Sárospataki Füzetek 14. (2010)

2010 / 1. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Byl, John: Világnézetek háborúja: a keresztyénség és kihívói.

War of the Worldviews

for our actions, they can be judged to be morally good or bad. Further, Pereboom clearly expects courts and judges to respond to moral oughts. Yet, if we are not responsible for our actions, as Pereboom claims, surely this applies equally to judges as well as criminals. How, then, can Pereboom venture to instruct us in how we ought to treat criminals? In doing so he presumes that we are in fact morally accountable, thus contradicting his central thesis.

When trying to convince somebody that one’s worldview is true, one must presume that there exist such things as purposeful selves, reliable minds, mental causation, rational norms and objective truth. Otherwise, we could not engage in rational discussion. However, these are all things that naturalism denies. Thus any rational argument for naturalism is ultimately self-refuting, since it must presume to be true things that it in fact denies.

Finally, regarding our ultimate purpose, William Provine affirms, “There is no ultimate meaning for humans.” Similarly, Richard Dawkins writes,

We are machines built by DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the

same DNA...That is exactly what we are for...It is every living object’s sole reason for living.11

On the other hand, Dawkins also stated, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”12 One wonders, how can Dawkins be intellectually fulfilled if his sole purpose is to reproduce copies of his DNA?

Post-Modernity

In the modern world, human reason elevated itself above God and claimed sovereignty. This entailed that human reason could criticize all beliefs. Critical human reason, once uncorked, is an insatiable acid that dissolves all absolutes, whether in religion, ethics, science or logic. Inevitably, however, human reason must eventually criticize also itself. Then reason unmasks itself as unreasonable, eroding even its own foundation and thereby causing modernity to self-destruct.

Naturalism, having banished God, Who upheld all universal norms, is now realizing that it is left with no sound basis for objective knowledge. As Nietzsche had foreseen, the death of God inevitably entailed the death of Truth. Critical human reason, applied to itself, destroys the very possibility of finding Truth. Consequently, modern man, instead of attaining god-like knowledge and wisdom, ends up with only the frustration of a hopeless quest.

In our post-moátrn era, many people have given up on formulating a coherent worldview. Whereas modernity asserted that the Biblical story was wrong, postmodernity rejects the notion that there is a story at all. The postmodern world lacks any real meaning and substance. It is a hopeless, pointless absurdity.

The story of modernity and its demise into post-modernity reminds one of the story of the tower of Babel (see Genesis 11). As Middleton & Walsh13 suggest, the

11 Dawkins, Richard: “Christmas Lectures for Young People”, London, Royal Institute, 1991.

12 Dawkins, Richard: The Blind Watchmaker. Harmondsworth, UK, Penguin, 1991. 6.

13 Middleton, J. Richard & Walsh, Brian J.: Truth is Stranger Than It Used to Be. Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 1995. 16-17.

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