J.P. Moreland was recently a guest on the Lutheran Christian talk radio program Issues, Etc, hosted by the always insightful Todd Wilken. I have been following Issues, Etc. for a number of years, and am a supporter of the ministry as well. You won’t find a more thoughtful and incisive host than Todd, who attracts the top minds in theology, science, and politics to provide a show that is always practical and relevant regarding today’s key issues, while staying focused on Christ. Todd has a rare talent to move deftly from one domain of discussion to another, which he has been doing for many years now. I would highly recommend Issues, Etc. to anyone who wants to be “in the know” about hot topics in Christianity and culture on a day to day basis. Todd’s show broadcasts Monday through Friday from 3p –5p Central Time. You can subscribe to their podcasts for free on iTunes, or listen/download from their site at http://issuesetc.org/. You can find the actual podcast I discuss here in mp3 format.
What I want to accomplish in this post is to transcribe key points from a highly relevant and instructive interview on naturalism that Todd conducted on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving with J.P. Moreland, distinguished professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology on the Biola University campus in La Mirada, CA. J.P. is one of my professors, and I think that I speak for myself as well as countless other Talbot students past and present when I say that taking classes from J.P. provides a unique opportunity to be challenged and inspired by someone who is a true giant in Christian thought. In particular, some of J.P.’s latest works make a persuasive case for theism through the argument from consciousness. J.P. uses this line of argumentation to rebut key tenets of naturalism. In this interview, we will get a flavor of J.P.’s highly complex argument against naturalism, in a form that is accessible and informative to the layman. His ability to make the very complex understandable is a true gift that will help any Christian to better understand and defend the Christian worldview. As an aside, we always get a kick out of discussing “J.P.s latest book” at Talbot. The reason is that J.P. is so prolific in producing new bodies of work, it’s hard to know what his “last book” is, or is that “was”?
The podcast opens by mention of one of J.P.’s latest books, titled The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism, whose content is the guiding force behind the podcast. Todd notes how early in the book, J.P. states that any decent worldview has to be able to “explain what is,” and not “explain it away.” By this simple criterion, J.P. does not believe naturalism qualifies as a decent worldview. There are things about us as human beings that naturalism has to really explain away and can’t really explain, such as consciousness. A naturalist, explains J.P., believes the physical world is all there is, and that the universe started as a physical universe. Yet matter is not conscious, so the naturalist must explain how one can take brute, mindless matter, and rearrange it according to the laws of chemistry and physics such that consciousness (or mind) just pops into existence. Basically, J.P. argues that you can’t get something from nothing, and you can’t get mind from matter. So if naturalism were true, there shouldn’t be any minds or consciousness. Now the believer in God doesn’t have a problem here because the believer in God doesn’t believe you have to get mind from nothing because we start with mind. The fundamental being in our view of the world is himself a mind, so we already begin the universe with consciousness and we don’t have to find a way to get it from nothing.
Todd then asks how does the thoroughgoing naturalist attempt to explain (or explain away) consciousness. J.P. responds that there are two strategies. The first attempt is to deny consciousness is really mental and to try to reduce it or identify it with just the brain. So this attempt is to say that consciousness may seem to be mental from the first person perspective, but it is really nothing but neurons firing in the brain. But this doesn’t work because there are things true of consciousness that are not true of the brain, and vice versa. So they can’t be the same, which is causing increasing difficult for naturalists to sell to the public. The second strategy is just to use the word “emergent,” which is to say when matter reaches a certain stage of evolution, a new property, consciousness, emerges. Thus, consciousness is just an emergent phenomenon when matter reaches a certain stage of complexity. But J.P. believes this is just a name for the problem, and not a solution. It’s like replying to the question “How does a magician get a rabbit out of a hat?” by replying “He gets a rabbit out of the hat.” That’s not a solution. The simple truth is that when the believer in God asks the naturalist for an explanation of consciousness, the naturalist responds that consciousness either isn’t real or it just came from nothing. But this is clearly not an answer to the problem.
Todd and J.P. next discuss the nature of naturalism as a means of thinking and looking at the world. In the book, J.P. talks about a “grand story” or narrative of naturalism. This narrative starts with the idea that the material world is all there is, and that science is our primary way of knowing reality. In fact, all other ways of knowing reality apart from the hard sciences aren’t really legitimate. The naturalist begins a creation account with tiny little “particles” (or “waves”) that rearrange to form more and more complex objects in larger and larger wholes, from molecules up to mountains and to planets, and solar systems and galaxies. So the creation story is about how sub-atomic particles form into more complex chunks of matter, and that is the account of how everything whatsoever came into existence. The problem is this leaves out many things about us, such as consciousness and free will. If you start with matter, it doesn’t behave according to free will, but does what it does entirely determined by the laws of nature. Matter has to do what it does because of the laws of chemistry and physics. That means if “you” were just your brain, or your body, and you were just a material thing, then you would have no free will and would have to behave according to your environment, and the laws of physics and chemistry. J.P. notes that more and more people in the judicial system are treating people as though they’re not responsible for their behavior. He believes this is because of the evolutionary naturalist perspective, because if it is true, then we don’t have free will and we’re not responsible for what we do.
Todd asks J.P. if he can deal further with two aspects of what he just stated. He asks first if it is coherent for a naturalist to talk about how one comes to “know” something. Knowledge seems to be something naturalists cannot explain. The real problem, notes Todd, is knowledge itself. J.P. responds that the act of knowing something is not just an occasion where little molecules bump into one another causing things to happen in his brain. An act of knowing requires him to be conscious or sentient. It requires his thoughts to be of something or about an object. It requires him to be capable of deliberating and following the laws of logic. But the laws of logic govern mind, not matter. So the real question is how can there be such a thing as logic if there weren’t an ultimate mind to ground it. How could there be reason or knowledge? He cites this very problem for Antony Flew, who was the leading atheist in the world for fifty years that recently became a believer in God. One of the reasons Flew gave in his book There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind was that if naturalism is true, then all you have are brains interacting with the environment and that’s it. But knowledge requires there to be a mental realm, a realm of spirit, that can’t be explained by the naturalist.
The other aspect that Todd asks about is “rank determinism.” Basically, if one is a sophisticated enough mathematician, one could tell where everything in the universe ought to be at any given moment. This would lead back to everything being determined from the beginning of time up to now. Todd wonders if the naturalist can be consistent with this radical determinism leading up to and determining all of the things we do or we say or we think right now. J.P. responds that it would be pretty hard to be consistent because if everything is matter, then all behavior would be fixed by prior states of the universe. If everything in this entire system called the universe is governed in its behavior by natural law, where natural law completely determines or fixes the probabilities of what is going to happen next such that there is no free agency, then with the loss of free agency goes the loss of reason. There would be no way for us to deliberate on anything by weighing evidence to see what is the best course of action to take.
You can find my transcription of the second segment of the interview in Part II.
{ 5 comments }
Walterm,
I have to thank you for your gracious apology, well beyond the call of duty. And the rest of what you say is absolutely on the mark. Since people will likely always differ about worldviews and matters epistemic and metaphysical, the most important thing is that they be able to disagree amicably. Bravo!
Tom
Tom, thank you for pointing out my error, and you have my sincere apology. As long as we continue to seek the truth by constantly testing our assumptions and presuppositions, that is really what matters. Whether one’s current position is theistic or naturalistic, the key is to be open to what the other side is arguing based on the merits of the argument only. While you are gracious, some naturalists are not only ungracious, but downright nasty and personal (PZ Myers is a notable example). If more were like you, the dialogue would be much more fruitful.
Walterm wrote:
“Maybe theism is more difficult to prove, but just because it is more difficult to prove does not mean it is false. Since you believe that theism is false a priori, all you are left with is naturalism.”
What I said in my review was:
“But naturalists such as myself like to think that were evidence to accumulate *in favor* of the supernatural hypothesis, we would gracefully acquiesce. After all, it would have been reached with our most reliable mode of justifying beliefs about the world, so on what grounds would we resist?”
I was trying to suggest that I’m not being dogmatic or apriori in my acceptance of naturalism.
This is a moderated blog, but to be fair I want to allow opposing views as long as they’re in a civil manner. I read Tom’s review of J.P.’s book and I would like to make a few comments:
1) I have known J.P. for several years now, and I can say unequivocally that J.P. does not believe that demonstrating the failure of naturalism would make his Christian theism necessarily true. Tom ought to know better than that. J.P. is no fool and he wouldn’t teach anything so foolish. So Tom, what you’re indicating to me is you don’t much about J.P. or what he thinks.
2) Regardless of what science discovers, it really doesn’t matter how much it explains. What science explains is entirely irrelevant to the truth or falsity of theism. If theism is true, then it is true. If it is false, it is false. If I could explain everything about my BMW, would that somehow negate the fact that some guys in Germany actually built it?
3) Tom wrote: “Present explanatory gaps may be closed by scientific and conceptual revolutions undreamt of by Moreland, so it seems premature to say naturalism has forever failed.” Well Tom, when and if you close the gap, only then can you declare victory. Until you do, don’t. J.P. isn’t declaring victory, but making an assessment based on what he feels is his epistemic duty.
4) Tom wrote: “But for supernaturalists such as Moreland, these questions have long since been wrapped up and put to bed. Their main occupation isn’t inquiry, but defending their worldview against the competition.” Again, Tom, you don’t know J.P. I believe YOU are defending your worldview against competition, but what I have heard from J.P. time and time again is that he sees Christianity as a defeasible form of knowledge. He is perfectly willing to give up his worldview in light of compelling evidence against. Are you?
5) Tom wrote: “For those wanting a philo-scientific challenge, the shortcomings of naturalistic explanations of consciousness is the spur to further empirical research and conceptual innovation, not a reason to give up on the Grand Story of naturalism.” Now this is really telling. Tom clearly doesn’t want to give up the grand story of naturalism, but to spur further research to prove out the naturalist story. Now Tom, do you want to find out what is true, or do you want to prove naturalism. Which is it? What J.P. is looking for is truth, and he is fine with going with naturalism if it has greater explanatory power. But obviously he doesn’t feel it is up to the task, so he doesn’t accept it. Maybe theism is more difficult to prove, but just because it is more difficult to prove does not mean it is false. Since you believe that theism is false a priori, all you are left with is naturalism.
For another take on the failure of naturalism, see my review of Moreland’s book at http://www.naturalism.org/Morelandreview.htm
regards,
Tom Clark
Center for Naturalism
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