I. THE MADNESS IS IN THEIR METHOD
CHAPTER I THE MADNESS IS IN THEIR METHOD
Of some it has been said that they have method in their madness, but of others it must be maintained that their madness is in their method. The absurd, irrational, conclusions that unbelievers have come to, with reference to Christianity, are the results of the mental attitude which they bring to the study of the faith, and the method by which they endeavor to evaluate it. They may deny either, or both, the existence of God and the deity of Christ because they are unable to establish them by certain methods. They overlook the fact, which should be obvious, that a method which applies in one field may not apply in another. The nature of the field which is under investigation determines the kind of approach which one must use in order to arrive at correct conclusions within that field. When one tries to prove something by a method which is entirely unsuited to the establishment of a particular truth, he will fail. But his failure does not mean that the truth does not exist; it proves that his method is not fitted to the particular field and can only result in fallacious conclusions. He has made the mistake of demanding proof by means of a method unsuited to that field. He has demanded that the method settle something with which it cannot even deal. He is as mistaken as the man who maintains that fear, hate, love, feelings, ideas, and ideals cannot exist because he has been unable to discover them by means of the X-ray machine.
I. THE DETERMINISM OF METHOD
The above considerations make it evident that there is such a thing as determinism of method, i. e. that the method that one uses may rule out certain aspects of reality and make certain that only failure can result from the effort to evaluate, or even to discover these aspects of reality by that particular method. It is impossible for fear and love to be discovered by X-ray. It is impossible that a man. can pick up ideas with forceps, put them in a bottle, shake them well, and end up with a system of philosophy 1 2 THE ROOTS OF UNBELIEF from such a combination of thoughts. And the man who tries to do it in that manner is not casting doubt on the existence of ideas, but rather does he cause doubt as to his sanity. It is not a reflection on ideas, but on him. This determinism of method has been recognized by thinkers in fields remote from the study of Christianity. V. J. McGill lamented, in "Some Queries Concerning Moore's Method," that in some cases important problems in psychological research are ignored for no other reason than the fact that they cannot be dealt with by some particular technique or method which an investigator has perfected. Some very important problems have been ruled out of court by certain investigators because they do not lend themselves to certain experimental techniques and statistical devices.'
Dr. Robert E. D. Clark, a scientist of Cambridge, England, has pointed out that "many people who have no first hand acquaintance with science, speak as though the method of determinism was so completely vindicated that there could be little doubt that it ought to be accepted as an article of faith for the whole of Nature. Such a view, however, has little to commend it. Every scientific worker comes across very large numbers of phenomena, and he mentions few which do not fit in with his theories. They are usually huge numbers of isolated observations for which no explanations are forth-coming, and unless they are repeatable they are forgotten. Science is only concerned with repeatable observations, and by its very nature, anything 'miraculous' is therefore out of its domain. The method of determinism could not be applied to a miracle, while on the other hand no one could expect a miracle to be repeatable when the physical conditions were made the same. "
The assumption of determinism is then a part of the method of attack used by science. But whether determinism is ever true as a fact is another question. Its success as a method suggests that a large part of Nature is determined, and this seems to the writer the most reasonable view to hold. "
Thus by reason of its nature, science automatically limits itself and is incapable of discovering whether determinism is univernal, or even whether it exists at all for certain. On the other hand the experience of free will indicated that the decisions we reach are not forced upon us from without. It is, therefore, very unnecessary to interpret our minds in terms of that which our minds have discovered (or think they have discovered) in the outer world. In other words our minds begin by dividing up the universe into two sections--the obective physical world and the subjects observing it. Between these there is apparently a great difference, but a study is made of those parts of the objective section which best fit in with determinism, and it is then claimed that determinism must apply to both sections of the world. The procedure is in fact a complete vicious circle. By using its own free will the mind decides what to think about, and after a few stages of reasoning concludes that it has no free will."
This determinism is the result of strict adherence to one method which has yielded fruitful results when applied to the objective physical world and from which sweeping conclusions have been drawn concerning the subjective realm of mind, of thoughts, feelings, ideas, and principles. The vast difference between the life of an intelligent being, man, is forgotten when men make large, unjustifiable, leaps from the life-less, non-intelligent matter and its relationships to life and mind. With two realms in the universe--the lower as manifested in matter and the higher as manifested in conscious, intelligent man--these men interpret all of the universe in terms of the lower. This is because of their blind adherence to a method which they have found productive in dealing with matter.
William James, one of the most famous and beloved figures in the history of Psychology, pointed out this same danger of making an unwarranted extension of a method. When engaged in research in psychology he adopted the deterministic view for scientific purposes. This viewpoint, however, was met with the counterclaim of ethics, when one considered larger areas of life than those embraced in those psychological problems, which one investigated by means of determinism which was adopted as merely provisional and methodological. He regarded the claim of ethics as sufficient to regard the will as free.
II. THE MISAPPLICATION OF A THEORY OF PROBABILITY
What would you think of an individual if he maintained that a proposition or principle in mathematics demolished the claims of Jesus Christ and demonstrated that He was a false prophet? Doubtless you would think that he was beside himself in trying to weigh the credentials of Christ by an appeal to some principle in mathematics. And you would be right. And yet, some do it. They "reason" as follows: Christians admit that there has been a multitude of false prophets and Messiahs. If, for example, out of one hundred who might claim to be the Messiah the Christians admit that all of them but one are making a false claim, it is hardly likely that the one is any different from the others, they reason. Thus the odds are ninety-nine to one that the hundredth is false also. The theory of probability, they thus argue, is against the position that Christ is right.
This same approach is made by some as they argue against the resurrection of Jesus Christ. "You will admit," they say "that of all of the billions who have died that Christ is the only one for whom you made the claim that He was raised to die no more." "Yes," we answer, "although the Bible tells us of some who were raised from the dead, yet Christ is the only one who had been raised to die no more." "Well," they reply, "since you admit that billions have not been raised the odds are overwhelmingly against Christ's resurrection."
To a type of mind which hears only sound, and does not look for the sense, this may sound like good logic, and establish the improbability of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So to them it will likely come as a shock that this reasoning is fallacious and that it no more shows Christ false and the resurrection a fake or a misunderstanding than it shows that Franklin D. Roosevelt never lived and was never President of the United States.
The error resides in the misapplication of the theory of probability which tries to settle the discussion concerning the Messiahship of Jesus, and His resurrection, on a basis which is entirely foreign to the type of basis and approach which is necessitated by the nature of the claims of Christ and the evidence that He was raised from the dead.
The theory of probability may be excellent in dealing with some things, but it is entirely out of place when used to settled matters which by their nature demand a different approach and a different type of examination. We shall illustrate this in fields in which the absurdity of such a mathematical approach is seen at first glance, and then in fields similar to that in which the claims and credentials of Christ are to be tested. What would you think of a friend who reacted as follows when you, who are an expert on music, told him that a certain piece of music had an excellent rating? Immediately he gets his scales and his footrule in order to weigh and measure that music to see whether or not your evaluation was correct? What would you think of the person who denied the beauty of a song simply because he could not measure it in terms of square feet? What about the man who declares that there is no power or beauty in a certain poem because he has been unable to take the square root of the poem? You would think--well never mind what you would think; but to say the least, it would not lead you to evaluate highly his approach to these things. However, these individuals are no more in error in their approaches to these different things than is the unbeliever who approaches the credentials of Christ in the manner which we have described.
To take illustrations more in the field in which one of the types of the credentials of Christ must be weighed, we turn to the field of history. Nero, a Roman Emperor, ruled for a period of time in the first century. Anyone who knows much about history, and the historical method, knows that Nero did live and that it can be established by the historical method. What would we think of the individual who reasoned as follows: of all the men who have ruled others, the historians admit that there was only one Nero who ruled at this time and place. Since in all the rulers both before and after him they admit that they cannot find another, the overwhelming probability is that they have never found a Nero. For certainly that which cannot be found among thousands and thousands of rulers is not to be found at all. If we had a friend who reasoned in that manner we would think either that he was jesting or that he was long overdue for a mental examination. On such logic we could prove that an individual does not exist. The individual would admit that in the billions who came before and the billions who may come afterwards that there was not and that there will not be another one just like him: that he is unique, unprecedented and unrepeatable. If out of the billions of babies born both before and after his birth not one of them was he, the odds are billions to one that he was never born. Surely, that which did not happen in billions of times would hardly happen at all, the theory of probability is against it. One more illustration and we draw the principle out of these illustrations and apply it to Christ. Would you consider it sound logic if a man argues that because thousands and thousands of roads do not lead to Chicago, that therefore the probability is that no road leads to Chicago? No, you would not consider this reasoning sufficiently sound to make you change your mind about a proposed trip to Chicago. It can be proved that there are such roads.
Historical events are unique in their nature. Once an event has taken place, or an individual has lived and died, that event or that person can not be demonstrated to have taken place and existed by any theory of probability. That particular event cannot be repeated. Even in laboratory experiments although one can perform an experiment similar to that performed by another person some years before, yet the performances of the experiment today do not prove that some other person performed a similar experiment at a certain place and time. With reference to such experimentation one could prove that it could have been performed but that does not prove that such a person actually performed it. Things like that must be established by testimony. And the existence of each person stands on its own evidence and its own evidence is not disturbed in the least just because there were billions of other people who were not that particular person.
Whether or not Jesus Christ is the Messiah, and whether or not He actually rose from the dead, will have to be determined by whether or not the evidence sustains His claims and the claims made for His resurrection. The truthfulness of His claims are not undermined because there are others who have falsely made claims. Counterfeits do not disprove the existence of the genuine article, and if the evidence concerning any individual bill is that it is genuine it is still genuine although a million may not be genuine. Those claims of Christ which can be tested by the historical method must be tested by that method if they are to be actually tested at all; to attempt to test mathematically those which give themselves only to the historical treatment is to have madness in one's method.
The fact that there are many who have claimed to be sent from God, and that many of them contradict one another, does not in any wise prove that they are all false. It does prove that they cannot possibly all be right. Conflicting stories might be told about an individual or an event, but that does not mean that there is no truth concerning those things, and that the truth cannot be established. What would you think of a judge "if there came several witnesses before him, and their testimony was opposite to one another, he would without further examination reject them all at once, and make their opposition to one another to he alone a proof that they were all false, and none of them to be depended upon." No, it is "reasonable, when testimonies are opposite, to weigh and compare those testimonies, in order to form a proper judgment concerning them . . . A just and impartial judge will not immediately reject the testimonies on both sides without examination, because they contradict one another, which is the method" which some unbelievers follow with reference to religion, "but will carefully compare them, that he may find out on which side the truth lies, and which of the testimonies is most to be credited, and will give his judgement accordingly."
Once an individual has examined the credentials of Christ and has become convinced that Jesus Christ is what He claimed to be, does one have to continue and examine the claims of all others who have claimed to be the Messiah? Not at all. Of course, one is willing to examine their claims and show that they cannot be maintained, but when one has established that Jesus is the Messiah and that He thus speaks with authority, He becomes the standard by which others are measured and found false, for they contradict Him and fall far below Him.
III. THE ARGUMENT TURNED AGAINST THE SKEPTICS
The theory of probability used by the skeptic to discredit the miracles and events of the Bible can not only be thus shown to be misused, but it can also be turned against him. Our own experience cannot be applied to miracles, for our own personal experience is limited to those objects and events which come under our notice. So from our experience we cannot draw testimony against them, nor from the experience of any other individuals who did not witness them or investigate them where they took place and in connection with the people or things on which the Bible claims that they were wrought. The fact is that "there is testimony for them, and none against them. Many persons testified that they saw them happen, and none testify that they were upon the spot, and examined all the circumstances, and saw that they did not happen. As to the testimony of those who were not there, however uniform it might be, it does not bear at all on the subject. The principles of calculation, therefore, are more in support of miracles than against them."
Thus, to use the weapon of our foe on him, since there are many that testify that they took place, and none has left testimony that they were there and know by personal experience that they did not take place, the overwhelming probability is that they did take place. If, for example, five witness that these miracles did take place, and none witnesses that they did not, the odds are five to nothing that they did take place. We do not, of course, use the number of professed witnesses to the miracles as the chief proof of the miracles; but rather the character of the witnesses; the nature of their testimony; etc. We are simply showing here, even on the skeptic's own use of this type of theory of probability, that his own weapon cannot only be turned aside, but turned back into the vitals of his own arguments.
The theory of probability can also be turned against the unbeliever by showing that the overwhelming odds are against the idea of chance as the creator of the universe and man. A vast multitude of things had to be just right or else the universe and life would have been impossible. If any one of them had been off balance life could not exist.
All these considerations support the conclusion that methods exclude some things, as well as include certain things. The nature of the method determines what can be isolated and studied by means of the method. The failure to recognize this has been one of the fundamental failures on the part of some unbelievers in dealing with the evidence of Christianity. They have been unable to get the right answers because their methods have excluded these answers from the very beginning. It is clear, therefore, that an investigator of the credentials of Christ should ask, before beginning his examination, whether or not the method of investigation which he intends to use is suited to dealing with the evidence on which the claims of Christ rest.
Our attention shall now turn to the way in which the conduct of professed Christians has, in some cases, helped to create a bias against Christianity. This bias has led some to conclude that one whose life is bad cannot have the right creed. As shall be proved, one should ask whether or not the person is really living by the faith which he professes with his mouth.