Can non-Christian views be internally consistent?

Christian View

The Christian Perspective

Non-Christian worldviews cannot be internally consistent.

While the above statement is true, proving it is a different matter. However, its truth follows from the basics of the Christian faith. Since, in Christian theology, the Christian God is understood to be necessary, any deviation from that which is necessary would be impossible, entailing a logical contradiction. Specifically, to claim a deviation from that which is necessary would be to claim that what is necessary is also not necessary, at the same time and in the same way.

Pointing out why some particular detail of the Christian faith is necessary, and why any deviation from it thus yields incoherence, is one of the primary activities of the Christian apologist.

I myself have dealt with the existence of God, the absence of more than one ultimate God, the intimate involvement of God in our present moment, the omniscience of God, and the plurality of persons in the Godhead in deductive form.

Other Christian apologists such as Justin Martyr, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Isaac Newton, Descartes, Pascal, Van Til, and C.S. Lewis have striven to do likewise, dealing with some of the same questions and many others as well.

Let's look at an example. Scripturally, we see that God exists in one particular necessary sense in that nothing has come into being apart from Him (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16). If things could come into being through a different mechanism, then it would not be necessarily true that nothing can come into being apart from Him. However, it is true, therefore the Biblical God is necessary for the existence of any created thing.

Thus, any view that posits the coming-into-being of anything must also posit the existence of the Christian God. Otherwise, things could come into being apart from Him, and we as Christians know this cannot happen. Other worldviews positing that things have come into being are missing a necessary prerequisite for the coming-into-being-of-things, namely, the Christian God.

It would be as though I claimed that I have a square with no right angles. You can't have a square with no right angles. That would be a contradiction.

Things can't come into being without the Christian God. That would likewise be a contradiction.

So, any view positing things-coming-into-being, and not-the-Christian-God, is a contradictory worldview, just like any worldview positing squares with no right angles.

In Christianity, however, the Christian God guarantees that all things are perfectly coherent and consistent. He cannot contradict Himself (2 Timothy 2:13; Exodus 3:14), and, as we have already seen, all of creation is His invention. This guarantees creation's non-contradictory nature as well. Because the Christian God exists, it is actually possible for humans to know things. Because the Christian God exists, humans can engage in science, math, and philosophy, all of which would be impossible apart from Him. In the Christian God are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3).

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So you can prove that non-Christian worldviews cannot be internally consistent if you start by having faith that Christianity is true and internally consistent.

Circularity at its absolute finest.

— Anonymous

Do you mean that it isn't even theoretically possible for non-christian worldview to ? Because I can imagine dozens that are. If you cut the infinite regress out of Hinduism for example it makes perfect sense. This is incompatible with Christianity, but it is possible.

— Sam Burke

Sam,

The idea of something making sense to us and it being truly coherent are not quite the same thing. When I watch a movie, it doesn't occur to me that none of the characters have used a restroom in three weeks. It doesn't seem impossible at all while I'm engrossed in the movie. It's entirely reasonable, but only because I'm not really thinking about how the human body works. Things often seem reasonable to us when in fact they are not... because we just can't see the problems: we aren't omniscient. But our failure to see it doesn't mean the incoherence isn't there. Since the Christian God is necessary, if follows that any view that denies the Christian God is necessarily impossible. Obviously, though, those who do not recognize my premise as being true will not find cause to accept my conclusion. But I believe it does follow.

— Timothy McCabe

There is no reason to think the Christian God is necessary, even if I accept all of your arguments because it doesn't rule out for example a God who has shared divinity only twice or 4 times or even 3 but didn't write the Bible or any other text. You have stated that we are not omniscient and all Non-Christian worldviews have unknown contradictions. I agree we don't know everything. Quantum Physics often seems contradictory, like when virtual particles pop in and out of existence, I have no doubt that it is non-contradictory to God. The same goes with Free Will. Free Will seems like the most ludicrous thing on earth, but it must be true. If your right then we have no basis to believe almost anything. If God predestined everything then every mistake is intended by God. How are we to know that are beliefs aren't mistakes planned by God? We can't know.Free Will is neither predestined nor random but in between. It seems ludicrous, but it must be true. (continued.)

— Sam Burke

Clearly many people's beliefs are wrong, and this is predestined by God on your view. Further it seems like an unreasonable thing to say that you an non-omniscient being knows what an omniscient God thinks when it is not logically necessary. I see no reason that Christianity must be true. And there are irrefutable reasons why Christianity cannot be true as I am beginning to point out on our other discussions.

— Sam Burke

This is where I stop agreeing with Presuppositional apologetics. I admire the method and use it for Deism, but when you start to say that all other beliefs are incoherent then you are moving from Reasonable Faith to Blind Faith. If you have some subjective proof of Jesus then you may be justified in that belief, but when using it against an unbeliever you may want to argue differently. Also I'm curious about where in the Bible you get the idea that all non-christian worldviews are incoherent, the fact that the Bible says that all things come from God doesn't mean other God's aren't theoretically possible. Using reason, I suspect God could imagine at least dozens of worldviews that are coherent. You could of course say that God only allows non-christians to have incoherent worldviews which I see nothing wrong with. But I would still appreciate some Biblical evidence.

— Sam Burke

The Problem with Van Tillian Apologetics is that it could only (even if it's arguments were successful in demonstrating the existence of a Triune God) establish the probability of the Christian God. It is not impossible that a triune God that is not the Biblical one exists. Of course it would be reasonable to believe in the Biblical God if that was the case. This is the flaw in Van Til's idea and a strength in Clarkian apologetics which to my understanding recognizes this fact.

— Sam Burke

Sam,

I understand that same key difference between Clark and Van Til in much the same way you do. Clark seems to have asserted that coherence is the thing to shoot for, and Christianity is coherent. Van Til seems to have asserted that coherence is the thing to shoot for, and ONLY Christianity is coherent.

But... take a look at this argument:

P1. Worldview X asserts that it matches reality.
P2. Worldview X asserts Y.
P3. Reality is not-Y.
C1. Worldview X therefore asserts both Y (from P2) and not-Y (from P1 and P3 combined).
C2. Worldview X is therefore incoherent.

By this logic, every false worldview is incoherent. If Christianity is true, then every worldview that contradicts it is false, and thus ultimately incoherent. Since I believe Christianity is true, I am therefore obligated to see all contradicting views as incoherent, even if I cannot myself find the flaw.

— Timothy McCabe

I grant that if Christianity is true then all other religions don't match reality and I will even grant that if Christianity is true then all worldviews that contradict are false. But in terms of proving Christianity, if it is coherent and certain non Christian worldviews are incoherent then it doesn't follow that Christianity is true. You could say that "the odds of uninspired people getting all of this right is very low, but that is an evidential argument.

— Sam Burke

Here is the analogy I would use. Even if I agreed with all of your arguments (against Atheism, Polytheism, monotheism sans trinity, the idea that we can pay our debt to the creator, etc) it does not follow that Christianity. One could imagine a religion that says all of these things and yet Jesus does not follow. It could be another savior who has somewhat different doctrines then Jesus. For your point out about all worldviews that are wrong being contradictory, I suspect we are talking about different things. I am referring to internally contradictory, not whether they contradict actual reality. It is not internally contradictory to imagine that God in a hypothetical world could have made it so that I would not have decided to post this comment. (I changed my mind about free will) Would you agree that it is coherent for God to have had different motives in a slightly different hypothetical world?

— Sam Burke

Can non-Christian views be internally consistent?

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