REFORMATION
BIBLE COLLEGE
DIALOGUE PAPER
IN A BAR WITH
JOHN LOCKE AND DAVID HUME
CHURCH HISTORY
BY
THOMAS BOOHER
SANFORD, FLORIDA
MARCH, 2012
I
strode into the bar. It was past eleven now, and my nerves were on edge. My
church history oral presentation and final paper would be due in a few short
hours, and I had yet to postulate what to talk about and what to write. After
pacing about in my room and realizing I was fresh out of ideas, I figured the
rational thing to do was hit up the bar and have a beer or two to calm my
nerves. After all, drinking seemed to always have that effect on me.
“What can I get
for you?” the girl at the bar asked. As she spoke, two other men scooted in,
each looking a bit disheveled and flustered with one another. They were garbed
in strange clothing, like something you might expect from near the time of the
Revolutionary War. Halloween was last Friday, so I chuckled to myself, thinking
these fully grown men had gotten their dates crossed.
“Um, hello sir?”
“Oh, yes,
sorry, I’ll have a Sam Adams, please.”
“Excellent
choice, they are part of our 2 for 1 special tonight.”
As the girl
left to get my drinks, I felt the keen glare of the two funny dressed men
pressing down on either side of me. They had each taken the empty stools to my
left and right.
“Boy, did you
say Sam Adams? That fanatical Puritan that I keep hearing about?”
“Oh come off it
Hume, The Massachusetts governor isn’t that crazy, he is only following the
most reasonable of all religions.[1]
Besides, this lad must be referring to some other Sam Adams. Getting caught in
this futuristic parallel universe after you slammed me into that wardrobe during
our last argument sure has gotten us into a pickle.”
“Hah!
Reasonable you say? It’s a shame you never got to read any of Voltaire.[2] Well
I guess we shall have another go at just exactly what is and is not reasonable,
harrumph!” The flustered man pushed away from the bar and hurried over to the
unoccupied pool table. He placed the cue ball on the table, then grabbed a pool
stick and waited for his companion to join him. His companion rose, but rolled
his eyes and ribbed me with his elbow.
“Boy, I’ve seen
this argument from him fifty times now. Notice, I said I have seen it. He’s gonna hit the cue ball into the other ball,
which will subsequently cause the other ball to move. Something has to be
struck in order to move, that’s plainly seen. But oh no, no sirree, Mr. Hume
here is going to tell me that I haven’t really
seen the law of cause and effect, but rather that is simply what my dumb mind
tries to make of it, and thus I can’t actually
prove that his striking the cue ball caused even the cue ball to move, let
alone the cue ball impacting the other ball to cause the other ball to move!”[3]
“Glad to see
your starting to pick up on my pure reason,” Hume retorted. Come here boy, I’ll
teach you something valuable for your strange world with flashing lights, tall
buildings, piped in music, and scrumptious chicken wings!”
Hume was
motioning me over. The bar girl just returned with my two Sam Adams, which I
picked up and carried to the pool table with the other funny dressed man
walking beside me. This was very confusing, but then, as if all the stars in
the sky and planets suddenly aligned, it dawned on me. I was talking to none
other than David Hume, the most important philosopher ever to write in English,[4]
and I was about ninety-nine percent certain who the other guy beside me was
too.
“My, you are
David Hume, and this, this must be John Locke, one of the great champions of
reason and empiricism during the Enlightenment.[5]
You said you arrived here through a…wardrobe?”
“Yes,” Hume
huffed. “We were in some strange world where there was snow and a lamppost; we
stumbled across a strange creature named Mr. Tumnus, and then, believe it or
not, Arius and some cranky old man with big glasses named John Gerstner.
Apparently they were enemies but had recently rectified their differences.”
“Never mind all
this,” Locke interjected. “The boy here can settle our dispute. Soon he will
see that reason and observation can lead us to truth, and should be used to
lead us to uncover more and more truth.”[6]
Hume then
squared up his shot and struck the cue ball, which collided with the red ball
and sunk into the corner pocket.
“Nice shot,” I
said. “Way to cause the red ball to go into the pocket. The cue ball struck it
at just the right angle. Besides I figured you’d go for the red ball, it stood
out to me.” A look of dismay fell over Hume’s face, but Locke slapped me on the
back jollily and laughed.
“Now, I
expected you to say that; the red ball stood out to you because of
individuation, but that’s for another time,”[7]
Hume said. “You have been conditioned by experience to make a leap in logic.
Because you have seen billiards played so many times, and because every time
the cue ball runs up against another ball and the other ball starts moving, you
infer from that that the cue ball striking the other ball is what caused the
other ball to move, and the movement of the ball is the effect of it being
struck by the cue ball.[8]
See, there are two definitions for cause that I have come up with- the external
and the internal. The external, which you just saw, is this: an object,
followed by another, and where all objects similar to the first are followed by
objects similar to the second. Now the internal is what you have processed from
years of observing billiard balls striking one another: an object followed by
another, and whose appearance always conveys the thought to that other.”[9]
“You’re gonna
lose him with all this mumbo jumbo Hume,” Locke retorted.
“Just wait,”
Hume replied impatiently. “Perhaps this will rationalize things for you. You
see kid, if we could scrub your brain of all memories of things being struck by
other things, and then you saw me perform this experiment, you would not
conclude that the cue ball hitting the other ball is what caused the other ball
to move. This connection you would only make after repetition.[10]
Maybe after the third, or fourth, or fifth time, you may begin to believe that
the cue ball hitting the red ball is what caused the red ball to move. But the
cue ball moving is one conjunction, and the red ball moving is another
conjunction. It is only after that internal process of seeing this repeatedly
that your mind begins to believe that the cue ball hitting the red ball is what
caused it to move. What you need to understand however, is that no new data has
been added, it has only been repeated. So since you would not make this
connection the first time, the argument of it being true simply because of
repeatability isn’t a proof of anything. We are only hearing a sound when the
two balls approach one another, and then the other one begins to move. But we
do not actually witness cause and effect here. It is just two separate
conjunctions. Your mind is making an irrational leap.”[11][12]
“Bah humbug,”
Locke snorted. “Suppose one of those fast moving vehicles that these people
call cars were to strike you Hume, would you not conclude that being struck by
the car is what caused your pain and likely death?”
“No, how would
I know that?” Hume said.
“Wait a minute,”
I cut in, taking a swig of my Sam Adams. “I’m not sure I agree with you Hume.
Say you did scrub my mind. The first time I saw a pool ball being struck, I
think I would likely conclude that the second ball moved because the first ball
hit it. I probably would not need that repeated, except to make sure nothing
fluky happened the first time, something that my sense perception somehow
missed or didn’t pick up on. But the reason I would make this connection the
first time is because there is a basic reliability of the sense perceptions.[13]
Not that everything we see is always accurate, for instance we see a bent oar
under water when it is not in fact bent. So I may wish to see the billiard
struck again to make sure that something else isn’t interfering. Perhaps the
lighting somehow distorted my vision and what I saw did not take place. But
once I saw this again, I could be quite certain that what I saw the first time
in fact was not an illusion. The
question isn’t that the first experience was inconclusive, it’s rather a matter
of making sure nothing was interfering with my vision.”[14]
“Ah and that is
your problem boy. You can never, never be absolutely certain that your sense perceptions
are absolutely reliable, only quite certain. Perhaps there is a distortion in
your vision, an invisible distortion, or an invisible force that moved the ball.
You cannot rule that out.”[15]
“But we both know you won’t be jumping out in
front of cars anytime soon, because at the very least, that seems to trigger
the invisible fairy monster that kills you every time someone jumps in front of
a fast moving car. So in the least, when you struck the cue ball and it moved,
and when the cue ball struck the red ball, those events had to at least prompt the invisible cause that you
postulate to activate and take over, yes?”
“I will grant
that for the time being, sure,” Hume replied.
“Fine then.
That’s God, Mr. Hume.” Hume opened his mouth but didn’t have anything to say.
“Well now,
timeout.” It was Locke cutting in this time. “I’m more with Thomas Jefferson,
let’s remove the miracles from the Bible. I don’t think God really gets involved
with things anymore. He stands aloof, unconnected with the world he wound up
and started. To say God made the red ball move is absurd; it is far more
reasonable to simply assume the cue ball alone is the cause of the red ball’s
motion.”
“Wait, you died
before Thomas Jefferson was born, how do you know about him?” I queried.
“Read about it
on my iPad in the car. We’ve been here for a little while now, you see.”
“Ah, okay,” I
said. “Well Mr. Locke, couldn’t God still be involved with this planet?”
“I suppose,
possibly,” Locke conceded.
“And could not
Hume at least be right in saying that an invisible force is what caused the red
ball to move?”
“Yeah and the
tooth fairy could actually put coins under children’s pillows,” Locke said. “Read
about the tooth fairy too, by the way.”
“Well
gentlemen, the Bible says that in God we live and move and have our being. For
anything to be in motion, something must have set it in motion. In order to get
the cue ball to move, Hume had to strike it, at least to activate the invisible
force, yes?” Both men nodded in agreement. “So then, at the beginning of time,
something had to set the universe in motion. And at the top of the pyramid must
be the eternal, self-existent God. Now if he set us in motion, and we continue
to be in motion, then He must be sustaining our motion. Since our being is
simply derived from his being, He must always energize us from the power of His
being so that our existence can be sustained. If He ceased to exist, or pulled
His being away from our universe, our universe would cease to be as well.
Further, when Jesus performed miracles, He went against the laws of nature that
God instituted and maintains to validate Him as a prophet from God, and a
prophet from God cannot utter falsehood. So when Jesus claimed to be the Son of
God, it must have been true, since the Bible is a reliable source historically
and records Jesus doing and claiming these things. And then when Jesus
prophesied that He would die for sinners, that must have been true too.
You guys have helped me think more
biblically through your observations, I do appreciate it. But I think both of
you should take my two Sam Adams here, the beer, kick back and think things
through a bit more yourselves.” I placed one of my mugs in Hume’s hand, and the
other in Locke’s.
“I must go now.
I have a paper to write for church history class. You guys have given just the
material I need to complete the paper and do the oral presentation, though I
doubt anybody will believe my story when I tell them. And that Sam Adams guy
was on the right track. Maybe if you drink the beer that bears his name you
will develop the Puritan theology that he had too. Worth a shot, right? Ha, you
get it? A shot. I made a pun. Did you have puns back then? Ah, never mind.”
With that I
exited the bar and headed home to write my paper.
5 New Words: Definitions from thefreedictionary.com
Postulate: To assume or assert the truth, reality, or necessity
of, especially as a basis of an argument.
Cue: Games A long tapered rod with a leather tip used to strike
the cue ball in billiards and pool.
Scrumptious: Splendid; delectable
Rectified: To set right; correct
Humbug: Nonsense; rubbish
[1] Justo
L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Present
Day, Prince Press ed ed. (Oxford: Prince Press, 1999), 189
[2] Professor
Adamson, “The Enlightenment Continued and Romanticism” (lecture, Reformation
Bible College, Sanford, FL, March 15, 2012).
[3] Justo
L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Present
Day, Prince Press ed ed. (Oxford: Prince Press, 1999), 192
[4] Morris,
William Edward, "David Hume", The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/hume/>.
[5] Uzgalis,
William, "John Locke", The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Winter 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/locke/>.
[6] Uzgalis,
William, "John Locke", The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Winter 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/locke/>.
[7] Professor
Sproul Sr., “Hume (part 1)” (lecture, Ligonier Ministries, Sanford, FL, Date
unknown),http://www.ligonier.org/rym/broadcasts/video/hume-part-1/ (accessed
March 29, 2012).
[8] Morris,
William Edward, "David Hume", The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/hume/>.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Morris,
William Edward, "David Hume", The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/hume/>.
[11] Justo
L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Present
Day, Prince Press ed ed. (Oxford: Prince Press, 1999), 190
[12] Morris,
William Edward, "David Hume", The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/hume/>.
[13] Professor
Sproul Sr., “Lecture 7, Reliability of Sense Perception” (lecture, Ligonier
Ministries, Sanford, FL, Date Unknown),http://www.ligonier.org/rym/broadcasts/video/hume-part-1/ (accessed
March 29, 2012).
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
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