Somebody once wrote to G.K. Chesterton and asked him what he thought about civilization. Chesterton promptly replied, "I think it is a wonderful idea, why doesn't somebody start one?" The moral bankruptcy that stalks our land and the existential emptiness so evident in our youth today remove any temptation to brand this Chestertonian response as cynical. What is harder to admit is the cause-effect relationship between atheism and our present crisis.
At first glance one may wish to dispute the allegation that atheism is the womb that conceived our moral malady. But a careful examination of its assumptions and conclusions reveal it to be a system indefensible against that charge and many others. It incorporates in its world view several fatal flaws, making it a costly and dangerous philosophy on which to build a life or destiny.
The philosophical process I have undertaken is somewhat akin to the three-step method that leads us to any conclusion-our assumptions, our arguments, and our applications. This necessitated incursions into the realm of logic, the testing of its conclusions in experience, and the mandating of those applications as prescriptive for others. Putting it differently, I have had to cover ground from the logically persuasive (that which can be demonstrated by argument) to the experientally relevant (that which can be tested and illustrated in life). Only after these steps can one establish norms and make applications for life. When atheism is tested along these lines, its vulnerability is seen in contrast to the cohesive strength of theism.
The word philosophy for many spells boredom, if not grief. Philosophy is to a student's mind what spinach is to a child's taste buds-a punishment to be endured but of questionable value. The other extreme is when it becomes to the philosopher what spinach is to Popeye-the sole and sufficient means to cerebral muscle-flexing. Here it sets itself up as the supreme authority on reality, capable of decimating any enemy, and hence of ultimate value. I have endeavored to rescue the arguments from both extremes, so that we neither allow the allegation that philosophers are mere wordsmiths nor do we allow them to take unto themselves the responsibility of being the ticket inspectors into heaven. The English scholar C. S. Lewis asserted that everyone in life has a philosophy-the only question is, whether it is a good one.
THE FRONT DOOR OF REASON
Philosophy, as I see it, comes to us at three levels. Level 1 is the theoretical substructure on which we make inductions and deductions, but it depends heavily upon the form and the force of an argument. Logic, to most minds, has never overflowed with romance or triggered excitement. Ambrose Bierce, an American writer and journalist, defined it as "the art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human understanding" (The Devil's Dictionary). Logic, unfortunately, also lends itself to the same critique Somerset Maugham made of perfection, "It's apt to be dull." With all of our resistance to it, however, it is the price one has to pay for testing truth claims, and it is impossible to attack logic without using logic. For, wherever there is truth, it has a direct bearing on reality, and the laws of logic do apply to reality. The classic illustration states:
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
It is hard to argue against that, regardless of how dull it sounds.
Since the laws of logic apply to reality, it is imperative that these laws be understood if any argument is to stand its ground. The laws of logic can be a vast subject, but the foundational laws are indispensable to the communication of truth.
Peter Kreeft, professor of philosophy at Boston College, briefly addressed the importance of correct argumentation in his book Three Philosophies of Life. In a subsection entitled "Rules for Talking Back" he said:
There are three things that must go right with any argument:
(1) The terms must be unambiguous
(2) The premises must be true
(3) The argument must be logical.
Conversely, there are three things that can go wrong with any argument:
(1) The terms may be ambiguous
(2) The premises may be false
(3) The argument may be illogical.
In any argument, the application of this grid cannot be compromised if the conclusion is to be defended or refuted. Truth is indispensable to each statement, and validity is indispensable to each deduction. This dual combination of truth and validity is central to the persuasiveness of any argument, and if there is a flaw in either of the two, it fails.
Many commonly held beliefs are prone to such mistakes. For example, take an often used argument, that is assumed to be a proof against the existence of God.
(1) There is evil in the world.
(2) If there were a God, He would have done something about it.
(3) Nothing has been done about it.
(4) Therefore, there is no God.
The third premise is not self-evident. It is susceptible to strong counter-arguments because it is a deduction in itself and in need of inductive support. It can be shown to fail the test of truthfulness and validity because it reveals the presuppositions of an individual. It says nothing about whether God exists or not, but only that if He did, He would do things "my way."
Despite the weakness of the third premise, this type of argument from atheists presents a logical dilemma for theists. Responding to this, theists may take several approaches as a starting point. Their goal will be to first defang the question and then present stronger arguments for God's existence.
The issue of evil is, of course, one of the greatest debating points between theism and atheism. Let me give just two meaningful approaches theists may use as starting points:
APPROACH I
(1) Yes, there is evil in this world.
(2) If there is evil, there must be good (a problem the atheist has to explain).
(3) If there is good and evil, there must be a moral law on which to judge between good and evil.
(4) If there is a moral law, there must be a moral law giver.
(5) For the theist, this points to God.
With this as a starting point, theists can mitigate the force of the argument from evil and then deal with underlying assumptions. They can show that some assumptions are not consistent with an atheistic world view. Then, as a final step theists can present the arguments for God's existence and explain what God has said (and done) about the problem of evil.
APPROACH II
(1) There is evil in the world.
(2) There is nothing inconsistent about evil and the freedom of the will within the framework of a loving creator.
(3) In fact, concepts of love and goodness are unexplainable unless there is a God.
(4) Since man does experience love and goodness, it argues for the reality of God.
(5) Therefore, it is not unreasonable to believe that he exists.
From here theists begin their arguments for the existence of God. Atheists may challenge some of these premises, but this is how the arguments and counter-arguments are fashioned.
There are many excellent books written on the subject. The problem of evil has many facets that need to be dealt with the moral problem, the physical problem, the metaphysical problem, and so on. Also, under discussion would be the issue of "the best of all possible worlds." The books The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis and Philosophy of Religion by Norman Geisler both contain representative discussions of the problem of evil. Lewis deals with the problem existentially, and Geisler, philosophically.
I have illustrated the foregoing to show that logic is pivotal in any discussion of God's existence. At some point and mere classroom confusion or convulsion. Logicians, they contend, may deal with theory; the existentialist, they argue, deals with life, sensation, and feeling.
This second level, or approach, has within it both strength and weakness. Its strength is that felt needs are met; its weakness is that feelings create absolutes. Unfortunately, in our day more than ever before, the imagination has been assaulted in every direction so as to invade our consciences with disturbing visions and distorting sounds of reality that shun the constructive and uplift the bizarre and violent. The end result is manipulated emotions that produce dissonance in life rather than harmony. The basic reason for this is that imagination has turned into fancy, and rather than serving the cause of beauty or good, it has become an avenue of strife and evil. Therein lies its danger. An abused imagination yields perversions that defy reason. On the other hand, when the imagination is stirred for all that is noble and right, its capacity to make the world a better place is enormous.
An illustration of the potency of this level of philosophy is a song that was sung by a nine-year-old girl. It became the most requested song all over the country because it addressed a theme that did not require any logician for its defense. It touched the sensitivities of old and young in every strata of society.
Dear Mr. Jesus, I just had to write to you.
Something really scared me when I saw it on the news,
About a little girl, beaten black and blue,
Lord, I thought I'd like to take it right to you.
Lord, please don't let them hurt your children,
Lead them up and shelter them from sorrow,
Please don't let them hurt your children,
Won't you keep us safe at home?
The reason for the effectiveness of this song is readily understood. Child abuse is one of those dastardly crimes that even a majority of criminals despise. It is said that child abusers must be segregated to protect them from the avenging anger of prison mates. A belief this common, that you do not hurt a child, does not necessarily need a philosopher's help. The force of the incontrovertible truth, carried forth in the strains of a simple melody and made doubly persuasive through the voice of a child, can stir the imagination of a whole nation.
Why is this so? Imagine yourself caught in the middle of a conversation at a professors' luncheon, discussing the issue of child abuse. Imagine your reaction should you find that there were both protagonists and antagonists-some in favor of it, while others condemn it. It would stagger the imagination to think that some would defend the victimization of a child. Common sense alone dictates the rationale behind the protection and care of the most innocent and vulnerable of our society. And that is the point. While the appeal of the song is to the imagination, it is the handmaiden of good sense and reason.
This is the very idea intended by Samuel Taylor Coleridge when he made a plea for the imagination to play a vital role in the transmission of truth within the boundaries of reason, as it pursued the good.
Imagination understood in this way is not simply the mind's aimless and uncontrolled (Pavlovian) reaction to stimuli, but the way by which we are able to penetrate and indeed repeat after it, the very divine act of creation.
Rightly understood and constructively used, imagination helps the mind pierce reality with unique glimpses through the inward eye. Wrongly understood and destructively used, imagination can become fertile ground for unmitigated evil.
Its vulnerability lies in its inextricable link with our emotions and feelings, which can easily take off into fanciful flings. Unguarded feelings can in turn create a whole new set of absolutes, until reality is viewed as a dispensing machine, designed to submit to the whims of our fluctuating emotions. Imagination easily falls prey to what Canadian economist and humorist Stephen Leacock has said, "Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl."
The person who takes emotions as a starting point for determining truth in clutching the finger of feeling thinks he has grabbed the fist of truth. By thinking exclusively at this level, he is driven inward until the whole world revolves around his personal passions. This is a dangerous self-absorption. He reshapes his world view to a "better felt than 'tellt"' perspective. If it feels good, do it; or as the line from a popular song says, "It can't be wrong when it feels so right."
The history of modern cultures and their expressions easily demonstrates how the moods and indulgences of a nation have been generated by the popular writers, entertainers, and musicians of the day. Those who harness the strength of the arts mold the soul of a nation to an extraordinary degree, affecting and changing the way people think and act to drastic proportions; hence, the lines of Andrew Fletcher, "Give me the making of the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws." Television and music media are such potent forces because they have within them the capacity to bypass reason and head straight for the imagination. They can bind the strongman of reason, and so capture the goods.
The existential philosophers of the 1950s and 1960s were fully aware of this potential and used these avenues to impart a world view of rebellion. The impact of the artist or writer at this level of communication must be seen as continuous with moral philosophers. It is an enlargement of the academic imagination, but they have a built-in aversion for systematization. They do not like to be put into categories. Since they deal so much with the here and now, they bear an obvious hostility to abstract theory, which to them obscures the roughness and untidiness of life. If life itself is so coarse and has such a jagged edge, why should a philosophy of life be uniform? They fail to see that they have made the effect the cause. They see life as a string of passions with which to conquer emptiness. The experience of feeling the here and now supercedes the existence of truth. To such people, experience precedes essence, the subjective overrules the objective, and what they do determines who they are. This inversion of thinking is what produces the grunts and groans of the gravediggers as they bury God. For, with His burial, all sense of life is buried. As they face the encroaching panic, they are forced to redefine everything, and each one has to create his own personal reality.
This is Level 2. It appeals to the imagination and deals with why people live the way they live. In concert with reason it is immensely powerful for the cause of good. When it is allowed to run unchecked by reason in fitful responses to stimuli, it will end up justifying even the most unconscionable acts.
SMUGGLING IN OPINION
Level 3 is what I call "kitchen table conclusions." It is amazing how much of the moralizing and prescribing in life goes on during casual conversations. The settings can vary from sidewalk cafes, where frustrated philosophers pontificate on profound themes, to the kitchen table, where children interact with their parents on questions that deal with far reaching issues. The question may be the nagging one of the day, or it could be a question raised in the classroom, such as, what would one do in a sinking boat with three life jackets and four passengers on board? This level of philosophizing escapes neither the beggar nor the academic dean of a prestigious school, because why is one of the earliest expressions of human life.
I recall an occasion when I had addressed a European university audience at an open forum that was chaired and moderated by a highly reputed scholar. The audience, recognizing his academic credentials and his great philosophical prowess, paid very close attention to what he said on some remote and obscure issues. They were in awe of him, even though much of what he said must have escaped the capacity of a large portion of the audience.
Shortly after this, we headed to his home, where he and his daughter got into a verbal sparring session over some evening plans she had made, the wisdom of which he had questioned. It was a somewhat pitiful sight to see this discomforting conflict between father and daughter. Suddenly the accolades showered on him in the halls of learning a few moments earlier were distant and smothered echoes of an unimportant event.
What he believed and how he lived had come home and had given his daughter leverage to challenge his dictums for her. She was arrogating to herself the rights he could not deny on the basis of his own belief system. It was a pointed reminder minder to me that everything that I believe about life is sooner or later tested at the kitchen table, or in the family room, where young people are very quick to make applications on the basis of their parents' philosophy.
This is Level 3 in action, and has a biting reality to it. Such philosophizing lacks foundational authority and is merely an opinion that dares to prescribe without bothering to defend. It smuggles in an ethic while denying a moral referent.
Every individual makes moral judgments in his day-today interactions in life. It is the coinage by which he pays as he goes. Without an accepted standard, a coin is worthless. The fundamental problem with Level 3, taken by itself, is that all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and when morality cannot be justified, any denunciation ends up undermining its own mines. Reality begs a better answer than mere applicationary pronouncements.
Most talk shows are examples of conversation at Level 3, where the opinions thrown back and forth treat on an equal plane, sexuality and ice-cream parlors. Everything in this relativized culture becomes purely a matter of taste or preference.
One particular talk show host I know of has constantly and dogmatically favored abortion with no sympathy for the pro-life position. So uncompromising and extreme was his attitude that he refused to even take calls from men, saying that this particular subject had nothing to do with the male of the species. Not infrequently he would get into a tirade, vilifying those who opposed his position.
Very surprising, therefore, was his reaction to a newspaper article, that described the process of preparation for some East European athletes before a competition. It explained that as part of their muscle development, they would plan to become pregnant two-to-three months before a key race. As the first two months of a pregnancy greatly enlarged the muscle capacity, they would reap its benefit and then abort the baby a few days before the race.
This article infuriated the talk show host, and he unsparingly denounced it as going to unpardonable limits; but he never explained his own inconsistency. Prescriptivism is doomed as a starting point and can never justify itself. Level 3 deals with why one prescribes what he prescribes.
THE PROPER WAY
To summarize, Level 1 is supported by logic; Level 2, by feeling; and Level 3 is where all is applied to reality. Putting it differently, Level 1 states why one believes what he believes. Level 2 indicates why one lives the way he lives, and Level 3, why one legislates for others the way he does. For every life that is lived at a reasonable level, these three questions must be answered. First, can I defend what I believe in keeping with the laws of logic-is it tenable? Second, if everyone gave himself or herself the prerogatives of my philosophy, can there be harmony in existence-is it livable? Third, do I have a right to make moral judgments in the daily matters of living-is it transferrable?
None of these levels can live in isolation. They must follow a proper sequence. Ideally, one must argue from Level 1, illustrate from Level 2, and apply at Level 3. Life must move from truth, to experience, to prescription. If either theists or atheists violate this procedure, they are not dealing with reality but creating one of their own.
Understanding these three levels uncovers the many sided weaknesses of atheism. With feeling or experience as a starting point, life is not livable, because it will face contradiction on every side. Application as a starting point, without truth to support it, is only one step removed from feeling and cannot be justified. But when one starts with the truth, it can be proven in experience and be justifiably prescribed for others.
In this study of atheism we have seen the logical contradictions it embraces, the existential hell it creates, and the vacuous pronouncements it makes. This manifold vulnerability is what provoked the acerbic remark that atheism has a greater capacity to smell rotten eggs than to lay good ones, or to attack other systems than to defend its own.
Extracted from Ravi Zacharias' A Shattered Visage
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