Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes (21 page)

Materialism:
To counter materialism, we can show that a biblical worldview teaches an even greater respect for the material world. The physical universe is not just a product of chance. The earth is not a rock spinning through empty space, with no higher purpose or meaning. Instead, the physical universe was brought into being by a God of love and beauty. It is a product of plan and design.

Fascinatingly, the early church also had to defend a high view of the material world, though for different reasons. Ancient Greek culture was permeated by philosophies such as Gnosticism and neo-Platonism that regarded the material realm as the realm of death, decay, and destruction. Gnosticism taught that the world was so evil that it could not be the creation of the highest, supreme deity but must be the handiwork of an evil sub-deity. The supreme God would not demean himself by mucking about with matter. Gnosticism denigrated the physical body as the “prison house of the soul.” The goal of salvation was to
escape
from the physical realm and leave it behind.

In this context, Christianity was nothing short of revolutionary. It teaches that there is only one God, and that he created matter. It is therefore intrinsically good. Christianity’s greatest scandal, however, was the incarnation—the claim that the God himself took on a physical body. He was not an avatar who just
appeared
to be human (as the Gnostics taught). He actually
became
human. The incarnation grants an astonishingly high dignity to the material world.

Even more revolutionary, after Jesus had “escaped” the physical world—after he died—he
came back
. In
a bodily resurrection. To the Greeks, this was not spiritual progress; it was
re
gress. Why would anyone want to come back to the material world, the realm of evil and corruption? The whole idea was utter foolishness to the Greeks (1 Cor. 1:23
KJV
).

Finally, what will happen at the end of time, according to Scripture? God is not going to scrap the idea of a physical universe and replace it with a purely ethereal plane of being, as though he made a mistake the first time. Instead he is going to replace it with “a new earth” (Rev. 21:1). And you and I will live on that new earth in new physical bodies. In the Apostles’ Creed, Christians affirm “the resurrection of the body.” This is an astonishingly high view of the physical world. Christianity imparts greater value to the material realm than any version of materialism.
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Empiricism:
To counter empiricism, Christians can show that a biblical worldview offers a better basis for trusting our senses. As we saw earlier, the flaw in empiricism is that it cannot give any guarantee that what we perceive through the senses is true. We cannot stand outside our heads to gain an independent vantage point from which to test sense data against the external world. The only adequate basis for confidence in sensory knowledge is the biblical teaching that a Creator designed our sensory apparatus to function reliably in the world he created.

The doctrine of creation is the epistemological guarantee that the constitution of our human faculties conforms to the structure of the external world. It is part of the “human design plan,” writes Plantinga, to trust our sense perceptions. When our perceptual faculties are in good working order, and functioning in the environment for which they were designed, we naturally trust that the colors and shapes we perceive are real objects in a real world.
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The high value placed on empirical knowledge was one of the crucial preconditions for the rise of modern science. Christians had to stand against a long tradition going back to the ancient Greeks that had denigrated the empirical world as a shifting realm of shadows. For Plato, it was impossible to gain genuine knowledge of the sensory realm because it was the realm of “appearance,” not reality. Many historians suggest that this low view of the empirical world is one reason the ancient Greeks did not develop modern science—and why Christianity was necessary to lay the groundwork for the empirical methodology of science.
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Rationalism:
To counter rationalism, we can show that Christianity honors human rationality as part of the image of God. It is no historical accident that the Middle Ages, when Christianity flourished, was the age of great rational system builders like Anselm and Thomas Aquinas. Their confidence in reason was unsurpassed because they regarded it as a gift from God. They were certain that the world is the creation of a reasonable God, and therefore it has an intelligible structure knowable by reason. Even today, as we have seen, Christianity stands for a unified, logically coherent truth against the upper-lower story divide that fragments modern worldviews.

Christianity also stands against the “masters of suspicion” who claim that human rationality is swamped by non-rational forces. The biblical God invites us to “reason together” (Isa. 1:18). Sanctification comes through “the renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:2), and the goal is to learn to love God “with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37). The word
logic
comes from
Logos
, the word used to describe Jesus in John 1:1. The implication is that logic reflects the nature of God’s own mind and character.

Postmodernism:
To counter postmodernism, Christianity offers an even more radical insight into the contingency of human knowledge. Postmodernism reduces knowledge claims to expressions of interest and power based on race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexual identity. But the biblical teaching on idols cuts much deeper—to the ultimate spiritual commitments at the core of human motivation. The Bible teaches that the overriding factor in the choices we make is our commitment to a concept of the divine. Our lives are shaped by the god we worship—whether the God of the Bible or some substitute deity.

In every area, Christianity encompasses the valid insights of all other worldviews, while avoiding their weaknesses. It incorporates the best insights of idol-centered philosophies, without falling into any limited, life-denying reductionism. This is genuinely good news.

In fact, Christianity is so attractive that atheists keep reaching over and borrowing from it. In the next chapter, we will find out what makes Christian truth so appealing—and why even atheists keep trying to claim parts of it for themselves.

PRINCIPLE #5

• • • • •

A few years ago I visited a large urban church that attracted students from universities across the city. The leader of the college and career group told me that he was earning a doctoral degree in chemistry.

“Excellent!” I said. “Have you considered the ways chemistry relates to your understanding of Christianity? For example, have you studied theories of chemical evolution and the origin of life?”

“Oh no,” he responded. “That’s why I went into
synthetic
chemistry—so I would not have to deal with those issues.”

Later that evening while mingling with other students, I met a young woman majoring in biology. “Great!” I said. “Have you read up on some of the controversial issues related to your field, like evolution and intelligent design?”

To my surprise, her response was almost identical to the young chemist’s. “Oh no. That’s why I went into pre-med—so I won’t have to deal with those issues.”

These were bright, well-educated young adults who could be using their gifts to educate the church on how to enter into public discourse with an informed voice. Yet they were refusing to step up to the plate.

Many Christians seem at a loss in constructing a biblical worldview suitable for the public arena. Typically they simply restate biblical
theology
. For example, George Barna conducts surveys to measure how many Christians hold a biblical worldview. His definition, however, consists of theological statements: that the Bible is “totally accurate,” that Jesus “lived a sinless life,” that Satan is “real,” that “people cannot earn their way into Heaven by trying to be good,” and so on.
1
But a worldview is not the same thing as a theology. A worldview
applies
theological truths to fields such as philosophy, science, education, entertainment, and politics.

Principle #5

Replace the Idol: Make the Case for Christianity

One of the best ways to craft biblical answers is to listen more closely to the questions. The Christian message will be most relevant when it is articulated at the specific points where people recognize the flaws and failures of their own worldviews. In Principle #3, for example, we met thinkers who recognize that their reductionistic worldviews have outcomes that they themselves regard as “alien” and “repugnant.” Outcomes that they themselves “cannot live” with. In Principle #4 we met people who rely implicitly on a biblical view of human reason. We could say that reductionists cannot live within the confines of their own worldview box, so they smuggle in ladders from a Christian worldview to climb out of the box. They are hungry for a fuller, more humane worldview than their idols give them.

Surprising as it sounds, the Christian worldview is so appealing that even those who reject it often borrow from it, whether consciously or unconsciously.

To craft a case for Christianity in every field would take another book. But we can get started by identifying those elements that people smuggle in from a Christian worldview. They are showing us where their own worldviews break down and, at the same time, what they find most appealing about Christianity. These provide strategic starting points for framing a biblical worldview attuned to the questions of our day.

Can a Relativist Oppose Racism?

Let’s start with a few widespread examples. Many people today claim to be moral relativists, arguing that there is no universal, timeless moral law. Yet they are likely to turn around and insist that acts of racism or abuse are wrong—not just unpleasant or personally offensive, but genuinely wrong. And they will protest vigorously if they themselves are cheated or violated in any way. Indeed, people cannot function for even a few hours without making moral evaluations:
He shouldn’t say that. She is so mean.

Ironically, moral relativists even pride themselves on being morally superior to others. After all,
they
are tolerant and nonjudgmental.
They
are not like other people who are insufferably bigoted and closed-minded, deserving the harshest condemnation. Every person draws a line in the sand somewhere that allows him or her to feel morally superior, like the Pharisee in Jesus’s parable who thanked God that he was not like other people (Luke 18:11).

Moral relativism may claim to be about tolerance and humility, but in reality it often fosters a highly judgmental, condemning attitude.

The upshot is that many people imbibe the
language
of moral relativism, but their words do not match who they really are as fully functional human beings. Instead it is the Christian worldview that fits who they are. Because humans are made in the image of God, they are hardwired with an intrinsic moral sense. Romans 2 says those who do not have God’s law in written form have the moral law “written on their hearts” (Rom. 2:15). They cannot help making moral claims—claims that have no basis in their own relativistic worldview, claims that make sense only on the basis of the biblical worldview they reject.

You might say they function
as if
Christianity is true. The recognition of moral truths is an aspect of general revelation. No matter how vigorously people suppress that knowledge, it keeps rising to the surface.

Another example are people who claim to be skeptics with regard to knowledge. On one hand, they claim we cannot be sure of anything. On the other hand, they are likely to insist that science has proved their own favorite theories. In practical life, they probably check their bank statements to verify that the figures are correct. In short, they live and act as though they do have access to genuine knowledge.

No matter how skeptical someone is, some things are virtually impossible to doubt—at least in practice. No one really doubts that the material world is real. (We all look both ways before crossing the street.) No one doubts inner experiences like pleasure or pain. (If I say I have a headache, you don’t ask, “How do you know?”) We do not doubt the reality of cause and effect. (We trust that fire will heat and ice will cool.) No one doubts his or her personal existence (we use the word “I”). If anyone does deny these basic facts, we call him insane—or a philosopher.

And even philosophers deny such elemental facts only provisionally. As we saw earlier, David Hume is the poster boy for extreme empiricism, which led him to extreme skepticism. Yet Hume found it impossible to maintain his skepticism when he left his study (when he joined his friends for a game of backgammon, as he put it). In “the occupations of everyday life,” Hume wrote, skeptical doubts “vanish like smoke, and leave the most determined skeptic in the same condition as other mortals.”
2

You might say there are no skeptics in the foxholes of real life. When they have to function in the ordinary world, their skepticism “vanishes like smoke.” They are compelled to act
as if
they have access to genuine knowledge in a way that their own worldview denies is possible.

In short, they must act
as if
a Christian epistemology is true. Christianity teaches that humans are made in God’s image. Our minds and senses are designed to function in God’s world. Even those who hold to extreme skepticism are forced by the sheer circumstances of life to act
as if
the biblical view of human cognition is true.

Why do people hold ideas that are not supported by their own worldview? Scripture says all people are made in God’s image, live in God’s world, and experience God’s common grace. As a result, in practice they experience the living truths of general revelation, even if they selectively suppress that knowledge. As psychologists tell us, suppressed knowledge eventually works its way to the surface. At those times, Thomas Johnson says, “people act and talk according to their repressed knowledge, which they receive from God’s general revelation, instead of acting according to the beliefs they claim to accept.”
3

The fact that everyone has to function as though Christianity is true opens a creative opportunity for addressing the secular world. Christianity provides the basis for the way humans can’t help behaving anyway. In making the case for a biblical worldview, a strategic place to start is by showing that it alone gives a basis for the ways we
all
have to function, no matter which worldview we hold.

The Confession of Richard Rorty

One challenge to building a case for Christianity is that its principles underlie so much of our shared culture that we no longer recognize them as distinctively biblical. For example, Westerners often pride themselves on holding noble ideals such as equality and universal human rights. Yet ironically, as we saw in earlier chapters, the dominant worldviews of our day deny the reality of human freedom and give no basis for moral ideals such as human rights.

So where did the idea of equal rights come from?

The nineteenth-century political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville said the idea came from Christianity. “The most profound geniuses of Rome and Greece” never came up with the idea of equal rights, he wrote. “Jesus Christ had to come to earth to make it understood that all members of the human species are naturally alike and equal.”
4

The nineteenth-century atheist Friedrich Nietzsche agreed: “Another Christian concept … has passed even more deeply into the tissue of modernity: the concept of the ‘equality of souls before God.’ This concept furnishes the prototype of all theories of equal rights.”
5

The contemporary atheist Luc Ferry says the same thing. We tend to take the concept of equality for granted; yet it was Christianity that overthrew ancient social hierarchies between rich and poor, masters and slaves. “According to Christianity, we were all ‘brothers,’ on the same level as creatures of God,” Ferry writes. “Christianity is the first
universalist
ethos.”
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A few intrepid atheists admit outright that they have to borrow the ideal of human rights from Christianity. Richard Rorty was a committed Darwinist; and in the Darwinian struggle for existence, the strong prevail while the weak are left behind. So evolution cannot be the source of universal human rights. Instead, Rorty says, the concept came from “religious claims that human beings are made in the image of God.”
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He cheerfully admits that he reaches over and borrows the concept of universal rights from Christianity. He even calls himself a “free-loading” atheist: “This Jewish and Christian element in our tradition is gratefully invoked by free-loading atheists like myself.”
8

At the birth of our nation, the American founders deemed it self-evident that human rights must be grounded in God. The Declaration of Independence leads off with those bright, blazing words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident—that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”

In the summer of 2013, a beer company sparked controversy when it released an advertisement for Independence Day that deleted the crucial words “by their Creator.” The ad said, “They are endowed with certain unalienable rights.” (Endowed by whom?) The advertisement is emblematic of what many secularists do: They borrow ideals like equality and rights from a biblical worldview but cut them off from their source in the Creator. They are free-loaders. Christians should reclaim those noble ideals, making the case that they are logically supported only by a biblical worldview.

Atheists often denounce Christianity as harsh and negative. But in reality it offers a much more positive view of the human person than any competing religion or worldview. It is so appealing that adherents of other worldviews keep free-loading the parts they like best.

What Makes Science Possible?

Another element of Western culture so widespread that we no longer recognize it as distinctively Christian is the scientific enterprise itself. The common stereotype is that religion and science are at war with one another. But historians have turned that stereotype on its head.

Consider, for example, the idea of “laws” in nature. Today that idea is so familiar that it strikes us as common sense. Yet historians tell us that no other culture—East or West, ancient or modern—came up with the concept of laws in nature. It appeared only in Europe during the Middle Ages, a period when Western culture was thoroughly permeated by Christian assumptions. As the respected historian A. R. Hall notes, the use of the word
law
in the context of natural events “would have been unintelligible in antiquity, whereas the Hebraic and Christian belief in a deity who was at once Creator and Lawgiver rendered it valid.”
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Of course, all societies have recognized cause-and-effect patterns in nature, which enabled them to construct buildings and bridges. The difference is that they regarded those patterns as merely practical rules of thumb. The intrinsic order of nature itself was thought to be inscrutable to the human mind. And when people do not think there
are
rational laws behind natural phenomena, they will not go looking for them—and science will never get started.

Philosopher Mary Midgley even describes Christianity as science’s “own worldview.” She writes, “Science does have its own worldview that includes guiding presuppositions about the nature of the world. The founders of modern science expressed these very plainly for their time. Cosmic order (they said) flows wholly from God, so science redounds to his glory.”
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Paul Davies makes the same point even more strongly. “All the early scientists, like Newton, were religious in one way or another,” he writes. “They saw their science as a means of uncovering traces of God’s handiwork in the universe.” What we now call the laws of nature they regarded as thoughts in the mind of God. “So in doing science, they supposed, one might be able to glimpse the mind of God—an exhilarating and audacious claim.”

Audacious perhaps, but a claim that remains a central underpinning for the scientific enterprise right to our own day. Science still has to assume that the world has an intelligible order. Yet the materialist or naturalist worldview cannot account for that order. If the universe is the product of
non-
rational processes, why does it have a rational order? If the universe is not the product of a mind, why it is comprehensible to the human mind? Among most scientists today, “the underlying order in nature—the laws of physics—are simply accepted as given, as brute facts,” Davies writes. “Nobody asks where they come from; at least they do not do so in polite company. However, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that … there is rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature.”