Is Belief in God Just a Natural Phenomenon?
Below are some quotes from Francis Schaeffer which comment on the same problem.
"No one has presented an idea, let alone demonstrated it to be feasible, to explain how the impersonal beginning, plus time plus chance, can give personality... As a result, either the thinker must say man is dead, because personality is a mirage; or else he must hang his reason on a hook outside the door and cross the threshold into the leap of faith which is the new level of despair." ...And these from John Frame applying the method of Van Tillian presuppositional apologetics.
"In the same way, if man has been kicked up by chance out of what is only impersonal, then those things that make him want hope of purpose and significance, love, motions of morality and rationality, beauty and verbal communication - are ultimately unfulfillable and are thus meaningless. In such a situation is man higher or lower? He would then be the lowest creature on the scale." Page 95, The God Who Is There
"If we begin with less than personality, we must finally reduce personality to the impersonal. The modern scientific world does this in its reductionism, in which the word personality is only the impersonal plus complexity." Page 285, He is There and He is Not Silent
"Van Til calls upon us to implement his transcendental method by the strategy of adopting the unbeliever's presuppositions for the sake of argument, in order to reduce them to absurdity. And, of course, we should also permit the unbeliever to attempt the same thing with our presuppositions." Page 320, Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought, John Frame
"I suspect that Van Til's strategy can be more clearly described as follows: We should address the unbeliever always from our own presuppositional commitment. From that commitment, however, we may legitimately examine the unbeliever's presuppositions and tell him our evaluations of them, how they look from our point of view. We may also evaluate their consistency (e.g., the consistency between rationalism and irrationalism) and factual accuracy from a Christian-theistic view of logic and evidence." Page 321, Ibid.
"In a practical situation, then, we should try to show the unbeliever that, for example, his rationalism and irrationalism separately and together destroy the intelligibility of the world and of human thought. But if this argument drives the unbeliever into a deeper irrationalism, we do not concede to him what his presuppositions permit him to concede, namely, that the world is an irrational place after all. Rather, we continue to press the claims of God's revelation. In some situations, we might point out that the non-Christian himself refutes his own irrationalism, for despite his philosophy he continues to live as if the world were a rational place. Thus, the unbeliever's own mind is part of God's revelation, witnessing against his irrationalist defense." 322, Ibid.
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