(Originally Written August 15, 2009 in the Journal)
Kingdom Triangle
JP Moreland
Zondervan Publishing, 2007
Religion cannot be a hobby.
Moreland pushes for Christians to have a deeper understanding of Christianity so that we can speak of it intelligently.
A secular worldview is thin, lacking the framework to make sense of value. An ethical monotheistic worldview is thick. In ethical monotheistic views the value of human beings is intrinsic. When we hear of "people of the week" in naturalistic settings they are borrowing from a thick worldview to comprehend it. They have to abandon their worldview to understand what they are showing.
Scientific Naturalism:
1. A theory of limited knowledge
2. A creation story based on the atomic theory of matter and evolutionary biology.
3. A physical view of reality, all that exists is physical or depends upon physical existence.
These three work together. A limited theory of knowledge justifies a creation story based on the atomic theory of matter and biology. And, the biology creation story justifies the physical view of reality.
What is real in a naturalist worldview depends on three things.
1. It is knowable in their theory of knowledge.
2. Its origin can be accounted for in evolution
3. It can be described by the language of chemistry and physics
Two forms of scienticism:
Strong - scientific knowledge exhausts what can be known
Weak - other knowledge can be had (i.e. ethics) but scientific knowledge is vastly superior
This is self-defeating as the definition does not meet its own standards
The natural view of reality is reductionism. It reduces things to identify with it and eliminates what it cannot reduce.
Physicalism (the reduction of everything to physical) however fails to account for what the world is as it is now, consider consciousness, secondary qualities, normative properties and the entire evolutionary framework (the Big Bang and natural laws are taken as brute fact).
Naturalism is doubly determined, the state of the universe is fixed by laws and the actions of things are set by their atomic and subatomic parts.
Life loses all meaning in this view of reality.
To explain the meaning of life a naturalist approaches it in three flawed ways:
1. Superficially: life is meaningless
2. Circular: the meaning of life is to find the meaning of life
3. Repugnant: hedonistic, life is meaningful so long as it is enjoyed
Six keys to a rich, objective meaning of life:
1. Free Will to ground responsibility, creativity, praise and blame
-William Provine stated, "Free will as traditionally conceived... simply does not exist. There is no way the evolutionary process as correctly conceived can produce a being that is truly free to make choices." Many times naturalism employs utilitarian justification in ethics that can lead to horrific moral implications.
2. Real intrinsic value that can be known and factored into our lives.
-In order for objective meaning to exist value must have three things true of it: There are things that are intrinsically good, things that must be ends of themselves. Two, human beings must be capable of knowing what is intrinsically valuable and what is not. Three, human beings, their products, actions and relationships must be intrinsically valuable. The naturalist view denies, necessarily, any intrinsic value. But they call morals and ethics either subjective or another simple evolutionary event.
3. The ability to acknowledge the reality of evil, provide an explanation of its origin and offer hope that it is ultimately redeemed and defeated.
-Naturalism fails to explain the reality of evil and is hopeless in offering hope in the midst of it.
4. Human beings must have equally intrinsic value simply as such.
5. There must be teleology and purpose in the cosmos relevant to human life.
-The Aristotelian notion of final cause is obsolete in naturalism. Living without teleology is utterly existentially repugnant. Nothing makes sense without teleology. Language itself implies teleology.
6. There must be a satisfying answer to the question, "Why should I be moral?"
