Turning Skeptics to Seekers
Turning Skeptics to Seekers
Introduction
Skepticism isn’t always bad: one kind can be healthy, another unhealthy; one constructive, another destructive; one enriching, another corrosive
Religious skepticism claims that although we may know objective truth in nonreligious fields, especially the sciences, we can’t know objective truth in religion. When this theory functions as an excuse not to look at apologetic arguments, it begs the question. For apologetics claims to prove that at least some religious claims are demonstrably true. One cannot exempt oneself from refuting those proofs by merely claiming at the outset that no truth can be known in religion.
There is a real difference between agnosticism and skepticism but the answers to both of them are almost identical. Agnosticism says that nothing can be known, but skepticism only says that we should doubt whether anything can be known.
RATIONALISM
Rationalism is not merely a view that says we use reason to test truth. Rationalism says that we can determine all truth by logic. It says that we can rationally prove the existence and nature of God. For a rationalist, no appeal to evidence can overturn a logical demonstration. That is why Spinoza, having proven to his own satisfaction that all reality was unified in absolute being, denied that anything in the world had existence distinct from God, or that there was any free will. That is why Leibniz maintained that this is the best of all possible worlds, no matter how bad things get. He was convinced by rationalism that only the greatest good can exist. All truth is logically necessary to a rationalist.