Atheism

The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis (1943) – Kairos Podcast Review on Books & Culture

The Abolition of Man (1943) by C.S. Lewis
Kairos Podcast Review on Books & Culture

Reviewer: David B.C. Tan
Discussant: Micheal Lim

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In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis sets out to persuade his audience of the importance and relevance of universal values such as courage and honor in contemporary society. “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments.” (C.S. Lewis)

By it [right sentiments] Lewis means “emotions conform[ing] to Reason.” As he explains it, “The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it…For Lewis the ability to have right sentiments is what separates humans from animals…The failure to nurture right sentiments ultimately results in the abolition of man, Lewis contends, because modern education produces “what may be called Men without Chests.” (Enc. Britannica)

In Lewis’s template, “the head rules the belly through the chest”—the chest is the mediator between our animal urges and minds and is the mechanism for training and tempering the belly. Without the chest, our disordered loves run wild. (J. Kohm)

Naomi Wolf on the Return of Ancient Demonic Gods in the West

[A new statute with horns and tentacles erected in honor of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on top of NYC Court house]
What are the causes of the ascendancy of irrational cancel-culture spirit in the colleges, the imposition of sexual policies which undermine the traditional family in wider society, the breakdown of social norms leading to eruption of violent street crime, and the ferocious hostility directed against Judeo-Christian values by the American elite and Woke activists in the USA today? I have for years tried to impress friends who asked me this question that there is no rhyme or reason to the tragic disintegration of what was once a great civilization – these are the symptoms of a “spiritual disease.”

At one level, my answer identifies the root problem. I am aware of the prescient warning given by the American Puritan, John Winthrop who charged his compatriots in 1630 to fulfill the responsibility being raised by God as “a city set on a hill” – “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world…But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other Gods, our pleasure and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it.” In other words, their failure to uphold their covenant with God will lead to them becoming a public spectacle for all the world to see.

However, as an observer living outside the USA, I found difficulties spelling out in a concrete manner what comprises the “spiritual disease” that is afflicting the American society. Hence, my answer remains unpersuasive because of its vagueness and lack of specificity. I was therefore pleasantly surprised when I came across an article by Naomi Wolf, “Have the Ancient Gods Returned” which offers a coherent and in-depth analysis of the cultural implosion and the social disintegration that is unravelling right before our eyes. Mind you, Wolf is a public intellectual with whom I least expect to agree with as she is one of the icons of feminism, and a left-wing activist working with the highest political leaders of the country. I have naturally assumed that she would be sympathetic to the anti-Judeo-Christian sentiments that are pervasive among the American elites. However, it seems that she had an epiphany of the dark forces that are energizing the activists who seek to destroy the Judeo-Christian foundations which made the West a great civilization. Her article is well worth reading.

Given below are some excerpts from the article.
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In an essay last year, and in my book The Bodies of Others, I raised a question about existential, metaphysical darkness.

I concluded that I had looked at the events of the past three years using all of my classical education, my critical thinking skills, my knowledge of Western and global history and politics; and that, using these tools, I could not explain the years 2020-present.

Indeed I could not explain them in ordinary material, political or historical terms at all. This is not how human history ordinarily operates.

I could not explain the way the Western world simply switched, from being based at least overtly on values of human rights and decency, to values of death, exclusion and hatred, overnight, en masse — without resorting to reference to some metaphysical evil that goes above and beyond fallible, blundering human agency… Continue reading “Naomi Wolf on the Return of Ancient Demonic Gods in the West”

Leibniz On The Problem of Evil and the Best of all Possible Worlds

Reading Voltaire’s satire Candide as an impressionable young man led me to think lowly of Gottfried Leibniz as a philosopher. In this satire, Voltaire mercilessly ridiculed Leibniz’s philosophy of optimism embodied by Pangloss, the mentor of the protagonist of the tale, Candide. Pangloss’ mindless muttering of the mantra, “All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds,” is plainly absurd when against the backdrop of an unrelenting series of gross injustices, cataclysmic natural disasters like the Lisbon earthquake (1755) and overwhelming personal tragedies that befall the naïve Candide and his love interest Cunegonde.

In Candide, Voltaire was reiterating an objection to theism which was first formulated as a trilemma by the ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus, which goes as follow:
1) “If God is willing to prevent evil but is unable to do so, then he is not omnipotent.”
2) “If God is able to prevent evil but unwilling to do so, then he is not perfectly good.”
3) “If God is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why is there evil in the world?” Continue reading “Leibniz On The Problem of Evil and the Best of all Possible Worlds”

Bertrand Russell’s Pointless Universe versus John Calvin’s Purposeful Providence

Bertrand Russell: Unyielding Grimace Against a Pointless Universe
Such, in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That Man is the product of causes which had no provision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built (p. 39). Continue reading “Bertrand Russell’s Pointless Universe versus John Calvin’s Purposeful Providence”

Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude 1872-1921. Book Review

Remember those sixth-form days when some of us were first thrilled by newly awakened intellectual abilities? We were quick to challenge traditional beliefs and the status quo, and eager to show off our acquaintance with the works of Bertrand Russell. The name Bertrand Russell was whispered with hush awe and quiet reverence. Russell represented to us the ideal of a socially engaged intellectual. Never mind that we couldn’t really understand his more technical papers on mathematical logic. His more popular written books such as Why I Am Not a Christian, Principles of Social Reconstruction and A Free Man’s Worship were sufficient to persuade us to adopt him as an inspiring icon for rebellion. His status as a Nobel Prize laureate decisively clinched an unquestioned hearing from skeptical students.

However, when I actually got down to read Russell for myself, particularly his book Why I Am Not a Christian, I found myself in for a great disappointment. Russell, who was arguably the most outstanding mathematical logician of his day, turned out to be illogical in his analysis of Christianity. He relied on a shoddy knowledge of Christianity. His analysis was full of non-sequitur and question-begging arguments with much scorn and rhetoric thrown in. I concluded that a more fitting title for the book would be Why I am too Prejudiced to Become a Stereotyped Christian. Continue reading “Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude 1872-1921. Book Review”

Moving Beyond Debating the Age of the Earth to Debating Scientific Naturalism

How old is the earth? The question has sparked intense debates among Christians in recent years. The issue is whether the opening chapters of Genesis teach that the earth was created a few thousand years ago (the Young-earth creation) or a few billion years ago (Ancient-earth creation). The debate can become acrimonious when there is no definite answer acceptable to both sides of the debate.

Perhaps the acrimony would be toned down if Christian apologists who are caught up in the debate acknowledge that the issue is actually of secondary significance as Christianity is faced with more serious challenges posed by influential atheistic scientists and philosophers like Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Stephen Hawkings and Daniel Dennett who assert that God is an illusion (Re: Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion & Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell). Surely, it is more urgent for Christian apologists to move beyond their in-house debate on the age of the earth and develop cogent answers to defend the objective reality of God against the atheists’ strident criticisms? Continue reading “Moving Beyond Debating the Age of the Earth to Debating Scientific Naturalism”

Science Uprising and Beyond

I see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower
William Blake

Time for Science Uprising
Scientists like Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Lawrence Kraus claim that the existence of God has been discredited by new discoveries of modern science. To them, contemporary cosmology, evolution and neuroscience have demonstrated conclusively that the universe spontaneously emerged from a quantum vacuum and that human beings are nothing more than evolving complex bio-chemical machines. The idea of God is unnecessary and irrelevant to our quest for knowledge and understanding of humanity and the universe.

Such atheistic claims are not surprising since these scientists espouse a form of scientific naturalism or “scientism” – the view that all phenomena are fundamentally physical. Since all events (including the mental realm of human beings) are due to physical causes, scientific investigation must be restricted to what is physically observable and measurable. Continue reading “Science Uprising and Beyond”

Science and Theology as Analogous Research Programmes – Science and Christianity: Part 6/6

Richard Dawkins, the famous British atheist, famously asserts that since science works, it must be true and we must believe what it says. If Christianity clashes with science, so much the worse for Christianity. For this reason, some college students are persuaded to abandon their Christian faith once they conclude that it has been discredited … Continue reading “Science and Theology as Analogous Research Programmes – Science and Christianity: Part 6/6”

The perception that science has discredited Christianity is based on two assumptions. First, the results of science are empirically verified and indubitable in contrast to the unverifiable claims of Christianity. Second, Christianity not only lacks explanatory power; it is in conflict with the empirical findings of science. For example, God becomes redundant once evolution explains the origins of species and inflationary cosmology explains the origin of the multiverse. We are reminded of the famous incident when Napoleon Bonaparte questioned Pierre Laplace why his large book on cosmology never mentioned the Creator, to which Laplace retorted, “I had no need of that hypothesis.”

However, neither Dawkins nor Laplace should be given the last word. There are other eminent scientists who do not agree that there is conflict between science and Christianity. Furthermore, science itself faces several intractable problems. Continue reading “Science and Theology as Analogous Research Programmes – Science and Christianity: Part 6/6”

Models of Integration of Science and Faith – Science and Christianity: Part 5/6

Critical Integration From a Christian Perspective Our approach to integrating science and Christian faith should be characterized by intellectual integrity and passion. This does not imply that non-Christians do not share these qualities. I am only pointing out that Christians ought to display these qualities as a distinctive of their faith. Arthur Holmes explains, The … Continue reading “Models of Integration of Science and Faith – Science and Christianity: Part 5/6”

Critical Integration From a Christian Perspective
Our approach to integrating science and Christian faith should be characterized by intellectual integrity and passion. This does not imply that non-Christians do not share these qualities. I am only pointing out that Christians ought to display these qualities as a distinctive of their faith. Arthur Holmes explains,

The Christian believes that in all that she does intellectually, socially or artistically, she is handling God’s creation and that is sacred. . . . The scholar’s love of truth becomes an expression of love of God, just as the citizen’s love of justice in society can be an expression of hunger for righteousness, and the artist’s love for the creative and the beautiful expresses love for the Creator” [Arthur Holmes, Idea of Christian College (Eerdmans, 1987), p. 48]

We should recognize that some disciplines may be less directly open to any specific ‘Christian’ approach, such as in mathematics and the physical sciences. Nevertheless, the attitude of the Christian should be an openness to the possibility of integration. Continue reading “Models of Integration of Science and Faith – Science and Christianity: Part 5/6”

Facing Up to the End of Science – Science & Christianity: Part 4/6

A Review of John Horgan, The End Of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age (Basic Books, 1996, 2015) My grandfather preached the good news of the Bible My father preached the good news of Socialism I preach the good news of Science The above slogan once seemed eminently … Continue reading “Facing Up to the End of Science – Science & Christianity: Part 4/6”

A Review of John Horgan, The End Of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age (Basic Books, 1996, 2015)

My grandfather preached the good news of the Bible
My father preached the good news of Socialism
I preach the good news of Science

The above slogan once seemed eminently reasonable since science has delivered unparalleled knowledge and technology to create modern civilisation. However, in recent years there has been increasing suspicion that science may be serving its profound knowledge in a poisoned chalice. Science creates more problems than it solves – problems all too familiar in the form of environmental disasters and weapons of mass destruction.

Perhaps many scientists remain blissfully unaware, if not indifferent, to this deep unease. After all, the prevailing image of the scientist is someone dressed in white clinical apparel working quietly in sanitised labs, oblivious to the hassles and tensions of life outside. But, we wonder, how can the dull routines of the lab, such as cleaning test tubes and animal cages, sustain the motivation for scientific research in the face of increasing doubts and criticisms? John Horgan, a senior writer for Scientific American and author of the book The End of Science, exploits his literary expertise effectively to offer vivid introductions and personal insights into the aspirations, audacity and hubris of some of the major icons of the scientific pantheon: Richard Dawkins, Francis Crick, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen J. Gould, Roger Penrose and Ilaya Prigogine. Continue reading “Facing Up to the End of Science – Science & Christianity: Part 4/6”