6 Principles Skeptics Borrow from the Bible
Logical Fallacies: Stolen Concept Fallacy, Part 1
Stolen concept fallacies are logical mistakes in arguments that assume the truth of the same principles they’re trying to disprove. Here’s a crash introduction to six “stolen” biblical principles that underlie many arguments meant to discredit the Bible.
“There’s a strange smell in the air today,” a pedestrian once observed aloud, strolling past a bus stop.
“Air doesn’t smell like anything,” remarked a stranger waiting for the bus. “In fact, there’s no such thing as air.”
That comment stopped the pedestrian. “Pardon?”
“I said, there’s no such thing as air. I can’t see it, or smell it, or taste it. I don’t think it exists.”
“But you had to breathe air just now to tell me you don’t believe in air,” the pedestrian pointed out. “And soundwaves in the air carried your voice to me.”
The bus arrived before the stranger could respond.1
Stolen Concepts
Like a person cannot argue against air’s existence without first breathing air, many arguments against the Bible rely on principles that a biblical worldview supplies.2 Such arguments involve a type of logical error known as the stolen concept fallacy, which occurs when arguments assume the truth of the concepts they’re trying to challenge. Let’s look at six of the biblical principles that stolen concept arguments tend to pilfer.
Principle #1: Truth
A biblical worldview provides a consistent basis for truth to exist and be knowable, because God is the ultimate source of absolutes. Humanist and education reformer John Dewy, however, acknowledged that atheism does not provide a foundation for absolute truth, declaring, “There is no God and no soul. Hence, there are no needs for props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, then immutable truth is also dead and buried. There is no room for fixed, natural law or permanent absolutes.”3
The stolen concept fallacy rears its head here because the declaration, “there is no God, no soul, and no absolutes,” is itself an absolute statement.4 In other words, for it to be true that there is no such thing as truth, there must first be such a thing as truth. By assuming the existence of truth to dispute the existence of truth, the argument defeats itself.
Principle #2: Logic
A biblical worldview teaches that an unchanging God, who is the source of truth, created an orderly universe that operates under logical principles. And he designed humans in his image as logical beings who can reason about their logical universe. So, logic is philosophically grounded in a biblical worldview, but—as Dr. Jason Lisle explains in this article—not in atheistic worldviews. For example, immaterial laws of logic could not exist in a strictly material universe. And if the laws of logic were only agreed-upon human conventions or artifacts of our individual brains, then those laws would not be universally true and unchanging. In other words, reality would not necessarily be logical everywhere and at all times.
Principles #3–4: Knowledge and Scientific Reasoning
Because a biblical worldview provides the basis for truth and logic, it also provides the basis for knowledge and science. However, as this article explains, atheism does not supply a foundation for knowing anything with certainty.5 Humans are not all-knowing. Instead, we have to inductively construct what we think we know from the information our senses give us.
The trouble is, we have no way of absolutely knowing whether our senses are reliable—or even real. Relying on our senses to inform us about whether our senses can reliably inform us is arbitrarily circular.6 But a biblical worldview teaches that our all-knowing, unchanging, eternal God gave us faculties for knowledge and reasoning, reveals absolutes through his Word, and created a logical universe where scientific reasoning is possible.
Principle #5: Morality
Without a foundation for absolute truth, secular worldviews also lack a foundation for absolute morality. If moral standards are by-products of evolution, cultural constructs, or matters of opinion, then morality is not rooted in the character of one triune God but in the minds of many humans.7
Pages of history including the French Revolution, World War II, and the Russian Revolution illustrate the practical problems with humans assuming the “right” to define their own moral standards. Theoretical issues abound as well, as secular worldviews provide no basis for absolutely defining words like “good” or “bad.” Trying to define these terms without a foundation for truth usually means playing a dictionary version of musical chairs. For instance, we could say “wrong” actions are “immoral” because they cause “harm,” which yields “negative” effects. But that’s just another way of saying, “bad actions are bad because they’re bad.” This does not foundationally explain what “harm” is, why it’s wrong,8 whether or why those standards may change, and who decides these things.9
Such challenges inspired the late Yale law professor Dr. Arthur Leff to observe, “there is discontent verging on despair whenever some theorist tries to develop a system in which ‘found’ ethical or legal propositions are to be treated as binding, but for which there is no supernatual [sic] grounding.”10 In other words, attempting to ground objective morality without God is logistically impossible.
Principle #6: The Value of Human Life
With no foundation for truth and morality, there can be no foundation for human rights. If humanity is just a by-product of naturalistic evolution, an accident with no ultimate purpose but surviving and no ultimate purpose for survival, then no human life has objective, lasting value or meaning. So, humans are only valuable to each other to the extent they can support one another’s survival and reproduction—and even those are ultimately meaningless. Humans have no more inherent rights than any other evolved animal, and “personhood” can be whatever we define it.11 As scholars, including Dr. Jerry Bergman, have documented, such reasoning has contributed to some of recent history’s worst atrocities.12
A biblical worldview, however, affirms that every human life has objective, lasting value and meaning because God created every human in his image, loves us, died for us, and seeks relationship with us. Furthermore, since a biblical worldview provides a foundation for morality, it also supplies a basis for treating actions that harm, exploit, or devalue human life as morally wrong. So, the Bible does provide a consistent basis for human rights.
Rooted in Reality
Altogether, a biblical worldview—not a naturalistic evolutionary one—supplies a solid foundation for the principles of truth, logic, knowledge, scientific reasoning, morality, and the value of human life. Any attempt at making a logic-, science-, morality-, or rights-based argument against the Bible requires pilfering these principles with a stolen concept fallacy. Notably, these principles are also immaterial and so can’t truly exist in materialistic worldviews anyway.
None of this implies that only people with a biblical worldview can exercise these principles. For example, many secularists practice excellent observational science, behave in moral ways, and defend the value of human life. The point is, doing so requires borrowing principles from the Word of God, who “gives to all mankind life and breath”13 whether or not they believe in the breath or its Giver.
For more information
Truth:
Relative Thinking—A Life Without Moorings and Meaning
Inerrancy and the Test of Truth
False Teaching Lie #3: Truth Is Up to You
Logic:
Atheism: An Irrational Worldview
A Reader Challenges Our Claim About a Logical, God-Created Universe
Is the Christian Worldview Logical?
Knowledge and scientific reasoning:
Atheism: The Weakest of Worldviews
Biblical Faith Is Not “Blind”—It’s Supported by Good Science
Science and the Bible: Should There Be a Conflict?
Morality:
Do Secularists Have a Foundation for Morality?
Morality and the Irrationality of an Evolutionary Worldview
Is Morality Determined by Its Popularity?
Human value:
God’s Image: The Difference-Maker
Are Humans Animals? Q&A
Sanctity of Life Q&A
Footnotes
- Some may read further into this analogy and point out that air, being matter, can be measured instrumentally, unlike God, who is Spirit (John 4:24). (God, however, reveals himself in other ways, including his Word and creation [Romans 1:20], which itself affirms his Word.) However, the purpose of this analogy, which Dr. Greg Bahnsen and Dr. Jason Lisle have similarly used, is not to liken matter and God but to illustrate the futility of stolen-concept arguments.
- Other monotheistic worldviews may supply bases for some of these principles as well. To see how these worldviews compare with Christianity, and why a biblical worldview remains the most consistent with itself and the observable world, see https://answersingenesis.org/world-religions/ and https://answersingenesis.org/is-the-bible-true/.
- John Dewey, “Soul-Searching,” Teacher Magazine (September 1933), 33.
- Saying “there is probably no God” is also an absolute statement, which ironically attempts to make humans “God,” as this article discusses.
- Some may suggest that we can still be 99.9% certain based on historical patterns, etc. This raises questions like, “How certainly do we know we can be 99.9% certain, since materialistic worldviews do not provide a foundation for certainty? How do we know that this probabilistic certainty won’t randomly change if we’re not in a perfectly logical universe created by a perfectly logical God? And how do we know we can trust our probabilistic reasoning, which requires logic, if materialistic worldviews do not provide a basis for logical reasoning?”
- Some may suggest it’s also fallaciously circular for Christians to base their thinking on the starting point of God’s Word. To find out why this isn’t the case, see Critical Thinking Scan Episodes 36, 37, and the associated resources.
- An argument called the Euthyphro Dilemma has long been presented as a challenge to the idea that moral laws must come from a Moral Lawgiver, God. For a response, see Critical Thinking Scan Season 1, Episode 62.
- I once heard an evolutionary professor suggest that wrong actions are wrong because they “punch a hole in the fabric of society.” But why is it wrong to perforate society’s fabric, and why is it right to care about society beyond its ability to further our evolutionary success—especially if society and its conventions are only evolutionary by-products and the universe will end in a heat death anyway? Break today’s conventions and we might break a few hearts, but none of that is existentially significant.
- Because moral absolutes are founded in God’s character, however, a biblical worldview can consistently define wrong actions as those in opposition to God’s unchanging, loving nature. (Noteworthily, obedience to God is also an aspect of God’s nature, because God is a Trinity. See Critical Thinking Scan Season 1, Episodes 61 and 62 for more information.)
- Arthur Leff, "Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law," Duke Law Journal (1979): 1229, 1232.
- For example, Kyle Munkittrick of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies proposed the following system for determining “personhood”-based rights: “Using a scaled system based on traits like sentience, empathy, self-awareness, tool use, problem solving, social behaviors, language use, and abstract reasoning, animals (including humans) will be granted rights based on varying degrees of personhood. Personhood-based rights will protect against Gattaca scenarios while ensuring the rights of new forms of intelligence, be they alien, artificial, or animal, are protected. When African grey parrots, gorillas, and dolphins have the same rights as a human toddler, a transhuman friendly rights system will be in place.” (Kyle Munkittrick, “When Will We Be Transhuman? Seven Conditions for Attaining Transhumanism,” Discover, July 16, 2011.) But using human-made definitions of “personhood” to establish where human “rights” come from opens the door to justifying the execution of anyone deemed less of a “person.” For instance, Princeton bioethicist and evolutionist Peter Singer stated, “Most people think that the life of a dog or a pig is of less value than the life of a normal human being. On what basis, then, could they hold that the life of a profoundly intellectually disabled human being with intellectual capacities inferior to those of a dog or a pig is of equal value to the life of a normal human being?” (Peter Singer, “Twenty Questions.” Journal of Practical Ethics 4, no. 2. (2016): 74.) In line with such thinking, 89.1% of doctors in Belgium now support the killing of newborns with disabilities.
- E.g., Jerry Bergman, How Darwinism Corrodes Morality (Joshua Press, 2017), https://answersingenesis.ca/store/product/darwinism-corrodes-morality/.
- Acts 17:25.
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