The Seven Deadly Spins--Physicalism

 Christianity has an interesting history with the study of the physical world. The Scientific Revolution took place in Western Civilization in part because of significant Christian presuppositions, such as: 1) the physical world is real and not merely an illusion, so it’s worth our time to study it; 2) it was created by God, the supreme intelligence, so it must have an orderliness to it that can be discovered; 3) the physical world was created by God but is not itself divine, thus it would not be improper to run experiments on it; and 4) God entrusted the physical world to the care of humans, so we have a mandate to gain a better understanding of it.

 But with the rise of evolutionary theory, a number of people have come to view Christianity as an impediment to our understanding of the physical world. Christianity insists that non-physical things play an important role in the world—beings like God, angels, and demons and entities like human souls. Yet the sciences have seemingly enriched our lives with or without reference to any of these things. We seem to be able to heal the human body through physical remedies like medicine and surgery with or without the use of prayer; we seem to be ever-increasing our material comforts with or without considering the will of God. To some people, then, Christianity looks like an idea that might have given people the illusion of understanding in the past but is now no longer necessary for understanding all there is to the world.

 The viewpoint I’m describing has been called physicalism. It’s the idea that the physical world is really all that exists; thus, all we would need to understand it would be the physical sciences. But physicalism leaves us with a very impoverished understanding of our own lives and the world in which we live. In fact, physicalism can’t even explain everything you’re experiencing right now as you read this newspaper! Just consider the question, “Why are these markings on the page the way they are?” Physical details certainly provide part of the explanation—the properties of the ink and paper make the markings appear a certain way and not some other way. But why are these markings arranged the way they are? Why are they arranged into patterns you recognize as letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs? And why are they arranged into these particular paragraphs and not different paragraphs? It’s because they are conveying a particular idea from my mind to yours. But an idea is not a physical thing. It has no weight (does your head get heavier when you think of a bowling ball rather than a cotton ball?). It has no taste (what does the idea behind this sentence taste like?). You can’t see an idea with your eyeballs or hear it with your eardrums, yet ideas are clearly real.

 If we believe that the physical world is really all that exists, we thus lose the ability to explain huge swaths of life. We lose the ability to explain human behavior because we have to leave human souls out of it; thus, we can’t discuss the influence of beliefs, goals, or intentions on behavior (not to mention the influence of moral realities like sin and righteousness). Nor can we fully explain the physical world on this viewpoint. Many of our questions about physical things would have to end with the answer, “There is no reason for it—it just is the way it is.”

 Christianity gives us the resources to have a much richer and more complete understanding of the world and ourselves. It reminds us that there are physical and non-physical components to our lives and the world around us, so we should seek to understand both and how they interact. Doing so will help us understand our lives, the problems we encounter, and how they can potentially be resolved.

The Seven Deadly Spins--Scientism

 “That’s just your opinion!” This phrase has become the rhetorical trump card in our society today. If someone makes a claim you don’t like, rather than go to all the trouble of proving that their claim is false, you can instead label their claim as an opinion and thereby escape from any pressure to believe it. After all, opinions really are just beliefs that flow out of personal perspective or preference. I’m not obligated to hold your opinions and you’re not obligated to hold mine. If someone claims to know something, however, that’s a different ballgame. Knowledge is based on facts that anyone can sort through for themselves, so if you can show me that the facts of a matter are such and such, then I can’t dismiss your claim as mere opinion. I either have to agree with your claim or show that you’ve misunderstood the facts (I can also withhold judgment until I’ve had a chance to think it through, but I can’t reasonably say you’re wrong without showing why).

 Why do I mention all of this? To highlight that it makes a big difference where you draw the line between matters that can be known and matters that can only be opinion. In our society today, there’s a tendency to believe that the only matters that can be known are the matters studied by the physical sciences—geology, biology, astronomy, chemistry, physics, etc. This mindset essentially argues that if you can’t weigh it, dissect it, dissolve it, etc., then you can’t really know anything about it—you can only form opinions about it. This view has been called “scientism” because it claims the realm of knowledge entirely for the physical sciences and relegates everything else to the realm of opinion.

 Notice how scientism relegates a huge swath of human experience and inquiry to being nothing more than opinion. Claims about history? They can only be opinions according to scientism (unless perhaps some detail of the claim can be weighed or measured). Thoughts about what is morally good for humans? Mere opinions. Religious or political views? Nothing more than personal preferences (again, unless some detail of them can be quantified in some way). Thus, scientism leaves us knowing—well, not much of anything about life in general.

 Why should we reject scientism? The first and best reason is that it is self-defeating; it doesn’t pass the very test that it offers for truth. Consider its core claim: only the physical sciences can give us knowledge. That very claim is not the product of any science; it is a philosophical claim. To put it another way, no one has ever dissected a frog and found that claim lying in the pan when he was done! No one has ever mixed solutions in a test tube only to have that claim come spilling out as the product of a chemical reaction. The claim cannot be proven true by science, yet science is the only proving ground allowed by scientism. Thus, the claim that only science can give us knowledge cannot possibly be true.

 A second reason is that it leaves us ignorant of vitally important aspects of life. Consider the nature of love. We all have a good idea of what it looks like to treat someone with love rather than hatred. In other words, we all know something of the essence of love. But if scientism is true, we couldn’t truly know anything about the essence of love since love is not a thing that can be weighed on a scale, examined under a microscope, etc. If the cost of embracing scientism is giving up our knowledge of love, then the price is far too steep to pay.

 The physical sciences have provided an incredible boon to our knowledge of the world in general. We enjoy benefits every day from discoveries that have been made in these fields. Yet to say that they and they alone can give us knowledge of the world is not an advancement—it is a regression, one that, if embraced, leaves us quite ignorant of the world, of ourselves, and of our Creator and Savior.

The Seven Deadly Spins--Skepticism about Morality

 It’s often said in our culture today, “You shouldn’t push your morality on others.” If this statement was simply used to argue that we should use persuasion rather than threats of force when we discuss morality, no one should object to that. But more often, there’s an unspoken claim that lies behind this statement; a claim that sounds something like this: “You shouldn’t push your morality on others—because what’s right and what’s wrong is just a matter of personal opinion.” Increasingly, our culture asserts that morality is a realm in which there are no objective standards that apply to everyone. We are told that each person must decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong and to tell another person that he’s done wrong would just be, well, wrong! It seems that the only sin in our society today is to tell another person that he’s sinned.

 It's not hard to see that this claim is self-contradictory. If you believe morality is relative to each person’s opinions and you say, “You shouldn’t push your morality on others,” you are really saying, “It’s wrong to tell someone else that he’s wrong!” Yet that’s exactly what you are doing by making this claim. Since this claim contradicts itself, it should be no surprise that we quickly abandon it when someone does us wrong. If you were (God forbid!) mugged in a parking lot somewhere, you wouldn’t think to yourself, “How unlucky that I ran into someone who has a different opinion about mugging!” No—you would think that this person has done wrong and that your assessment is not simply a personal opinion. You would think that this person had violated a true standard that applies to both of you and that he should have known about this standard and followed it. What’s more, you would be convinced that this man had done you wrong even if mugging was legal—so your conviction isn’t based on whatever the law happens to say but on something else, something more fundamental in reality than even the laws of a society.

 You would be right, of course, yet the idea that morality is relative still persists in our culture like a stubborn stain that won’t come out in the wash. On a spiritual level, it’s not hard to see why this persistence exists: we are sinners and we don’t want anyone telling us we’re wrong—not even God! On an intellectual level, I think there are two main reasons why moral relativism persists. First, we seem to assume that if there are objective standards for morality, then moral decisions ought to be easy. It might seem that our moral choices should be crystal clear if certain actions are always right and other actions are always wrong—yet our moral choices are not always easy to figure out, so we may question whether objective moral standards exist. But we need to understand that there’s a difference between recognizing moral standards and applying them. It’s one thing to acknowledge that the standard “do not murder” applies to all people at all times; it’s another thing to sort out whether a certain instance of killing is murder or if it is something else—like justifiable self-defense. But we must recognize that a difficulty in applying a standard doesn’t prove that the standard is non-existent.

 A second reason why moral relativism persists is the connection between morality and politics. Many moral issues have become hot-button political topics today. As free citizens of a republic, we correctly object to the idea that the government would have the power to tell us what is right and wrong. Yet it’s easy to take this line of thinking too far and say that if the government doesn’t have the power to tell me what is right and wrong, no one else should either—it should be entirely up to me. Here we must simply recognize the vast difference between human authority and divine authority. A human government cannot define what is right and wrong because it is also supposed to be subject to the true standards of right and wrong. But divine authority is different. God has the authority to tell us what is right and wrong because He is our Creator. He knows how and why He made us, so He can tell us what is good for human nature and what is evil for it, and He can declare what would move us toward our true purpose and what would move us away from it. This connection is why many people have seen the moral order to offer a powerful argument for God’s existence—for if objective moral standards exist for humans, God is the only one who could be their source. So ultimately, if you want to deny that objective moral standards exist, you must deny that God exists. I hope you’ll agree with me that that price is far too steep to pay.

The Seven Deadly Spins--Skepticism about Truth

 It’s true—our society is pretty confused these days about truth and whether we can know it. Some speak of “your truth” and “my truth,” as though truth is no different than one’s personal opinion. Others are even more skeptical, declaring that there simply is no truth to be known—expect perhaps in a discipline like science.

 The roots of modern skepticism go back to Rene Descartes, a French mathematician and philosopher who lived from 1596 to 1650. Descartes wanted to have the same kind of certainty for all of his knowledge that he had for his knowledge about math (think of how certain you are that 2+2=4). As a thought experiment, he decided to temporarily doubt everything about which he could entertain a doubt. So he doubted the existence of God; he doubted what his senses told him about the world; he even doubted whether a world existed outside his mind at all! As he kept up this process of doubting, he realized that the one thing he could not doubt was that he was doubting! And if he was doubting, he was thinking; so he announced his famous but little-understood statement, “I think, therefore I am.” He believed that he could then carefully analyze his own thoughts to prove that God exists and that the world his senses told him about exists. Later philosophers would disagree with details of Descartes’ project, but many would adopt the idea that doubt should be the starting point of all investigation. In other words, it would be said that any claim to know truth should be doubted until it can be proven beyond any doubt.

 This mental posture of doubt about truth has wreaked havoc on our society today. For one thing, it has contributed to the nastiness and cynicism in our current political climate—for if politics is not the practice of discovering true principles for human well-being and using them to govern, then what is it? It would seem to be nothing more than the pursuit and use of power—one group seeking to impose its arbitrary will on everyone else. And indeed, that is exactly how many people view politics today! Gone are any reasonable and friendly discussions about policy in the pursuit of truth, because according to skepticism, there is simply no truth to be discovered in such discussions.

 And as a pastor, I certainly have to point out the terrible effects on Christian faith when skepticism reigns supreme. What would it mean to say “It is true that Jesus rose from the grave” if we cannot know anything about truth? It could mean nothing more than “It is meaningful (or inspiring or comforting) to me to believe that Jesus rose from the grave.” But as the Apostle Paul told us in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19, if Christ’s Resurrection is not a fact of history, then our faith is empty and pointless and we are still lost in our sins. “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

 We would do far better to reject skepticism and affirm what virtually all people in all times and places have known—that there is such a thing as truth, and we can know what is true. Indeed, it’s undeniable that we know truth, for if you say “We cannot know truth,” what you’re actually claiming is: “Here’s one thing we know about truth—that we cannot know truth.” Skepticism is therefore self-defeating and cannot possibly be…true. Ironic, isn’t it? So if we really can know truth, then we have a foundation upon which to build truth claims. We can begin to show that it is true that God exists, that Jesus is the Son of God, that He died for our sins and rose from the grave, and that the Bible is the Word of God. Rest assured that we really can know truth—no doubt about it!

The Seven Deadly Spins--Nominalism

Trying to understand our culture today is a lot like showing up late to a movie—important things happened before you arrived, but since you’re not aware of them, you’re struggling to understand what’s unfolding before you right now. So it is in our present time. Many people are looking at the ideas being embraced in our culture and are asking, “How can my neighbor (or friend or family member) believe THAT!?”

Spiritually, we know that the root of all problems and false ideas in our society is sin. The human race is in rebellion against God; we don’t want to accept things the way He created them. Sin is the problem causing trouble in all societies and yet, societies manifest this struggle with sin in different ways. Differences in the intellectual soil of societies produce different false ideas and thus different problems.

In my next few articles, I’d like to dig down into the intellectual soil of our society to uncover the factors producing false ideas around us today. I hope this project won’t seem out of place—my colleagues who also write in this column do a good job of taking us to the Scriptures, so I’m confident that contribution will continue. Perhaps my short project will simply provide some helpful context for understanding our society today and how to navigate through it in a faithfully Christian manner. I’m calling my little project “The Seven Deadly Spins” in order to refer to spins—or distortions—of what is true.

The idea I’ll mention today is called nominalism. It is the claim that an idea like “human nature” or “humanity” does not come into our minds from the world around us; rather, that idea is just a title or category that we assign to a group of similar but ultimately separate things. For example, when you go downtown to the café, you don’t shake hands with “human nature”—you shake hands with Bob, Steve, Debbie, and Sue. Yet from ancient times, philosophers argued that there was something real that connected Bob, Steve, Debbie, and Sue—something they all shared in common that we could call human nature. These philosophers argued further that this shared thing was not just an invention of our minds, it was something our minds discovered about the real world, and this shared thing was just as real as anything we can see, touch, taste, smell, or hear. Beginning in the Middle Ages however, it started to become more fashionable among philosophers to deny that something like “human nature” existed as anything more than just an idea that our minds created to categorize things around us.

That far-too-brief description is surely still a bit confusing to you, but the significance of nominalism is this—if an idea like human nature is just the product of human minds, then human minds control it. We would get to decide what the boundaries of human nature are and who fits inside those boundaries. Perhaps you can see where this could lead. Combined with another idea or two, nominalism becomes the root of racism—the claim that we can declare other people to be “sub-human” simply because of where we choose to draw the boundaries of humanity. In a similar way, nominalism becomes the root of denying personhood to a baby in the womb—because again, if nominalism is true, human minds become the arbiter of who does and who does not count as a person.

In contrast to nominalism, Christians ought to affirm that a thing like human nature is a real, true, objective feature of the universe. It’s not something we made up and thus it’s not something we control. My shared humanity with another person is a fact imposed upon both of us—I don’t get to decide if humanity applies to him any more than I get to decide if the laws of physics apply to him! And what could make reality be this way? Only our Creator God who conceived of humanity in His mind in the first place.