Skeptic Annotated Bible Author’s Self-Defeating Worldview

In our post “How to Handle Bible Contradictions” I talked about how worldview matters concerning alleged Bible contradictions:

Discussing Bible contradictions doesn’t happen in a vacuum…worldviews shapes one’s interpretation of what are evidences, facts, and the laws of thoughts.

Because worldview matters we must also be conscious of not just refuting Bible contradictions but also whether the skeptics’ worldview even allow for the intelligibility and meaningfulness of talking about “contradictions” or whether the skeptics’ worldview is a self-defeater and undermine their whole enterprise:

So its worth exploring whether a skeptics’ worldview can even make the laws of logic intelligible.  If their own worldview destroys the laws of logic, then there’s no place for them to even critique and say the Bible is problematic by being contradictory in the first place.  Of course worldview apologetics doesn’t take away the place of examining alleged Bible contradictions and refuting them.  But we must not forget that worldviews are important and that if one is arguing for a particular worldview or the rejection of a worldview based upon the claim that the Bible has contradictions, then Presuppositional apologetics must be brought to bear.

Having thus far refuted 70 alleged Bible contradictions from the Skeptic Annotated Bible (SAB) on this blog I thought it would be fair to probe whether the worldview of the author would undermine his own project of the Skeptic Annotated Bible.  What I’m asking here is a famous question asked by theologian Cornelius Van Til: “On what foundation rest the guns which he directs against the Christian position?”  Is it going to be a good foundation or will it be bad ground for his “artillery?”

Prerequisites for the search for a Bible Contradiction

First off we begin by asking what is the prerequisite for author Steve Wells to level a charge that there is a Bible contradiction.  While there are other presuppositions for the purpose of this essay we will note three prerequisites:

1. The Laws of Logic must be true.  To claim that the Bible has contradictions the author is trying to make the point that the Bible is irrational; and if it is irrational one must reject it.  The skeptic here is using the tool of the law of non-contradiction.  This of course presupposes that the laws of logic are true which includes the laws of non-contradiction.
2. Induction is an adequate tool.  Part of the skeptics’ search for a Bible contradiction involves inductive reasoning.  That is, the skeptic is making proper inference of a generalized conclusion from particular instances.  The skeptic is reading the Bible and from the reading is making certain inferences deductively (necessarily follows from the premises) and inductively (strong versus weak probability).  This presupposes that induction is a legitimate form of reasoning.
3. The mind is thinking properly.  The skeptic including the author of the Skeptic Annotated Bible prides himself as being “rational.”  He’s assuming his mind is working properly when he notes there are Bible contradictions.

Note these three prerequisites are also presupposed when a Christian refutes alleged Bible contradictions.  But does the worldview of the author of SAB support these prerequisites or does it undermine them?  If they undermine them then this “defangs” the skeptic’s attack of the Bible within the skeptic’s own worldview.  Also this dilemma also provides the self-defeater against the skeptic’s own conclusion for his worldview since his worldview cannot provide the precondition to make sense of his argument that there is a Bible contradiction.  The skeptic in this situation has become like a snake biting itself.

The Worldview of the author of SAB

Wells is an atheist.  In a written interview he tells us this:

I was raised in a non-religious environment, with an agnostic father and a vaguely Protestant mother. By the time I was twelve, I considered myself an atheist and I argued with anyone with any form of religious belief. It always seemed obvious to me that God was imaginary and religion was only superstition.

(nexuszine.wordpress. com/2008/09/10/interview-steve-wells-from-the-skeptics-annotated-bible)

In a 2014 interview this is what he says

So for the first twenty years or so of my life I was a nonbeliever and then I became a Christian and a Catholic and a very enthusiastic believer and that lasted for about twenty years and then the last twenty years or so I became an atheist again.

(youtube. com/watch?v=EpkVCU2TA4s Time stamp: 9:56-10:11)

Seeing that the author is an atheist we now see how atheism undermine the three prerequisites for Wells to reason that there are Bible contradictions.

A Self-Defeating Worldview

Wells’ atheism reduces to absurdity the three prerequisites that are preconditions for his attempt to find Bible contradictions:

1. Well’s worldview means the mind cannot be thinking properly to be rational.  In a universe without God the mind came about by impersonal forces (Wells in his blog promotes secular naturalistic evolution).  But a mind that essentially arise from impersonal accidental causation is an irrational mind since accidents is not a hallmark of rationality.  Instead it is arbitrary: Like doing Math with a Dice so a chance driven Atheist worldview brings about destruction of Knowledge.
2. Well’s worldview makes the Laws of Logic arbitrary.
   1. Remember our first point that Well’s worldview means the mind cannot be thinking rationally.  This also undermine the laws of logic since the mind is the entity that think about the laws of logic.
   2. Furthermore the laws of logic including the law of Non-Contradiction requires God.
      1. Philosopher James Anderson in a nutshell argues: “In summary, the argument runs as follows. The laws of logic are necessary truths about truths; they are necessarily true propositions. Propositions are real entities, but cannot be physical entities; they are essentially thoughts. So the laws of logic are necessarily true thoughts. Since they are true in every possible world, they must exist in every possible world. But if there are necessarily existent thoughts, there must be a necessarily existent mind; and if there is a necessarily existent mind, there must be a necessarily existent person. A necessarily existent person must be spiritual in nature, because no physical entity exists necessarily. Thus, if there are laws of logic, there must also be a necessarily existent, personal, spiritual being. The laws of logic imply the existence of God” (“The Lord of Noncontradiction: An Argument for God from Logic,” Page 20).
      2. Anderson fleshes out his arguments in the rest of his paper that is accessible here.
   3. Thus without God the atheistic worldview of the author of SAB undercut his own project of pointing out contradictions.
   4. Well’s worldview brings problem for Induction.  Philosopher James Anderson has written a paper titled ““Secular Responses to the Problem of Induction.”  In it Anderson concludes “On the basis of this survey, it is evident that there presently exists no satisfactory solution to the problem of induction from a secular perspective.”  Wells’ worldview is the acid that dissolves inductive reasoning.

Going back to the question, “On what foundation rest the guns which he directs against the Christian position?” we see the author of SAB has a bad worldview foundation as problematic as a Louisiana Sinkhole.  That is his own worldview just swallows up his “guns” whole.  In the worldview of the author of SAB contradictions is meaningless since according to atheism everything “is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

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