More Apologetics

It's been a great week of conversation with an old friend from high school who is perhaps a more devout atheist than I am Christian. It takes me back to my apologetics class and reminds me that there are a few ways to go about the business of talking about God. The three that I have in mind are:

1. Argue from creation
2. Cumulative case
3. Presuppositionalism

When I had to do a paper on this I argued in favor of cumulative case. However, the more time I spend in the Word and the more time I spend chatting with my friend I think I am becoming more of a presuppositionalist. For example, I wrote this:

If I understand the materialist view correctly (please correct me if I don't) then through random chance some amino acids came together and become something that we call "life." This first single-cell organism somehow managed to do the things that living creatures do including reproduce itself, which it did when the conditions were right. Of course, if the conditions weren't right the first time then random chance had to bring more amino acids together again and so on. Now these organisms kept reproducing and of course the numbers get big very quickly when you multiply by 2. Over time some mutations of these organisms started forming multicell organisms and they were able to thrive in their environment. I think of sponges for example. Over time through random chance and mutation some of the cells started to differentiate and you have the earliest systems in animals (i.e flatworms). As time wore on this happened again and again. Eventually you end up with mammals. Through chance the species started to differentiate because of their environment. Over time members of these different species, which only exist through random chance, happened upon each other as male and female and were able to reproduce. This means that these random chances had to happen in duplicate, but with different sexes. Also, as those male and female animals happened to evolve in the same general area so they could find each other neither one managed to fall off a cliff, get eaten, etc before their first encounter.

And he wrote back saying that I pretty much had it right, though apparently there are ways to explain the problem of the male and female of the new species. He then went on to make the point that what I see as preposterous he sees as what must happen given enough time for it all to cook.

So clearly the argument from design isn't working. We've had some similar discussions about the problems of good and evil.

What this is boiling down to is our presuppositions. He admits that he does not have total knowledge, but chafes at the idea of a "black box" to explain anything. On the other hand, I know that I do not have total knowledge and I assume that there must be someone out there who does that I can trust. This is the fundamental key to faith, I believe. Either we are willing to take that step or not.

Personally, I think that the Christian worldview does have some problems to resolve such as the problem of evil. Playing the "God's will" card seems weak to the skeptic. However, I still think that is more plausible than dirt + water + time = everything.

At the very least, I am very glad to reconnect with an old friend even if we have to park this discussion at some point. I have sometimes wondered how to differentiate friendship from evangelism targets. Now I know.