Sárospataki Füzetek 14. (2010)
2010 / 1. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Byl, John: Világnézetek háborúja: a keresztyénség és kihívói.
BYL, JOHN Evolutionary biology tells us there are no purposeful principles in nature, no gods and no designing forces that are rationally detectable. . . Second, there are no inherent moral or ethical laws. .. Third, human beings are marvelously complex machines. Fourth, when we die, we die and that is the end of us, no hope of everlasting life. Free will simply does not exist, evolution can’t produce a being that is truly free to make choices .. . The universe cares nothing for us . . . There is no ultimate meaning for humans.8 Such is the somber creed of naturalism. It terms of our fundamental worldview questions, naturalism’s answers can thus be summarized as follows: Story: Ontology. .Anthropology. Knowledge: Ethics: Religion-. Everything came about from nothing, through random evolution. The ultimate reality is matter, operated upon by purposeless, natural causes. Man is an accident, who has no soul and no life after death. All knowledge is empirical, acquired through our sense; there is no divine revelation. There are no universal norms, no mathematical truths. God, if he exists at all, is irrelevant to us. Assessing- Naturalism How well does naturalism account for reality? Reality is very complex. The British physicist Roger Penrose, in his book Shadows of the Mind, argues that we can distinguish between three different worlds (see Figure 2). The first world is the material world, consisting of the things we see and feel. The second world is that of our mind. It consists of thoughts, beliefs and emotions. The third world is the ideal world of timeless truths. This concerns such things as knowledge, understanding, wisdom, and their underlying norms. Typical of this abstract world are such simple truths as “2 + 2 = 4”. I shall refer to this third world as that of mathematics. Provine, William: “Progress in Evolution and Meaning in Life”, in Evolutionary Progress. (Matthew H. Nitecki (ed.), Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1988. 47-74. 32 SÁROSPATAKI FÜZETEK
