Great Illustration to Show the Difference Between Belief and Unbelief

Cornelius Van Til, in The Foundations of Christian Education, gives a wonderful illustration to show the antithesis between the believer and unbeliever.  We say that we see the truth, while the unbeliever is quite sure that we do not.  Van Til gives a well-known story to illustrate the point:

There was a country where most of the inhabitants were blind, including the philosophers.  But there were a few simple people whose eyes were not sealed, and they spoke of the joy of seeing the sun.  'But,' said the philosophers, 'you must not talk in that excited metaphorical strain.  There is a diffuse warmth, as we all know, but your talk about a visible luminous body is an antiquated objectivism.  There is no sun.'

Yet the simple people asserted all the more that they saw the sun, and a psychological committee was appointed to investigate the matter.  They made many experiments and in the course of time they discovered that whenever those whose eyes were not sealed said they saw the sun, they had opened their eyes.  

The blind psychologists felt over the seeing faces and they made sure that there was a precise correlation between the openings of their eyes and the visions of the sun.  'Dear friend,' they said, 'you are suffering from an illusion; the image of the sun that you speak of somewhat unintelligibly is produced by this trick of opening your eyes.  Be honest now and tell us if you ever behold the image of the sun except when you open your eyes.'  

The simple seers said, 'No' and the committee was well pleased with them and hoped that they would recover from their sight.  But the simple seers smiled to themselves, and went away saying, 'We see the sun.'

Van Til comments on the story: "This story illustrates the point that our opponents cannot make their position of doubt or negation reasonable to themselves unless they seek to show that we as well as they know nothing of the matter at all.  If one should argue that airplanes are the illusions of the heated imagination while Lindbergh [an American aviator] was flying overhead, he would have to give good reasons for his faith.  So our opponents are driven to appoint psychological and philosophical committees to prove that we are self-deluded.  And the woeful plight of the world gives them a lenient and favorable jury."

This is why I read Van Til.