UNDER OUR SKIN Clues of a Communicative God in Widespread Transcendent Knowledge

MARSHALL JANZEN

An assignment submitted to ACTS Seminaries for the class

“CAP 550: Apologetics in a Postmodern World” in partial fulfillment of a

Master of Arts in Christian Studies degree.

December 1, 2012

ii

Contents

THESIS: The widespread existence of TIKs (belief-forming instruments within humans, transcendent as to their reach and inherent as to their nature, which produce knowledge) reveals more than the muted and often confused whispers they generate: their very existence points to a Creator who desires to communicate.

The forms of TIKs ............................................................................................ 2

The objections to TIKs .................................................................................... 7 Scripture invalidates divine revelations such as TIKs ........................ 7 TIKs do not reveal the same information to everyone ..................... 10 Natural explanations undermine the trustworthiness of TIKs ...... 13

The fruits of TIKs ........................................................................................... 16 Imparted knowledge ............................................................................... 17 Implied knowledge.................................................................................. 17 Implications for apologetics ................................................................. 19

Bibliography .................................................................................................... 21

Under Our Skin 1

Religious belief is tenacious. Five years after the decades-long Marxist–Communist experiment in Russia ended, less than 19% of the population claimed “no religious affiliation.” The figure in the United States, where no concerted attempt to stamp out religion had been made, was only a few points lower.1 Likewise, morality is ubiqui-tous. Dirk Willems, an Anabaptist martyr from Asperen, Nether-lands, is regarded as a folk hero by current residents and has a street named in his honour.2 After escaping from prison and crossing a frozen lake, Willems turned back to rescue a pursuing constable who had fallen through the ice; he was subsequently burned at the stake.3 Perhaps the most surprising thing about these anecdotes is that they fail to surprise. Of course mere persecution could not stamp out reli-gious belief. Of course a selfless act of compassion would be widely recognized as admirable. These conclusions may seem self-evident, but why is this so?

Human beings know many things about the world they inhabit, but they also seem to know some things that transcend this world. Most people have some idea about a supernatural power or powers to which they are subject. Most have similar understandings about the rightness or wrongness of certain acts. There are exceptions and variances, but in general people seem to possess a number of TIKs:

(TIK) A belief-forming instrument within humans, transcendent as to its reach and inherent as to its nature, which produces knowledge.

This paper will argue that the widespread existence of these TIKs reveals more than the muted and often confused whispers they gen-

1. Paul Gabel, “An Elemental Impulse: Religion Is So Powerful that Even Soviet Antireligious

Policy Failed,” Skeptic Magazine 13, no. 2 (2007): 59, accessed October 5, 2012, http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-05-30/. Since these surveys in 1996, the unaffiliated in the US has hovered between 10% and 17%. Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2008), 18, 20, accessed November 22, 2012, http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf.

2. John S. Oyer and Robert S. Kreider, Mirror of the Martyrs (Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2003), 36–37.

3. James C. Juhnke, “Shaping Religious Community Through Martyr Memories,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 73, no. 3 (July 1999): 547.

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erate: their very existence points to a Creator who desires to commu-nicate.

The forms of TIKs Each of the italicized terms in the above definition deserves clarifi-

cation. Starting with the last, a TIK produces knowledge: information is contained in what is believed rather than merely feelings or in-stincts, and that information appears obvious and self-evidently true to the believer rather than merely as hunches or opinions.4 The knowledge is brought to mind through some “collection of human cognitive architecture,”5 whether that be regions of the brain or as-pects of a person that cannot be reduced to physical parts. That ar-chitecture is inherent in a person; it is not acquired or learned.6 While the belief-forming instrument is inherent, the knowledge it produces is better described as maturationally natural:7 the knowledge comes about as a person matures, much as walking and talking do, unless extreme environmental factors or disabilities preclude it. Finally, the knowledge relates to transcendent realities that cannot be acquired by the physical senses, scientific investigation, or rational deduction. The knowledge may sometimes be triggered by contemplating a natural scene or event, such as a mountaintop panorama or the death of a friend, but it is not simply a deduction (“such a beautiful view must have been created by Someone”) or inference (“she was mortal, so I must be too”). Instead, the knowledge transcends what can be logi-cally derived from the physical trigger: “I am not right with the One who made all this,” or “there is an existence after death.”

In Christian theology, TIKs as defined above and delineated below

4. William P. Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca, NY:

Cornell University Press, 1993), 285; Paul Helm, “John Calvin, the “Sensus Divinitatis,” and the Noetic Effects of Sin,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 43, no. 2 (April 1998): 92.

5. Kelly J. Clark and Justin L. Barrett, “Reidian Religious Epistemology and the Cognitive Science of Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 79, no. 3 (September 2011): 652, doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfr008.

6. J. Budziszewski, What We Can’t Not Know: A Guide (Dallas, TX: Spence, 2003), 14–15.

7. Clark and Barrett, “Reidian Religious Epistemology,” 649n14; Jonathan Jong, “Explaining Religion (Away?): Theism and the Cognitive Science of Religion,” Sophia (2012): 10, doi:10.1007/s11841-012-0338-9.

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are within the wider category of general revelation: the testimony of creation to some attributes of its Creator. This revelation is both divinely imparted and fully natural;8 the two aspects are no more contradictory than the claim that human beings are both God’s handiwork and formed through natural processes. The revelation is not learned from texts or teachers, distinguishing TIKs from special revelation. It is not based on logical reasoning that deduces God’s attributes from aspects of creation, distinguishing TIKs from natural theology. The revelatory light from all TIKs has been clouded by sin, but not extinguished.

The two most prominent TIKs, as I have defined the term, provide a sense of the divine and an understanding of the moral law. Both are supported by Scripture and are widely recognized by those who do not hold Christian or even theist beliefs.

Sensing divinity: A natural ability to ponder supernatural realities, with varying levels of clarity, has been advocated throughout re-corded history by countless influential thinkers from Plato and Cicero to John Calvin and Leo Tolstoy.9 This inchoate sense imparts a dispo-sition to “bow before someone or something higher” than oneself,10 or perhaps to chafe against that felt obligation. Culture and upbringing can influence its interpretation,11 from “there are spirits I need to appease” to “there is a God I am not right with.” Whether in pantheis-tic, polytheistic, or henotheistic interpretations, at least two points of knowledge remain: a reality exists beyond what can be seen of the natural world,12 and human beings have some duty to this higher

8. Edward Adams, “Calvin’s View of Natural Knowledge of God,” International Journal of

Systematic Theology 3, no. 3 (November 2001): 281.

9. See, respectively, John Baillie, Our Knowledge of God (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 47–48; David C. Steinmetz, “Calvin as Biblical Interpreter Among the Ancient Philosophers,” Interpretation 63, no. 2 (April 2009): 150–51; Edward A. Dowey Jr., The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1994), 50–53; Gabel, “Elemental Impulse,” 58.

10. Peter J. Leithart, “That Eminent Pagan: Calvin’s Use of Cicero in Institutes 1.1–5,” Westminster Theological Journal 52, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 10.

11. Owen Anderson, Reason and Worldviews: Warfield, Kuyper, Van Til, and Plantinga on the Clarity of General Revelation and Function of Apologetics (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2008), 100.

12. While pantheistic views may not see anything beyond nature, they invest nature with

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realm.13 Scripture assumes its readers already believe in deities. From

Genesis onward Yahweh is shown to be the one true God with no time spent establishing the very concept of a god.14 The messages of Paul and Barnabas in Acts appeal to this general knowledge, claiming that God “has not left himself without testimony” due to God’s be-nevolent acts in creation (Acts 14:17), and that the unknown god the Athenians worshipped in ignorance alongside other deities (17:23) can be known through Christ. In Calvin’s theology, the entrance of sin into the world has smothered this awareness he calls the sensus divinitatis, but it is never effaced or uprooted.15 Although its original purpose was to lead people to proper relationship with God, due to sin the sensus inevitably leads to superstition, idolatry, and fear.16 Apart from a further work of God, it only serves to condemn men and women for rejecting the light given to them, even though con-demnation was not its aim (Rom. 1:18–25).17 Moving beyond Calvin, it appears that it was never God’s intention for this sense to operate apart from other revelation. Both before and after the fall, the sensus may prepare a person to anticipate and accept further communica-tion from God by providing the categories and vocabulary necessary to process that further revelation.18

Conscience: From Tsesze’s interpretation of Confucius to Imman-

supernatural attributes.

13. Clark and Barrett, “Reidian Religious Epistemology,” 652.

14. Kelly J. Clark, Return to Reason: A Critique of Enlightenment Evidentialism, and a Defense of Reason and Belief in God (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1990), 49.

15. Adams, “Calvin’s View,” 286.

16. Adams, “Calvin’s View,” 290.

17. Dowey, Knowledge of God, 82. There is an interesting tension in Paul’s messages between worshipping an unknown God (Acts 17:23) and refusing to worship a known God (Rom. 1:21). Paul’s flexibility in making the same basic point to different audiences by using language that differs markedly in its particulars should guard against attempts to extract a full-orbed theology of general revelation from any one statement, or from an overly close parsing of his words. This tension is noted by Anthony J. Guerra, Romans and the Apologetic Tradition: The Purpose, Genre, and Audience of Paul’s Letter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 50.

18. Helm, “John Calvin,” 97.

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uel Kant and C. S. Lewis,19 the concept of a common moral sense has been widely recognized across diverse cultures and times. Unlike scientific laws that describe how nature operates, the moral law de-scribes how people ought to operate, even though they frequently act differently.20 This universal moral law is imperfectly understood by an individual through their conscience. Our conscience does not simply reflect our opinions, but rather confronts us with

understandings about what is right and wrong, good and bad, worthy and unworthy, just and unjust, that are not established by our own actual desires, decisions, or preferences but instead believed to exist apart from them, providing standards by which our desires, decisions, and preferences can themselves be judged.21

The boundaries of the moral law are murky, with each culture pos-sessing its blind spots, yet the central core is remarkably stable. Even the recognition that moral standards have progressed in certain areas is predicated on the existence of a transcendent moral standard. Without one, it is meaningless to speak of moral progress or to judge slavery and sweatshop labour as backward. Without objective moral-ity the atheistic argument from evil loses its force and human rights are only national preferences. Conscience and the moral law it illu-minates provide a basis for the idea that moral claims are discovered rather than created.22

Scripture confirms the reality of a moral law that is partially known even without special revelation. When God revealed the covenant requirements to the Hebrews, they were expected to recognize the

19. See, respectively, Lin Yutang, From Pagan to Christian (Cleveland, OH: World, 1959), 81; Paul

Guyer, “Introduction: The Starry Heavens and the Moral Law,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, Cambridge Collections Online, ed. Paul Guyer (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 1, doi:10.1017/CCOL0521365872.001; C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, rev. ed. (1952; repr., San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 20.

20. C. S. Evans, Why Believe? Reason and Mystery as Pointers to God, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), 40–41.

21. Christian Smith, Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2003), 8.

22. Timothy J. Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (New York, NY: Riverhead Books, 2009), 157.

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superior morality of this new code: “And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?” (Deut. 4:8, NIV, emphasis added).23 Paul expands on this theme in Romans 1–3 where he reveals that Jew and gentile alike possess an awareness of a law that they transgress.24 This law may be the Torah (2:12), but it may also be another law that, unlike the Torah, can be obeyed without circumcision (vv. 25–27). Gentiles have the work of this law “written in their hearts” (v. 15, NET).25 This law is one that all people are under, “so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God” (3:19, emphasis added). It is “through the law we become conscious of our sin” (v. 20), whether by reading the Torah or feeling the convicting

23. All Scripture quotations are from the New International Version, 2011 update, unless

otherwise noted. Scripture quotations marked NET are from the New English Translation. Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the English Standard Version.

24. The following interpretation follows key aspects of Herbert Bowsher, “To Whom Does the Law Speak? Romans 3:19 and the Works of the Law Debate,” Westminster Theological Journal 68, no. 2 (Fall 2006).

25. M. A. Seifrid, “Natural Revelation and the Purpose of the Law in Romans,” Tyndale Bulletin 49, no. 1 (1998): 120. A number of commentators aver that the gentiles referred to are gentile Christians and the convicting witness is not conscience but a new desire to obey God that the Spirit imparts, e.g. C. E. B. Cranfield, Romans, A Shorter Commentary, American ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1985), 50–52; Christopher R. Little, The Revelation of God Among the Unevangelized: An Evangelical Appraisal and Missiological Contribution to the Debate (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 2000), 34–40. However, this introduces two meanings for “gentile” in this section (1:13 and 2:24 are clearly not limited to Christians) without any contextual clues to point to when each is intended. Also, from Paul’s earlier statement that even the idolaters of chapter 1 “know God’s righteous decree” that their deeds deserve death (1:32), Paul does seem to have in mind a law more limited than the Torah that is known to all.

Cranfield arrives at the gentile Christian interpretation by means of eliminating other options. One of these options is that the passage teaches that some pagan gentiles, “on the basis of a natural law, fulfill the demands of God’s law and so merit His favour.” This is rejected as “hardly compatible with 3.9, 20, 23.” However, he does not mention the far more compelling view that this passage is not about an overall assessment of a pagan gentile’s righteousness, but about each of their particular acts being judged by their conscience, with some acts bringing accusation while others are excused. Cranfield’s own view requires the text to refer to particular acts rather than an overall assessment – otherwise the passage would teach that some gentile Christians will not be saved – so not considering this option is a considerable oversight. This interpretation does not argue for a works-based salvation that contradicts Romans 3, and it allows for a more straightforward interpretation of the moral law and conscience in this text. Sherlock Holmes declared, “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” The danger in Holmes’ approach, which is also Cranfield’s, is failing to consider all possible options.

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tug of conscience (2:14–15), so that neither Jews nor gentiles may claim an advantage before God (3:9). Both the Torah itself and Paul’s interpretation of it are based on the presumption that there is a uni-versal moral law that all people partly know.

Other TIKs could be described, such as Blaise Pascal’s divine hun-ger26 or Lewis’ closely-related nostalgia for a time that has not yet come.27 While it is conceptually useful to separate various TIKs, they may overlap in the cognitive faculties that produce them. Isolating TIKs is probably more like teasing apart spaghetti than meatballs. Collectively, TIKs are simply all the cognitive architecture through which humans conceive of transcendent knowledge. Before attempt-ing to see what can be learned from TIKs, it is necessary to see if their existence can be sustained in the face of several critical objections.

The objections to TIKs Both conscience and the sensus face similar objections: they reveal

knowledge too inconsistently to be meaningful, they can be explained away by natural processes, and certain passages of Scripture rule out their existence.

Objection 1: Scripture invalidates divine revelations such as TIKs Ever since the propagandists of Nazi Germany created a cultural

Christianity that set the Bible aside and focused on what may be learned through general revelation, many Christians have been skep-tical of attempts to find God revealed outside of Scripture.28 The dangers are real, but there is also danger in following Karl Barth to the opposite extreme and denying all divine revelation other than special revelation. Since Scripture itself testifies to the reality of other revelation (Ps. 19:1–6; Matt. 6:26–30; Acts 14:17; Rom. 1:18–23), this position is self-defeating and hard to sustain apart from a prior com-

26. Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. W. F. Trotter (1944; repr., Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics

Ethereal Library, n.d), e-book, 80 (#425), accessed October 23, 2012, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/pascal/pensees.html.

27. C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (1949; repr., San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001).

28. Bruce A. Demarest, General Revelation: Historical Views and Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1982), 15.

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mitment to a theological system.29 Between these extremes, Chris-tians may still find certain passages problematic for revelations such as TIKs.

First, a later section of Romans appears to state that oral proclama-tion is the only way the message of Christ may be presented:

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? . . . Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ. (Rom. 10:14, 17)

However, Paul is raising a challenge to his own argument by these rhetorical questions and assertions. His response begins in the follow-ing verse. “But I ask: Did they not hear? Of course they did: ‘Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world’ ” (v. 18). Paul’s answer, first quoting Psalm 19:4 and then refer-ring to Israel’s special revelation, is that a revelatory word has gone out to all people even before they hear a proclamation of Christ. In fact, sometimes those without the Torah made more use of what they had been given than Israel did (vv. 19–21). Neither creation nor To-rah is sufficient to bring one to salvation (see 1:18–32 and 2:17–29 respectively), but both are revelatory.

Second, some psalms appear to deny that people have any knowl-edge of God:

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, doing abominable deeds, there is none who does good.

The LORD looks down from heaven on the children of man,

29. Better to “follow Dr. Barth in denying that there can be any knowledge of God which God

Himself does not impart, while affirming against Dr. Barth that all men have some knowledge of Him.” Baillie, Our Knowledge of God, 65. By reducing “all knowledge by revelation to theological knowledge” Barth undermines any basis for claiming that all truth ultimately comes from God; he “dichotomized theology and science, keeping them in two separate spheres where they cannot affect each other.” D. W. Diehl, “Evangelicalism and General Revelation: An Unfinished Agenda,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 30, no. 4 (December 1987): 441.

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to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.

They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.

Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon the LORD? (Ps. 14:1–4, ESV; also 53:1–4)

These psalms appear to speak of a special category of people – athe-ists – who are fools. However, the middle verses reveal that all people have become corrupt and refuse to do good. All people have become fools! Similarly, in Psalm 10 the saying “There is no God” is paralleled with the claim that “God has forgotten . . . he will never see it” and “You will not call to account” (vv. 4, 11, 13, ESV). In all three psalms, it is not atheists who are in mind, but people who choose to live as if God does not see or care.30 To varying degrees, all people do this. They know what is right, and they know of a higher power, but they choose to ignore this knowledge. These psalms do not contradict the existence of general revelation, but show that people typically do not heed it.

Third, the following verse is raised frequently to counter the idea of general revelation:

The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. (1 Cor. 2:14)

The point of this verse is that God’s Spirit is required to correctly discern revelation.31 This is true whether that revelation comes from Scripture or TIKs. If God’s Spirit were not at work, whether in those who do not yet believe or those who do, no revelation of God could

30. Baillie, Our Knowledge of God, 119–20.

31. Marion L. Soards, 1 Corinthians, New International Biblical Commentary 7 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999), 61–62.

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be received.32 None of the above passages preclude the idea that human beings

possess TIKs that partially reveal God’s existence and testify to a moral law. They do show that what is understood by a person through these TIKs is very limited, but even limited revelation has a purpose:

One notices in the New Testament that the apostles always be-gin with the Scriptures when they are talking to Jews but that with Gentile nonbelievers they always begin somewhere else – with the testimony of creation, with the Gentiles’ own sense of the insufficiency of their gods or with the Gentiles’ conscious-ness of the law written on their hearts. Although these things are insufficient for salvation, the apostles clearly think they pre-pare Gentile nonbelievers to receive the gospel of salvation in the same way that the law of Moses prepared the Jews.33

Just as a Christian should not reject the revelatory nature of the Jewish Scriptures because they were frequently misunderstood and misapplied, so too it is a mistake to reject general revelation. How-ever, this does raise another major objection: if TIKs are so inconsis-tent in what they reveal, can they truly be said to produce knowledge?

Objection 2: TIKs do not reveal the same information to everyone Whether the Bible says that all people know something about God

and morality is irrelevant; what matters is that demographics and history disprove this claim. Atheists and agnostics exist. The distribu-tion of religious beliefs varies radically around the world.34 A multi-tude of contradictory moral codes have existed and continue to exist

32. “But we must bear in mind that if the illuminating grace of the Holy Spirit makes the

authority of the Bible operative so does the common grace of the Spirit make the authority of general revelation operative. Both general and special revelation are an objective authority that must be entreated when it comes to questions of truth, regardless of how sin has affected our thinking.” Diehl, “Evangelicalism and General Revelation,” 445.

33. J. Budziszewski, Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 183.

34. For instance, Saudi Arabia is at least 95% Muslim while Thailand is 95% Buddhist. Stephen Maitzen, “Divine Hiddenness and the Demographics of Theism,” Religious Studies 42, no. 2 (June 2006): 179–80, doi:10.1017/S0034412506008274, accessed October 16, 2012.

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in different contexts. John Locke provided an influential statement of this objection:

Can it be thought, that the Ideas Men have of God, are the Characters, and Marks of Himself, engraven in their minds by his own finger, when we see, that in the same Country, under one and the same Name, Men have far different, nay, often con-trary and inconsistent Ideas, and conceptions of him? Their agreeing in a Name, or Sound, will scarce prove an innate No-tion of Him.35

It is true that history and demographics provide a dose of reality to overly optimistic formulations of certain TIKs. For instance, the sensus has sometimes been construed as showing that “all sane cognizers” know that God exists, even if they are not aware that they know, do not profess to know, or claim to know differently based on certain reasons.36 This in turn leads to the conclusion that all atheists, agnos-tics, pantheists, and polytheists throughout human history have ei-ther repressed their underlying theistic belief, practiced self-deception, professed a different belief than they actually held, or were insane. Certain defenders of the moral law have likewise attempted to show that the entire Decalogue is largely contained within the law our conscience witnesses to, including the knowledge that only Yahweh is to be worshipped.37 These positions are so insulated from reality as to be disprovable; a person of any belief system could likewise claim that

35. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. H. Nidditch (1689; repr., Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1979), I.IV.14. Locke proceeds to discuss variety beyond theistic beliefs: “What true or tolerable Notion of a Deity, could they have, who acknowledged, and worshipped hundreds? Every Deity, that they owned above one, was an infallible evidence of their ignorance of Him, and a proof, that they had no true Notion of God, where Unity, Infinity, and Eternity, were excluded.” Locke, Human Understanding, I.IV.15.

36. David Reiter, “Calvin’s “Sense of Divinity” and Externalist Knowledge of God,” Faith and Philosophy 15, no. 3 (July 1998): 256, 262.

37. The “biblical Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, states the most important part of the universal moral code in ideal form. If the anthropological data suggest something short of the ideal, that is not because nothing is universal, but because two universals are in conflict: universal moral knowledge, and the universal desire to evade it.” Budziszewski, Can’t Not Know, 29. Regarding the first commandment, “everyone does know that there is one true God and that he owes Him sole worship. . . . [T]hose who say they don’t know of any such God are fooling themselves, and biblical revelation merely ‘blows their cover’.” Budziszewski, Can’t Not Know, 32.

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everyone truly believes as they do, regardless of what they profess. Such an argument reduces TIKs to little more than occasions for fideistic polemics since they cease to be a publicly demonstrable phenomenon.

The description of TIKs I have offered is informed by Locke’s cri-tique and tailored to match what is publicly supportable. As already discussed, the knowledge from TIKs is not innate in a person from birth but rather maturationally natural; the shape of the resultant knowledge depends on a person’s culture, upbringing, and will. The sensus produces an awareness of the category of the supernatural, but many other factors affect whether that category is populated by spir-its, gods, or one God.38 Further, TIKs are similar to colour perception and sexual desire: common to all human societies, though not all individuals.39

These clarifications do not dilute the revelation of TIKs to mean-inglessness, but rather limit the claim to what the data supports. Human societies are always peopled by “inescapably moral agents.”40 The individual without any moral compass – the psychopath – is an aberration. In general, society lives by a moral code, even if its boundaries are fuzzy and infractions are common. While this code may not be identical from person to person or society to society, the very existence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights testifies to some widely (though not universally) acknowledged common ground. C. S. Lewis noted that studying history from

the Babylonian Hymn to Samos, from the Laws of Manu, the Book of the Dead, the Analects, the Stoics, the Platonists, from Australian [and American] aborigines . . . [reveals] the same tri-umphantly monotonous denunciations of oppression, murder,

38. Helm, “John Calvin,” 97.

39. Gabel, “Elemental Impulse,” 59. When a trait is said to be common to all societies, it of course excepts any human society that is formed based on excluding all who possess the trait in question. If a society were to form based on only admitting colourblind individuals it would not undermine the claim that colour perception is common to all human societies due to the artificial nature of the criterion.

40. Smith, Moral, Believing Animals, 8. “All normal people possess a sense of morality.” D. L. Krebs, “Morality: An Evolutionary Account,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 3, no. 3 (2008): 149.

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treachery, and falsehood, the same injunctions of kindness to the aged, the young, and the weak, of almsgiving and impartial-ity and honesty.41

The various differences and localized blindnesses do not reveal a chaos, but rather “a substantial agreement with considerable local differences of emphasis and, perhaps, no one code that includes eve-rything.”42

Further, throughout history humans have been “incurably reli-gious.”43 Even under the Communist governments of China and Russia religious belief thrived. According to Anatoly Lunacharsky, commissar for education and enlightenment in the first Soviet gov-ernment under Lenin, “Religion is like a nail: the harder you hit it, the deeper it goes in.”44 Numerous controlled studies have demonstrated the ways children appear to naturally form belief in supernatural agents while reductive naturalism has to be taught.45 The specific form of belief is highly correlated to upbringing and culture, but the bias towards supernaturalism over naturalism transcends these fac-tors.46

Objection 3: Natural explanations undermine the trustworthiness of TIKs

Many religious skeptics agree that human nature is biased towards supernatural and moral belief, but also claim that natural processes adequately explain this phenomenon. This objection takes many forms. (1) Belief in God and morality are nothing but wish fulfillment. We want a sensible universe, clear moral standards, and secure,

41. C. S. Lewis, “The Poison of Subjectivism,” in Christian Reflections, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1967), 77.

42. Lewis, “Poison of Subjectivism,” 78.

43. Evans, Why Believe, 56.

44. Gabel, “Elemental Impulse,” 56.

45. Deborah Kelemen, “Are Children “Intuitive Theists”? Reasoning About Purpose and Design in Nature,” Psychological Science 15, no. 5 (2004), doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00672.x; Jesse Bering, “Atheism Is Only Skin Deep: Geertz and Markusson Rely Mistakenly on Sociodemographic Data as Meaningful Indicators of Underlying Cognition,” Religion 40, no. 3 (2010): 167–68, doi:10.1016/j.religion.2009.11.001.

46. Michael Shermer, How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science (New York, NY: W.H. Freeman, 2000), 35.

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meaningful lives. Earthly fathers fail us, so we transfer our hopes to an invisible Father in heaven. “Religion addresses what we very much want.”47 (2) These beliefs are nothing but the products of neurons firing in a familiar pattern. Drugs and sleep deprivation can induce similar brain patterns, so these neurological responses are not trust-worthy.48 (3) These beliefs are the wildly successful precursors to modern-day chain letters; they are nothing but memes, viruses of the mind that insidiously spread their payload through the embedded command, “Pass this on.”49 (4) Our transcendent beliefs are nothing but a misfiring pattern-seeking module in our brain. The ability to see patterns in our surroundings aided survival and reproduction, but it also enabled us to form superstitions, observe omens, and worship gods. While still valuable, pattern-seeking continues to deceive peo-ple, from seeing Jesus on a tortilla to attributing a friend’s recovery to whispered words invoking an invisible deity. Our evolutionary past explains why “we may be hardwired to think magically.”50

All these versions posit ways to explain the presence of TIKs with-out also accepting the transcendent realm they point to. These chal-lenges cannot all be true. If TIKs are nothing but biochemistry (version two) they cannot also be nothing but psychology (version one). The “nothing but” language confuses explaining with explaining away.51 For instance, neurology may show what goes on in our heads when we see, but this does not prove there is no outside world we are seeing.52 One phenomenon may have neurological, psychological, and

47. Charles B. Daniels, “Experiencing God,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 49, no. 3

(1989): 497. Sigmund Freud provided a standard articulation of this argument. Another psychological explanation is that God and morality are just tools of the elite to dominate and control the masses, as Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche argued with varying nuances. This version does not truly explain the existence of TIKs, since it is only because “the masses” generally possess firm convictions about a supernatural power and morality that religion can effectively be used to control them. Adams, “Calvin’s View,” 286.

48. Gabel, “Elemental Impulse,” 58.

49. Deane-Peter Baker, “Dawkins’ Moral Argument in The God Delusion: A Critical Assessment,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, no. 135 (November 2009): 81. Richard Dawkins proposed the term “memes” to refer to this concept.

50. Shermer, How We Believe, 35.

51. Jong, “Explaining Religion,” 4.

52. Clifford Williams, Existential Reasons for Belief in God: A Defense of Desires & Emotions for

Under Our Skin 15

evolutionary explanations, and their mere presence does not under-mine its trustworthiness.53 Further, the evidence of TIKs outside a person’s immaterial spirit or soul is expected. If the function of TIKs is to allow human beings to acquire and process transcendent knowl-edge, they must somehow interface with the natural aspects of our cognitive faculties, including our brains.

Certain versions more directly challenge the trustworthiness of transcendent beliefs. Against version two, the replication of religious experiences through artificial means does not disprove all such ex-periences any more than hallucinations disprove all sight.54 Against the first, a felt need for security after death, a moral standard, or God does not invalidate belief in such things any more than a hunger disproves the existence of food. Inductive reasoning suggests an op-posite conclusion: a widely felt need suggests that the object of the need exists.55

Because this last point is widely acknowledged, the human “hun-ger” for the transcendent cannot be ignored by those who adopt a naturalistic paradigm. Richard Dawkins’ meme explanation (version three) suffers from a serious inconsistency. While he sees belief in God as a virus of the mind, he lauds the moral sense, and specifically altruism, as one of the great achievements of evolution. Since both have evolutionary explanations,56 and both qualify as memes by Dawkins’ definition, it is inconsistent to treat belief in God as discred-ited by its natural origins while accepting the moral sense as a trust-

Faith (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011), 42–43.

53. Kenneth I. Pargament, “Is Religion Nothing But…? Explaining Religion Versus Explaining Religion Away,” Psychological Inquiry 13, no. 3 (2002): 240, 243; Clark and Barrett, “Reidian Religious Epistemology,” 656.

54. Alston, Perceiving God, 230–31.

55. Evans, Why Believe, 57. “A man’s physical hunger does not prove that that man will get any bread,” but surely “it does prove that he . . . inhabits a world where eatable substances exist.” Lewis, Weight of Glory, 33. Further weighing against the wish fulfillment explanation is that conceptions of God and morality are not uniformly pleasant or comforting and often make inconvenient demands on the believer. Stephen T. Davis, God, Reason, and Theistic Proofs, Reason & Religion (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1997), 131–33.

56. For a detailed account of the evolutionary origin of morality (without a reductive “nothing but” claim), see Krebs, “Morality.” For a rebuttal to reductionist explanations of morality, see Smith, Moral, Believing Animals, 33–38.

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worthy yet fallible pointer to truth.57 Version four avoids Dawkins’ inconsistency, yet suffers from a

similar flaw. While TIKs may indeed be expansions of the pattern-seeking ability in our brain, so too is the scientific process. The cogni-tive faculties that now produce belief in God, gods or spirits may have served an earlier evolutionary purpose in detecting predators lurking in rustling grass or a “movable feast” of beasts stampeding through a field. So too, they have allowed humans to postulate general relativity and analyze the wave–particle duality of light.58 If those faculties are considered to have gone awry when they detect deity rather than predators and prey, why trust them when they allow us to do science and complex math rather than flee or fight? If faculties become un-trustworthy when they transcend the functions instrumental in their development, we are left without the ability to trust the scientific investigation that traces that development.59

A remaining objection may be that TIKs are interpreted too incon-sistently to be comparable to science. However, both are ways that we use our minds to make inferences from incomplete data.60 Sometimes we fill in the pieces incorrectly, and this may be especially so with TIKs. Even so, rudimentary faculties are still faculties. That humans have an olfactory sense is not undermined by it presenting us with less detailed information than our vision, nor by it functioning at a reduced level compared to bears or dogs. This paper has argued that TIKs are quite coarse-grained in what they reveal, yet even so they remain revelatory.

The fruits of TIKs Given that TIKs exist and cannot be ruled out as untrustworthy,

what can be learned from their presence? A number of insights spring from what they directly reveal and what their existence implies.

57. Baker, “Dawkins’ Moral Argument,” 82; Shermer, How We Believe, 69–72.

58. Clark and Barrett, “Reidian Religious Epistemology,” 662.

59. Keller, Reason for God, 142–43.

60. Jong, “Explaining Religion,” 9.

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Imparted knowledge The sensus reveals that the category of supernatural entities exists.

We are not the greatest power in the universe, so satisfying our own desires may not be the greatest good. While humans, as all higher animals, possess an instinctual selfishness rooted in our need to sur-vive, we also possess a witness that shames our selfishness.

The conscience reveals where a person falls short in what they have done or failed to do by judging past behaviour and present thoughts. It shows that something is not right about us. Further, through illuminating the moral law, it causes us to feel indignation when we are the victims of other people’s misdeeds and outrage when others suffer at the hands of evil people or systems. It is not only me that is not right, but others are not right. The whole world is not right. All this bad news provokes a hope, a desire, even a need for there to also be some good news.

Implied knowledge The presence of TIKs does not prove there is a creator, but it points

to a creator. The natural origins of TIKs imply that this creator also governs the rest of nature with all its natural processes, including evolution. Only such a creator could use natural processes and natu-ral history as part of the means by which TIKs are implanted deep within humanity.

While TIKs themselves do not consistently reveal a personal God, the existence of TIKs is best explained by a personal God. The super-natural realm that TIKs reveal is sometimes interpreted as being populated by the distant or departed deity of deism or Aristotle’s unmoved mover. However, it is only from the perspective that there is a God who desires to communicate with humanity that the pres-ence of TIKs is not merely explainable but expected.61 In fact, on this view TIKs or something quite like them is required. “If God is indeed interested in relating to us, then God would have to make religious belief psychologically possible.”62 Due to TIKs humans generally have the categories and vocabulary necessary to process further divine

61. Williams, Existential Reasons, 72–73; Jong, “Explaining Religion,” 11.

62. Jong, “Explaining Religion,” 10.

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communication. Without them, a relationship with God would not be possible.63 Given that TIKs do exist, we should expect further communication from God without prejudging what form it must take.

Another implication is that TIKs make people accountable to God to the exact extent that they provide revelation. From Calvin on, there has been a tendency among Christian interpreters to see TIKs as only establishing guilt without providing revelation (at least not with-out interpretation through special revelation). This contradiction should be rooted out. Either TIKs are by themselves an authoritative revelation of God, or by themselves they are insufficient to establish a person’s guilt before God.64

TIKs provide an encouraging sign that this world is God’s world and human beings are God’s image-bearers. As we interact with a diversity of perspectives, Christianity has the home-field advantage. God has designed humanity so that acceptance of the supernatural is natural while reductive naturalism must be taught. Because of this advantage, Christians should be circumspect when worldviews be-come prevalent that counter not only Christianity but also the vague revelations of TIKs. When atheism, naturalism, or moral relativism receive more widespread acceptance, we may be witnessing more than a failure of evangelism. These may be reactions against Christi-anity and related belief systems that are so powerful they cause peo-ple to resist knowledge that in most times and places is common.65 However, even in these situations there is reason for optimism. The presence of TIKs indicates that these reactions are unlikely to become the new normal as long as the offenses that provoke them are ad-dressed. Where those offenses are something other than the offense of the cross, Christians have an opportunity – perhaps even a duty – to make amends.

63. Alvin Plantinga and Michael Tooley, Knowledge of God (Malden, MA, Oxford: Blackwell

Publishing, 2008), 7–8. Otherwise, those who lacked them could not even learn from those who possessed them.

64. Diehl, “Evangelicalism and General Revelation,” 447.

65. Williams, Existential Reasons, 119.

Under Our Skin 19

Implications for apologetics Apologetics may be one way this is accomplished. The existence of

TIKs suggests that in most venues apologists should focus less on attempting to prove the existence of the supernatural and more on removing barriers that impede belief. The analogy of TIKs to other senses provides a guard against always attributing a person’s lack of “perception” to their own stubborn will and sinful condition. It may be that a person does not experience a particular TIK, just as one may be blind or deaf. Our world is fallen, and even if we had reason to limit our fallen nature to the physical aspects of existence, TIKs are at least partly contained in those physical aspects. In other cases, there may be a barrier to belief that may have more to do with the sins of others than the sins of the unbeliever. Upton Sinclair wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary de-pends upon his not understanding it!”66 Other factors than salaries, such as moral outrage or a vow to never be hurt again, may cause the same difficulty. “I can’t believe in a God in whose name countless atrocities have been committed!” Or, “God couldn’t be bothered to save my daughter, so he’ll get nothing more from me.” By uncovering the foundational reasons a belief is resisted, the apologist becomes better situated to truly help.

I noted earlier that TIKs provide an awareness of bad news that leaves people eager for good news. This opens the door for the apolo-gist – or simply the Christian friend or neighbour – to share that good news. In many cases, people may not need convincing of the existence of God and the bad news of their separation from God due to sin. An apologetic that focuses on defending those things, or that always starts with those things, may lose these seekers before the good news they crave arrives. This is not an attempt to equate apolo-getics with evangelism, since far more may be required than pro-claiming Jesus’ love and sacrifice. The seeker may have heard the story many times before, but the task will be to articulate and defend that story in the face of their objections and questions.

In all this, Christians can be assured that God’s Spirit is at work,

66. Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked (1935; repr., Berkeley, CA:

University of California Press, 1994), 109.

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both through what they contribute and in what they have no part. It is the Spirit who illumines every revelation, whether it be found in creation, in TIKs, in Scripture, or in the words of God’s servants. God did not form human beings to leave them alone. God desires to communicate, and has ensured that communication is possible. May we help others heed the whispers under their skin as we point them towards God’s shouted acts in history.

Under Our Skin 21

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