The Weight of Experience

I took a class last Spring entitled "Christian Theism and the Postmodern world". In the class we looked at some of the classic arguments for the existence of God and the popular objections to God's existence. Recently, a podcast I was listening to got me thinking about the argument from experience. Prior to the class I did not give much credence to the role experience plays in discovering or affirming truth. My argument being whether I experience something to be true or not is irrelevant to what is true.

What I came to appreciate in this class is the great value we place on experience in our culture. We tend to base our understanding of truth on what we've personally experienced through our senses, which is why we have phrases like "I saw it with my own eyes" or "I couldn't believe it until I touched it". Even Thomas, in John's Gospel said, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."

When we experience personally, or secondhand, a miracle we tend to give more credit to God. Even though, I do not think everything that happens at a Benny Hinn crusade is of God, many people are influenced to believe in God because of what they experience at them. Conversely, there are stories like Charles Templeton (not Face from the A-Team). He was a Christian and a member of the Billy Graham Crusade, but died an agnostic. He tells of a time when he went to a ladies' home and prayed for her daughter and as he prayed the daughter was healed. When asked how he could not believe in the Christian God after experiencing such a miracle, he said that he could not understand why God would choose to heal her and not the billions of other suffering children in the world.

These stories show me that experience can be used to both affirm God's existence and used to deny it, even with the example of miracles. So I find myself feeling that experience is a strong support in the argument for the existence of God, but should not be the primary argument. What say ye?

True or False?

I was listening to a Stand to Reason podcast, hosted by Greg Koukl. As I listened to the podcast, Koukl stated the simple and precise definition of omnisicence is "God knows and believes all true propositions." A proposition can succinctly be defined as a statement regarding a subject.

My question for Koukl is whether it is possible for God to know "false propositions." My reason for this is, if God is not able to know false propositions then there is information that it is impossible for God to know. An example of this would be a lie, which by definition is a false proposition. Although it would be possible for God to know that a person lied, as the event occurring would be a true proposition, it would not be possible for God to know the contents of the lie. Perhaps, God would be able to know the information if there was a statement made about the lie. For example, although Brian ate the cookie, he told his mother, "No mommy, I didn't eat any cookies"! The problem then becomes by knowing the statement about the false proposition God now knows the false proposition, which goes against the initial proposition regarding omniscience.

Using Koukl's definition of omniscience (which has been used by many others before him) I wonder if there is a means by which God is able to know false propositions or if the definition should be reworked to state, "God knows both true and false propositions, but only believes true propositions."