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Part 2 - Is Faith actually a form of Knowledge?

One of the ideas that has been ingrained in us is the idea that faith happens in the absence of knowledge. Alvin Plantinga quotes Mark Twain "faith is believing what you know ain't true". We talk of a 'leap of faith' and easily accept that faith is the opposite of reason.

And what has been the result? A contempt from the intellectual and scientific community towards those who have faith in God. If I understood that faith walks hand in hand with ignorance and was divorced from reason, I wouldn't want it either. But what if the opposite is true?

Certainly Alvin Plantinga argues the point.

He contends that "if naturalism were true, ....there would be no such thing as knowledge. That's bad enough, but there's worse to follow...(I'm going to put it in my own words here)...He (the naturalist - the atheist, the evolutionist, etc) can't trust his brain and thinking ability to actually hold true beliefs." (BTW, if you want the actual quote - I'll put it as a footnote)

I love it. Basically he's saying that whether or not theism actually is true, at least it allows for belief, for knowledge, for truth itself and warrants faith. One might say it doesn't disprove itself...but is reasonable.

And by contrast, explaining things like belief, knowledge, and truth without God is actually unreasonable and does not warrant faith - really in anything at all!

from page 1 - "I'll argue that the naturalist is committed to the sort of deep and debilitating skepticism according to which he can't trust his cognitive faculties to furnish him with mainly true beliefs; he has a defeator for whatever he believes, including naturalism itself. And I'll argue that naturalism, insofar as it implies materialism about human beings, has no room for the essential features of our mental life, including in particular belief." - Alvin Plantinga, Knowledge of God

Part 1 - discussion from "Knowlege of God"

Really, there are very few systems of thought out there... but lots of variations on them. And it seems we cannot move past the question of origin in forming the basis of how we look at life. The prevailing intellectual thought in our day is that there is no God and that our origin is a chance happening - we might call this naturalism. It involves explanations like evolution to explain our origin but the basic premise is that all can be explained by science or empirical evidence.

So what happens if we leave God out of the equation? What happens to our view of human life...to our view of ourselves?

One of Alvin Plantinga's first arguments is this: "if naturalism were true, there would be no such thing as proper function, and therefore also no such thing as malfunction or dysfunction." (pg.1)

I can look around this office and see many things that have a proper function - telephone, computer, my guitar, coffee mug, pens. And there is something common to all of these things...they were designed for a purpose. And inherent in that is the possiblity that they could break, or become unusable for the purpose they were intended for. But if my pen were not designed as a tool to write, who is to say that when it runs out of ink, that it is malfunctioning.

That is the start of our discussion...if we were not designed by God...the alternative is that we were not designed at all and with that goes any expectation of what we could be or what we ought to be, etc. If I take this a step further, than anyone who says there is no God, really should not be talking about disasters, sickness or any other kind of 'malfunction' or 'dysfunction' in our natural world.

That's a very interesting thought because some of those most vocal about things like "global warming", "social injustice", and "world poverty" are those who also do not believe in God. What is it then that gives them the idea that things should be (or even could be) any different?!!

Are you up for a little philosophy?

If anyone thinks people of faith aren't thinking people, they ought to try reading someone like Alvin Plantinga. I enjoy the challenge of trying to understand his philosophical arguments.

One thing is for sure: Understanding the different philosophies are important because they are what shapes whole generations of thinking. And we've got a whole generation of young people who have a hard time reconciling faith to their philosophy and the world views so prevelant today...and many time it's faith that seems to get booted to the curb.

So I thought I'd share a few things I'm learning along the way. Any maybe by sharing it with you, it'll clarify my own understanding.

The book I'm reading is actually a written debate between Alvin Plantinga and Michael Tooley titled "Knowledge of God".

So, I'll post as I go along and see how it goes.

My Page - Worship The Rock

My Page - Worship The Rock

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Wonky day!

Today was wonky! I couldn't get into the homeschooling mode because I started a good book when I woke up and didn't feel like putting it down. So I decided that I'd better get the blood flowing and decided to get the boys to help me put in all my bedding plants. So we spent a few hours doing that. After we worked so hard, it was time for dinner, right? But Ladger didn't make it home from town until close to 2 pm. It's amazing how that throws things out of wack.

And then it hailed. The boys and I looked out the window at all our newly planted plants. I think I held my breath until it cleared up and...we were really lucky this time - nothing damaged too badly. The boys collected a potful and put it in the fridge - P5 was genuinely surprised that it all melted to water in there :-). And it reminded the boys that a snowcone would make a nice treat. And now, R8 wants me to play Age of Empires - he likes to watch - twist my rubber arm :-)

Weary of the weather...

The wind feels like it's straight from the North Pole these days. May has been horrid - cool and manytimes downright freezing, rainy, snowy, cloudy and dreary. I still have lots of garden to put in and my kitchen looks like a plant nursery because I don't dare put anything in the ground (plus who wants to work in a parka?) Oh, we have had some tiny, nice patches of weather but all too few and far between.

We were doing a poem that talks about all the months of the year and whoever wrote it doesn't live in our country.

February brings the rain
Thaws the frozen lake again
Not a chance!!
March brings breezes loud and shrill
Stirs the dancing daffodil
That's sounds like our May - as I listen to the shriek of the wind this morning sitting here in the office!

April brings the primrose sweet
Scatters daisies at our feet

May brings sunshine full and bright
Sends the busy bees to flight
Maybe our trip to Hawaii made be less content than usual with our rather harsh climate!

Some excitement at our place...

Our latest toy!

This winter snow has got to quit!!

Mother's Day

Saturday morning, R8 asked me to take him to town so he could get me something for Mother's Day - to be honest I didn't really feel like making the extra trip but how could I say no to that?

It's become a tradition for us that when the boys want to shop for me, we go to a local gift shop - Et Cetera - because it really is easy to find so many things I like there and because they have the nicest staff. So I went in with the boys to help them with some ideas. We let the gal working there know what we were up to and she was more than willing to let me sit outside the store and help the boys make a final choice and pay for their purchases. I love how special the whole thing is - from the reactions of other customers who find it so sweet - from the gal helping the boys thanking me for bringing my boys in to shop - from the look of pride on their faces when they came out with beautifully wrapped gifts - from the excitement in the morning when they couldn't wait for me to open up the gifts and enjoy my surprise. Didn't they do well? They both picked something totally different than any suggestions I made. R8 has been buying me angels for a couple of years now and that collection is very precious to my heart. P5 picked the necklace - he loves glitter and I think he was hoping I'd give him the little purple box (which I did).

Maybe you can tell that I count myself the luckiest Mom alive :-)

Got the password?

P5 taped this calculator outside his bedroom door yesterday - now we have to type in a pass code to enter the room - he whispered to me that the code was taped on the bottom of the door and there was taped a note with our phone number on it. I guess it worked 'cause he let me in :-)

I went shopping for plants today and my boys were with me. I enjoyed the reactions of people to the eagerness of the boys. They carefully went through every section and carefully chose what they wanted with much discussion between them. R8 bought his brother a watermelon plant and he bought six snapdragons for himself. They were fun.

I spent entirely too much but here's how it goes - Ooh look at that- a columnar crab apple tree - I've already got a few crab apple trees but this columnar shape - I'll have to try that!! And so it goes - the hunt for anything I don't already have growing plus a number of annuals to fill in my flower beds. I don't know if I dare plant anything yet though - still been quite cold at night!!

A trip to the shopping mall...

Here are my boys in front of their favorite race cars in display at the mall. Gotta love the bright yellow rubber boots - he wears them everywhere - I really have to watch he doesn't wear them to church - LOL

Holding up the race schedule for the summer - I have a feeling we'll be heading to the races!

My desk

Here's what's on my desk - some of them just arrived today. Mostly books on songwriting or guitar! I'm planning to dive in to some serious work in these areas over the summer.

And I'm pondering lots of things these days. Holiness of God, the mercy seat and atonement, and a host of other things...

To go to school or not....

I may as well write a little note as I have no idea what I'm doing this morning. Normally I'd have the boys at the table by now and well into math or something like that. But there's a part that needs replacing on the seeder and I'm waiting for a phone call to see if I need to run into town this morning for it if it's in stock.

Yesterday, I realized that I missed 31 messages on Facebook on all these months I haven't been keeping track. I realized that the reason I didn't know about them was that my account is still on my old email address and I didn't receive any notification for any of them!!

Truthfully, it was a good break - as we all know, the computer can certainly eat up a good chunk of our time and I want to be careful of that. But I also enjoy the interraction and will look forward to catching up!

2009 already???!!

Okay, I've taken a long break...something like a year from actually writing anything in this blog. So now that I have no readers left :-) I guess I'll see what happens for now.

Seeding started yesterday. It's been a cool spring (dismal and gray and still freezing a little at night) and not too many nice days but the sun is actually shining today! I think I may even go outside and tackle some weeds - haven't even felt the slightest inclination up 'til now. R8 is out in the seeder with Dad and P5 is at home telling me he's made a grass invention that should give us new grass in about 4 years - more or less - made out of some old motor partsand stuck in a bare patch in our lawn. I should plant some seed around it and let him see his invention 'working'....on the other hand, do I really want to encourage motors being stuck in my lawn ?!!

The highlights of my year: I finished my Berklee College of Music Arranging Certificate a few weeks ago and that's been a major part of my time commitment for almost two years now. And this past year has been my first without music students (well I did have a couple) but it's been quite the different year. This is my first spring in something like 10 years that I'm not working like crazy getting a recital organized and students prepared. Not that I haven't got lots on the go but it's nice to enjoy the yard this year!