[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 20, 2011. It was republished here on November 8, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date. The link was also updated to its current location.]
(This is another item in the "not new, but new for me" category. I was familiar with presuppositionalism, but not this particular presuppositionalist. Based on how radical Cheung's position is, I guess you could also place this in the "you can't make this stuff up" category.)
Vincent Cheung is a Christian apologist of the presuppositionalist variety. His website includes two articles which defend his calling all non-Christians "morons":
In this post, I am simply going to quote some excepts from these articles:
According to Scripture, all non-Christians are morons.
It is important for us to realize that non-Christians are morons and that I am right in stating this as an integral part of the biblical approach to apologetics. This is because if we are going to face our intellectual enemies with Scripture as our weapon, then we better first accept Scripture's own description of the unbelievers, that they are stupid and depraved. No wonder many Christians are such feeble apologists! They have rejected Scripture's own description about the situation from the start.
Cheung then turns to philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong to provide an example of what he calls a professional moron. But first Cheung takes issue with William Craig's performance against Craig:
Then, one day my wife came home and said that she heard William Lane Craig in an interview on a Christian radio program. The interview was mainly to promote this book, and the host of the program asked Craig about several of the issues that were discussed in the debate. My wife thought that Craig's responses were too uncertain, too tentative, and she wondered whether such weak answers do more damage rather than good for the Christian cause.
Turning to Sinnott-Armstrong, after criticizing various statements and arguments by Sinnott-Armstrong, Cheung offers this assessment:
Look how far the human race has fallen, that someone can be this stupid! Like all other non-Christian scholars, Sinnott-Armstrong is an intellectual fraud. He passes himself off as a professional philosopher, and claims to be one who examines the assumptions behind people's beliefs. Yet, at essential points in his arguments, he resorts to subjective intuition, common sense, and popular opinion. Professor of philosophy? I would not trust him to teach even elementary school debate. He is better off roaming the streets and picking up soda cans – at least then he would be making an honest living. Where are the scholars? Where are the philosophers? Where are the professors of this world? Has not God made intellectual mincemeat out of them?
You might exclaim, "What?! He calls himself a philosopher, and this is how he argues? What's wrong with him?!" I already told you – he is a moron.
And elsewhere we get this generalization:
You might exclaim, "What?! Are they stupid or something?" Yes, they are stupid, and these are the same morons who attack your faith and call you irrational. They are desperate and dishonest. They are finding it impossible to remain rational apart from reliance on God's revelation, but they refuse to admit it.
Cheung makes it absolutely clear the same conclusion holds for any other non-Christian professional philosopher:
I have used Sinnott-Armstrong and Zarefsky only as examples, but all other non- Christian thinkers are just as mentally feeble. Whether it is Michael Martin, Kai Nielsen, or some other non-Christian in the past or present, it makes no difference.
Furthermore, not only are non-Christian philosophers "mentally feeble," but even small children are intellectually superior to non-Christian professional philosophers:
This brings us to an important point mentioned earlier. Can even children defeat these non-Christian professors in debate? They certainly can, if they are properly trained by their parents and their pastors. God has already made the unbelievers foolish (1 Corinthians 1:20), and he delights in using the lowly things to humiliate the proud (v. 28). Although we should all participate, who better to embarrass non-Christian scholars than the children, the mentally disabled, and the uneducated?
And elsewhere, Cheung writes:
According to Scripture, unbelievers are nothing but spiritual and intellectual fecal matter. Otherwise, why in the world do you think they need to convert? Why do you think that they are helpless apart from God's sovereign grace?
He concludes:
Under biblically-approved conditions, we are permitted, and at times even duty-bound, to use biblical invectives against unbelievers and heretics. We do not call them "morons" or "feces" out of personal vindictiveness, but to proclaim what Scripture says about them, and to declare to them that they are not the rational and decent people that they imagine themselves to be.
Let us hope that Cheung's apologetics is as fringe to Christian apologetics, as Westboro Baptist Church is to Christian churches.
[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 19, 2011. It was republished here on November 8, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date. The link was also updated to its current location.]
Matthew Flanagan has written a response to my post on Jerry Coyne and explaining morality. I am quoting his response in its entirety, with Flannagan's permission.
Hi Jeffery, I tried posting this on your site but couldn’t, feel free to do so.
You write: ”I suspect that C.S. Lewis’ moral argument for God’s existence is probably much more influential among the average reader of USA Today than the work of Robert Adams. And Lewis does appeal to a variety of moral phenomena in in Mere Christianity as part of his moral argument for God’s existence. That phenomena includes not only what Lewis calls the “Moral Law,” but also moral emotions (e.g., guilt, obligation).”
I agree Coyne is probably referring to popular arguments like those by Lewis. (or Craig) .
However, I am inclined to see Lewis as offering a popularised version of Adam’s I spell this out in my article “God and the Moral Law in C S Lewis” which is forthcoming in a anthology on Lewis. In fact the phenomena of “guilt” is one of Adam’s central arguments in Finite and Infinite Goods, if you remember he argues that the such things as guilt, blame, and so on are central to the concept of obligation and suggest obligations are social requirements. The point I think in both authors is that guilt is not a feeling, it points to the state of being guilty, its possible for example to feel guilty for something and also know that reality its not your fault and you are not in fact guilty of the infraction.
I need to think about his thoughtful response before commenting. I hope to reply soon.
Update (21-Nov-11)
I just posted the following reply to Flanagan.
Hi Matt — Sorry for the delay in responding. You wrote:
I agree Coyne is probably referring to popular arguments like those by Lewis. (or Craig)
Fair enough. But if you agree that Coyne is probably referring to popular arguments like those by Lewis (or Craig), then I think you also must agree that Coyne’s naturalistic explanation for moral emotions is at least relevant to those arguments. Putting aside the issue of whether Coyne’s explanation is accurate, the problem with his response is that it is, at best, incomplete. As I argued in my original response, there is a distinction between the feeling of obligation and obligation itself.
You wrote:
However, I am inclined to see Lewis as offering a popularised version of Adam’s I spell this out in my article “God and the Moral Law in C S Lewis” which is forthcoming in a anthology on Lewis. In fact the phenomena of “guilt” is one of Adam’s central arguments in Finite and Infinite Goods, if you remember he argues that the such things as guilt, blame, and so on are central to the concept of obligation and suggest obligations are social requirements. The point I think in both authors is that guilt is not a feeling, it points to the state of being guilty, its possible for example to feel guilty for something and also know that reality its not your fault and you are not in fact guilty of the infraction.
I assume that you do not mean Lewis was familiar with and literally relying upon Adams’ work, since Adams hadn’t yet published anything on DCT when Lewis originally delivered his talks on the BBC which later became the book we know as Mere Christianity. Rather, I interpret your comment to mean that Lewis argued that the evidence to be explained includes not only the feeling of obligation, but also moral obligation itself. I agree with that interpretation of Lewis.
Still, I want to defend Jerry Coyne a little bit here. Lewis’ presentation of his moral argument is not exactly the clearest piece of analytic philosophy; it’s not like he he presents the logical form of his argument with numbered premises and a conclusion. In fact, I’ve read different Christian authors who are Lewis fans but who present his argument in different ways. (In fact, I think the clearest formulation of Lewis’s argument is to be found in a book by an atheist — Erik Wielenberg’s God and the Reach of Reason!) My point is simply that Lewis’s argument is not as clear as it could be. On the other hand, if Coyne were a philosopher, he probably would have recognized the distinction between the feeling of obligation and obligation.
As an aside, if you would be so kind to send me a copy of the article you wrote for the Lewis anthology, I would be grateful for the chance to read it. It sounds interesting!