Tag Archives: Vern Poythress

Science and the Beauty of God

05 Tuesday Aug 2014

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In “Surfing the Universe,” Benjamin Wallace-Wells, of physics as a search for beauty:

Physicists have long looked to higher math for insights into the workings of the universe. “If a figure is so beautiful and intricate and clear, you figure it must not exist for itself alone,” John Baez, a professor of mathematics at the University of California at Riverside, said. “It must correspond to something in the physical world.” This instinct—the assumption that beauty will stand in for truth—has become a habit. Some physicists now worry that string theory’s mathematics have grown permanently unmoored from the real world—an exercise in its own complexity. And so modern theoretical physics has become, in part, an argument about aesthetics.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/07/21/surfing-the-universe

Interestingly, Poythress explains that seeing such beauty is right, because such beauty is a disclosure of God:

Scientific laws, especially “deep” laws, are beautiful. Scientists have long sifted through possible hypotheses and models partly on the basis of the cri­teria of beauty and simplicity. For example, Newton’s law of gravitation and Maxwell’s laws of electromagnetism are mathematically simple and beauti­ful. And scientists clearly expect new laws, as well as the old ones, to show beauty and simplicity. Why?

 

The beauty of scientific laws shows the beauty of God himself. Though beauty has not been a favorite topic in classical expo­sitions of the doctrine of God, the Bible shows us a God who is profoundly beautiful. He manifests himself in beauty in the design of the tabernacle, the poetry of the Psalms, and the elegance of Christ’s parables, as well as the moral beauty of the life of Christ.

 

The beauty of God himself is reflected in what he has made. We are more accustomed to seeing beauty in particular objects within creation, such as a butterfly, or a lofty mountain, or a flower-covered meadow. But beauty is also displayed in the simple, elegant form of some of the most basic physical laws, like Newton’s law for force, F = ma, or Einstein’s formula relating mass and energy, E = mc2. Why should such elegant laws even exist? Beauty is also dis­played in the harmony among different areas of science, and the harmony between mathematics and science that scientists rely on whenever they use a mathematical formula to describe a physical process.

 

Poythress, Vern S. (2006-10-13). Redeeming Science: A God-Centered Approach (Kindle Locations 369-377). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

 

Logic as a Person

11 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Christology, Image of God, imago dei, Thinking, Trinity, Vern Poythress, Wisdom

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Dr. Poythress in his recent book Logic contends that logic’s existence reveals God and exists because of God. He first ties together two proposition: (1) God is Lord over all (Psalm 103:19); and (2) “[L]ogic is not created. Philosophers have maintained that it ‘just is'” (63). If we try to place God over logic, then logic somehow is a/the Lord of God.

Poythress notes three aspects of the character of God. “First, God is dependable and faithful in his character” (63). Thus God by nature holds a logical consistency with whom he is. He is a God who “cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). Second, God alone is the Creator — nothing stands above him and nothing stands independently of him. Therefore, his consistency and attributes must be part of who he is: the logical coherence of his being provides the substance of logic. Third, human beings are made in the image of God and think God’s thoughts after God. He quotes Van Til, to the effect that we “think God’s thoughts after Him analogically” (64).

Our logic reflects God’s logic. Logic, then, is an aspect of God’s mind. Logic is universal among all human beings in all cultures, because there is one God, and we are all made in the image of God….Whenever we reason, we are imitating God whether we recognize it or not. The only alternative is insanity, which means the disintegration of the image God in us. 64.

Thus, human logical enterprises an attempt to describe this aspect of God’s character.

Poythress goes on to contend that logic is a personal, not an impersonal, attirbute. He notes that logic is an aspect of human thought — it is not the activity of rocks or trees. Moreover, logic is embedded within language and moves through language. The Bible further teaches that creation itself is the result of rational speech, that is, logical enterprise.

He then notes the manner in which the Bible makes plain this rational speech of God is the Word of God, the Logos:

Logic, we said, is personal. Now it becomes more evident why it is personal. It not only personal, but a person, namely, the Word of God. But we should be careful to underline the the fact that this person, the second person of the Trinity, is much richer than our human conceptions, either of logic or of reason or of language as a whole. He is infinite, an infinite person, with all the richness of God himself: “for in him [Christ] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col. 2:9). Thus logic in a narrow sense is only one aspect of who God is. (71).

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Book Review (Part Four): Inerrancy and Worldview: Answering Modern Challenges to the Bible, Vern Poythress

12 Friday Apr 2013

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Part Four: The Impersonalist Misreading of Scripture

          Poythress identifies two basic worldviews.  On one hand, he identifies the biblical worldview of a personal God who “upholds all things by the word his power” (Hebrews 1:3): “The laws derive from God’s speech, which is the speech of a personal God. But our modern culture has moved away from this kind of regularity” (52).

          The opposing worldview sees such regularity not as the kind action of a loving God, but rather as the blind action of an enormous machine, “[O]ur modern culture has moved away from this kind of conception of regularity. The nineteenth century saw the triumph of natural science in interpreting the physical aspect of the cosmos. Nineteenth-century natural science produced a kind of mechanistic model of the universe, which could be easily interpreted as implying a kind of mechanistic model of the universe …a universe governed by impersonal law” (52). He calls this worldview “impersonalism” (30).

          Drawing out the theological implications, Poythress notes that the impersonal view begins without God’s existence: “[I]t substitutes the God of the Bible for a kind of god of its own invention, in the form of impersonal laws. The god is the substitute for the real thing, and that sense, an idol” (53).

          But what of polytheism? Poythress notes that if all things are ultimately and only physical matter, human beings and trees really are the same. The natural human desire for some spirituality combined with a materialism has a tendency to invest the physical world with spirits. 

          Such a thing is seen in ancient polytheism, where physical things: winds, ocean, rivers, stars, et cetera are understood to be gods worthy of reverence.  In modern times, a full-fledged religion is rare as with respect to physical items (although it is not completely absent). More often it takes a more diffuse superstition, “Everyday people within advanced industrial societies are looking into astrology and fortune-telling and spirits ….That direction may seem paradoxical. But ….If a materialist viewpoint is correct, all is one” (31).

          I spoke recently with a scientist and professor from one of the most prestigious universities in the world.  He casually mentioned that his materialist science colleagues were “very superstitious”. When I questioned him, he thought the matter beyond quibble.

          Poythress goes onto draw out the religious commitment of such pantheism: When a viewpoint includes spirits and gods, it may in a sense appear to be personalist. But ultimately it is impersonalist, because the “one” dissolves what is distinctive in persons” (31).

          In the book, Poythress demonstrates and works out the impersonalist convictions which underlie modern disciplines of science, history, linguistics, history, sociology, anthropology and psychology. In particular, he shows how such presuppositions necessarily will undermine any value for the Bible, but assuming at the outset that the Bible is cannot be true:  What he means is that the Bible describes a personal God uphold the world. The impersonalist presuppositions which underscore modern study assume such a God cannot and does not exist.

          To demonstrate the nature of such misreading of Scripture, Poythress interacts with the biblical texts in light of various disciples. By drawing out the impersonalist presuppositions in such disciplines, he exposes the manner in which such disciplines create conflict and confusion – not because it exists in the text, but rather because the presuppositions cannot account for or incorporate the claims of Scripture.

          I remember my anthropology professor in college discussing his works among pygmies in Africa. The pygmies lived in the forest and rarely saw anything more than thirty feet away (I don’t remember the precise distance, but it was not far – due to the extremely dense vegetation). When he took some people out to the plains and showed them large animals at a great distance, they thought the animals were very small – not far away. Their understanding of the world did not include the fact that things far away would look small.

          The impersonalist cannot rightly see the universe or Scripture, because he cannot admit to the evidence of God’s personhood – even though such denial comes at the cost of one’s own humanity.[1]

[1] Poythress does note that the regularity – but not utter and absolute uniformity – of God’s interaction with creation permits impersonalist “laws” to approximate some aspects of reality. For the good and value of God’s consistent regulation of the natural world, see God in the Shadows, by Dr. Brian Morley.

Book Review (Part Three): Inerrancy and Worldview: Answering Modern Challenges to the Bible, Vern Poythress

11 Thursday Apr 2013

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Part Three: Religious Gullibility and Dehumanizing Idolatry

          Poythress works out the trouble of the materialism in a section on religious gullibility.  The skeptic will appreciate that Poythress does not rule skepticism out-of-court, “Skepticism about religious belief should not be dismissed too quickly. It is a counterfeit, which means that it is close to the truth. It has seen some things to which we do well to pay attention” (221).

          Some questioning of religious claims is necessary, because human beings have a built-in vulnerability: Due the Fall (Genesis 3), human beings have a deep seated need for God: this is expressed in longing for significance, safety, assurance. The extraordinary desire for such things leads human beings to accept counterfeits: sort of like the young lover who overlooks extraordinary faults solely because the lover’s desire is so great. “I don’t care if he steals and lies, he is wonderful!”

          Gullibility is the cost of trying to remedy the damage of the Fall without seeking the remedy of God in Jesus Christ.  

          The things desired by the human being supersede any other commitment to truth or life: such things become one’s ultimate commitments and thus control all understanding in one’s life. Ultimate commitments which do not terminate in God are by nature extremely dangerous, because they will destroy the human being seeking them.

Such desires are in fact gods:

When we forsake the true God, we make commitments to ultimates that become substitutes for the true God. In other words, we commit ourselves to counterfeits. We worship them. Worship is an expression of ultimate commitment. The Greeks had their gods whom they worshipped. Modern people may worship money, or sex, or power (223).

This is the real trouble with our desire for satisfaction when de-coupled from God:

This is how idolatry functioned in Old Testament. The fundamental problem with the Israelites in the Old Testament was that they reserved for themselves the prerogative to determine what they needed and when they needed it, instead of trusting the Lord. The self-oriented hearts of the Israelites then looked to the world (the neighbors in their midst) and followed their lead in blowing to gods that were not God in order to satisfy the lusts of their self-exalting hearts. When this is comprehended, it portrays the terrible irony of Israelite false worship. When the Israelites followed the lead of their neighbors and bowed before blocks of wood, that act of false worship underlined their desire for autonomy and, in an ironic way, was an exultation of themselves even more than of the idol. The idol itself was incidental; (in our world it could be a pornographic picture, a spouse as the particular object of codependency, or an overprotective mother’s controlling fear attached specifically to her children) the self-exalting heart was the problems, which remains the problem today.

The main problem sinful people have is not idols of the heart per se. The main problem certainly involves idols and is rooted in the heart, but the idols are manifestations of the deeper problem. The heart problems is self-exultation, and idols are two or three steps removed. A self-exalting heart that grasps after autonomy is the Grand Unifying Theory (GUT) that unites all idols. Even though idols change from culture to culture and from individual to individual within a culture, the fundamental problem of humanity has not changed since Genesis 3: sinful people want – more than anything in the whole world – to be God.[1]

          Such an idolatrous heart necessarily seeks for some manner to escape from God (Romans 1:18). While those who reject God are rarely as expressive as Huxley, Huxley does make the confession of impersonalism plain:

For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries,  the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an  instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was  simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever.

Aldus Huxley, Ends and Means (1946), 272. A copy of the work may be found here: http://www.archive.org/stream/endsandmeans035237mbp/endsandmeans035237mbp_djvu.txt As Poythress writes of such a one, “His ultimate commitment is to himself as ultimate. That commitment has been labeled autonomy….In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, … this desire for autonomy, the rule of the self by the self, and alleged infinite freedom that might go with it have been overlaid by materialism or impersonalism” (229).

          And here is the real terror and sorrow of such idolatry: The desire for some satisfaction without God requires one to abandon a personal God – and thus requires one to rejection themselves as a person. Idolatry comes at the cost of dehumanizing oneself.

          Yet, the lure of idols is so great that we human beings will ruin our lives rather than leave off the chase, “It is hopeless, for I have loved foreigners [idols] and after them I will go” (Jeremiah 2:25).

          The only solution for such deception is the redemptive work of God in Jesus Christ.

Poythress exposes the impersonalism presupposed by the various disciplines which interact with the Bible. – That will be discussed in part four.

[1] Heath Lambert, The Biblical Counseling Movement After Adams (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 148.

Book Review (Part Two): Inerrancy and Worldview: Answering Modern Challenges to the Bible, Vern Poythress

11 Thursday Apr 2013

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Part Two: The Self-Destruction of Impersonalism.

          From the title, one might expect to read of the 40 “hardest” challenges to the Bible: the sort of book where one explains Cain’s wife and the genealogies of Jesus.  Yet, rather than consider isolated “problems” Poythress confronts the basic worldview which confronts the Bible: impersonalism.

          Any thorough, consistent worldview must come to grips with the fact that human beings are personal.  Yes, theists must answer the question of “If God is real, then why he is invisible?”[1]

          But, materialist must answer the question of person:  the materialist must say that he does not actually exist as a person. His thoughts are solely the result of physical processes — just like water boiling or freezing. Indeed, the experience of the thought is ultimately an illusion.

          Now this leads to all sort of nonsense: If my thoughts are merely complex mechanical processes, then the thoughts are compelled. My thinking that the world is merely material/impersonal is compelled by materialism.  I cannot “know” the truth of the process, because I have no choice in the process. My knowledge of materialism is as compelled by physics as it water freezing or boiling.

          If that is true then nothing is true or false, good or evil: these are and are not (although I could not know that – I actually can only point to other physical processes responding to previous physical processes – and even that may not be a real pointing, because  it is only a physical process itself: just like the turtles holding up the world, there are only previous physical processes all the way down – which itself cannot be known to be true: it’s like a hall of mirrors, except that there is not “real” object reflected in the mirrors, here there is only mirrors).

          The materialist – or as Poythress calls him, an impersonalist (he actually uses the word “impersonalism”, (30) must answer the question of why he has a mind, why he can think. The impersonalist must explain why he would hate one who would injury his family – and why he has love for his family.  The impersonalist must give an account for the fact of persons at all.

          Now the proposition that person arises from matter in motion is nonsense.[2]  This is usually obscured by philosophical jargon and complex arguments. But in the end, the fact of the passion and the arguments undercuts the entire proposition. I find it far more sensible to start with the fact that you and I are persons, and answer the question of God’s invisibility; than to start with plasma (the almost gas stuff, not the blood stuff) and end up with Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.

          Poythress notes this trouble in the discussion of religious gullibility. While he will go on to express some admiration for skepticism of religious claims (see part two), he notes the trouble with such materialist rejection of God.
He notes the greatest strength of the materialist/impersonalist mindset does not derive from the strength of the argument, but rather from its commonality in the culture, “This kind of materialist explanation of religious belief has a considerable plausibility in our time because materialism itself is widespread and lends its support. In addition … materialism carries with it some of the prestige of natural science” (220).

          However, as noted above, skeptical materialism ends up as eating its tail, “When this principle is followed consistently, it leads to the conclusion that beliefs in general must be debunked. And that includes the belief in materials, belief in evolution, and belief in brain structures. The debunker ends up with no grounds on which to stand to do his debunking” (220).

[1] It is a trick question: it is sort of like “Do you still engage in illegal activities?” The trouble comes from combining two (or more) questions into one sentence: Have you ever engaged in an illegal activity? If you have, do you still do so?  Lawyers would object that he question assumes facts not in evidence. Debate coaches would call it the fallacy of many questions.

 

The question about God being invisible first assumes as true the proposition; Everything which is real is visible (or otherwise subject to physical measurement). Let us ask that question first: Is everything real/true subject to physical measurement? The answer is “No.” The very act of thinking about the question is a thing not subject to physical measurement.

 

Even if it is true that every thought must correlate to brain activity (that is itself a problematic proposition), it does not further mean that every thought is brain activity. The thought, the subjective reflection is not physical.  A player runs all the bases and comes Home in a baseball game. The player touching home plate corresponds to a score, but touching the home plate is not the score. You get a point for touching home plate, but the point is not the act of touching home plate.

 

Interestingly the most certainly “real” knowledge we possess is knowledge of things which are not physical.  You may misperceive the physical world (poor light, hallucination, et cetera). You may have a mistaken or confused thought about some aspect of the external world. But, you can never be confused as to the fact of your own perception or thought. The mental state may not correspond correctly (another rabbit trail) to the physical world, but the fact of the thought is certain to you.

 

The question asked of God corresponds to a non-physical reality: true or false. Neither the truth nor falsity are physical, although both are real.

 

God is by nature incorporeal – as our all our thoughts, emotions, hopes – as is truth, beauty, goodness, faith, hope & love. Such is made of that which is most certain and most real.  In short, it’s a trick question.

[2] Poythress notes, “Materialists conveniently ignore the evidence that does not fit, just as the person who consults fortune tellers ignores the cases where the alleged fortune does not pan out” (229).

Book Review (Part One): Inerrancy and Worldview: Answering Modern Challenges to the Bible, by Vern Poythress

10 Wednesday Apr 2013

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Part One: A Quick Note of Approval

          I will interact with the basic arguments of the book, in parts 2-4. But to start, I will say the following: I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Poythress writes in a clear, logical and thoughtful manner.  He seeks to teach, to explain and persuade. And, he succeeds in his desire.

          He avoids two troubles common to books which concern difficult, abstract concepts: First, he thoroughly explains and illustrates the concepts. Nothing remains a free-floating concept. He tethers everything to the ground. Second, he never draws out illustrations to the point of tedium. The illustrations move the argument along.

          He never burdens the reader with anything obscure for the sake of appearing abstruse (although if anyone has the right to appear recondite, a dual doctor, which includes a Harvard PhD in mathematics, would be the one). Or to avoid the error of which I complain, He doesn’t use big words or hard ideas so that you know he is smart – even though he is …very.

           He raised and combined ideas which I had not previously considered. In particular, I came to appreciate the pervasive effect of defective presuppositions upon the disciplines of history and sociology. I particularly like the manner in which he drew out the impersonalism of modern thought. In doing so, he disclosed a point which one could not deny when shown it plainly – and yet one which I had never properly appreciated before.

          Throughout the book, Poythress grounds his argument in a Christian worldview – all the while explaining the nature of that worldview upon the observation of the world.  And, as a good disciple of Christ must, he not only strengthens and encourages the brothers (Acts 15:32), but he also proclaims the Lordship of Jesus and the Gospel as he goes.

          In short, the book did the two things a book should do: teach and delight.  It is well worth the time to read thoroughly.