an agenda not to find the truth, but to
support one’s biases, emotions, and personal beliefs.126
Against intellectual hypocrisy, the skeptic calls out for “reason, rationality, honesty, authenticity,
epistemic humility, and assigning confidence values in direct proportion to evidence.”127

1.3 The Importance of a Response
Here we reach the end of the ‘Devil’s Advocate’ presentation of the dishonesty objection,
which calls for an internal and external apologetic response.128 Internally, a response is needful
for the believer who finds herself drifting toward fear, doubt, and unbelief when faced with the

125

E.g., C. S. Lewis is often celebrated as one such individual. For a nuanced account of his conversion, see Alister
E. McGrath, C. S. Lewis—A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2013),
chap. 6.
126
Coyne, Faith versus Fact, 238.
127
Boghossian, “Faith, Epistemology, and Answering Socrates’ Question by Translation,” 84.
128
“Apologetics is best deployed toward two basic goals, which we might distinguish as internal and external: (a) to
strengthen and to mature the faith of Christians; and (b) to remove obstacles, and clarify issues, and offer winsome
inducements to those who are not (yet) Christians.” Stackhouse, Humble Apologetics, 118.

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dishonesty objection—a response to the (possible) misgivings and accusations raised by her own
‘intellectual conscience’:129
Am I being honest with myself? Do my assumptions predetermine the outcome in favour
of Christianity? Do I hold skeptical viewpoints to higher standards than my own? Have I
arrived at my beliefs honestly? Am I truly open to the possibility that my religion is false?
But if I am, how can I also be a devoted follower of Jesus Christ?
This thesis presents a possible way to isolate and untangle this problem for those who find their
Christian faith challenging to reconcile with their understanding of intellectual honesty.
Externally, and as a matter of the public integrity of Christian witness, it is crucial to hear
the skeptic’s concerns as fairly and charitably as possible—but to also require the same of the
skeptic. I hope that skeptics will at least agree that their concern has been heard and that future
conversations about this issue might benefit from a more robust understanding of how a
Christian might honestly engage with this challenge.

1.4 Audience
My primary audience is Christians intrigued by the dishonesty objection and especially
those troubled by it. This includes those who, like me, have noticed instances of intellectual
dishonesty regarding science among church leaders, authors, and speakers—leading us to
question the integrity of our own faith. I hope that skeptics prone to make the dishonesty
objection might read this thesis as well; to that end, I have striven to be as irenic amid
disagreement as possible.130
Readers who do not sense any essential tension between science and Christian faith in the
forgoing discussion may feel excluded, but that is not my intention. E.g., some of my beloved

129

This is how I, myself, came to focus on this matter.
Too often, Christian apologists have expended (what I call) their ‘offence credits’ on straw-manning, taking
cheap shots, and being needlessly disrespectful, ungentle, and rude. I am convicted that we must be judicious with
our ‘offence credits,’ spending them only on the cross and other true non-negotiables.
130

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siblings in Christ take a low view of modern science, stating publicly that most scientists—being
variously incompetent, deceived, devious, etc.—widely participate in lies and conspiracies about
the age of the universe, human origins, climate change, public health, etc. I hope these Christians
will be challenged in their rejection of modern science. Many of our siblings in Christ are
scientists: they are part of the Body of Christ, vocationally called to investigate nature and
equipped to enrich the Church—not merely the seminary—by probing the glories of Creation.
We must not question their competence and integrity without first hearing them as siblings on
their own terms, for the ear cannot say to the eye, “I have no need of you.”131
Some may shrug at the dishonesty objection: so, what if Christianity is a bit intellectually
dishonest? I hope this group is also challenged. I take it as self-evident that intellectual honesty
is part of a Christian’s duty to love the truth. If Christian faith at its best requires intellectual
dishonesty, something is profoundly incoherent, logically and morally, in the faith itself.132

1.5 Research Question
Aiming at both honest self-scrutiny and a fair response to the dishonesty objection, the
research question may be stated, Is the Christian faith less intellectually honest than science?
Specifically, the focus is whether Christian faith is less honest in the senses detailed above,
regarding self-criticism, falsification, and intellectual humility, and whether this justifies such
charges as intellectual hypocrisy and pseudoscience.

131

1 Cor. 12:21.
The idea that Christianity might be both true and yet only believable, or preach-able, by means of intellectual
dishonesty is interesting and theoretically possible; this is not unlike a detective who cannot prove a suspect is
guilty—though he is indeed guilty—and so plants evidence against him. However, as the dishonesty objection
implies, it is theologically objectionable to think that the Christian God has set things up so that the only path to
right belief is by dishonest means. I agree with the skeptic on this, so there is no need to discuss it further.
132

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1.6 Hypothesis
The goal is to show that the dishonesty objection does not offer a sufficient reason for
non-believers to dismiss the gospel or for believers to conclude that their Christian faith is
intellectually dishonest. To that end, this thesis benefits from Plantinga’s Warranted Christian
Belief, in which he deals with the (different) de jure objection that Christian belief is
epistemologically unacceptable; there, he shows that this objection is dependent on a de facto
assumption that Christianity is false in the first place.133
Similarly, the dishonesty objection depends on anti-theological assumptions. By
comparing science and Christianity fairly and charitably, such assumptions are exposed: the
dishonesty objection (a) tolerates from science what it considers dishonest from Christianity
because (b) it excludes in advance the possibility of revealed, authoritative, and transformative
theological knowledge as Christian thinkers understand it. It sets up a test that Christianity, even
if true, could never pass. Behind the demand for extraordinary evidence lies a human insistence
on guaranteeing to ourselves, by ourselves—on our own terms—the veracity of theological
knowledge: this is indeed a “pretension ... against the knowledge of God.”134 Thus, the research
hypothesis may be stated in this way: The charge that Christian faith is less intellectually
honest than science does not follow from a comparison between the two; at its best, Christian
faith is just as honest about God as the best science is about nature.

133
134

Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 190–91.
2 Cor. 10:5 (NIV).

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Chapter 2
Positioning a Response
The preceding chapter has considered the skeptic’s dishonesty objection in its strongest
form: Christian faith falls short of intellectual honesty as exemplified in science. Yet an honest,
fair-minded exchange requires openness from both parties toward steel-manning the opposing
view. To avoid holding the Christian to a higher, double standard, the skeptic must ask whether
he “know[s], in advance, that nothing will budge [him] from [his position]”—whether his
rejection of other ways of knowing is “an axiom, not the end product of a process of reasoning.”1
Accordingly, this chapter invites the skeptic to adopt a best-versus-best approach, striving to hear
a Christian response in its strongest form. Instead of responding to each accusation from chapter
1 piecemeal, I will develop a nuanced picture of the epistemological situation in which the
Christian finds herself. Many of the skeptic’s charges will be dealt with naturally along the way.
The remaining objections will be addressed in chapter 5.

2.1 Project Scope
To properly appreciate this response, it may be helpful to think of this thesis as a
specialized tool. This discussion lies at the far edge of normal apologetics, questioning whether a
faithful Christian can be intellectually honest about ‘the whole show’ in the first place—well
apart from arguments and evidence in well-trodden fields of apologetics.2 While the conclusions

1

Pace Dawkins, The God Delusion, 319. Christian readers should note that even if the skeptic does exhibit this sort
of hypocrisy, it does not follow that the dishonesty objection is invalid. The intent here is to invite skeptical readers
to maintain a fair-minded approach—not to commit the tu quoque fallacy: “a form of ad hominem fallacy that
occurs when it is assumed that an argument is wrong if the source making the claim has itself spoken or acted in a
way inconsistent with it. The fallacy focuses on the perceived hypocrisy of the opponent rather than the merits of
their argument.” “Tu Quoque,” RationalWiki, accessed January 28, 2022, https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tu_quoque.
2
It may be helpful for readers to imagine, e.g., the dishonesty objection being made after all other apologetic
arguments have been offered—after all other objections to Christianity have been answered.

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offered have broader implications for apologetics,3 this thesis is not a rejection of standard
modes of apologetics. It is best understood as a meta-apologetic approach. Therefore, it is
essential to take a moment to define the scope of this project in terms of what it is not.

2.1.1

Not an Exercise in Positive Apologetics
This thesis is not an attempt at positive apologetics, which offers evidence and arguments

that the Christian faith is true. Instead, it employs negative apologetics: “refuting objections to
the Christian faith.”4 Thus, we must bracket the tantalizing matter of natural theology.5 The task
at hand is not to prove that God exists, that theological knowledge is real, or even that Christians
are not, in fact, deluded or deceived—but to show what is wrong with the dishonesty objection: a
de jure response to a de jure objection.
The skeptic is not concerned whether “there are good arguments for the existence of
God,” or whether “in light of the evidence it’s more probable than not that God exists,” or
whether certain “arguments make it rational to believe that God exists.”6 Even if these points
were granted, how can the believer move beyond a tentative, more-probable-than-not stance to
holding the Christian faith as so final and authoritative that she is justified in preaching it?

3

See especially chaps. 4, 5.
William Lane Craig et al., Five Views on Apologetics, ed. Steven B. Cowan, Counterpoints: Bible and theology
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000), 8.
5
Natural theology may be defined as “the part of theology that does not depend on revelation,” but not everyone
believes that revelation-independent knowledge of God is possible. “What Is Natural Theology?,” The Gifford
Lectures, last modified September 8, 2014, accessed December 1, 2022,
https://www.giffordlectures.org/overview/natural-theology.
Benefiting from voices that differ on natural theology (e.g., both Karl Barth and William Lane Craig), I
plan to offer a response that may be useful regardless of one’s position: that those who accept natural theology may
say why they need not remain provisional in their commitment to Christ, and that those who reject natural theology
might gain a greater appreciation for the service that negative, nuanced, and careful apologetics can offer. One way
of describing my intent is that it is to investigate whether the believer needs to be intellectually open (provisional)
about whether any natural anti-theology might someday succeed.
6
Craig, Reasonable Faith, 189.
4

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2.1.2

33

Not a Search for Warrant
Although Plantinga’s work will be helpful for this thesis, his work is not aimed at

answering the dishonesty objection. He argues that if Christianity is true, then Christian belief is
epistemologically warranted—that is, it qualifies as bona fide knowledge.7 However, the skeptic
is not concerned with whether Christian belief would count as knowledge if it were true. Instead,
he finds it intellectually dishonest for the Christian to hold her beliefs in a final, non-provisional
manner, preaching to others today with confidence that no sufficiently contrary evidence or
arguments—what Plantinga calls “defeaters”—will change her mind tomorrow. Intellectual
honesty requires being open to the possibility that one is wrong.

2.1.3

Neither a Presuppositional nor Evidentialist Apologetic
At certain points, readers may wonder whether I am engaging in presuppositional

apologetics, which “emphasizes special revelation as the starting point for apologetics,” insisting
that “both parties in an apologetic encounter must assume that biblical revelation gives the only
framework” within which “people can correctly interpret evidence.”8 However, I do not ask the
skeptic to assume that the Bible is true or insist that he cannot use his reasoning capacities
otherwise. Rather, I argue that to evaluate the Christian’s intellectual honesty fairly, the skeptic
must attempt to see things from her point of view—which, at least for the sake of argument,
requires handling the concept of revelation coherently, charitably, and hospitably.9

7

See Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief.
David K. Clark, Dialogical Apologetics: A Person-Centered Approach to Christian Defense (Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker Books, 1993), 104–5.
9
This thesis takes revelation to refer to the entire speech-act of God toward humanity. Most centrally, it relates to
Jesus Christ as the Incarnate God-Man. It includes Jesus’ life and teachings, God’s work through the people of Israel
before Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the universal Church. This thesis also takes it as given
that revelation also properly applies to the apostolic tradition, the Rule of Faith of the early church, and biblical
inspiration (understanding God to be active in the writing, editing, and canonization of Scripture). Two works that
have informed me on these matters are Craig D. Allert, A High View of Scripture? The Authority of the Bible and the
8

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Neither do I mean to reject evidentialist apologetics, which “stresses the accumulation of
biblical and historical evidence,” using “an array of facts ... to defend the central claims of
Christianity.”10 The nature of the dishonesty objection is such that the response required is
perhaps more toward the presuppositional end of things, but this should not be taken to imply
that I disparage evidentialist apologetics.11

2.1.4

Not the Only Possible Response
Finally, this thesis is but one possible response to the dishonesty objection. Different

apologetic answers to this challenge could be made from different understandings of science,
philosophy, epistemology, and theology. Different Christian answers are likely possible from
other Protestant perspectives and Catholic and Orthodox ones. It might well be possible for
thinkers from other religious traditions to ably address this objection.12

2.2 What Is Intellectual Dishonesty?
Typically, apologetic exchanges rely on common ground between the Christian apologist
and her conversation partner. Suppose the issue is whether the Bible has been translated or
copied too often to be reliable. In that case, there is clear, relatively objective common ground to
which both parties can appeal: ancient manuscripts, early quotations, textual criticism, etc. If the
challenge comes from philosophy, such as the Euthyphro dilemma, again, a large set of

Formation of the New Testament Canon, Evangelical Ressourcement (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007);
Daniel H. Williams, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants
(Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1999).
10
Clark, Dialogical Apologetics, 106.
11
Two of my favourite apologetic arguments are of an evidentialist flavour: First, the “Evolutionary Argument
Against Naturalism” in Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (New
York: Oxford University, 2011), chap. 10; Second, an argument for historical reliability because the frequency of
names in the Gospels matches the frequency of names found on gravestones from that time (which, e.g., would be
extremely difficult to get right if the Gospels were written centuries later). Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the
Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2017).
12
The subject of other religions is addressed in § 5.1.2.

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35

overlapping assumptions, rules, modes of thinking, etc., is shared by both parties. In the case of
the dishonesty objection, however, identifying common ground is part of the challenge itself.
The core of the dishonesty objection is that science meets a universal standard that the
Christian faith fails to meet: a failure termed intellectual dishonesty. In one sense, this entire
thesis is an argument about defining this term in the context of the Christian faith. At the same
time, it seems impossible to respond unless both parties agree on essential terms. Nonetheless,
we must seek as much agreement as possible. As the following sections will show, there is cause
for both agreement and disagreement between regarding intellectual dishonesty.

2.2.1

Agreement: An Abstract Definition
At least in regular parlance, the Christian and the skeptic can agree on what it means to

be intellectually dishonest: being utterly closed to correction, embracing self-defence over selfcriticism, employing non-falsifiable claims while feigning falsifiability, and claiming final
certainty beyond what any evidence can justify. Again, the Bible teaches Christians to listen to
both sides of a matter,13 not to be more critical of others than of themselves.14 Christians are
admonished against being “wise in [their] own eyes,”15 hating correction,16 having an inflated
sense of their own understanding,17 deceiving others,18 and using dishonest scales.19
With an accuracy perhaps chilling to Christians and skeptics alike, the Scripture describes
a time when people will cherry-pick teachers to confirm their own biases: they “will not put up

Prov. 18:13, 17. Verse 13 “is not to be limited specifically to a judicial hearing. It is much more general, and it is
in line with the talkativeness of a fool. ... Typically the fool does not listen to others and hence is not in real
dialogue; he insists only on personal views.” Roland E. Murphy, Proverbs, ed. Bruce M. Metzger, David A.
Hubbard, and Glenn W. Barker, Word Biblical Commentary 22 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998), 136.
14
Matt. 7:1-5; Luke 6:41; Rom. 2:1-11.
15
Prov. 3:7, 12:15, 14:12, 21:2, 26:12; Isa. 5:21.
16
Prov. 12:1.
17
Prov. 3:5.
18
E.g., Exod. 20:16; Prov. 14:5, 12:22.
19
Prov. 11:1, 20:10, 20:23; Mic. 6:11. This might reasonably include intellectual scales.
13

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36

with sound teaching, but ... will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires and
will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.”20 The words “intellectual
dishonesty” do not appear in the Bible. Still, the Christian and the skeptic can agree on what it
means to be intellectually honest—just as they can often agree about what regular honesty is.

2.2.1.1 General Honesty and Dishonesty
In general, honesty is “the quality of being fair and truthful,” “adherence to the facts,”
and “fairness and straightforwardness of conduct.”21 An honest action is “done with good
intentions even if unsuccessful or misguided.”22 General dishonesty (or plain dishonesty) is the
opposite or “lack of honesty or integrity”: a “disposition to defraud or deceive.”23
Importantly, honesty is a function of one’s intentions regarding what one believes to be
true; it is unrelated to being correct. A victim who misremembers the eye colour of her mugger is
honest but wrong: a policeman who plants evidence against a guilty party is correct but
dishonest. In common parlance, a person certainly tells a lie if they “make an untrue statement
with intent to deceive” or “create a false or misleading impression.”24 Yet it is also possible to
‘lie’ by either stating something false by accident—“Oops, I lied”—or on purpose but without
intent to deceive: “Oh, I’ve definitely never procrastinated on my thesis. I’d never do that.”
Therefore, for the sake of brevity, let us understand lying to mean the intentionally deceptive sort

20

2 Tim. 4:3-4 (NRSVUE). Paul is talking about people who will reject the gospel, but the method of rejection is
intellectually dishonest: “Rather than hearing one correct teacher, they build a wall of teachers as if the sheer
number of teachers will make them right. What they really want is to have their itching ears tickled with the latest
doctrinal fad.” William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, ed. Bruce M. Metzger, David A. Hubbard, and Glenn W.
Barker, Word Biblical Commentary 46 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2000), 574.
21
Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “honesty,” accessed February 1, 2022, https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/honesty.
22
Lexico, s.v. “honesty,” accessed February 1, 2022, https://www.lexico.com/definition/honest.
23
Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “dishonesty,” accessed February 1, 2022, https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/dishonesty.
24
Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “lie,” accessed February 1, 2022, https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/lie.

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of lying; let’s take “to state something false” as an abbreviated form of “to state something one
believes to be false;” and let’s take “knows to be false” as equivalent to “believes to be false.”
Philosopher Alex Barber describes three categories of dishonesty, as depicted in figure 21. The most restrictive category is lying: directly stating something false. Communicative
dishonesty occurs when the subject expresses a falsehood by verbally hiding, downplaying, or
otherwise intimating something false. It manifests in various forms—outright lying, obstructing
the truth, muddying the waters, etc.—but it is always an intentional, communicative act,
“intended to cause or sustain false belief.”25 Communicative dishonesty is not merely deceptive;
it is an “abuse of linguistic exchange”:26
Theft is an objectionable method for transferring effective ownership because it violates a
norm without which the social practice of ownership would be impossible, namely, the
norm that property transfer requires permission. ... Knowingly expressing a falsehood
involves the abuse of communication, the social practice whereby we openly display
communicative intentions to our fellow beings.27

Alex Barber, “Lying, Misleading, and Dishonesty,” The Journal of Ethics 24, no. 2 (June 2020): 141. There is a
debate in moral philosophy about whether lying is distinctly worse than merely misleading. For this paper, I am
adopting Barber’s view that “Our focus instead should be on the boundary between what is and is not expressed in a
communicative act, irrespective of whether it is actually said.” Note that whereas Barber abbreviates
“communicative dishonesty” as “dishonesty” in his paper, I am using “dishonesty” to refer to the larger category of
“general dishonesty,” which includes communicative dishonesty along with non-communicative attempts to deceive.
It is also important to note that Barber’s claim “is not that [communicative] dishonesty is worse than mere attempted
deception. Sometimes it will be worse, sometimes it will be comparatively trivial. The claim, rather, is just that
[communicative] dishonesty’s wrongness is distinctive.” “Lying, Misleading, and Dishonesty,” 157.
26
Barber, “Lying, Misleading, and Dishonesty,” 152.
27
Barber, “Lying, Misleading, and Dishonesty,” 157.
25

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38

Most generally, attempting to deceive
(or general dishonesty) “[seeks] to cause
someone to believe that p when one knows p
to be untrue.”28 This consists of all cases
where the subject acts with the intention that
another person will draw or maintain a false
conclusion, including lying, communicative
dishonesty, and non-verbal deception.29
As an example, Barber offers three
Figure 2-1. Categories of dishonesty.

different methods by which subject x might
attempt to deceive his neighbour y into concluding that there are foxes in their neighbourhood:
Act A: x utters ‘We have foxes. I saw them last night.’
Act B: x utters ‘I never realised we have foxes.’
Act C: x pulls y’s rubbish from y’s bin in the night and scatters it over y’s lawn.30
A is lying, B is misleading, and C is a non-expressive attempt to deceive. Using false balances or
counterfeit currency are also examples of non-expressive dishonesty: seeking to cause someone
to believe something false without abusing social conventions of linguistic exchange.

2.2.1.2 Intellectual Honesty
Intellectual honesty is related to plain honesty but specifically applies to situations in
which “subtleties of presentation or reasoning are in play”:31 “honesty in the acquisition,
Barber, “Lying, Misleading, and Dishonesty,” 153.
Barber notes that it is technically possible to ‘lie’ without intent to deceive, but this is not important for our
analysis here. “Imagine a conversation with someone who is oddly sceptical towards everything you say. For
amusement you say you are a lighthouse keeper. You have no intention to trick your interlocuter into believing this
as you know you will be disbelieved, yet it is natural to describe you as having decided to lie.” “Lying, Misleading,
and Dishonesty,” 145.
30
Barber, “Lying, Misleading, and Dishonesty,” 153.
31
Louis M. Guenin, “Intellectual Honesty,” Synthese 145, no. 2 (2005): 218–19.
28
29

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39

analysis, and transmission of ideas.”32 For Harvard ethics lecturer Louis M. Guenin, “the kernel
of intellectual honesty consists in a disposition of an agent such that when presented with an
incentive to deceive in any way,” she will not.33 Despite “contrary incentives,” an intellectually
honest person “refuses ... to gain an unfair advantage” for her preferred view of things; she will
neither “indulge laziness” by glossing over problems in her position nor exaggerate.34
An intellectually honest person does not dodge the question, shade the truth, walk
crookedly, assert on the basis of wishful thinking, or throw an inquirer off the scent. An
intellectually honest person may draw fine distinctions, but will not float [an intentionally
convoluted] distinction that might mislead. ... [They will] avoid any nuance, emphasis,
inclusion, or neglect that might mislead. An opponent’s position will be reported in the
strongest form that the opponent has articulated. Settings do arise in which one may keep
one’s own counsel, but the intellectually honest person will not do so if that would
mislead.35
2.2.1.3 Intellectual Dishonesty
Intellectual dishonesty is the opposite: “a disposition to mislead when talking seriously”
and choosing a contrary incentive over truthfulness.36 It should not be confused with academic
dishonesty, which refers to fraudulent forms of academic conduct.37 Similar to plain honesty, it is
possible to be intellectually honest but wrong, or correct but intellectually dishonest.
Intellectual dishonesty may seem to be a subcategory of general dishonesty; that is,
dishonesty about “the acquisition, analysis, and transmission of ideas.”38 However, recalling the
skeptic’s objections, the Christian faith is accused of being utterly closed to correction,
embracing self-defence over self-criticism, employing non-falsifiable claims while feigning

RationalWiki, “Intellectual Honesty.”
Guenin, “Intellectual Honesty,” 217.
34
Guenin, “Intellectual Honesty,” 218.
35
Guenin, “Intellectual Honesty,” 220.
36
Guenin, “Intellectual Honesty,” 218.
37
E.g., cheating and plagiarism. “Academic Dishonesty Definition and Types,” Northern Illinois University,
accessed December 8, 2022, https://www.niu.edu/academic-integrity/faculty/types/index.shtml.
38
RationalWiki, “Intellectual Honesty.”
32
33

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falsifiability, and claiming final certainty beyond what any evidence can justify. Given that
“intellectually dishonest” colloquially applies to these activities, further analysis is required.
For Barber, theft is wrong because it violates social norms for ownership, and
communicative dishonesty is distinctly wrong apart from mere deception (which is also wrong)
because it violates social norms for communication.39 Drawing on Guenin’s phrasing, I submit
that intellectual dishonesty is wrong because it violates social norms pertaining to subtleties of
reasoning and presentation40—norms pertaining to the honest pursuit of truth. In other words,
whereas communicative dishonesty is an abuse of language, intellectual dishonesty is an abuse of
subtleties of reasoning and presentation.

2.2.1.4 Strong Intellectual Dishonesty
Let us further distinguish between strong and weak forms of intellectual dishonesty.
Strong intellectual dishonesty (SID) holds only if the subject intentionally meddles with the
presentation of evidence, reason, etc., to hide, downplay, or draw attention away from
inconvenient truths. E.g., tobacco companies paid a group of ethically compromised scientists to
suppress the truth about tobacco-related health risks for decades, and something similar happens
with climate science today.41 SID includes non-verbal attempts to deceive, verbally misleading,
sophistry, and lying—everything grouped under “general dishonesty” above—so long as the
deception plays on subtleties of reason for the sake of causing or sustaining false belief.
The dishonesty objection is not concerned with this strong form of intellectual
dishonesty. While one could accuse all Christian thinkers and leaders of being intentionally
deceptive about the faith, this accusation would not trouble many Christians. It is trivially true

Barber, “Lying, Misleading, and Dishonesty,” 157.
Guenin, “Intellectual Honesty,” 218–19.
41
Oreskes and Conway, Merchants of Doubt.
39
40

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41

that there are dishonest people—scientists and Christians alike—who, at their worst, attempt to
deceive others. The matter at hand concerns whether the Christian faith participates in, or even
depends upon, a weaker, more subtle form of intellectual dishonesty at its best.

2.2.1.5 Weak Intellectual Dishonesty
Weak intellectual dishonesty (WID) tries to induce or sustain a true belief in others—a
belief that the subject himself takes to be true. WID is more serious than being misguided or
ignorant: it holds when the subject has a responsibility to pursue the truth in some manner but
fails to do so—a failure to appropriately seek the truth when presented with a contrary incentive.
The incentive might be sustaining one’s career, personal pride in being right, laziness, preventing
(perceived) weaker minds from being ‘led astray’ by nuance and hard questions, or even the fear
of discovering that the belief in question may turn out to be false. Whereas SID is fraudulent
regarding subtleties of reason and presentation, WID is negligent in these matters.
Examples of WID include the following: a scientist dismisses a preponderance of new
evidence because he is convinced that his theory cannot be wrong; a Biblical scholar, fully
convinced that Moses penned the entire Pentateuch, straw-mans the (alternative) Documentary
Hypothesis instead of carefully weighing the evidence and arguments for it in their strongest
form; a public health official, rightly convinced that vaccines work, argues that vaccine mandates
are warranted based on medical science alone, glossing over ethical-democratic questions; a
Bible college instructor, sincerely convinced that the Bible is the Word of God, downplays
legitimate questions raised by critical scholarship so as not to trouble her students.42

42

It would be one thing for this instructor to inform her students that there are legitimate, challenging questions
about the Bible and Christianity that require a greater level of training and study than her Bible college presently
offers—and that she retains her faith amid such questions. It is another thing to allow one’s students to graduate with
the misleading, triumphalist impression that there simply are no legitimate, challenging questions out there.

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2.2.1.6 Plain Dishonesty vs. Intellectual Dishonesty
Two further distinctions are needful. First, SID may occur in the two outermost circles of
Figure 2-1 but not the centre. E.g., instead of spreading leaves to prompt false conclusions about
wildlife, one might ‘arrange the intellectual furniture’ of a presentation, discussion, piece of
writing, etc., so that the audience draws his desired, false conclusion—an attempt to deceive.
Sometimes, SID may extend inward to the second circle—expressing a falsehood without
directly stating it—but the deception must pivot on subtleties of reasoning and presentation. At
the innermost circle—lying—the distinction between plain and intellectual dishonesty breaks
down. One can lie about intellectual matters, such as the outcome of an experiment, but the
mode of deception no longer depends on subtleties of reasoning and presentation.
Second, and more
importantly for our discussion,
WID occurs outside the largest
circle in Figure 2-1: WID
excludes all attempts to deceive
(that would be SID). Therefore,
weak intellectual dishonesty, with
which the dishonesty objection is
primarily concerned, is not
considered dishonesty in
everyday parlance, as shown in
Figure 2-2.

Figure 2-2. Weak intellectual dishonesty (WID) is not general dishonesty in
common parlance. Strong intellectual dishonesty (SID) does qualify.

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2.2.1.7 Notes on Intellectual Dishonesty
Since these matters are tied up with an individual’s private intentions and beliefs about
truth, identifying WID is not straightforward. An individual might simultaneously engage in
WID, SID, and lying. From the outside, WID is perhaps impossible to distinguish from mere
incompetence. E.g., an author sincerely advocating for a flat earth who presents a cherry-picked,
misleading view of cosmology might be weakly intellectually dishonest. However, if he is
unaware of the problems with his presentation, WID cannot hold. It seems the most we could say
is that he is mistaken, incompetent, or deluded. When he is informed and understands his errors
in reasoning or presentation, his level of responsibility increases: he must choose between WID
and correcting his errors. Yet from an outside point of view, it remains possible that he has not
understood the criticism or sincerely disbelieves it. At most, we can say that the more often he
flatly dismisses criticism, the more likely he engages in WID.

2.2.2

What the Skeptic Needs to Show
Let us suppose that the Christian and the skeptic can agree on this articulation of weak

intellectual dishonesty, hereafter abbreviated to “intellectual dishonesty.” Suppose also that they
both subscribe (enough, for the moment) to the correspondence theory of truth—that a statement
is true if, and only if, it corresponds to reality.43 It is thus non-controversial to suppose further
that they agree on intellectual honesty as a universal obligation, or duty, toward reality.
Given such an agreement, the skeptic’s path to success seems clear. First, he must
identify the Christian’s errors in handling evidence and reason. E.g., perhaps she has been

43

Due to space constraints, I will not discuss philosophical debates regarding theories of truth, postmodern
skepticism, and the like in this paper. Even so, this is not to the detriment of my argument because critiques along
the lines of the dishonesty objection often come from those who espouse scientism, which implies a modern
correspondence theory of truth—although it is not always articulated as such.

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claiming she is a Christian because of something erroneous, such as the (false) claim that “there
is no scientific evidence whatever for evolution. The actual evidence is exactly what would be
expected if God had created each kind of creature in the beginning.”44
Second, and crucially, the Christian must recognize that her duty toward the truth has
increased due to her encounter with the skeptic, either because (a) she sees that she has made an
error or (b) she suspects that she might have made an error. Suppose, instead, she genuinely fails
to recognize anything worth attending to. In that case, she either (c) misunderstands or (d) has
overriding beliefs that—erroneous or not—can account for the skeptic’s accusations: perhaps the
skeptic misunderstands; he would say anything to discredit Christianity. Maybe everything she’s
ever been taught gives her no reason to think evolution could be true. Unless she informs him,
the skeptic cannot know whether he is dismissed for good or bad reasons. Regardless, if the
Christian does not perceive herself as more responsible for investigating things than before, she
cannot be intellectually dishonest—even if some of her thinking is wrong or deluded.
Third, therefore, the Christian must renege on her duty to the truth. To continue, let’s
suppose a form of case (b) above: the Christian now fears that evolution might be true, which
(for her) suggests her faith could be false. For intellectual dishonesty to hold, she must carry on
as before without sufficiently increased attention to the matter. She knows she has failed her duty
to the truth at some level, but she is so convinced that Christianity is true that she carries on
unabated. At least for the moment, we could describe such a Christian as intellectually
dishonest—at least about evolution and Christianity. However, she could satisfy her duty to the
truth and retain her faith by reading a book like Evolution: Scripture and Nature Say Yes.45

44

Morris, The Long War against God, 279.
Denis O. Lamoureux, Evolution: Scripture and Nature Say Yes (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016).
Alternatively, she could read a book that debunks evolution to her satisfaction: incorrect, but not dishonest.
45

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Importantly, the dishonesty objection is not primarily concerned with intellectual
dishonesty about science but about the Christian faith in general, especially relating to core
matters of the Holy Spirit, revelation, and authority. Regarding these things, it is more complex
for the skeptic to identify the errors the Christian allegedly makes.46

2.2.3

Disagreement: A Tale of Two Realities
Despite initial agreement on a definition for intellectual dishonesty as an obligation to

reality, it is critically important to point out that the skeptic and the Christian strongly disagree
about ultimate reality: they have radically different pictures of the universe we live in. Even with
perfect agreement about the abstract features of this obligation, such an agreement can only go so
far if the two parties cannot agree on what it looks like in practice.

2.2.3.1 Thought Experiment: Two Soldiers
Defining a mutual duty to reality when the parties cannot agree about reality is difficult,
to say the least. Such an impasse is not entirely unlike that faced by two opposing soldiers during
the American War of Independence: The loyalist says, “You’re a traitor!” The patriot replies,
“You’re an oppressor!” To some extent, each soldier might recognize important virtues at work
in the other, such as respect for the rules of war, battlefield courage, or self-sacrifice; however,
any mutual estimation of each other’s loyalty to authority will be quite different.
Quite apart from how intrinsically loyal each soldier may be in his personal life, the
problem lies upstream, pivoting on disagreement about rightful authority in the first place.
Unless one of them reconsiders the rightful authority over the Thirteen Colonies, he cannot begin

46

To use terminology I will introduce in § 2.6.3, it is comparatively easier to identify intellectual dishonesty when it
relates to investigational authority (science) than when it deals with revelational authority (theology).

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to approve of the other as being properly loyal. At most, he could say the other is a good solider
for his side—that he would be properly loyal if he only served the rightful authority.

2.2.3.2 What if Jesus Is the Truth?
The Christian and the skeptic face a far more difficult impasse. They do not disagree
about human, governmental authority, but about ultimate authority;47 ultimate reality; humanity’s
spiritual context, in which, for the Christian, all humans encounter spiritual forces—good and
evil;48 human sinfulness, self-deception,49 and truth-suppression;50 and the nature of truth itself.
As theologian Donald G. Bloesch makes clear, for Christians, “truth is inseparable from grace,”
“associated with obedience,” and linked “to what is humanizing and liberating.”51 Truth is
both transformative and informative. Jesus claimed that he told the truth and that he bore
witness to the truth (Jn 8:40, 45; 18:37). He was intimating not that his words were
necessarily in conformity with external reality but that they presented an accurate picture
of God’s plan and purpose for human existence. His Jewish interrogators could not grasp
what he was saying because they did not abide in the truth (8:43–47). To be in the truth
means to abide in God; to be in error means to be separated from God.52
Crucially, the Christian believes Jesus is the truth.53 “Truth is not so much an idea as a
person, not so much a formulation as an act.”54 The Christian agrees with the skeptic on

47

Matt. 28:18.
John 16:8; Heb. 13:2; 1 Peter 5:8.
49
Jer. 17:9.
50
Rom. 1:18.
51
Donald G. Bloesch, Holy Scripture: Revelation, Inspiration and Interpretation, Christian Foundations 2 (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005), 282, 293.
52
Bloesch, Holy Scripture, 283.
53
John 14:6. “In calling himself the truth,” one scholar argues, “Jesus is not giving an ontological definition in terms
of transcendentals but is describing himself in terms of his mission to men.” Raymond Edward Brown, The Gospel
According to John, ed. William Foxwell Albright and David Noel Freedman, vol. A, The Anchor Bible 29 (Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), 630. Others are more comfortable with an ontological claim: “Jesus is not only the
way to God; he is the truth of God – how could he be otherwise, since he is the embodiment of God’s selfrevelation?” F. F. Bruce, The Gospel of John: Introduction, Exposition, and Notes (Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans, 1983), 299. See also John 1:1-18.
Even if we take Jesus’ statement in the weaker sense here, something like “I am the way of truth and life”
(a reading rejected by Bruce), it would still mean that Jesus is centrally important to the Christian way of life, which
would include the pursuit of truth, and therefore intellectual honesty. Bruce, The Gospel of John, 299.
54
Bloesch, Holy Scripture, 282.
48

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the idea of truth as a correct description of the world, but the correspondence theory
becomes questionable when the discussion turns to ultimate or final truth. Truth in the
ultimate sense is not a conforming of the mind to objective reality but the refocusing of
the mind by the Spirit of God, who breaks into our reality from the beyond. Truth is
being brought into accord with the transcendent meaning of the gospel, the very Word of
God. It is not simply an agreement between our ideas and the gospel but a conforming of
our total life orientation to the demands of the gospel. Truth in biblical perspective is not
so much the factual as the eventful. It is not the mere perception of facts but
transformation by the transcendent reality that the biblical facts point to and attest.55
The Christian’s duty to the truth cannot be understood coherently apart from her personal
duty to the One who claimed to be the truth. All philosophical theories of truth
begin with a cognitive capacity within the human person, whether this be reason, feeling,
experience, intuition or so on. Truth is what the human being can discover or conceive or
imagine. In theology[,] truth is what God declares and reveals. Truth is not a human
possibility but a divine actuality.56
Thus, intellectual honesty has a somewhat different meaning for the Christian.
The skeptic will not give any quarter to ‘intellectual honesty’ as a duty to Christ, but the
Christian cannot coherently reject the notion. This is but one feature of a problem of position
explored in this chapter, which obstructs common ground between the Christian and the skeptic.
Still, for the dishonesty objection to hold—as opposed to the mere accusation of
delusion—the skeptic must provide more than a simple dismissal of these matters. He must show
that the Christian faith—at its best and on its own terms—cannot be held apart from
irresponsibly glossing over errors related to subtleties of reasoning and presentation. As things
stand, it is far from clear that the dishonesty objection succeeds in this regard. In particular, the
skeptic does not appear to be open to the Christian understanding of revelation as revealed.

Bloesch, Holy Scripture, 287. Bloesch follows Karl Barth, whose understanding of the “Word of God” is
complex: it applies to the Bible, but it is not synonymous with “the Bible.” For the scope of this thesis, Barth’s
“Word of God” can be applied to special revelation generally.
56
Bloesch, Holy Scripture, 294.
55

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2.3 Revelation as an Object of Knowledge
Critics of religion, such as Dawkins, do not accept “other ways of knowing besides the
scientific,” objecting that it amounts to Christians defining themselves into an “epistemological
Safe Zone,” immune from criticism.57 Phrased that way, Christians might be within their rights
to accuse the skeptic of strong scientism—wherein science is the only source of knowledge—and
reply on that level alone.58 However, adherence to strong scientism is not required for the skeptic
to make the dishonesty objection. Let us suppose that the skeptic already agrees that it is selfreferentially incoherent to state that science is the only form of knowledge—since that statement
itself cannot be arrived at using science. Suppose he agrees that there are other ways of knowing
apart from science, such as those appropriate to moral or philosophical truths.
Perhaps it is more appropriate to say that the skeptic adheres to a weak form of scientism,
which considers science as merely the best source of truth:
Advocates of weak scientism allow for the existence of truths apart from science and are
even willing to grant that they can have some minimal, positive rationality status without
the support of science. But advocates of weak scientism still hold that science is the most
valuable, most serious and most authoritative sector of human learning. Every other
intellectual activity is inferior to science. Further, there are virtually no limits to science.
There is no field into which scientific research cannot shed light. To the degree that some
issue or belief outside science can be given scientific support or can be reduced to
science, to that degree the issue or belief becomes rationally acceptable. Thus we have an
intellectual and perhaps even a moral obligation to try to use science to solve problems in
other fields that, heretofore, have been untouched by scientific methodology.59

57

Dawkins, The God Delusion, 183–84.
“Strong scientism is the view that some proposition or theory is true and/or rational to believe if and only if it is a
scientific proposition or theory; that is, if and only if it is a well-established scientific proposition or theory that, in
turn, depends on its having been successfully formed, tested and used according to appropriate scientific
methodology. There are no truths apart from scientific truths, and even if there were, there would be no reason
whatever to believe them.” Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 347.
59
Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 347.
58

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The above is closer to the skeptic’s position. However, let us also assume that the skeptic agrees
that it is nonsensical for the conclusions of science to be considered more certain than the
philosophical foundations that make science possible in the first place.60
A more charitable formulation of the skeptic’s misgiving is as follows: science is not the
best source—much less the only source—of knowledge in every sphere of human life; however,
a comparison with science shows that the Christian’s appeal to revelation is intellectually
dishonest—insulating her faith from being corrected or falsified: “an impregnable fortress ...
constructed around ... a ridiculous set of beliefs, rendering them immune to rational criticism and
creating a veneer of faux reasonableness.”61
This thesis aims to show that the dishonesty objection fails, not to prove that Christian
faith is falsifiable in some sense that the skeptic would find acceptable. There is no need to
accept the skeptic’s implication that only assailable things are true—or that one can only be
intellectually honest toward falsifiable things. There are good reasons to think the opposite.

2.3.1

God and Other Minds
The core argument of Plantinga’s God, and Other Minds is that “belief in other minds

and belief in God are in the same epistemological boat; hence if either is rational, so is the other.
But obviously the former is rational; so, therefore, is the latter.”62 At first, this might appear to be
a strange inclusion. The key is to try to inhabit the mindset of an other-minds skeptic, who finds

“Strong scientism rules out these presuppositions altogether because neither the presuppositions themselves nor
their defense are scientific matters. Weak scientism misconstrues their strength in its view that scientific
propositions have greater epistemic authority than those of other fields like philosophy. This would mean that the
conclusions of science are more certain than the philosophical presuppositions used to justify and reach those
conclusions, and that is absurd.” Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 348.
61
Law, Believing BS, 11.
62
Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University, 1967), viii.
60

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the existence of other minds—other real persons—apart from himself to be just as outlandish, or
doxastically distant, as an atheist finds the existence of God to be. Rather than believing in other
minds, an other-minds skeptic finds it easier to believe that other people are androids, holograms,
or other illusions of personhood. Full solipsism denies the existence of anything apart from one’s
own mind—including nature. From the standpoint of epistemology, theism is just as vulnerable
to atheist criticism as realism is to solipsist criticism.63 As we will see below, merely drawing
attention to such vulnerabilities is not enough to prove intellectual dishonesty.

2.3.1.1 Thought Experiment: Flowers on the Nightstand
Suppose you awaken and see a bouquet on your nightstand. You live alone, so you can
hardly believe your eyes. In fact, you actually disbelieve your eyes, so you reach out with your
hands to tell whether the flowers are there. But your disbelief is so strong that you don’t trust
your sense of touch either, similarly rejecting smell, taste, hearing, and the other, oftenoverlooked senses. Do any options remain? Is there any logical, noncircular way to regain trust
in your experience if you flatly refuse to appeal to sensory input at all? No phone calls, video
evidence, or explanations from a secret admirer will help, for such things rely on rejected senses.
The only possible remedy is to take a leap of faith and trust one or more of your senses again.64

2.3.1.2 Thought Experiment: A Solipsist Disagrees with Himself
Furthermore, let us imagine Sam, a solipsist who believes that nothing exists apart from
his own mind. As far as he is concerned, his realist friend Rae, a scientist, is merely a part of his

“Realism” has many possible meanings, but here I simply mean “belief in the natural, physical world”—an
antonym of solipsism.
64
This problem is inspired by the systematic doubt of René Descartes. See Gary Hatfield, “René Descartes,” ed.
Edward N. Zalta, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2018),
accessed February 23, 2023, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/descartes/.
63

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51

consciousness. He accuses her (or the Rae part of himself) of being intellectually dishonest (as
illusions go) because of her stubborn belief that the physical universe and about eight billion
other minds are real. For Sam, sensory input—much less empirical science—is not valid for
knowing anything at all. At best, such ‘input’ merely provides a way to know his own mind via
some self-generated illusion.
What can Rae say to him? Any appeal she makes to experience is rejected because it is
not a valid way of knowing. Any valid form of knowledge, Sam insists, must originate in the
mind alone; it cannot be dependent on any ‘experience’ with the so-called “external world.” He
argues (with himself) that if there were an external world, he would be able to prove it using
purely philosophical methods; he wouldn’t need to rely on faith.
For Sam, Rae is a manifestation of his own loneliness, tempting him to pretend to know
what he doesn’t know and could never know. To avoid the pitfalls of faith and confirmation bias,
he must not allow ‘intellectually dishonest’ assumptions in the door. Besides, the supposed
‘external world’ is far too disorderly and chaotic to be real—it is clearly an illusion. A real
external world would conform far better to the ideal forms of the mind.65
Here Rae accuses Sam of foisting an inappropriate epistemology on the external world—
assuming that the mind is the only source of knowledge. He responds that she is simply defining
a whole imaginary universe into an epistemological safe zone: her belief in the external world is
unassailable—utterly immune to any evidence or argument he presents.

65

Here, Sam espouses views like those of some ancient Greek philosophers. Although they did not necessarily
embrace solipsism, philosophers following Plato did place the material realm at a lower level of credibility than the
ideal realm—the divine, transcendent world and realm of the soul (the rational, intellectual part of each human),
accessible only by reason and more real than the material world. The material, sensible world was considered “a
perpetual Heraclitean flow of ever-changing appearances of which no real knowledge is possible,” so only thinking
that has to do with the realm of ideas, or Forms, “attains truth.” A. H. Armstrong, An Introduction to Ancient
Philosophy, 3rd ed. (London: University Paperbacks, 1957), 37.

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Sam finds Rae’s science intellectually dishonest, but it is unclear that he has grounds for
the accusation. For Rae to be guilty of intellectual dishonesty, she must knowingly meddle with
subtleties of reasoning and presentation when making her case to Sam (or herself). Otherwise,
she is at most deluded (from Sam’s point of view). It seems fairer to say that there is an
epistemological gap between them—a problem of position.

2.3.1.3 Objections Roundup 1
These thought experiments apply to several of the skeptic’s objections. First, there is an
upper verification limit for any way of knowing, including science; ultimately, all ways of
knowing depend on encounters that the human knower cannot get behind, verify, or ‘check up
on.’ A geologist can investigate sedimentary formation, planetary formation, and how gravity
and cosmic inflation work, but he must finally accept his encounter with the universe as it is. A
woman can get to know a man by sharing experiences and conversation, but she cannot verify
that he is another mind apart from her own; she simply accepts it, and their relationship occurs
downstream. The acceptance of both the universe and other minds is unassailable: “an axiom, not
the end product of a process of reasoning”66—despite Dawkins’s aversion.
Second, it is always possible that an extreme skeptic might find these upper limits
suspicious, but the fact that there are such limits does not tell us one way, or the other, whether a
given way of knowing has a real object.67 Therefore, for the charge of intellectual dishonesty to
hold, it is not enough to merely question the object’s reality or point out its epistemological
limits—for such limits apply to every way of knowing, regardless of legitimacy.

66
67

Pace Dawkins, The God Delusion, 319.
Where “object” is used in the epistemological sense: the thing that a given way of knowing is attempting to know.

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2.3.2

53

The Nature-Revelation Analogy
Taking the above together with Plantinga’s argument about God and other minds, we

may argue that Christian faith is another legitimate way of knowing, taking divine revelation as
its object. The fact that the skeptic does not appreciate it need not trouble the Christian any more
than a solipsist should trouble a scientist. Every way of knowing, including science, can be
criticized by a sufficiently skeptical person. Let us refer to this apologetic approach of setting up
an analogy between the external world and divine revelation as the nature-revelation analogy.

2.3.2.1 Objection: Going Nuclear
Stephen Law labels such an apologetic approach as “Going Nuclear”—“an attempt to
unleash an argument that lays waste to every position, bringing them all down to the same level
of ‘reasonableness.’”68 He groups the nature-revelation analogy with skepticism about all reason
in general, which he calls “a wonderful get-out-of-jail-free card. It allows [the theist] to walk
away ..., saying, ‘So you see? In the last analysis, our beliefs are equally (ir)rational! They’re
both ‘faith positions!’”69 For Law, this is a bad tactic because
it’s almost certainly an intellectually dishonest ruse. Those who press the nuclear button
rarely do so in good faith. Bear in mind that, in such discussions, playing the skeptical
card really is the nuclear option. By Going Nuclear, [the theist] avoids defeat, but only by
utterly annihilating the rationality of every belief. All positions, no matter how sensible
or nuts, come out as equally (ir)rational.70
Going nuclear, says Law, can make belief in fairies appear reasonable. To be consistent, the
theist must accept all manner of ridiculous positions as equally (un)reasonable.
As a last-ditch strategy [the theist] may try this: she may admit that her own belief
involves a leap of faith, but then add that her atheist opponents make a similar leap of
faith when it comes to trusting their senses. ...

68

Law, Believing BS, 97.
Law, Believing BS, 99.
70
Law, Believing BS, 100.
69

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... Having set up this skeptical argument, our Theist may then add that she happens to
enjoy not only sensory experiences but also a God experience. God, she supposes, reveals
himself to her. ...
... Belief in God need be no more a faith position than the atheist’s belief in the external
world. The two beliefs are actually intellectually on par. It’s leaps of faith all round.71
For Law, it is not enough to assert that God is in the same epistemological boat as other
minds or the natural world. Since it is trivially true that every way of knowing has its limits and
detractors, this does not accrue to the credibility of theism. “Even if any belief about the external
world involves a leap of faith,” Law argues, “it does not follow that it’s as reasonable for Theists
to place their trust in their God experience as it is for atheists to trust their senses.”72 Unlike
belief in the natural world—a nearly-universal human belief—many religious people worldwide
have conflicting religious experiences; moreover, in Law’s view, there is too much suffering in
the world to believe in an all-loving, all-powerful God.73

2.3.2.2 Response: A More Modest Claim
There is much to say in response to Law. First, while it might not be fair to accuse Law
of straw-manning our analogy, the fact that he unnecessarily aligns it so closely with irrationality
exemplifies that common ground between the Christian and the skeptic is in short supply. If the
skeptic will not entertain the possibility of divine revelation—immediately identifying openness
toward it with gross irrationality—it is difficult to see how any progress can be made. To be just
as intellectually open and honest as he expects the Christian to be, the skeptic must be willing to
consider possibilities that are doxastically distant from him, such as the possibility that
Christianity is a legitimate way of knowing a real object.

71

Law, Believing BS, 101–2.
Law, Believing BS, 103.
73
It is beyond our scope to respond to the Problem of Evil, but many apologists, including Plantinga, have written
about it at length. E.g., Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1977).
72

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Second, I do not present the nature-revelation analogy to argue that theism is equally
well-supported or credible as belief in the external world.74 I present the analogy to support a far
more modest claim: it is not intellectually dishonest for the Christian to accept revelation as an
object of knowledge. In fact, the point of making the nature-revelation analogy is the difference
in credibility between the two: to utilize something common to the skeptic and the Christian—
acceptance of one’s encounter with the external world, on which science depends—to address
something controversial between them: openness to revelation, on which Christian faith depends.
Third, comparisons between God and fairies fail to appreciate the Christian view of
divine revelation. The skeptic expects the Christian to recognize the difference in face-value
credibility between the external world and God as understood by an average, non-religious
Western person; it is only fair that he would recognize the difference in face-value credibility
between God and fairies. The skeptic would not write serious books on non-belief in fairies or
attend a public debate on whether fairies exist—except perhaps to lampoon theism.
The nature-revelation analogy is not a retreat to irrationality but a modest insistence on
putting the matter at hand in perspective: any charge of intellectual dishonesty that relies on
epistemological vulnerabilities common to science and Christianity must apply to both. Since it
is trivially true that every way of knowing has its limits and detractors, this fact neither supports
nor undermines the credibility of theism. The skeptic may believe that the Christian faith is not a
legitimate way of knowing. Still, he should recognize that his assertion that divine revelation is
impossible says nothing one way or the other about the Christian’s intellectual honesty.

74

To be clear, if an apologist did make such a claim, then Law’s arguments about Going Nuclear might apply.

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2.3.3

56

Christian Faith as Dependent on the Transcendent

2.3.3.1 A kata-physin Approach
Christian thinkers have attended to science and theology as ways of knowing. Karl Barth,
considered to be the most important theologian of the twentieth century, refers to theology as a
“science,” where a “science” is any study that seeks “to apprehend a specific object and its
environment in the manner directed by the phenomenon itself.”75 Theologian Thomas F.
Torrance develops Barth’s thinking further. Surveying Alexandrian theologians from the second
to the fifth centuries—especially John Philoponos—Torrance holds that “Christian thinkers laid
the foundations upon which all subsequent empirical and theoretical science has developed.”76
Contrary to the largely anti-empirical views of Greek philosophy,77 the Incarnation led them to
understand “space and time as contingent.”78 The fact that something genuinely new had entered
history—something that could never have been arrived at by pure reason—suggested that
empirical engagement was necessary:
this called for a process of positive questioning of realities or framing of thought
experiments designed to let their actual nature to disclose itself — a method which
became known as “kataphysic” or “dogmatic science”, that is a science in which thinking
and knowing are positively governed by the objective nature or reality of things, operate

75

Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, trans. Grover Foley (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston,
1963), 3.
76
Thomas F. Torrance, Theological and Natural Science (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2002), 5. Readers should note,
however, that it is inaccurate to suggest, as apologists sometimes do, that all modern science owes its existence to
the Judeo-Christian worldview and could not have possibly come about any other way (and Torrance is not making
that strong of a claim here). Still, it is also inaccurate to say that the medieval church suppressed the growth of
science, as atheists sometimes suggest. See Ronald L. Numbers, ed., Galileo Goes to Jail: And Other Myths about
Science and Religion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2009), chaps. 2, 9.
77
“It was his distinctively Christian understanding of creation that had opened up for Philoponos the possibility of a
genuinely scientific account of the world of space and time, freeing it from the philosophical myths of the Greeks.
Here also we see that it was his theological understanding of the contingent rational order of the universe of space
and time free from necessity that provided him with access to the actual nature of the universe, and helped him to
put forward a genuine scientific understanding of the empirical laws of its order.” Torrance, Theological and
Natural Science, 86.
78
Torrance, Theological and Natural Science, 6.

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holistically rather than analytically, and develop a modality of the reason that is
appropriate to the specific nature of the object.79
Kata physin is Greek for “according to [the] nature” [of the thing studied]. A kata-physin
approach requires one to “apprehend a specific object ... in the manner directed by [that
object].”80 This “modality of reason”—way of knowing—determines “how we know [the
object], think about it, formulate knowledge of it, and how we verify that knowledge.”81 The
modality of reason appropriate for knowing an impersonal object, e.g., a rock, differs from that
appropriate for another person: “with a person we are not in a position to exercise control over
him or her as the object of knowing—a human being is personally other than we are, and is more
profoundly objective ..., for a person would object to our attempts to control him or her.”82 It
would be improper to attempt to know another person by studying only his body or brain: the
appropriate modality of reason for a person is relationship—not that of physical science.
Applied to knowing God, the kata-physin principle necessitates “a radical change in our
knowing of him in accordance with his divine nature as the Lord God the Creator of our being:
we cannot objectify him in the same way.”83 An “epistemological inversion” occurs here,
dependent on “his self-revelation and grace”: “we can know him ... only in the mode of worship,
prayer, and adoration in which we respond personally, humbly, and obediently to his divine
initiative.”84 In short, humanity can only possibly know God as creatures getting to know their
Creator, who reveals himself to them as he sees fit; in Barth’s terms, “knowledge of God is
obedience to God. ... It is an act of human decision corresponding to the act of divine decision.”85

79

Torrance, Theological and Natural Science, 121.
Barth, Evangelical Theology, 3.
81
Torrance, Theological and Natural Science, 92.
82
Torrance, Theological and Natural Science, 92.
83
Torrance, Theological and Natural Science, 92.
84
Torrance, Theological and Natural Science, 92.
85
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. Geoffrey William Bromiley and Thomas F. Torrance, study ed. (London: T&T
Clark, 2004), II/1:26.
80

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2.3.3.2 Knowledge as Dependent
One important corollary of this kata-physin understanding is that all knowledge depends
on its own object. The object of science is nature—that which cannot be gotten behind or
corrected.86 For a relationship, the object is another person, and there is already an
epistemological shift: the knower is also known. In both cases, knowledge is dependent. There is
no empirical science independent of nature and no relationship independent of another person.
Crucially, any theological knowledge worthy of the name depends on God—on revelation.87

The reader may object that logical and mathematical truths are ‘beyond nature’ and can correct science. This
thesis has no space to explore where philosophy should fit in with all this entirely, but it raises many questions. Do
the laws of logic and mathematics constitute an ultimate object beyond nature? Would it be better to say they are the
non-negotiable ground of all knowing projects? It seems incorrect to think that philosophical truths are proximate
objects under nature—for the laws of logic also apply when knowing persons and even God. It is also suspect to
conceive of philosophy as a super-ultimate object above nature and revelation—especially since philosophy has at
times discouraged the pursuit of nature and revelation as legitimate objects of knowledge.
First, there is nothing necessary in math or logic to discourage science or theology—only philosophical
assumptions. As for whether mathematics exists as an object of knowledge, Torrance’s discussion of Gödel,
Einstein, and others suggests that mathematics cannot be self-contained; it must have a transcendent ground:
“Modern science devoted to the investigation of empirical phenomena could not have arisen in the classical form
given to it by Galileo and Newton if it had been restricted to a purely a priori approach. It arose out of the way of
understanding of the universe as created by God and endowed by him with a created or contingent rationality of its
own dependent upon his transcendent rationality.” Torrance, Theological and Natural Science, 39.
For our purposes, let us agree with William Lane Craig that abstract objects (a philosophical term) such as
mathematical and logical truths must not be considered uncreated or co-eternal with God. God and Abstract Objects:
The Coherence of Theism; Aseity (New York: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2017). If they can be said to exist in any
sense (Craig thinks not), it will be a sense that depends on God. Regardless, since adherence to logical and
mathematical truths permeates all valid ways of human knowing, we can say that this is built into the act of knowing
any object—proximate or ultimate. Therefore, this matter need not detain us further.
87
Although special revelation (direct revelation in Christ, Scripture, etc.) is most naturally in view here, one could
understand general revelation (God’s self-disclosure in creation) to be the outworking of an act of God. A theology
of nature (drawing conclusions about God from nature, having already recognized nature as his creation) also
epistemologically depends on God. Natural theology, which generally tries to work from a ‘neutral,’ non-theistic
understanding of nature to prove the existence of God, does attempt independent knowledge of God.
As mentioned earlier, it is beyond the scope of this paper to engage this matter. Whether or not natural
theology is possible has no bearing on the dishonesty objection: if it is possible, we can yet consider it an act of
grace on God’s part—accommodating himself to those who seek him—and so not technically independent after all.
“If we choose to speak of other revelations besides the one great revelation in Jesus Christ, then they must be
conceived as being subordinate to and dependent on God’s self–revelation in Christ” Donald G. Bloesch, A
Theology of Word and Spirit: Authority and Method in Theology, Christian Foundations 1 (Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity, 2005), 163.
What the Christian cannot coherently entertain is the idea of an ontologically neutral arena from which to
launch the project of natural theology. Either the Holy Spirit is present or not; either the Christian is regenerated or
not. There might be an intellectually neutral space into which the Christian might retreat to conduct natural theology,
but if Christianity is true, there cannot be an ontologically neutral space; therefore, she cannot have certainty that she
86

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We may extend this train of thought and group objects of knowledge into two types.
Proximate objects, such as rocks and trees, are proper objects of knowledge, but not ultimate:
one can ‘get behind’ them and submit their ways of knowing to other, more fundamental objects
and ways of knowing. Geology, e.g., might be understood as a combination of sciences such as
chemistry and thermodynamics, which can be grouped under physics, and so on.88
Ultimate objects are the end of the line, epistemologically speaking. There is nothing
higher to which one can appeal to verify their existence, nor is there any higher authority for
correcting one’s knowledge of them. Beyond physics, the ultimate object for geology is nature—
the external world. With persons, things are more complicated. People’s bodies are proximate
objects of knowledge, subordinated to nature, but as persons, they are ultimate objects of
knowledge.89 Again, the ultimate object of theology is revelation.

2.3.3.3 Thought Experiment: A View from Where?
To illustrate the sheer dependence of theological knowledge on revelation, imagine you
had obtained genuinely independent theological knowledge. On your own, you could describe
the relationship between the Creator and creation—God and humanity. You could make true
pronouncements about divine nature by looking at God, comparing him to human conceptions,
and determining which concepts match God. The only question is, where would you be standing?

conducts natural theology apart from the influence of the Holy Spirit and other spiritual realities. Ironically, God is
the only one capable of knowing what an atheistic universe would be like—if such a concept is coherent at all.
Finally, even if I am incorrect about most of the above, a truly natural theology would not be necessary for
Christian faith. It could not replace the need for special revelation; therefore, it would have little bearing on my
argument in this thesis.
88
One could argue that this is too reductionistic, holding that the emergent properties of geological strata should be
taken as an epistemological object in its own right. In either case, the ultimate encounter for science is with nature.
89
This need not commit me to a dualist understanding of the mind and body per se. See, e.g., Nancey C. Murphy,
Religion and Science: God, Evolution and the Soul, ed. Carl S. Helrich (Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 2002), pt. 1.

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To independently describe the Creator-creature relationship, one must stand above both.
From such a vantage, one could attain an effectively certain theology: one would be a supergod.90 However, the idea of such knowledge is incompatible with Christianity: one cannot stand
above God. Therefore, theological knowledge depends on God for (a) general, kata-physin
reasons and (b) because God is transcendent. We can somewhat directly compare science with
nature—poking, prodding, repeating experiments—but we cannot directly compare our theology
to God. In this sense, theology is even more dependent on revelation than science is on nature.
The skeptic cannot coherently consider Christianity in its strongest form while insisting
that any claim to divine revelation is a matter of pretending.91 Otherwise, he implies that even if
Christianity were true, revelation would still not be a valid object of knowledge—but this rules
out the Christian faith in the first place. His demand for independent knowledge of God is a
demand for pseudo-theology: an impossible, incoherent theology. The skeptic is thus invited to
engage in greater “doxastic openness” to revelation as an object of knowledge.92

2.4 Revelation as Authoritative
For the Christian, revelation is not merely an object of knowledge from outside nature, as
though it could be compared to a message from an incomprehensibly advanced and distant alien.
Revelation is authoritative: it is more akin to a message from the rightful king of creation.

“It would indeed have to be a second God who could see God directly.” Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/1:19.
E.g., “[The Church] pretended to have a revelation from God. It knew the road to eternal joy, the way to death. It
preached salvation by faith, and declared that only orthodox believers could become angels, and all doubters would
be damned. It knew this, and so knowing it became the enemy of discussion, of investigation, of thought. Why
investigate, why discuss, why think when you know?” Robert G. Ingersoll, “The Failure of the Church and the
Triumph of Reason,” in Christianity Is Not Great: How Faith Fails, ed. John W. Loftus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus
Books, 2014), 45. “Cases of faith are instances of pretending to know something you don’t know.” Boghossian, A
Manual for Creating Atheists, 23.
92
“Doxastic openness ... is a willingness and ability to revise beliefs. Doxastic openness occurs the moment one
becomes aware of one’s ignorance; it is the instant one realizes one’s beliefs may not be true. Doxastic openness is
the beginning of genuine humility.” Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, 51.
90
91

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2.4.1

61

Thought Experiment: Flashlight vs. Sun
Imagine your friend Fred joining you for an afternoon at the local escape room. At some

point during your adventure, you enter a dark room with a flashlight in it. Fred operates the
flashlight, illuminating a sign with instructions: go through the left door. The door opens to a
fenced-in area exposed to daylight. “Look,” you say, “there’s a sign saying that we have to dig in
this area over here.” “Hold on,” says Fred, still using the flashlight and peering at the sign.
“Okay, right. Let’s dig.” After a shared laugh, you look around for a shovel.
What makes this exchange funny is that Fred pretends to trust the flashlight—a lower
‘authority’—more than the illumination of the sun itself—a higher authority. He attempts to use
the flashlight to verify the sun’s illumination, but this is clearly wrong-headed. If he weren’t
joking, there would be no recourse, for no brighter light is available to verify the sun. In his
situation, Fred must either receive the sun’s light as the highest luminary authority or not.93
Suppose Fred were to don unique sunglasses that dim the sun but not the flashlight,
attempting to compare them as equals and determine which is brighter. This, too, is nonsensical
since the recognition of the sun’s greater brilliance is already built into the sunglasses. Fred can
shield himself from the sun’s light, but he can neither cause it to be dimmer (at its source) nor

Readers may object that it is at least possible to test the Sun’s light in terms of coherence: that the Sun’s light is
both coherent with itself (i.e., the picture of things it illuminates is not self-contradictory, whatever that might mean)
and with lesser luminaries (i.e., the Sun does not reveal a different picture than the flashlight—only a more complete
and detailed view). At first glance, this perhaps appears not far from C. S. Lewis’s statement, “I believe in
Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” “Is
Theology Poetry?,” in The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses, rev. ed., 1980, 140.
However, Lewis describes his experience downstream from receiving the sun/Christianity as a trustworthy
illumination source. This is not a case of refusing an encounter—demanding a neutral arena to test Christianity
against naturalism (what he calls “the scientific points of view” in this passage)—but a case of reasoning from this
encounter. His comparison of moving from naturalism to Christianity to waking up from a nightmare bears this out:
there is no neutral space for comparing a nightmare to one’s waking life—only the fact that the latter can account for
the former and not vice versa. “Is Theology Poetry?,” 138–40.
This analogy is only meant to illustrate the top-down nature of divine authority. “Certainly we cannot
compare special revelation to the sustained light in the noonday sun, for this would mean that God’s revelation is
continually and immediately accessible to Christians, whereas revelation is God’s free act of self–disclosure, which
must occur again and again if we are to remain in the truth.” Bloesch, A Theology of Word & Spirit, 163.
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verify its light by his own means. Any attempt to separate the sun from its own brilliance is to
experience the sun less, and any attempt to separate divine revelation from authority is to reject a
fundamental part of revelation itself.

2.4.2

Ultimate Authority
Similar to ways of knowing, appeals to authority eventually reach an upper limit: one

either accepts the final authority or not. In the case of science, there is no higher authority than
nature itself. A better understanding of nature can always correct scientific theories, but nature
itself—the object of science—can never be corrected. For Christianity, the highest authority is
God’s own self-disclosure: revelation. Not unlike the illumination of the sun in our thought
experiment, ultimate authority can be neither guaranteed nor corrected by any lesser authority—
to argue otherwise would be logically incoherent. Any human legitimately encountered by such
an authority faces only two options: accept or reject. There is no room for neutral ground
between accepting and rejecting the ultimate authority of Jesus Christ—no more than there is any
room for our two soldiers to find a compromise between their respective loyalties.

2.4.3

The Skeptic and Divine Authority
The matter of divine authority is, of course, a point of departure between the Christian

and the skeptic, who takes biblical warnings against false teachers as a problem for intellectual
honesty. However, this objection does not consider Christianity at its best, allowing for how
things might appear if Christianity were indeed true. Behind the skeptic’s accusation that the
apostles commit genetic and ad hominem fallacies in their warnings lies the assumption that they
cannot be writing with authority. However, if God does exist as a legitimate, transcendent, higher
authority, he has every right to have his apostles pen such warnings. This is not entirely unlike a

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scientist’s obligation to warn against pseudoscience. In both cases, there is a legitimate authority
that listeners must accept or not. It is thus incoherent for the skeptic to accuse the Christian of
intellectual dishonesty simply because she accepts God as the highest authority.

2.4.3.1 Extraordinary Evidence
Sagan’s adage that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is a favourite
among those who make the dishonesty objection. Recall the conditions under which Coyne says
he might accept the Christian faith, such as Jesus’ appearance in the sky, accompanied by angels,
apostles, and healings of amputees:
If this were all witnessed by others and documented by video, and if the healings were
unexplainable but supported by testimony from multiple doctors, and if all the apparitions
and events conformed to Christian theology—then I’d have to start thinking seriously
about the truth of Christianity. Perhaps such eyewitness evidence isn’t even necessary. If,
as Sagan suggested, the New Testament contained unequivocal information about DNA,
evolution, quantum mechanics, or other scientific phenomena that couldn’t have been
known to its authors, it would be hard not to accept some divine inspiration.94
Notably, Coyne appears to walk back his words immediately:
Perhaps other scientists would call me credulous. My scenario about a visiting Jesus
could, they say, be a gigantic con game played by aliens with the technology to pull off
such a stunt. ... After all, the science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s “third law” was
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” But I think you
can substitute “God” for “magic.” And this is why my acceptance of God would be
provisional, subject to revocation if a naturalistic explanation arose later. Extraordinary
claims require extraordinary evidence, but we can never say that such evidence is
impossible.95
Whether Coyne is inclined to accept the faith or not, his approach places his rational
capacities firmly above any divine authority. Even if faced with some of the most substantial
evidence that he can imagine for Christianity, he does not see himself accepting the authority of

94
95

Coyne, Faith versus Fact, 118–19.
Coyne, Faith versus Fact, 119.

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God. Human rationality permanently remains the highest court of authority for him. Thus, Coyne
is only willing to accept the independent, super-god pseudo-theology mentioned earlier.
The problem is not that Coyne wants to use reason to recognize Christian truths per se;96
the problem is his standard: nothing can ever reach the bar of revelation—it is still under the bar
of his reason after the point of would-be recognition. Put another way, he either makes it
impossible to recognize bona fide revelation, or he is only willing to acknowledge a form of a
‘revelation’ (in truth, observation) that remains permanently subordinated to reason. In other
words, not even the most extraordinary evidence imaginable could cause him to recognize
authoritative revelation. His provisional recognition of some Christian truths would remain at the
level of observation (achieved), not revelation (received).

2.4.3.2 Can There Be Evidence?
Skeptics such as Boghossian prize willingness to change one’s mind, given sufficient
evidence: “an atheist is willing to revise their belief (if provided sufficient evidence); the faithful
permit no such revision.”97 Dawkins chides Christians who believe the Bible is true: “if the
evidence seems to contradict it, it is the evidence that must be thrown out, not the book.”98
However, a fascinating discussion between them suggests something different entirely:
Boghossian: What would it take for you to believe in God?
Dawkins: I used to say it would be very simple. It would be the Second Coming of Jesus
or a great, big, deep, booming, bass voice saying, “I am God.” But I was persuaded,
mostly by Steve Zara, who is a regular contributor to my website. He more or less
persuaded me that even if there was this booming voice in the Second Coming with
clouds of glory, the probable explanation is that it is a hallucination or a conjuring trick
by David Copperfield. He made the point that a supernatural explanation for anything is
96

There is a longstanding debate in Christian apologetics about the role of reason in such things, as exemplified by
different schools of thought in theology (Calvinism vs. Arminianism) and apologetics (presuppositionalism vs.
evidentialism), and I will not be resolving such differences here. See, e.g., Craig et al., Five Views on Apologetics.
97
Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, 28.
98
Dawkins, The God Delusion, 319.

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incoherent. It doesn’t add up to an explanation for anything. A non-supernatural Second
Coming could be aliens from outer space.
[Boghossian is in full agreement with Dawkins, arguing, for example, that if the stars
spelled out a message from God, we would first have to rule out alternative explanations,
like an alien trickster culture. Dawkins agrees.]
Boghossian: So [the stars aligned into a message] couldn’t be enough. So, what would
persuade you?
Dawkins: Well, I’m starting to think nothing would, which, in a way, goes against the
grain because I’ve always paid lip service to the view that a scientist should change his
mind when evidence is forthcoming. The trouble is, I can’t think what that evidence
would look like.
[The two then discuss some message or evidence for God that might be hidden in nature
or mathematics, but not even this is sufficient.]
Boghossian: I think that [the] way to think about the problem—as a principle ... it should
be able to be derived by reason. ... Something that stood in isomorphic relationship with
the very structure of reality that was in a numerical code like pi, and then somehow ...
[Here they reject the idea because not even God could meddle with necessary numerical
constants.] So yeah, I don’t really know what it would take.99
These skeptics would fail McCormick’s Defeasibility Test. Regardless, it is well worth
reading Zara’s words, which Dawkins found compelling. Zara stridently states that there can be
no evidence for God (or any god). His reason is that gods “represent ultimates”:
There is no-one higher than Yahweh to appeal to. ... This ultimate nature of gods is
beyond evidence. After all, how could it possibly be tested? ...
... None of [Yahweh’s] attributes could ever be shown to be true using science. Not
because science is flawed, but because none of these attributes could ever be shown to be
true using any test against reality. ...
... Gods of weather aren’t too dangerous to believe in. ... The problem starts when people
insist that they know about Gods of Morality ... [because] there is no appeal, no higher
authority, by definition. And that’s bad.

“Richard Dawkins in Conversation with Peter Boghossian,” (public dialogue, Portland State University, October
11, 2013), 53:12, https://youtu.be/RoQurwEZmmQ. The remarks referenced here begin at about 12:27
(https://youtu.be/RoQurwEZmmQ?t=747), helpfully transcribed in part by Michael, “Dawkins Admits Nothing Can
Persuade Him God Exists,” Shadow To Light (blog), February 25, 2020, accessed February 10, 2023,
https://shadowtolight.wordpress.com/2020/02/24/dawkins-admits-nothing-can-persuade-him-god-exists/.
99

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This is why theism is not just a philosophical mistake, but a moral hazard. It’s a source of
claims of unchallengeable ultimate moral authority. It bypasses civilized standards of
equality and fairness, and it’s deeply undemocratic. ...
... We should make it clear that all arguments that lead to gods are wrong because they
lead to gods! God is a singular mistake, a philosophical division by zero, a point at which
the respectability of arguments break[s] down. God is out of the question, the ultimate
wrong answer.100
The Christian cannot wholly agree with Zara. Still, he shows some recognition of the true
implications of divine revelation: a greater authority cannot be underwritten by a lesser one.
Unlike Coyne, Zara recognizes that divine authority is ultimate in the final analysis and cannot
be tested against anything. His final comments about God being “a singular mistake, a
philosophical division by zero, [and] a point at which the respectability of arguments break[s]
down” emphasize the problem of position between the skeptic and the Christian.101
It is not too much to say that these skeptics are “immune to rational objection”102
regarding their a priori rejection of any transcendent, ultimate, legitimate authority. The skeptic
may balk at the suggestion that he has a “pretension ... against the knowledge of God,”103 but the
voices considered above do little to suggest otherwise. Coyne criticizes Giberson because “no
data could dispel his belief in God,”104 but his own rejection of a transcendent authority is just as
Steve Zara, “There Can Be No Evidence for God (Revisited),” The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and
Science (blog), July 30, 2011, accessed January 21, 2014,
https://web.archive.org/web/20140121204114/http://old.richarddawkins.net/discussions/642394-there-can-be-noevidence-for-god-revisited. (This page is no longer available, so it can only be accessed using the Internet Archive.)
101
Zara, “There Can Be No Evidence for God (Revisited).”
102
Pace Rosenberg, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, viii.
103
2 Cor. 10:5 (NIV).
104
Coyne, Faith versus Fact, 119. Moreover, Coyne is unfair toward Giberson. A fuller quotation of Giberson is as
follows: “Gould and Dawkins are smart guys and know way more about evolution than I do. But they are also
agnostics and thus have no choice but to deny any overarching purpose to natural history. ... They may be right, of
course, but let us admit that their guess is no better than mine.
We can agree, perhaps, that the inspection of natural history per se provides no certain indication that we
are the ‘expected results’ of some hidden patterns. However, there is another way to look at this. As a believer in
God, I am convinced in advance ...” Saving Darwin, 213. In his own way, Giberson thus expresses both the problem
of position (see § 2.6) and the revelation-dependent nature of theological knowledge.
Similarly, when Giberson writes about the potential social fallout if he were to abandon the faith, he does
so to bolster his credibility for rejecting Intelligent Design (ID) as a scientific theory. In effect, he says, Look at the
100

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intractable. Dawkins cannot imagine evidence to convince him of God’s existence because he is
only willing to consider independent, non-authoritative knowledge of God. This is not unlike a
solipsist who fails to specify what evidence would convince him of the external world. For the
skeptic, avoiding falsehood is more important “than gaining truth.” He “must be shown wrong
before anyone can claim to know anything”;105 he will not accept what could possibly trick him.

2.4.4

Don’t Cross the Modalities
Torrance holds that the modality of reason for one object (e.g., a rock) is inappropriate

for another (a person). How, then, can the knowing project appropriate to one object justify the
existence and pursuit of another object? Here we have in mind ultimate objects; perhaps physics
can justify the pursuit of geology in some sense, but one cannot proceed purely from the
empirical inquiry of the physical world to the existence of other minds.106 Rather, we find
ourselves encountered by other minds (as persons) and proceed in knowing them ‘by faith.’ The
mode of reason appropriate to the natural world—science—is not appropriate for knowing (much
less verifying) a transcendent, ultimate, legitimate authority. It is better to say, “extraordinary
claims require extraordinary encounters.”
The dishonesty objection compares ‘apples to oranges.’ No one would ask whether
mathematics is more intellectually honest than friendship—or set up chemistry vs. cartography
or lab reports vs. poetry. None of these ways of knowing has more ‘universal honesty units’ than
the other. The related conditions, challenges, and expectations for intellectual honesty vary

strong social incentive I have to accept ID—and yet I still do not accept it because I believe it is both scientifically
and theologically unsound. Saving Darwin, 156. Ironically, Coyne argues for Giberson’s intellectual dishonesty by
presenting an example of his intellectual honesty: resisting an incentive to accept ID.
105
Moreland, Love God with All Your Mind, 142; emphasis added.
106
Some apologists make a case for theism based on such a gap. See, e.g., Victor Reppert, C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous
Idea: A Philosophical Defense of Lewis’s Argument from Reason (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003).

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according to the object at hand. As John Polkinghorne puts it, “there is no universal
epistemology.”107 For the skeptic to assert that describing and quantifying the natural world is
more intellectually honest than a relationship with the Creator of nature is a form of scientism.

2.5 Revelation as Transformative
In all his theology, Barth safeguards the “infinite qualitative difference between God and
man”;108 that is, “the absolute otherness of God, which relativizes every human situation and
effort.”109 Central to Barth’s understanding of revelation is the idea that God freely gives himself
to be known.110 In doing so, “He acts towards us as the same triune God that He is in Himself,
and in such a way that, ... we receive a share in the truth of His knowledge of Himself. Certainly
it is the share which He thinks proper and which is therefore suitable for us. But in this share we
have the reality of the true knowledge of Himself.”111
For Barth, revelation is not arrived at by human inquiry.112 In the free decision of God, it
confronts the elect such that “they must begin by thinking of the truth of its reality,” and “they
can no longer withdraw into themselves in order to affirm, question or deny it thence. Its truth
has come home to them, has become their own. And in the process they themselves have become
the truth’s.”113 This “self-confirming acquaintance” is such that these men and women “can no

“We can only know the quantum world in terms respectful of its veiling, and it would be epistemically disastrous
to try to insist on the Newtonian clarity that we can often attain in the macroscopic world of everyday phenomena. If
that epistemic specificity is true of subatomic physics, it is surely even more important to recognise a similar truth in
relation to the knowledge of God.” John Polkinghorne, Science and the Trinity: The Christian Encounter with
Reality (New Haven: Yale University, 2004), 77.
108
Thomas F. Torrance, Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge: Explorations in the
Interrelations of Scientific and Theological Enterprise (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1984), 286.
109
Archie J. Spencer, “THS 742: Lecture XIII,” Christian Theology, March 21, 2011, video, 1:13:17,
http://www.christiantheology.ca/videos/ths-742-lecture-xiii/.
110
Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1:15.
111
Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/1:51.
112
Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1:§4. Again, here I’ve used the word “revelation,” but Barth says, “Word of God.”
113
Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1:188.
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longer exist without it but only with it, that they can only think of its reality as true, that they can
only start their existence with the truth of its existence and nature.”114
The Apostle Paul calls the Christian a “new creation” with the “mind of Christ,”115
emphasizing the transformative nature of Christian faith. Christian “truth is not merely
conceptual ... but also existential, for it alters human existence, it brings to the person ensnared
by sin a new being as well as a new perception of reality.”116 If the skeptic is to understand
Christian faith in its strongest form, it is critically important for him to appreciate this point:
revelation is not merely transcendent, ultimate, and authoritative—it is also transformative. The
Christian understands herself to exist differently downstream from this encounter.117

2.6 The Problem of Position
There is some abstract common ground between the Christian and the skeptic regarding
the definition of intellectual dishonesty. Still, the problem of position alluded to throughout this
chapter prevents what might have been a typical apologetic response.

2.6.1

The Christian’s Position Under God
The source of the problem of position is the uniqueness of theology’s object of

knowledge: divine revelation cannot fit into any normal category of human knowledge. The

114

Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1:188.
2 Cor. 5:17; 1 Cor 2:16.
116
Bloesch, Holy Scripture, 301.
117
From one perspective, one could consider any encounter with an ultimate object to be transformative. E.g., a
neuroscientist might know an awful lot about a particular woman subject by studying her brain, but this is not the
same thing as knowing a person. Upon meeting her and engaging in conversation, one could say he exists differently
downstream from that encounter—an encounter that no information about neutral structures could replace. We can
also think of one’s encounter with the external world as transformative, but this is more challenging since we all
stand downstream from that encounter. If we were to imagine a ‘perfect solipsist’—a lucid, thinking person who has
never received any sensory input—he too might be transformed and exist differently downstream from an encounter
with the external world. In this sense, to be born is a transforming encounter. It would be too much to say that Jesus
was thinking along such lines in his conversation with Nicodemus, but interestingly, he refers to being “born again.”
John 3:1-21 (NIV).
115

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Creator-creature distinction frustrates attempts to achieve independent knowledge of God. One
can set up a nature-revelation analogy from the human or creaturely end of things, explored in
chapter 3. However, no analogy is possible from the Creator’s end of things: nature and
revelation could hardly be more different, and we will pursue this further in chapter 4.

2.6.2

The Christian’s Position Before the Skeptic
The Christian’s position does not change the ground rules for intellectual honesty—a

duty toward reality: it expands her reality. The skeptic understands intellectual honesty as
something owed to ourselves and each other, but the Christian understands it as something first
owed to God. Intellectual honesty is a duty to the truth, but the Christian insists Jesus is the truth.
Where the Christian accepts divine revelation as an object of knowledge, the skeptic rejects the
possibility, desiring independent knowledge of God. Where the skeptic resists any moral or
epistemological authority above humanity, the Christian accepts God as both.
Finally, the Christian understands herself as transformed by revelation. She can strive to
be intellectually neutral—fair-minded—but not ontologically neutral: she cannot un-transform
herself for argument’s sake. A neutral evaluation of the Christian’s intellectual honesty cannot
proceed, for no one can hold the two universes—Christian and atheistic—side-by-side to
compare them from outside: there is no final, neutral way to exclude the twin possibilities that
the Christian is deluded in Dawkins’s sense and that the skeptic is deluded in the biblical sense.

2.6.3

Two Poles of Authority
For the Christian, there are two poles of authority, both of which come into play for

intellectual honesty. First, there is the authority of God, revelational authority, which the skeptic
does not recognize. This authority is most centrally understood to reside in Jesus Christ as the

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Incarnate God-Man. It includes his life and teachings, and it is present in the ongoing work of the
Holy Spirit through the Scriptures, traditions, and life of the Church. Christian faith, practice,
and theology rely on this authority. Second, the Christian recognizes an authority that is common
to her and the skeptic: the investigational authority that comes from expertise or deep
acquaintance, such as the authority of an electrician to advise a homeowner about the best way to
add a circuit to their breaker panel, or the authority of a climate scientist to discuss global
warming. Science relies on this type of authority, which the Christian can understand as
delegated to humanity by God.118

2.6.4

Objections Roundup 2
Since Christians recognize two poles of authority, it is challenging to work out their

relationship. For a skeptic, sensing no need to reconcile Scripture with nature, it is easy to avoid
the pitfalls of imposing one’s reading of Scripture onto science. For those who recognize both
nature and revelation as objects of knowledge, this is more complicated; it should not be
surprising that Christians have struggled to do justice to science and Scripture simultaneously.
A similar observation applies to Craig’s comments on the ministerial use of reason, the
role of the Holy Spirit, and the difference between knowing and showing that Christianity is true.
First, his comments on the ministerial use of reason can rightly apply to any object of
knowledge. If one were to apply a magisterial use of reason to nature, science could not proceed:
the dictates of one’s preconceptions would override empirical inquiry; if the results of an
experiment contradicted a reigning theory or mathematical model, e.g., the experimental results
would be perceived as less authoritative than the abstract reasoning—not unlike the ancient

118

E.g., Prov. 25:2; Eccles. 1:13-17. See McLeish, Faith and Wisdom in Science.

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Greek approach. Understood from this angle, it should not be so controversial to hold that a
ministerial use of reason should be taken toward revelation.
Second, Craig’s knowing-showing approach can be understood along similar lines. I
would put it differently: “We know Christianity is true primarily by the self-authenticating
witness of God’s Spirit. We show Christianity is [probable, reasonable, or not necessarily false]
by presenting good arguments for its central tenets [and good responses to objections].”119 A
scientist knows that the external world exists by its self-authenticating qualities, and he enjoys a
fruitful epistemological relationship with nature downstream from that encounter. If he meets a
solipsist, he might attempt to show that the external world probably exists, or is not necessarily
illusory, by presenting good arguments and responses to objections—but it is not intellectually
dishonest for him to refuse to adopt solipsism.
Finally, we come to Craig’s view that “should a conflict arise between the witness of the
Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and
evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa.”120 The
skeptic would take no issue if a biologist said, “should a conflict arise between the evidence for
evolution and argument and evidence presented by a young-earth creationist, then it is the former
which must take precedence.” We might imagine Rae the realist saying, “should a conflict arise
between your intuition that the external world exists and argument and evidence presented by
Sam the solipsist, then it is the former which must take precedence.” The skeptic can always
present Craig’s words such that they seem intellectually dishonest. A more charitable view is that

119

Craig, Reasonable Faith, 58; emphasis in original. It seems too strong to say that the believer can show that
Christianity is true (positive apologetics) in any final way using reason—apart from revelation—but reason can be
very useful for responding to objections (negative apologetics).
120
Craig, Reasonable Faith, 48.

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this is a matter of authority: a biologist is justified in warning her students away from error, and
an apologist is justified in similarly warning his readers.

2.7 Summary and Next Steps
This chapter has invited the skeptic to adopt a charitable and nuanced picture of the
epistemological situation in which the Christian finds herself. While there is common ground in
defining intellectual dishonesty in the abstract, in practice, there is a great distance between
them, which I call the problem of position. When theology is viewed as a way of knowing
legitimate, transcendent, authoritative, and transformative divine revelation, several of the
skeptic’s accusations break down. He cannot coherently question the Christian’s intellectual
honesty—a de jure criticism—while simultaneously insisting that the only possible theological
knowledge must be guaranteed to himself, by himself, and on his own terms: such an insistence
rules out Christianity in the first place—a de facto denial. The following chapter will expand on
how Christians might understand science and theology as ways of knowing.

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Chapter 3
Science and Theology as Ways of Knowing
The previous chapter has argued that nothing is necessarily intellectually dishonest about
being open to the possibility of legitimate, transcendent, authoritative, and transformative divine
revelation. Unless the skeptic is prepared to rule out Christianity in advance, he must consider
the position that humanity would be in before the Christian God. We now turn to outlining how
the Christian might understand science and theology as ways of knowing their proper objects: by
exploring similarities between them, we can further address the skeptic’s objections.

3.1 Falsification Is Not the Only Option
Falsification plays a central role in the dishonesty objection. Whereas the Christian faith
engages in self-defensive apologetics, the skeptic argues, science embraces self-criticism by
trying to prove reigning theories false. We will return to this objection presently, but here we
must point out that the skeptic overemphasizes the role of falsification in science. In truth, there
is no universally accepted view of scientific knowledge. On the contrary, several epistemologies
have waxed and waned over the history of science: logical positivism, falsification, more
pragmatic theories, etc.1 Even today, while their approach is the same in practice, scientists may
disagree philosophically on realism vs. antirealism,2 and some insist they have no use for

1

Alister E. McGrath, Science and Religion: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), chap. 3.
Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, chap. 16. An antirealist or instrumentalist philosophy of science
is not the same as the solipsism explored earlier: unlike Sam the solipsist, an antirealist scientist still treats nature as
a legitimate object of knowledge in practice despite his philosophical misgivings.
2

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philosophy at all.3 The popular portrayal of science may extol it as perfectly objective,
falsification-centred, and based on evidence alone, but this is not the whole picture.

3.1.1

Falsification and Positivism
The skeptic’s insistence on verifiable knowledge is evocative of the logical positivism

movement of the twentieth century, which advocated for a verification principle of meaning:
an informative sentence, to be meaningful, must be capable in principle of being
empirically verified. Since religious statements like “God exists” or “God loves the
world” were, in their opinion, incapable of being empirically verified, positivistic
philosophers held them to be literally meaningless, as if one had asserted [gibberish].”4
In response to criticism, this developed into the falsification principle, “which held that a
meaningful sentence must be capable in principle of being empirically falsified,”5 which calls to
mind Karl Popper’s understanding of scientific theories.6 Importantly, for philosophers today,
“positivism is dead, or at least as dead as a philosophical stance or movement ever becomes, but
it is still alive among many scientists and others who are not well-versed in, or knowledgeable
about, what has occurred in technical philosophy since the 1950s.”7

E.g., astrophysicist and skeptic of religion Neil deGrasse Tyson dismisses “philosophy as a useless enterprise and
actually advised bright students to stay away from it,” necessitating a public correction from philosopher and
biologist Massimo Pigliucci, also a skeptic of religion. “Neil DeGrasse Tyson and the Value of Philosophy,”
HuffPost (blog), July 16, 2014, accessed February 18, 2023, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/neil-degrasse-tysonand-the-value-of-philosophy_b_5330216.
It is difficult to appreciate such sweeping dismissals of philosophy from popularizers of science because—
whether one acknowledges it or not—science relies on philosophical presuppositions: “(1) the existence of a theoryindependent, external world; (2) the orderly nature of the external world; (3) the knowability of the external world;
(4) the existence of truth; (5) the laws of logic; (6) the reliability of our cognitive and sensory faculties to serve as
truth gatherers and as a source of justified beliefs in our intellectual environment; (7) the adequacy of language to
describe the world; (8) the existence of values used in science (e.g., “test theories fairly and report test results
honestly”); (9) the uniformity of nature and induction; (10) the existence of numbers”—or at least the usefulness of
numbers (see note on abstract objects in § 2.3.3.2). Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 348.
4
Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 154.
5
Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 154.
6
Recall the skeptic’s endorsement of Popperian falsification in § 1.2.3.
7
“Positivism (Philosophy),” New World Encyclopedia, n.d., accessed February 18, 2023,
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Positivism_(philosophy).
3

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Science and Personal Knowledge
Chemist turned philosopher Michael Polanyi rejects the positivist ideal of science as

independent of human subjectivity and cultural-historical contingency: “complete objectivity as
usually attributed to the exact sciences is a delusion and is in fact a false ideal.”8 The Western
philosophical tradition has attempted to account for how persons know things by ignoring the
involvement of persons, but there can be no knowledge without a person knowing it. The
objective-or-nothing view of knowledge has painted itself into a corner, leading to skepticism,
self-contradiction, and a flawed view of knowledge in general and science in particular.9 The
attempt to imagine science as wholly objective, impersonal knowledge “presents us with a
picture of the universe in which we ourselves are absent. In such a universe there is no one
capable of creating and upholding scientific values; hence there is no science.”10
The scientist’s subjective involvement makes science possible: science must hold that
“certain emotions are right” for its purpose, making good use of “intellectual passions” for

8

Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, 2nd ed. (1962; repr., Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1974), 18. Lesslie Newbigin helpfully explains Polanyi’s context: “A disastrous shift in the
way science was being understood and practiced, experienced by Polanyi especially through his contacts with the
Soviet leadership during the 1930s, prompted him to move from the work of research science to the study and
teaching of philosophy. The Soviet leaders regarded science simply as a necessary tool for the implementation of
their social planning. The idea that pure science should be practiced as an avenue to truth was dismissed as
bourgeois nonsense. Science was a necessary instrument in the pursuit of power. And it was obvious that the
Russians were only pushing more logically in the direction that was being taken elsewhere. Polanyi had to ask
himself, ‘What are the grounds for believing that the findings of science are not merely useful but true?’ In the
attempt to answer this question, he came to the conclusion that we had been misled by the illusion of a totally
objective knowledge. If objectivity means that we must aim for the greatest possible truthfulness in our thinking and
speaking about realities beyond our own minds, then of course it is a proper goal. But if it means that all subjective
elements are excluded, then it is obviously absurd to suppose that total objectivity is possible; for, if there is no
subject who knows, there is no knowing.” Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship
(Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1995), 45.
9
Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 286.
10
Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 142. “Men may go on talking the language of positivism, pragmatism, and
naturalism for many years,” Polanyi observes, “yet continue to respect the principles of truth and morality which
their vocabulary anxiously ignores.” Personal Knowledge, 232.

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interpreting data, focusing research, etc.11 Objectivist accounts of science concentrate only on the
“practical demonstration of scientific law,” overlooking how discovery and verification happen
in practice.12 A scientist might ignore experimental results that seem to undermine an accepted
paradigm in the hope that later they will be explained within that paradigm; other times, the
paradigm must change. There is no definite, objective rule or method that can dictate when such
results should be accepted or dismissed as anomalies—only the personal decisions of scientists.13
Polanyi is adamant that his epistemology is not a denial of the external world:14 personal
knowledge is not wholly subjective or relativist. Rather, “all our personal and rational activity
operates with two poles, a subjective pole and an objective pole. The subjective pole is the
knowing, believing, acting person, and the objective pole is ‘the other’, either another person or
some reality independent of himself.”15 Just as an overly modern, objectivist approach denies the
subjective pole of knowledge, an overly postmodern, relativist view denies its objective pole.

“Science can then no longer hope to survive on an island of positive facts, around which the rest of man’s
intellectual heritage sinks to the status of subjective emotionalism. It must claim that certain emotions are right; and
if it can make good such a claim, it will not only save itself but sustain by its example the whole system of cultural
life of which it forms part.” Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 134.
12
Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 13–14.
13
“During the eighteenth century the French Academy of Science stubbornly denied the evidence for the fall of
meteorites, which seemed massively obvious to everybody else. Their opposition to the superstitious beliefs which a
popular tradition attached to such heavenly intervention blinded them to the facts in question.” Polanyi, Personal
Knowledge, 138.
14
Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 316.
15
Thomas F. Torrance, ed., Belief in Science and in Christian Life: The Relevance of Michael Polanyi’s Thought for
Christian Faith and Life (Edinburgh: Handsel, 1980), 11.
11

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3.1.2.1 Knowledge: Focal and Subsidiary
Polanyi introduces the idea of indwelling: extending one’s influence (even one’s being) to
include a tool, teaching, or person to better know and interact with some greater context.16 E.g., a
blind man ‘indwells’ a stick to ‘see’ the world around him:
As we learn to use a probe, or to use a stick for feeling our way, our awareness of its
impact on our hand is transformed into a sense of its point touching the objects we are
exploring. ... We become aware of the feelings in our hand in terms of their meaning
located at the tip of the probe or stick to which we are attending. This is so also when we
use a tool. We are attending to the meaning of its impact on our hands in terms of its
effect on the things to which we are applying it.17
Alister McGrath helpfully explains further:
Just as the blind man learns to trust his white stick and depend upon it, so we are obliged
to trust our perceptions. Occasionally, they may mislead us. Knowledge is thus not
disembodied ideas, as the Enlightenment suggested, but involves the personal element of
commitment both to what is known, and the means which must be used to know it.18
Indwelling is “the act of knowing in which we gain new meaning,” which includes science.19
Polanyi distinguishes two forms of awareness: “focal [awareness] by ‘attending to’ and
subsidiary [awareness] by ‘relying on.’”20 The blind man’s subsidiary awareness of his stick
makes his focal awareness of his environment possible.
There can be focal and subsidiary awareness of the same items[,] but no awareness can be
completely focal. To be aware of something subsidiarily is not to be aware of it in itself
but only as a clue or an instrument pointing beyond itself. ... For example, the words of a
sentence refer thought to something independent of them; the use of a pair of stereo
pictures focusses attention on their joint image. ... We are subsidiarily aware of a hammer
in our hand when driving in a nail.21
Indwelling is “the activity of knowing whereby the mind dwells in a coherence or integration latent in some object
(or teaching or person) in order to interiorise it until there is a structural kinship between the knowing subject and
the object known. In this way the natural integration in the object known is so assimilated into the knower that it
functions as the subsidiary term in his focal understanding of it. Theologically regarded, indwelling is an act [of]
meditation and worship in and through which we are given access to God in his own inner communion.” Torrance,
Belief in Science, 139.
17
Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2009), 12–13.
18
Alister E. McGrath, Science and Religion: An Introduction, 85.
19
Torrance, Belief in Science, 139.
20
Torrance, Belief in Science, 137.
21
Torrance, Belief in Science, 137.
16

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A great deal of our subsidiary awareness is tacit, or inarticulate: knowledge that cannot
be put into words. E.g., not all the knowledge relied upon when riding a bicycle can be put into
words:22 “we always know more than we can tell. It is on this deep subsidiary awareness that all
skills, explicit thought, formal reasoning, and articulate knowing and communication rely.”23

3.1.2.2 Scientific Discovery
The moment of scientific discovery is an example of subsidiary-focal integration, which
occurs when subsidiary knowledge combines with focal, or articulate, knowledge to become
new focal knowledge: discovery. It is “a logical leap, a personal feat, a nonlinear move from
parts to whole that innovatively links hitherto disparate particulars, transforming the meaning
and appearance of all it encompasses.”24 This leap occurs across a “logical gap”:25 an irreversible
advance in knowledge that cannot be accounted for in purely logical terms.26 It requires
commitment, a deliberate action taken by accrediting what one believes to be true, in full
awareness that it “might conceivably be false.”27

Esther L. Meek, “Michael Polanyi and Alvin Plantinga: Help from Beyond the Walls,” Philosophia Christi 14, no.
1 (2012): 63.
23
Torrance, Belief in Science, 145.
24
Meek, “Michael Polanyi and Alvin Plantinga,” 62.
25
Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 123.
26
“The irreversible character of discovery suggests that no solution of a problem can be accredited as a discovery if
it is achieved by a procedure following definite rules. For such a procedure would be reversible in the sense that it
could be traced back stepwise to its beginning and repeated at will any number of times, like any arithmetical
computation. Accordingly, any strictly formalized procedure would also be excluded as a means of achieving
discovery.” Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 123.
27
Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 214.
22

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As a practical example of subsidiary-focal integration, consider figure 3-1. The solution
may take time for those who have not seen this image before. The problem is that we cannot see
anything beyond our focal awareness: ostensibly random blotches. But if we peer long enough or
are told the answer, we make the leap to focusing on the image itself: we come to see the focal
solution through subsidiary awareness of the blotches. The move from confusion to the answer is
not linear or piecemeal; it happens all at once, after which it takes effort not to see it.28 “The
immediate implication which Polanyi draws is that, if all our knowledge is to be of the kind
sought by Descartes, namely, certain knowledge capable of explicit formulation in precise terms,
then scientific discovery will be forever impossible.”29 For Polanyi, “only statements that can be
doubted make contact with reality.”30

Figure 3-1. An opportunity for subsidiary-focal integration.

28

This well-known collection of dots is a dalmatian dog. To the best of my knowledge, the original source is
unknown. Gert Tonder and Yoshimichi Ejima, “Bottom–Up Clues in Target Finding: Why a Dalmatian May Be
Mistaken for an Elephant,” Perception 29 (2000): 149–57.
29
Newbigin, Proper Confidence, 62.
30
Newbigin, Proper Confidence, 75.

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3.1.2.3 Responsible Commitment
Framed this way, Polanyi conceives knowledge as responsible commitment: “the freedom
of the subjective person to do as he pleases is overruled by the freedom of the responsible person
to act as he must.”31 Torrance explains that commitment is
the personal and responsible submission of the mind to the requirements of a reality
independent of it. Commitment expresses a belief on the strength of which a person is
prepared to entrust himself to the claims of reality upon him. Unlike its popular use,
commitment, in Polanyi’s thought, is not a subjective state, for it “purposely” refers the
self away to what is independent of it. Commitment is objectively, not subjectively,
oriented.32
Following Polanyi, philosopher Marjorie Grene points out that knowledge has long been
considered different from belief in traditional Western philosophy.33 Either (a.i) this knowledge is
somehow obtainable (Plato’s recollection, Descartes’s systematic doubt, etc.), or (a.ii) nothing
other than mere belief is obtainable (skepticism—not to be confused with the skeptic in this
thesis). Both options take an “explicitarian” approach to knowledge: nothing is considered tacit;
everything must be articulable to count as knowledge.34
But if knowledge is permitted to be a form of belief, then perhaps (b.i) knowledge is
justified, true belief. Plantinga’s account of warrant is an example: to count as knowledge,
beliefs must be formed using cognitive faculties that are functioning properly, in the proper
environment, using cognitive faculties that have been designed to form true beliefs.35 But Grene
is unsatisfied: “It’s not really ‘justified’ that’s troublesome, it’s ‘true’. What keeps eluding us is a
way to check our beliefs against reality and find out, once and for all, whether they are true. ...

31

Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 309; emphasis removed.
Torrance, Belief in Science, 134.
33
Here “belief” means “an opinion that something is the case.” Marjorie Grene, A Philosophical Testament
(Chicago: Open Court, 1995), 11–20.
34
Meek, “Michael Polanyi and Alvin Plantinga,” 66.
35
Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 156.
32

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For we can’t get outside all our beliefs at once in order to check them.”36 This leaves the option
embraced by philosopher Esther Meek, who follows Polanyi and Grene: (b.ii) “knowledge is
justified belief in the hope of truth.”37
Following this line of thought, all knowledge, including scientific knowledge, is a
responsible commitment in the hope of truth.
Commitment refers to the clues we indwell subsidiarily in pursuit of a focal pattern. In
other words, faith is of a piece with keeping your balance on a bike, and thus quite
ordinary. Faith just is what we do in knowing. Belief is the epistemic act. But it is a lived
body feel of a tool or framework indwelt with confidence.38
This responsible commitment is made with what Polanyi calls universal intent: the
scientist acknowledges the “jurisdiction of reality over him” and “submits to it in good
conscience,” knowing it could prove to be false, but with the hope that others will recognize his
conclusions as universally valid as well:39
In the last resort[,] it is reality itself that must be the judge of the truth or falsity of his
work, but the scientist accepts that judgment as his own in a responsible act of binding
self-legislation — hence the standards he sets for himself in his scientific activity are the
standards imposed by objective reality itself on all scientists.40
3.1.3

Scientific Revolutions
For those familiar with the philosophy of science, mentioning a “paradigm shift”

immediately calls to mind Thomas S. Kuhn and his seminal work in the philosophy of science,
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Working from Polanyi’s understanding of a paradigm,41

36

Grene, A Philosophical Testament, 17. This calls to mind the problem of position discussed earlier. Also, Grene is
not explicitly reacting to Plantinga’s work here but to “justified, true belief.”
37
Meek, “Michael Polanyi and Alvin Plantinga,” 72.
38
Esther L. Meek, Loving to Know: Introducing Covenant Epistemology (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2011), 170;
emphasis added.
39
Torrance, Belief in Science, 147.
40
Torrance, Belief in Science, 147.
41
Torrance reports that he was chosen by Polanyi, a Christian himself, to be his posthumous interpreter. See
Theological and Natural Science, chap. 8. He describes an episode in his efforts in this role. “All the other books,
pamphlets, scientific papers, and relevant correspondence, from Michael’s library, were duly collected by Chicago

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Kuhn critiques a piecemeal, falsification-oriented view of science. “Popper famously complained
that psychoanalysis could not be scientific because it resists falsification,” but for Kuhn,
“resisting falsification is precisely what every disciplinary matrix in science does.”42
For Kuhn, a holistic view of science is more sensible: scientific theories are parts of
larger theoretical frameworks in each field, called paradigms. Paradigms “consist of formal
theories, classic experiments, and trusted methods. Scientists typically accept a
prevailing paradigm and try to extend its scope by refining theories, explaining puzzling data,
and establishing more precise measures of standards and phenomena.”43
Contrary to a simplistic, falsification-oriented view, Kuhn argues that science develops
through “alternating ‘normal’ and ‘revolutionary’ (or ‘extraordinary’) phases.”44 During a period
of normal science, scientists proceed within the reigning paradigm (e.g., Newtonian Mechanics)
by “puzzle-solving.”45 Often, the goal is not to falsify what is known but to “add to the scope and
precision with which the paradigm can be applied,” proving oneself to be “an expert puzzlesolver.”46 The reigning paradigm provides “a criterion for choosing problems that, while the
paradigm is taken for granted, can be assumed to have solutions.”47
During normal science scientists neither test nor seek to confirm the guiding theories of
their disciplinary matrix [i.e., paradigm]. Nor do they regard anomalous results as
falsifying those theories. ... Rather, anomalies are ignored or explained away if at all

University for housing and display in their Regenstein Library. In it they lodged their own scientifically checked and
prepared catalogue. They include, it may be added, the correspondence between Michael Polanyi and Thomas Kuhn,
in which Kuhn admitted that he had taken the concept of paradigm from Michael!” Theological and Natural
Science, 133.
42
Alexander Bird, “Thomas Kuhn,” ed. Edward N. Zalta, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Metaphysics
Research Lab, Stanford University, 2022), accessed February 18, 2023,
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entrieshomas-kuhn/.
43
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Thomas S. Kuhn,” Britannica, July 14, 2022, accessed February 18,
2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-S-Kuhn.
44
Bird, “Thomas Kuhn.”
45
Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 35–42.
46
Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 36.
47
Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 37.

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possible. It is only the accumulation of particularly troublesome anomalies that poses a
serious problem for the existing disciplinary matrix.48
When a critical mass of “anomalies and ad hoc assumptions”49 accumulates (e.g., black
body radiation vs. Newtonian Mechanics), a period of revolutionary science takes place:
Instead of simply acquiring further data or modifying theories within the existing
framework, some scientists look for a new framework, which may involve a questioning
of fundamental assumptions. Within the new paradigm, new kinds of data are relevant[,]
and the old data are reinterpreted and seen in a new way.50
A paradigm shift is thus a “non-cumulative developmental [episode] in which an older
paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one.”51 Similar to Polanyi’s
subsidiary-focal integration, a scientific revolution is an irreversible shift to a more intellectually
satisfying theoretical framework.

3.1.4

Science as Research Programs
Philosopher of mathematics and science Imre Lakatos appreciates Popper’s falsification

as far as it goes, but like Polanyi and Kuhn, he finds that it “would rule out too much of everyday
scientific practice ... as unscientific and irrational. For scientists often persist—and, it
seems, rationally persist—with theories, such as Newtonian celestial mechanics that by Popper’s
standards they ought to have rejected as ‘refuted’”:52
A key example for Lakatos is the “Precession of Mercury”[;] that is, the anomalous
behaviour of the perihelion of Mercury, which shifts around the Sun in a way that it
ought not to do if Newton’s mechanics were correct and there were no other sizable body
influencing its orbit. The problem is that there seems to be no such body. The difficulty
was well known for decades[,] but it did not cause astronomers to collectively give up on
Newton until Einstein’s theory came along. Lakatos thought that the astronomers were
Bird, “Thomas Kuhn.”
Ian G. Barbour, Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues, rev. ed. (San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), 125.
50
Barbour, Religion and Science, 125.
51
Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 92.
52
Alan Musgrave and Charles Pigden, “Imre Lakatos,” ed. Edward N. Zalta, The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2021), accessed February 19, 2023,
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/entries/lakatos/.
48
49

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right not to abandon Newton even though Newton eventually turned out to be wrong and
Einstein turned out to be right.53
Offering a middle ground between Popper’s continual questioning of basic assumptions
and Kuhn’s emphasis on the tenacity of paradigms, Lakatos proposes “a ‘hard core’ of central
ideas that are preserved by making adjustments in a ‘protective belt’ of more tentative auxiliary
hypotheses.”54 Rather than approaching science in terms of “competing individual theories
(Popper) or successive paradigms (Kuhn),”55 Lakatos thinks in terms of research programs.
A research program is constituted by a hard core of ideas that is deliberately exempted
from falsification so that its positive potentialities can be systematically developed and
explored. Anomalies are accommodated by changes in the auxiliary hypotheses, which
can be sacrificed [i.e., falsified] if necessary.56
E.g., physics professor Robert B. Mann lists several core commitments “in science that
[are] (effectively) not falsifiable,” such as the laws of conservation:
By these I mean the conservation of energy, momentum, angular momentum, and charge.
It is very difficult ... [to see] how these conservation laws could be falsified in any
practical terms. Indeed, whenever an experiment (apparently) finds that one of these is
not conserved, the working assumption is that something has been missed — some part
of the system is carrying charge, or energy, or whatever it was that was missing. This
technique is used in particle physics all the time: missing energy is used to identify new
particles and is not regarded as evidence that energy is not conserved. Simply put, some
things don’t disappear. In practice, this has been a very successful strategy for making
progress in science in general and physics in particular.57
As long as a research program progresses and predicts novel facts,58 Lakatos would have
it maintained. However, when a research program is “stalled and not growing for a considerable

Musgrave and Pigden, “Imre Lakatos.”
Barbour, Religion and Science, 132.
55
Barbour, Religion and Science, 132.
56
Barbour, Religion and Science, 132; original emphasis removed; new emphasis added.
57
Robert B. Mann, email message to author, January 26, 2019.
58
These “may refer to new phenomena or to already known facts not previously related to the program.” Barbour,
Religion and Science, 132.
53
54

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period and when there is a promising alternative,” it is “not falsified [as a whole] but is rather
displaced as a research strategy.”59
The falsificationist might object, saying that Lakatos merely describes falsification in
fancy terms: why not just say that the hard core of theories is falsified? First, Lakatos is rejecting
Popper’s narrow view that falsification is the distinguishing mark of all science.60 Second,
Lakatos observes that “the hard core theses by themselves are often devoid of empirical
consequences,”61 which makes them unfalsifiable in the Popperian sense:
For example, Newtonian mechanics by itself ... won’t tell you what you will see in the
night sky. To derive empirical predictions from Newtonian mechanics[,] you need a
whole host of auxiliary hypotheses about the positions, masses and relative velocities of
the heavenly bodies, including the earth. (This is related to Duhem’s thesis that, generally
speaking, theoretical propositions—and indeed sets of theoretical propositions—cannot
be conclusively falsified by experimental observations, since they only entail
observation-statements in conjunction with auxiliary hypotheses. So when something
goes wrong, and the observation statements that they entail turn out to be false, we
have two intellectual options: modify the theoretical propositions or modify the auxiliary
hypotheses. ...) Together with the hard core[,] these auxiliary hypotheses entail empirical
predictions, thus making the theory as a whole—hard core plus auxiliary hypotheses—a
falsifiable affair.62
In other words, as the conjunction of its auxiliary hypotheses and hard-core theories, a research
project is ‘falsifiable’ by virtue of its auxiliary hypotheses, not the hard core per se. If we were to
say that an unproductive research project was falsified (rather than displaced), it would be saying
too much: it would incorrectly imply that the non-empirically vulnerable hard core was falsified
in the same Popperian sense as the auxiliary theories.

59

Barbour, Religion and Science, 132; emphasis added.
“Lakatos distinguished dogmatic, naïve and sophisticated falsificationist positions, attributing them to ... ‘protoPopper, pseudo-Popper and proper-Popper’. (Popper did not appreciate being disassembled into temporal or
ideological parts and protested ‘I am not a Trinity.’” Musgrave and Pigden, “Imre Lakatos.”
61
Musgrave and Pigden, “Imre Lakatos.”
62
Musgrave and Pigden, “Imre Lakatos”; see Roger Ariew, “Pierre Duhem,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, Fall 2014), accessed February 23, 2023,
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/duhem/.
60

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Third, the fact that a research program is displaced does not mean that every theory (hard
core or auxiliary) is falsified; several theories may carry over to a new research program. E.g.,
modern physics still successfully uses Newtonian mechanics for objects of relatively medium
sizes and speeds.

3.1.5

Objections Roundup 3

3.1.5.1 Science Is More than Falsification
Contrary to the skeptic’s portrayal, the preceding discussion shows that science cannot so
narrowly rely on falsification. Still, this should not be read as a sweeping rejection of Popperian
falsification so much as a rejection of the skeptic’s appropriation of it. By asserting that
intellectual honesty requires one’s views to be falsifiable, the skeptic takes Popper’s criterion
further than Popper himself. In response to an interviewer who questions whether his
falsification concept itself is falsifiable, e.g., Popper replies that “it is a silly question”:
His falsification concept ... is a criterion for distinguishing between empirical and nonempirical modes of knowledge. Falsification itself is “decidedly unempirical”; it belongs
not to science but to philosophy, or “meta-science,” and it does not even apply to all of
science. Popper seemed to be admitting that his critics were right: falsification is a mere
guideline, a rule of thumb, sometimes helpful, sometimes not.63
Here Popper stresses that his criterion is only meant to address empirical claims—not all
human reason, as the skeptic is wont to do. If one presses falsification further to rule out God,
such as the famous atheist Anthony Flew attempted,64 then the criterion does refute itself. “The
statement ‘In order to be meaningful, an informative sentence must be capable in principle of
being empirically verified/falsified’ is itself incapable of being verified or falsified.”65

John Horgan, “The Paradox of Karl Popper,” Scientific American (blog), August 22, 2018, accessed February 20,
2023, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/the-paradox-of-karl-popper/.
64
“Theology and Falsification” (lecture presented at the Socratic Club, Oxford University, Oxford, UK, May 6,
1948).
65
Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 155.
63

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Even today, if we were to insist on a rigid, universal, falsification-oriented approach to all
physical phenomena, we could not overlook the fact that quantum mechanics (tiny objects) and
general relativity (very fast or large objects) take mutually exclusive perspectives: for the former,
time and space are discrete, quantized entities; for the latter, they are considered continuous. A
Lakatosian approach allows us to have more ‘epistemological patience’ in the hope that we
might come to a more holistic understanding. In the meantime, both branches of physics continue
to be fruitful research programs, so there is no need to reject either one. Drawing on Torrance,
we can say that the physicist is free to approach sub-atomic and relativistic phenomena according
to the terms each (proximate) object sets for itself. There is no need to go hunting in general
relativity for a reason to falsify quantum mechanics or vice versa.
Rather than being confined to Popperian falsification, the Christian may adopt a
philosophy of science resembling Lakatos’s approach. It is worth noting, however, that some
philosophers of science go quite a bit further in their departure from any falsification criterion.
E.g., Paul Feyerabend’s
Against Method explicitly [draws] the “epistemological anarchist” conclusion that there
are no useful and exceptionless methodological rules governing the progress of science or
the growth of knowledge. The history of science is so complex that if we insist on a
general methodology which will not inhibit progress[,] the only “rule” it will contain will
be the useless suggestion: “anything goes.”66
We will not adopt such an extreme view for our discussion below, but this is another
alternative to the Popperian philosophy of science assumed by the skeptic.67 Since science itself
does not meet the bar of falsification-in-a-vacuum, and since falsification cannot be generalized

John Preston, “Paul Feyerabend,” ed. Edward N. Zalta, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Metaphysics
Research Lab, Stanford University, 2020), accessed February 19, 2023,
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/feyerabend/.
67
If we were to adopt an “anything goes” approach, Christianity could easily live up to such a standard.
66

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to all human reason, there is no reason to think that the Christian faith must accept the skeptic’s
demand as a requirement for intellectual honesty.

3.1.5.2 A Word on Faith
The skeptic views faith with derision. Dawkins criticizes Christians for taking the
truthfulness of revelation as “an axiom, not the end product of a process of reasoning,”68 unlike
his “belief in evolution,” which is “not faith” because it is falsifiable.69 For Harris, faith is “the
license religious people give themselves to keep believing when reasons fail.”70 Loftus calls it
“an irrational leap over the probabilities.”71 Boghossian describes it as “pretending to know
something one doesn’t know” and an unreliable, failed epistemology.72 For Dawkins, faith is a
dangerous enemy of critical thinking: “Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no
justification and brooks no argument. ... If children were taught to question and think through
their beliefs, instead of being taught the superior virtue of faith without question, it is a good bet
that there would be no suicide bombers.”73
The Christian may respond in two ways. First, there is more than one definition of faith.
From a biblical perspective alone, the word is complex. In the New Testament, faith is translated
from pisteuō, “the term regularly used to denote the many-sided religious relationship into which
the gospel calls people—that of trust in God through Christ.”74 It can denote “truth believed,”
“restful reliance,” and “trust.” The Old Testament “variously defines faith as resting, trusting,

Dawkins, The God Delusion, 319. Dawkins refers explicitly to the “truth of the holy book,” but his words can be
applied to revelation in general.
69
Dawkins, The God Delusion, 320.
70
Harris, “An Atheist Manifesto.”
71
Loftus, “Victor Reppert Now Says.”
72
Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, 27–30.
73
Dawkins, The God Delusion, 347–48. It is outside the scope of this thesis to respond to the charge that religion
causes violence; see Chamberlain, Why People Don’t Believe, chap. 3.
74
Walter A. Elwell, ed., Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001),
s.v. “Faith.”
68

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and hoping in the Lord, cleaving to him, waiting for him, making him our shield and tower,
taking refuge in him, etc.”75 In the Bible, faith includes “right belief about God,” it “rests on
divine testimony,” and it is understood to be a supernatural gift from God.76
Philosopher William Lad Sessions distinguishes six types of faith: (a) faith as
interpersonal trust, (b) faith as persistent belief despite inadequate evidence, (c) faith as a
fundamental attitude or “horizon of significance,” (d) faith as general serenity, (e) faith as loyalty
or devotion, and (f) faith as hope for some deeply-desired future good—however improbable.77
Dawkins and the others quoted above are primarily concerned with Sessions’s “belief model” of
faith—type (b). However, the Christian faith includes many of these types, if not all of them. To
pigeonhole Christian faith into just one model, and in the worst light, is not to see it at its best.
Second, the Christian can respond that science relies on several types of faith from
Sessions’s list: (a) It is essential to have interpersonal trust in the scientific community to hold up
scientific values—without which there is no peer review or self-correction. (b) Everyone,
including the skeptic, must participate in the belief model to some extent. Since “reason includes
a willingness to believe in the absence of evidence (even belief in the most secure proof requires
faith in one’s memory, rational intuition, etc.), reason as such includes a degree of faith.”78
I see that the coral tiger lilies are in bloom. I don’t note that I am being appeared to a
certain complicated way (that my experience is of a certain complicated character) and
then make an argument from my being appeared to in that way to the conclusion that in
fact there are coral tiger lilies in bloom there. ... It is rather that upon being appeared to in
Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, s.v. “Faith.”
Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, s.v. “Faith.” Perhaps the most famous biblical statement is that “faith
is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Heb. 11:1 (KJV). In first-century Greek,
“substance” is hypostasis, which various translations of the Bible render as “confidence,” “realization,” “certainty,”
or “assurance” in this verse. The word for “evidence” is elenchos, which is here translated as “conviction,”
“assurance,” “evidence,” or “proof.” We will not determine the best translation here. Still, the author of Hebrews
means to communicate something uncertain in terms of human, investigational authority and yet trustworthy in
terms of revelational authority.
77
William Lad Sessions, The Concept of Faith: A Philosophical Investigation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University,
1994), chap. 2.
78
Rauser, Theology in Search of Foundations, 62.
75
76

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that way (and given my previous training), the belief that the coral tiger lilies are in
bloom spontaneously arises in me. This belief will ordinarily be basic, in the sense that it
is not accepted on the evidential basis of other propositions. The same goes for memory.
You ask me what I had for breakfast; I think for a moment and then remember: pancakes
with blueberries. I don’t argue from the fact that it seems to me that I remember having
pancakes for breakfast to the conclusion that I did; rather, you ask me what I had for
breakfast, and the answer simply comes to mind.79
Basic belief in the reliability of memory and perception is not based on argument and evidence in
everyday life. The fact that such basic beliefs are uncontroversial does not change the fact that
faith is involved. From the point of view of someone sufficiently skeptical, this is faith.
The “attitude model” of faith, type (c), might seem superfluous to science at first:
[this] model makes central a more fundamental and global kind of attitude: a person’s
basic orientation, interpretation, perspective, or “onlook” toward the world; how the
person “takes” or “sees” or “experiences” the world. This attitude essentially generates a
“horizon of significance,” a kind of prepropositional boundary both between a person and
her world and also around them both. A horizon at once divides, unifies, structures, and
limits both self and world. Because a horizon-forming attitude is fundamental, totalizing,
and significance-engendering, it has all the earmarks of distinctively religious faith.80
These words call to mind the Christian: transformed and given a new “horizon of significance.”
However, as they pursue nature as an object of knowledge, scientists take an interpretative
attitude toward it. E.g., the famous physicist Max Planck argues that
science demands ... the believing spirit. ... Over the entrance to the gates of the temple of
science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which ... scientists cannot
dispense with.
The man who handles a bulk of results obtained from an experimental process must have
an imaginative picture of the law that he is pursuing. He must embody this in an
imaginary hypothesis. The reasoning faculties alone will not help him forward a step, for
no order can emerge from that chaos of elements unless there is the constructive quality
of mind which builds up the order by a process of elimination and choice. Again and
again the imaginary plan on which one attempts to build up that order breaks down[,] and

79

Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 175–76. Plantinga goes further to develop an epistemological model in
which “the beliefs constituting faith are typically taken as basic; that is, they are not accepted by way of argument
from other propositions or on the evidential basis of other propositions.” Warranted Christian Belief, 249–52.
80
Sessions, The Concept of Faith: A Philosophical Investigation, 69.

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then we must try another. This imaginative vision and faith in the ultimate success are
indispensable. The pure rationalist has no place here.81
We can detect notes of faith as hope, resembling type (f), in Planck’s words, along with hints of
Polanyi’s approach in the terms “embodying” and “choice.”
Indeed, for Torrance, Polanyi shows us
that in the most rigorous scientific activity[,] the human mind cannot operate outside a
framework of beliefs which, though formally unprovable, play an essential role in
guiding the thrust of inquiry into the hidden meaning of things. ... [He shows] that
scientific activity, and indeed all rational activity, operate with an inner relation between
faith and reason similar to that found in Christian theology in its movement of inquiry
from faith to understanding.82
3.2 The Adopted Philosophy of Science
3.2.1 Science as a Knowing Project
Physicist Paul Dirac once said, “philosophy will never lead to important discoveries. It is
just a way of talking about discoveries which have already been made.”83 Similarly, “Einstein
said that scientists are not, and should not be, driven by any single perspective but should be
willing to go wherever experiment dictates and adopt whatever works.”84

81

Max Planck, Where Is Science Going?, trans. James Murphy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1932), 214–15.
Torrance, Belief in Science, xvi.
83
From an interview in Thomas S. Kuhn et al., eds., Sources for History of Quantum Physics: An Inventory and
Report (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1967), n.p., quoted in Mara Beller, Quantum Dialogue: The
Making of a Revolution (University of Chicago, 2001), 58.
84
Mano Singham, “The Idea That a Scientific Theory Can Be ‘Falsified’ Is a Myth,” Scientific American (blog),
September 7, 2020, accessed February 14, 2023, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-idea-that-ascientific-theory-can-be-falsified-is-a-myth/.
Singham confirmed by email that he is referring to this passage, especially the italicized sentences in the
centre: “The reciprocal relationship of epistemology and science is of noteworthy kind. They are dependent upon
each other. Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology
is—insofar as it is thinkable at all—primitive and muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist, who is
seeking a clear system, fought his way through to such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content
of science in the sense of his system and to reject whatever does not fit into his system. The scientist, however,
cannot afford to carry his striving for epistemological systematic that far. He accepts gratefully the epistemological
conceptual analysis; but the external conditions, which are set for him by the facts of experience, do not permit him
to let himself be too much restricted in the construction of his conceptual world by the adherence to an
epistemological system. He therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of unscrupulous
opportunist: he appears as [a] realist insofar as he seeks to describe a world independent of the acts of perception; as
idealist insofar as he looks upon the concepts and theories as the free inventions of the human spirit (not logically
82

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At a glance, such statements may appear to reject philosophy altogether, but they can also
be understood as congruent with Torrance’s conviction: “in rigorous science[,] we pursue inquiry
in any field in such a way that we allow the nature of the field or the nature of the object to
govern how we know it, think about it, formulate knowledge of it, and how we verify that
knowledge.”85 Therefore, philosophy can aid the pursuit of a given empirical reality and describe
the process after the fact. However, the way of knowing—what may be called a knowing
project—is governed by the object of knowledge itself.
Relying on Torrance and our discussion above, let us begin with the ultimate object of
scientific knowledge—nature—for a knowing project called (natural) science. Instead of a core
with an outer layer, let us say that the
knowing project takes place in the light of
its proper object, as depicted in figure 3-2.
Just below nature as an ultimate
object of knowledge, there are countless
proximate objects: these are subdivisions
of nature on which individual fields of
science focus as objects of knowledge,
such as plants (botany), animals (zoology),
or rocks (petrology). Importantly, they are

Figure 3-2. Science proceeds in the light of nature.

derivable from what is empirically given); a positivist insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified only
to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations among sensory experiences. He may even
appear as Platonist or Pythagorean insofar as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable
and effective tool of his research.” Albert Einstein, Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp,
3rd ed., Library of Living Philosophers, VII (New York: MJF Books, 1970), 683–84; centre emphasis added.
85
Torrance, Theological and Natural Science, 117.

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parts of nature—not ontologically separate from it. They are depicted separately for convenience.
Next lies a first-tier lens representing a set of unassailable, non-negotiable beliefs
necessary to receive nature as an object of knowledge. These axioms include “the existence of a
theory-independent” and knowable external world; “the laws of logic”; and “the reliability of our
cognitive and sensory faculties to serve as truth gatherers.”86 We must indwell these axioms by
faith to learn anything about nature: they are the ‘blind man’s stick’ by which we know nature.
To refuse to rely on this ‘stick’ is to avoid faith, but we will fail to know anything about nature.
Beneath axioms, there is a second-tier lens to represent scientific axioms. Unlike the firsttier lens, these axioms are broadly negotiable because humanity has not always held to them;
nonetheless, they make modern, empirical science possible. E.g., the belief that nature is orderly
and worthy of knowing in its own right (contra Plato); belief in “the uniformity of nature and
induction”;87 belief in the contingency of nature, which necessitates empirical engagement;88 and
belief in the cultural and moral values of the scientific community.
Next, we have multiple third-tier lenses (only two are depicted) to represent Lakatos’s
core theories—one third-tier lens for each research project that takes a proximate object (or a
group of proximate objects) as its focus. These core theories are negotiable in principle, but they
are pragmatically exempted from falsification during normal science.
In the space below the core theories, there is an even more complicated set of competing
lenses (not shown) which could represent various schools of thought and further subdivisions.
This is the space in which auxiliary hypotheses may be proposed, tested, and even falsified in the
sense described by Venema in chapter 1. When Kuhnian revolutions occur, one third-tier lens

86

Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 348.
Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 348.
88
Recall Torrance’s study of Alexandrian theologians, discussed in § 2.3.3.1.
87

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(e.g., Newtonian mechanics) is displaced (in the Lakatosian sense) by another (general relativity)
that provides a more fruitful view of that field’s proximate object(s) (space, time, gravity, etc.) in
a broader range of relevance.
Finally, the overall knowing project of science results from nature’s ‘light’ as received
through these many lenses. At no point can science operate without lenses at all tiers, for no
scientist can (a) step outside his first-tier beliefs, (b) dispense with empirical engagement,89 or (c)
hold at bay all his field’s theories simultaneously.90

3.3 A Knowing Project for Each Object
3.3.1 Theology as a Knowing Project
Let us extend the nature-revelation analogy to become a full science-theology analogy.
Alongside our depiction of science, we may place a similar one for theology (figure 3-3). In
place of nature, revelation is the ultimate object; just below, we have proximate objects for areas
of specific theological study to focus on. In place of axioms, we have a first-tier lens for the
general faith that God “exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”91
Christian theology’s second-tier lens is the Rule of Faith—the core, essential teachings of
the Christian faith.92 Next, we have a lens for each major stream of the Christian faith
(Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism, etc.). Beneath the third-tier lenses, there would be

89

Or dispense with the fruit of such engagement conducted by others.
Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of the Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1997), sec. 38.
Readers may notice that figure 3-2 is far better suited to the hard sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) than the
soft sciences (psychology, sociology, etc.). It is beyond the scope of this thesis to flesh this out: to properly depict
psychology, we would need to have both nature and person(s) as proper objects, and science would proceed in the
light of both nature and person(s) in the area where the knowing projects overlap.
91
Heb. 11:6 (NIV). See the final paragraph of § 4.2.2 for commentary.
92
“Long before the apostles’ or ecumenical creeds, we find the regulating function of the Rule of faith in the
churches, expounding the cardinal points of theology which evangelical Christians still believe and confess to this
day.” It “was not a creed, nor a formula, but an abbreviated body of doctrine wherein the genuine articles of
Christianity were articulated.” Williams, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism, 87–88.
90

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subordinate lenses (not shown) for competing denominational emphases and schools of thought
(especially for Protestantism). This space contains both theories about major doctrines and
comparatively minor doctrines—important but not core to the Christian faith.
E.g., the theological reality of the Atonement—Jesus’s atonement for our sins—would be
a proximate object: something happened on the cross. The Rule of Faith lens affirms this reality
by faith in general terms, providing the core doctrine of the fact of the Atonement: Jesus died for
our sins to reconcile us to God. Each major stream of the Christian faith appropriates the core
doctrine differently, generating minor doctrines and theories about it. One group of Protestants
might hold to a penal substitutionary theory while a group of Catholics believes in Christus
Victor. Importantly, criticisms of these theories do not accrue to the core doctrine—much less to
the theological reality (i.e., proximate object) itself.

Figure 3-3. Science and theology as ways of knowing their respective, ultimate objects: nature and revelation.

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97

Objections Roundup 4
Now that we have a sketch of science and theology as knowing projects, or disciplines,

we may revisit the skeptic’s accusations—particularly those that directly compare science with
the Christian faith. Many flaws in the dishonesty objection come to light when the knowing
projects of science and theology are properly aligned.

3.3.2.1 Correction and Self-Criticism
The skeptic calls the Christian faith intellectually dishonest because it neither accepts nor
seeks faith-falsifying evidence; he compares this to scientific theories, emphasizing that
scientists seek to disconfirm them. However, this criticism is misaligned: the skeptic compares
science’s lower-tier components (normal science’s auxiliary hypotheses) to theology’s upper-tier
components. As we have already explored with the nature-revelation analogy, scientists are
rightly neither open to evidence to disconfirm the existence of nature nor do they seek it. Coyne
may insist that “what cannot be refuted cannot be accepted as true”;93 however, for both science
and theology, encounter with the discipline’s respective ultimate object is its own proof. Any
knowledge to be had occurs downstream from accepting it.
This criticism also fails to appreciate science and theology as distinct modalities of
reason: it assumes that theology aims solely at nature as a source of knowledge.94 For both
science and theology, each knowing project is self-critical with respect to its own proper object.
In each discipline, we come to knowledge by humbling ourselves before the object in question,
setting aside our pretensions and preconceptions, thereby allowing it to set the terms for

93

Coyne, Faith versus Fact, 259–60.
Certain branches of theology, such as theology of nature (an interdisciplinary situation not depicted in figure 3-3),
may consider information from nature by considering nature as God’s creation and therefore revelatory to some
degree. Regardless, the proper object of theology is revelation itself.
94

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exploration, discovery, correction, etc.95 For theology, that object is divine revelation; the
scientific community might appear just as opposed to self-criticism and correction if we were to
cross the modalities and demand, e.g., that science look up to the Bible as a scientific text.
Christian faith is openly self-critical in the light of revelation. As Barth puts it,
“evangelical theology is an eminently critical science, for it is continually exposed to judgment
and never relieved of the crisis in which it is placed by its object, or, rather to say, by its living
subject.”96 Throughout church history, Christian thinkers, at their best, have striven to develop
and criticize their theology before the canons of theological authority.97 The sixteenth-century
Anabaptist leader Balthasar Hübmaier expresses such an attitude:
Dear devout Christians, this is my conviction which I have learned from the Scriptures,
namely, about images and the mass. Wherein my teaching is not right and Christian[,] I
ask you all through Jesus Christ, our only Savior, I ask and beseech you, to correct my
judgment in a brotherly and Christian way with the Scriptures. I may err, I am a man; but
a heretic I cannot be. I will (and desire from my heart) receive correction and give many
thanks to those who make known my error for I will follow God’s Word willingly[,] and
in all obedience[,] come under its judgment for you and all of us to be truly Christ’s
disciples and follow after Him.98
The ecumenical councils were convened to work out disputes concerning received teaching.99
When properly understood, theology can even be said to make discoveries:
No discovery is properly called such unless it takes a logical leap beyond the data it has
at hand, being enabled, by its indwelling in the data, to perceive a rational pattern that is
really there but has not previously been discerned. Thus might [the Council of]
Chalcedon be seen to be an attempt to look through the data provided by (i) the New
Testament witness to the divine-human interrelation with history, (ii) the worship of the
Christian community and (iii) the tradition’s rational indwelling in both (i) and (ii), to the
truth about Jesus Christ. The Dogmatic Formula of Chalcedon is a statement of high
95

Barth, Evangelical Theology, chap. 1; Torrance, Theological and Natural Science, 92.
Barth, Evangelical Theology, 10.
97
However we might understand these—Scripture, tradition, spiritual experience—they are understood to be
authoritative by virtue of God’s own authority, given to the church in revelation.
98
Melchior Schuler and Johann Schulthess, eds., Huldreich Zwingli’s Werke (Zürich: Friedrich Schulthess, 1828),
459–540, translated in William Roscoe Estep, The Anabaptist Story: An Introduction to Sixteenth-Century
Anabaptism (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), 81–82; emphasis added.
99
E.g., Justo L. González, The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Present Day (Peabody, MA: Prince,
2009), chap. 17.
96

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scientific precision, condensing into a few sentences that which may be believed about
Jesus Christ, and thus presenting in a form that is at once personal and scientific a claim
for the truth of Christianity.100
Importantly, theology makes theological discoveries, not scientific ones. The Protestant
Reformation is akin to a paradigm shift within the bounds of orthodoxy. More generally, it is
widely considered a virtue in evangelical churches for everyone to learn Scripture well enough to
critique teaching from the pulpit competently.
Although science may not dictate theology (no more than theology may dictate science),
science has often prompted Christian thinkers to take a fresh look at Scripture on its own terms,
aiding in the “genre calibration” for biblical texts.101 For Barth, biblical theology “must
conscientiously employ all known and available means, all the rules and criteria that are
applicable to grammar, linguistics, and style, as well as all the knowledge gathered in the
comparative study of the history of the world, of culture, and of literature.”102 Alongside
archaeology, linguistics, and studies of ancient cultures, science can help determine meanings of
biblical texts.103 E.g., suppose science strongly indicates that the earth is much more than six
thousand years old. In that case, this may suggest to the Christian that the early chapters of
Genesis are not intended to convey history (or science) according to modern standards. Still, she
must attend to the proper object of theology: she must attend to Scripture itself to see whether the

Colin E. Gunton, “The Truth of Christology,” in Belief in Science and in Christian Life: The Relevance of
Michael Polanyi’s Thought for Christian Faith and Life, ed. Thomas F. Torrance (Edinburgh: Handsel, 1980), 105.
Gunton uses science in the broader sense here, similar to Barth.
101
Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say About Human Origins (Grand Rapids,
MI: Brazos, 2012), 35.
102
Barth, Evangelical Theology, 176; emphasis added.
103
One difference is that while archaeology, linguistics, etc. act ‘positively’ to supply possible meanings, science
helps in a ‘negative’ sense to rule out possible readings. Readers should not expect to find twenty-first century
science in the Bible—nor should they give too much place to science in hermeneutics: Yes, science provides
positive evidence for an ancient earth by robust, mutually-confirming lines of evidence concerning normally
occurring natural processes; No, science does not show that resurrections (or any other miracle) cannot happen—
only that they do not normally happen.
100

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early chapters of Genesis teach a physical history of nature.104 Science cannot proceed
independently of nature, and theology cannot proceed independently of revelation.
Finally, without repeating our treatment of falsification above (§ 3.1), we may note that
various minor doctrines and theories may indeed be falsified with respect to higher-tier lenses
and revelation itself (e.g., Arianism, ‘biblical’ arguments for slavery, etc.). The major streams of
Christianity are perhaps not just as vulnerable to falsification (or displacement) as the core
theories of science. E.g., it is unlikely that Protestantism could be displaced in the way quantum
mechanics displaced Newtonian physics in the realm of the very small; however, the pace of
theology is not nearly so quick as science, and church history may yet be in its infancy. In any
case, there is nothing intellectually dishonest about theology being oriented to its proper object.

3.3.2.2 The Flow of Authority
For both ways of knowing, the flow of authority is top-down. Each level may correct the
level below it, and at the top (including proximate objects), no correction is possible: science
cannot correct nature, and theology cannot correct revelation. It follows that one’s authority is
proportional to one’s acquaintance or intimacy with the object of knowledge. A quantum
physicist has more authority to speak about the nature of electrons than a general physicist, who
has more authority than an electrical engineer, who has more authority on the matter than an
electrician, who is more authoritative than a layperson.105

104

John H. Walton, e.g., approaches Scripture on its own terms and concludes that Genesis is not intended to address
material origins. The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity, 2009).
105
Regarding vaccines, something similar can be said for immunologists, general biologists, medical doctors, and
nurses, respectively. Importantly, this is where the knowing project is science. The flow of authority would run in
reverse if the object of knowledge were taken to be practical application of science, of course: quantum physicists
do not often fish wires through finished walls, and immunologists may not be able to find a vein with ease.

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Sometimes the scientific community must use its authority to speak out against bad
science, pseudoscience, and false claims—especially doubt-mongering. During the 1970s, the
tobacco industry aimed to “fight science with science—or at least with the gaps and uncertainties
in existing science, and with scientific research that could be used to deflect attention from the
main event.”106 Rather than seek the proper object of science, the defenders of big tobacco
sought profits, and it was up to scientists to expose these false teachers. Later, “the same people
who had questioned acid rain, doubted the ozone hole, and defended tobacco now attacked the
scientific evidence of global warming.”107
The COVID-19 pandemic has also required scientists to address misconceptions, fears,
and false claims about masks and vaccines.108 According to Hübmaier, the distinguishing mark
of a theological heretic is that after being corrected by authority, she persists in her views
anyway. A ‘scientific heretic’ persists in his erroneous belief after it has been rejected by peer
review. Thus, there is a crucial difference between (a) the minority scientist ahead of his time
and challenging an existing paradigm, such as Einstein, and (b) a minority scientist who persists
in his falsified idea, theory, or displaced paradigm. Einstein saw ahead because he paid even
greater attention to the authority of nature. He saw what others would soon see. But the scientific
heretic looks backward, refusing to see what others have already seen; he is not trying to know
nature so much as he is holding onto an erroneous view.
The skeptic accuses the Christian faith of being self-defensive; however, even science
must defend itself against false teaching: scientists have both the authority and the responsibility

106

Oreskes and Conway, Merchants of Doubt, 13.
Oreskes and Conway, Merchants of Doubt, 168.
108
E.g., Rebecca Dielschneider, “Vaccine Hesitancy: Christian Reasons and Responses,” Perspectives on Science
and Christian Faith 73, no. 1 (March 2021), https://doi.org/10.56315/PSCF3-21Dielschneider. Members of the
American Scientific Affiliation have given several public talks on COVID-19 to this end: “ASA Response to
COVID-19,” American Scientific Affiliation, last modified November 26, 2022, accessed February 23, 2023,
https://network.asa3.org/page/covid-19.
107

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to do so. There is nothing intellectually dishonest about it. Responsible scientists do not
encourage the public to personally question all the way down whether climate science is worthy
of assent.109 Some voices must be exposed as lying, clouding the truth, committing the false
balance fallacy, etc.110 The skeptic would not consider it to be an example of the genetic fallacy
if an immunologist warned against heeding scientific heretics who abuse their authority to stoke
doubts about masks and vaccines during a deadly pandemic; rather, the skeptic might readily
agree: “do not receive him into your house.”111
For Christianity, those most acquainted with God’s revelation have a similar
responsibility to warn against false teaching—especially Jesus’ apostles and the authors of the
New Testament. The skeptic accuses these authors of committing the genetic and ad hominem
fallacies, but this is to deny that they are writing with authority in the first place. If they write
with authority, their warnings are sensible, not intellectually dishonest.
Coyne’s inability to rule out trickster aliens prevents him from thinking he could embrace
Christianity even if given overwhelming evidence. The title of Dawkins’s famous book alone
suggests that the only form of Christian faith acceptable to him would exclude the possibility of
delusion. To eliminate the possibility that Christianity is a delusion, such skeptics insist on an
impossible form of ‘evidence’ that begs the question in favour of skepticism—an attempt to
define divine authority into an ‘epistemologically vulnerable zone’ (pseudo-theology).

If anything, the public is asked to put more faith in science than the Christian asked to put in her pastor’s
preaching: at least she is encouraged to check it against Scripture—but we will discuss differences in chapter 4.
110
The fallacy of false balance is a patent example of strong intellectual dishonesty, wherein two competing views
are presented to the public as though they are of equal merit when, in truth, one is rejected by almost everyone in the
field. This happens with climate science but also with matters of faith. E.g., most biblical scholars and historians
strongly reject Jesus mythicism (the idea that no such human existed at all), but this is sometimes presented as
though the situation is a ‘fifty-fifty’ in terms of probability.
111
2. John 1:10.
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By considering these criticisms alongside the flow of authority for the two knowing
projects at hand, we can see that, in general, insisting on invulnerability to being tricked leads
away from knowledge: it leads skeptics of science to pseudoscience, skeptics of our senses to
solipsism, skeptics of the gospel to pseudo-theology, and skeptics of God to atheism. They are
“so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”112

3.3.2.3 Incentives to Be Intellectually Dishonest
The skeptic says that Christians are incentivized toward intellectual dishonesty, unlike
scientists. First, we are considering Christianity at its best; one could similarly claim, e.g., that
climate scientists are only in it for the money,113 or are part of a conspiracy—as skeptics of
science often do. Second, from a Christian perspective, a reward in heaven provides an incentive
to love the truth.114 Third, the skeptic only mentions incentives in the present-day West, but other
contexts, such as persecution, provide strong incentives to renounce the faith. Fourth,
communicating science to the public involves a modicum of political self-interest, which should
not be counted against science itself. While one cannot rule out the self-interest of a preacher
completely, it does not necessarily say anything about her intellectual honesty.

3.3.2.4 Intellectual Humility
Perhaps the skeptic’s most challenging accusation is that the Christian holds and preaches
her faith in a non-provisional manner, going beyond the evidence. This concerns the uniqueness
of theology’s object, as the following chapter makes clear. However, so long as we are

112

C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle, The Chronicles of Narnia 7 (New York: HarperTrophy, 1956), 169.
For a fun counterexample, see Katharine Hayhoe, “Climate Change, That’s Just a Money Grab by Scientist...
Right?,” November 22, 2017, video, 7:28, https://youtu.be/Iq8Jo9QN0qA.
114
2 Thess. 2:10. Scripture indicates that a person who is oriented to truth would love the truth so as not to be
deceived, resisting the temptation to cherry-pick teachers to play into one’s confirmation bias—what their “itching
ears want to hear” 2 Tim. 4:3 (NIV). Proverbs likewise holds intellectual humility in high regard (18:13, 17).
113

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considering science and theology as ‘parallel’ knowing projects from the human, or creaturely,
side of things, there are several observations the Christian can make in response to the skeptic.
First, intellectual honesty cannot mean “refraining from commitments.” The skeptic and
Christian share many (ostensibly) ‘secular’ convictions in a non-provisional sense, such as the
equal worth of all humans. The skeptic is correct that there are always epistemological limits,
science is never final, etc. Still, we may presume he would eagerly “leap over the probabilities”
and join the Christian in preaching a permanent, non-provisional condemnation of scientific
racism,115 e.g., and that he would not find it intellectually dishonest.
Second, scientific theories may be provisional, but it is hard to see in what sense the
scientist holds to the axioms described above provisionally. The skeptic himself is not
meaningfully provisional regarding the external world. If the Christian alone is expected to keep
commitments at bay, the skeptic holds her to a higher standard than he is willing to meet. It is
more sensible to say that the lower-tier components of both knowing projects are provisional
with respect to the upper-tier ones, which are far less provisional, if at all.
Third, the truth is that scientists don’t hold to their theories in exact proportion to the
evidence they have. As Polanyi explains, they reach a point where they are confident enough in a
theory or paradigm to responsibly commit to it. In Lakatosian terms, scientists intentionally
exempt hard-core theories from falsification so long as they are able.
Fourth, returning to authority, the Scripture describes Jesus Christ as God’s authentic,
authoritative revelation.116 To respond by insisting on a provisional, legitimate, transcendent,
authoritative revelation is a contradiction in terms, which effectively denies revelation in the first

“Scientific racism is an organized system of misusing science to promote false scientific beliefs in which
dominant racial and ethnic groups are perceived as being superior.” “Scientific Racism,” National Human Genome
Research Institute, accessed December 8, 2022, https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Scientific-Racism.
116
Heb. 1:1-4.
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place. Similarly, pseudoscience gives the appearance of rationality but refuses to relate
appropriately to nature and scientific authority.

3.4 Summary and Next Steps
To further address the skeptic’s accusations, this chapter has compared science and
theology as ways of knowing. The role of falsification has been overemphasized in science and
rationality, and faith plays a role in both. Drawing on both philosophers of science and
theologians, we can depict a philosophy of science alongside a parallel depiction of theology.
Each project radically depends on its own proper object: science has nature, and theology has
revelation, with many essential lenses in between. When our understanding of these projects is
properly aligned, several of the skeptic’s criticisms about correction, self-criticism, self-defence,
incentives, and intellectual humility break down. To expose pseudoscience, scientists must attend
to the natural world itself; to expose the pseudo-theology asserted by the skeptic, we must now
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Chapter 4
Revelation as a Unique Object of Knowledge
The discussion above may be compared to a trial where the defendant is accused of
intellectual dishonesty. The skeptical prosecutor has made his case in its strongest form. The
judge has admonished the jury to strive for impartiality—to see the matter from the defendant’s
perspective. As her lawyer, I’ve appealed to whatever common ground I can muster to create a
space for reasonable doubt about my client’s guilt; I have invited the jury to hypothetically set
aside the skeptic’s pseudo-theological demands, such as a super-god’s eye view and an
observable, testable ‘revelation’ devoid of authority. I now call the defendant herself to testify.
She does not speak in hypotheticals ‘from the outside.’ She speaks for herself, downstream from
an ongoing, transformative encounter. She speaks as a Christian.
Objection! The defendant’s testimony must be vulnerable to human criticism, on human
terms, on pain of intellectual dishonesty.
Overruled. The prosecution will refrain from demanding that the Christian defend her
Christianity by ceasing to be a Christian.
To think that any response to the dishonesty objection must be assailable by human
reason begs the question: it assumes that human reason is the ultimate bar of authority. This is “a
form of confirmation bias where the very act of [insisting on neutrality] means [the skeptic has]
already bought back into the system.”1 For the Christian to meet the skeptic’s terms, her ‘faith’
would have to be nothing more than a species of trust in her own reason.2 Without further
apology, this chapter leans into theology, emphasizing how science and theology differ.

1

Pace Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, 126. This, too, expresses the problem of position.
It is well beyond the scope of this thesis to fully articulate and defend a particular view of faith and reason. Still, it
is worthwhile to explain the chosen view. Historically speaking, the Christian faith has three broad options: (a)
reason precedes faith (Aquinas), (b) faith precedes reason (Augustine), or (c) “faith and reason do not support one
another. Hence one believes virtually in spite of reason” (Tertullian, fideism). As depicted in figure 3-3, this thesis
2

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4.1 Theology Is More Constrained Than Science
At most, the nature-revelation analogy must be understood as a helpful way of modelling
the perspective and cognition of the human knower—it is not an ontological claim.3 While
science and theology have ‘parallel’ similarities as knowing projects, several ‘perpendicular’
differences are revealed when we attend to the uniqueness of theology’s proper object and the
position of the Christian before it. In the first place, theology is far more constrained than science
because of the uniqueness of its object. At its best, theology must grapple with the obstacles of
sin and finitude for knowing God—obstacles largely irrelevant to science at its best.

4.1.1

A Universal Encounter?
Theological truth “is not known except through an interior change brought about by the

Spirit of God,”4 but Christian thinkers have long disagreed about how this works vis-á-vis human
free will. For the Calvinist, God inscrutably withholds his self-authenticating encounter from a
segment of humanity. For the Arminian, this encounter is freely available to all but only
experienced by those who seek it. Whether by choice or design, we will not dwell on this
perennial debate here. At a minimum, we can say humanity’s encounter with revelation does not
have the same universal, ‘obvious’ quality that our encounter with nature does: agreement on
nature far exceeds our agreement on God. This constraint makes theological knowledge far less
‘democratic’ than scientific knowledge, only furthering the problem of position. “Any person can
know purely factual truth, but only the redeemed can know truth that liberates and empowers.”5

takes an Augustinian view of both science and theology. “Faith precedes reason, but [it] makes reason possible.
From the perspective of faith, understanding can emerge.” Robert W. Lyon, “Faith,” Baker Encyclopedia of the
Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 764.
3
See Archie J. Spencer, The Analogy of Faith: The Quest for God’s Speakability (Downers Grove, IL: IVP
Academic, 2015).
4
Bloesch, Holy Scripture, 301.
5
Bloesch, Holy Scripture, 284.

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108

Epistemological Inversion
We have discussed how Torrance’s kata-physin principle necessitates “a radical change

in our knowing” when we seek to know God.6 This entails a significant difference between
science and theology: the degree of authority or ‘licence’ of the human knower. The object of
knowledge has authority in both disciplines: only God may reveal God; only nature has authority
(delegated by God) to reveal nature. Having been delegated investigational authority, we may
prod nature at our whim—experiments may be done on our terms and schedules. With other
persons, this is significantly curtailed: “if I’m always setting little traps to see whether you’re my
friend, ... I’ll destroy the possibility of real friendship between us by the distrust I display.”7 The
difference is even more accentuated when knowing God:
[for] an impersonal object or a personal being, our relationship with it is on the same
creaturely level (although as observers or knowers[,] we may well occupy a logical level
above it), but where the objective pole is God the Creator[,] our relationship to him can
only be one of reverence in which we look up, and not across or down.8
This is Torrance’s epistemological inversion. “We can know [God] ... only in the mode of
worship, prayer, and adoration in which we respond personally, humbly, and obediently to his
divine initiative.”9 Whereas science has the licence to interrogate its object repeatedly, theology
confesses that “it always rests with God and not with us whether our hearing is real hearing and
our obedience real obedience, whether our dogmatics is blessed and sanctified as knowledge of
the true content of Christian utterance or whether it is idle speculation.”10 Christian faith is “an
empty vessel that receives, not ... a criterion that judges and controls.”11

6

Torrance, Theological and Natural Science, 92.
John Polkinghorne, Quarks, Chaos and Christianity: Questions to Science and Religion, rev. ed. (New York:
Crossroad, 2005), 22.
8
Thomas F. Torrance, “The Framework of Belief,” in Belief in Science and in Christian Life: The Relevance of
Michael Polanyi’s Thought for Christian Faith and Life, ed. Thomas F. Torrance (Edinburgh: Handsel, 1980), 13.
9
Torrance, Theological and Natural Science, 92.
10
Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1:18.
11
Bloesch, Holy Scripture, 292.
7

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109

The Noetic Effects of Sin
We have already covered the impossibility of a neutral arena in which one might assess

the Christian’s intellectual honesty on largely theoretical grounds. When we allow Christian
theology to speak to this issue, such a prospect is further exposed as hopeless because of human
sinfulness. Individual scientists might sin in terms of pride, selfishness, fraud, or intellectual
dishonesty, but these are not enduring obstacles between the scientist and nature. For theology,
the human knower has the added disadvantage of being estranged from God, an infirmity that
significantly hinders the proper reception of revelation. Although this thesis does not take a
presuppositionalist perspective, it is worth noting “two important strengths in
presuppositionalism, especially in its milder forms”:
First, this method is correct in stressing the impact of a world view on a person’s
apprehension of truth. This fits with the results of holistic philosophy of science. Facts do
not always speak for themselves. Observers must attune themselves to nature to receive
its broadcast. Second, spiritual blinkers also influence human knowledge.
Presuppositionalism rightly recognizes the noetic effects of sin.12
The noetic effects of sin are the effects that human sinfulness—estrangement from God—
has on the mind, resulting in “a condition that involves both intellect and will. It is an affective
malaise, a malfunction or madness of the will. But it is also a cognitive condition,” affecting “our
knowledge of other people, of ourselves, and of God.” The noetic effects of sin “are less relevant
... to our knowledge of nature and the world.”13 For Plantinga, sin affects how we deal with
revelational authority much more than how we handle investigational authority:
The most serious noetic effects of sin have to do with our knowledge of God. Were it not
for sin and its effects, God’s presence and glory would be as obvious and uncontroversial
to us all as the presence of other minds, physical objects, and the past. Like any cognitive
12

Clark, Dialogical Apologetics, 106.
Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 213. It might be thought that one could ‘sin’ against nature by trying to
expound nature’s reality without submitting one’s theories to nature, i.e., without willingness to ‘repent’ of one’s
theory and ‘believe’ what nature reveals about itself through empirical investigation. Nonetheless, nature does not
have moral authority over humanity.
13

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process, however, the sensus divinitatis can malfunction; as a result of sin, it has indeed
been damaged.14
The idea of a sensus divinitatis (sense of divinity) was set forth by the sixteenth-century
Reformation theologian John Calvin:
That there exists in the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity,
we hold to be beyond dispute, since God himself, to prevent any man from pretending
ignorance, has endued all men with some idea of his Godhead, the memory of which he
constantly renews and occasionally enlarges, that all to a man being aware that there is a
God, and that he is their Maker, may be condemned by their own conscience when they
neither worship him nor consecrate their lives to his service.15
Theologians disagree on the sensus across traditions, even within the Reformed tradition
that follows Calvin.16 Barth is very reserved about the sensus, outright rejecting it in his early
work,17 if not all his work. However, it is an integral part of Plantinga’s Warranted Christian
Belief: the sensus is damaged by sin, but the “internal instigation of the Holy Spirit” overcomes
this damage.18 “For Barth, it is not merely fallenness that the Holy Spirit must overcome, but
human finitude as such”; it is “a problem of nature, not [only] sin”:19 even without sin, humanity
would not know God’s presence and glory without his accommodating human finitude.

14

Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 214.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society,
1845), 1:3.1.
16
Kevin Diller, Theology’s Epistemological Dilemma: How Karl Barth and Alvin Plantinga Provide a Unified
Response (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014), 216–22, chap. 8.
17
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn Clement Hoskyns (London: Oxford University, 1968).
18
Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 243–44.
19
S. Joel Garver, “Review of Theology’s Epistemological Dilemma: How Karl Barth and Alvin Plantinga Provide a
Unified Response,” Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, last modified June 8, 2015, accessed February 25, 2023,
https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/theology-s-epistemological-dilemma-how-karl-barth-and-alvin-plantinga-provide-aunified-response/. “As a Christian theologian, Barth is attempting to reflect the inner priorities of Christian theology
and emphasize those priorities over against critical areas of potential distortion. It would be antithetical to Barth’s
task if he were to highlight the virtues of our epistemological gifts without also emphasizing their utter inadequacy.
They are powerless outside of God’s giving of himself to be known and his decision to involve our faculties in his
self-revealing. Plantinga’s purposes are considerably different. He operates as a Christian philosopher with the
particular goal of defending the possibility that belief could have warrant without reposing on an argument or
demonstrable evidence. Plantinga’s models are intentionally theologically minimalist. Though they are intended to
be faithful to Christian theology, they make no pretenses of being comprehensive theological accounts.” Diller,
Theology’s Epistemological Dilemma, 218.
15

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To emphasize the problem of position and the need for faith in science and Christianity,
the preceding chapters side with Barth over Plantinga by stressing human finitude: the Creatorcreature distinction, the top-down nature of authority, the futility of objectivism, and especially
our inability to “check our beliefs against reality and find out, once and for all, whether they are
true.”20 Still, both thinkers agree that sin affects the intellect, inhibiting right belief about God—a
conviction broadly common to non-liberal Protestantism, Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy.21

4.1.4

We Are Not Objective, Innocent Explorers
Scripture warns that humans are easily tricked by their own hearts and desires:22 “the

desire for knowledge is there, but so is the desire to hide from ... [its] implications.”23 It is not
enough to state, in clinical fashion, that there is an estrangement between the human knower and
the object of theology. Missionary and theologian Lesslie Newbigin stresses this point:
theological liberalism, which at least downplays the noetic effects of sin and estrangement from
God (if not rejecting the notion altogether), “challeng[es] us to be open to new truth, to be
fearless in exploring all reality and to be humble in recognizing the vastness and mystery that we
try to comprehend with our finite minds.”24 This may sound entirely in accord with everything
argued so far, but Newbigin senses a fundamental flaw:

Grene, A Philosophical Testament, 17. I’ve chosen this path not only because I find it more convincing but
because it is arguably tougher to respond to the skeptic from this perspective—in a sense, choosing this more
difficult path helps to steel-man the dishonesty objection.
21
Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2000), sec.
407; St. Athanasius Orthodox Academy, ed., The Orthodox Study Bible (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008), 1–2;
Craig Truglia, “The Orthodox Doctrine of Original Sin: A Comprehensive Treatment,” Orthodox Christian
Theology (blog), April 11, 2021, accessed February 26, 2023,
https://orthodoxchristiantheology.com/2021/04/11/the-orthodox-doctrine-of-original-sin-a-comprehensivetreatment/.
22
Jer. 17:9; Mark 7:20-22; Rom. 1:18; 2 Cor. 4:4.
23
James W. Sire, Habits of the Mind: Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books,
2000), 91.
24
Newbigin, Proper Confidence, 103–4.
20

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The error is the supposition that it is we who are the explorers, that the real questions are
the ones we formulate and put to the universe, and that our minds have a sovereign
freedom to explore a reality waiting to be discovered. Our peril is that, out of the vastness
of the unplumbed mystery, we summon up images that are the creations of our own
minds. The human heart, as Calvin said, is a factory of idols.25
The modern temptation is to “picture ... ourselves as sovereign explorers who formulate
the real questions in a search for a yet-to-be-discovered reality.”26 Not unlike the crew of the
U.S.S. Enterprise 1701-D, we will set the terms for inquiry. We might encounter vastly more
powerful beings, perhaps even benevolent ones. Still, we know the plot in advance: we are the
good guys, and any ostensibly omnipotent, authoritative being we encounter is a trickster—a
more powerful creature unworthy of worship and obedience.27 There may be higher powers than
humanity but no legitimately higher authorities. We can meet the universe’s challenges with hard
work, a humanist ethic, and technology. And yet,
the gospel undermines our questions with a question that comes to us from the mystery
we thought to explore. It is a question as piercing and shattering as the voice that spoke to
Job out of the whirlwind. It exposes our false pretensions. We are not honest and openminded explorers of reality; we are alienated from reality because we have made
ourselves the center of the universe.28
4.1.5

A More Critical Realism
As we have discussed, science and theology both rely on ongoing, self-critical scrutiny in

the light of their respective objects. Drawing on the work of Polanyi, Kuhn, Lakatos, and others,
science-religion scholar Ian G. Barbour develops “critical realism”:29 an alternative to both (a)
science as being a perfect mirror of nature (naïve realism) and (b) science as being merely a

25

Newbigin, Proper Confidence, 104.
Newbigin, Proper Confidence, 104.
27
E.g., the being(s) called “Q.” Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Encounter at Farpoint,” season 1, episodes 1-2,
directed by Corey Allan, written by D. C. Fontana and Gene Roddenberry, featuring Patrick Stewart and John de
Lancie, aired September 28, 1987, first-run syndication, Paramount Television.
28
Newbigin, Proper Confidence, 104.
29
Ian G. Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1971), 156–71, 248.
26

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useful description.30 “Scientific theories yield partial, revisable, and abstract knowledge of the
world”; they are “expressed through ‘metaphor’ – open-ended analogies whose meaning cannot
be reduced to, or replaced by, a set of literal statements – and through their systematic
development into models.”31 Theology also uses human language to model divine realities (e.g.,
Christ as having two natures in one person), so it must also be critically realistic in recognizing
that the fullness of the divine reality is not exhausted in human language.
The critical realism of theology must be more self-critical than that of science in several
ways. First, serious theology is self-critical partly because of human sin and rebellion against
God. It is possible to participate in science at its best without accepting physical realism; this is
not unlike being excellent at a videogame that requires critical thinking and problem-solving. It
is at least thinkable for a solipsist like Sam to be a best friend to Rae the realist; still, it is difficult
to imagine—especially regarding respect for her boundaries or putting her needs ahead of his
own. Shifting the modality of reason to God, however, it is impossible to do Christian theology
at its best while doubting whether God exists.32
I do not mean to say skeptics cannot do theology in the broader academic sense. Nothing
prevents a skeptic from academic excellence in the philosophy of religion, general theology, or
even a study of Christian theology.33 However, there is a difference between describing and
doing. In its most basic and proper form, Barth emphasizes that Christian theology is a response
to God’s personal address in Jesus Christ:
Human thought and speech cannot be about God, but must be directed toward God,
called into action by the divine thought and speech directed to men, and following and
30

E.g., Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University, 1977).
Robert John Russell and Kirk Wegter-McNelly, “Science,” in The Blackwell Companion to Modern Theology, ed.
Gareth Jones, Blackwell Companions to Religion (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 513–14.
32
The kata-physin approach to theology cannot work “despite oneself” as it can in science. Double-mindedness
might work in science, but not in theology (cf. James 1:6-8).
33
E.g., in 2016, I had the pleasure of conversing with Donald Wiebe at Trinity College, University of Toronto.
31

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corresponding to this work of God. Human thought and speech would certainly be false if
they bound themselves to a divine “It” or “something,” since God is a person and not a
thing. But human thought and speech concerning God could also be false and would at
any rate be unreal if they related themselves to him in the third person. What is essential
for human language is to speak of men in the first person and of God in the second
person. True and proper language concerning God will always be a response to God,
which overtly or covertly, explicitly or implicitly, thinks and speaks of God exclusively
in the second person. And this means that theological work must really and truly take
place in the form of a liturgical act, as invocation of God, and as prayer.34
Of course, not all Christian thinkers take the same view of philosophizing about God. For
apologists such as Craig and Moreland, “two controls” guide “inquiry into the divine nature:
Scripture and perfect being theology”:35
the Anselmian conception of God as the greatest conceivable being or most perfect being
... [may guide] philosophical speculation on the raw data of Scripture, so that God’s
biblical attributes are to be conceived in ways that would serve to exalt God’s greatness.
Since the concept of God is underdetermined by the biblical data and since what
constitutes a “great-making” property is to some degree debatable, philosophers working
within the Judeo-Christian tradition enjoy considerable latitude in formulating a
philosophically coherent and biblically faithful doctrine of God.36
We cannot dwell on this debate, but neither do we need to do so: both sides agree that receiving
revelation as revelation is critical.
Second, whereas science “operate[s] with ‘picturing models’ built up from observational
phenomena” and humanly-constructed metaphors, the Holy Spirit inspires theology’s “disclosure
models”:37 the Church is not permitted to move on from them.38 Science can gauge the success
of its models and research programs,39 but in theology, gauging success requires reflection
within the Church and “constant dialogue with the past”;40 ultimately, it rests with God. Third,
and most importantly, while scientific critical realism is an epistemological “response to and

34

Barth, Evangelical Theology, 164.
Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 501.
36
Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 501.
37
Torrance, Transformation and Convergence, 255.
38
Alister E. McGrath, Science and Religion: An Introduction, 164.
39
For instance, we can judge whether a Lakatosian research program is active or stagnant.
40
John Polkinghorne, Faith, Science and Understanding (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2000), 39.
35

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interpretation of the history of science and the explanatory power of scientific discovery,”
theology’s “critical realism is a response to and interpretation of God’s self-revelation in Jesus
Christ ..., as an implication of God’s self-revelation and the knowledge that it calls forth.”41

4.1.6

We Cannot Master Theology
Although the scientist can never step ‘outside’ to check whether his theories about nature

match reality in a final sense, the success of modern industry and technology suggests a
significant and increasing level of mastery over nature. In contrast, the Christian can never
master or wield the knowledge of God to her own advantage: there is no such thing as
‘theological technology’ or ‘spiritual mechanics.’42 “The Christian is always in the position of
‘having and not having’ the truth, since reason cannot penetrate the paradox of God becoming
human in Jesus Christ.”43
The truth, as it is contained in the Christian revelation, includes the recognition that it is
neither possible for man to know the truth fully nor to avoid the error of pretending that
he does. It is recognized that ‘grace’ always remains in partial contradiction to ‘nature,’
and is not merely its fulfillment.44
“We can truly know but only partially. We can begin to understand, but we cannot
comprehend.”45 As the Apostle Paul puts it, “we see in a mirror, darkly.”46

Ross H. McKenzie and Benjamin Myers, “Dialectical Critical Realism in Science and Theology: Quantum
Physics and Karl Barth,” Science and Christian Belief 20, no. 1 (April 2008): 65.
42
See Donald G. Bloesch, The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry, Mission, Christian Foundations 6 (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2002), 177.
43
Donald G. Bloesch, God, the Almighty: Power, Wisdom, Holiness, Love, Christian Foundations 3 (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005), 215. The inner quotation is from Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man:
A Christian Interpretation (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 2:217.
44
Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation, 2:217.
45
Bloesch, God, the Almighty, 49.
46
1 Cor. 13:12 (ASV).
41

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Objections Roundup 5
The Christian takes seriously the biblical warnings about being right in her own eyes and

deceiving herself,47 and she considers the noetic effects of sin to be real.48 Not only are humans
on the receiving end of the Creator-creature relationship, but in our sin, we are opposed to God—
we are opposed to an authority above ourselves. We can address the skeptic further by
appreciating the additional constraints of theology compared to science.
First, Christianity is more self-critical in light of its object than science, not the other way
around: the level of self-scrutiny required for Christian faith extends beyond the mere possibility
of being wrong to the constant need for repentance and reliance on God. Second, theology
teaches that all humans have a strong confirmation bias against God. It is unfair for the skeptic to
accuse the Christian of “buying back” into her system if he dismisses the Christian warning that
all humans are tempted to “buy back” into their system of sin and rebellion against God. Third,
we come to Loftus’s accusation that it is intellectually dishonest for the Christian to refrain from
judging her own beliefs with the same skepticism she directs at other religions.49 Not only does
this posit the sort of neutral area that I have been critiquing in this thesis, but it fails to take
seriously the ‘skepticism’ that Scripture has about the human heart, etc.50 Finally, we must
consider whether the skeptic has been encountered by the object of theology at all. To evaluate
Christianity on its own best terms, he must “taste and see.”51 He may be unwilling, finding such

47

E.g., 1 Cor. 3:18; Gal. 6:3; James 1:26; 1 John 1:8.
The noetic effects of sin are the effects on the mind due to sin and sin nature. Leaving aside the finer details of
Calvinism vs. Arminianism on this point, the Christian rejects a fully Pelagian view of human reason. To some
significant extent, humankind opposes God in our flesh and is prone to “suppress the truth.” Rom. 1:18.
49
Loftus, The Outsider Test for Faith, 23.
50
Notably, Loftus is aware of such criticisms and engages them. E.g., The Outsider Test for Faith, chaps. 6–8. Space
prevents a full exchange, but it is fair to say that Loftus insists on human reason as the highest bar of authority.
51
Ps. 34:8.
48

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an answer to be grievously circular. Still, to make the dishonesty objection while refusing to ask
at least for “ears to hear” is not unlike a solipsist who refuses to open his eyes.52

4.2 Theology Is More Objective Than Science
Although the uniqueness of theology’s object poses additional challenges, it also provides
theology with strengths unknown to science. Yes, all human knowledge that makes contact with
reality can be doubted from the human side.53 However, true theology provides a form of
knowledge that is more objective than science.54 That is, theology is even more intimately
encountered and determined by its respective, proper object.

4.2.1

Transcendent and Immanent
Imagine a hallway with a corner at the far end. Around the corner lies nature itself as an

object of knowledge. Now, a scientist can never go around the corner or even look around it;
however, every time he conducts an experiment, he gets a glimpse. It is not enough of a glimpse
for him to perceive certain knowledge of nature, but it is actual contact with reality that informs
his empirical approach. For theology, however, the object of knowledge is not inert, waiting
around the corner to be probed from afar. God has come ‘around the corner’ to us in Jesus Christ.
The previous chapters have emphasized God’s otherness and transcendence, but this must
be held in tension with his immanence: “the God of the Bible is both the Wholly Other and the
Infinitely Near.”55 There is no need for the Christian to become a super-god to have theological

52

Deut. 29:4; Matt. 11:15; Mark 4:9, 23; Luke 8:8, 14:35; Rom. 11:18.
Newbigin, Proper Confidence, 75.
54
Importantly, this is not the objectivism we rejected in § 3.1.2. Here we are concerned with objectivity in its truest
sense: authentic intimacy between subject and object. By contrast, objectivism pretends to have knowledge without
personal knowledge; by rejecting the subject, objectivism forfeits any true relationship between subject and object.
55
Bloesch, God, the Almighty, 24.
53

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knowledge: “The foundation for Christian faith is not a timeless principle but a personal address.
It is not a self-evident truth but the personification of truth in Jesus Christ.”56

4.2.2

More Objective, Not Less
Unlike the object of natural science, God can reveal himself intimately. A tree cannot

speak out to correct a botanist, but a friend can hide and disclose information: “a human being is
personally other than we are, and is more profoundly objective” than a tree.57 God can go further
still: he “can come to us and enable us to think what was previously unthinkable.”58 This makes
theology more—not less—directly in contact with its proper object of inquiry than science is
with nature, enjoying “a measure of objectivity that we encounter nowhere else”:59
Here human thinking undergoes an epistemic reorientation, a metanoia, under the
creative and self-revealing impact of God’s personal interaction with us. Thus there takes
place an epistemological inversion of our knowing relation but in strict accordance with
the nature of God as he makes himself known to us. With creaturely realities we seek to
know them in accordance with their nature as they become ‘disclosed’ to us under our
questioning, but with God our knowing of him in accordance with his nature takes place
under the constraint of his activity in ‘revealing’ himself to us. Here scientific method,
pursued strictly in accordance with the nature and reality of God as he makes himself
known to us is up against a measure of objectivity that we encounter nowhere else, under
the compelling claims of his transcendent nature which we can never master. This means
that we may know God truly only through his self-revelation and grace, and hence only in
the mode of worship, prayer, and adoration, in which we respond humbly and obediently
to his divine initiative in making himself known to us personally and savingly through his
Word as our Creator, Lord and Savior. 60

56

Bloesch, God, the Almighty, 12; emphasis added.
Torrance, Theological and Natural Science, 117. In terms of the language I have been using in this thesis, “more
profoundly objective” might be taken to indicate that a person is an ultimate object of knowledge whereas a tree is
merely a proximate object, subordinated to nature. Not only this, but the person-person epistemological relationship
is of a more objective quality than the person-nature one: i.e., a friend can make himself an object of our
understanding by telling us about himself. In this sense, our knowledge of him, this ‘object,’ is more intimate and
directly determined—more objective—than any knowledge we might gain about a tree.
58
Bloesch, God, the Almighty, 61.
59
Torrance, Theological and Natural Science, 122.
60
Torrance, Theological and Natural Science, 122.
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In its dependence on the free action of God,61 Barth argues that true theology can have no
articulable epistemology.62 As God freely gives himself to be known,
He acts towards us as the same triune God that He is in Himself, and in such a way that,
... we receive a share in the truth of His knowledge of Himself. Certainly it is the share
which He thinks proper and which is therefore suitable for us. But in this share we have
the reality of the true knowledge of Himself.63
Theologian Eberhard Jüngel helpfully interprets Barth: the possibility of theology is
grounded in God freely giving his self-interpretation of his own self-knowledge:64 “God
accommodates himself to language in the very same degree, on the very same basis of being, that
God accommodates himself to humanity in the [person of Jesus Christ].”65 This does not mean
that theology, as a human response to revelation, is a perfect or exhaustive description of God:
Theology is modest because its entire logic can only be a human ana-logy to that Word;
analogical thought and speech do not claim to be, to say, to contain, or to control the
original word. But it gives a reply to it by its attempt to co-respond with it; it seeks
expressions that resemble the ratio and relations of the Word of God in a proportionate
and, as far as feasible, approximate and appropriate way.66
However, “it is possible for [humanity] to hear and even speak, and hence also to know,
the Word of God.”67 Otherwise, “any serious hearing and speaking of God’s Word would be
ruled out.”68 Therefore, biblical faith rests in God’s personal address to humanity, by which “we

61

Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1:15.
Barth calls theology a “free science.” It “joyfully respects the mystery of the freedom of its object”—“freed by its
object from any dependence on subordinate presuppositions.” This includes epistemological presuppositions.
Evangelical Theology, 8.
63
Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/1:51. Notably, the misgivings associated with any pseudo-theology that would
conceive knowledge of God as independent and observation-oriented do not apply here.
64
See John Webster, ed., The Possibilities of Theology: Studies in the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel in His Sixtieth
Year (London: T&T Clark, 2004).
65
Eberhard Jüngel as summarized by Archie J. Spencer, “THS 742: Lecture XV,” Christian Theology, March 14,
2011, video, 1:06:31, http://www.christiantheology.ca/videos/ths-742-lecture-xii-2/.
66
Barth, Evangelical Theology, 17.
67
Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1:187.
68
Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1:188-9.
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really know the hidden God,” whose will is “at one with his will disclosed in Jesus Christ”—the
center and goal of Scripture”69 Thus, for Barth, divine revelation is direct and not provisional.70
From a Christian perspective, science may even be understood as more provisional than
theology because there is no omniscient, self-interpreting agent choosing to reveal essential and
adequate knowledge of nature. Recalling figure 3-3, whereas science must rely on axioms and
(reasonable) assumptions, theology rests on God’s promise that his Word is true. Therefore,
theology’s first-tier lens must be understood as faith in God’s promise and not merely a
philosophical assumption: God “exists and ... he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”71

4.2.3

Subjectivity as an Asset
Critics of an objectivist bent have long disparaged theology as “unscientific” for its

subjectivity, which is evident, e.g., in reliance on “ancient authorities and traditions.”72 Polanyi
shows, however, that subjectivity is not at all the liability that objectivist, falsification-centric
thinking makes it out to be. “All our personal and rational activity ... [has] a subjective pole and
an objective pole. The subjective pole is the knowing, believing, acting person, and the objective
pole is ... some reality independent of himself.”73 The scientist’s subjective involvement is an

69

Bloesch, God, the Almighty, 63–4.
While revelation is direct for Barth, knowledge of God is indirect: “At bottom, knowledge of God in faith is
always this indirect knowledge of God, knowledge of God in His works, and in these particular works—in the
determining and using of certain creaturely realities to bear witness to the divine objectivity. What distinguishes
faith from unbelief ... is that it is content with this indirect knowledge of God. It does not think that the knowledge
of God in His works is insufficient. ... [I]t is grateful really to know the real God in His works.” Church Dogmatics,
II/1:17.
71
Heb. 11:6 (NIV). Perhaps by grace this lens may begin (chronologically, not theologically) as something more
philosophical; but in the real, theological sense, it cannot remain that way. Cf. § 4.2.4.2.
72
“In our day, theology has been challenged as a legitimate academic pursuit on at least two main fronts. One is the
question of means, of procedure: Theology is, to put it bluntly, accused of being unscientific. It is hopelessly fraught
with prejudice, it defers to ancient authorities and traditions, and it remains impervious to counter-evidence and
contrary arguments. It constantly drives investigation to foregone conclusions, perverting science into propaganda. It
is the very model of unscientific, anti-intellectual discourse.” John G. Stackhouse Jr., “Putting God in God’s Place:
Does Theology Belong in the University?,” Studies in Religion 45, no. 3 (2016): 379.
73
Torrance, Belief in Science, 11.
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asset that makes science possible: he must bring proper passions to the data, make nonlinear
leaps beyond the data in the moment of discovery, etc.
Science’s enduring paradigms, hard-core theories, and research programs could even be
called traditions. The objectivist may be scandalized: a scientist ought not to impose his own,
subjective understanding on the data! But we have seen that science requires a measure of
legitimate subjectivity. It is of course a problem if certain preconceptions prevent proper
attention to science’s object of knowledge.74 However, there are also needful, legitimate
‘preconceptions’ or ‘traditions’ for scientists. E.g., an early-career physicist does well to use
current, successful theories to interpret data by assuming that they are at least mostly correct—by
trusting that they result from earlier scientists properly attending to nature.
In theology, we bring more than a tentatively successful theory to the ‘data’ of Scripture:
we have the Rule of Faith.75 Again, the notion that one ought to bring a tradition or subjective
viewpoint to the data flies in the face of modern rationalism—a failure to be objective! However,
the core tradition and teachings of Christianity are the result of properly attending to the object of
theology. What we have in the Rule of Faith, therefore, is not an alien preconception imposed on
the Scriptural data, derailing attendance to theology’s proper object. Rather, we have a legitimate
tradition to bring to the Bible.76 It is even more legitimate than for a physicist to tentatively
assume that Einstein’s theories are correct.
This is not to denigrate scholarship that strives to read Scripture ‘objectively’ by
applying, e.g., a grammatical-historical hermeneutic. But it is to say that the Christian’s position

Recall, e.g., Torrance’s discussion of Greek preconceptions in § 2.3.3.1.
See § 3.3.1.
76
So much so that church fathers such as Irenaeus and Tertullian can effectively criticize heretics for using the
wrong tradition to interpret the Scriptures. See, e.g., Allert, A High View of Scripture?, 78–97; Williams, Retrieving
the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism, 87–99.
74
75

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is more enriched than simply being alone in a vacuum with the biblical data. God has taken care
of both the objective and subjective poles involved in biblical interpretation for the church:
objectively, there is the data of Scripture itself; subjectively,77 there is the Rule of Faith as well
as the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. This is another advantage unique to theology.

4.2.4

Objections Roundup 6

4.2.4.1 Preaching and Finality
We now come to the skeptic’s charge that the Christian preaches with finality that which
could only be provisional. First, the truth about God is not provisional from God’s point of view;
his self-knowledge is final. If God has shared a portion of his own self-knowledge with the
Christian, then she enjoys a level of objectivity that outstrips science. Second, the Christian does
not understand herself to be preaching on her own investigational authority, as though she were
delivering the results of her own observations and experiments on the divine. If this were her
understanding, perhaps there would be something intellectually dishonest about her gospel
presentation. However, the Christian preaches with a form of revelatory authority delegated by
Jesus Christ.78 For the skeptic to insist that she cannot possibly speak with this authority is, once
again, to deny a core part of the Christian faith in advance.

4.2.4.2 Proportionate Confidence
The skeptic accuses the Christian of holding her faith disproportionately to the evidence.
First, as we have seen throughout this thesis, the skeptic’s approach to evidence tends to rule out
Christianity in the first place. He imagines a neutral arena for humans to weigh evidence as

77
78

Or at least ‘subjectively’ as the objectivist would understand it.
E.g., Matt. 28:16-20.

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objective, innocent explorers. However, the claims of Christianity cannot be charitably evaluated
this way. At best, we would arrive at some provisional pseudo-theology. Second, the skeptic
insists on a type of evidence that is inappropriate for the modality of reason—and at least
Dawkins, Boghossian, Coyne, and Zara indicate that no evidence could suffice.
Third, suppose the skeptic appreciates the above and that he only speaks of the sort of
evidence that Christian apologists themselves would offer. In this case, he mistakes the
difference between knowing that Christianity is true and showing that it is not necessarily false.
While perhaps evidence is chronologically prior to the Christian’s faith, it cannot be
theologically prior. The Christian might be a former adherent of another religion who left upon
finding evidence that it was false or that the evidence for Christianity was superior. Even in this
case, she is not a Christian because of the evidence but because she exists downstream from an
ongoing, transformative encounter with the Holy Spirit. She has not leapt beyond the
probabilities in the context of some empirical observation—that would be intellectually
dishonest. Instead, she is a new creature. The skeptic thus sets up a target at which the Christian
does not aim, chastising her for missing: a test Christianity could never pass, even if it is true.

4.2.4.3 A Dependent View of Things
It is true that Christians sometimes speak with arrogance and pride, looking down on
non-Christians with an assumed “superior view of things,” as the skeptic complains.79 However,
this is not an attitude taught by Scripture. The Christian ought to speak as one humbled by God’s
gift—someone who has received, not achieved, a perspective informed and transformed by
revelation. “What do you have that you did not receive?” Paul asks the Corinthians. “And if you

79

See § 1.2.2.4.

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did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?”80 “The confidence proper to a
Christian is not the confidence of one who claims possession of demonstrable and indubitable
knowledge. It is the confidence of one who [has] heard and answered the call that comes from
the God through whom and for whom all things were made: ‘Follow me.’”81

4.3 Summary and Next Steps
In this chapter, we have shifted from a largely hypothetical and philosophical posture
toward giving explicitly theological responses to the dishonesty objection. Considering the
uniqueness of theology’s object of knowledge, we can see that theology is more constrained and
objective than science. Theology may face several obstacles unknown to science, but its posture
of dependence on God’s freely given self-knowledge makes theology possible. In this case, the
possibility of theology is also the Christian’s possibility of intellectual honesty amid confident
preaching. The following chapter will address remaining objections as we conclude.

80
81

1 Cor. 4:7. See also Rom. 12:3, Gal. 6:3.
Newbigin, Proper Confidence, 105.

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Chapter 5
Conclusion
This thesis has presented the skeptic’s dishonesty objection from science in its most
potent form. We have rejected falsification as insufficient for understanding all of science, much
less theology. Each object of knowledge—nature and revelation—should be sought on its own
terms, without a priori demands getting in the way. While seeking common ground between the
Christian and the skeptic regarding intellectual honesty and humanity’s finitude under a
transcendent God, we have maintained disagreement on God’s authority and transforming
address toward the Christian. We have responded to nearly all the skeptic’s accusations by
comparing science and theology regarding their similarities and differences. This concluding
chapter addresses the remaining objections, making a final response to the dishonesty objection.

5.1 The Last Roundup
5.1.1

Dishonesty About Science
Despite this defence, the skeptic may yet feel that some form of the dishonesty objection

is warranted by Christian dishonesty about science:1 e.g., the often-repeated claim that had the
universe been old, the lunar lander would have fallen into a deep layer of dust on the moon. In
truth, even before the moon landing, NASA’s engineers, having an ancient understanding of the
universe, “were convinced that the [moon’s] surface would be firm. The foot pads for Surveyor

Dawkins’s complaint (quoted in § 1.1.2) about religious people who “know they are right ... in advance” is made in
a passage on fundamentalist subversion of science. The God Delusion, 319–23.
1

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and for Apollo were designed for landing on a relatively firm surface.”2 Despite being refuted in
print, claims of “missing dust” were repeatedly published in the 1970s and 80s.3
If the skeptic takes Christianity at its best, he must recognize that many Christians in the
sciences advocate for intellectual honesty.4 Some Christian authors hold “missing dust”
advocates accountable: “there is little excuse for writers with advanced degrees in scientific
fields who do not keep themselves informed of technical publications on topics about which they
choose to write.”5 Christian groups such as BioLogos offer correctives to misinformation about
science,6 and church historians point out that the current, problematic relationship between
science and evangelicalism is not intrinsic to the Christian faith.7
Writing about A.D. 415, Augustine of Hippo exhorts Christians to avoid repeating
falsehoods about nature. Given that many non-Christians are acquainted with the study of nature,
he argues that it is “disgraceful and dangerous” for them
to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking
nonsense. ... If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well
Howard J. Van Till, Davis A. Young, and Clarence Menninga, Science Held Hostage: What’s Wrong With
Creation Science and Evolutionism (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1988), 73.
3
It was also presented to me in a tenth-grade science class at a Christian school in Edmonton, AB (1998-99).
Prominent young-earth organizations now recognize the moon dust argument as flawed: “Until new evidence is
forthcoming, creationists should not continue to use the dust on the moon as evidence against an old age for the
moon and the solar system.” Andrew A. Snelling and David Rush, “Moon Dust and the Age of the Solar System,”
Journal of Creation 7, no. 1 (April 1993): 2–42. However, one can still find it presented more recently, e.g., Ron
Calais, “Proof That the Moon Is Young!,” Creation Moments (blog), n.d., accessed January 12, 2022,
https://creationmoments.com/article/proof-that-the-moon-is-young/. For a detailed account of this problematic
claim, see Van Till, Young, and Menninga, Science Held Hostage, chap. 4.
4
The American Scientific Affiliation (which includes its expression in Canada) is a group of scientists and those
interested in the sciences who are committed to honestly holding together science and Christian faith. “About the
ASA,” American Scientific Affiliation, accessed January 19, 2022, https://network.asa3.org/page/ASAAbout;
“About CSCA,” Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation, accessed January 19, 2022,
https://www.csca.ca/about/.
5
Van Till, Young, and Menninga, Science Held Hostage, 81.
6
Deborah Haarsma, Jim Stump, and David Buller, “Beyond ‘Plandemic’: A Christian Response to Conspiracies,”
BioLogos, last modified May 11, 2020, https://biologos.org/articles/beyond-plandemic-a-christian-response-toconspiracies/.
7
Warfield, Noll, and Livingstone, Evolution, Scripture, and Science; Livingstone, David N., Darwin’s Forgotten
Defenders: The Encounter Between Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought (Vancouver: Regent College,
1984); Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1994), chap.
7.
2

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and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to
believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal
life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on
facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?
Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow
on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions
and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books.8
There are indeed Christians who embrace self-defence over self-criticism regarding
modern science, indulging conspiracy theories and bad science in cosmology, geology, biology,
climatology, immunology, etc.—even using Scripture to support their views. However, as
Augustine makes clear above, these are not Christian thinkers at their best. Mature Christian
scholarship is self-critical, avoiding “a simple celebration of everyone and everything that is on
one’s side”9—including pseudoscience that seems to support one’s reading of Scripture.
As a reminder, we cannot readily judge the difference between error and intellectual
dishonesty from the outside. It is complicated to properly relate investigational authority with
revelational authority (a challenge the skeptic does not face). Consequently, there is a publicly
broken relationship between many of God’s scientists and preachers, with well-intentioned, if
mistaken, people on both sides.10 But even for straightforward cases, a best-vs-best approach will
not singly fixate on examples of Christian dishonesty about science.

5.1.2

Dishonesty About Other Religions
The skeptic may be unsatisfied with this defence, arguing (a) that it remains intellectually

dishonest for the Christian to dismiss other religions and (b) that it could be made on behalf of

8

Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis 1.19.
George M. Marsden, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship (New York: Oxford University, 1998), 54.
10
I am highlighting honest mistakes about science made by non-scientist preachers, but non-theologian scientists
can make them about theology too. Being in neither group, I’ve made some mistakes myself.
9

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just about any religion. To be intellectually honest, she would have to try out every single
religion from the inside before choosing Christianity as though it were the best one.

5.1.2.1 A Failure to Investigate?
At first, this may seem to be a most formidable criticism. However, by taking a kata
physin approach and reminding ourselves of the dependent character of all knowledge, we can
ably respond. The problem of position applies here also: just as a Christian cannot stand outside
herself to become another God looking down on theology next to God, neither can she look
down on all human religions and compare them to God in some independent way. Not even a
scientist can look down on all possible paradigms in his field to compare them from the outside.
Again, the Christian does not speak as someone who has ‘done the math,’ calculating
independently that Christianity is the best religion. This would assume human reason as the
highest bar of authority. If the Christian were to adopt such an approach consistently, she would
end up in Coyne’s position: refusing to receive by faith even if given stupendous evidence.
Crucially, as the Christian moves away from revelation—as she relies on her own attempt
to determine the true religion—she becomes like Peter, sinking through the waves when he looks
away from Christ.11 She must resist the temptation: humans have neither the perspective nor the
authority to determine which religion is true. Any such attempt shifts the Christian’s dependence
from God onto herself. She ends up farther away from the knowledge of God, not closer.
Importantly, this is not to dismiss negative apologetics.12 There is no reason the Christian
can’t point out, e.g., that the Book of Mormon reports horses and metallurgy in the Americas

11

Matt. 14:22-33.
There is even a place for positive apologetics, but in a ‘negative mode.’ E.g., “You should become a Christian
because of the historical evidence for the Resurrection” is positive apologetics in a ‘positive mode’—showing that
Christianity is true (Craig). However, “Look at this evidence; don’t listen to skeptics who say there is no historical
12

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before the Europeans brought them here or that genomic evidence strongly contradicts the
Mormon claim that native Americans are descended from Semitic peoples.13 To be intellectually
honest, however, she should be aware of weaknesses and inconsistencies in her own thinking.
She should not point out problems with Mormon archeology if she does not grapple with
challenges to Christian thinking from the same field.14
The Christian should not assume that she has the final balance of evidence in her own
time and culture. What appears to be a sound and convincing argument today may be less
convincing tomorrow. E.g., writing in the early fifth century, Augustine
frankly admits that the books containing the story of Christ belong to an ancient history
that anyone may refuse to believe. Therefore, he turns to the present miracle of the
church as the basis for accepting the authority of Scripture. He saw the very existence of
the mighty and universal church as an overwhelming sign that the Scriptures are true and
divine. ...
... Even if the unbeliever rejects all biblical miracles, he is still left with one stupendous
miracle, which is all one needs, namely, the fact of the whole world believing in
Christianity without the benefit of the Gospel miracles.15
This argument may have been convincing in Augustine’s time and place, but the skeptic would
not find this convincing in the least today.
The Christian is on her most solid footing when the goal of her apologetics is to expose
the shifting cultural pretensions against the knowledge of God in her own time and place so that
(a) that they will not hinder evangelism and (b) any Christians troubled by them can proceed

evidence for the Resurrection” uses the same positive apologetic in a ‘negative mode’—showing that Christianity is
not necessarily false (my approach).
13
Ross J. Anderson, Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Quick Christian Guide to the Mormon Holy Book
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), chap. 7.
14
E.g., Peter Enns says that “Biblical archaeologists are about as certain as you can be about these things that the
conquest of Canaan as the Bible describes did not happen: no mass invasion from the outside by an Israelite army,
and no extermination of Canaanites as God commanded.” The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has
Made Us Unable to Read It (New York: HarperOne, 2014), 58. Whether or not the Christian agrees with Enns, she
should be aware of such challenges. She should not make a nuanced, qualified response while holding her
conversation partner to the most wooden, literalistic understanding of his own religious texts; she should not
compare the most robust Christian defences with the weakest defences of other religions.
15
Craig, Reasonable Faith, 31; Augustine, City of God 22.5.

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with knowing God. Her goal must not be to replace a transforming Christian encounter with a
pseudo-theological ‘certainty’ of her own making. “For no one can lay any foundation other than
the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.”16

5.1.2.2 A Monopolized Defence?
This is an area for further research, but other religions probably could make a defence
like the one in this thesis—at least similar from the skeptic’s perspective. The Christian need not
be troubled, however, for several reasons. First, the Christian faith does not depend upon proving
that adherents of other religions—or even skeptics themselves—are intellectually dishonest. This
is a problem not for the Christian, but for the skeptic: he is the one who must ask himself
whether it is reasonable to suppose that all religious people are intellectually dishonest.17
Second, this objection is similar to one made against Plantinga’s Warranted Christian
Belief—that other religions could also claim warranted belief using his approach.
Interestingly, Plantinga does concede that practitioners of other theistic religions could,
like the Christian, argue with equal cogency that, say, a Muslim version of Plantinga’s
model is epistemically possible, philosophically unobjectionable given the truth of Islam,
and probably warranted in a way similar to that described in the model if Islam is true.
But such a conclusion does not support relativism. It merely shows that there is no de jure
objection to other theistic faiths independent of de facto objections to them.18
Similarly, the de jure dishonesty objection depends on de facto denials of many things necessary
for the Christian faith to be intellectually honest in the first place; if the skeptic has maneuvered
himself into a similar position toward other religions, that is his own problem.

16

1 Cor. 3:11.
There is an important difference between (a) the Christian’s belief—which she accepts on revelational authority—
that she, along with all humanity are subject to a spiritual delusion and (b) the skeptic’s belief—on his own
investigational authority—that all religious people are intellectually dishonest; this is especially curious given that
the skeptic so strongly emphasizes the tentative, provisional nature of his own authority. Nonetheless, such is the
corner he has painted himself into.
18
Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 167.
17

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5.1.3

131

Dishonesty About Falsification
The skeptic accuses the Christian of making non-falsifiable claims while feigning

falsifiability, particularly in the often-repeated claim that Christianity is a falsifiable religion
because finding the bones of Christ would falsify Christianity. This objection presents another
area for further research, but we can offer a brief response by comparing this with another
disagreement about falsification in science. On the one hand, everything said about falsification
in chapter 3 stands: how many anomalies are too many? is an unavoidably personal question,19
and auxiliary hypotheses are discarded before core theories.20 On the other hand, it seems too
much to say that ‘knock-down’ falsification is impossible in principle. It is at least conceivable
that certain knock-down anomalies could directly falsify a core theory.

5.1.3.1 Thought Experiment: Could One Tooth Falsify Evolution?
Dawkins says he would gladly change his mind about evolution “if the necessary
evidence were forthcoming.”21 But identifying and agreeing upon the necessary evidence
involves personal knowledge, as the following disagreement between two Christian thinkers
makes clear. Science-religion scholar Denis Lamoureux emphasizes the provisional, evidencedependent nature of evolutionary theory by describing a potential knock-down anomaly:
I find that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming. Every science that deals with
origins fits tightly together and comes to only one conclusion: the universe and life
evolved. I have experienced the fruitfulness and predictability of the theory of evolution.
Every time a new fossil is discovered, it always fits exactly where it should. I have yet to
see evidence that falsifies biological evolution. In fact, evolution is the easiest theory to
disprove. Find just one human tooth near the bottom of the geological record and you
could destroy evolutionary science. That’s no exaggeration, but I wouldn’t hold my

19

Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 138. See § 3.1.2 above.
Barbour, Religion and Science, 132. See § 3.1.4 above.
21
Dawkins, The God Delusion, 320.
20

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breath waiting for it to happen. I recognize the explanatory power of evolutionary theory.
As many have said, biology makes sense in the light of evolution.22
For Rauser, Lamoureux’s statement is “hyperbolic at best and outright false at worst”:
Evolution is a good theory[,] and good theories are not falsifiable in the way
[Lamoureux] describes because they explain multiple lines of evidence.
Consequently, when recalcitrant facts ... against a theory arise, they tend to be treated as
anomalous exceptions outweighed by the overall explanatory power of [the]
theory. Or they are the catalyst for the theory being amended to some degree to
accommodate the fact.23
Rauser expresses a Kuhnian-Lakatosian view, while Lamoureux stresses something
closer to Popper. However, both refer to the multiple, mutually confirming lines of evidence for
evolution. These thinkers deeply agree—evolutionary theory depends on evidence—while
differing on presentation. Perhaps their disagreement is subtle: Lamoureux might mean, “[if we
were certain we had found] just one human tooth ...”; Rauser might read it as, “[if we noticed
what appeared to be] just one human tooth ... .” Interestingly, Lamoureux’s confidence in
evolution lies in how easy it would be to falsify it, whereas Rauser’s confidence is in how hard it
would be.24 In any case, biologists would have to consider such a find very seriously.25
This thought experiment shows that emphasizing ease of falsification is an unpredictable
method for persuading others to adopt a position. What some thinkers take to be a knock-down
anomaly may not be readily accepted by others.

22

Denis O. Lamoureux et al., Four Views on the Historical Adam, ed. Matthew Barrett and Ardel B. Caneday,
Counterpoints: Bible and theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2013), 40; closing emphasis added.
23
Randal Rauser, “Is Evolution the Easiest Theory to Disprove? A Response to Denis Lamoureux,” Randal Rauser
(blog), May 16, 2014, https://randalrauser.com/2014/05/is-evolution-the-easiest-theory-to-disprove-a-response-todenis-lamoureux/.
24
Rauser, “Is Evolution the Easiest Theory to Disprove? A Response to Denis Lamoureux.”
25
As Coyne puts it, evolution is vulnerable to several possible “observations that, if repeated and confirmed, would
disprove parts of [it],” such as finding “fossils in the wrong place,” “adaptations in one species good only for a
second species,” and “a general lack of genetic variation in species.” Thus, Coyne says evolution is falsifiable “in
the Popperian sense” (although his description seems more Lakatosian). “What Would Disprove Evolution?,” Why
Evolution Is True (blog), July 9, 2012, https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2012/07/09/what-would-disprove-evolution/.

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5.1.3.2 Thought Experiment: Could the Bones of Christ Falsify Christianity?
For Christian apologists like Craig, discovering the bones of Christ (BOC) would be a
knock-down anomaly for the Christian faith. The implication is that this is a live criterion for
falsification of the Resurrection and Christianity along with it. Therefore, apologists argue that
“Christianity is a falsifiable religion. Christianity makes objective claims ... that, by the
evidence, can be either confirmed or disconfirmed.”26 The skeptic argues that by appealing to the
hypothetical BOC, the Christian merely feigns falsifiability.
For fairness’s sake, let’s develop this objection from the skeptic’s point of view.27 To see
the problem more clearly, let’s set up a syllogism:
(a) If the BOC are discovered and verified, then Christianity is falsified.
(b) It is theoretically possible to discover and verify the BOC.
(c) Therefore, it is theoretically possible to falsify Christianity.
For the truthfulness of (a), apologists like Craig appeal to Scripture: “if Christ has not
been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.”28 The
Christian and the skeptic can readily agree that the truthfulness of historic, traditional
Christianity depends on the Resurrection.29 However, similar to the Lamoureux-Rauser
disagreement above, not everyone agrees about knock-down anomalies: there are people who
describe themselves as Christians and yet reject (a).30 Whether the Christian is willing to
recognize their faith as orthodox is beside the point: from the skeptic’s point of view, there is
already a problem with the syllogism.

Craig and McDowell, “Can I Get a Witness?;” emphasis in original.
I.e., I am again playing the role of the accuser for the rest of § 5.1.3.2.
28
1 Cor. 15:14 (NRSV). E.g., Craig and McDowell, “Can I Get a Witness?”
29
I include myself in this group, insisting on a literal, bodily Resurrection.
30
Some scholars, such as John Dominic Crossan, argue that Christianity could remain true, in some sense, without
Jesus’ bodily resurrection. See William Lane Craig et al., Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? A Debate Between
William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998); see also Randal Rauser,
You’re Not as Crazy as I Think: Dialogue in a World of Loud Voices and Hardened Opinions (Downers Grove, IL:
IVP Books, 2012), chap. 7.
26
27

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A more serious problem lies with (b). Even if the alleged BOC were discovered, asks
Boghossian, “what evidence would it take to satisfy [Christians] that they were actually the
bones of Christ?”31 Craig himself doubts that such a discovery could be verified.32 Biologists
could probably verify an out-of-place human tooth, but to verify the BOC would require either
an epistemic miracle or a set of coincidences so unlikely that it might justify belief in God
anyway.33 In fact, (b) is extremely unlikely, if not false altogether. Therefore, we almost
certainly cannot conclude (c). “If ... there would be no way for you to know ... that they were the
bones of Christ, then your belief isn’t falsifiable.”34
Accordingly, Craig’s implied answer to the question, “If the bones of Christ were
discovered, could we falsify Christianity?” is the same as above: doubtful. He doubts
Christianity could be falsified if faced with the bones he says would warrant falsification.
Moreover, his placing of the Holy Spirit over evidence suggests that this discovery should not
warrant falsification for Christians even if the BOC could be authenticated.35 This ‘falsifiable’
Christianity cannot be falsified: the relevant evidence neither could nor should falsify it.
Thus, the skeptic might reasonably ask, is the Christian faith contingent on evidence—
epistemologically provisional—or not? If the answer is Yes, it is misleading to declare

31

Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, 61.
Craig, “Would Finding Jesus’ Corpse Falsify Christianity?”
33
Randal Rauser suggests that if the bones were found “along with documentary evidence that the resurrection was
a hoax staged by the apostles ..., [it] would most certainly disconfirm the resurrection.” The Swedish Atheist, the
Scuba Diver, and Other Apologetic Rabbit Trails (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2012), 78. However, (i) this
narrows further a condition for falsification (finding the bones alone) that is already too narrow to be a meaningfully
live option; (ii) there is ample reason to imagine that Christians would simply dismiss such documentary evidence as
a hoax itself; and (iii) it is hard to see how such documentary evidence could be authenticated in terms of authorship.
Even if it were dated to the time of the apostles, it could have been written by someone antagonistic to Christianity
and placed next to any young-adult male’s bones; moreover, it would not be impossible to mimic the vocabulary and
style of a New Testament author—or simply claim to be an apostle who hadn’t written anything else.
34
Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists, 61.
35
“Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit ... and beliefs based on argument and evidence,
then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter.” Craig, Reasonable Faith, 48. The reader is
reminded that I am taking a Devil’s advocate approach in this paragraph.
32

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independence from future evidence by preaching the gospel with an air of finality, speaking
beyond the evidence’s probabilities. If the answer is No, then it is misleading to claim that the
faith is vulnerable to an empirically live criterion for falsification. If the moment calls for an
intellectually responsible, honest, and careful appearance, the apologist emphasizes her
(impossible) falsification criterion; otherwise, she speaks with an air of final authority that
exceeds what evidence can ever provide.

5.1.3.3 Response
Importantly, not every apologist argues that the Holy Spirit takes precedence over
contrary evidence. However, the skeptic makes an important criticism here. There is a subtle but
significant difference between the mere fact that the truthfulness of Christianity depends on the
Resurrection and the claim that the Resurrection is meaningfully vulnerable to empirical
falsification today. Nonetheless, several responses to the skeptic are warranted.
Notably, Craig and others do not claim Christianity is falsifiable in the scientific sense
but in a looser, historical sense. They do not offer the BOC as a criterion that could lead
Christians to reject the scientific ‘hypothesis’ of Christianity. None of them thinks of Christianity
as a hypothesis. It would be more charitable to understand them this way: they highlight that if
Christianity were false, disconfirming evidence might reasonably be expected. However, we are
now at a distance from the evidence presented to the apostles. It would be best to emphasize the
impact that producing the recognizable body of Christ would have had at that time.
The skeptic rightly points out a tension between emphasis on evidence vs. the Holy
Spirit. This tension is exemplified in competing schools of apologetics and the fact that Christian
traditions and thinkers have debated faith and reason for two millennia. We must refrain from
repeating our preceding discussions of modalities of reason, evidence, and provisionality here.

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Still, many of those ideas apply: the Christian must do justice to both investigational authority
(evidence) and revelational authority (Holy Spirit, etc.); it should not be surprising that the
skeptic can find paradoxes and present them uncharitably.
Turning to the Scripture itself, Paul’s reasoning runs in a direction opposite to the
common apologetic appropriation of 1 Corinthians 15. He writes to Greeks with a cultural
heritage of elevating immaterial things and disparaging material things—such as a resurrected
body. It makes sense that Paul might need to overcome that prejudice: since you are Christians,
don’t you know you must accept a bodily Resurrection? In contrast, it would make no sense for
him to spend his whole letter admonishing, encouraging, and instructing his ostensibly Christian
audience only to pause and try to convince them to become Christians.
Paul is not trying to convince modern skeptics to accept Christianity based on evidence
for a historical Resurrection: his task is not even to convince the Corinthians that Christianity is
true because of the Resurrection—but to admonish them to accept the bodily Resurrection by
virtue of their Christianity. He uses reductio ad absurdum: “if there is no resurrection of the
dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation
has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.”36 “Paul then uses deliberative rhetoric to
underline the disadvantages or (here) disastrous consequences of such a denial: faith is empty;
the apostles are false witnesses; there is no release from sin; dead believers are lost.”37 I.e., if you
reject the bodily Resurrection, you’re implying that your own faith is useless! Paul expects his
already-Christian audience to balk at the consequences of rejecting the bodily Resurrection. He is

36

1 Cor. 15:13-14 (NRSV).
Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, ed. I. Howard
Marshall and Donald A. Hagner, The New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William
B. Eerdmans, 2000), 1177.
37

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not saying, look how easy our faith would be to falsify; he is saying, look how serious the
consequences of denying bodily resurrection are.
If it is impossible to verify the BOC, Christianity is not falsifiable concerning such a find.
Not only is it misleading for the Christian to imply otherwise, but by appealing to falsification as
an epistemic virtue for faith, she implies that objectivist human reason is a standard by which
revelation may be judged worthy of human assent. The fact that some liberal Christians are
willing to depart with a literal Resurrection while professing some form of the faith further
complicates the matter.38 Finally, Scripture makes a point opposite to the common apologetic
appropriation. The Christian should refrain from saying Christianity is falsifiable (today)
concerning the BOC; she should thank skeptics like Boghossian for highlighting this error.
However, nothing above shows that the Christian faith is inevitably intellectually dishonest—
only that Christians can make overstatements. Intellectual honesty concerns what Christians do
after this is made known to them.

5.1.3.4 An Elaborately Constructed Delusion?
Finally, the skeptic may reply that the Christian’s long-winded theology and philosophy
talk only commits her more deeply to her delusion. Everything above is a needlessly elaborate
retreat further into the Christian’s confirmation bias, and not unlike the solipsist with flowers on
his nightstand, she has crossed her own point of no return. She is so afraid of trusting her own
human reason that she would say anything to get out of it. The skeptic can only listen helplessly
as she defines beings and their bizarre requirements into existence. Is God unfalsifiable? That’s
the skeptic’s fault for expecting falsification at all. Is the Christian self-defensive instead of self-

38

Again, I am not claiming to personally recognize this as orthodox Christian faith—only that this is a problem for a
positive apologetic that invokes the BOC as a live falsification criterion.

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critical? No problem: she can invent her own personal standard for self-criticism. Does the
Christian believe things beyond evidence? Concoct a way to make theology look good. Is the
Christian unable to defend her view? Get out ahead of the problem by drawing attention to it ad
nauseam and inventing a term for it, such as “the problem of position.”
Such an objection does exemplify the problem of position, of course—including the very
criticism of the idea. This is the consequence of suggesting to human reason that it is not the
highest court of authority. The Christian is well aware of how things look without the eyes of
faith: she appears more delusional than a self-described time traveller who claims to bring
knowledge back from the future; more eccentric than someone who describes her alien
abduction.39 Accordingly, she cannot expect to answer the dishonesty objection in a way that will
satisfy the skeptic or anyone else who comes to “the mystery of life with the certainty that
human reason can at length entirely resolve the mystery,”40 assuming it can be solved. Given the
choice between cultural respectability and intellectual honesty toward her transforming
encounter, she chooses the latter and everything that comes with it.

5.2 A Pretension Against the Knowledge of God
We have heard the skeptic’s dishonesty objection in its strongest form, addressing it
throughout this thesis. Having articulated a Christian understanding of science and theology, we
can see that the dishonesty objection depends on anti-theological assumptions.

39

She would have legitimate, unassailable authority to speak about her experience in both cases. However, these
examples do not carry the same offence as true theology. A time traveller has information—observational
expertise—but she does not have authority above human reason itself.
40
Reinhold Niebuhr, Discerning the Signs of the Times: Sermons for Today and Tomorrow (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1949), 172.

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5.2.1

139

Intellectual Hypocrisy
The dishonesty objection tolerates from science what it considers dishonest from

Christianity. Science may uncritically accept the encounter with its ultimate object of knowledge
as veridical, but theology cannot. Science may depend on its object for knowledge without
permission from any other knowledge project, but theology may not. Science may receive its
object as what it really is, under the licence of humanity to probe it for knowledge, but theology
may not receive its object as properly beyond the human right to control it. Scientists may warn
their students away from pseudoscience, but theologians must not criticize pseudo-theologies.
The object of science has corrective authority, but theology cannot look to its own object as
authoritative. Scientists may personally commit to scientific paradigms with universal intent, but
theological paradigms must be shown one-hundred percent certain before committing to them.
The axioms of science are permissible, but the Rule of Faith is not. This is intellectual hypocrisy.

5.2.2

Intellectual Prejudice
The dishonesty objection excludes in advance the possibility of revealed, authoritative,

and transformative theological knowledge as Christian thinkers understand it. There can be no
evidence to bring the skeptic to faith because human reason cannot justify an authority higher
than itself; at most, trickster aliens might exist. Epistemological inversions are not thinkable: if
God exists, he must join humanity in a neutral arena of being where humanity can observe and
arrive at his authority as the end-product of reason. Even if such a God were to incarnate himself,
he must not come on his own authority;41 his authority must be underwritten and co-signed by
human authority. Under no circumstances may theology suggest that human reason is impaired

41

Cf. Matt. 7:28-29.

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or limited in scope, for “we ... are the explorers, ... [and] the real questions are the ones we
formulate and put to the universe.”42 The very idea of a way of knowing over which we are not
masters is oxymoronic. This is intellectual prejudice.

5.2.3

Intellectual Dishonesty
The skeptic’s de jure objection is thus dependent on de facto denials. By virtue of

intellectual hypocrisy and prejudice, the dishonesty objection erects a standard that Christianity,
even if true, could never meet. This is indeed a “pretension ... against the knowledge of God,”43
and the skeptic must now choose between addressing his error or embracing intellectual
dishonesty in making the dishonesty objection. Regardless, the charge that the Christian faith is
less intellectually honest than science does not follow from a comparison between the two; at its
best, the Christian faith is just as honest about God as the best science is about nature.
One last word. I have found that nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the
work of an apologist. No doctrine of that Faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one
that I have just successfully defended in a public debate. For a moment, you see, it has
seemed to rest on oneself: as a result, when you go away from that debate, it seems no
stronger than that weak pillar. That is why we apologists take our lives in our hands and
can be saved only by falling back continually from the web of our own arguments, as
from our intellectual counters, into the Reality — from Christian apologetics into Christ
Himself. That also is why we need One another’s continual help — oremus pro
invicem.44

42

Newbigin, Proper Confidence, 104.
2 Cor. 10:5 (NIV).
44
Latin, “Let us pray for one another.” C. S. Lewis, “Christian Apologetics,” in God in the Dock: Essays on
Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1999), 103.
43

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