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“The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.” (Luke 1:35 NASB) |
| “Unreasonable”
When I am teaching non-Christians, they often bring this verse up. They say to me things like, “The Spirit’s conception of Jesus is just a fairy tale. It’s unreasonable.” When I ask why they say that, they reply that it lacks evidence – especially evidence through replication. They say that evidence is the only way one can know anything. At this point I begin to feel sorry for them. You see, they have adopted a tragically flawed world-view that is unsustainable. They have missed what philosophers’ call a “properly basic belief.” A PBB is something that is still rational even without evidence or arguments. It is based on the bedrock idea that evidence cannotbe the only way to know truth. It can’t! If evidence were the only way to know truth, then, in the words of William Lane Craig, “One can’t establish anything as true since any evidence given in support would itself need to be proven and that proof further proven – ad infinitum. This is called the problem of infinite regress. Nothing can be known.” That’s the atheist problem. According to the evidence-only trap, nothing can be known. That’s not to say that evidence is unimportant, but it can’t be the sole basis of truth. For more consideration of all this, I recommend Alan Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief. I also think you will enjoy the brief videos linked below. They were written and produced by a doctoral student in our church as a summary of Dr. Plantinga’s arguments. Defeater 1: The Possibilitiy of Christian Belief: http://youtu.be/GORwmLF06Q4 |