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Meditation 529
Knowing God

by: Michael Fitzpatrick

To open a discussion on this article, please use the contact page to provide your comments.

Introduction

I am writing the following two expository pieces in reply to arguments put forth by philosophers Peter Kreeft and C.S. Lewis. Some odd compulsion demands that I write this, mainly that I cannot sit on knowledge which shows a glaring fallacy in two of the most famous philosophical arguments for the existence of a real and personal God: the argument from man’s internal intuition or longing, and the argument from morality. These both have long held tremendous sway for me, and even now I still consider them two of the most compelling reasons given for faith in a Divine Lover. They may still be correct, perhaps in another form, but I find that I can no longer agree with the arguments as they currently stand. Here are my heretical thoughts, for those who wish to parlay in such cosmic musings.

Man’s Longing For God

The first subject is whether or not mankind gives credence to God’s existence through the very act of his seeking. The idea is that throughout human history we find man has always longed for meaning and purpose and eternal life, and more often than not, religion and some sort of deity worship has come from that yearning as a solution, an answer to the spiritual burning. Peter Kreeft, professor of philosophy at Boston College, views this vast history of desiring hope as an arrow pointing to something that indeed can provide the fulfillment mankind seems to look for. A helpful analogy is that a man is hungry because such a thing as food exists, and a man needs to eat. A man is thirsty because somewhere in the world is water, and he needs to drink water. Therefore, a man seeks some true meaning in his life, some fulfilling happiness, thus somewhere exists that real, attainable happiness. Blaise Pascal wrote,

“All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions…Yet all men complain…A test which has gone on so long, without pause or change, really ought to convince us that we are incapable of attaining the good by our own efforts…this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite object.”1

He speaks of the infinite abyss within us as the spiritual yearning for heaven and the joy that can come from God, and says that nowhere else can we find the meaning for our lives. If we have such a strong internal desire for God, then He must necessarily exist to fulfill the need. Kreeft concurrs with Pascal that all our earthly attempts at meaning and happiness have been in vain:

“No one is really happy. The phenomenon is universal, not peculiar to some temperaments, for it is not a matter of temperament or feelings, which always undulate like waves. Beneath this surface, beneath the waves of satisfaction alternating with dissatisfaction of surface desires, the deep hunger of the heart remains unsatisfied. Because it is not a matter of temperament, this deep unhappiness appears most clearly not when one would expect, when life is full of fears or sufferings. If it appeared mainly at such times, we might dismiss it as escapism. But it is precisely when life treats us best that the deepest dissatisfaction arises. As long as we lack worldly happiness, we can deceive ourselves with the ‘if-only’ syndrome: If I only had this or that, I would be happy. But once we have our thises and thats and are still unhappy, the deception is exposed.”2

The philosopher songwriter Ted Kirkpatrick agrees with this conclusion:

“Suicide among the rich,
Defies the laws of reason which,
Tells those who have it all
Must often answer to death’s call.”3

And finally the Jewish philosopher in his epic decree writes:

“I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. All share a common destiny – the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not…This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterwards they join the dead.”4

So it seems we have a rather despondent, hopeless view of life upon this earth. No matter what we do under the sun, we cannot attain true satisfaction in our souls and selves. Thus, the conclusion is that we were not created to find such relief in this world, but in another, namely Heaven, wherein can be found God. Since we have this innate desire that speaks to something that can abate the yearning, and it isn’t found in this world, Kreeft implores that the only recourse must be a God who loves us and can fulfill us beyond this world.

“The major premise of the argument is that every natural or innate desire in us bespeaks a corresponding real object that can satisfy the desire. The minor premise is that there exists in us a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature, can satisfy. The conclusion is there exists something outside of time, earth, and creatures which can satisfy this desire. This something is what people call God and heaven.”5

The extensive quotations are to avoid any straw man accusations following the conclusion of this piece. I am trying to honestly and accurately portray what has been one of the most powerful arguments ever given for faith in a personal deity. This subject has been discussed by almost every major thinker and philosopher since Socrates, and is continually triumphed by the religious as the assurance of their faith. Because most of the modern world has adopted the mindset of Descartes and Berkeley, people view knowledge as originating with self, then ideas, and finally outward to objects. Arguments regarding objects are always viewed with skepticism because according to the epistemological flow, our sensory perception of objects is second-hand information.6 But this particular discussion does not appeal to our senses, but to our selves, the most immediate and verifiable aspect of us. Not only that, it speaks to a quality of mankind that does seem to be universal: the question of why we are here.

So is this the solution? Has Kreeft succinctly solved the ancient question in a convenient syllogism and now we can all relax, drink green tea, and await our entry into Heaven? Unfortunately it is not so simple. For Kreeft has allowed us to think of this too easily in terms of black and white. Certainly, I agree we all have a desire for meaning, hope, and happiness. I cannot think of a single human who would disparage all three of these elements, for even the Nihilist prefers to drink his coffee with crème because it tastes better that way. Nor can I conceive of a person who is absolutely content in this world. At both ends of the spectrum you find people working toward their conception of contentment, but the point is they are working: the ascetic is still attempting to denyreality and self, while the fundamentalist is still trying to meet all the tenants and requirements of their orthodoxy. Nowhere do you find someone who is happy and does nothing to maintain that happiness. When people become elderly, they retire and some move into rest homes where they will be cared for the remainder of their natural lives. They might be happy, but in a limited sense, because now that they have spent their lifetime working and have raised their children to adulthood, they often feel that they are no longer needed or cannot have any real impact on the future. They live out their lives with a strange melancholy – they are thankful and pleased with the life they have lived, yet find themselves feeling their usefulness was cut short, finite, not necessarily real, perhaps even self-created.

So it seems Kreeft might be onto something with his minor premise. He says there is nothing in this world which will ever give us fulfilling happiness forever. Some clarification may be helpful. He doesn’t necessarily mean that we cannot find happiness here, but that it won’t last, and that on a philosophical level it is not truly real, only self-justified. For example, my meaning in life is not to be a soldier. The Army is a synthetic organization and our function is self-purposed. If the Army disappeared, would my meaning in life also go with it? Kreeft acknowledges that this world may make you happy for awhile, but it will be a self-made happiness. Whether this is good or bad is irrelevant, I just want to draw your attention to the what it is he is looking for: a happiness that will survive death. The Jewish philosopher says that nothing matters because all our work becomes dust and we all have the same fate, the grave. Kreeft desires eternity, immortality, meaning that will not pass away like the seasons.

He claims that every desire corresponds with a real object or thing. In his appendix, he quotes C.S. Lewis, saying, “A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”7 Compelling indeed. Now, assuming that his first premise is true, that real desires speak to real things, does it follow that since he feels a desire for “heaven”, there is a heaven?

My objection is this: a baby feels hunger, thus there exists food. But food is a very ambiguous term, and there are different levels of food. There is a simple meal, the nutrition necessary to sustain the body, and then there is a feast, worthy of any glutton and fulfilling the body beyond its necessary needs to its wants. This dichotomy needs to be made plain – desires do correspond to real things, but not every desire exists in a symbiotic manner. We need to eat, so there is food and we eat it; but food does not exist to be eaten. A deer does not exist simply to satisfy our appeties, it just happens that we can eat it, so we do. But the existence of the deer is not testified to just because we are hungry. Furthermore, what we need to eat and what we want to eat are two different things: the former would consist of following the food pyramid on the side of the Cheerios boxes, the latter gorging ourselves even when we are not in need of sustenance. So, the baby may feel hunger, but that hunger does not necessitate the existence of a small meal or a feast. It only says that there exists something which will abate that desire, not what it is. The baby may reason (if a baby could reason, perfect world hypotheticals here) that there exists a feast because he feels hunger, but it does not follow that there then is a feast. It may be that there exists only basic food groups and enough to survive. So desire comes in two forms: need and want. The former does demand existence of some form of fulfillment, the second wishes for some form of fulfillment. Sometimes the want is satisfied; indeed there are feasts. But sometimes it is wishful thinking in an imperfect world.

And so, Kreeft reasons in his second premise that he feels a desire which cannot be fulfilled in this world. But could it not be he is wishing for a feast (heaven) when all that exists to meet that desire is a simple dinner (earth)? The philosophers above say that the fulfillment must exist beyond this world because there is only “vanity” here. But perhaps, in despair of concluding vanity, they went from needing meaning to wanting greater meaning. The need perhaps was fulfilled here on earth, but it wasn’t enough for their insatiable spirits, and so they’ve become theological gluttons, desiring something more. “This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good or evil, neither cruel or kind, but simply callous – indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.” (Richard Dawkins) Perhaps, faced with this predicament, Kreeft cannot bring himself to accept the naturalist position because he dreams of greater grandeur. But that does not mean there is a heaven or a God waiting for him, only that he has a nice idea of what could be.

I often have a desire to go riding. The very evidence of my desire to do so shows that there must exist something in this world which can be ridden, such as a horse. But I can envision a horse with a horn on its head, called a unicorn. If I was to follow in Kreeft’s line of thinking, I would be saying that since I can envision a unicorn, and I desire to ride more than a horse, I must desire to ride a unicorn. But there do not exist unicorns in this world. Perhaps there are unicorns in another world. Could it be then that I was made for another world? Or is it that I should just be happy with riding horses? “Did man create God to have a reason to live?” (Dostoevsky)

Is it true that happiness cannot be found in this world? “I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.” (Marie Curie) Truthfully, the majority of people in the world probably practice a religious concept of works to prepare for some afterlife. But could it be that they do so because they are ignorant of the joys of this world? We live in a world filled with undeniable, majestic beauty, full of art, music, theater, literature, poetry, architecture, adventure, culture and thrills. Certainly there are things that hurt us or fill us with fear, but bitter taste in life is what makes the joys so sweet.

The Jewish philosopher, when he saw the meaninglessness of working for something lasting, concluded, “Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do...Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has give you under the sun - all your meaningless days...Be happy, young man, while you are young, and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth. Follow the ways of your heart and whatever you see, but know that for all these things God will bring you to judgement.” Basically, be happy in this life. Live this one to the fullest. He didn’t say set your eyes on heaven and work for its glory, for who knows if there is one to be worked for? If one lives for another world, one which will not be, then both words are lost. Could there be a heaven? Of course. But I do not think that just because man is a spiritual creature who seems to be looking for something great, there is necessarily a celestial solution to all our problems, absent the inconveniences of this world.

Discerning A Crooked Line

The early twentieth century witnessed the strange conversion of two of the most infamous atheists of the time, G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, and to this day the impact of their decisions are still being felt through the profound writings that stemmed out of such dramatic change.9 Lewis became a champion for the Christian faith because he believed, as the skeptics do, that nothing should be believed that is unreasonable or without evidence. It was his conviction that if an impartial investigation was done of the world around us, we would find we have no choice but to acknowledge that Christianity, in its most unorthodox form, is the most sensible belief in making sense of the universe. His story of conversion from atheism to theism is remarkable, and to this day few have been able to challenge the incredible arguments put forth by this Cambridge scholar.

In the mid-forties, Lewis gave a series of radio lectures laying out one of his many arguments for the faith. It was a two part segment: part one was called, “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe”, and part two titled, “What Christians Believe”. In the former, he built on Immanuel Kant’s argument from morality and demonstrated why morality gives us great reason to believe in a supernatural creator. The second part was an impassioned analysis showing how the Christian understanding of God is the only metaphysical conception that fits with the conclusions of the first part, and the world around us. The discourse is remarkable, with one particular paragraph that is often quoted in books, movies, high school grad pictures, theology texts, and more.

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless -I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning.”10

One of the most famous arguments against atheism, Lewis delivers at tremendous blow to the naturalist belief, for he places such thinkers in a precarious position. Either they give up belief in a real morality, or they admit that morality is dependant on a personal God. Now the relation of God to morality is in no way a moot point; in fact it is an agreed upon opinion among philosophers, theistic or otherwise, that the question of God’s role in morality is unavoidable.

Albert Camus, writer, existentialist, and atheist, asked, “Can one be a saint without God? —that’s the problem, in fact the only problem, I’m up against today.”11 Fyodor Dostoevsky, the Russian philosopher famous for his deliberations on ethics and justice and a contemporary of Camus, responded with another rhetorical question: “If you have no God, what is the meaning of crime?”12 They felt that if there was no longer an objective, infinite God who had purposefully created the world and its human inhabitants, instilling both a physical and a natural law to govern, then there is no true “objective” morality that can say what is actually right and actually wrong; instead, justice becomes a fancy of either the masses or the powerful. The final, nihilistic opinion on morality came from Nietzsche, declaring that “morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.”13

These are the voices of the existentialist, the naturalists, and some atheists, who agree that without God true morality does not exist. The theists readily affirm this, for they feel by demonstrating that the naturalist position is without any real morality, they can create a repugnance for such thought by the unconverted, winning their support and perhaps even belief.

William Lane Craig, research professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, in an open debate with an atheist, stated:

“If naturalism is true, it becomes impossible to condemn war, oppression, or crime as morally wrong. Some action, say, incest, may not be biologically or socially advantageous, and so in the course of human evolution it has become taboo. But there is nothing really wrong about raping someone...the nonconformist who chooses to flout the herd morality is doing nothing more morally wrong than being uncultured.”14

So we find that according to thinkers on both sides of the theological map, in order for natural law and true morality to have any objective, meaningful basis, God must exist. Lewis found himself, at the time an atheist, in quandary for he could not rationally justify condemning the world as evil (and God non-existent as he could not create an evil world) without admitting to some true standard that indicated to him the world was indeed evil. For him to give up God was to give up such a notion. But then morality has only one recourse, personal fancy, and if the world is evil only because it made him uncomfortable, then no such argument against God’s existence from such selfish grounds could be made. Lewis found he needed God to prove that the world was evil. Therefore his position is that objective morals cannot exist apart from God, for that is illogical, and since objective morals are evident in the world around us in natural law, God must exist, and personally so, to take such an interest in us as instilling a will to goodness.

Like Kreeft’s idea that our internal longing for meaning attests to God, so it appears here that our internal morality also testifies to a divine maestro. We have an idea of meaning, therefore there must exist some sort of meaning. Likewise, we have an idea of just and unjust, therefore there must exist some sort of real justice. This statement of Lewis’s for a long time was a cornerstone to my own belief in Christianity, because it seemed like a paradox where Christianity was the only exit. I believed in morals so God must exist, end of discussion. Even now I still consider it a tremendous piece of writing. To separate myself from my former faith, I had to confront Lewis with the utmost honesty, for I knew otherwise he would haunt me forever.

First of all, the argument that God doesn’t exist because the world is actually evil is a bit of a distraction. Lewis was trying to prove what does not exist using evidence, but that is no longer his point and not relevant to our discussion. We can dismiss Lewis’s conviction that the world really is unjust because, in his own admonition, it seemed to be his private conviction so he could have a reason to explain away God. Instead, we need to focus on what Lewis is aiming for. In order to reach his intended goal, a personal God, he had to advocate that indeed right and wrong are real, objective essences. But it seems that, just as most people cannot bear the idea of a meaningless universe, he cannot bear the thought of an amoral universe, and rejects his own observation that his sense of justice could be just his personal whim. He wants (not needs) a world with actual right and wrong, because otherwise anarchy or worse would rule. So in a real sense, Lewis needs God to prove real morality as much as he needs real morality to prove God.

Imagine you are trying to measure a piece of board for a housing project. You need a foot of board to complete your objective. You measure the piece according to some standard of what constitutes one foot, such as a ruler. But you cannot prove that the board is one foot without the ruler which shows, every time, what one foot looks like. Likewise, without things like boards to measure, the ruler would be meaningless, for it would not correspond to anything. You cannot know a foot of board without a ruler, nor can you know a ruler without something to compare it to. And note that there is no such thing as a ‘foot’, it is simply an idea to help us understand real thing. The ruler and the board are real, the ‘foot’ simply a concept linking them together.

God, in this context, is necessary for the existence any sort of absolute morality (this is presuming said God is eternal, because a finite God could most certainly not be absolute). But in Lewis’s usage, it is just as necessary for the objective morality to show that there must be a God to create it. Yes, you have heard this kind of argument before. It goes like this: the bible is the true word of God because God inspired it. How do you know? It says so in the Bible.

Lewis commits an error of circular reasoning. But instead of catching it, he reveals his inner motives - that he very much wants the existence of objective morality to be real. He cannot bear the thought of theft and murder being subjective to the human experience. So he wants an objective morality. He wants a straight line so he can discern whether or not other lines are crooked. But wanting does not attest to something existing. He says it cannot be his private fancy since he really does want the universe to be held accountable. If for it to be held accountable he must accept God, then so be it.

Is a line crooked because you know of a straight line? What about the converse? Is it possible that we could not know good without evil to show us what is not good? Lewis is misusing analogies here with his talk of crooked lines and lightness/darkness. Darkness is not a real thing, it is not a substance. Darkness is simply the absence of light. But a crooked line is not defined as: that which is not a straight line. Crookedness is a quality wholly of itself, and while a straight line distinguishes a crooked line, they can be known and understood independently. One man is a bellowing fellow, another a quiet chap. We do not need the solemn one to know that the other is loud; these are qualities that stand alone. I stated in my first essay that “bitter taste is what makes the joys so sweet”. Again it seems as if I am using two opposites to define each other. But this can be resolved with a simple experiment. Place something bitter on your tongue. Can you taste it, or do you have to have something sweet along side to distinguish it? Of course not, bitterness is a nasty quality that carries its own value. Bitterness is not defined as ‘not a sweet thing’. So is evil simply the absence of goodness, or is it its own quality? This leads us to a deeper question: are goodness and badness real things? Or are they adjectives used to describe real things? A board and a ruler are real things, a ‘foot’ is not. The line is real, while crookedness and straightness are descriptions, not entities. Thus it seems we are talking about justice and injustice as adjectives concerning the world.

God becomes the ultimate plumb line to judge the value of humanity. But how is it that Lewis comes to this divine standard? Simply because he finds himself believing that there must be some sort of justice. But he forgets Plato’s ancient question: “Is a holy thing holy because the gods approve it, or do the gods approve it because it is holy?”15 Plato believed the second part, because he felt that goodness was an essence in and of itself. But Lewis makes God out to be the former, the one who sits on high and issues commandments determining whether each thing is just or unjust. But I think all of this speculation is muddying the waters. A line is a line. It may be straight or crooked, depending on the perspective of the viewer. What Lewis may find unjust I might find quite reasonable. To impose a moral decree on it is to give our own opinion on the correctness of something. If we say God says it is wrong, we are simply backing up our supposition with the greatest argument from authority ever given.

In the prior essay on meaning, I made the comment of “wishful thinking in an imperfect world.” Now a critic could say I am being hypocritical, for what am I comparing the world to when I say it is not perfect? Nothing, I would counter. I have never seen nor heard of a perfect world, and I do not need one to say that this one is imperfect, because I am not making a comparison, I am simply saying what this world is not. Lewis said dark would be without meaning unless we knew of light, and I agree! But just because there is dark does not mean that somewhere light actually exists. By saying a lightless world is dark, a person is saying what it is not (it is not filled with light), but it is quite possible to do so without knowing what light actually is or looks like. The person simply has the idea that there could be a non-dark world, a world unlike his current state of affairs. He knows of light, in the sense he has an idea of it, without ever having seen it. Likewise, I have no idea what a perfect world would be, other than it is not this. The idea of a perfect world is capable for me to understand because, just as in math, I can reason from a lesser to a greater. There is always n+1; I may not know what a number beyond a googleplex looks like or if such a number exists, but I can most certainly create the idea of it from the simple reasoning of a googleplex plus one. I have never seen such a number, but I still know of it.

Therefore, it is even possible for Lewis to speak of an unjust world without knowing of a just one. He simply reasons to the idea there could be a world where murder does not occur. But it doesn’t follow that there is actually such a world. I discern a crooked line without knowing of a straight one, because when I see the shifts and turns of the crooked line, I can create the idea that there could be a line that does not twist about in such fashion. I may not be able to envision it, and I may not know of its qualities, but I simply define it as ‘not a crooked line’.

Lewis wants real justice and morality to exist. But he finds the world unjust because he cannot bear the alternative, that rape and homicide might be merely selfish inconveniences. We like to think that people ought to behave and act a certain way, but that doesn’t mean that there is actually a moral law saying they should do so. He is calling a line crooked, when in actuality it is just a line, neither crooked nor straight, merely existing. Any meaning such as crookedness is being injected upon it by the viewer to define what the thing is, to distinguish it for himself. But if he goes around declaring crookedness is an actual thing, then he is turning the adjective into a noun. So it is just as possible that Lewis the atheist was simply wrong in calling the world unjust, that the world is neither good nor evil, it just is, and such attributions are simply the preference of the viewer. We humans invoke an absolute judge because Lewis is right in part - without God we cannot be truly right or wrong. So we believe God is real and morally discerning so that we can shout our accolades and issue our condemnations without our consciences bothering us.

Postscript

You should be able to comprehend now why I included these two rebuttals together. Both are the same argument using different propositions. Kreeft knows of the fulfillment of simple desires, and from that he postulates there must be an ultimate fulfillment. Lewis judges a sense of injustice, from which he conjectures the existence of an ultimate judge. But they are both committing St. Anselm’s great mistake, when he reasoned that because he could imagine an ultimate being, it must exist because existence is a part of it being the ultimate being, and if it did not exist he would be unable to imagine it as the ultimate being. We cannot allow ourselves to imagine things into existence, especially when concerning the question of what is the meaning of life.

Please realize that on neither point am I in full agreement with the conclusion. I do believe there is meaning in the world, that there is true morality, and that God, in some form, exists. My objective here was not to argue that we live in a meaningless or amoral world, but that these two gentlemen are arguing not from facts but from fancies. I needed to show that their premises are not as concrete as they think. As stated in my introduction, I think both arguments could still be correct, but the issues I raised need to first be addressed. Otherwise they will remain as I currently see them - two great minds wishing for a fantastic and alluring reality so much they begin to believe it is real because the alternative seems so awful. But I must remind them., “It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” (Carl Sagan)

Footnotes:

  1. Blaise Pascal, Pensees, 148, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (New York Penguin Books, 1966), pp. 74-75
  2. Peter Kreeft, Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing (Ignatius Press, 1980), pp. 57-58
  3. Ted Kirkpatrick, Vanishing Lessons (Tourniquet, 1994)
  4. Ecclesiastes, New International Version, The Holy Bible, (International Bible Society, 1984) 1:14, 9:2,3
  5. Ibid, Appendix A, pp. 201-202
  6. For a further introduction of the principles behind this form of truth perception: George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 1998), Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, 4th ed. (Hacket Pub Co Inc, 1999), Alec Fisher-Nicholas Everitt, Modern Epistemology: A New Introduction (McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages, 1994), Jonathan Dancy, An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology (Blackwell Publishing, Inc, 1985).
  7. Ibid, Appendix A, pp. 208
  8. Ecclesiastes 9:7,9, 11:9
  9. Suggested reading: C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (Harvest Books, 1966), G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Ignatius Press, 1995)
  10. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (http://www.philosophyforlife.com/mctoc.htm) Chpt. 6
  11. Albert Camus, The Plague, trans. Stuart Gilbert (Vintage International, 1991) pg. 255
  12. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Random House, 1950) pp. 79, 313, 760
  13. Friedrieh Nietzsche, quoted from Jonathon Green, The Cassell Dictionary of Cynical Quotations (http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/nietzsche.htm)
  14. William Lane Craig, Is the Basis for Morality Natural or Supernatural?, Craig-Taylor Debate (http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/craig-taylor2.html)
  15. Plato, Euthyphro, The Dialogues of Plato, Vol.1 (Yale University Press, 1989) 10a