In his very fine book on the Argument from Reason for God's existence (C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea), Victor Reppert invites us to imagine the reaction of the intellectual world should a proponent of the inerrancy of the Bible say something like the following:
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, a commitment to Scripture's inerrancy. It is not that the methods and institutions of biblical study somehow compel us to accept only interpretations that 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 capable of doubting the Word of God in any respect will wind up doubting it in all respects.
Such a defense of the doctrine of inerrancy would render the opinion of any individual who mounted it irrelevant in any setting outside the church. Certainly such a person would be treated with derision in the secular academy. Critics would reasonably charge that such a belief is based solely upon religious faith, and blind faith at that. It is religious fideism - the idea that we should just believe regardless of the evidence arrayed against our belief or, for that matter, the evidence in favor of it - and fideism is an abdication of our intellectual responsibility to submit our beliefs to the evidence.
Yet this is exactly, mutatis mutandis, what atheistic evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin once said about his commitment to materialism. His commitment, and that of those for whom he speaks, is simply scientific fideism based on blind, irrational faith. Here are Lewontin's words:
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, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow 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 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.... anyone who believes in God can believe in anything.
This is from the pen of the same man who has criticized Creationists for a prior commitment to the truth of Genesis and who has said that that commitment disqualifies creationism as science and makes creationists irrelevant to the discussion of origins. But how is an unfalsifiable, apriori faith commitment to Genesis any different than an unfalsifiable, apriori faith commitment to materialism? If creationists are not credible because they will believe Genesis no matter what the evidence how is their view different from Lewontin's position that he will cling to materialism no matter what the evidence against it? How is the creationist any more closed-minded, any more anti-intellectual than is Lewontin?
The answer is that he is not. Lewontin, and many other Darwinians, are just as religious as any creationist except that their religion is materialism. They hold to it with a tenacity that is impervious to argument and immune to evidence.
Reppert goes on to quote atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel who makes this faith commitment even more explicit:
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 am 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.
Nagel's materialism is based on his wish that God not exist. A Christian's theism is based, let's just say for argument's sake, on his desire that God does exist. Why is the latter considered somehow more intellectually disreputable than the former? Why is one kind of faith considered unacceptable in the public square when the other kind is not?
RLC
