Critique One - Part Eight - Bad Coffee

I've been trying to imagine a way to describe in brief my summary thoughts on Mr. Russell's presentation on 'Why I am not a Christian' in particular, and on Atheism in general. Bad Coffee kept coming to mind: it is weak and doesn't do what it's supposed to. Bad coffee looks more like tea, and warm milk is about as effective a pick-me-up. What has become clear in the past few weeks is that when one chooses to jettison God, some real mental gymnastics has to take place to make sense of the world. Mr. Russell's arguments were like the bad coffee, weak and ineffective.

In the end, as C.S. Lewis so plainly put it, Atheism turns out to be too simple, a "boy's philosophy". Atheism has no ability to explain why we are here, who we are, how we should behave, or what will happen to us. What it offers in return is a stubborn individualism, the human intellect (which to be consistent turns out to be just a happy accident of time and chance), and science. Per my last post, i'd like to say a few last words about science. These excerpts are taken from C.S. Lewis and his paper, De Futilitate.

"The physical sciences, then, depend on the validity of logic just as much as metaphysics or mathematics. If popular thought feels 'science' to be different from all other kinds of knowledge because science is experimentally verifiable, popular thought is mistaken. Experimental verification is not a new kind of assurance coming in to supply the deficiencies of mere logic. We should therefore abandon the distinction between scientific and non-scientific thought. The proper distinction is between logical and non-logical thought...

we can make no distinction between science and other logical exercises of thought, for if logic is discredited science must go down whith it...

logic is a real insight into the way in which real things have to exist...Unless we take to be knowledge is an illusion, we must hold in thinking we are not reading rationality into an irrational universe but responding to a rationality with which the universe has always been saturated...

I am well aware that many whose philosophy involves this subjective view of values do in fact sometimes make great efforts for the cause of justice or freedom. But that is because they forget their philosophy. When they really get to work they think taht justice is really good-objectively obligatory whether any one likes it or not: they remember their opposite philosophical belief only when they go back to the lecture room...In a word, unless we allow ultimate reality to be moral, we cannot morally condemn it...

The defiance of the good atheist hurled at an apparently ruthless and idiotic cosmos is really an unconscious homage to something in or behind that cosmos which he recognizes as infinitely valuable and authoritative: for if mercy and justice were really only private whims of his own with no objective and impersonal roots, and if her realized this, he could not go on being indignant. The fact that he arraigns heaven itself for disregarding them means that at some level of his mind he knows they are enthroned in a higher heaven still...

we then of course have to ask how this ultimate morality in the universe can be reconciled with the actual course of events. It is really the same sort of problem that meets us in science. The pell-mell of phenomena, as we first observe them, seems to be full of anomalies and irregularitities; but being assured that reality is logical we go on framing and trying out hypotheses to show that the appaent irregularities are not really irregular at all. The history of science is the history of that process. The corresponding process whereby, having admitted that reality in the last resort must be moral, we attempt to explain evil, is the history of theology."

I want to make clear first and foremost that it is not my intention to demean or fail to recognize the advances and benefits brought about by science. I am a structural engineer by trade, and therefore am very thankful that there are some absolute constants in this world. If things didn't behave predictably I could not do my job, nor design structural elements with any assurance that they will behave in a manner consistent with what has already been observed. What I am saying is that we cannot take science, which is experimentation and observation, and use it as an explanatory tool for the most important and far reaching questions for humankind: namely origins, meaning, morality and destiny. It is not just that science has not been formulated or applied properly to answer these questions, it is that science cannot answer these questions.

What answer do I then give to these questions of origin, meaning, morality and destiny? Not a person, not an organization or a denomination, not a program or thought form - I present Jesus - God, second person of the Trinity, the Word, the way, the truth, the life. If we take the Word and really examine what it has to say we find it is the most cogent, consistent and complete explanation available to those most important questions in life.

It has been said that in Christianity and the Bible joy is central and sorrow is peripheral, whereas in the world sorrow is central and joy is peripheral. It has also been said that Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, but has been found difficult and left untried. A hard look at Jesus and the Christian-Biblical worldview will provoke serious thought about difficult issues, but will provide a non-contradictory answer. The alternative, i'm afraid, amounts to little more than a cup of bad coffee.