Two Candid Admissions

Last week Viewpoint discussed the book by philosopher Victor Reppert titled C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea. Reppert examines the corrosive effect that metaphysical naturalism, if true, has on the status of Reason. Reppert's basic argument is an elaboration of an argument employed by C.S.Lewis, but Reppert expands it and addresses several objections raised by critics.

His contention is that if matter, energy, and physical forces like gravity are all there is then everything is ultimately reducible to material, non-rational particles. If so, our beliefs are just brain states that can be completely explained in terms of non-rational physical forces. But any belief that is fully explicable in terms of non-rational causes cannot itself be rationally grounded. Therefore, if materialism is true, none of our beliefs are rationally grounded, Reason itself is a non-rational illusion, and both truth and the reliability of scientific invetsigation are chimerical. Thus the materialist has no rational grounds for believing that materialism is true or that anything is true.

Whatever the eventual verdict on this argument and its several derivatives is, one of the things the author does which is hard to gainsay is show that the atheists' claim to intellectual superiority based upon the rationality of their beliefs is something of a self-delusion. It intimidates the unsophisticated and unsuspecting perhaps, like suddenly encountering a bloated puffer fish, but there's nothing there to be particularly fearful of.

Reppert quotes two well-known intellectuals, one a leading materialist scientist and the other a philosopher, who inadvertantly reveal that whatever role reason plays in their professional lives, it has little to do with their ultimate commitments and that some of Reason's most eminent proponents are perfectly willing to abandon it when it suits their purpose. The first passage is from Richard Lewontin:

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community of unsubstantiated just-so stories [in evolutionary biology] because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material causes, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who believes in God can believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that Miracles may happen. (1997)

This is an extraordinary expression of dogmatic faith in naturalism, and it's not just non-rational, it's anti-rational. To see how, Reppert asks us to imagine the reaction of a materialist to a similar claim made by a Biblical theist:

Our willingness to accept biblical teachings that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between faith and unbelief. We take the side of Scripture in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the existence of unsubstantiated just so stories in Scripture, because we have a prior commitment to Scripture's inerrancy. It is not that the methods and institutions of biblical study somehow compel us to accept only interpretations which are in accordance with the Bible's inerrancy, but on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to biblical inerrancy to create a method of biblical study that [produces explanations that are consistent with inerrancy, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, our commitment to inerrancy is absolute, for we cannot allow doubt to get its foot in the door. For anyone doubting the Word of God in any respect will end up doubting it in all respects.

Any Christian who wrote something like this would be laughed to scorn by skeptics, including, no doubt, Lewontin himself, yet a scientist of his stature writes almost exactly this, and his colleagues merely nod sagely and think nothing of it.

The second quote is from philosopher Thomas Nagel and his book The Last Word:

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper - namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God, and naturally, hope that I'm right about my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. (1997)

And Freudians accuse believers of engaging in irrational wish-fulfillment. Nagel's atheism is based upon a hope that there is no God, which is itself based upon a subjective preference for a Godless universe. The point here is that neither Lewontin nor Nagel is ultimately basing his anti-theism on anything rational. Even if the evidence went against them they would not yield in their adamantine refusal to accept the existence of God. Their ultimate commitments are founded primarily upon an aesthetic predilection for one kind of reality as opposed to another. The much vaunted role of Reason in the rejection by atheists of belief in God is shown, in these two men at least, to be quite irrelevant.