Tag Archives: Enlightenment

Philosophy

Why Should Christians Study Philosophy?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In some Christian circles, there is great distrust of philosophy.  Of course, this is not just a Christian issue, as there are many non-Christians who also dismiss philosophy as a waste of time, at best, and dangerous, at worst.  Those who think it is a waste of time sometimes claim that the vast majority of people know nothing about philosophies or philosophers, and that philosophy, therefore, has a negligible effect on society.

Is that true?  Historian Jonathan Israel, an expert on the European Enlightenment, disagrees.  Read what Israel has to say about the role of philosophy in the Enlightenment:

[T]hose who inveighed most obsessively against new ideas before and after 1789 also insisted that most people then, as now, neither knew nor cared anything about ‘philosophy.’  Yet practically all late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century commentators were convinced, and with some reason, that while most failed to see how philosophy impinged on their lives, and altered the circumstances of their time, they had all the same been ruinously led astray by ‘philosophy’; it was philosophers who were chiefly responsible for propagating the concepts of toleration, equality, democracy, republicanism, individual freedom, and liberty of expression and the press, the batch of ideas identified as the principal cause of the near overthrow of authority, tradition, monarchy, faith, and privilege.  Hence, philosophers specifically had caused the revolution.

Throne, altar, aristocracy, and imperial sway, according to spokesmen of the Counter-Enlightenment, had been brought to the verge of extinction by ideas which most people know absolutely nothing about. Most of those who had supported what conservative and middle-of-the road observers considered corrosive and pernicious democratic concepts had allegedly done so unwittingly, or without fully grasping the real nature of the ideas on which the ringing slogans and political rhetoric of the age rested. Yet if very few grasped or engaged intellectually with the core ideas in question this did not alter the fact that fundamentally new ideas had shaped, nurtured, and propagated the newly insurgent popular rhetoric used in speeches and newspapers to arouse the people against tradition and authority. Indeed, it seemed obvious that it was ‘philosophy’ which had generated the revolutionary slogans, maxims, and ideologies of the pamphleteers, journalists, demagogues, elected deputies, and malcontent army officers who, in the American, French, Dutch, and Italian revolutions of the 1770s, 1780s, and 1790s, as well as the other revolutions which followed proclaimed and justified a fundamental break with the past.  

According to Israel, the philosophers supplied the ideas that provoked the revolutions of the Enlightenment.  Those who did not listen to what the philosophers were saying were ultimately overrun by their ideas anyway.  Is this still the case today?  Professor Thomas Howe would say “yes”: 

The significance of these observations for our study is that the same is true today. The influence of philosophy on the day-to-day lives of the people is by far not negligible, and this is even more true for Christians. . . . For the Christian, philosophy is communicated to the congregation through the pulpit. Pastors read and study and attempt to keep up on current events.  But it is precisely in the books, journals, and magazines they read that philosophy is communicated to them and through them to their congregations—and this happens today, as it did leading up to the Enlightenment, without any realization that it is going on. In terms of a basic principle we might say, the less familiar we are with philosophy, the more likely it is to influence us without our being aware.

Should all Christians rush out and take philosophy classes?  Probably not, but some of us should, and probably many more than currently are.  Those who have no interest in philosophy should, at a minimum, be supportive of those Christians who do have interest.  They are watchmen on the tower, and we need them.

Philosophy

Must We See to Believe?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Thomas, the disciple of Jesus, is famous for the following statement: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

There have always been people like Thomas who demand that they directly experience something before they believe it exists.  During the Enlightenment in Europe, the philosophical theory of empiricism came to embody this principle for the modern world.

According to Garrett DeWeese, “the Enlightenment doctrine of empiricism holds that all knowledge of the world is empirical,” or all knowledge comes from our sensory experience.  The philosopher David Hume took this notion so far that he denied that we could know that our selves exist.

DeWeese continues:

Today the spectacular successes of the natural sciences have enshrined empirical investigation as by far the best – and for most people, the only – way to know.  But what about things we can’t sense?  Is nonempirical knowledge possible?  The question is crucial, for a great many important things can’t be known through our senses – things such as whether we have a soul and whether God exists.

If empiricism is true, then our knowledge becomes incredibly limited, and, in fact, the Romantics and German idealists that came after Hume and Kant were repelled by empiricism and rejected it as far too limiting of human knowledge.  Is empiricism true?

No.  Notice first that the claim “All knowledge of the world is empirical” is itself not an empirical statement.  How could we know that [claim] through our senses?  The claim is self-refuting.  But beyond that, there are good reasons to think that at least some knowledge of the world is nonempirical . . . .  Beliefs that certain things exist may be inferred from empirical observations.  This is how we justify belief in such things as electrons, gravitational fields, beauty, or love.  And similarly for belief in God.

DeWeese further explains:

We can know some things without using our senses at all.  For example, we can know much about ourselves through introspection (a nonempirical process).  We can know that we have minds that think, believe, hope, fear, and so on, and that we are not identical to our bodies.  Many ethicists claim that moral knowledge is accessible through intuition or conscience or pure reason.

Here is the bottom line.  Our senses serve us well, but they are limited.  We are more than our senses, and we can know more than what we directly experience with our senses.  Our lives would, in fact, be unlivable if we could only know what our senses directly bring to us. 

Unlivable?  Look at the words of David Hume, one of the most famous empiricists of modern history, speaking of his empiricist theories:

Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium. . . . I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three of four hours of amusement, I wou’d return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain’d, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.

Philosophy, Polls, Science and God

How Should Religion and Science Interact?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

During the Renaissance and Enlightenment, philosophers continuously changed their views on how science and religion should interact.  Philosopher William Lawhead describes the continuum chronologically in his textbook The Voyage of Discovery.

Initially, most scientists and philosophers “saw religion and science as co-equal partners in the search for truth.”

Lawhead continues: “Gradually the viewpoint emerged that the claims of revealed religion should be accepted, but only after they have been trimmed down to conform to the scientific outlook.”  Put another way, religious claims must be confirmed by science.

The third stage of development was deism – the belief that the world is wholly rational on its own and that human reason alone can answer questions of nature, religion, and morality.  The deists retained God as the Creator of the universe, but believed that God did not intervene in nature after he created it.

Following deism, “Agnosticism or religious skepticism began to appear in the works of such thinkers as David Hume.  The agnostics urged that we must suspend judgment concerning God’s existence, for reason does not give us any grounds for believing in a deity, although it cannot prove that one does not exist.”

Lawhead explains that “finally, full-blown naturalism or atheism appeared. . . . Its proponents claimed that the philosophical and scientific evidence is stacked against the God hypothesis.  Therefore the rational person will reject it, just as we have the flat-earth theory and the theory that diseases have supernatural causes.”

What is fascinating to me is that all of these views are still held by our contemporary society, hundreds of years later.  That is one reason I find the study of philosophy to be so useful; the ideas never go out of style.  In fact, the same ideas are repeated over and over again throughout history.

What about you?  Which of these five views do you hold about the interaction of science and religion?  Please vote in the poll below and leave comments explaining your vote.

Morality, Philosophy

Will Science and Technology Lead Us to Utopia?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Many people in our western civilization are optimistic that things are always getting better.  If we continue to invest in education, if we produce more advanced technology, and if we push scientific understanding as far as it can go, then we will eventually reach a paradise on earth.  This paradise is inevitable, they believe.

This optimism can be traced back to the eighteenth century, to the period known as the Enlightenment.  The Enlightenment thinkers sincerely believed that man’s reasoning powers were unlimited and that science and technology would eventually prevail.  According to Professor William F. Lawhead, one of the central beliefs of the Enlightenment was that “all problems, theoretical or social, can be solved through science and concerted, rational effort.”  Sound familiar?

Those who continue to hold to the ideals of the Enlightenment, however, have at least one major counter-example to answer to, that of the Holocaust.  I was reminded of this counter-example by Professor J. T. Bridges, whose research yielded the following chilling quotation from author Michael Berenbaum:

The Holocaust, by its scope, nature, and magnitude transforms our understanding of human culture and human existence.  An unspoken premise of the advocates of culture and education is that the refinements of culture and learning somehow make us into better people and intensify our moral worth.  Yet the Holocaust was perpetrated not by the least cultured and least sophisticated of nations but by the most cultured and most advanced of societies.  Furthermore, the elements within that society that proved capable of perpetrating the evils were not the least cultured, but came from all spectrums of society including philosophers and scientists, musicians and engineers, lawyers and ministers, artists and intellectuals.  No segment of German society proved immune. . . . We see that people could love good music and kill young children.

A people with some of the most advanced science and technology, sophisticated culture, turned into Nazi Germany.  You will excuse me if I harbor some doubts about the utopian hopes of our modern day Enlightened.  Clearly science and technology, education and culture did nothing but make the Nazis into more scientifically advanced, more educated, and more culturally sophisticated killers.

Atheism, Church History, Existence of God, Human Nature, Philosophy, Religion, Skeptics

Does Mankind Really Need God?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In studying church history, I’ve  been looking at the period often called the Enlightenment.  During this time, a movement swept through Europe which attempted to throw off the authority of divine revelation and place man on his rightful throne as the center of all knowledge and wisdom.

Historian Clyde Manschreck suggested that:

Man’s rational powers in league with science made dependence on God seemingly unnecessary.  Men were confident that they had the tools with which to unlock the mysteries of the universe.  Former distrust of human reason and culture, as seen in the traditional emphases on depravity, original sin, predestination, and self-denial, gave way to confidence in reason, free will, and the ability of man to build a glorious future.

Enlightenment values have continued to this day.  Many of the skeptics I know have a deep distrust of authority figures and tend to think of their own abilities as more than adequate to get them through life successfully.  One skeptical friend of mine told me that the only person he could count on to solve any of his problems was himself.  If all you need is yourself, then what need have you of God?

The Enlightenment, in some respects, strikes me as a philosophical temper tantrum against the authority and rightful rule of God over man.  Is man truly able to go it alone?  Is the world getting better due to secular human wisdom?  How you answer these questions has a lot to do with whether you believe in or trust God.

If man needs no authority over him, if he can get the job done on his own, than the Enlightenment was correct.  God, as another friend of mine recently told me, is unnecessary.  We can get along just fine without him.

I don’t know about you, but I think that coming out of the 20th century, a century with more killing of human life than all other centuries combined, you have to be nuts to think we can solve our own problems.  But that’s just me… maybe we just hit a little bump in the road.