Materialism: A Postscript (and Addendum)

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Materialism: A Postscript

Author's note: "Materialism (A Postscript)" first appeared on NewsWithViews.com. The "Addendum" which follows is previously unpublished.

Most of my email is positive (alas, due to time constraints I am often unable to answer most of it). When I get something critical, I spend time reading it. I am not perfect. Sometimes readers catch errors or have worthwhile suggestions. Among my favorites is an email from one Terry Hayfield, sent back in 2004 in response to my initial “The Real Matrix” series. I still have the printout. It presented itself not as a criticism but as an “offer to share research.” His results differed from mine, and he argued that my reasoning was based on a false premise. He did not launch a personal attack. He argued a rational case in a way that got my attention and led to a correspondence and mutual sharing of ideas and information that continued for several years.

I contrast this with an email from someone I’ll call RB (his initials; I’ll not use his name to save him embarrassment), received the day Part 3 of “Materialism” appeared. He labeled himself: “a secular, agnostic, non-observant liberal Jew.” This after an opening sentence not offering to share research but describing my article as “typical of NewsWithViews; utter poppycock, drivel, hogwash, bunk, tripe etc.”

Great way to win friends and influence people, dude!

But I’ve learned that debates over what is very fundamental to our thinking and our moral lives — over worldviews, that is — will sometimes invoke hostility instead of constructive dialogue. RB’s email, having begun on a bad note, went downhill from there. I wondered if he’d really read what I’d written or just scrolled up and down, saw a few words and lines he didn’t like, then took to his keyboard to bang out a long paragraph of hysterics against what he assumed I’d said.

RB “[found] it highly offensive that Christians like yourself arrogantly claim to have a monopoly on morality and virtue, and fatuously pretend that you can only be a good person if you are a believing Christian …”

Hold the bus. Did I say Christians were good people because they were Christians? Now admittedly Part 4 was still a week or so away and so unavailable, but somehow I doubt RB’s having the whole thing in front of him would have made a difference. I’d never said that Christians were “good people.” In Part 4 I was explicit about their being prone to the same weaknesses and temptations as non-Christians. Even prior to that material, I had not said we have a “monopoly on morality and virtue,” whatever that is.

My argument vis-à-vis morality was that given the failure of every secular ethical theory, Christian accounts of morality are surely no worse off!

RB then went on an extended rant about sex / sexual misconduct and promiscuity / abortion / contraceptives (which I never mentioned). The sexual revolution he called “nothing but a myth” which would astonish those who lived through it, especially parents who lost communication with their children over it. But what sketchy details RB offers about sexual peccadillos and misadventures prior to the 1960s actually lend strong support to my thesis, that we are a fallen species who cannot save ourselves. For again I’d not stated that “no one engaged in sexual misconduct and promiscuity [or that] there were no abortions or hardly any …” What I’d said was that now we had ethical theories in which these were all very much at home. RB continues: “Sexual promiscuity has existed all over the world for thousands of years and abortion has also been common all over the world for thousands of years. However, Christianity has also fostered an extremely harmful prudishness, puritanism and sexual repression for 2,000 years …”

Very Freudian sounding, Freud having been a leading “secular, agnostic, liberal Jew.” It’s the height of political incorrectness to say it, but “secular, agnostic, liberal Jews” have an obsession with sex I’ve long found puzzling. Conversations I’ve had with them (mostly academics, admittedly) tend to veer in that direction sooner or later. Since most “gentiles” do not share this fascination, at least not as a core part of their worldview, I suppose we’re “repressed.” Another feature of the “secular, agnostic, liberal Jew” is their assumption they’ve gotten inside others’ minds and psyches, divining their supposed neuroses. We’re the arrogant ones? What do they propose as the cure? A sexually “liberated” culture — which is pretty much what we have in the twenty-first century, with (e.g.) Miley Cyrus performing nearly naked, is it not?

That aside, one could just offer the obvious reductio ad absurdum that murder has “also been common all over the world for thousands of years.” Maybe we should get rid of all laws and traditions and worldviews that “repress” our hidden desires to slaughter one another in cold blood! Yeah, that’ll work!

RB’s next few lines are about poverty, perhaps unsurprisingly. As I noted — again it had to wait for Part 4 — Christians have been remiss in this area and are vulnerable to criticism. I stated specifically that Jesus did not command us to care for the poor, or offer health care, only if we can make a profit doing so.

But having conceded that much, I’d like to see what “secular, agnostic, liberal Jews” are doing about poverty. Those I’ve known tend to support the status quo, which means mindlessly supporting the leviathan banks and the bought-and-paid-for political classes whose policies bear primary responsibility for widening inequality and worsening poverty in our time. Pot, meet kettle. I wonder how many donations RB or his buddies have made, or fundraisers conducted, to alleviate poverty in places like, e.g., Haiti. (I have, incidentally.) My response: put your money where your mouth is, or shut up!

There was more to make me wonder if English is this guy’s native language: “The notion that if you are an atheist, you think there is no such thing as right and wrong and that everything should be considered permissible is abject poppycock.” Did I say atheists as a group believe there is no such thing as right and wrong? I did not. Indeed, the bulk of Part 2 takes up secular efforts to elucidate right versus wrong in a material universe — efforts which make no sense if they think there is no right or wrong. My argument is that these efforts fail, often giving breathtakingly bad advice in the process. That’s hugely different from saying those making them don’t believe in right or wrong. (Maybe RB did not read Part 2. Not my problem.)

Finally there is that now-familiar canard about a “Christian Taliban” trying to take over the U.S., an “extremely dangerous” conspiracy that “must be stopped before they get power in America” and “some of its members are contributors to News With Views” [sic.].

I am sure my fellow NewsWithViews.com contributors will be surprised to hear of their cultural influence! By the way, I often see this Taliban reference in atheist-leftist rants. Perhaps RB can point to Christians who practice some equivalent of Sharia law, kill apostates, mutilate women’s genitals, burn villages, etc. I’ve never seen them. Am I blind or is he hallucinating? I don’t think it’s the former.

There is no Christian Taliban! The idea is absurd! As I noted in my very brief private reply to RB, there are no Christian groups with the resources, even if they had the will. Most have been effectively marginalized in the present culture of materialism, hedonism, and multiculturalism. No Christian I know of has the deep pockets of, e.g., a George Soros (another “secular, agnostic, liberal Jew”) who has been bankrolling leftist causes for decades, or of those running the leviathan banks, other corporations, the political class, or the Hollywood culture where “secular, agnostic, liberal Jews” predominate whether anyone cares to admit it or not.

No doubt RB and perhaps others will interpret such remarks as “antisemitic.” This, too, has gotten to be a tiresome canard, made by some Jews in response to someone outside their orbit noting their economic and cultural power. It usually comes prior to their honoring Godwin’s Law and invoking the specter of Adolf Hitler who, in RB’s words, “was NOT an atheist and never renounced his Catholic faith.” Take that, Catholics! By the way, do Catholics or any other Christian denominations have special organizations such as B’nai B’rith or the Anti-Defamation League to function as attack dogs to destroy the reputations of their critics? The late Joe Sobran once said, “An anti-semite used to be someone who hated Jews. Now it’s someone Jews hate.”

Why bother with a “Postscript” such as this? Because it offers an interesting case study. Most of the issues raised are only indirectly related to my central claim, which is that materialism as a worldview (its premises and reasoning laid out in Part 1) does not offer a viable account of the way reality is put together, nor a moral backbone to support a large civilization. The past hundred years show this conclusively. We’ve illuminated the ties between materialism and leftism, ties going back at least 250 years. Both reject original sin and instead follow, e.g., Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778), arguably the founding father of modern progressivist leftism, holding that our institutions are to blame for moral turpitude and modern corruption (Rousseau singled out private property, the family, and unsurprisingly, the church). Both believe that the right kind of technocratic and sexual tinkering can save us and build a global, hedonist Utopia. Responses to critics of materialism and leftism tend to be either as incompetent as RB’s, intellectually dishonest, or both. Leftists especially are threatened by the avalanche of evidence against their dearest assumptions — to the point where some of their number will set out with efficiency and enthusiasm to destroy the careers of scientists who offer detailed exemplars of said evidence. Thus perhaps it should be unsurprising that leftist keyboard commandos, Jewish or not, go into attack mode when some of us take aim at their false premises and absurd canards.

Addendum

RB sent me a extended reply indicating a number of things. First, his follow-up email was refreshingly free of insults and far more constructive. I was pleased to see this. He insisted (1) I’d misunderstood him, and responded based on my misunderstandings, thus attacking a straw man; (2) secular materialism survives my criticisms of it via its effects on culture; and (3) the real dangers to Western civilization are extreme right-wing Christians, which he was careful to distinguish from “mainstream” Christians of Protestant denominations.

Let me take these up in reverse order.

First, it’s a given that Christians are not all of a single type. No one says otherwise. Some are among the most systematic of thinkers (Notre Dame philosopher of religion Alvin Plantinga comes to mind). At the other end of a long continuum you will find raving dispensationalists who think the Rapture will happen any day now, or crazies whose answer to the problem of abortion is to bomb a clinic or shoot a doctor. Any worldview has a lot of intelligent and decent people supporting it as well as a few lunatics. I take this to be RB’s view of actual Christians.

He offers a term for (I presume) one school of extremists: Dominionism (or Dominion Theology). It’s a term I’ve encountered before. The idea has a Biblical basis. In Genesis 1:28 we read, referring to Adam and Eve, “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” So the idea of there being such a group is not crazy.

As a guy with a substantial library on Christian sects, movements, cults, etc., though, I’ve not encountered such a group. To make sure I hadn’t missed anything, I Google searched the Web once again. There is no single group calling itself that. There are, however, schools of thought who believe what RB and others who use the term Dominionism or Dominion Theology say they believe. One example is the school that followed R.J. Rushdoony which calls itself Christian Reconstructionism, which is authoritarian and ultimately theocratic at least by implication. Another group is the New Apostolic Reformation movement which promotes Christians reclaiming “the seven mountains of culture”: government, religion, media, family, business, education, and arts and entertainment, and who claim among their leaders author and church-growth guru C. Peter Wagner. One might also cite folks like Pat Robertson, I suppose, or the Moral Majority founded by the late Jerry Falwell.

I do not know, of course, if any of these are who RB had in mind. This is the problem when one makes broadsides about “right wingers” which do not include supporting links or specifics. I have no evidence that any of the above is a threat to the body politic; Robertson and Falwell's group lost their influence long ago. What you see with the others are groups of bookish older men who wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to acquire power in today’s environment, even within Christian circles, for (as RB himself notes) they are well outside the main line of Christian denominations. The handful of people who have bombed abortion clinics, moreover, have not had provable ties to organized groups. Whatever noises the latter make about, e.g., “stoning adulterers” according to Old Testament law, actually doing something violent would probably not occur to them.

Now I’m as open to a good “conspiracy” claim as anyone, as I’ve written about such claims at length, but I prefer claims for which there is evidence — often in the form of admissions by the “conspirators” themselves (writings of David Rockefeller Sr., Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, Carroll Quigley, and so on), especially when combined with the deep pockets and extensive networks necessary to put their plans in motion. With the secular globalists I just listed, there is abundant evidence of a long term plan to establish a world government that would service global corporations: an arrangement variously called Corporatism or technofeudalism, or sometimes just the New World Order (although that term has been sullied by overuse).

There is no credible evidence of a Dominionist conspiracy pushing something like this. RB cited just one author in support of his views: a rabbi named James Rudin, author of a book entitled The Baptizing of America (2006). He couldn’t have known that I was already aware of the book and unimpressed by it. Rudin’s views, in addition to being dated (I seem to recall, he rants on and on about the Moral Majority), have many of the same problems as RB’s, adding slipshod Biblical exegesis and a blind support for Israel that is surely as fanatical as anything ascribable to “fundamentalists.” In the interests of full disclosure, I didn’t finish the book. It seemed as hypocritical as it was silly, and I have better uses of my time.

If secular Jews want to avoid charges of hypocrisy, they will condemn the Zionist theocracy run out of Tel Aviv that has “dominion” over Israel and demand justice for Palestinians in places such as Gaza who have been driven from their land and brutalized by the ongoing Israeli occupation. That’s another essay, obviously (this report drawing from boots-on-the-ground information will do for a start, however; the author, incidentally, is an atheist, not a Christian, if that means anything).

Overall, I’m inclined to dismiss claims of a Dominionist conspiracy that threatens the American body politic as a product of left-leaning secularists’ imaginations.

A second element of RB’s response denies that secularism has failed, ethically and culturally. To my astonishment he held out Europe as an exemplar of secularist success: to quote: “The supposedly Godless, wicked, hedonistic and permissive European countries are in fact in many ways much better off than much of America. Secularism has brought prosperity, progress, equality, freedom and happiness to Europe....” Those keeping up with current events know that au contraire, Europe is disintegrating. Native populations are dropping as people do not have children; the inequality leftists once cared about has skyrocketed especially since the EU elites gained power. The various countries are being overrun by unassimilable and often violent immigrants, nearly all of them Muslims. Perhaps RB should travel to Greece or in other southern European nations who have been strongarmed into embracing “austerity,” or cities in France or Germany being colonized by Muslims whose violence and sex crimes have grown legendary. As political correctness (PC) dominates national conversations there at least as much as in the U.S., no one is supposed to raise such issues. The truth remains, however: it is not the few remaining Christians in Europe who are gang-raping women and blowing things up.

RB points out — correctly, insofar as it goes — that we are talking about “only a tiny fraction of all the world’s more than a billion Muslims.” Unfortunately, the presumed silent majority have remained silent about the atrocities of that violent few, be they the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels; or about ISIS beheading Christians and apostates among their own, or burning people alive. Muslim atrocities include mutilating women and throwing homosexuals off the tops of tall buildings.

How can anyone with a functioning brain believe these people can assimilate into Western culture?

Even evangelical atheist and hard materialist Richard Dawkins recently observed, “There are no Christians, as far as I know, blowing up buildings…. I am not aware of any Christian suicide bombers. I am not aware of any major Christian denomination that believes the penalty for apostasy is death….” He added, “I have mixed feelings about the decline of Christianity, in so far as Christianity might be a bulwark against something worse.”

I must therefore reject RB’s embrace of secular Europe and defense of the idea of a “Christian Taliban” implying a cultural equivalence between the two worldviews: Christianity and Islam, because they share opposition to abortion, homosexuality, and gender-equivalence (which becomes “women’s rights and equality for women” in PC terminology); have a desire to teach their young their own traditions (“indoctrination” is the leftist term for this, as if what leftists are doing, e.g., in universities, is different); and reject Darwinism.

Europe’s secular materialism has proven defenseless against incursions by violent Muslims who have no reason to love the West (see below). Should secular materialism become even more the reigning worldview in the U.S. than it is now, the U.S. will be equally defenseless. This is crucial to understand, given the calls among the PC elements in the U.S. including the Obama administration to “resettle” Muslims in American communities without vetting to determine who is who, and who is likely to turn violent. Add to this the insinuation that anyone who questions this ongoing set of arrangements is a “racist.” Small wonder so many Americans are supporting Donald Trump, the only presidential candidate who unequivocally rejects the open borders mindset that got Europe into this mess.

Remember San Bernardino, Calif.? If such events become monthly or weekly occurrences, just remember, PC types and secularist exponents of "diversity," you were warned!

So did I misrepresent RB’s views or didn’t I? Without my reproducing the entire email he sent (it was quite long) readers are not really able to decide, of course, and that might seem to make this conversation a bit one-sided. RB is, of course, within his rights to publish articles on a blog of his own, including criticisms of me. Let me therefore just make a few scattered concluding remarks. RB contends that “the sexual revolution … did not cause mass debauchery in society as so many right-wingers seem to make it out to have done.” Well … people aren’t having sex in the streets, of course (although you’ll likely see some lurid sights in college bars following football victories). North Carolina, however, is presently under fire for a state law refusing “transgendered” (i.e., sexually confused and/or PC-addled) males access to women’s bathrooms. Christian businesses have been slammed with fines of such severity for refusing to bake wedding cakes for gay couples that it is clear that the intent is destruction of livelihood. People are being deprived of employment and income, moreover, for preaching against homosexuality and gay marriage. Pastors are being threatened with arrest and fines for refusing to perform same-sex marriages.

Should we believe nothing is amiss with secularism when, to enforce PC, the legal system openly sets out to destroy Christian businesses and ruin the lives of Christians exercising what used to be First Amendment rights (which included the right to practice their religion openly)? Should we lose sleep over claims of a Christian “right wing conspiracy” when pastors lose control over their own churches?

You be the judge.

RB tells me, “There are far worse things in America than Miley Cyrus performing nearly naked, and no one is being forced to watch her do this….” Following is a brief dissertation on the “beauty” of nudity. It can be beautiful, as in art, or lurid and degrading, as with someone spreading her legs on stage. It’s a matter of intent, and of context. RB does not appear to grasp this.

Nor did Alfred C. Kinsey (1894 – 1956), whose Kinsey Reports, studies of both male and female sexuality published in 1948 and 1953 respectively, did much to unleash the sexual revolution. Kinsey’s Institute for Sex Research, based at Indiana University and funded through the Rockefeller Foundation’s deep pockets, purposefully set out to destroy the ties between sexuality and morality. Kinsey and his team also manipulated statistics on the supposed variety of sexual practices by interviewing imprisoned pedophiles and not disclosing this to readers, as well as very likely engaging in criminal sexual conduct with children. Judith Reisman argued in her Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences (1998) that data on alleged child sexuality made public for the first time by Kinsey’s team could not have been obtained any other way.

The hard-left Southern Poverty Law Center labeled Reisman a “conspiracy theorist.” So it goes.

Kinsey was a materialist, of course, and he knew who was buttering his bread. There are good reasons for thinking the sexual revolution was not a mere accident or cultural misstep. The issue is not specific persons or political figures pushing “Communist” agendas. For the Corporatist world government mentioned above to ascend over the West, both the Christian worldview and Constitutionally limited government have to be discredited among intellectuals and in the political-economic centers. This worldview values, in addition to sexual responsibility, the family unit, a work ethic, acceptance of the fact that actions have consequences, a balance between self-reliance and community involvement, a disdain for laziness, respect for the rule of law as something more than what politicians decree or what judges and bureaucrats hand down, and the idea that concentrations of power are dangerous. It rejects Utopianism. It recognizes that traditions, Christian or otherwise, are not simply arbitrary intellectual products, able to be changed at will, but organic entities shaped by generations of effective practice. They reflect who we are as human beings, and what renders our communities stable, if imperfect. These are the only things that make a mostly free society with Constitutional controls on government possible.

But again, this is another, lengthier essay.

In sum, one can agree, there are worse things than public near-nudity and displays of debauchery. But it dawns on me that with the global reach of today’s technology, especially the Internet now easily accessible via hand-held devices, there is absolutely nothing to prevent Muslim children from accessing Miley Cyrus’s (or other Western celebrities’) performances. Or the children of Hindus or Buddhists or other faiths.

No one is “being forced to watch,” some will say. True, and irrelevant. Not every “free choice” is a good one. There are reasons Anglo-European culture is distrusted elsewhere in the world. Some go beyond U.S. militarism and control in the name of extracting other nations’ natural resources, although those have been sufficient to make us enemies (Iran is an example). Perhaps the wiser of other faiths sense the destructive potential of materialism and secularism to unleash a pleasure-über-Alles mindset. Do parents or other adults in non-Western, non-secular cultures have a right to protect their children from this if that is their choice, or do they not? If not, then who makes that choice for them? Western secularists? By what standard, and on whose authority?

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Materialism (Part Three) Steven Yates

Author's note: these are the third and fourth parts of a four-part (plus postscript) essay that first appeared on the commentary site NewsWithViews.com. I have corrected a couple of typos and put in a few new links but otherwise kept substantive changes to an absolute minimum.

“Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream

It is not dying, it is not dying.

Lay down all thought, surrender to the void

It is shining, it is shining.

That you may see, the meaning of within

It is being, it is being.

That love is all, and love is everyone

It is knowing, it is knowing.” ~The Beatles, “Tomorrow Never Knows” (1966)

The upshot, so far, is that in our moral lives in a material world, everything is up for grabs.

Reactions to this varied. One was the turn to mind-altering drugs, led by such writers as Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) whose The Doors of Perception (1954) was the source of a different 1960s rock group’s name, and of course Timothy Leary (“Tune in, turn on, drop out”). Transcendent reality and values may not exist in the material world but can be found in your head! The 1960s hippies began to “drop acid” (LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide). Some would claim to “see God.” Acid rock was its musical expression, proclaiming mystical revelations of peace and love. Others, of course, experienced sometimes terrifying hallucinations caused by the drug’s radical altering of their perceptions. I recall from my graduate student days a past user telling me how he’d seen his stereo grow a mouth, as the music coming from his speakers took the form of two arms reaching his way as it tried to eat him. People with latent personality disorders, or just the anxiety-prone, were especially susceptible to bad experiences with LSD. Some users ended up with psychoses, or simply “burned out” from repeated usages with permanent brain damage: “acid casualties.” All of which makes the values-are-in-your-head route a risky one to travel down!

Many of that generation’s parents, however, had turned away from the problem, leaving them vulnerable to criticisms of them as morally shallow, having sold their souls to the corporate system. “If it feels good, do it” is a phrase associated with the hippies, but there was a sense in which the prevailing ethos was closer to this sort of phrase than their elders cared to admit. Convenience reigned. This was true in business, in government, in academia. If it’s convenient, do it. Consider abortion, which had become an issue well before Roe v. Wade (1973). Sexual license (also a problem in some communities before the liberation movements of the 1960s) led to unwanted pregnancies; simple as that. Despite the prattling about those cases when “the mother’s life is in danger,” over 99% of abortions are abortions of convenience. Abortion’s legal acceptability has led to the killing of over 50 million unborn babies and counting. I will not torture readers with the bizarre rationalizations feminist philosophy professors have produced (it is hard to call them philosophers with a straight face), except to note that the linguistic sleight of hand used has been intended to deprive the unborn and sometimes even the newly born of moral standing, and hence any claim on life that others are obligated to respect. The Nazis and other totalitarians did the same thing, removing those to be eliminated from the moral community.

But then again, if Benedict, Dewey, Rorty, and others are correct, then the only moral standing anyone has is what their society, or the state, gives them. What the state and social approval give, the state and social approval can take away, whether its targets are Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, etc., under the Nazis; those who resisted collectivized farming under Stalin; or the unborn in our own culture. It is possible, by this reading, that a future Christian civilization might regard this last as one of the largest and most insidious holocausts of all.

The tendency, as we have seen, has been to evade the issues, or to simply stop thinking about them. Many theologians would succumb fully to the “death of God” by the 1960s, even as their children were “finding Him” in recreational chemistry. Secularization was one of the manifestations of materialism having captured Western culture. Harvey Cox (1929 – ), one of the leaders of the “death of God” movement, wrote in his The Secular City (1965) that secularization “bypasses and undercuts religion and goes on to other things…. The world looks less and less to religious rules and rituals for its morality or its meanings.”

I recently finished one of the most comprehensive accounts I have seen of the modern, secular attempt “to live after the death of God”: The Age of Atheists: How We Have Sought to Live since the Death of God (2014) by British intellectual historian Peter Watson (1943 – ). Watson’s account ranges across philosophy, art, poetry, literature, and science — or, more exactly, science-promotion, as he includes evangelical atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris, which is materialism promotion in my sense of that term. Watson is a reasonably honest thinker, and those who maintain (as I do) that materialism has no hope of providing society with a sound moral foundation and direction will find support for their views in his work. So despite the title and themes (and tediousness at times), the book merits study. At the end, Watson does not endorse mere science-promotion but rather seeks to explain why many credible authors, writers, poets and artists have found the “scientific worldview” too narrow. His answer isn’t especially satisfying.

It comes down to the idea that, given God’s absence, the “central sane activity” (title of the book’s meandering closing chapter) is “sheer wondering inquiry,” and a grasping for those lonely moments of meaningfulness and life-affirmation. Different authors have given them different names. Abraham Maslow, for example, called them “peak experiences”; James Joyce spoke of “epiphanies”; Malroux, of “temporary refuges”; Yeats, of “brief moments of ecstatic affirmation”; Ibsen, of “flashes of spiritual value.” These moments, Watson insists, can be had in loving relationships, the satisfaction of various desires, the experience of hearing an especially moving piece of music or seeing a work of art or reading poetry, or in any number of other ways including just the mundane satisfaction of a job well done.

Even if you are a secularist, are you really satisfied with this?

Study them closely, and you see that these experiences, real though they may be, are private and personal; one comes away sensing the difficulty the writers have in communicating their content to others. They are more the stuff of poetry than philosophy. They are, however, pleasant — momentary “highs” — and we are inching our way back to the possibility that psychoactive drugs can be used to trigger such experiences artificially and expand them indefinitely if the results are satisfying enough to outweigh the dangers.

All this seems like denial to me. Of the obvious. By turning away from the larger picture, the one both Nietzsche and Russell were courageous enough to face, to focus on those nice little particulars we experience or arrange for ourselves, whether in our private lives or by using recreational chemicals, we evade the important consequence of materialism:

That once you’ve removed God and transcendence from your worldview, there are no binding moral values, binding in the sense of being definitive and authoritative, and suggesting a lasting, inescapable, personal penalty for their violation. There is only state authority, popularity, physical pleasure, and these ephemeral on-top-of-the-world moments — all of which end in death, which the materialist understands as the permanent extinction of consciousness and personality. You cease to exist as completely as the nonexistence that preceded your conception. Presumably after those final anxious moments before you wink out, you won’t be worried about it.

Watson correctly observes that many people in secular society seem to have no problem with this. They have either rejected “religion” without further thought, or simply grew up without it. He writes:

“We need to remind ourselves … that many people — and perhaps the quieter souls among us — see no problem in God being dead. For them his death is no source of anxiety or perplexity…. [S]uch individuals are not “metaphysical types” and seek no “deep” meaning in existence. They just get on with their lives, making ends meet, living from day to day and season to season, enjoying themselves where they can, untroubled by matters that so perplex their neighbors. They have no great expectations that the big questions will ever be settled, so devote no time to their elucidation. In some ways, they are the most secular people of all and perhaps the most content” (The Age of Atheists, pp. 532-33).

Such folks blend smoothly into the majority, the masses of humanity in advanced civilization, meeting its demands on them, and no more thinking independently today than the third or so who were content with British rule in the 1770s and another third who didn’t care so long as they had food on the table. If asked, they will say they have no time for such matters as these. They will vote for mainstream candidates without question, and only start asking questions when their supposed leaders send their kids off to die in foreign wars as cannon fodder, if even then. They are first veilers. While many are nice people and good at what they do, should we trust their collective judgment with matters as far from everyday experience, and as important, as whether or not one should believe in God as the source of moral valuation?
 

Materialism (Part Four) Steven Yates

“Jesus, help me find my proper place

Jesus, help me find my proper place

Help me in my weakness

Cause I'm falling out of grace.

Jesus. Jesus.” ~The Velvet Underground, “Jesus” (1968)

I confess I had a difficult time choosing an open song lyric for this final segment, if only because explicit Christian themes are rare in rock music (it does happen, however). Yet that world contains many artists who have engaged in intense self-exploration often reaching out to a spiritual reality even if by accident. Lou Reed (1942 – 2013), author of the above lyrics, is an example. He had clearly seen the seamy side of human existence including from the standpoint of a heroin addiction when he was in his early 20s. The song cited above sounds surprisingly like a prayer for someone who was not a Christian (I am assuming). Reed’s music has always struck me as that of an observer and seeker, someone commenting on the dark side of human life as if from a vantage point somewhere above.

According to materialists, there is no “vantage point somewhere above,” of course. There is just this world, and whatever neural synapses are firing in your brain. The New Atheism (Dawkins, et al) has reiterated Nietzsche’s “God is dead” by proclaiming the impending death of Christianity.

I wouldn’t hold my breath. The Soviets spent over 70 years trying to eradicate Christianity by force; the Maoists, in China, also tried to wipe it out. It is true that, e.g., church attendance is dropping on the part of millennials, a source of commentary on Christianity losing ground in the U.S. It is incompatible with the political correctness that dominates the mindset of millennial students, for sure. But Christianity is the fastest growing religion elsewhere in the world, such as (ironically) in Russia and China. Why would anyone think Christianity is going away voluntarily? What we should be thinking about is where the Christian worldview stands in the present, and what its future might be.

What is the Christian worldview? It stands, as I argue in Four Cardinal Errors, in sharp contrast to the materialist worldview. Here are some proposals.

(1) God exists, as a Being who transcends space, time, and causality. The things of God, including morality, transcend space, time, and causality. God created the world of space, time, and causality. Logos and Ethos (logicality and morality) are inseparable aspects of God’s eternal nature. God’s existence is a starting point, not a conclusion of our reasoning.

(2) There is therefore the world of space, time, and causality — the world of human experience and of science — and whatever noumenal realm exists “beyond” these, outside possible human experience. Neither reality nor God are limited to space, time, and causality. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951) would say we are pushing at the limits of language. In a sense, he was correct. But limits to human language and understanding do not limit reality. In the last analysis, God’s nature as both one God and as “three persons” (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) are mysteries, as is how Creation was accomplished, how our free will operates, and possibly how consciousness itself works. Positivism and scientism disliked and distrusted mysteries. Materialists believed they had explained them. Rorty, who also admired Wittgenstein, believed the problems were artifacts of our insistence on “mentalistic” language. But some recent philosophers of mind — Colin McGinn (1950 – ) is an example — now sound very Kantian in concluding that consciousness has remained fundamentally mysterious despite decades of hard, patient, sustained inquiry and analysis … because our reason just isn’t structured so as to fathom its mysteries. If materialism is false, the mysteriousness of consciousness makes perfect sense! It just can’t be forced-fitted into the materialist conceptual straitjacket!

(3) What science does it does reasonably well, when not corrupted by politics or other sources of dollars. Again, though, science is designed to answer questions and solve problems in this world. Again as Kant showed, it cannot address metaphysical problems, any more than can reason itself. Reason, though its starting point is Logos, is human, all too human, is finite therefore, and not designed to reach or grasp an eternal God. From what successes science has enjoyed it does not follow logically that this world, the world of space, time, and causality where science and technology operate, exhausts reality.

(4) According to Christianity human beings were created in God’s image. Hence the fundamental ontological and moral differences between us and the rest of the Creation. As St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) put it, our reason is an imprint of God’s eternal nature within us. Thus we have the finite capacity to acquire knowledge of the Creation, whether through science or rational insight.

(5) The Christian worldview’s diagnosis of the human condition is not ignorance but sin: the fact that the first humans (whether we read Genesis literally or not) turned away from God. They believed they could do better on their own, autonomously. They were wrong. Sin corrupts everything, including the quest for truth. Most thinkers have sought to avoid any frank discussion of sin. The idea flies in the face of the idea of human perfectibility, or at least of indefinite improvability by our own efforts, legacies of the Enlightenment. But any honest, empirical look at ourselves ought to suggest that we cannot save ourselves, or improve ourselves wholesale as ethical beings. We can make small improvements here and there, akin to learning to bathe; most of us tend to behave better when we are comfortable and when our stomachs are full. But morality is simply not our “default setting”; it should be obvious that even children can be hideously cruel to classmates who do not “fit in.” While many of us adults doubtless mean well because we have internalized moral principles to some degree, others among us remain pretty much untouched by these niceties. We try to device systems of rules that operate under the assumption that the desire to do good should be a primary motivator, when it usually isn’t. Most of us have little interest in what does not affect us directly, or bring us benefits. All of us have our lapses, some of which are truly breathtaking! Secularists believe we can be autonomous, but absent an external moral compass, we often just act as destroyers, of others if not ourselves, whether on the grand scale of the wars of choice in the Middle East or the small but from the victim’s standpoint all-too-real one of the teenager who is bullied or cyberbullied until she commits suicide. Unless such things happen to one of our own, we drift with the herd, with the quiet secularists Peter Watson noted.

(6) Christian ethics are found in the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and elsewhere in the Old and New Testaments. Yes, there are often problems interpreting what we perceive God’s will to be, and religious communities are bound to disagree over specifics. But the problems understanding what Christianity requires of us surely pale next to the failure of secular ethical theories, and of secularism more broadly. One thing is crystal clear: Christian salvation is to be found in Jesus Christ who alone promises salvation from the consequences of sin (Romans 3:23; Romans 6:23; John 3:16; elsewhere), something we cannot do ourselves (Ephesians 2:8–9; elsewhere). Recognizing that if we try to start with ourselves we get nowhere, and that our ability to get nowhere on our own is entirely consistent with what we observe in history and society, are good places to begin one’s appreciation of Christian ethics, or of the Christian worldview generally.

Christians do not get everything right, of course. The Christian does not cease to sin nor even to suffer the consequences of sin; the most he can do is confess sins, and turn away gratefully acknowledging God’s forgiveness. What Christians get wrong could fill a separate article: failure in their families; failure to care for their neighbors and fellow citizens as God commands (Jesus did not say to treat the sick only if you can make a profit doing so); failure to care for the Creation itself, over which God gave humanity dominion, which means assuming moral responsibility, not destructive plundering; and more besides.

But these human failures do not give us an argument against Christianity and for materialism, which in the end gives us no basis for condemning any of these failures other than expedient ones.

What of other faiths? some might ask. I was born in the U.S. (grew up in Atlanta), and have been surrounded by Christians for much of my life (except for time spent in universities surrounded by materialists). Suppose I’d been born in, say Baghdad. Would I not be writing my condemnations of Western materialism as part of my submission to Allah, as a devout Muslim scholar (the word Islam means submission)? Would I not be a Hindu or possibly a Buddhist, had I been born in, say, India? Or a Confucian, had I been born in Tibet?

There are no easy answers to such questions. I do not know if Christians can have the best answers to them, as those answers (obviously) presuppose Christianity and to a logical mind, will sound circular. The fact that everyone considers his/her religion to be “the right one” is a given; no one would believe in his/her faith otherwise. Other faiths stand at the center of other worldviews, of course, non-Western ones in most cases. That means (by definition) they are not widely represented in those regions of the world identified as “the West.” High or low representation has no logical implications for truth or falsity, however.

Technology, a product of the West, has brought these different worldviews into the same meeting space as never before, however: cyberspace, which transcends the fact that some of us are able to travel anywhere and experience the cultural embodiments of other worldviews firsthand. The thing to do, it seems to me, is to encourage interfaith dialogue as never before, conducted respectfully and with an eye to seeing what is similar, and not being so eager to focus on what is different. And looking to the future rather than dwelling on the errors of the past. The world needs people both able and willing to communicate, especially with divisive and destructive personalities everywhere. We can then show how the world looks to Christians, and present what we believe is true in Christianity.

This, we must add, goes along with acting as Jesus Christ would have as act, in accordance with His words during the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere: for example, working to ensure that impoverished peoples here and afar have food to eat, whatever their beliefs, and to help them learn those practices that will help them feed themselves. Words without deeds, after all, are idle chatter. Having attended to such matters, the most constructive thing we can do is to step aside and trust God to do His work.

My Kantian-Kierkegaardian Christian Worldview

There are answers if you know where to look for them JOIN the Faith in Jesus Network My Kantian-Kierkegaardian Christian Worldview http://faithinchristlives.blogspot.cl/2016/02/my-kantian-kierkegaardian-christian.html
by Steven Yates, Ph.D.
[Author’s note: an earlier version of this material first appeared on my personal blog at https://lostgenerationphilosopher.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/my-kantian-kierkegaardian-christianity/. I have reworded a sufficient number of passages and added enough material to make this a stand-alone essay, however.]
I am an outsider who for various reasons ranging from personal blunders (such as taking his advanced degree from a crap doctoral program in an unranked university) to circumstances beyond his control (affirmative action) never found a tenure-track job in academia. I've since embraced my status as an outsider and gone into self-imposed exile living in a foreign country fairly well away from the avalanche of stupidity that has largely consumed the U.S. over intervening years. Being an outsider isn't necessarily bad! One sees things the insiders miss! And if one chooses to continue thinking, one does one's own, and draws appropriate conclusions. One of mine is that the most salient fact about academia in our time is the dubiousness of nearly everything of import that comes out of it. This calls for a separate and far longer essay. In accordance with this stance, however, I’ve been increasingly inclined over the years to make up my own mind about matters of philosophical theology, and of faith. I am unimpressed by the tenured faculty member (or devotee of such) who wears his atheism as a badge of honor, unless he can show that he or she has actually read a few lines of the New Testament — or has an explanation for those curious events many of us have experienced that don’t quite add up given the materialist view of the universe, or can account for our actual lives as moral agents with a moral philosophy that can be sustained under truly rigorous criticism. All of which sets the stage for our topic today.
These days I think of myself as a Kantian-Kierkegaardian Christian. What does that mean, and how does it differ from some kind of fundamentalism? Does it speak to moral philosophy? In this piece I will be primarily concerned with the first: what a phrase like Kantian-Kierkegaardian Christian drives to articulate.
I’ve long maintained that Western civilization is the scene of a long “cold war” between two worldviews. I wrote a slim book about this back in 2004 (published in 2005). Its title was Worldviews: Christian Theism versus Modern Materialism. The title tells all. One worldview is that of Christianity. The other is materialism, or materialistic naturalism. There are other worldviews in the world, of course (example: Islam), but they are not major players in Western civilization, at least not yet. And there are variations on both Christianity and materialism. There are the many Christian denominations, leading to arguments over how you identify a person as a Christian. And there is Marxist materialism, which differs quite a bit from the varieties of materialism found in the so-called capitalist world, including that of the academic capitalism of the neoliberal university.
I am more interested in what these have in common than where they differ. What all forms of Christianity have in common is the existence and centrality of the Christian God, and the believer’s fealty to His dictates, including how Christian salvation occurs (we are born in sin; Jesus Christ offers salvation to sinners; we do not save ourselves through works — Ephesians 2: 8 – 9). Prior to these matters for the Christian philosopher, however, is a question far more basic: can God’s existence be proven? Should attempts to prove His existence be made? These are two of the most longstanding debates in philosophical theology. The upshot of over 2,000 years of conversation is: probably not. The three most widely studied arguments for God’s existence of interest to philosophers, the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments, all face well-known and daunting criticisms. But where do we go from here? is the really interesting question. We can, of course, simply become atheists. But atheism does not follow logically from the failures of the arguments. How about agnosticism? Agnosticism might seem to be on safer ground epistemologically, but not existentially. Sooner or later, you must choose: belief or unbelief? You must commit to one or the other. And be willing to accept the consequences. To choose agnosticism is to become an operational atheist, one who lives life under the assumption that God does not exist. One may deem the whole matter irrelevant to practical affairs in the Secular City. To refuse to talk about it and live a life under the assumption that belief in God has no part to play in it is again to commit to God’s nonexistence. Are there grounds for belief, absent a decisive argument for God’s existence? Is an argument for the existence of a Being such as God even a good idea? This was our second question above. An argument is possible that attempts to prove God’s existence with logic, e.g., to ground the necessity of a Prime Mover on Logos, is not a good idea, and that such efforts really are a misuse of whatever rational faculties we have, however understood.
From the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) we obtain the idea that the human mind is structured to operate in a world of three dimensions plus time. He developed this idea in great detail in Critique of Pure Reason. To make this as easy as possible and hopefully without oversimplifying too much, Kant had the idea that the world of experience is a kind of construction of consciousness, via forms of intuition (space, time) and categories of the understanding. Reality apart from the constituting human consciousness is an unknowable Ding-an-Sich (thing-in-itself). What Kant had realized (among other things) was that traditional philosophy in the hands of both the rationalists of his homeland and the British empiricists had come essentially to a dead end. The latter in particular assumed that we begin with neutral experience (“impressions,” Hume called the units of experience with which we begin). Kant launched what he called a “Copernican Revolution” in philosophy by introducing the idea that instead of our concepts or categories conforming to putatively neutral experience, our experience conforms to a priori categories of the understanding. The human mind, that is, is an active shaper of the world of experience, not a passive recipient of it!
To make this more accessible, all we need to say is that we cannot step outside our humanness, to see what reality looks like from a totally neutral vantage point, outside the structure our cognition, or conscious intellects, bring to experience. We cannot cease being human. As the saying goes, we do not have a “God’s eye point of view.” If God exists, only He has a “God’s eye” perspective outside of three-dimensional space plus time. Subtract the theistic element here, and we have what has been a common theme of much philosophy since the collapse of logical positivism, explaining the increasing importance assigned to such matters as historicity, culture-centeredness, and so on. For if it is true that we cannot cease being human, nor can we cease being members of particular cultures, or divorce ourselves from their histories. How to construe these apparently genuine limits on our cognition remains a problem, because if they are pursued too far in the extreme, they lead to various forms of self-stultifying relativism and subjectivism, the postmodern trap into which most of the humanities world has fallen over the past half-century.
A realist, non-constructionist version of Kant’s ideas is possible that would enable us to avoid a variety of problems. It would hold that the objects of our our world of experience, physical nature, that is, is real insofar as it goes, as indicated by our ability to act effectively in it, learn how its parts (e.g., physical objects and processes) work, and manipulate them to meet our needs (technology, or technique). The objects of experience, that is, are real, but our experience is only of certain elements of them. I have a visual experience of the table my computer is sitting on as I type this, that is, but not of the atoms and molecules which comprise the table, and given the limitation of my visual perception resulting from the way my eye, optic nerve, and visual center in my brain is put together, this is to be expected. Physical nature extends well beyond the senses, in other words, and this is the testimony of modern theoretical physics.
Physical nature, in this case, hardly needs to exhausts reality (the difference between materialism and all other worldviews). Theoretical physics appears to support this idea as well. Theoretical physics is based on higher mathematics, not experience; higher mathematics is, in turn, based on necessity. It is not arbitrary, even if we can find many cultures that make no use of it. The mathematics of, e.g., superstring theory, appears to require higher dimensions: nine, according to one count (the number may have increased). The details are unimportant for our purposes. All that is required is that we have a realist ontology about mathematical entities, as it is unclear what an alternative ontology (nominalism?) would amount to. There are then two kinds of realist ontology: the Platonist one and the Christian one. The Platonist one leaves mathematical entities as inexplicable primaries. The Christian one supposes that God is the Ultimate Mathematician! We find ourselves with a transcendental Christian realism vastly different from the world we experience. Empiricism, on the other hand, makes both our knowledge of and the utility of, mathematics, ultimately as mysterious as Platonism.
The most advanced modern science is at variance with the requirements of materialism but compatible with Christianity. Note carefully: compatibility is a logical relation. Two propositions are compatible if both can be true in the same possible universe. Physical science may not prove or even offer direct evidence for the existence of a deity, or set out to do so. It, like experience, begins with the assumption of a physical universe of three spatial dimensions plus time, at least until reasons appeared for questioning that assumption. Its presuppositions that this universe is both ordered (not chaotic) and that its order is comprehensible to the human mind, are suggestive. For are these presuppositions true? What does it mean to ask this?
All of which brings us to the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855). Some historians of ideas label Kierkegaard’s philosophy “Christian existentialism.” He himself had no label for it, and would have rejected such labels with contempt. And he would have been suspicious of the above presuppositions, which are just too easy — thrown into doubt by what we would today call “black swan” events: inherently unpredictable and destructive of our comforting mental edifices. Kierkegaard emphasized that God’s existence is impossible to prove. He singled out the design argument, popular in his day, and still popular now among many Christian theists, who use the term Intelligent Design (ID) even though the items of evidence ID theory relies on do not entail that the Designer must be the Christian God. The point Kierkegaard made: perceived disruptions in the design would cause the perceiver to throw out the whole of Christianity if this is its basis (cf. Philosophical Fragments, ch. 3), given the absence of logical entailment from ID to Christianity’s God. An agnostic friend once reasoned to me, “There’s no proof.” It dawned on me that day: that’s true, and it’s the key! Christianity is based on faith, on a Kierkegaardian “leap” (his term), and cannot be based on anything else.
Lest the materialist rise up in a gesture of triumph and declare that we Christians have just given away the game, because materialism is based on reason / evidence, we must note immediately: no other worldview can be based on anything else. Materialist arguments do not work, i.e., are not compelling unless the materialist presupposition is introduced at the start and maintained throughout the argument. The presupposition, too, rests on a “leap.” Materialist naturalism seems to me refuted by recent findings of theoretical physics, the many experiences we have that do not align with it (mostly now subsumed under the phrase the hard problem of consciousness), as well as careful attention to what goes on with language and our understanding of it (is the grasping and understanding of a word or phrase a material process?). I know that materialists reading this will complain that I either haven't understood, or have misrepresented, materialism. It is a common ploy by defenders of a very basic idea to state that the critics do not understand it. Moreover, it is always possible to reinterpret experience so as to fit the favored point of view, usually by ignoring or discounting those elements that “don’t fit.” The point I would make here is, materialism is not a finding of any science. Nor does any scientific theory entail it, not even the ones on which there is largescale consensus, like Darwinian evolution. Those who believe otherwise, all they have to do is lay out the logic leading from specific findings of these sciences to the general thesis that materialism is a true account of reality. I submit that this cannot be done. Materialism is, if anything, a presupposition of a certain way of looking at physical reality alone through science. Empirical science, therefore, has not refuted Christianity, nor could it do so. Much modern philosophy of science begins by having science on an epistemic pedestal except for a few writers such as Paul Feyerabend (1924 - 1994): positivism and its immediate descendants. Remove it from this pedestal, and this becomes instantly and abundantly clear.
We can say all this before we even get to moral philosophy, or political philosophy, or legal philosophy, with all the practical problems they lead to. I submit: in all three of these areas, if our goal is to base our conclusions on reason instead of obedience to secular authority, materialism leaves us at sea. You can see this by googling the essay by British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970), “A Free Man’s Worship,” and reading it carefully. It is a classic statement of the secularist’s stance based on purported findings of modern science … and dilemma. In different ways, the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 – 1881) and the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900), had far more dramatic and compelling accounts of the actual consequences of “God [being] dead.”
But this must do for now. Normative matters require a far different discussion than we’ve provided here. I will turn to them in a future post. Just as a teaser: while it is possible to quarrel with Christian ethics, or claim that there are many points where the Christian worldview is unclear, all I can say at this point is, Christian ethics is no worse off than any of the available secular theories, all of which fail miserably if the idea is to establish them with something more than, “This is where I make my stand.” As for legal philosophy, I will invoke the idea of legal positivism: an idea that boils down to the law being what those with enforcement power say it is, no more and no less. Legal positivism stands unnoticed in the background behind social issues ranging from abortion to Kentucky clerk Kim Davis’s refusal to put her name on marriage certificates for gays, and behind Judge Bunning’s contention that natural law would set a terrible precedent. It would at that, because it would destroy the entire edifice of legal positivism that those who would change existing law wholesale depend on! But … I get ahead of myself. More on a future occasion. Where we will end up … there are propositions worth believing … even if you cannot prove them true! Indeed, we have no choice except to believe a few things we cannot prove: among the upshots of the Kantian “Copernican Revolution” in epistemology is that we are not “wired” to do otherwise! This ought to be compatible enough with all the modern and postmodern tendencies to be of some interest!

Dying for an Answer: An Attempted Theodicy to the Problem of Evil

It is perhaps one of the greatest intellectual stumbling blocks in all of religious thought. As much as any soul would like to avoid the topic all together, sooner or later each person will be forced to grapple with the seemingly incongruous realties resulting from the simultaneous existence of both a sovereign God and the prevalence of evil in the world. To some, the disconcerting existential trauma of suffering in their lives and in the lives of those around them is enough to make one come down in the negative in their answer to the God question. However, upon deeper reflection one is forced to realize that — though still mind boggling — it is not necessarily inconsistent for both evil and the Biblical conception of God to exist at the same time.

In the hopes of gaining just a bit of perspective into such an overwhelming universal mystery, it is probably best to start out by formulating the problem in a summarized written form. Norman Geisler in “Introduction To Philosophy: A Christian Perspective” states the problem in the following manner: “(1) If God is all-powerful, He could destroy evil. (2) If God is all-good, He would destroy evil. (3) But evil exists. (4) Therefore, there is no such God (Geisler, 274).” To establish a credible defense to these charges, the Christian must show that evil does not necessarily upset the divinely appointed applecart and is allowed to exist because of the purpose it serves in subordination to higher, more important realities even if these do not always make sense to finite human sensibilities.

At the heart of this debate is a discussion as to both the nature of God and the nature of evil. As to the ethical nature of God, Matthew 5:48 instructs the reader, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father which is in heaven is perfect.” However, that goodness is not like unto that of a saintly grandmother, though kind and loving in all of her intentions, who is helpless to prevent the world from deteriorating all around her.

In the spirit of the Rooseveltian axiom of speaking softly and carrying a big stick, God has the power necessary to carry through implementing how He thinks things ought to be. Colossians 1:17 says, “And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” This is further elaborated and extended in Acts 17:28 which reads, “For in him we live, and move, and have our being…”

Pretty much nothing happens without God knowing about it and at least allowing it to happen by not intervening to prevent it even if He himself does not endorse the action, behavior, or event in question. Evil, by its very nature on the other hand, is a thought or deed violating God’s nature of absolute goodness as expressed in the form of His natural and special revelation to those who inhabit the universe He created.

Yet, if God really does have the whole world in His hands as the old spiritual suggests, there needs to be a bit of explanation on the part of the apologist or theologian. For if God really is in sovereign control, one must show how this fits together with passages such as I John 1:5 which says, “This then is the message we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”

The first step in eliminating the apparent contradiction arising between the existence of both God and evil is to show how evil might serve some purpose or be allowed to exist as the unfortunate byproduct of some more comprehensive good. Perhaps the best response Christian thinkers have provided thus far over the centuries is probably the so-called “Free Will Defense”.

The underlying assumption of the Free Will Defense posits that the fault and consequences for evil in the world lies solely on the shoulders of those who commit moral transgressions and exhibit ethical shortcomings rather than upon a God imposing them upon the world from the outside. Scripture bears much of this idea out in passages such as Romans 5:12 which reads, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned…” Thus, it is pretty much our own fault as a species as a whole for the misery rampaging across the face of the earth and in individual lives.

While such a theory might help account for things such as crime, war, and even sickness since none of us have escaped the stain of sin, by itself it does not provide enough explanation to account for the tragedy arising from natural disasters (often referred to as so-called “acts of God”) or why God does not normally intervene to prevent ne’er-do-wells from inflicting pain and suffering upon their victims innocent in terms of instigating these particular acts of malice. Both of these quandaries find their answer in what Ronald Nash calls the “Natural Law Theodicy” or what John Frame refers to as the “Stable Environment Defense”.

Frame notes in “Apologetics To The Glory Of God” that a stable environment is fundamental to human existence (164). Ronald Nash writes in “Faith & Reason: Searching For A Rational Faith”, “Free rational action requires a world of natural objects governed by natural laws (200).”

C.S. Lewis adds to this perspective in “The Problem Of Pain” , “But if matter is to serve as a neutral field it must have a fixed nature of its own … if you were introduced into a world which thus varied at my every whim, you would be quite unable to act in it and would lose the exercise of your free will (19).” Lewis continues in the following paragraph, “Again, if matter has a fixed nature and obeys constant laws, not all states of matter will be equally agreeable to a given soul, nor beneficial for that matter which he calls his body (20).”

Thus in essence, the same system of reasonably stable natural laws that allows man to survive and even thrive in an otherwise hostile universe can also end up allowing the very same components of nature that man requires for his very existence to be turned on him and to inflict harm upon him. Lewis points out how fire can either warm the flesh or burn it.

This is wrought with consequences as to why both nature and man seem capable of raining down misery with impunity. As to the issue of natural disasters, Romans 8:20-22 explains, “For the creation was subjected to frustration not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it… We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time (NIV).” Thus, the very physical setting of creation is under the curse not unlike that imposed upon humanity for the fall of the species into sin.

Though the providence of God no doubt often spares certain individuals from befalling the ferocity of a world out of control, the system of physical laws through which the natural world is governed is usually left in place for the overall benefit of finite kind. For we would be unable to adjust in our current condition to a constantly changing and fluctuating cosmos. This principle readily applies to those bent on using physical matter to inflict their own corrupt wills upon secondary by-standing parties.

For example, one can use a baseball bat to enjoy an afternoon of leisurely recreation or to work someone over during an armed robbery. While we would all like God to intervene to prevent physical matter and natural forces from wreaking havoc upon us, in all likelihood doing so would inflict even greater harm upon the human species and the world in their current condition than simply allowing these contingent entities to continue on until the so-called end of history and the beginning of eternity.

Much of this theodicy is focused upon the preeminence of freedom in the relationships established under the terms of the divine economy. But some might argue that it is at this point of imbuing the actors in the universal drama with their own sense of freedom that God erred in His drafting of the cosmic screenplay. However, it is because of His absolute goodness that God has seen fit to grant some degree of say-so to those He loves the most.

It is because of the overwhelming sense of importance placed upon love that freedom must take precedence over order and control though freedom and love take place within the boundaries established by this order and control. For as any lovesick high school student turned down for the prom eventually realizes, love must be given freely or it is not true love.

The Scripture says in Joshua 24:15, “….choose you this day whom ye will serve.” The text does not say that the decision will be thrust upon you. The Lord will hear enough whining on the Day of Judgment. He does not need to make His task more difficult by assigning the responsibility for our eternal fates and destinies to any party other than ourselves. For centuries, skeptics used the problem of evil to chip away at the foundations of theism. However, the fact that the objection can be raised at all points towards the affirmative in its conclusion to the God question.

Human beings recoil in horror as they do to the pain and unfairness of the world since it is such a shocking affront to the way things were originally intended to be. Atheism uses this reaction deep within the soul to make its case for a totally naturalistic universe. But if evil, pain, and suffering are simply a part of the natural order, on what grounds are we justified in railing against it, and for that matter, how are we even capable of determining something has gone awry in the first place?

If evil is nothing more than part of the backdrop against which life plays itself out, man should barely notice it. For example, most normal people do not lie awake at night wondering why there is oxygen in the world or work themselves up into having an anxiety attack despairing as to why they will have to eat breakfast in the morning. The ability to complain about and speak out against evil points to the reality of some transcendent standard existing above the fray by which to justify this innate tendency towards making judgments.

One might counter that these standards simply exist within the individual as personal conscience. Yet both the daily news and the pages of history are replete with examples of how competing interpretations of these principles differ considerably and the conflicts that often arise without appeal to a yet higher arbitrating authority.

Thus, some external standard must exist in order to tell the difference between right and wrong. The only sufficient basis for this criteria is found in God. Alister McGrath provides the following proof in “Intellectuals Don’t Need God & Other Modern Myths“: “(A). Unless there is a God, there cannot be objectively binding moral obligations. (B). Objectively binding moral obligations exist. (C). Therefore, there is a God (40).”

At this point, the Christian thinker ought to take the problem of evil, invert it, and turn it against the critics of faith. John MacArthur writes in “Terrorism, Jihad & The Bible”, his response to the September 2001 terrorist attack upon the United States, “The question we ought to ask is not why disasters happen sometimes. What we ought to ask is why don’t disasters happen all of the time (65).”

The problem really is not so much the problem of evil but rather the problem of pleasure. For human beings have done such a superb job messing up the world, that if God did not exist, how does any pleasure exist at all? And if God does exist, why does He continue to bless mankind despite the rebellion, animus, and contempt characteristically displayed on the part of the species to its benevolent Creator?

James 1:7 says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” No matter how wretched life can get, somewhere along the way most people can recall at least a single moment of fleeting kindness in their lives and usually more.

Even if the Christian takes the time to carefully delineate the case that God is not responsible for the existence of evil in the world and how the existence of phenomena morally classified as such does not contradict His nature of absolute holiness, this is often still not enough to satisfy some of the more rigorous skeptics. These voices will counter that, even though the above theistic assertion might be true, God is still the bad guy in this story. In their eyes, He has not done enough to use His immense power to rectify the situation.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. God has been far from passive in solving this problem He did not create.

Kenneth Boa and Robert Bowman write in “An Unchanging Faith In A Changing World: Understanding & Responding To Critical Issues Christians Face Today“, “God has embraced this in the most intimate way possible through the abusive treatment His Son received when he was tortured and crucified (81).” These apologists continue, “Thus, the real problem of evil — …whether anything can be done to overcome it and bring good out of it — has been answered (81).” In essence, the problem has already been solved. The thing is that we are so mired in the flow of time that we are not yet able to fully enjoy the effects of this resolution.

God did not run away from the problem, but instead tackled its resolution head on in the most enthusiastic manner imaginable by allowing pain and evil to be visited upon Himself and in the person of His Son Jesus Christ. Nor did God gloss over the reality of evil in the attempt to buttress His position by spinning the matter in His favor by downplaying our pain.

God comes at the issue in such a straightforward manner that His blunt forthrightness would make plain-spoken newsman Bill O’Reilly blush. Job 14:1 declares, “Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble.”

God could very well quote the following from that old country song when we grow weary of the troubles inherent to life in this world: “I beg your pardon. I never promised you a rose garden.” He does, however, promise to do away with them in the next world where He will wipe away every tear according to Revelation 21:4. If God really was little more than a fairy tale, would the authors of Scripture include those texts that do little to sooth the troubled soul about the bleakness this side of Heaven and instead force the individual to confront some rather starting realities?

The problem of evil has plagued the mind of man at least since the day the first parents were expelled from the Garden of Eden for disobedience. However, the problem is not so much that God is a messed-up illogical being but rather that man is so limited in his capacity for reason that he is unable to ascend to the level of understanding necessary to comprehend the operational totality of the universe at the level of cosmic completeness.

God let’s a whining Job have it in Job 38:3-4 and beyond when the Lord inquires, “Gird up now thy loins like a man [translated as “brace yourself’ in the NIV]; for I will demand of then an answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if you hast understanding.”

And while man can theodicize until he is blue in the face, such answers provide only a modicum of comfort when one befalls ill health, when a family member passes away, or when religious fanatics fly airplanes into skyscrapers. During such trials, the best one can hope for are the reassurances found in Romans 8:28: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purposes.”

Bibliography:

Boa, Kenneth and Bowman Robert. “An Unchanging Faith in a Changing World: Understanding and Responding to Critical Issues That Face Christians Today.” Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1997.

Frame, John. “Apologetics To The Glory Of God: An Introduction.” Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishers, 1994.

Geisler, Norman & Feinberg, Paul. “Introduction To Philosophy: An Introduction.” Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1980.

Lewis, C.S. “The Problem Of Pain.” New York, New York: MacMillian Publishing, Eighteenth Printing, 1973. MacArthur, John. “Terrorism, Jihad & The Bible: A Response To The Terrorist Attacks.: Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2001.

McGrath, Allister. “Intellectuals Don’t Need God & Other Modern Myths: Building Bridges To Faith Through Apologetics.” Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1993.

by Frederick Meekins

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A Review Of “Why I Am Not A Christian” By Bertrand Russell

Without a doubt, Bertrand Russell stands as one of the most formidable minds of the modern era. Through his efforts with Alfred North Whitehead in “Principia Mathematica”, Russell further elaborated the relationship between mathematics and deductive logic. Russell's endeavors, however, were not confined to complex philosophical treatises having little influence outside of academic circles. Russell's work spanned the intellectual spectrum, ranging from works on the history of philosophy to international relations and political theory. Russell even produced newspaper articles for mass consumption. But despite his prolific intellectual output, Russell did not apply his mathematician's logic and objectivity to much of his non-scientific thought, especially in the area of religion as embodied by his work “Why I Am Not A Christian”.

Instead of addressing a single topic throughout the entire work, “Why I Am Not A Christian” is a collection of articles and essays addressing Russell's position on religious matters in general and issues regarding Christianity in particular. Proverbs 23:7 says, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so he is.” Many times influential voices speaking in the opinion-molding institutions of academia and media contend that one's views on religion do not necessarily impact other areas of existence such as the political or the sociological. Scripture teaches that this popular opinion is incorrect. However, the Bible is not readily accepted by those arguing for the mentioned opinion. Even though the work argues against the traditional positions of Christianity, the power of “Why I Am Not A Christian” resides in how it links one's views regarding religion with one's beliefs about society and the world despite the author's attempt to argue otherwise.

Russell's religious beliefs (or lack thereof) found their basis in his position that the theistic proofs are not as conclusive as believers make them out to be. When asked what he would say if confronted by the Creator at his death, Russell said he would respond by saying, “God! Why did you make evidence of your existence so insufficient?”

In “Why I Am Not A Christian”, Russell proceeds to critique each of these arguments. None of them escape his scathing scrutiny. Of the argument from the First Cause, Russell remarks that, if everything must have a cause, then God cannot be the uncaused cause by those following in the intellectual lineage of Aquinas. Russell claims that this argument actually results in an endless digression of creators begetting creators much like those mythological cosmologies where the Earth rests atop an elephant resting atop a tortoise etc. etc (7).

From the outset, Russell argues from faulty notions. According to Norman Geisler in “Introduction To Philosophy: A Christian Perspective”, in a thoroughly naturalistic context something cannot come from nothing. But by its definition, a noncontingent being does not require a cause since its existence is complete in itself (289). Only finite contingent beings require a cause.

The next proofs tackled by Russell are the arguments for the existence of God from the evidence of creation. Russell argues that, in the light of Einsteinian relativity, the Newtonian system of natural law is not as binding upon the universe as originally thought. Therefore, these scientific principles cannot be used to argue for the existence of a rational creator. However, one could turn the tables on Russell and point out that the revelations of Einsteinian physics actually provide a better testimony to the existence of God than even the previous Newtonian model.

According to Russell, natural law is nothing more than statistical averages resulting from the laws of chance (Russell, 8). John Warwick Montgomery in “Faith Founded On Fact” rebuts Russell's position by pointing out that the Einsteinian and quantum paradigms actually allow for miracles while maintaining that an ordered universe exists. In those systems attempting to account for the totality of the physical universe, it is God who keeps the universe from instantaneously dissolving into the chaos of individual atoms flying off into their own paths and who can rearrange the normal operations of reality when doing so suits His greater glory such as turning water into wine and resurrecting the dead (Montgomery, 43).

Besides drawing faulty conclusions regarding the validity of the theistic proofs, Russell errs as to their purpose as well. Russell is correct in pointing out that these arguments do leave room for some doubt. Yet this can be said about any other linguistically synthetic proposition about the world as well.

If one wants to get really nit-picky about the matter, one could doubt whether Bertrand Russell himself even existed since the Analysts were not above doubting the veracity of historical knowledge. As much as it might irritate the so-called “scientific mind”, one cannot exist without exercising some degree and kind of faith.

The theistic proofs can serve as a guide pointing towards faith or as a mechanism to help rationally clarify it. They do not properly serve as a replacement for it. Norman Geisler points out that one ought not to believe in God because of the theistic proofs. Rather, the theistic proofs provide one with a basis to reasonably assert that God exists (Geisler, 269).

Having taken on the first person of the triune Godhead, Russell turns his sites onto the second, the Lord Jesus Christ. To his perverse credit in a perverse sort way, Russell does not hind behind the phony religiosity of the liberal and the modernist which states, “Jesus was a good teacher, but...”

Russell openly wonders whether or not Christ even existed. And even if He did, Russell asserts, Jesus is far from being the greatest among human teachers as asserted by the likes of the Unitarians and the New Age movement. At best, according to Russell's scorecard, Jesus comes in at a distant third behind Socrates and Buddha (16). According to Russell, Christ's greatest flaw was His belief in the reality of Hell and His condemnation of those who would not heed the Messiah's call. Socrates provides a superior moral example since Socrates did not verbally castigate his detractors (Russell, 17).

Russell's disdain for those believing in the reality of Hell exposes his own bias rather than prove his dedication to the ideas of truth that he invokes elsewhere to undermine the claims of religious faith. In appraising the idea of Hell, Russell does not give much consideration to the realm of eternal damnation, instead dismissing the concept as a cruel idea (18). But if Hell is real, is not Christ doing the proper thing in warning how such a terrible fate might be avoided? Employing Russell's line of reasoning, it becomes cruel to chastise someone standing under a tall tree with a piece of sheet metal during a thunderstorm since such an exhortation also warns of the dire consequences likely to result from such foolish behavior.

But while Russell questions the historicity of Jesus Christ, he readily accepts that of Buddha even though Christ is perhaps the best documented figure of ancient history. The first accounts of Buddha appear nearly 500 years after the death of that particular religious figure. Those regarding Jesus appear within the first several decades following the Crucifixion.

Allegedly having removed God from His thrown as sovereign of the universe, Russell proceeds to lay out what he does believe primarily in the chapter titled “What I Believe”. Replacing religion as the tool by which man approaches the world, Russell would have man utilize science to determine meaning, reducing the totality of reality to that of mere physics (50). To Russell, even thought is nothing more than the chemical components and electrical impulses arising from the brain's physical composition.

Yet despite believing the material world to be ultimate, Russell saw no problem with making pronouncements regarding the areas of life transcending the material base such as ethics and social organization. Russell boldly states in italicized print for all to read, “The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge (56).” However, elsewhere in the very same chapter, Russell says, “...nature in itself is neutral, neither good nor bad (55).”

If humanity is nothing more than the sum of the physical composition of the species, it is then inappropriate to elaborate a theory of morality. Morality poured into such a naturalistic crucible becomes nothing more than individual personal preferences, which do seem to serve as Russell's source of moral reasoning. According to Russell, traditional morality is based upon cruelty and ignorance. However, according to John Frame in “Apologetics To The Glory Of God”, to invoke the values of love and knowledge (even when done so to undermine traditional conceptions of virtue) is to inadvertently defend the divinely established order of creation traditional moral values rests upon in the first place since such values are only desirable if a divinely created hierarchy exists (93-102).

Ultimately, one cannot craft a system of ethics solely based on science legitimately defined as science. At best, science can only assess and clarify the situations to which moral principles must be applied. To say that science is the source of moral values is to argue for a scientism or a naturalism as loaded with as many conceptual presuppositions as any theistic creed.

One can base one's ethical beliefs on the record of Scripture, which II Timothy 3:16 says is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for corrections, and for instruction in righteousness. Or, one can operate under man's own unaided reason, which is finite, corruptible, and known to change every five to ten years subject to FDA approval. History reveals which has the far better track record.

Unlike many Christians who do not take their worldview outside the church sanctuary or seminary classroom, Bertrand Russell was not one content to keep his philosophy and ideology confined to the level of an academic exercise. In terms of political activism, this was manifested by his vocal opposition to the nuclear diplomacy engaged in by both the United States and the Soviet Union during the tensest days of the Cold War.

However, the application of Russell's worldview did not always lead him to pursue admirable yet perhaps naive goals such as world peace. In fact, Presbyterian minister D.James Kennedy suggests in “Character & Destiny: A Nation In Search Of Its Soul” that Russell may have formulated his philosophical position regarding religious matters as a justification for his erotic proclivities, the lanky intellectual having actually had numerous adulterous relationships including philanderous escapades with the daughters of friends and colleagues (173). In fact, Russell social views derived from his foundational assumptions sparked considerable controversy. After all, it was not his “Principia Mathematica” that cost him a professorship at the City College of New York but rather his views regarding marriage and personal morality.

Seeing man soley as the product of natural processes and merely as a highly evolved animal, Russell's views regarding human intimacy and procreation reflect this sentiment. According to Russell, much of traditional morality --- especially that dealing with sexual ethics --- is based upon superstition. In fact, Russell believes that it would be beneficial for society and family life if the traditional understanding of monogamous, life-long, God-ordained marriage was openly violated. In these matters, Russell sounds much like a contemporary Planned Parenthood operative or public school sex educator. For example, Russell argues for no-fault divorce, unhampered sexual promiscuity provided children do not result from such illicit unions, and for temporary trial marriages not unlike the phenomena of cohabitation (Russell, 168-178).

Despite his attempts to expand human freedom and happiness in regards to these matters, Russell's proposals are in reality prescriptions for heartache and disaster. The segment of society sustaining the highest number of casualties in the sexual revolution are the young that Russell had hoped to liberate. According to syndicated columnist Cal Thomas in “The Death Of Ethics In America”, by the age of twenty-one 81% of unmarried males and 60% of unmarried females have had sexual intercourse. However, such carnal stimulation is not necessarily the fulfilling personal growth opportunity Russell claimed it would be.

Venereal diseases rank as the number one form of communicable illness in the United States. And the varieties of this pestilence prevalent today do not always react as well to penicillin as those ravaging the morally deviant of Professor Russell's day (Thomas, 92). Those engaging in Dr. Russell's trial marriages --- what use to be referred to as living in sin --- fare little better. Those participating in such arrangements on average go on to experience higher levels of marital discord and incidents of divorce.

God did not establish the regulations regarding human intimacy in order to rain on everybody's parade. These rules were promulgated in order to bring about the maximum degree of individual well-being and personal happiness. Matthew 19:5 says, “For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. Hebrews 13:4 adds, “Marriage is honorable in all and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.”

To his credit and the shame of the church, Russell does note how women have over the course of history often endured oppressive marriages many times under the sanction and justification of misunderstood interpretations regarding marital submission. However, any cruelty justified under this command is a misinterpretation of the passage's true intent. In Ephesians 5:25, just two verses away from the famous Scripture misused as an excuse for all manner of masculine cruelty, the Bible clearly reads, “Husbands, love your wives even as Christ loved the church.” This love is to be a sacrificial and gentle love; not the decree of a tyrant even though the husband is the king of the house. Studies indicate that, in reality, marriage is far safer for women than the live-in arrangements advocated by Russell under the euphemism of temporary marriage.

Having dismissed the traditional family and religion (both organized and otherwise) as impediments to humanity's progress, Russell puts his hope for the betterment of mankind in the state. Rather than punish individuals committing sins so heinous that they infringe upon the well-being of society, the state is to manipulate human behavior in order to bring about desired outcomes beneficial to the greater community. In fact, according to Russell, sin defined as an action committed by an individual in defiance of the universal moral order as established by an omnipotent creator does not exist. Sin is merely that which is disliked by those controlling education (159).

Even those committing the most heinous deeds are not beyond the pale of psychological reprogramming or pity much like that lavished upon a wayward dog that cannot help scratching up the furniture. To bring about his scientific utopia, the state would be granted expansive powers in even those most private aspects of existence. For example, Russell's state would go so far as to decree that children must be confiscated from their parents and raised by trained statist experts (Russell, 163).

Russell also suffers from the same paradox afflicting Marx and other socialists in that Russell desires to shrink the power of the state while at the same time dramatically increasing it. While wanting to put economic power into the hands of workers through a system of guilds and syndicates, Russell also sought to establish a world state having a monopoly on the use of force as well as establish guaranteed incomes and the human breeding restrictions mentioned earlier.

The issues raised by Russell's political opinions still possess relevance today with much of contemporary civic discourse an ongoing debate regarding the very kinds of policies advocated by Russell and his leftwing associates. F.A. Hayek noted in “The Road To Serfdom” that, while liberals might have naive but benevolent intentions behind their social engineering proposals, these ultimately require more bloodthirsty totalitarians or others of a similar vain lacking concern for innate human freedoms and constitutional liberties. Even Russell admits that much of human liberty is the result of the interplay between church and state (185). What then would result should the influence be nullified as Russell proposes?

Reflecting upon Russell's proposal of state-run childcare, it is highly doubtful whether or not such a program could be implemented without a great deal of bloodshed or a massive multi-generational conspiracy such as Hillary Clinton's it takes a village mentality and the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of The Child. Programs and policy outlooks such as these seek to alter the fundamental nature of the family primarily through bureaucratic stealth and covert legislative manipulation. Realizing that the proclivities towards marriage and family ran so deeply in the human psyche, even the Soviets had to back off their plank to so openly undermine the oldest of human institutions as part of their diabolical agenda.

And while the wars plaguing mankind are deplorable, the geopolitical landscape allowing them to arise is still preferable to the global tyranny and persecution that would result from a planetary regime that would impose its iron will on any portion of the world refusing to heed its edicts and decrees. At least under the current world order, a small percentage of humanity is able to enjoy some measure of freedom until the Lord's Second Coming.

Contrary to what even the National Rifle Association claims, America's Founding Fathers did not draft the Second Amendment to protect skeet shooting and squirrel hunting. Instead, this constitutional provision established a sense of liberty by creating tension between freemen and the operatives of the state by implying violence could result should government authorities over step the confines of their legitimate powers. Something similar is true with a system of nation-states competing with one another, none of which can tyrannize all of mankind at one time.

By reading “Why I Am Not A Christian”, one is reminded that the current culture war besieging America did not begin with either the inaugurations of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. It is in fact decades and even centuries old. While setting out an agenda and its ideological justification, Russell's “Why I Am Not A Christian” also provides a glimpse into the cultural disputes of another era.

The final chapter of the book consists of an appendix detailing the court case that ultimately prevented Russell from obtaining a professorship of mathematical and scientific philosophy. Whether or not Russell's critics should have acted so vehemently is open to debate as (to utilize a phrase just employed) there is some virtue to settling things through “open debate” with each side detailing their merits and revealing the weaknesses in the arguments of their opponents. However, history has shown that the concerns raised by those opposed to Russell's appointment were based in legitimate fears.

Though Russell cannot bear sole guilt as much of that must also go to his colleagues sharing in his worldview of loose sex and paternalistic government, this philosophy has gained such prominence in social institutions such as education, entertainment, and even religion. Regard for the family and human life has deteriorated to such a degree that is has become regular to hear in news reports of former mailmen mowing down with machine guns their fellow employees (the act itself now referred to as “going postal”) or of prom queens killing their newborns between dances. The world has never been perfect since the expulsion from Eden, but seldom in history has there been times where such outright evil is openly justified by those in authority such as certain psychologists, elected officials, and media personalities.

Bertrand Russell's “Why I Am Not A Christian” will not stand as a classic regarding what is explicitly written upon the pages. For the highest rational principle appealed to is that the world should enshrine the thoughts and preferences of Bertrand Russell simply because they are the thoughts and utterances of Bertrand Russell. However, the message it propounds between the lines of each man serving as his own god ranks among the central apologetic challenges of this or any other era. The clear style and detectable fallacies found within the pages of Russell's “Why I Am Not A Christian” will prepare Christians to take on more sophisticated versions of these arguments wherever they might appear.

By Frederick Meekins

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