{"id":487,"date":"2023-08-01T22:01:03","date_gmt":"2023-08-02T02:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/?p=487"},"modified":"2023-08-01T22:01:03","modified_gmt":"2023-08-02T02:01:03","slug":"the-enlightenment-is-dead-chapter-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/08\/01\/the-enlightenment-is-dead-chapter-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Enlightenment is Dead: Chapter 2\u00a0\u00a0– Killing God and Killing Knowledge:\u00a0 Descartes to Nietzsche"},"content":{"rendered":"

Descartes and the Beginning of Secularism<\/em><\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9 Descartes (1596-1650) can be given a great deal of the credit for initiating modern philosophy and modern atheism.\u00a0 His philosophy marks, as those who endorse this philosophical change call it, the transition from the Age of Faith, or Age of Authority, to the Age of Reason.\u00a0 Descartes wrote during the Protestant Reformation, when there was a crisis of religious authority prompted by the rejection of the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and its scholastic philosophy that merged Aristotelianism\u00a0with Christianity.\u00a0 Although Descartes was a Roman Catholic, like many in the Protestant Reformation, he sought to overthrow the intellectual dominance of Aristotelianism.\u00a0 Like the Protestant scientists, he insisted that the material world could be described mathematically.\u00a0 But his approach did more to encourage a search for a purely secular foundation for knowledge than promoting a Christianity free from Aristotelianism.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rather than really being a move from faith to reason, the transition in thinking is better characterized as one from the autonomous authority of God\u2019s rationality to the autonomous authority of Man\u2019s rationality.\u00a0\u00a0 As I will defend more fully below, science had its origin in the Middle Ages, a product of the belief in the rationality of the Creator.\u00a0 Yet beginning with Descartes, philosophers sought to justify scientific knowledge on more and more consistently secular grounds.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Even though Descartes\u2019 philosophy included an argument for the existence of God[1]<\/a> and he was as a devout Roman Catholic, instead of assuming the Christian view that the mind of man is corrupted by sin and God\u2019s revelation in the Bible provides certain knowledge, Descartes found the greatest certainty for knowledge in the mind of man, basing his system on the certainty of cogito ergo sum<\/em>, which is Latin means, \u201cI think [or \u201cI am conscious\u201d], therefore I am.\u201d\u00a0 Every other idea not deducible from that idea involved skepticism.\u00a0 This led to a sharp mind\/body dualism because, in contrast to the \u201cclear and distinct\u201d idea of the cogito<\/em>, he held that our sensation of the material world is highly error-prone.\u00a0 As a brilliant mathematician and father of analytic geometry, he thought that the mathematical way of thinking could solve the deepest philosophical problems.\u00a0 Thus, just as his mathematical thinking involved abstract objects of geometry like perfect squares and circles, he began his philosophical thinking with clear and distinct ideas.\u00a0\u00a0 Even though many philosophers of our current age curse Descartes for his sharp mind\/body dualism that led them down a dead-end of trying to find epistemic certainty in human thinking,[2]<\/sup><\/a> they at least owe him gratitude for putting the focus of modern intellectual life on man rather than God and initiating the secular trend of being skeptical\u00a0of everything except the human intellect.<\/p>\n

Descartes\u2019 sharp mind\/body dualism led him to a mechanistic view of nature.\u00a0 But beyond the mechanism endorsed by other Christians in this era, Descartes held that God establishing laws of nature and putting matter into motion was enough to account for all the structures of the natural world, even if it began from a \u201cprimeval chaos.\u201d[3]<\/a>\u00a0 Descartes\u2019 contemporary Blaise Pascal\u00a0complained:\u00a0 \u201cI cannot forgive Descartes; in all his philosophy, Descartes did his best to dispense with God.\u00a0 But Descartes could not avoid prodding God to set the world in motion with a snap of his lordly fingers; after that, he had no more use for God.\u201d[4]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Although Descartes held that God continually sustains creation, Pascal recognized the deistic direction of Descartes\u2019 philosophy.[5]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s a view that would be compatible with Darwinian evolution.\u00a0\u00a0 Robert Boyle basically classified Descartes as an atheist like Epicurus for failing to recognize that God must be the source of the structures of living bodies:<\/p>\n

I do not at all believe, that either these Cartesian laws of Motion<\/em>, or the Epicurian casual concourse<\/em> of Atoms could bring meer Matter into so orderly and well contriv\u2019d a Fabrick as this World. . . .\u00a0 I think it utterly improbable that brute and unguided<\/em>, though moving<\/em>, Matter should ever convene into such admirable structures, as the bodies of perfect Animals.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

As I\u2019ll discuss below, Boyle and the other English Protestant empiricists believed in a mechanistic view of nature, but one where God\u2019s direct design was necessary to account for complicated mechanisms like the bodies of living creatures.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Spinoza Reducing Rationalism to Absurdity<\/em><\/p>\n

The Dutch Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza\u00a0(1632-1677) brought Descartes\u2019 rationalism to its absurd conclusion, developing Descartes\u2019 mathematical\u00a0and geometric reasoning so that it absorbed all reality, including the empirical.\u00a0 He claimed that human actions can be explained by mathematics and geometry like anything else in nature:\u00a0 \u201cI shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids.\u201d[7]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 Spinoza reduced everything in reality, including God, to one thing, \u201csubstance,\u201d that he also referred to as \u201cGod or nature.\u201d[8]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 Substance is his one true idea that is clear and distinct and can serve as a foundation of a deductive system, able to guide the human mind to all other true ideas.[9]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Substance is infinite, indivisible and timeless \u2013 without past, present or future.[10]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Thought and extension (physical reality) are modes of the one timeless thing, substance:\u00a0 \u201cThe order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.\u201d[11]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 By this he attempts to solve Descartes\u2019 mind\/body dualism by saying that they are the same thing.<\/p>\n

Spinoza held that to view an object under the category of eternity is to strip away its form, even Platonic\u00a0universals, so that it becomes an unrecognizable, timeless abstraction.\u00a0\u00a0 How can Spinoza account for the changing world of experience on the basis of a timeless substance?\u00a0 How can a product of the changeless and timeless be changeable and perishable?\u00a0 Although trying to be more consistently rational than Descartes, Spinoza\u00a0is forced to make a distinction like Descartes\u2019\u00a0between our knowledge of perishable, material objects and our knowledge of the eternal substance.\u00a0 Knowledge of perishable objects is treated as \u201cinadequate knowledge\u201d that is \u201cfragmentary and confused,\u201d[12]<\/sup><\/a> unlike knowledge of substance, which is clear and distinct.\u00a0 The problem with this and other philosophies known by the term \u201crationalism\u201d is that to view everything as a product of a timeless abstraction entails reducing the changing world of experience to a shadow of the timeless, or an illusion.\u00a0 Yet, not even the production of a changing<\/em> shadow or illusion from an ultimate timeless, indivisible<\/em> abstraction makes sense.\u00a0 It should go without saying that this undermines the possibility of science, which depends on our ability to discover new facts about the world without destroying the reality of change in the world.[13]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 I\u2019ll address this again under a discussion of Greek philosophy below.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Francis Bacon and the English Empiricists<\/em><\/p>\n

Rather than follow Descartes like many philosophers on the European continent, the British mainly looked to their own Francis Bacon (1561-1626), for their view of knowledge and science; and he was a proponent of empiricism. \u00a0In opposition to Aristotelians who dominated the universities in his day and spent their time refining conceptual distinctions in Aristotle\u2019s philosophy, Bacon wanted universities dedicated to collaborative, intense empirical research so as to produce useful inventions for the betterment of mankind.\u00a0 His writings inspired the formation of the world\u2019s first national scientific institution, the Royal Society of London, in 1660.[14]<\/a><\/p>\n

Some twentieth century philosophers like Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper have faulted Bacon for advocating the collection of empirical data without the direction of hypotheses, but that is not what Bacon taught.[15]<\/a>\u00a0 He describes the proper method of science as a combination of empirical data collection with the refinement of logical thinking:<\/p>\n

Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay it up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested. Therefore from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never yet been made), much may be hoped.[16]<\/a><\/p>\n

Bacon was the son of Puritans, his theology was basically Calvinistic, and a literal reading of the Bible\u00a0had a strong influence on why he thought that scientific investigation was commendable and possible, as I will discuss further in chapter 6.\u00a0 Historian of science Charles Webster\u00a0writes that \u201cBacon became the most important philosophical and scientific authority of the Puritan Revolution.\u201d[17]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Baconian empiricism\u00a0was based on the biblical principles that Adam and Eve fell from their dominion over nature when they rebelled against God, but that dominion was being restored in Bacon\u2019s day in fulfillment of biblical prophecies.[18]<\/a>\u00a0 Bacon taught that the motivation of science should be the Christian moral imperative of charity, relieving the suffering of humanity and even in some degree restoring the prosperity of the Garden of Eden.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, some have claimed that Bacon promoted a materialistic rather than theistic view of science.\u00a0 Bacon insisted that scientists investigate material causes without speculating about purposes in nature, such as investigating the material causes of clouds, rather than saying the purpose of clouds is to water the earth, and even discouraging scientists from saying that the purpose of eyelashes is to protect the eye.\u00a0 He acknowledged that purpose is a legitimate source of inquiry and may be intended by God, but he did not want scientists to be distracted by such speculations from pursuing their work of discovering material causes.[19]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 This was in response to Aristotelian talk about final causes to the neglect of discovering material causes. \u00a0Bacon\u2019s distinction was exploited by later secular thinkers beyond what he intended by making an absolute distinction between science (finding physical causes) and religion (finding purpose).<\/p>\n

In the next generation, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, and others continued the defense of rigorous empiricism in science.\u00a0 They based their empiricism on the assumption of God\u2019s sovereignty over His creation.\u00a0 Because God is free to impose any laws on His creation that he desires, careful observation is required to discover those laws.\u00a0 The laws of nature are not a priori<\/em>, rationally necessary principles that a philosopher can deduce while just sitting in his armchair.\u00a0 As Roger Cotes, a mathematician who wocked with Isaac Newton, wrote in the Preface to the second edition of Newton\u2019s Principia<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Without all doubt this world, so diversified with that variety of forms and motions we find in it, could arise from nothing but the perfectly free will of God directing and presiding over all.\u00a0 From this fountain it is that those laws, which we call the laws of Nature, have flowed, in which there appear many traces indeed of the most wise contrivances, but not the least shadow of necessity.\u00a0 These therefore we must not seek from uncertain conjectures, but learn them from observations and experiments.[20]<\/a><\/p>\n

The marriage between Aristotle and Christianity, most authoritatively defended by Thomas Aquinas, had always been one of deep conflict.\u00a0 Aristotle held to a chain of being: eternal matter on the verge of non-being at the bottom of the chain, and an empty unity in the pure being of the Unmoved Mover on the top of the chain, and a gradation of being between the two, which is the world that we experience.\u00a0 In contrast, Christianity teaches that matter is not eternal, only God is, and His being is distinct from His creation.\u00a0 The Creator is a living, active God, one who plans every detail of the world, creates the world, and directs the course of the world according to His plan.\u00a0 His plan includes every hair on your head and every sparrow (Luke 12:6-7), \u201chaving been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will\u201d (Eph. 1:11).\u00a0 He is not an empty, static unity like the Unmoved Mover. \u00a0The Unmoved Mover does not know the world and is not the efficient cause of the world; rather, motion originates from the material world<\/em> as result of lower forms desiring the Unmoved Mover.\u00a0 The Unmoved Mover \u201cmoves\u201d the world like a flower \u201cmoves\u201d a bee, in unconscious passivity. \u00a0\u00a0The world makes itself, following the model of the Unmoved Mover. The static, empty Unmoved Mover could not create the universe, could not perform miracles, could not become incarnate as a human, could not hear or answer prayers, and could not reveal knowledge to prophets.[21]<\/a><\/p>\n

The English philosopher-scientists of the Scientific Revolution decisively broke with Aristotle in favor of the Reformation\u2019s view of God\u2019s sovereignty and worked out the implications of that for science.\u00a0 Their understanding of the world was epoch-changing, driving the change from the Middle Ages to Modernity.<\/p>\n

Their rejection of Aristotle and their embrace of the English Reformation\u2019s view of the sovereignty of God led the philosopher-scientists of this era (\u201cnatural philosophers\u201d) to revive ancient atomism, but with modifications to conform to their Christian beliefs (e.g., rejecting the animism of Epicurean atomism).\u00a0 Having rejected the matter\/form scheme of Aristotle, they did not regard matter as the formless, potentially intelligible part of nature.\u00a0 Rather, matter is considered a fully rational building block of the universe that can be precisely measured.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Their conviction that a rational God is in control of the smallest details of His creation motivated them to break down matter into the smallest units possible to understand matter\u2019s structure. \u00a0Rejecting Aristotle\u2019s gradation of being and his view of four earthly elements and the fifth element of ether for heavenly bodies, they regarded all things, terrestrial and celestial, as composed of the same basic matter.\u00a0 Atomism was in keeping with their new, egalitarian view of matter.<\/p>\n

Rejecting the idea of internal principles of motion as held by the Scholastics (following Aristotle) and of intelligent spirits within matter that produce motion as held by the Hermetics, Protestant scientists of Scientific Revolution viewed motion as arising from universal law imposed by God on all matter.\u00a0 Klaaren writes, \u201cIndeed, the shift from immanent to imposed laws of nature was part of the general transition in seventeenth-century thought from an organic to a later, strictly mechanical outlook.\u201d[22]<\/a><\/p>\n

Bacon, Boyle, and Newton fought for empirical, mechanistic science when its victory was not yet assured over its Scholastic and Hermetic opponents, basing their views on the presupposition of a sovereign God who created the world as He freely decreed it.\u00a0 They are not the empiricist philosophers usually studied in philosophy classes, but they are the ones that made the Scientific Revolution and the modern world a reality.\u00a0 Christian theology contributed to the origin of modern science movement in many other ways that I\u2019ll describe in in Chapter 6.<\/p>\n

Newton is often associated with deism, but he believed in a God who is active in His creation and who has revealed His plans for history in the Bible.\u00a0 The generation following Newton is when those calling themselves Newtonians began embracing deism.[23]<\/a>\u00a0 As time went on, many others referred to themselves as Newtonians or Baconians because of their commitment to empiricism in science, but their views of God were often diminished from the view that God is sovereign over His creation, as held by Bacon and Newton.\u00a0 Eventually many of those calling themselves Newtonians and Baconians rejected the existence of God altogether.\u00a0 When the basis for Bacon\u2019s and Newton\u2019s empiricism was rejected, attempts were made to justify empiricism on other grounds, but these were failures, as I\u2019ll explain the remainder of this chapter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Philosophers Reducing Empiricism to Absurdity<\/em><\/p>\n

The major proponents of empiricism that are usually studied in philosophy classes are, in historical order, John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.\u00a0 Philosophers usually see the historical order as a progression toward the reduction to absurdity of empiricism.\u00a0 John Locke (1632-1704) was the son of Puritans and was a professing Christian throughout his life, although he had some unorthodox theological views.\u00a0 Instead of basing his philosophy of knowledge forthrightly on God as sovereign Creator like the previously discussed philosopher-scientists, he started with human experience \u2013 sensations creating ideas on the blank slate of the human mind \u2013 as the basis for all human knowledge.\u00a0 Like Descartes\u2019 philosophy, God becomes included in the theory of knowledge later on to add some collateral support rather than being central to the origin and explanation of human knowledge.\u00a0 French Lockeans in the eighteenth century such as Diderot\u00a0and Helv\u00e9tius\u00a0were materialists who influenced the views of many scientists and later atheist thinkers such as Karl Marx.<\/p>\n

Bishop George Berkeley\u00a0(1685-1753) held the bizarre position of \u201cimmaterialism,\u201d that there is no material world.\u00a0 He believed that the assumption of a material world as the source behind our sense experience is unwarranted.\u00a0 Rather, our experiences of the world are ideas given to us directly by God.\u00a0 (Think of The Matrix<\/em> where a computer program creates a virtual reality for people connected to it.)\u00a0 A tree continues to exist when no human is perceiving it because God is perceiving it.\u00a0 However, since ideas only exist in minds, the tree would only be an idea in God\u2019s mind, which undermines the Biblical teaching of God creating a world that is distinct from Himself.\u00a0 Empiricism\u00a0became separated from the material world that it was supposed to be intimately tied to.\u00a0 Berkeley pointed out that Locke had no basis for his distinction between primary and secondary qualities, with primary qualities existing in matter and secondary qualities existing only in the mind, based on a purely empiricist view of knowledge.\u00a0 Primary qualities, such as extension, shape, and motion, are not fixed sensations but change according to the observer\u2019s point of view.[24]<\/a><\/p>\n

If one assumes that God has created a material world that exists independently from the human mind, then it makes sense to talk about a distinction between primary and secondary qualities of matter, a distinction between how objects exist independently of the human mind, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the effects that sensation of objects has on the human mind that go beyond the objects themselves, such as color, taste, smell, and sound.\u00a0 But if sensation is made the basis for all knowledge, then such a distinction collapses.\u00a0 There is nothing beyond sensation.\u00a0 For Galileo, Descartes, Locke, and the English scientists of the Reformation, the real world is the world of primary qualities, the mathematically describable world.\u00a0 But, as Berkeley points out, for a pure empiricist, the real world is the world as it is given in sensation, and so-called primary qualities are mere abstractions from the real world.<\/p>\n

David Hume (1711-1776) dropped God completely from his theory of knowledge.\u00a0 But he failed at rescuing empiricism from Berkeley\u2019s claim of sensation being disconnected from the material world.\u00a0 Instead of restoring the standard scientific view of a hard, material world governed by natural law, Hume reduced the world to a parade of disconnected sense impressions in the theater of the mind.\u00a0 His atheistic formulation of empiricism brought British empiricism to the completely irrational conclusion that knowledge of the world and of ourselves is not possible.\u00a0 When empiricism was transformed from the view of Bacon and the Christians who were early members of the Royal Society, as a tool given to man by his Creator so that man could carry out his purpose of governing the earth, into Hume\u2019s view of empiricism as a self-sufficient source of human knowledge, it completely self-destructed.\u00a0 Humean empiricism is an atheistic degeneration of the Christian empiricism that fueled the Scientific Revolution.<\/p>\n

Hume\u00a0is known by most skeptics of Christianity as the great intellectual that refuted arguments for miracles and the design argument for the existence of God through his strict adherence to empiricism.\u00a0 He is less well-known for his arguments that show the bankruptcy of naturalistic empiricism. The history of philosophy since Hume is largely a record of failed attempts to save a secular view of science from Hume\u2019s reductio ad absurdum<\/em> of it. Hume demonstrated the inability of experience alone to give us knowledge of cause and effect relationships between material objects, knowledge of natural law or regularity, or any knowledge of the world at all.[25]<\/sup><\/a> \u00a0The Hume who is highly admired among modern academics and other skeptics is the Hume who teaches that the unbreakable uniformity of material cause and effect keeps God, miracles, revelations, and the like out of their lives and out of the universe.\u00a0 Few of them are aware of the Hume who discovered that naturalistic empiricism provided no basis for a law of cause and effect.\u00a0 His conclusion about the possibility of knowledge through the senses completely undermines his argument against miracles based on the alleged absolutely unbreakable uniformity\u00a0of natural law.\u00a0 The famed atheist philosopher turned deist, Anthony Flew, recognizes this in his 2007 book, There is a God<\/em>.\u00a0 He corrects his view of Hume that he expressed in his critically acclaimed book published in 1961:<\/p>\n

Despite these commendations, I have long wanted to make major corrections to my book Hume\u2019s Philosophy of Belief<\/em>. . . .\u00a0 [I]n \u2018Of Liberty and Necessity\u2019 and \u2018Of Miracles,\u2019 Hume himself was hankering after (even when he was not actually employing) notions of causes bringing about effects that were stronger than any that he was prepared to admit as legitimate.\u00a0 Hume denied causation in the first Inquiry<\/em> and claimed that all the external world really contains is constant conjunctions; that is, events of this sort are regularly followed by events of that sort.\u00a0 We notice these constant conjunctions and form strong habits associating the ideas of this with the ideas of that.\u00a0 We see water boiling when it is heated and associate the two.\u00a0 In thinking of real connections out there, however, we mistakenly project our own internal psychological associations.\u00a0 Hume\u2019s skepticism about cause and effect and his agnosticism about the external world are of course jettisoned the moment he leaves his study. . .\u00a0 .\u00a0 There is, for instance, no trace of the thesis that causal connections and necessities are nothing but false projections onto nature in the notorious section \u2018Of Miracles\u2019 in the first Inquiry<\/em>.\u00a0 Again in his History of England<\/em> Hume gave no hint of skepticism about either the external world or causation.\u00a0 In this Hume may remind us of those of our own contemporaries who upon some sociological or philosophical grounds deny the possibility of objective knowledge.\u00a0 They then exempt from these corrosions of universal subjectivity their own political tirades, their own rather less than abundant research work, and above all their own prime revelation that there can be no objective knowledge.[26]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Hume\u00a0saw that with sense impressions as the ultimate basis of all knowledge, there is no unity to the world.\u00a0 Knowledge of your own existence, your memories, the tree you see through the window, the apparent repetition of events that lead you to assume a law of cause and effect relationships in the material world \u2013 they are all illusions, reflecting nothing more lasting than any particular sensation that you experience.\u00a0 Applied consistently, this view destroys science \u2013 and civilization.\u00a0 Hume noted that, based purely on experience, nothing can be said to exist but the discrete moment.\u00a0\u00a0That there are cause-and-effect relationships between various perceptions cannot be known from experience.\u00a0\u00a0Any\u00a0necessity<\/em>\u00a0that might connect various perceptions is not itself a perception.\u00a0\u00a0Abstract concepts like law, logic,\u00a0and identity are applied by the human mind to perceptions, but they themselves are not perceptions.\u00a0They all involve continuity over time, but bare experience gives us nothing but the discrete moment.\u00a0 Therefore, on a theory of knowledge completely based on experience, we can\u2019t know anything about law, logic, and identity.\u00a0\u00a0Since we have no experience of the future, experience itself provides no basis for believing that the future will be anything like the past.\u00a0\u00a0Hume says that when \u201cwe form any conclusion beyond those past instances, of which we have had experience,\u201d our reasoning has \u201cno just foundation.\u201d[27]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Hume resorted to custom and habit as explanations for our belief in the regularity of nature, but custom and habit themselves presuppose continuity over time and cause-and-effect relationships (a constant conjunction of perceptions causes beliefs about necessary connections), and discrete experience can provide no basis for continuity over time and causality.<\/p>\n

Aside from Hume\u2019s problem of explaining a rational basis for causality, his view of unbreakable causality is problematic for science as well.\u00a0 Based on the view of causality that Hume uses against miracles, we should disbelieve our senses at times.\u00a0 If we have seen nothing but white swans, but then see a black swan, our uniform experience should lead to us discount our observation of a black swan.\u00a0 Also on this strong view of causation, laws of nature should never be revised.\u00a0 Newtonian physics should never have been questioned when physicists found evidence for quantum mechanics or relativity.[28]<\/a>\u00a0 On the other hand, if we follow Hume\u2019s realization that bare experience gives us no basis for saying that the future will be like the past since we have no experience of the future, then our constant experience of a person dying and then staying dead provides no basis for saying that another death won\u2019t be followed by a resurrection.[29]<\/a><\/p>\n

Hume\u2019s appeal to custom and habit as the basis for belief in causation when he realized that his naturalistic empiricism failed to justify the belief involved some arrogance and historical ignorance on his part.\u00a0 Contrary to his arrogant assumption, Hume\u2019s naturalistic empiricism is not the only philosophical candidate for justifying belief in causality.\u00a0 While people in every civilization believe in causation to some extent in order to function in life, and custom and habit play a part in that, it was the Christian belief in the rationality of God that served as the historical basis in Western Civilization for the scientific faith in causality.\u00a0 Non-Christian cultures did not adopt a strong belief in causality apart from Christian influence, as I discuss further in another chapter.[30]<\/a><\/p>\n

Descartes\u00a0thought that he found an unquestionable truth when he said that \u201cI think, therefore I am.\u201d\u00a0 But Hume found a way to doubt that, because knowledge of the self, the \u201cI,\u201d is undermined by strict empiricism.\u00a0 The self is assumed to persist through great lengths of time, but there is no one perception that lasts as long as the self allegedly does.\u00a0 Hume recognized the implication that, when a person sleeps, he \u201cmay truly be said not to exist.\u201d[31]<\/sup><\/a> \u00a0Even while awake, each change in perception of yourself must be regarded as a completely new self.\u00a0 As a consequence, not only does naturalistic empiricism\u00a0undermine knowledge of the future, it undermines knowledge of the past. \u00a0Knowledge of the past depends on the continuity of memory and personal identity. \u00a0But since the discrete moments of sense experience do not provide a basis for continuity over time, knowledge of the past, including one\u2019s own past existence, is inconsistent with the claim that all knowledge is through sense experience.\u00a0 Hume\u2019s atheism reduces to absurdity. \u00a0On the basis of it, we can have knowledge of neither the external world nor our inner selves, neither the past nor the future.\u00a0 If Hume\u2019s worldview is true, then you don\u2019t exist, I don\u2019t exist, nobody exists.\u00a0 Hume\u2019s view of knowledge does not allow for laws of nature, confirmation of theories by predicting future events, or repeatability of experiments. \u00a0Although Hume\u2019s empiricism is the standard theory of knowledge held by modern atheists, it provides no basis for human rationality, science, or the advancement of civilization.<\/p>\n

The effect of Hume\u2019s philosophy on himself was despair, ignorance, and \u201cthe deepest darkness,\u201d not intellectual enlightenment. Hume lamented that the \u201ccold, and strain\u2019d, and ridiculous\u201d conclusions of his philosophical reasoning gave him \u201cphilosophical melancholy and delirium,\u201d tempting him \u201cto throw all my books and papers into the fire, and resolve never more to renounce the pleasures of life for the sake of reasoning and philosophy.\u201d[32]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 To quote Bertrand Russell\u00a0again, in terms of modern atheist philosophy of knowledge, which largely follows Hume, humans cannot know anything whatsoever:<\/p>\n

That scientific inference requires, for its validity, principles which experience cannot even render probable is, I believe, an inescapable conclusion from the logic of probability. . . .\u00a0\u00a0To ask, therefore, whether we \u201cknow\u201d the postulates of scientific inference is not so definite as it seems. . . .\u00a0\u00a0In the sense in which \u201cno\u201d is the right answer we know nothing whatsoever, and \u201cknowledge\u201d in this sense is a delusive vision.\u00a0\u00a0The perplexities of philosophers are due, in a large measure, to their unwillingness to awaken from this blissful dream.[33]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Furthermore, Hume recognized that it does no good to claim that\u00a0nature is \u201cprobably\u201d orderly because that claim begs the question; probability itself assumes order.[34]<\/a>\u00a0 We can calculate the probability that a certain number will be rolled with dice only because we do not live in a world of chaos, in which dots might appear, disappear, or become unicorns rather than dots with each roll.<\/p>\n

While modern intellectual secularists see Hume as their hero, decisively refuting Christianity with brutally consistent logic and an unshakable adherence to scientific empiricism, the truth is that Hume\u2019s destruction of naturalistic empiricism displayed the irrational implications of secularism.\u00a0 Subsequent philosophy has largely been footnotes to Hume, a series of failed attempts to overcome Hume\u2019s destruction of the secular justification of scientific knowledge (and ethics, as I\u2019ll discuss in the second section of this book).\u00a0 Bertrand Russell acknowledges this:\u00a0 \u201cHume\u2019s philosophy, whether true or false, represents the bankruptcy of eighteenth century reasonableness. . . .\u00a0 The growth of unreason throughout the nineteenth century and what has passed of the twentieth is a natural sequel to Hume\u2019s destruction of empiricism.\u201d[35]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kant\u2019s Failed Attempt to Save Science from Hume\u2019s Failure<\/em><\/p>\n

Immanuel Kant\u00a0(1724-1804) realized that Hume had demonstrated that strict empiricism\u00a0failed to allow for knowledge and science, and he saw the need to \u201csave science\u201d[36]<\/sup><\/a> from Hume\u2019s skepticism:\u00a0 \u201cI openly confess, the suggestion of David Hume\u00a0was the very thing, which many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber, and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy quite a new direction.\u201d[37]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Kant\u2019s solution to Hume\u2019s failed attempt to account for science based on strict empiricism was to embrace the psychological origin of causation and declare it sovereign over the world.\u00a0 The autonomous human consciousness imposes order on the unstructured sensations.\u00a0 There are no laws of nature external to the human mind; rather, the human mind is the lawgiver of the universe, exclusively imposing the laws of nature on sensations:\u00a0 \u201cThus the order and regularity in the appearances, which we entitle nature, we ourselves introduce.\u00a0 We could never find them in appearances, had we not ourselves, or the nature of our mind, originally set them there.\u201d[38]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 And also, \u201cThus understanding is something more than a power of formulating rules through comparison of appearances; it is itself the lawgiver of nature.\u201d[39]<\/a>\u00a0 The laws of nature, then, become completely subjective.\u00a0 Cause, space, time, and even existence are nothing but organizing forms imposed by the mind on sense impressions, not part of the world beyond the human mind.<\/p>\n

Kant\u00a0says that \u201cThoughts without content are empty, intuition [i.e. perception of material objects] without concepts are blind.\u201d[40]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 As a solution to the empty concepts of rationalism and the blind sense perceptions of empiricism, he proposes a third way to account for human knowledge by having the autonomous human mind combine the empty unity of pure thought with the blind content of sense perception.\u00a0 His attempted solution to the problem of knowledge is like trying to add two zeros together and expecting to get a positive number.[41]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 It amounts to combining a blank and chaos to produce the intelligible world that science studies, what Kant called the \u201cphenomenal\u201d world.\u00a0 Neither a blank unity nor a chaotic diversity can be an object of knowledge.\u00a0 Therefore, Kant\u2019s approach amounts to claiming that the irrational produces the rational.\u00a0 Kant himself was clear that the pre-rational \u201cnoumenal\u201d realm, which includes 1) the \u201cthings-in-themselves\u201d that cause sensation and 2) the unity of pure thought that organizes sensations, is unknowable<\/em>.[42]<\/a>\u00a0 Yet, Kant\u2019s very explanation of his philosophy requires him to make knowledge claims about these noumena.\u00a0 Given that he says that existence<\/em> is imposed by the human mind on phenomena, he cannot say that the noumenal exists.\u00a0 Likewise, he says that causation<\/em> is imposed by the autonomous mind to form the phenomenal world, therefore his philosophy forbids the noumenal from causing anything; and yet he also holds that sensations and the unity of consciousness are caused<\/em> by the noumenal realm.\u00a0 Kant\u2019s philosophy of knowledge is self-refuting.<\/p>\n

Kant claims that the \u201ctranscendental unity of apperception\u201d (which I\u2019ll refer to as the \u201ctranscendental ego\u201d) is the unity of consciousness that stands behind the experience of self-consciousness, the \u201cI think.\u201d\u00a0 The transcendental ego is the ultimate source of the order and structure that is imposed on the sensations, which have no structure. Kant regards the transcendental ego as an immutable, pure unity,[43]<\/a> without any of the \u201cmanifold\u201d of \u201cmatter\u201d that is supplied by sensation,[44]<\/a> much like Aristotle\u2019s Unmoved Mover, but each person gets\/is his or her own Unmoved Mover.\u00a0 Whereas Aristotle claimed that form and matter combined out in the world to form the intelligible world, Kant claims that form and matter combine in the autonomous human mind, with concepts supplying the form and sensation providing the matter to form the intelligible world within human consciousness.[45]<\/a> \u00a0And similar to Aquinas\u2019s claims that the Unmoved Mover can be thought but not known because it is a pure form,[46]<\/a> Kant claims that the transcendental ego (and everything else in the noumenal realm) can be thought but not known:\u00a0 \u201c[T]hough we cannot know<\/em> these objects as things in themselves, we must yet be in a position at least to think<\/em> of them as things in themselves; otherwise we should be landed in the absurd conclusion that there can be appearance without anything that appears.\u201d[47]<\/a> \u00a0Kant couldn\u2019t escape that absurdity.\u00a0 Kant (with Aquinas) is trying to have his cake and eat it too by claiming that we can think of something that we can\u2019t know.\u00a0 There is no content to the transcendental ego to know since it is a pure unity in the noumenal realm.\u00a0 Since there is no content to know, it cannot be thought.<\/p>\n

Kant observed that \u201cit still remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the existence of things outside us . . . must be accepted merely on faith, and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof.\u201d[48]<\/a>\u00a0 Kant thought that his approach succeeded where empirical idealism (such as Berkeley\u2019s view) failed because Kant required the existence of an external world to produce sensation.[49]<\/a>\u00a0 Although Kant believed in such a world, his commitment to consistency with the principle of the autonomy of the human mind logically excluded it.\u00a0 Since his external world of noumena<\/em> is unknowable, non-existent, and impossible to speak of without falling into self-refutation, his hoped-for success was an illusion.\u00a0 Such are the philosophical quagmires that people unavoidably fall into when they make the mind of man rather than the mind of God their ultimate foundation of knowledge.<\/p>\n

There is also the problem of the origin of the (unknowable) noumenal self, the transcendental ego, the principle of unity in human experience that produces (causes!) the phenomenal experience of self-consciousness.\u00a0 It was not created by the Christian God in Kant\u2019s\u00a0philosophy.\u00a0 The abstract unity of the self somehow comes into existence out of the chaos, out of the noumenal realm\u00a0of unrelated particulars.\u00a0 Cornelius Van Til\u00a0compared the futile attempt of philosophers like Kant trying to explain human rationality on the basis of the irrational to a man made of water, trying to escape an infinite sea of water, on a ladder of water:<\/p>\n

Suppose we think of a man made of water in an infinitely extended ocean of water.\u00a0 Desiring to get out of water, he makes a ladder of water. \u00a0He sets this ladder upon the water and against the water and then climbs out of the water only to fall into the water. \u00a0So hopeless and senseless a picture must be drawn of the natural man\u2019s methodology based as it is upon the assumption that time or chance is ultimate. \u00a0On his assumption his own rationality is a product of chance. \u00a0On his assumption even the laws of logic which he employs are products of chance. \u00a0The rationality and purpose that he may be searching for are still bound to be products of chance.[50]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

And then this immutable, abstract unity of the autonomous human self that somehow arises from chaos can only be a finite unity:<\/p>\n

Kant\u2019s phenomenal realm is but an island, and that a floating island on a bottomless and shoreless sea. After all, the human mind can furnish at most a finite schematism or a priori<\/em>. We do not admit that the human mind can furnish any a priori<\/em> at all unless it is related to God. But suppose for a moment that it could, such a schematism could never be comprehensive.[51]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Even if the unity of the autonomous human mind could arise out of chaos, it suffers from solipsism \u2013 in a world by itself, unable to know any other minds that might have also arisen from the infinite, irrational chaos that surrounds everything.\u00a0 I<\/em> have a unity of consciousness, but you<\/em> are a synthesis of my transcendental ego that imposes the laws of nature upon the world.<\/p>\n

And yet, even to state his philosophy, Kant had to make a universal negative claim about the existence of a vast, admittedly unknowable noumenal realm.\u00a0 It amounts to a universal claim that there is no Creator God as described in the Bible \u2013 no God that has rationalized all the facts prior to man\u2019s contact with the facts.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Although Kant presented himself as a kind of defender of the faith, claiming that \u201cI had to deny knowledge to make room for faith,\u201d[52]<\/sup><\/a> the only \u201cfaith\u201d allowed by his philosophy is an appeal to the irrational; whereas Christian faith in God is an appeal to the absolute rationality of God.\u00a0 By excluding all knowledge prior to its original production by the autonomous human mind, Kant kept an all-knowing God that created the world out of the picture \u2013 out of human experience of the physical world and excluding the possibility of propositional revelation coming to man from God.<\/p>\n

The exclusion of God by attempting to establish human autonomy, which requires stripping the universe of ultimate rationality, results in the common problem among atheists of making self-refuting statements, such as making the absolute statement that there are no absolutes and the universal claim that we can\u2019t know universals.\u00a0 As observed by William F. Buckley, Jr., \u201cLiberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.\u201d\u00a0 In an ultimately meaningless universe, all views equally valid because all views are meaningless, hence we get liberal relativism and support of viewpoint diversity (even if the viewpoints contradict each other, because there is no logic in a meaningless universe).\u00a0 But liberals still want to claim to have discovered some true things about the universe (including that it is meaningless), which entails contrary views being false.\u00a0 Liberals, indeed, want to regard their views as the most advanced in history and thus unquestionable by any rational person. \u00a0\u00a0They are absolutist about their relativism. \u00a0\u00a0As put by the ever-quotable G.K. Chesterton, \u201cThe special mark of the modern world is not that it is sceptical, but that it is dogmatic without knowing it.\u201d[53]<\/a>\u00a0 Because atheism involves trying to justify human knowledge in an ultimately non-rational world, atheism is trapped in an irresolvable dialectic tension between such dualities as rationalism and irrationalism, unity and diversity, absolutism and relativism.\u00a0 Trying to be more consistent in their atheist philosophy cannot resolve the contradiction in their thinking but only display it more clearly since it is inherent in their view of rationality.\u00a0 Universals are an unavoidable aspect of language, but atheists cannot account for them because they deny a universal Mind.\u00a0 I will explore this further when I defend Christianity in Chapter 5.<\/p>\n

Kant\u2019s arguments against the classic arguments for God\u2019s existence (ontological, cosmological and teleological)[54]<\/a> largely follow from his epistemology.\u00a0 Given the failure of his epistemology, his arguments against the arguments for God\u2019s existence fail as well.\u00a0 Since Kant can\u2019t (if you\u2019re British, make the same sound twice), allow for knowledge of empirical objects that exist apart from the human mind, neither can he allow for a God that exists apart from the mind of man.\u00a0 Since causality is nothing more than a concept projected by the human mind, Kant can\u2019t allow for causality to prove the existence of a God that is anything more than a projection of the human mind. \u00a0God can no more exist outside the human mind than space can (and space can\u2019t, according to Kant).[55]<\/a> \u00a0We need the concept of God, Kant explains, to properly understand the necessary unity of all phenomena; but since all necessity is imposed by the human mind, so is the idea of God.\u00a0 God serves as a \u201cregulative principle of reason\u201d not a \u201cconstitutive principle.\u201d[56]<\/a><\/p>\n

We should also recognize that Kant made the same mistake that Hume did in assuming that belief in a universal law of causation that can be described with mathematical precision is a universal trait of the human mind.\u00a0 They both failed to recognize that it was the Christian belief in the rationality of God that served as the historical basis in Western Civilization for the scientific faith in universal causality.\u00a0 Philosopher R.G. Collingwood observes that the failure of philosophers to recognize the Christian origins of belief in mathematically precise causality is common from Kant into the twentieth century (when Collingwood was writing).\u00a0 With respect to early twentieth-century philosopher Samuel Alexander, Collingwood says that he,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

. . . was too much under the influence of eighteenth-century thinkers [and thus] constructed his metaphysics\u00a0 on the assumption that all human beings everywhere and always accepted what Mill calls the law of universal causation, and for that matter everything enunciated\u00a0 in Kant\u2019s \u2018System of Principles.\u2019 . . .\u00a0 For in point of fact the Kantian \u2018principles\u2019 are nothing more permanent that the presuppositions of eighteenth century physics, as Kant discovered them by analysis.\u00a0 If you analyse the physics of to-day, or that of the Renaissance, or that of Aristotle, you get a different set.[57]<\/a><\/p>\n

Kant has been criticized for making Euclidean geometry an a priori<\/em>, necessary aspect of rational minds, which was shown not to be necessary by the later development of non-Euclidian geometry based on curved space.\u00a0 Kant has been defended on that point with the claim that Euclidean geometry was merely an illustration that he used.\u00a0 Regardless of the merits of that defense, Kant definitely saw universal causality as necessary to science, and thus made it a universal aspect of how all rational minds function, even though it is really only an aspect of how minds influenced by Christianity function.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Miracle of Mathematics Applying to Matter<\/em><\/p>\n

Modern scientists have sometimes noted the \u201cunreasonable\u201d order of nature, reducible to mathematical\u00a0formulas that humans can understand.\u00a0 Eugene Wigner, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and mathematician famously said,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

. . . [F]undamentally, we do not know why our theories work so well. . . .\u00a0\u00a0The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics\u00a0for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.\u00a0\u00a0We should be grateful for it and hope that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning.[58]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

In his famous book A Brief History of Time<\/em>, physicist Stephen Hawking\u00a0asks a similar question, \u201cWhat breathes fire into the equations?\u201d:<\/p>\n

Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? Is the unified theory so compelling that it brings about its own existence? Or does it need a creator, and, if so, does he have any other effect on the universe? And who created him?[59]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman\u00a0also remarks:<\/p>\n

The fact that there are rules at all to be checked is a kind of miracle; that it is possible to find a rule, like the inverse square law of gravitation, is some sort of miracle. It is not understood at all, but it leads to the possibility of prediction \u2014 that means it tells you what you would expect to happen in an experiment you have not yet done.[60]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Likewise, Albert Einstein\u00a0remarked that \u201cThe most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.\u201d[61]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 In a letter to a long-time friend written on March 30, 1952, he notes how the comprehensible nature of the universe is inconsistent with atheism; one should rather expect chaos, although he wants to make clear that he hasn\u2019t converted to traditional religion in the weakness of his old age:<\/p>\n

You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or as an eternal mystery. Well a priori<\/em> one should expect a chaotic world which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way.\u00a0 One could (yes one should<\/em>) expect the world to be subjected to law only to the extent that we order it through our intelligence. . . .\u00a0 By contrast, the kind of order created by Newton’s theory of gravitation, for example, is wholly different.\u00a0 Even if the axioms of a theory are proposed by man, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori<\/em>. That is the ‘miracle’ which is constantly reinforced as our knowledge expands.<\/p>\n

There lies the weakness of the positivists and professional atheists who are elated because they feel that they have not only successfully rid the world of gods but \u201cbared the miracles.\u201d\u00a0 Oddly enough, we must be satisfied to acknowledge the \u201cmiracle\u201d without there being any legitimate way to approach it.\u00a0 I am forced to add that just to keep you from thinking that\u2013weakened by age\u2013I have fallen prey to the parsons.[62]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Many other experts have made the similar observations about the \u201cmiracle\u201d of math applying to the material world.\u00a0 Here are two more examples, the first by physicist Remo J. Ruffini, and the second by science journalist Timothy Ferris:[63]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

How a mathematical structure can correspond to nature is a mystery.\u00a0\u00a0One way out is just to say that the language in which nature speaks is the language of mathematics.\u00a0\u00a0This begs the question.\u00a0\u00a0Often we are both shocked and surprised by the correspondence between mathematics\u00a0and nature, especially when the experiment confirms that our mathematical model describes nature perfectly.[64]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

If the prospect of a dying universe causes us anguish, it does so only because we can forecast it, and we have as yet not the slightest idea why such forecasts are possible for us.\u00a0\u00a0A few figures scrawled on a piece of paper can describe the rate the universe expands, reveal what goes on inside a star, or predict where the planet Neptune will be on New Year’s Day in the year A.D. 25,000.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Why should nature, whether hostile or benign, be in any way intelligible to us?\u00a0 All the mysteries of science are but palace guards to that mystery.[65]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The quote above by Remo J. Ruffini that \u201cthe language in which nature speaks is the language of mathematics\u201d is derived from Galileo\u2019s famous statement that \u201cMathematics is the language with which God has written the Universe.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0Galileo was not shocked and surprised about a correspondence between mathematics and nature because he believed in God.<\/p>\n

The abstract concepts of mathematics are discovered by the human mind, but mathematics would not be universal and necessary if their origin were finite, contingent human minds.\u00a0 Therefore they have a quality of independence from the human mind.\u00a0 The phenomena of the natural world, we find, conform to these mathematical\u00a0concepts that have a quality of independence from the human mind.\u00a0\u00a0 And nature does not conform to the order that just any human mind imposes (e.g. Ptolemy\u2019s mistaken view of celestial orbits), but only the minds trained in mathematics and careful observation.\u00a0\u00a0 This doesn\u2019t make sense in terms of Kant\u2019s philosophy of the autonomous human mind imposing the laws of nature on an irrational chaos that gave the human mind its birth.\u00a0 It does<\/em> make sense in terms of a common origin for the mathematical concepts and the phenomena of nature that are independent of the human mind, but also connected to the human mind, namely in terms of an absolutely rational Creator who made humans in His image.[66]<\/a>\u00a0 But I\u2019ll get to more details on that later.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sartre Reducing Kant\u2019s Autonomous Mind to Absurdity<\/em><\/p>\n

Fast-forward in the history of philosophy to the twentieth century when Jean-Paul Sartre\u00a0asks, what is consciousness in a world without God?\u00a0 His conclusion:\u00a0 It\u2019s a spontaneous nothingness, an absurdity.\u00a0 The permanence of individual objects of experience is an illusion of the words we apply to changing experience.\u00a0 Even permanence of the self is a construct of the descriptions that we and others apply to us from which we construct our self-image.\u00a0\u00a0 He basically exposes the impossibility of Kant\u2019s attempt to create permanence through a transcendental ego that arises in a world without God, so Sartre ends in the same place as Hume had ended, with a world of disorganized experience.\u00a0 Sartre\u2019s conclusion about epistemology parallels his conclusion about ethics \u2013 that there are no rules except the rule that we are free to make our own rules.\u00a0 Applied to scientific knowledge, this means that there is no regularity to nature; humans freely and arbitrarily impose whatever order to nature that they choose.\u00a0 However, each individual human has that freedom in an irresolvable competition with other humans who are imposing descriptions of the world that conflict with each other; hence, \u201cHell is other people.\u201d\u00a0 Each person is a finite god trying to act sovereignly in the world but frustrated by competing gods trying to do the same, which makes all other people devils.[67]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Kant was right that there must be a permanent ego that unifies the deliverances of the senses in order to make sense of knowledge.\u00a0 But Kant can\u2019t make sense of a permanent ego because of his commitment to human autonomy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hegel\u2019s Attempt to Universalize Kantianism<\/em><\/p>\n

Kant tried to solve Hume\u2019s skepticism about knowledge of the world, but his approach created a new skepticism about our ability to know the \u201cnoumenal\u201d world, the world in itself, as it exists outside our minds.\u00a0 G.F.W. Hegel (1770-1831) tried to solve Kant\u2019s skepticism through overcoming his noumenal\/phenomenal distinction by positing that concepts are out in the world, not just in the human mind.\u00a0 Hegel had to put Aristotle\u2019s form\/matter scheme back out into the world given that Kant\u2019s philosophy failed by putting the form\/matter scheme completely inside the autonomous human mind.<\/p>\n

Because concepts are out in the world, Hegel says that, \u201cWhat is rational is real, and what is real is rational.\u201d[68]<\/a>\u00a0 This statement could be made by other rationalists like Plato, but with a meaning different than Hegel\u2019s. Plato saw the Ideas as static and standing apart from the world of change, which was illusionary, so that the empirical world is not the real and the rational but only the transcendent Ideas are real and rational; whereas Hegel was intent on explaining the world of change as rational.\u00a0 The world is the development of mind (\u201cGeist,\u201d as Hegel calls it).\u00a0 This is the rationale behind his dialectic method, often described as a process of thesis, antithesis, synthesis (although Hegel himself did not use these terms).\u00a0 On this view, a particular concept, the thesis, is seen as true at a particular time in history; then it is contradicted by another concept, the antithesis; but then the prior views are replaced by another concept that integrates to some degree the previous views into a higher realization of truth, the synthesis. \u00a0This synthesis becomes the new thesis, and the process continues. \u00a0The apparent contradictions encountered in the course of experience and history are overcome by the dialectic process, thus accounting for the rationality of experience and history.\u00a0 The ideal toward which this process moves is the Absolute, in which all the diversity in history is related to the universals.\u00a0\u00a0 Hegel also calls the Absolute a \u201cconcrete universal\u201d because it integrates all the diversity and unity of history.<\/p>\n

But Hegel\u2019s goal of rationality, like Kant\u2019s and Aristotle\u2019s philosophies, undermines itself with a fundamental irrationality.\u00a0 The dialectic process begins with the concepts of Being and Nothingness, which synthesize into Becoming. \u00a0Being, Hegel admits, has no content because it is an empty unity; thus \u201cPure Being and pure nothing are, therefore, the same.\u201d[69]<\/a>\u00a0 History, then, begins with nothingness, with no rationality; but it somehow becomes something rational \u2013 diversity of content with unity.[70]<\/a> \u00a0Furthermore, the Absolute is an ideal toward which history is moving as the human race gains knowledge of the world; but it\u2019s not a present reality or a future reality that is ever achieved.\u00a0 The non-rational is ultimate in the world, not the rational.\u00a0 Even if limited rationality could have arisen, complete rationality is never achieved.\u00a0 Rationality is always an island in an infinite sea of the non-rational.\u00a0 Although Hegel tries to achieve some stability to human knowledge by saying that the prior stages of knowledge are integrated into the later stages, there is no basis for saying that humanity possesses the truth about the world at any point in history because absolute truth is not present at any point in history.\u00a0 Like Kant and Aristotle, Hegel is still trying to combine the two irrational elements of pure diversity and pure unity to produce the intelligible world through the autonomous human mind, but collectively rather than individually.<\/p>\n

Why would history, originating from the void, be moving toward absolute truth?\u00a0 Why would there be a telos<\/em>, a purpose, to history? \u00a0On what basis can we say that apparent contradictions in history and experience can be logically resolved, even though humans don\u2019t have the knowledge to resolve them at a particular point in history? \u00a0That history is moving toward the ideals of rationality and morality makes sense if an Absolute God created the world and is directing history toward the ideal goal.\u00a0 Hegel, who studied theology before he studied philosophy, tries to merge Christian eschatology with German Idealism.[71]<\/a>\u00a0 It does not turn out well.\u00a0 German Idealism is a degeneration from Christianity, not an advancement.\u00a0 Hegel strips from the Christian idea of historical progress the only concept of ultimate reality, the biblical God, that can serve as a basis for faith in the progress of history.[72]<\/a>\u00a0 God is stripped of transcendence and placed completely within the world, being most fully expressed in humanity as it grows in knowledge over the course of history toward the goal of absolute knowledge.\u00a0 Karl Marx later picked up the idea of historical progress from Hegel to create what has been called the Last Great Christian Heresy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nietzsche<\/em>\u00a0and the Absurdity of Human Reason in a World Without God<\/em><\/p>\n

The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), represents the disintegration of European philosophy up through the end of the nineteenth century.\u00a0 Nietzsche holds that all facts are interpreted facts, and he concludes from this that there is no truth.\u00a0 Late-twentieth-century post-modernism has come back around to this view, as I discuss below; and Nietzsche has become popular in philosophical circles again.\u00a0 But since there is no truth, scientists are not discovering anything true about the world.\u00a0 Cause and effect, regularity in nature \u2013 these are all illusions created by words:<\/p>\n

In \u201cbeing-in-itself\u201d there is nothing of \u201ccausal connection,\u201d of \u201cnecessity,\u201d or of \u201cpsychological non-freedom;\u201d there the effect does not<\/em> follow the cause; there \u201claw\u201d does not obtain.\u00a0 It is we<\/em> alone who have devised the causes, sequence, reciprocity, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we interpret and intermix this symbol-world, as \u201cbeing-in-itself,\u201d with things, we act once more as we have always acted \u2013 mythologically<\/em>.[73]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Since all facts are interpreted facts, scientific knowledge is not the universal, objective standard that can unify all people in all cultures, as modernists have na\u00efvely believed it could.\u00a0 Every person is isolated in the ghetto of his own mind and culture.\u00a0 Since there is no objective standard of measurement, there is no such thing as progress, scientifically or morally \u2013 just competition and survival.\u00a0 Some survive better than others, but, Nietzsche said, degeneration inevitably follows.[74]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Nietzsche adopted the old, pre-Christian, anti-scientific view of cyclical time, in which any progress eventually reaches a maximum, after which degeneration inevitably follows, in endless cycles.[75]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 As I discuss below, Christianity had introduced the linear view of time to the world, providing the optimism necessary for science that progress can always increase in history.<\/p>\n

Nietzsche\u2019s relativism follows from his materialism.\u00a0 Truth and falsehood are not properties of matter but of propositions, so if only matter exists, no propositions exist, including the proposition that materialism is true or that matter exists.\u00a0 Materialism is mindlessness.\u00a0 All interpretations, all propositional statements, are equally mythological.\u00a0 It\u2019s a view that is self-refuting, which Nietzsche was honest enough to acknowledge:\u00a0 \u201cGranted that this also is only interpretation \u2013 and you will be eager to make this objection? \u2013 well, so much the better.\u201d[76]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Nietzsche\u00a0observed that the use of meaningful language requires the existence of God:\u00a0 \u201cI am afraid we cannot get rid of God because we still believe in grammar.\u201d[77]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 The \u201csymbol-world\u201d of language resists reduction to materialism.\u00a0 In a materialistic context, human rationality is a tragic mistake, a disease, produced by evolution:<\/p>\n

They found themselves clumsy in obeying the simplest directions, confronted with this new and unknown world they had no longer their old guides \u2013 the regulative instincts that had led them unconsciously to safety \u2013 they were reduced, were those unhappy creatures, to thinking, inferring, calculating, putting together causes and results, reduced to that poorest and most erratic organ of theirs, their \u201cconsciousness.\u201d . . .\u00a0 But thereby he introduced that most grave and sinister illness, from which mankind has not yet recovered, the suffering of man from the disease called man, as the result, as it were, of a spasmodic plunge into a new environment and new conditions of existence, the result of a declaration of war against the old instincts, which up to that time had been the staple of his power, his joy, his awesomeness.[78]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Human rationality is a brief, meaningless, wretched absurdity in the history of the universe:<\/p>\n

In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge.\u00a0 That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of \u201cworld history\u201d\u2013yet only a minute.\u00a0 After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.<\/p>\n

One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature.\u00a0 There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened.\u00a0 For this intellect has no further mission that would lead beyond human life.\u00a0 It is human, rather, and only its owner and producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it.\u00a0 But if we could communicate with the mosquito, then we would learn that it floats through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying center of the world.[79]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

This is one of the more consistent pictures of human rationality in the context of atheism that has ever been presented by an atheist.\u00a0 Human rationality is an alien absurdity in the materialistic worldview.\u00a0 It is not a picture that promotes human rationality against the irrationalism of religion; rather religion is irrational in the sense that it supports the idea of human rationality, which must be an illusion in terms of the materialistic worldview.\u00a0 Atheist support for human rationality must come from an irrational leap of faith.\u00a0 As Herbert Schlossberg\u00a0explains the dilemma of modern atheism, \u201cSince its naturalism is irreconcilable with its anthropology, it confers special status on human beings by the irrational process of mystification.\u201d[80]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

[1]<\/a> He argued that a finite mind would be inadequate to be the cause the idea of an infinite being, therefore God must be the cause of the idea of God in the mind of man.\u00a0 Descartes also endorsed the ontological argument, that existence is a perfection, therefore a supremely perfect being must have existence.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a>\u00a0 As expressed, for example, by Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature<\/em> (Princeton, NJ:\u00a0 Princeton University Press, 2009), chapter 1: \u201cThe Invention of the Mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> \u00a0Ren\u00e9 Descartes, Principles of Philosophy<\/em>, Part 3, \u00a7 47. Descartes says things could have<\/em> begun from chaos and developed into our present world, but he affirms that in fact everything was created as mature as depicted in Genesis 1.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a>\u00a0 Blaise Pascal, Pens\u00e9es<\/em> (1669), \u00a72, No. 77.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a>\u00a0 See Aram Vartanian, Diderot and Descartes: A Study of Scientific Naturalism in the Enlightenment<\/em> (Princeton University Press, 1953).<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Robert Boyle, The Origine of Formes and Qualities (According to Corpuscular Philosophy)<\/em>, 2d ed. (Oxford:\u00a0 Ric. Davis, 1667), pp. 102-04.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Baruch Spinoza, Ethics<\/em>, tr. R.H.M. Elwes, Part III, preface.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a>\u00a0 Ethics<\/em>, Part IV, preface.\u00a0 Spinoza is often referred to as pantheist, meaning \u201call is god.\u201d\u00a0 But his god is impersonal and non-transcendent.\u00a0 Whereas a Christian, on the basis of a personal Creator distinct from His creation, can say that God can conceive of something and choose to wait to make it a reality at a later time, Spinoza\u2019s premise of impersonal rational necessity leads him to say that everything that could possibly exist does exist necessarily. Ethics<\/em>, Part I, Prop. XXXV.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a>\u00a0 Baruch Spinoza, One the Improvement of the Understanding (Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect)<\/em>, tr. R.H.M. Elwes (An Electronic Classics Publication), \u00a742, http:\/\/www2.hn.psu.edu\/faculty\/jmanis\/spinoza\/spinoza1.pdf<\/a>.\u00a0 See Robert J. Roecklein, Politicized Physics in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy: Essays on Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza<\/em> (Lanham, MD:\u00a0 Lexington Books, 2014), p. 184.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a>\u00a0 Spinoza, Ethics<\/em>, Part I, Prop. XX, and Part II, Prop. X.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid, Part II, Prop. VII.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid., Part II, Prop. XXIX.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a>\u00a0 See Van Til, The Reformed Pastor and Modern Thought<\/em> (Phillispburg, NJ:\u00a0 Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1980), pp. 107-08.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a>\u00a0 Charles Webster, The Great Instauration:\u00a0 Science, Medicine and Reform 1626-1660<\/em> (London: Duckworth, 1975), p. 515.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a>\u00a0 See Zagorin, pp. 90ff; and Peter Urbach, Francis Bacon\u2019s Philosophy of Science<\/em> (LaSalle, IL:\u00a0 Open Court, 1987, pp.134-43.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a>\u00a0 Francis Bacon, Novum Organum<\/em>, Book I, \u00a7XCV, pp. 131-32, https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/worksfrancisbaco08bacoiala\/page\/130\/mode\/2up.<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a>\u00a0 Webster, The Great Instauration<\/em>, p. 25.<\/p>\n

[18]<\/a>\u00a0 Novum Organum<\/em>, Book II, \u00a7LII.\u00a0 Also see his Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[19]<\/a>\u00a0 Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning<\/em> (1605), Book III, p. 509, https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/worksfrancisbaco08bacoiala\/page\/508\/mode\/2up.<\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> \u00a0Quoted in Klaaren, Religious Origins of Modern Science<\/em>, p. 158.<\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> \u00a0See my blog posts for more on this:\u00a0 \u201cBeware Greeks Bearing Gifts:\u00a0 Part 2 of a Review of J.V. Fesko\u2019s Reforming Apologetics,\u201d http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/2019\/06\/12\/common-notion-confusion-part-2\/<\/a>; \u201cA Thomistic Transcendental Argument that Needs Van Til,\u201d http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/2017\/11\/06\/thomistic-transcendental-argument\/<\/a>; \u201cThe Scope and Limits of Van Til’s Transcendental Argument:\u00a0 A Response to John Frame,\u201d http:\/\/www.christianciv.com\/The_Scope_and_Limits_of_VTAG.pdf<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[22]<\/a>\u00a0 Klaaren, Religious Origins of Modern Science<\/em>, p. 173.\u00a0 See this book for further support for these points.<\/p>\n

[23]<\/a> Margaret C. Jacob, \u201cChristianity and the Newtonian Worldview,\u201d in God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science<\/em>, ed. David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers (University of California Press, 1986), p. 246-47.<\/p>\n

[24]<\/a>\u00a0 George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge<\/em>, \u00a7 11.<\/p>\n

[25]<\/a>\u00a0 David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding<\/em>, chs. 4-7.<\/p>\n

[26]<\/a>\u00a0 Anthony Flew, There is a God:\u00a0 How the World\u2019s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind<\/em> (New York, NY:\u00a0 Harper One, 2007), pp. 57-58.\u00a0 For a detailed criticism of Hume\u2019s argument against miracles, see John Lennox, God’s Undertaker<\/em> (Lion Hudson, Kindle Edition, 2011), ch. 12.<\/p>\n

[27]<\/a>\u00a0 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature<\/em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 91.<\/p>\n

[28]<\/a>\u00a0 James N. Anderson, David Hume<\/em> (Kindle Edition), loc. 1662.<\/p>\n

[29]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid., loc. 1706.<\/p>\n

[30]<\/a>\u00a0 See page 75, below.<\/p>\n

[31]<\/a>\u00a0 A Treatise of Human Nature<\/em>, p. 252.<\/p>\n

[32]<\/a>\u00a0 David Hume,\u00a0Treatise on Human Nature<\/em>, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford:\u00a0\u00a0Clarendon Press, 1951; first published in 1739), p. 269.<\/p>\n

[33]<\/a>\u00a0 Bertrand Russell,\u00a0Human Knowledge:\u00a0\u00a0Its Scopes and Limits<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0(New York: Clarion Books, Simon and Schuster, 1948), \u00a0xv-xvi.\u00a0\u00a0Quoted in Greg Bahnsen, \u201cPragmatism, Prejudice, and Presuppositionalism,\u201d\u00a0Foundations of Christian Scholarship<\/em>, Gary North Ed. (Vallicito, CA:\u00a0\u00a0Ross House Books, 1976), p.\u00a0243.<\/p>\n

[34]<\/a> \u00a0David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding<\/em>, IV.32.<\/p>\n

[35]<\/a> \u00a0Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy<\/em> (New York, NY:\u00a0 Simon and Schuster, 1945), pp. 672-73.<\/p>\n

[36]<\/a>\u00a0 This is Will Durant\u2019s characterization of Kant\u2019s purpose, widely acknowledged as accurate:\u00a0 \u201cTo put these threads of argument together, to unite the ideas of Berkeley and Hume with the feelings of Rousseau, to save religion from reason, and yet at the same time to save science from skepticism \u2013 this was the mission of Immanuel Kant.” \u00a0Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy<\/em> (New Rev. ed., New York: Garden City Publ., 1933), p. 285.<\/p>\n

[37]<\/a>\u00a0 Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics<\/em> (The Open Court Publishing Company, 1902), p. 7.<\/p>\n

[38]<\/a> Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason<\/em>, tr. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin\u2019s Press, 1965), A 125.<\/p>\n

[39]<\/a> \u00a0Ibid., A 126.<\/p>\n

[40]<\/a> \u00a0Ibid., B 75.<\/p>\n

[41]<\/a>\u00a0 Cornelius Van Til, Christian-Theistic Evidences<\/em>, (Phillipsburg, NJ:\u00a0 Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1978), p. 87; and An Introduction to Systematic Theology<\/em> (Phillipsburg, NJ:\u00a0 Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1974), p. 20.<\/p>\n

[42]<\/a> Kant, Critique of Pure Reason<\/em>, A 352, A 494\/ B 522.<\/p>\n

[43]<\/a> Ibid., A 107, A 132.<\/p>\n

[44]<\/a> \u00a0Ibid., B 135.<\/p>\n

[45]<\/a> \u00a0Ibid., A 42\/ B 59-60.<\/p>\n

[46]<\/a> \u00a0Aquinas says, \u201cReason cannot reach up to simple form, so as to know \u2018what it is;\u2019 but it can know \u2018whether it is.\u2019\u201d Summa Theologica<\/em>, 1a.12.12.\u00a0 Also see Summa Contra Gentiles<\/em>, 1:14.2.<\/p>\n

[47]<\/a> \u00a0Kant, Critique of Pure Reason<\/em>, B xxvii.<\/p>\n

[48]<\/a>\u00a0 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason<\/em>, (Preface to the Second Edition) B XL, note.<\/p>\n

[49]<\/a> Ibid., B 519 \u2013 B 520.<\/p>\n

[50]<\/a> Cornelius Van Til,\u00a0Christian Apologetics<\/em>, p.\u00a063.<\/p>\n

[51]<\/sup><\/a> Cornelius Van Til, Christian-Theistic Evidences<\/em>\u00a0(Phillipsburg, NJ:\u00a0Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1978), p. 37.<\/p>\n

[52]<\/a>\u00a0 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason<\/em>, B xxx.<\/p>\n

[53]<\/a> \u00a0Illustrated London News<\/em> (March 15, 1919).<\/p>\n

[54]<\/a> \u00a0I don\u2019t subscribe to the classic formulations of the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments as presented by the likes of Anselm and Aquinas, but I do believe that necessary existence, cause, and order can be used to prove God\u2019s existence, as I explain further in Chapter 5.<\/p>\n

[55]<\/a> \u00a0Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason<\/em>, A 619, B 647<\/p>\n

[56]<\/a> \u00a0Ibid., A 619\/ B 647, A 620\/ B 648.<\/p>\n

[57]<\/a> \u00a0R.G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics<\/em> (Mansfield Centre, CT:\u00a0 Martino Publishing, 2014 [1939]), p. 179.<\/p>\n

[58]<\/a>\u00a0 Eugene\u00a0Wigner,\u00a0“The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,”<\/a>\u00a0Symmetries and Reflections:\u00a0\u00a0Scientific Essays<\/em>\u00a0(Cambridge and London:\u00a0\u00a0The MIT Press, 1970) p. 237.<\/p>\n

[59]<\/a>\u00a0 Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time<\/em>, p. 232.<\/p>\n

[60]<\/a>\u00a0 Richard Feynman, The Meaning of it all<\/em> (London, Penguin, 2007), p.23; quoted in Lennox, Gunning for God<\/em>, p. 34.<\/p>\n

[61]<\/a>\u00a0 Albert Einstein, “Physics and Reality”(1936), in\u00a0Ideas and Opinions<\/em>, trans. Sonja Bargmann (New York: Bonanza, 1954), p. 292.<\/p>\n

[62]<\/a>\u00a0 Albert Einstein, Letters to Solovine:\u00a0 1906-1955<\/em> (New York, NY: Philosophical Library, 1987), p. 131.\u00a0 Einstein did not like the idea of a personal God.\u00a0 He was a follower of Spinoza\u2019s pantheism.\u00a0\u00a0 See Norman L. Geisler, \u201cEinstein, Albert,\u201d in Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics<\/em> (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), p. 214f.; and Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion: Physics and Theology<\/em> (Princeton, NJ:\u00a0 Princeton University Press, 1999).<\/p>\n

[63]<\/a>\u00a0 For additional quotes on this issue, see \u201cMathematics,\u201d at Atheists Confess:\u00a0 We Can\u2019t Make Sense of the World<\/em>, http:\/\/www.christianciv.com\/Atheists_Confess.htm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[64]<\/a>\u00a0 Remo\u00a0J.\u00a0Ruffini, “The Princeton Galaxy,” interviews by Florence\u00a0Heltizer,\u00a0Intellectual Digest<\/em>, 3 (1973), p. 27; quoted in James Nickel,\u00a0Mathematics:\u00a0\u00a0Is God Silent?<\/em>\u00a0(Vallecito, CA:\u00a0\u00a0Ross House Books, 2001), p. 209.<\/p>\n

[65]<\/a>\u00a0 Timothy Ferris,\u00a0The Red Limit:\u00a0\u00a0The Search for the Edge of the Universe<\/em>\u00a0(New York:\u00a0\u00a0William Morrow, 1977), pp. 217-18; quoted in Gary North,\u00a0Is the World Running Down?:\u00a0\u00a0Crisis in the Christian Worldview<\/em>(Tyler, TX:\u00a0\u00a0Institute for Christian Economics, 1988), p. 13.<\/p>\n

[66]<\/a> \u00a0James Nickel, Mathematics:\u00a0 Is God Silent?<\/em> (Vallecito, CA:\u00a0 Ross House Books, 2001).<\/p>\n

[67]<\/sup><\/a> See W. T. Jones, Kant to Wittgenstein and Sartre:\u00a0 A History of Western Philosophy<\/em> (New York:\u00a0 Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1969), pp. 418-46.\u00a0 Regarding Sartre\u2019s argument against the existence of God, like Kant, Sartre attempts to wield universal and unchanging laws of logic to make, as Cornelius Van Til puts it, an \u201ca priori<\/em> universal negative judgment about all possible reality, to the effect that God cannot exist.\u201d And like Kant, this an impossible attempt of a consciousness rising into existence as foam upsurging from an shoreless, bottomless sea of chance to relate to a priori<\/em>, universal, unchanging laws of logic.\u00a0 Cornelius Van Til, The Apologetic Methodology of Francis Schaeffer<\/em>, conclusion to chapter 3 and conclusion to chapter 4, in C. Van Til & E. H. Sigward, The Pamphlets, Tracts, and Offprints of Cornelius Van Til<\/em> (Electronic ed.) (Labels Army Company: New York, 1997).<\/p>\n

[68]<\/a> G.F.W. Hegel, Philosophy of Right<\/em>, translated by S.W Dyde (Kitchener, Canada:\u00a0 Batoche Books Limited, 2001), p. 18.<\/p>\n

[69]<\/a> Hegel, Science of Logic<\/em>, Vol. 1, Bk. 1, \u00a7134.<\/p>\n

[70]<\/a> See Cornelius Van Til, The New Modernism: An Appraisal of the Theology of Barth and Brunner<\/em> (Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company 1947), p. 51.<\/p>\n

[71]<\/a> \u00a0Hegel would not object to saying that he borrowed from Christianity because he regards Christianity as the stage of history that is nearly as advanced as the next stage of history, the stage of Philosophy. See Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History<\/em>, \u00a750, at https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/reference\/archive\/hegel\/works\/hi\/history4.htm#050<\/a>. \u00a0In the dialectic process, the new synthesis contains what was good about the previous stage of history.<\/p>\n

[72]<\/a> \u00a0For the biblical origin of the idea of historical progress see below, pp. 103 and 124.<\/p>\n

[73]<\/a>\u00a0 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future<\/em>, tr. Helen Zimmern (Mineola, NY:\u00a0 Dover Publications, 1997), p. 15.<\/p>\n

[74]<\/a>\u00a0 By valuing survival and the rise of the \u201csuperman,\u201d Nietzsche is engaging in the common fallacy of modern evolutionists who reject objective morality but still treat survival as a value, as I make mention in my companion essay on ethics.<\/p>\n

[75]<\/a>\u00a0 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science<\/em>, tr. Walter Kaufman (New York:\u00a0 Vintage Books, 1974), pp. 273-74 (\u00a7 341).<\/p>\n

[76]<\/a>\u00a0 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil<\/em>, p. 16.<\/p>\n

[77]<\/a>\u00a0 Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols<\/em>, tr. Richard Polt (Indianapolis, IN:\u00a0 Hackett Publishing, 1997), p. 21.<\/p>\n

[78]<\/a>\u00a0 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals<\/em>, tr. Horace B. Samuel (Stilwell, KS:\u00a0 Digireads.com Publishing, 2007), pp. 76, 77-78.\u00a0 This translation has \u201cformidableness\u201d rather than \u201cawesomeness,\u201d but I like \u201cawesomeness\u201d better, which is used in another translation.<\/p>\n

[79]<\/a>\u00a0 Friedrich Nietzsche, \u201cOne Truth and Lie,\u201d in The Portable Nietzsche<\/em>, tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York, NY:\u00a0\u00a0 Penguin Books, 1977), p. 42.<\/p>\n

[80]<\/a>\u00a0 Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction:\u00a0 Christian Faith and its Confrontation with American Society<\/em> (Nashville, TN:\u00a0 Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1983), p. 84.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Descartes and the Beginning of Secularism Ren\u00e9 Descartes (1596-1650) can be given a great deal of the credit for initiating modern philosophy and modern atheism.\u00a0 His philosophy marks, as those who endorse this philosophical change call it, the transition from … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":489,"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}