Tuesday, February 17, 2009

"More things in heaven and earth..."

Fifteen years ago InterVarsity Press published the Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli. It quickly became one of my favorite references for the common arguments against Christianity and the responses. The book is useful for any Christian who engages in discussion with those who raise philosophical objections to the faith—perhaps especially for students. The book reminds us that there are good and persuasive answers to questions like "Does God exist?," or "How can God allow evil to exist?," or "Is Christianity the only true religion?" Recently one of the authors, Peter Kreeft, commented on that last question at the beginning of a lecture, "A Philosophical Refutation of Reductionism.":
Ronald Knox once quipped that "the study of comparative religions is the best way to become comparatively religious." The reason, as G. K. Chesterton says, is that, according to most "scholars" of comparative religion, "Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism."

But any Christian who does apologetics must think about comparative religions because the most popular of all objections against the claims of Christianity today comes from this field. The objection is not that Christianity is not true but that it is not the truth; not that it is a false religion but that it is only a religion. .... How insufferably narrow-minded to claim that Christianity is the one true religion! God just has to be more open-minded than that.

This is the single most common objection to the Faith today, for "today" worships not God but equality. It fears being right where others are wrong more than it fears being wrong. ....
Is it possible to have reasonable certainty that your religious convictions are right, that is, that Christianity is true, and that, insofar as their claims contradict those of the Faith, other religions are wrong? Kreeft contends that a fundamental problem in even discussing the issue is that most philosophers think such religious questions are unanswerable. The problem is "reductionism":
The most usual position among philosophers in the Western world today, in fact the most usual position among academics generally, is some kind of reductionism. By "reductionism" I mean simply the belief that the world-view, or implicit metaphysics, of most people, or ordinary people, especially people of previous eras and cultures, errs by believing too much; that Hamlet's Shakespeare was exactly wrong when he said to Horatio that "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy." The prevailing view among modern Western intellectuals is that there are in fact fewer things, or fewer kinds of things, or fewer dimensions of things, in heaven and earth, that is, in objective reality, than in most people's philosophies or beliefs. Thus most modern philosophers see the role of philosophical education primarily as a disillusioning, a debunking of myth, superstition, and naivete.
Kreeft goes on to refute first "reductionism," and then "materialism":
The commonest form of metaphysical reductionism, and the most philosophically interesting and controversial one, is materialism, which is the claim that everything that is real is material; that there is not a second dimension or kind of reality that is immaterial, or spiritual, or mental, but that what we call mind and mental phenomena can be reduced to and explained as merely material phenomena. According to materialism, all that happens when we calculate that 21+31=52, or when we judge that murder is evil, or when we believe that God exists, or that we perceive the sky as blue, or when we predict that we will die, is that certain bundles of physical energy are doing certain physical things, like moving across synapses or producing chemical reactions, in our brains. The claim is that there are no immaterial phenomena that cannot be explained as material phenomena.

Now there is one very easy refutation of this argument for materialism. It is simply that the premise does not entail the conclusion. For even if we grant the premise that we find no immaterial phenomena that cannot be fully explained as material phenomena, this does not logically entail the conclusion that there are no immaterial phenomena.... (more)
Read it. Even if you don't contemplate engaging in apologetic argument with your acquaintances, it will reinforce in your own mind the fact that faith and reason are allies.

Thanks to Insight Scoop for the reference!

A Philosophical Refutation of Reductionism

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