Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes (15 page)

Double-Minded Secularists

Consider a few more real-life examples. In
What Science Offers the Humanities
, Edward Slingerland, identifies himself as an unabashed materialist and reductionist. A reviewer for the journal
Science
expressed hope that the book will “initiate conversion experiences” to a materialist worldview. (Conversion experiences? And you wondered whether materialism could really be labeled a religion?)

Slingerland argues that Darwinian materialism leads logically to the conclusion that humans are robots—that our sense of having a will or self or consciousness is an illusion. Yet, he admits, it is an illusion we find impossible to shake. No one “can help
acting
like and at some level
really
feeling
that he or she is free.” We are “constitutionally incapable of
experiencing
ourselves and other conspecifics [humans] as robots.”

One section in his book is even titled “We Are Robots Designed Not to Believe That We Are Robots.”

Do you recognize the language of general revelation? It consists in those fundamental truths that humans “can’t help” experiencing and feeling, even when those truths contradict their own worldview. In one passage Slingerland writes, “We are constituted in such a way” that we “unavoidably” and “inescapably” experience the “lived reality” of being moral agents.

How does Slingerland propose to resolve the contradiction between his “lived reality” and his deterministic philosophy? He does not even try. Instead he says “we need to pull off the trick of … living with a dual consciousness, cultivating the ability to view human beings simultaneously under two descriptions: as physical systems and as persons.”
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In other words, he explicitly recommends constructing a mental dichotomy, a two-story division:

Cultivating a “dual consciousness”

PERSONS

Free Agents

PHYSICAL SYSTEMS

Robots

Such compartmentalized thinking is what George Orwell famously called “doublethink,” and it functions here as a philosophical coping mechanism. When a worldview fails to account for all of reality, what do adherents do? Do they say, “I guess my theory has been falsified; I’d better toss it out”? Most people do not give up that easily. Instead they suppress the things that their worldview cannot explain, walling them off into a conceptual area separate from reality—an upper story of useful fictions. Wish fulfillment. Illusions.

A dual consciousness is a signal that contrary evidence from general revelation is being suppressed. As we saw in Principle #2,
every
nonbiblical worldview ends up with some form of “dual consciousness” or dualism. There will always be a contradiction between the realities it acknowledges (what fits in the box) and the realities it denies (what sticks out of the box). A conflict between what it professes and what it suppresses.

Losing Total Truth

The price of accepting such a sharp dichotomy, however, is the loss of a unified truth. Slingerland’s two views of the human person are logically contradictory. For if we really are robots operating by purely material causes, then freedom is impossible. There is no logically coherent, unified worldview that can encompass both these contradictory views of the human person.
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From time immemorial, people have held to the ideal of the unity of truth. The universe itself is an integrated, coordinated whole and therefore the truth
about
the universe must be an integrated, coherent whole. We may not be able to see yet how it all fits together. But we know that two contradictory statements cannot both be true.

Until roughly the 1930s, American higher education was based on what was explicitly called “the unity of Truth”—“the conviction that all truths agreed and ultimately could be related to one another in a single system,” writes Harvard historian Julie Reuben.
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Yet today even well-educated people have come to accept a contradictory, fragmented two-story view of truth. On one hand, they embrace a worldview that is radically reductionistic. On the other hand, they cannot deny the truths pressed on them by everyday experience—the truths of general revelation. So they have done what earlier generations would have found unthinkable: They have given up the ideal of the unity of truth.

A Leap of Doubt

The thinkers we have covered so far are surprisingly frank. They recognize the sharp contradiction between what they practice and what they profess. It is unusual, however, for people to be so clear-sighted. Many stop short of working out the full implications of their worldview. They simply live with a patchwork of conflicting ideas. An effective strategy in apologetics is to help people see more clearly where their worldview really leads. When they realize that idol-centered worldviews fail the practical test, that insight may open them to the case for a biblical worldview.

Consider Marvin Minsky of MIT. He is best known for his pithy phrase that the human brain is nothing but “a three-pound computer made of meat.” Obviously, computers do not have the power of choice; the implication is that neither do humans. Surprisingly, however, Minsky then asks, “Does that mean we must embrace the modern scientific view and put aside the ancient myth of voluntary choice? No. We
can’t
do that.”

Why not? Minsky goes on: “No matter that the physical world provides no room for freedom of will; that concept is essential to our models of the mental realm.” We cannot “ever give it up. We’re virtually forced to maintain that belief,
even though we know it’s false
.”
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False, that is, according to Minsky’s materialist worldview.

This is an amazing case of Orwellian doublethink. Minsky says people are “forced to maintain” the conviction of free will, even when their own worldview tells them that “it’s false.” Clearly, he is not referring to merely cultural customs or traditions that can differ from society to society. These are truths that humans can’t
not
know.

The inescapable fact that we are personal beings constitutes evidence that our origin is a personal Being. How does Minsky escape the force of that evidence? He reduces it to the status of a necessary falsehood. He moves it to the upper story:

“Ancient myths” that we are “forced to maintain”

NECESSARY FALSEHOODS

Freedom of Will

SCIENTIFIC VIEW

Computer Made of Meat

This is nothing less than a secular leap of faith. Materialists start by affirming the lower story as an account of what is real and true. But when the facts of experience fail to fit their worldview, they take a leap of faith to the upper story and embrace those facts in an ambiguous manner as false—yet necessary—beliefs.
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We must emphasize that this is a far cry from the biblical concept of faith. The Bible does
not
define faith as a leap to something that has no logical ground within its own worldview—a useful falsehood. When Paul writes, “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7), some Christians seem to think he is speaking metaphorically and means “by faith, not
reason
.” But Paul is speaking literally and he means sight. Non-material realities are invisible. They cannot be seen. Faith is “the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1
KJV
). It can take tremendous faith to act on the basis of realities we cannot see, but it is not a logical contradiction. Given the evidence, such actions can even be eminently reasonable, just as it is reasonable for physicists to count on the reality of forces and fields that they cannot see.

The secular project leads to the suicide of the intellect and the disintegration of the person. By contrast, the Christian worldview is amazingly positive, affirming both the unity of truth and the holistic commitment of the thinking person.

Atheism versus Civilization

In Romans 1, Paul warns that idols lead to destructive behavior, to moral and social breakdown. Amazingly, some secular thinkers recognize the truth of Paul’s warning.

Philosopher Saul Smilansky is a determinist who regards free agency as an illusion. Yet he considers it a “fortunate” illusion because it makes civilized life possible. He urges society’s elites to persuade people that they are responsible agents (though in reality they are not) in order to maintain a healthy sense of moral duty and responsibility. Otherwise they could excuse hostile behavior by saying they had no choice in the matter. Free will is a necessary fiction—“morally necessary”—to undergird the social order.

Smilansky summarizes by saying, “We
cannot live
adequately with … a complete awareness of the absence of free will.” Thus “we ought to hold on to those central but incoherent or contradictory beliefs in the free will case.”
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What are the telltale phrases that he is being challenged by general revelation? His admission that “we cannot live” on the basis of what his worldview teaches. That “we ought to hold on to” a contradictory belief in free will.

Of course, Smilansky’s materialistic worldview gives no basis for any moral “ought” because that word implies that humans are capable of making moral choices. A review of his book points out that he is advocating “a two-tiered” system: “There are those in the know (mostly philosophers and scientists) who realize the naturalistic truth about ourselves, and then there’s the rest of us—the vast majority who must be misled as to our real nature, lest we become demoralized.”
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When we hear people talk about ideas that are false, yet necessary for a humane social order, that is a signal that they have bumped up against the hard edge of a reality that does not fit their worldview. They have stumbled upon the truths of general revelation. And they are seeking to suppress those truths by demoting them to useful fictions. It’s remarkable how Paul’s description in Romans 1 of the dynamics of suppression makes sense of the latest modern worldviews.

Dawkins’s “Intolerable” Worldview

The best known of the New Atheists is Richard Dawkins. In his books, he argues that humans are merely “survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed” by their genes. Therefore it makes no sense to hold anyone responsible for what they do. After all, he says, “When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it. We track down the problem and fix it.” He urges an overhaul of the entire criminal justice system: “Isn’t the murderer or the rapist just a machine with a defective component?”

Dawkins likes to illustrate with an episode from the British comedy show
Fawlty Towers
. When Basil Fawlty’s little red car won’t start, first he scolds the car, like a parent with a disobedient child. Then he counts to three. Finally he picks up a tree branch and gives the car a good thrashing. “Of course we laugh,” Dawkins writes. But, “Why don’t we laugh at a judge who punishes a criminal? … Doesn’t a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility?”
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In Dawkins’s mind, a person has no more freedom than a little red car.

When a young man pressed him on the issue after a public lecture, however, Dawkins admitted that he does not practice what he preaches. He does not treat the very idea of responsibility as nonsense. He does hold people responsible for their actions: “I blame people, I give people credit.”

“But don’t you see that as an inconsistency in your views?” the young man asked. Dawkins replied, “I sort of do, yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with,
otherwise life would be intolerable
.”
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It was an astonishing admission that in practice no one can live by the naturalistic worldview that he himself promotes—that its consequences would be “intolerable.”

Einstein’s Dilemma

What we learn from these examples is that many prominent thinkers live a two-story or bipolar existence. In their professional work, they adopt a reductionistic philosophy that regards people as essentially little red cars. But when they leave their laboratories and go home for the day, they have to switch to a contrary paradigm in order to treat people justly and humanely—to avoid a life that is “intolerable.”

Even the great Albert Einstein was caught in the same dilemma. On one hand, he writes, “human beings in their thinking, feeling, and acting, are not free but are as causally bound as the stars in their motions.” Yet on the other hand, he said, “I am compelled to act
as if
free will existed because if I want to live in a civilized society I must act responsibly.”
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Einstein’s phrase “as if” is a giveaway that he is talking about an irrational leap of faith. The source of the phrase is the writings of Immanuel Kant. On one hand, Kant thought science led to the conclusion that humans are elements in a vast machine operating by the laws of physics. On the other hand, he said, to salvage morality, we must act
as if
we were free. And to ratify our moral standards, we must act
as if
God existed. And because morality makes no sense unless justice prevails in the end, we must act
as if
there were an afterlife. Otherwise, “all moral laws are to be considered as idle dreams.”

In Kant’s view, it is impossible to
know
whether these theological teachings are true. But to encourage moral behavior, he said we must live
as if
they were true. The phrase
as if
signals a concept that has been moved to the upper story.
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Living “as if” Christianity were true

WHAT WE ACCEPT “AS IF”

Freedom, God, Morality, Afterlife

WHAT WE KNOW

Materialism, Determinism

Ever since Kant, the phrase
as if
has come to signal truths that people are compelled to hold, even though they cannot account for those truths within their own worldview. They live
as if
Christianity were true, even though their worldview denies it. Instead of giving up their worldview in the face of contrary facts, they endure a severe mental schizophrenia.