This post continues my transcription from Part I of the Todd Wilken interview with J.P. Moreland on naturalism as a worldview.
Todd recaps the first segment by noting that J.P. pointed out that in the naturalist worldview, consciousness has to go, knowledge has to go, and free will has to go. His question is what is next that has to go if one is to think consistently as a naturalist? J.P.’s response is that the single biggest thing that is gone in the university is the self. It is widely believed now in the university, according to J.P., that there is no self, no “I,” no ego. Human beings are literally just a conglomeration of atoms and molecules called their brains, and there is no owner to the brain. There is no unified, single “I,” or self. And so psychology, for example, which used to be the study of the soul, or the self, is no longer about that, but behavior. It is the study of different areas of the brain that cause behaviors in this way or that way. So what we have is a disappearance of the self or the ego. And the reason is because if you start with matter, and you rearrange it, then what you get are aggregates or collections of parts. You and I will turn out not to be a single, simple subject or self, but we will just be an aggregate of parts called our brains. But our brain is a collection, an aggregate, a conglomeration of myriad molecules and atoms. Yet “you” and “I” aren’t collections. You are a single, self, or “I.” And you can’t explain how you can get a single self by just rearranging parts into some kind of a heap or an aggregate.
Todd notes in the book that J.P. proposes that the concept that ought to be set in contrast to what he sees as amounts to sheer nihilism in the Christian worldview is the image of God. J.P. responds by asking what if God is really real? If we are actually made in his image, then you would think we would be like God (in certain ways), and we could predict there would be things about us that reflect the very nature of God himself. Thus, any worldview that didn’t begin with God would have trouble accounting for us. What J.P. is suggesting is that God has at least five things true of him:
- God is conscious
- God has free choice
- God has the capacity to engage in reason
- God is a self (in fact, in his case, three selves in the godhead)
- God has value of incredible personal value and worth
All of these things are true of us, without mentioning the matter of human rights. The point is without the image of God, it is very hard to explain where human beings get their value. And it is certainly difficult to explain why we should have equal value, because we’re not equal. Some are athletic and some aren’t. Some are socially useful and some are socially useless. Some are better able to achieve their life aims. Others aren’t so good at achieving their life aims, as they are more indecisive. We have absolutely nothing in common that is equal that matters, if it isn’t the image of God. Now the Christian says we are in the image of God, and indeed Martin Luther King in all of his civil rights activity grounded the equal rights of all human beings in the fact that we did literally have something in common, and that was the image of God. But if that goes by the board (is done away with), so that there is no God much less an image of God, then there becomes no basis for equal human rights because we don’t have anything in common that matters, because we have wide differences of ability and merit, and so on. So J.P. suggests that if we are made in the image of God, there should be things about us such as consciousness, free will, the ability to reason, the fact that we have a self, and that we have great, incredible high equal value. Then we would predict that if you start with matter like the naturalist does, he would not be able to explain these features about us, and indeed the naturalist cannot explain them.
Todd asks if naturalism fails in this way, why is it still tottering around and hasn’t fallen under its own weight? J.P. responds that people have this idea that science supports naturalism. But it really doesn’t because science doesn’t make any statement about worldview. Science doesn’t tell us that there is no spirit, or soul, or consciousness, or free will. What tells us that is the view that says science is all there is, but that is not itself a statement of science. The claim that science is all there is not itself a statement of physics, or chemistry, or science. And so it isn’t science that implies naturalism, it is philosophical naturalism that implies naturalism. And a lot of people are confused on this because they think that science supports naturalism whereas science is indifferent to that question. J.P. says he is a strong advocate of science and a full-blown Christian theist. It isn’t science that supports [the naturalist] worldview, it’s the claim that science is all there is. And again, that is not a scientific assertion.
With Thanksgiving coming up the following day, Todd asks how he should respond to family members who are naturalists that will espouse views that we’re just collections of atoms and neurons firing randomly and that’s what we really are. J.P. responds with the following proposed questions:
- How can you get consciousness from matter?
- How can you get free will from matter that isn’t free?
- How can you get reason from matter that doesn’t follow the rules of reason?
- How can you get value from matter which doesn’t have value within and of itself?
- How do you get persons who are free and consciousness and happen to have value from little particles of matter that don’t have any of this in them?
- How do you get something from nothing?
J.P. notes that the final question is the whole point of what he’s trying to impress on our culture in his book Imago Dei. Finally, Todd asks J.P. if naturalism will eventually collapse under its own weight. J.P. responds that he sees signs of naturalism collapsing, and he thinks we will be facing forms of relativism in its wake that will be an opportunity for us Christians to seize the vacuum that has been left.
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