Skeptics Won't Believe This

A popular rule among skeptics says that any belief without testable evidence is indistinguishable from delusional fantasy, and that the believer carries the whole burden of proof. It sounds airtight. But the question underneath it is old. What may a man count as knowledge, and who decides? This piece sets out that question on its own terms, and then brings Scripture to bear on it.

The skeptic’s rule, stated fairly

The skeptic’s position deserves a fair hearing. He says that a claim earns belief only when it can be tested, and that the man making the claim carries the burden of proof. If I say there is a dragon in my garage, you do not have to disprove it. I have to show it. A belief that no test could ever confirm or refute, he says, looks exactly like a fantasy from the outside, so it should be treated like one.

There is real wisdom in that. Men do invent things. Courts rightly demand evidence before they convict. Scripture itself requires two or three witnesses before a matter is settled (Deuteronomy 19:15) (2 Corinthians 13:1), and it tells believers to test the spirits rather than swallow every claim (1 John 4:1). No Christian should defend credulity.

The trouble is not the call for evidence. The trouble is the word “whatsoever.” The skeptic’s rule, applied with full rigor, cuts away the ground he stands on.

What Russell conceded

Bertrand Russell was no friend of Christianity. Yet in The Problems of Philosophy (1912), in the chapter on the existence of matter, he admits that there is no logical impossibility in supposing that all of life is a dream and that nothing exists outside one’s own mind. He cannot refute that by demonstration. He accepts the existence of an external world because it is the simpler hypothesis and because men hold it by an instinctive belief, not because he has proved it.

That is a remarkable concession from a skeptic. Every test a man runs takes place inside his own experience. Every instrument reading, every lab result, and every peer review reaches him through senses and memory that he must already trust. He cannot step outside his mind to check whether his mind matches the world. So before any experiment begins, he has already believed several things he cannot test: that the world is real, that other minds are real, that his memory is reliable, and that nature behaves the same tomorrow as today.

Those are not foolish beliefs. They are necessary ones. But they are beliefs, held before evidence and used to interpret evidence.

Belief as the gate

Once that is admitted, the skeptic’s rule changes shape. It is not “believe only what you can test.” It is “believe the starting points that let you test anything at all, and then test within them.” What a man can know depends on what he already believes about the world.

A scientist who gets a truly incoherent result does not conclude that the world has dissolved. He concludes that some real variable went wrong: a contaminated sample or a faulty sensor. He can only reason that way because he already believes the world is orderly. Without that belief, science has nothing to stand on.

Apply the same logic to God. If belief about the world can govern what a man is able to know about the world, then belief in God can govern what a man is able to know about God. That is not special pleading. It is the same rule the skeptic already lives by. And it means he has no logical ground to dismiss the knowledge that believers claim. He can say, “I do not share your starting point.” He cannot honestly say, “Your knowledge is fantasy because I cannot test it from mine.”

The many witnesses

Then there is testimony. Most of what any man knows he has never tested himself. He has not measured the distance to the sun or examined the history of Rome. He relies on witnesses he trusts.

Christianity has never rested on one witness. The risen Christ appeared to Peter, to the Twelve, and then to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom were still alive when Paul wrote and could be asked (1 Corinthians 15:5, 6). Luke says he carefully investigated everything from the beginning, drawing on eyewitnesses, so his reader could know the certainty of what he had been taught (Luke 1:1-4). John says the apostles proclaimed what they had heard, seen with their eyes, and touched with their hands (1 John 1:1-3). Peter says they did not follow cleverly made-up stories but were eyewitnesses of Christ’s majesty (2 Peter 1:16). Down through the centuries, a great multitude of believers has added the same testimony of a living Christ.

A skeptic can refuse that testimony. But if he lacks the belief that would let him test it, he is not in a position to rule it out. He is a man without instruments calling the astronomer a liar.

Why the gate stays shut

Here Scripture gives a light philosophy cannot. If belief is the gate, why do some men believe and others do not? Not because believers are smarter or more honest. Paul says the natural man does not accept the things of God’s Spirit. They seem like foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14). Men are not neutral judges standing at the door. Paul says they suppress the truth by their wickedness, even though what can be known about God is plain to them from creation (Romans 1:18-20). The god of this age has blinded their minds (2 Corinthians 4:4).

So the skeptic’s trouble is not a shortage of data. The heavens declare God’s glory every day (Psalm 19:1). His trouble is the heart that reads the data. Jesus told Nicodemus that no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again (John 3:3). Seeing comes after birth, not before. No one comes to Christ unless the Father draws him (John 6:44). Faith itself is God’s gift (Ephesians 2:8). God gives a new heart in place of a heart of stone (Ezekiel 36:26), and He opened Lydia’s heart so that she paid attention to what Paul said (Acts 16:14).

That is why I cannot manufacture belief in another man, and why he cannot manufacture it in himself. The gate opens from the inside only when God, in His providence, opens it. The Reformed confessions say the same: effectual calling is God’s work alone, in which He enlightens the mind and renews the will (WCF 10) (1689 LBC 10).

This also guards against pride on the believer’s side. If I see, it is because I was given eyes (1 Corinthians 4:7). I have nothing to boast about. But I am also not obligated to call my sight blindness because a blind man demands it.

True skepticism

The skeptic prides himself on doubting. Good. Let him doubt thoroughly. Let him turn the same scrutiny on his own starting points that he turns on mine. Let him ask why he trusts reason, if his mind is only the accident of matter in motion. Let him ask why he expects nature to stay orderly, if no one orders it. The Christian has an answer: God made the world and holds it together by His word (Hebrews 1:3) (Colossians 1:17), and He made man in His image to know it (Genesis 1:27). The skeptic borrows that order every time he runs a test, and then denies the One who lends it.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7). That is not an anti-intellectual slogan. It is a statement about where knowledge starts.

For the man who must weigh it

When someone tells you that your faith is a fantasy because it cannot be tested, do not get angry, and do not pretend you hold no beliefs before evidence. Neither does he. Grant what is true in his demand. Then show him that his own rule, applied strictly, cannot get him out of his own head, and that his greatest thinkers have admitted it.

Give him the witnesses (1 Corinthians 15:6). Tell him plainly that what he lacks is not information but a new heart (John 3:3). Do not try to win him with cleverness, for faith comes by hearing the word of Christ (Romans 10:17), and God alone gives the increase (1 Corinthians 3:7). Be ready to give a reason for your hope, with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15).

As you pray, ask God to open the eyes of the men you argue with, and ask Him to keep you humble, since you once could not see either. Then leave the outcome in His hands, where every gate and every heart already rests.