Response to Don Carson's "How do I know God exists?"

A friend of mine recently sent me a video by Don Carson (http://vimeo.com/7415635). In the video, Carson responds to the question "how do I know God exists?" Carson's ideas represent the most common line of reasoning I have heard from Christian pastors.

In this post, I hope to expose what I see to be horrendous errors in Carson's logic.
Note: This doesn't necessarily mean that I don't agree with other 'pro-God's existence' arguments; I'm just saying the ones in this video are terrible.

If you haven't watched the video yet (under 5 min), then please do so! http://vimeo.com/7415635
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Here are two quotes from Carson that summarize his ideas well:

"there is a sense in which if we address how we can know that God exists, we are already putting ourselves into a certain kind of heritage of thought in which human beings think of themselves as independent knowers- that is we stand apart from any tradition or heritage. we are unshaped, we are unformed... And we stand in judgment of God, as God provided the right set of evidences..."

and,

"God becomes no more than a conclusion of a syllogism or the conclusion of a body of evidences... "

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Let us now examine in more detail what Carson has to say. I hope that everyone understands that I have no qualms with Carson as a person- I just don't agree with his ideas. In addition, I hope that the same level of scrutiny I am applying to Carson's ideas will be applied to my ideas (See Golden Rule, http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2011/05/golden-rule-is-universal-principle-in.html)

Carson said:

"from Bible's point of view, that [looking at evidence] is the wrong place to begin"

and,

“When they begin from the God side of things, rather than the human side of things [they see the truth].”

Josh's response:

• If we start from the Quran's point of view, it is also the wrong place to begin. How dare we stand as judges over Allah?
• If we start from the Flying Spaghetti Monster's point of view, both the Christians and the Muslims are starting from the wrong place.
• Instead of starting out with YHWH as a fundamental assumption (and by doing so nullify other belief systems for no reason other than the fact that they are not Christianity), it is better to not assume any belief system is correct, and then fairly apply the same criteria to all of them (Fundamental Assumptions Parts 1 and 2, http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2011/06/fundamental-assumptions.html)

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Carson said:

 

"If we come to a place where we stand in judgment, it is a sign of our blindness. Nature, design, consciousness, good evil, Jesus' resurrection, power and his treatment of evil, historical evidence"

and,

 

"I could give you books and articles that might be helpful..."

 

Josh's response:

• I call what Carson just did categorical evidence spamming. Another appropriate name for it would be "the shotgun argument." If one were to simply listen to him state the above and then fail to dig deeper into each individual argument, one could be convinced by what he said. While I don't have any issues with providing a list of arguments, what I DO have a problem with is using a list of unexplained arguments as evidence. Saying "you could dig deeper into these things, but it wouldn't really make a difference" while at the same time infering that the list itself (or the number of arguments) is valid evidence is deceptive and disgusting.
• Because Carson's thesis is "we should not stand in judgement over God," he should not have underhandedly included "evidence" with which his listeners could... judge God.

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Carson said:

 

"If it were a perfect world, you wouldn't ask this question"

 

Josh's Response:

• This is just another example of circular reasoning.
• Indeed, in Pasafarianism, if it hadn't been for the great downfall of man, we would already know for certain that the Great Noodle exists. It is only a result of our fallen race that we cannot see the truth.

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Carson said:

"Belief comes through reading Bible… Conscience… Eyes being opened… Conversion..."

 

Josh's response:

• There is no difference between what Carson just said and what Mormon missionaries say
• The argument here encourages the addition of emotional bias into decision making
• What about people who read the Bible and don't convert?

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Conclusion:

 

All of Carson’s arguments were founded upon circular logic, applied to many other religions in addition to Christianity, or made use of the “shotgun effect”. I disagree with all forms of circular logic other than “I trust my senses and thought processes because I can sense and I think so” (see Fundamental Assumptions Part 2).

If arguments apply to multiple religions, THEN CRITERIA OUTSIDE OF THE RELIGIONS MUST BE USED TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THEM. “Shotgun” arguments are meaningless and can even be deceptive unless further research is done.