Psychology Topic and Mode Rationale Assignment

Overview

You will submit a topic with a 200-word rationale for your topic and how you plan to present it to the community (with at least 3 cited sources)
detailing why the issue is relevant to public policy and the mode of choice is being chosen. I must approve your topic prior to submitting it for grading. Please email a quick synopsis of your selected topic for advocacy. 

Please submit assignment in the following format:

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Include title page in APA format with Running head;

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Paper must be at least 200 words;

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Do not use personals experiences, or the words “I,” “you,” “me,” or “us” in your papers. Must be based strictly from research using the course text or JFL Online Library.

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Format paper in Times New Roman, 12-point font, with 1” margins all around paper.

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Type paper in paragraph format (5-7 sentences per paragraph).

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Remember citations are placed before the period in a sentence. Ex: Human services professionals can assist in referring clients to additional resources (Sire, 2009). 

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Indent paper at the beginning of every paragraph.

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Do not justify your paper. Align all paragraph margins to the left side of paper.

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Include an APA formatted Reference page at the end of paper on a new page.

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Submit paper in assignment area located in Module/Week Two folder. 

For this assignment, you will draw on your studies to produce an advocacy plan for the issue featured in the
Persuasive Essay and using the communicative mode of your choice. The issue in the
Persuasive Essay will be used to create a local advocacy project. After giving some thought to any specific action plan(s) to be encouraged, the other key part of this assignment is to choose an appropriate
mode for how this advocacy might work (e.g., oral, written, visual, digital, live, online, recorded, etc.).

You will be given an opportunity to justify your choice of mode, so the choice itself needs to be a rhetorically sound, deliberate, and based on the conditions under which the desired audience will encounter the advocacy piece.

Instructions

The aims of this assignment are twofold: 1) to demonstrate an awareness of what constitutes effective advocacy (e.g., its differences from persuasion), and 2) to show a strong awareness of the rhetorical benefits of different modes of communication, as well as their weaknesses.

Part 1

Topic and Mode Rationale: You will submit a topic with a 200-word rationale for the mode of choice (with at least 3 cited sources) detailing why the issue is relevant to public policy and the mode of choice is being chosen.

Note: Your assignment will be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.

Page 2 of 2

The Universe Next Door

James W. Sire

Sire, J. W. (2020). The Universe Next Door. InterVarsity Press. 

https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9780830849390

IF THEISM LASTED SO LONG, what could possibly have happened to undermine it? If it satisfactorily answered all our basic questions, provided a refuge for our fears and hope for our future, why did anything else come along? Answers to these questions can be given on many levels. The fact is that many forces operated to shatter the basic intellectual unity of the West.1

Deism developed, some say, as an attempt to bring unity out of a chaos of theological and philosophical discussion which in the seventeenth century became bogged down in interminable quarrels—even religious wars—over what began to seem even to the disputants like trivial questions. Perhaps John Milton had such questions in mind when he envisioned the fallen angels making an epic game of philosophical theology:

Others apart sat on a Hill retir’d

In thoughts more elevate, and reason’d high

Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will and Fate,

Fixt Fate, Free will, Foreknowledge absolute,

And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.2

After decades of wearying discussion, Lutheran, Puritan, and Anglican divines might well have wished to look again at points of agreement. Deism to some extent is a response to this, though the direction such agreement took put deism rather beyond the limits of traditional Christianity.

Another factor in the development of deism was a change in the location of the authority for knowledge about the divine; it shifted from the special revelation found in Scripture to the presence of Reason, “the candle of God,” in the human mind or to intuition, “the inner light.”3 Why should such a shift in authority take place?

One of the reasons is especially ironic. It is linked with an implication of theism which, when it was discovered, was very successfully developed. Through the Middle Ages, due in part to the rather Platonic theory of knowledge that was held, the attention of theistic scholars and intellectuals was directed toward God. The idea was that knowers in some sense become what they know. And since one should become in some sense good and holy, one should study God. Theology was thus considered the queen of the sciences (which at that time simply meant knowledge), for theology was the science of God.

If people studied animals or plants or minerals (zoology, biology, chemistry, and physics), they were lowering themselves. This hierarchical view of reality is really more Platonic than theistic or Christian, because it picks up from Plato the notion that matter is somehow, if not evil, then at least irrational and certainly not good. Matter is something to be transcended, not to be understood.

But as more biblically oriented minds began to recognize, this is God’s world—all of it. And though it is a fallen world, it has been created by God and has value. It is indeed worth knowing and understanding. Furthermore, God is a rational God, and his universe is thus rational, orderly, knowable. Operating on this basis, scientists began investigating the form of the universe. A picture of God’s world began to emerge; it was seen to be like a huge, well-ordered mechanism, a giant clockwork, whose gears and levers meshed with perfect mechanical precision. Such a picture seemed both to arise from scientific inquiry and to prompt more inquiry and stimulate more discovery about the makeup of the universe. In other words, science as we now know it was born and was amazingly successful.

At the same time, of course, there were those who distrusted the findings of the scientists. The case of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) is famous and, in a quite distorted form, is often cited today as proof of the antiscientific nature of Christian theism. In fact, Galileo as well as other Renaissance scientists such as Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), Francis Bacon (1561–1626), and Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) held fully Christian worldviews.4 Moreover, in Bacon’s words, knowledge became power, power to manipulate and bring creation more fully under human dominion. This view is echoed in modern parlance by J. Bronowski: “I define science as the organization of our knowledge in such a way that it commands more of the hidden potential in nature.”5 If this way of obtaining knowledge about the universe was so successful, why not apply the same method to knowledge about God?

In Christian theism, of course, such a method was already given a role to play, for God was said to reveal himself in nature. The depth of content, however, that was conveyed in such general revelation was considered limited; much more was made known about God in special revelation. But deism denies that God can be known by revelation, by special acts of God’s self- expression in, for example, Scripture or the incarnation. Having cast out Aristotle as an authority in matters of science, deism began to cast out Scripture as an authority in theology and to allow only the application of “human” reason. As Peter Medawar says, “The 17th-century doctrine of the necessity of reason was slowly giving way to a belief in the sufficiency of reason.”6 Deism thus sees God only in “Nature,” by which was meant the system of the universe. And since the system of the universe is seen as a giant clockwork, God is seen as the clockmaker.

In some ways, we can say that limiting knowledge about God to general revelation is like finding that eating eggs for breakfast makes the morning go well, and then eating only eggs for breakfast (and maybe lunch and dinner too) for the rest of one’s life (which now unwittingly becomes rather shortened!). To be sure, theism assumes that we can know something about God from nature. But it also holds that there is much more to know than can be known from nature and that there are other ways to come to know.

BASIC DEISM

As Frederick Copleston explains, deism historically is not really a “school” of thought. In the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries more than a few thinkers came to be called deists or called themselves deists. These thinkers held a number of related views, but not all held every doctrine in common. John Locke (1632–1704), for example, did not reject the idea of revelation, but he did insist that human reason was to be used to judge it.7 Some cold deists, like Voltaire (1694–1778), were hostile to Christianity; some warm deists, like Locke, were not.8 Some, like Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), believed in the immortality of the soul; some did not. Some believed God left his creation to function on its own; some believed in providence. Some believed in a mildly personal God; others did not. So deists were much less united on basic issues than were theists.9 Moreover, as we will see later on, some forms of popular deism, such as moralistic therapeutic deism, are thought of by some people as fully Christian.

Still, it is helpful to think of deism as a system and to state that system in a relatively extreme form, for in that way we will be able to grasp the implications various “reductions” of theism were beginning to have in the eighteenth century. Naturalism, as we shall see, pushes these implications even further.

Whatever God hath revealed is certainly true: no doubt can be made of it. This is the proper object of faith: but whether it be a divine revelation or no, reason must judge. . . . Nothing that is contrary to, and inconsistent with, the clear and self-evident dictates of reason, has a right to be urged or assented to as a matter of faith, wherein reason hath nothing to do.

John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding 4.18

As in theism, the most important proposition regards the existence and character of God. Warm deism—such as that of Franklin, who confessed, “I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his Providence” —retains enough sense of God’s personality that Franklin thought this God “ought to be worshipped.”10 But cold deism eliminates most features of personality God is said to display. He is only a transcendent force or energy, a Prime Mover or First Cause, a beginning to the otherwise infinite regress of past causes. But he is really not a he, though the personal pronoun remains in the language used about him. He does not care for his creation; he does not love it. He has no “personal” relationship to it at all. Certainly he did not become incarnate in Jesus. He is purely monotheistic. As Thomas Paine said, “The only idea man can affix to the name of God is first cause, the cause of all things.”11

A modern deist of sorts, Buckminster Fuller, expressed his faith this way: “I have faith in the integrity of the anticipatory intellectual wisdom which we may call ‘God.’”12 But Fuller’s God is not a person to be worshiped, but merely an intellect or force to be recognized.

To the deist, then, God is distant, foreign, alien. The lonely state this leaves humanity in, however, was not seemingly felt by early deists. Almost two centuries passed before this implication was played out on the field of human emotions.

In cold deism the system of the universe is closed in two senses. First, it is closed to God’s reordering, for he is not “interested” in it. He merely brought it to be. Therefore, no miracles or events that reveal any special interests of God are possible. Any tampering or apparent tampering with the machinery of the universe would suggest that God had made a mistake in the original plan, and that would be beneath the dignity of an all-competent deity.

Second, the universe is closed to human reordering because it is locked up in a clocklike fashion. To be able to reorder the system, any human being alone or with others would have to be able to transcend it, get out of the chain of cause and effect. But this we cannot do. We should note, however, that this second implication is not much recognized by deists. Most continue to assume, as we all do apart from reflection, that we can act to change our environment.

To be sure, deists do not deny that humans are personal. Each of us has self-consciousness and, at least on first glance, self-determination. But these have to be seen in the light of human dimensions only. That is, as human beings we have no essential relation to God—as image to original—and thus we have no way to transcend the system in which we find ourselves.

Bishop François Fénelon (1651–1715), criticizing the deists of his day, wrote, “They credit themselves with acknowledging God as the creator whose wisdom is evident in his works; but according to them, God would be neither good nor wise if he had given man free will—that is, the power to sin, to turn away from his final goal, to reverse the order and be forever lost.”13 Fénelon put his finger on a major problem within deism: human beings have lost their ability to act significantly. If we cannot “reverse the order,” then we cannot be significant. We can only be puppets. If an individual has personality, it must then be a type that does not include the element of self-determination.

Deists, of course, recognize that human beings have intelligence (to be sure, they emphasize human reason), a sense of morality (deists are very interested in ethics), a capacity for community and for creativity. But none of these, while built into us as created beings, is grounded in God’s character. None has any special relationship to God; each is on its own.

Here there is a distinction between warm and cold deists. Deism is the historical result of the decay of robust Christian theism. That is, specific commitments and beliefs of traditional Christianity are gradually abandoned. The first and most significant belief to be eroded was the full personhood and trinitarian nature of God. Reducing God to a force or ultimate intelligence eventually had catastrophic results. In fact, as we shall see, not only naturalism but nihilism is the final result. Were the history of worldviews a matter of the immediate working out of rational implications of a change in the idea of the really real, a belief in an afterlife would have immediately disappeared. But it didn’t. Nor did a belief in morality; that took another century. So warm deists, those closest to Christian theists, persisted in the notion of an afterlife, and cold deists, those further away, did not.

In deism human reason becomes autonomous. That is, without relying on any revelation from the outside—no Scripture, no messages from God via living prophets or dreams and visions—human beings have the ability to know themselves, the universe, and even God. As John Locke put it, “Nothing that is contrary to, and inconsistent with, the clear and self-evident dictates of reason, has a right to be urged or assented to as a matter of faith, wherein reason has nothing to do.”14

Because the universe is essentially as God created it, and because people have the intellectual capacity to understand the world around them, they can learn about God from a study of his universe. The Scriptures, as we saw above, give a basis for it, for the psalmist wrote, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1). Of course, theists too maintain that God has revealed himself in nature. But for a theist God has also revealed himself in words—in propositional, verbalized revelation to his prophets and the various biblical writers. And, Christian theists maintain, God has also revealed himself in his Son, Jesus—“the Word became flesh” (John 1:14). But for deists God does not communicate with people. No special revelation is necessary, and none has occurred.

Émile Bréhier, a historian of philosophy, sums up well the difference between deism and theism:

We see clearly that a new conception of man, wholly incompatible with the Christian faith, had been introduced: God the architect who produced and maintained a marvelous order in the universe had been discovered in nature, and there was no longer a place for the God of the Christian drama, the God who bestowed upon Adam “the power to sin and to reverse the order.” God was in nature and no longer in history; he was in the wonders analyzed by naturalists and biologists and no longer in the human conscience, with feelings of sin, disgrace, or grace that accompanied his presence; he had left man in charge of his own destiny.15

The God who was discovered by the deists was an architect, but not a lover or a judge or personal in any way. He was not one who acted in history. He simply had left the world alone. But humanity, while in one sense the maker of its own destiny, was yet locked into the closed system. Human freedom from God was not a freedom to anything; in fact, it was not a freedom at all.

One tension in deism is found at the opening of Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man (1732–1734). Pope writes,

Say first, of God above or man below,

What can we reason but from what we know?

Of man what see we but his station here

From which to reason, or to which refer?

Through worlds unnumbered though the God be known,

’Tis ours to trace him only in our own.16

These six lines state that we can know God only through studying the world around us. We learn from data and proceed from the specific to the general. Nothing is revealed to us outside that which we experience. Then Pope continues, He who through vast immensity can pierce,

See worlds on worlds compose one universe,

Observe how system into system runs,

What other planets circle other suns,

What varied being peoples ev’ry star,

May tell why heav’n has made us as we are.

But of this frame the bearings and the ties,

The strong connections, nice dependencies,

Gradations just, has thy pervading soul

Looked through? or can a part contain the whole?17

Pope assumes here a knowledge of God and of nature that is not capable of being gained by experience. He even admits this as he challenges us as readers on whether we really have “looked through” the universe and seen its clockwork. But if we haven’t seen it, then presumably neither has Pope. How then does Pope know it is a vast, all-ordered clockwork?

One can’t have it both ways. Either (1) all knowledge comes from experience and we, not being infinite, cannot know the system as a whole, or (2) some knowledge comes from another source—for example, from innate ideas built into us or from revelation from the outside. But Pope, like most deists, discounts revelation. So we have a tension in Pope’s epistemology. And it was just such tensions that made eighteenth-century deism an unstable worldview.

Deism’s ethics in general is founded on the notion that built into human nature is the capacity to sense the difference between good and evil. Human reason is not “fallen” as in Christian theism; so when it is employed by people of good will, it results in moral discernment. Of course, human beings are free not to do what they discern as good; evil then is a result of human beings not conforming to their inherent nature.18

So much for human good and evil. But what about natural evil? Natural events—floods, hurricanes, earthquakes—bring disaster, massive pain, and suffering to many. Deists do not consider either human reason or the universe itself to be “fallen.” Rather it is in its normal state. How, then, can the normal universe in which we experience so much tragedy still be good? Isn’t God, the omnipotent Creator, responsible for everything as it is? Doesn’t this world reflect either what God wants or what he is like? Is God, then, really good?

While it is probably unfair to charge deism itself with the confusion illustrated by Alexander Pope, it is instructive to see what can happen when the implications of deism are exposed. Pope writes:

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;

All chance, direction which thou canst not see;

All discord, harmony not understood;

All partial evil, universal good;

And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,

One truth is clear, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.19

This position ends in destroying ethics. If whatever is is right, then there is no evil. Good becomes indistinguishable from evil. As Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) said, “If God exists, he must be the devil.” Or, worse luck, there must not be good at all. For without the ability to distinguish, there can be neither one nor the other, neither good nor evil. Ethics disappears.

It is surely necessary to point out that not all deists saw (or now see) that their assumptions entail Pope’s conclusions. Some felt, in fact, that Jesus’ ethical teachings were really natural law expressed in words. And, of course, the Sermon on the Mount does not contain anything like the proposition “Whatever is, is right.” A deeper study of the deists would, I believe, lead to the conclusion that these early deists simply were inconsistent and did not recognize it.

Alexander Pope himself is inconsistent, for while he held that whatever is is right, he also berated humanity for pride (which, if it is, must be right!).

In pride, in reas’ning pride our error lies;

All quit their sphere and rush into the skies.

Pride still aiming at blessed abodes;

Men would be angels, angels would be gods. . . .

And who but wishes to invert the laws

Of order sins against th’ Eternal Cause.20

For a person to think of himself more highly than he ought was pride. Pride was wrong, even a sin. Yet note: a sin not against a personal God but against the “Eternal Cause,” against a philosophic abstraction. Even the word sin takes on a new color in such a context. More important, however, the whole notion of sin must disappear if one holds on other grounds that whatever is, is right.

If deists were to be consistent to the clockmaker/clockwork metaphor, they would be little interested in history. As Bréhier has pointed out, they sought knowledge of God primarily in nature as understood in the growing content of natural science. The course of Jewish history as recorded in the Bible was largely dismissed as legend, at least partially because it insisted on God’s direct action on and among his chosen people. The accounts of both Testaments are filled with miracles. The deists say miracles can’t happen. Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), for example, produced The Life and Morals of Jesus, better known as The Jefferson Bible. His popular version excluded narratives of all the miracles. By such a procedure the Bible became largely discounted as giving insight into God or human beings or, especially, the natural order. Jefferson became the judge of what could be true or worthy of belief. At best the biblical narratives were illustrations of divine law from which ethical principles could be derived. Then, too, H. S. Reimarus (1694–1768) attempted “to reconstruct the life and preaching of Jesus with the tools of critical history.”21 And John Toland (1670–1722) argued that Christianity was as old as creation; the gospel was a “republication” of the religion of nature. With views like those, even the specific acts of history are not important for true religion. The stress is on general rules. As Pope says, “The first Almighty Cause / Acts not by partial but by gen’ral laws.”22 God is quite uninterested in individual men and women or even whole peoples. Besides, the universe is closed, not open to his reordering at all.

Nonetheless intellectuals, historians, and philosophers with a basically deistic bent were, as Synnestvedt says, “fascinated by history.” He cites major works by seven major deistic scholars, including a History of England by David Hume (1711–1776), The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (1737–1794), and Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind by Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794).23 All these “histories” are, of course, based totally on the autonomy of human reason; none of them appeal to perspectives derived from revelation. As a result they display a wide variety of interpretations of the meaning and significance of human events.

Because, unlike Christian theism, there is no orthodox deism, each deist is free to use reason, intuition, tradition, or whatever squares with his or her view of ultimate reality. Deists’ core commitments will thus reflect their personal passions or, in common parlance, what turns them on—the flourishing of their individual personal life, their family life, public life. Early deists such as Franklin and Jefferson took public welfare as a key commitment. Others like Paine combined their commitment to public life with a passion for their own personal freedom (and the freedom of everyone in the commonwealth) from the dictates of religion. But the more a deist becomes divorced from allegiance to a personal God, the less religious mores and traditional goals characterize their core commitments. As a result, societies themselves become more pluralistic and less socially cohesive. Thus the tie between deism as a worldview and freedom as a personal and social goal inspired the bloody violence of the French Revolution and spurred on the development of democracy and eventually the vast cultural diversification of American society. Each year the Western World, especially America, becomes more pluralistic than the year before.

MODERN DEISM

As can be seen from the above description, deism has not been a stable compound. The reasons for this are not hard to see. Deism is dependent on Christian theism for its affirmations. It is dependent on what it omits for its particular character. The first and most important loss was its rejection of the full personal character of God. God, in the minds of many in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, kept his omnipotence, his character as creator and, for the most part, his omniscience, but he lost his omnipresence (his intimate connection with and interest in his creation). Eventually he lost even his will, becoming a mere abstract intelligent force, providing a sufficient reason for the existence of the universe whose origin otherwise could not be explained. The spectrum from full personality to sheer abstraction is represented by a variety of deistic types. We have already noticed the differences between warm and cold deism as represented by early deists. Now we will examine some modern forms and introduce new labels for them: (1) sophisticated scientific deism, (2) sophisticated philosophic deism, and (3) popular deism of which moralistic therapeutic deism is a particular illustration.

Sophisticated scientific deism. A cold deism continues to thrive in some scientists and a few humanists in academic centers across the world. Scientists like Albert Einstein, who “see” a higher power at work in or behind the universe and want to maintain reason in a created world, can be considered deists at heart, though no doubt many would not wish to claim anything sounding quite so much like a philosophy of life.24

It’s hard for me to believe that everything out there is just an accident. . . . [Yet] I don’t have any religious belief. I don’t believe that there is a God. I don’t believe in Christianity or Judaism or anything like that, okay? I’m not an atheist. . . . I’m not an agnostic. . . . I’m just in a simple state. I don’t know what there is or might be. . . . But on the other hand, what I can say is that it seems likely to me that this particular universe we have is a consequence of something which I would call intelligent.

Robert Wright, Three Scientists and Their Gods

Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking also leaves room for a deistic God. The fundamental laws of the universe “may have originally been decreed by God,” he writes, “but it appears that he has since left the universe to evolve according to them and does not now intervene in it.”25 His rejection of a theistic God is clear. Actress and New Age leader Shirley MacLaine once asked Hawking if there is a God who “created the universe and guides his creation.” “No,” he replied simply in his computer-generated voice.26 After all, if the universe is “self-contained, having no boundary or edge,” as Hawking suspects is true, then there is no need for a Creator; God becomes superfluous.27 Hawking therefore uses “the term God as the embodiment of the laws of physics.”28 Hawking is not alone among scientists and other intellectuals in holding such a view.29

Sophisticated philosophic deism. In 2004 Antony Flew (who died in 2010), a long-time vocal atheist and opponent of Christian theism, declared himself a deist. His change of mind came from his growing sense that a variety of arguments, from those of Aristotle to the fine-tuning of the universe, are really compelling. As he put it, “he simply had to go where the evidence led.”30 God, for Flew, has most of the “classical theological attributes.” Though he rejects the notion of special revelation from this God, he is open to its possibility. The authenticity of this move by such a formerly convinced atheist has been questioned, but the evidence for it is rock solid.31

One of the clearest exponents of a more humanistic warm deism is Václav Havel, the playwright, public intellectual, and former president of the Czech Republic. The defining characteristic of Havel’s worldview is his understanding of prime reality, his answer to the first worldview question. Havel uses several terms to label his answer: Being, mystery of being, order of existence, the hidden sphere, absolute horizon, or final horizon. All these terms suggest a cold deism. But there is nothing cold about his experience of this sheer Being. Havel, for example, ponders why, when he boards a streetcar late at night with no conductor to observe him, he always feels guilty when he thinks of not paying the fare. Then he comments about the interior dialogue that ensues:

Who, then, is in fact conversing with me? Obviously someone I hold in higher regard than the transport commission, than my best friends (this would come out when the voice would take issue with their opinions), and higher, in some regards than myself, that is, myself as subject of my existence-in-the-world and the carrier of my “existential” interests (one of which is the rather natural effort to save a crown). Someone who “knows everything” (and is therefore omniscient), is everywhere (and therefore omnipresent) and remembers everything; someone who, though infinitely understanding, is entirely incorruptible; who is for me, the highest and utterly unequivocal authority in all moral questions and who is thus Law itself; someone eternal, who through himself makes me eternal as well, so that I cannot imagine the arrival of a moment when everything will come to an end, thus terminating my dependence on him as well; someone to whom I relate entirely and for whom, ultimately, I would do everything. At the same time, this “someone” addresses me directly and personally (not merely as an anonymous public passenger, as the transport commission does).32

These reflections are close, if not identical, to a fully theistic conception of God. Surely some Being that is omniscient, omnipresent, and good, and who addresses you directly and personally, must himself (“itself” just doesn’t fit these criteria) be personal.

Havel, too, sees this. And yet he draws back from the conclusion:

But who is it? God? There are many subtle reasons why I’m reluctant to use that word; one factor here is a certain sense of shame (I don’t know exactly for what, why and before whom), but the main thing, I suppose, is a fear that with this all too specific designation (or rather assertion) that “God is,” I would be projecting an experience that is entirely personal and vague (never mind how profound and urgent it may be), too single-mindedly “outward,” onto that problem-fraught screen called “objective reality,” and thus I would go too far beyond it.33

So, while Being manifests characteristics that seem to demand a commitment to theism, Havel avoids this conclusion by shifting his attention from Being (as an objective existent) to himself (as a reflector on his conscious experience). What Havel does draw from this experience—to very good advantage, by the way—is that Being has a moral dimension. Being, then, is the “good” ontological foundation for human moral responsibility.34

Popular deism. Popular deism is popular in two senses. It is both a simple, easygoing belief in the existence of an omnipotent, impersonal, transcendent being, a force or an intelligence, and it is a vague belief held by millions of Americans and, I suspect, millions more throughout the Western world.

In its cold versions, God is simply the abstract force that brought the world into existence and has largely left it to operate on its own. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that many well-educated people, especially academics and professionals, would acknowledge the probable existence of such a being but would largely ignore his existence in their daily lives. Their moral sensitivity would be grounded in the public memory of common Christian virtues, the mores of society, the occasional use of their own mind when dealing with specific issues, such as honesty in business, attitudes to sexual orientation, and practices. They live secular lives without much thought of what God might think. Surely a good life will prepare one for life after death, if, indeed, there is such a thing.

In its warmest versions, God clearly is personal and even friendly. University of North Carolina sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton in 2005 published a massive study of the religious beliefs of teenagers. Their conclusion was that most of these teenagers adhered to what they called moralistic therapeutic deism. They summed up this worldview as follows.

1. A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.

2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most religions.

3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.

5. Good people go to heaven when they die.35

God, ultimate reality, in this view makes no demand on his creation to be holy, righteous, or even very good. “As one seventeen-year-old conservative Protestant girl from Florida told us [the researchers], ‘God’s all around you, all the time. He believes in forgiving people and whatnot and he’s there to guide us, for somebody to talk to and help us through our problems. Of course, he doesn’t talk back.’”36 When asked what God is like, a Bryn Mawr College student drew a big smiley face and wrote, “He’s one big smiley face. Big hands . . . big hands.”37 This form of deism is certainly not limited to youth; it is, I suspect, very much like that of their parents and adult neighbors.

AN UNSTABLE COMPOUND

Enlightenment deism did not prove to be a stable worldview. Historically it held sway over the intellectual world of France and England from the late seventeenth into the first half of the eighteenth century. Then its cultural significance declined. But few, if any, major shifts in worldview disappear completely. Deism is indeed still alive and well.

What made and continues to make deism so unstable? The primary reasons, I think, are these:38

First, autonomous human reason replaced the Bible and tradition as the authority for the way ultimate reality was understood. Everyone could decide for themselves what God was like. Once the concept of God was up for grabs, there was no stopping his being reduced from the complex Christian theistic idea of God to a minimal, simple force or abstract intelligence. The gradual slide from a full-blooded Christian theism was thus inevitable; what replaced the biblical God was a variety of gods, each with fewer and fewer features of personality.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT

The Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason, is the intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas throughout Europe during most of the eighteenth century. An important element of the Enlightenment was the scientific revolution. Authority, especially religious authority, was rejected in favor of what unaided reason could establish on its own terms. Romanticism in the early nineteenth century provided a counterbalancing reaction, rejecting the dominance of reason alone and stressing the place of feelings and the human spiritual response to nature. Postmodernism has offered an even greater challenge to Enlightenment reliance on reason, though the world of scientific investigation continues apace, seemingly little affected.

Second, autonomous human reason replaced the Bible and tradition as the authority for morality. At first autonomous reason and traditional morality tracked well together. The human mind exposed to the surrounding culture assumed that, for the most part, those cultural values were in fact reasonable. In the early years, deists placed confidence in the universality of human nature; people who used their reason would agree on what was right and wrong.39 This eventually turned out to be a false hope. However universal human nature may be, in practice people do not agree on matters of good and evil or what constitutes “good” behavior as much as the early deists thought.

Third, deists rejected the biblical notion of the fall and assumed that the present universe is in its normal, created state. As Pope said, “whatever is, is right.” One could derive one’s values from clues from the natural order. One clue was the universality of human nature. But if whatever is, is right, then no place is left for a distinctive content to ethics.

Fourth, since the universe is closed to reordering, human action is determined. What then happens to human significance? People become cogs in the clockwork mechanism of the universe. Human significance and mechanical determinism are impossible bedfellows.

Fifth, today we find even more aspects of deism to question. Scientists have largely abandoned thinking of the universe as a giant clock. Electrons (not to mention other even more baffling subatomic particles) do not behave like minute pieces of machinery. If the universe is a mechanism, it is far more complex than was then thought, and God must be quite different from a mere “architect” or “clockmaker.” Furthermore, the human personality is a “fact” of the universe. If God made that, must he not be personal?

So historically, deism was a transitional worldview, and yet it is not dead in either popular or sophisticated forms. On a popular level, many people today believe that God exists, but when asked what God is like, they limit their description to words like Energy, The Force, First Cause, something to get the universe running and often capitalized to give it the aura of divinity. As Étienne Gilson says, “For almost two centuries . . . the ghost of the Christian God has been attended by the ghost of Christian religion: a vague feeling of religiosity, a sort of trusting familiarity with some supreme good fellow to whom other good fellows can hopefully apply when they are in trouble.”40

In what was to follow even the ghost of the Christian God disappeared. It is to that worldview we now turn.

Without warning, David was visited by an exact vision of death: a long hole in the ground, no wider than your body, down which you were drawn while the white faces recede. You try to reach them but your arms are pinned. Shovels pour dirt in your face. There you will be forever, in an upright position, blind and silent, and in time no one will remember you, and you will never be called. As strata of rock shift, your fingers elongate, and your teeth are distended sideways in a great underground grimace indistinguishable from a strip of chalk. And the earth tumbles on, and the sun expires, an unaltering darkness reigns where once there were stars.

JOHN UPDIKE, “PIGEON FEATHERS”

DEISM IS THE ISTHMUS between two great continents—theism and naturalism. To get from the first to the second, deism is the natural route. Perhaps without deism, naturalism would not have come about so readily. Deism in its warm eighteenth-century versions has become almost an intellectual curiosity, handy for an explanation of the foundation of American democracy, but not much held today. Other than Christian theists, there are few today who explain our situation as an indication of God’s providence. Deism’s sophisticated twentieth-century versions are mostly cold and limited to a few scientists and intellectuals and to those who, while they say they believe in God, have only a vague notion of what he, she, or it might be. Naturalism, on the other hand, was and is serious business.

In intellectual terms the route is this: In theism God is the infinite-personal Creator and sustainer of the cosmos. In deism God is reduced; he begins to lose his personality, though he remains Creator and (by implication) sustainer of the cosmos. In naturalism God is further reduced; he loses his very existence.

Swing figures in this shift from theism to naturalism are legion, especially between 1600 and 1750. René Descartes (1596–1650), a Christian theist by conscious confession, set the stage by conceiving of the universe as a giant mechanism of “matter” which people comprehended by “mind.” He thus split reality into two kinds of being; ever since then the Western world has found it hard to see itself as an integrated whole. The naturalists, taking one route to unification, made mind a subcategory of mechanistic matter.

John Locke, a Christian theist for the most part, believed in a personal God who revealed himself to us; Locke thought, however, that our God-given reason is the judge of what can be taken as true from the “revelation” in the Bible. The naturalists removed the “God-given” from this conception and made “reason” the sole criterion for truth.

One of the most interesting figures in this shift was Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751). In his own day La Mettrie was generally considered an atheist, but he himself says, “Not that I call in question the existence of a supreme being; on the contrary it seems to me that the greatest degree of probability is in favor of this belief.” Nonetheless, he continues, “it is a theoretic truth with little practical value.”1 The reason he can conclude that God’s existence is of so little practical value is that the God who exists is only the maker of the universe. He is not personally interested in it nor in being worshiped by anyone in it. So God’s existence can be effectively discounted as being of no importance.2

It is precisely this feeling, this conclusion, which marks the transition to naturalism. La Mettrie was a theoretical deist but a practical naturalist. It was easy for subsequent generations to make their theory consistent with La Mettrie’s practice, so that naturalism was both believed and acted on.3

Behavior does indeed fuel intellectual development. In fact, if we take seriously the last phrase of the definition of worldview in chapter one (“foundation on which we live and move and have our being”), we could label La Mettrie a full-fledged naturalist.

BASIC NATURALISM

This brings us, then, to the first proposition defining naturalism.

As in theism and deism, the prime proposition concerns the nature of basic existence. In the former two the nature of God is the key factor. In naturalism it is the nature of the cosmos that is primary; for now, with an eternal Creator God out of the picture, the cosmos itself becomes eternal—always there, though not necessarily in its present form, in fact certainly not in its present form.4 Carl Sagan, astrophysicist and popularizer of science, has said it as clearly as possible: “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”5

Nothing comes from nothing. Something is. Therefore something always was. But that something, say the naturalists, is not a transcendent Creator but the matter of the cosmos itself. In some form all the matter of the universe has always been. Or so naturalists have traditionally held. Some more recent naturalist philosophers and astrophysicists, however, reject the logic that holds that something has always had to be. The universe may rather have originated out of “a singularity at which space-time curvature, along with temperature, pressure and density, becomes infinite.”6 Space and time (all we know of reality) come into being together. Moreover, nothing spiritual or transcendent emerged from this cosmic event. It makes no sense to say there was a before before the singularity. In short, matter (or matter/energy in a complex interchange) is all there is. Ours is a natural cosmos.

ATHEISM, AGNOSTICISM, APATHEISM

Atheism is a bold philosophical claim that no God/god exists and that we can know the claim to be true. Agnosticism, in its strong form, is equally bold—the philosophical claim that we cannot know whether God exists. (I’ve examined the evidence and have concluded we cannot know whether God exists or not.) In its weaker form, agnosticism may simply indicate a lack of knowledge of whether God exists or not. (I don’t know whether God exists or not; I’ve never looked closely at the evidence.) Apatheism (combining “apathy” and “theism”), a term coined in 1972 by sociologist Stuart D. Johnson, holds that whether God/gods exist is simply an irrelevant question. (Why should I care whether God exists or not? The answer to the question has no practical relevance to my life.)

The word matter is to be understood in a rather general way, for since the eighteenth century, science has refined its understanding. In the eighteenth century scientists had yet to discover either the complexity of matter or its close relationship with energy. They conceived of reality as made up of irreducible “units” existing in mechanical, spatial relationship with each other, a relationship being investigated and unveiled by chemistry and physics and expressible in inexorable “laws.” Later scientists were to discover that nature is not so neat, or at least so simple. There seem to be no irreducible “units” as such, and physical laws have only mathematical expression. Physicists like Stephen Hawking may search for nothing less than a “complete description of the universe” and even hope to find it.7 But confidence about what nature is, or is likely to be discovered to be, has almost vanished.8

Still, the proposition expressed above unites naturalists. The cosmos is not composed of two things—matter and mind, or matter and spirit. As La Mettrie says, “In the whole universe there is but a single substance with various modifications.”9 The cosmos is ultimately one thing, without any relation to a Being beyond; there is no “god,” no “creator.”

This proposition is similar to proposition 2 in deism. The difference is that the universe may or may not be conceived of as a machine or clockwork. Modern scientists have found the relations between the various elements of reality to be far more complex, if not more mysterious, than the clockwork image can account for.

Nonetheless, the universe is a closed system. It is not open to reordering from the outside—either by a transcendent Being (for there is none) or, as I shall discuss later at length, by self-transcendent or autonomous human beings (for they are a part of the uniformity). Émile Bréhier, describing this view, says, “Order in nature is but one rigorously necessary arrangement of its parts, founded on the essence of things; for example, the beautiful regularity of the seasons is not the effect of a divine plan but the result of gravitation.”10

The Humanist Manifesto II (1973), which expresses the views of those who call themselves “secular humanists,” puts it this way: “We find insufficient evidence for belief in the existence of a supernatural.”11 Without God or the supernatural, of course, nothing can happen except within the realm of things themselves. Writing in The Columbia History of the World, Rhodes W. Fairbridge says flatly, “We reject the miraculous.”12 Such a statement, coming as it does from a professor of geology at Columbia University, is to be expected.

What is surprising is to find a seminary professor, David Jobling, saying much the same thing:

We [that is, modern people] see the universe as a continuity of space, time, and matter, held together, as it were, from within. . . . God is not “outside” time and space, nor does he stand apart from matter, communicating with the “spiritual” part of man. . . . We must find some way of facing the fact that Jesus Christ is the product of the same evolutionary process as the rest of us.13

Jobling is attempting to understand Christianity within the naturalistic worldview. Certainly after God is put strictly inside the system—the uniform, closed system of cause and effect—he has been denied sovereignty and much else that Christians have traditionally believed to be true about him. The point here, however, is that naturalism is a pervasive worldview, to be found in the most unlikely places.

What are the central features of this closed system? It might first appear that naturalists, affirming the “continuity of space, time, and matter, held together . . . from within,” would be determinists, asserting that the closed system holds together by an inexorable, unbreakable linkage of cause and effect. Most naturalists are indeed determinists, though many would argue that this does not remove our sense of free will or our responsibility for our actions. Is such a freedom really consistent with the conception of a closed system? To answer we must first look more closely at the naturalist conception of human beings.

While Descartes recognized that human beings were part machine, he also thought they were part mind; and mind was a different substance. A great majority of naturalists, however, see mind as a function of machine. La Mettrie was one of the first to put it bluntly: “Let us conclude boldly then that man is a machine, and that in the whole universe there is but a single substance with various modifications.”14 Putting it more crudely, Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis (1757–1808) wrote that “the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile.”15 William Barrett, in a fascinating intellectual history of the gradual loss of the notion of the soul or the self in Western thought from Descartes to the present, writes:

Thus we get in La Mettrie . . . those quaint illustrations of the human body as a system of imaginary gears, cogs, and ratchets. Man, the microcosm, is just another machine within the universal machine that is the cosmos. We smile at these illustrations as quaint and crude, but secretly we may still nourish the notion that they are after all in the right direction, though a little premature. With the advent of the computer, however, this temptation toward mechanism becomes more irresistible, for here we no longer have an obsolete machine of wheels and pulleys but one that seems able to reproduce the processes of the human mind. Can machines think? now becomes a leading question for our time.16

In any case, the point is that as human beings we are simply a part of the cosmos. In the cosmos there is one substance: matter. We are that and only that. The laws applying to matter apply to us. We do not transcend the universe in any way.

Of course we are very complex machines, and our mechanism is not yet fully understood. Thus people continue to amaze us and upset our expectations. Still, any mystery that surrounds our understanding is a result not of genuine mystery but of mechanical complexity.17

It might be concluded that humanity is not distinct from other objects in the universe, that it is merely one kind of object among many. But naturalists insist this is not so. Julian Huxley, for example, says we are unique among animals because we alone are capable of conceptual thought, employ speech, possess a cumulative tradition (culture), and have had a unique method of evolution.18 To this most naturalists would add our moral capacity, a topic I will take up separately. All of these characteristics are open and generally obvious. None of them imply any transcendent power or demand any extramaterial basis, say the naturalists.

Ernest Nagel points out the necessity of not stressing the human “continuity” with the nonhuman elements of our makeup: “Without denying that even the most distinctive human traits are dependent on things which are nonhuman, a mature naturalism attempts to assess man’s nature in the light of his actions and achievements, his aspirations and capacities, his limitations and tragic failures, and his splendid works of ingenuity and imagination.”19 By stressing our humanness (our distinctness from the rest of the cosmos), a naturalist finds a basis for value, for, it is held, intelligence, cultural sophistication, a sense of right and wrong not only are human distinctives but are what make us valuable. This we will see developed further under proposition 6 below.

Finally, while some naturalists are strict determinists with regard to all events in the universe, including human action, thus denying any sense of free will, many naturalists hold that we are free to fashion our own destiny, at least in part. Some, for example, hold that while a closed universe implies determinism, determinism is still compatible with human freedom, or at least a sense of freedom.20 We can do many things that we want to do; we are not always constrained to act against our wants. I could, for example, stop preparing a new edition of this book if I wanted to. I don’t want to.

This, so many naturalists hold, leaves open the possibility for significant human action, and it provides a basis for morality. For unless we are free to do other than we do, we cannot be held responsible for what we do. The coherence of this view has been challenged, however, and is one of the soft spots in the naturalist’s system of thought, as we will see in the following chapter.

This is, perhaps, the “hardest” proposition of naturalism for people to accept, yet it is absolutely demanded by the naturalists’ conception of the universe. Men and women are made of matter and nothing else. When the matter that goes to make up an individual is disorganized at death, then that person disappears.

The Humanist Manifesto II states, “As far as we know, the total personality is a function of the biological organism transacting in a social and cultural context. There is no credible evidence that life survives the death of the body.”21 Bertrand Russell writes, “No fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave.”22 And A. J. Ayer says, “I take it . . . to be fact that one’s existence ends at death.”23 In a more general sense humankind is likewise seen to be transitory. “Human destiny,” Nagel confesses, “[is] an episode between two oblivions.”24

Such statements are clear and unambiguous. The concept may trigger immense psychological problems, but there is no disputing its precision. The only “immortality,” as the Humanist Manifesto II puts it, is to “continue to exist in our progeny and in the way that our lives have influenced others in our culture.”25 In his short story “Pigeon Feathers” John Updike gives this notion a beautifully human dimension as he portrays the young boy David reflecting on his minister’s description of heaven as being “like Abraham Lincoln’s goodness living after him.”26 Like the seminary professor quoted above, David’s pastor is no longer a theist but is simply trying to provide “spiritual” counsel within the framework of naturalism.

That man is the product of causes which had no prevision 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 labors 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.

Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship”

Notice the similarity between the deist and the naturalist notion of how we come to know. Both accept the internal faculty of reason and the thoughts human beings come to have as givens. From a cosmic standpoint, reason developed under the contingencies of natural evolution over a very long period of time. From a human standpoint, a child is born with innate faculties which merely have to develop naturally. These faculties work on their own within the framework of the languages and cultures to which they are exposed. At no time is there any information or interpretation or mental machinery added from outside the ordinary material world. As children grow, they learn which of their thoughts help them understand and enable them to deal with the world around them. The methods of modern science are especially helpful in leading us to more and more profound knowledge of our universe. Human knowledge, then, is the product of natural human reason grounded in its perceived ability to reach the truth about human beings and the world.27

We should notice that I have used the word truth to describe the end result of human reason when it is successful. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries few would question its propriety. As Aristotle said in the first lines of his Metaphysics, “All men desire to know,” meaning “All human beings desire to know the truth, that is, the way reality really is.” Naturalists today, especially scientists and ordinarily educated people, may continue to think this way. When most people say that water is hydrogen and oxygen, two parts to one, they think they have accurately described its chemical makeup; that’s what water is. More philosophically minded modern naturalists are content to say that we can learn to describe what we take to be reality in language that allows us to live successfully in the world, but no one can know what something is. There is a rift between words and things that cannot be bridged.28 We will see how this plays out in chapter nine on postmodernism. What is important to note here is that naturalists ground human reason in human nature itself.

Ethical considerations did not play a central role in the rise of naturalism. Naturalism rather came as a logical extension of certain metaphysical notions —notions about the nature of the external world. Most early naturalists continued to hold ethical views similar to those in the surrounding culture, views that in general were indistinguishable from popular Christianity. There was a respect for individual dignity, an affirmation of love, a commitment to truth and basic honesty. Jesus was seen as a teacher of high ethical values.

Though it is becoming less and less so, it is still true to some measure today. With a few twists—for example, a permissive attitude to premarital and extramarital sex, a positive response to euthanasia, abortion, and the individual’s right to suicide—the ethical norms of the Humanist Manifesto II (1973) are similar to traditional morality. Theists and naturalists can often live side by side in communal harmony on ethical matters. There have always been disagreements between them; these disagreements will, I believe, increase as humanism shifts further and further from its memory of Christian ethics.29 But whatever the disagreements (or agreements) on ethical norms, the basis for these norms is radically different.

For a theist, God is the foundation of values. For a naturalist, values are constructed by human beings. The naturalist’s notion follows logically from the previous propositions. If there was no consciousness prior to the existence of humans, then there was no prior sense of right and wrong. And if there were no ability to do other than what one does, any sense of right and wrong would have no practical value. So for ethics to be possible, there must be both consciousness and self-determination. In short, there must be personality.

Naturalists say both consciousness and self-determination came with the appearance of human beings, and so ethics, too, came then. No ethical system can be derived solely from the nature of “things” outside human consciousness. In other words, no natural law is inscribed in the cosmos. Even La Mettrie—who fudged a bit when he wrote, “Nature created us all [man and beast] solely to be happy,” betraying his deistic roots—was a confirmed naturalist in ethics: “You see that natural law is nothing but an intimate feeling which belongs to the imagination like all other feelings, thought included.”30 La Mettrie, of course, conceived of the imagination in a totally mechanistic fashion, so that ethics became for him simply people’s following out a pattern embedded in them as creatures. Certainly there is nothing whatever transcendent about morality.

The Humanist Manifesto II states the locus of naturalistic ethics in no uncertain terms: “We affirm that moral values derive their source from human experience. Ethics is autonomous and situational, needing no theological or ideological sanction. Ethics stems from human need and interest. To deny this distorts the whole basis of life. Human life has meaning because we create and develop our futures.”31 Most conscious naturalists would probably agree with this statement. But exactly how value is created out of the human situation is just as much up for grabs as is the way we ought to understand the origin of the universe.

The major question is this: How does ought derive from is? Traditional ethics, that is, the ethics of Christian theism, affirms the transcendent origin of ethics and locates in the infinite-personal God the measure of the good. Good is what God is, and this has been revealed in many and diverse ways, most fully in the life, teachings, and death of Jesus Christ.

Naturalists, however, have no such appeal, nor do they wish to make one. Ethics is solely a human domain. So the question: How does one get from the fact of self-consciousness and self-determination, the realm of is and can, to the realm of what ought to be or to be done?

One observation naturalists make is that all people have a sense of moral values. These derive, G. G. Simpson says, from intuition (“the feeling of rightness, without objective inquiry into the reasons for this feeling and without possible test as to the truth or falseness of the premises involved”),32 from authority, and from convention. No one grows up without picking up values from the environment, and while a person may reject these and pay the consequences of ostracism or martyrdom, seldom does anyone succeed in inventing values totally divorced from culture.

Of course values differ from culture to culture, and none seems absolutely universal. So Simpson argues for an ethic based on objective inquiry and finds it in a harmonious adjustment of people to each other and their environment.33 Whatever promotes such harmony is good; what does not is bad. John Platt, in an article that attempts to construct an ethic for B. F. Skinner’s behaviorism, writes,

Happiness is having short-run reinforcers congruent with medium-run and long-run ones, and wisdom is knowing how to achieve this. And ethical behavior results when short-run personal reinforcers are congruent with long-run group reinforcers. This makes it easy to “be good,” or more exactly to “behave well.”34

The upshot of this is a definition of good action as group-approved, survival-promoting action. Both Simpson and Platt opt for the continuance of human life as the value above all values. Survival is thus basic, but it is human survival that is affirmed as primary.35

Both Simpson and Platt are scientists with a consciousness of their responsibility to be fully human and thus to integrate their scientific knowledge and their moral values. From the side of the humanities comes Walter Lippmann. In A Preface to Morals (1929) Lippmann assumes the naturalists’ stance with regard to the origin and purposelessness of the universe. His tack is to construct an ethic on the basis of what he takes to be the central agreement of the “great religious teachers.” For Lippmann, the good turns out to be something that has been recognized so far only by the elite, a “voluntary aristocracy of the spirit.”36 His argument is that this elitist ethic is now becoming mandatory for all people if they are to survive the twentieth-century crisis of values.

To discover the true principles of morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of gods; they need only common sense. They have only to commune with themselves, to reflect upon their own nature, to consult their visible interests, to consider the objects of society and the individuals who compose it, and they will easily perceive that virtue is advantageous, and vice disadvantageous, to such beings as themselves. Let us persuade them to be just, beneficent, moderate, sociable, not because such conduct is demanded by the gods, but because it is a pleasure to men. Let us advise them to abstain from vice and crime, not because they will be punished in the other world, but because they will suffer for it in this.

Baron D’Holbach (1723–1789), “Common Sense”

The good itself consists of disinterestedness—a way of alleviating the “disorders and frustrations” of the modern world, now that the “acids of modernity” have eaten away the traditional basis for ethical behavior. It is difficult to summarize the content Lippmann pours into the word disinterested. The final third of his book is addressed to doing that. But it is helpful to notice that his ethic turns out to be based on a personal commitment of each individual who would be moral, and that it is totally divorced from the world of facts—the nature of things in general:

A religion which rests upon particular conclusions in astronomy, biology, and history may be fatally injured by the discovery of new truths. But the religion of the spirit does not depend upon creeds and cosmologies; it has no vested interest in any particular truth. It is concerned not with the organization of matter, but with the quality of human desire.37

Lippmann’s language must be carefully understood. By religion he means morality or moral impulse. By spirit he means the moral faculty in human beings, that which exalts people above animals and above others whose “religion” is merely “popular.” The language of theism is being employed, but its content is purely naturalistic.

In any case, what remains of ethics is an affirmation of a high vision of right in the face of a universe that is merely there and has no value in itself. Ethics thus are personal and chosen. Lippmann is not, to my knowledge, generally associated with the existentialists, but, as we shall see in chapter six, his version of naturalistic ethics is ultimately theirs.

Naturalists have tried to construct ethical systems in a wide variety of ways. Even Christian theists must admit that many of the naturalists’ ethical insights are valid. Indeed theists should not be surprised by the fact that we can learn moral truths by observing human nature and behavior, for if women and men are made in the image of God and if that image is not totally destroyed by the fall, then they should yet reflect—even if dimly—something of the goodness of God.

First, the word history, as used in this proposition, includes both natural history and human history, for naturalists see them as a continuity. The origin of the human family is in nature. We arose out of it and most likely will return to it (not just individually but as a species).

Natural history begins with the origin of the universe. Something happened an incredibly long time ago—a Big Bang or sudden emergence—that ultimately resulted in the formation of the universe we now inhabit and are conscious of. But exactly how this came to be few are willing to say. Lodewijk Woltjer, formerly an astronomer at Columbia University and later director general of the European Southern Observatory, spoke for many: “The origin of what is—man, the earth, the universe—is shrouded in a mystery we are no closer to solving than was the chronicler of Genesis.”38 A number of theories to explain the process have been advanced, but none have really won the day.39 Still, among naturalists the premise always is that the process was self- activating; it was not set in motion by a Prime Mover—God or otherwise.

How human beings came to be is generally held to be more certain than how the universe came to be. The theory of evolution, long toyed with by naturalists, was given a “mechanism” by Darwin and has won the day. There is hardly a public-school text that does not proclaim the theory as fact. We should be careful, however, not to assume that all forms of evolutionary theory are strictly naturalist. Many theists are also evolutionists. Evolution has, in fact, become a far more vexed issue among both Christians and naturalists than when this book was first written.40

A theist sees the infinite-personal God to be in charge of all natural processes. If the biological order has evolved, it has done so by conforming to God’s design; it is teleological, directed toward an end personally willed by God. For a naturalist, the process is on its own. George Gaylord Simpson puts this so well he is worth quoting at some length:

Organic evolution is a process entirely materialistic in its origin and operation. . . . Life is materialistic in nature, but it has properties unique to itself which reside in its organization, not in its materials or mechanics. Man arose as a result of the operation of organic evolution and his being and activities are also materialistic, but the human species has properties unique to itself among all forms of life, superadded to the properties unique to life among all forms of matter and of action. Man’s intellectual, social, and spiritual natures are exceptional among animals in degree, but they arose by organic evolution.41

This passage is significant for its clear affirmation of both human continuity with the rest of the cosmos and special uniqueness. Yet lest we conclude that our uniqueness, our position as nature’s highest creation, was designed by some teleological principle operative in the universe, Simpson adds, “Man was certainly not the goal of evolution, which evidently had no goal.”42

In some ways the theory of evolution raises as many questions as it solves, for while it offers an explanation for what has happened over the eons of time, it does not explain why. The notion of a Purposer is not allowed by naturalists. Rather, as Jacques Monod says, humanity’s “number came up in the Monte Carlo game,” a game of pure chance.43 And Richard Dawkins, one of the more vocal of neo-Darwinian evolutionists, confirms this: “Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view.”44 Any intentionality is ruled out as a possibility from the beginning.45

In any case, naturalists insist that with the dawn of humanity, evolution suddenly took on a new dimension, for human beings are self-conscious —probably the only self-conscious beings in the universe.46 Further, as humans we are free consciously to consider, decide, and act. Thus while evolution considered strictly on the biological level continues to be unconscious and accidental, human actions are not. They are not just a part of the “natural” environment. They are human history.

In other words, when human beings appear, meaningful history, human history—the events of self-conscious, self-determining men and women— appears. But like evolution, which has no inherent goal, history has no inherent goal. History is what we make it to be. Human events have only the meaning people give them when they choose them or when they look back on them.

History proceeds in a straight line, as in theism (not in a cycle as in Eastern pantheism), but history has no predetermined goal. Rather than culminating in a second coming of the God-man, it is simply going to last as long as conscious human beings last. When we go, human history disappears, and natural history goes on its way alone.

Each individual is free to choose whatever goal or commitment he or she wishes. Most naturalists are an integral part of a particular cultural community and orient their personal lives within the norms of their community. But there is nothing in the naturalist worldview to require this, and rebels to any society-given notion of the good life cannot reasonably be criticized for their rebellion to social norms. Still, while naturalism provides no rational justification to act selflessly, naturalists often choose to serve their community or promote a purely secular human flourishing. Naturalists will not, of course, choose to live in order to please any God or gods.

NATURALISM IN PRACTICE: SECULAR HUMANISM

Two forms of naturalism deserve special mention. The first is secular humanism, a term that has come to be both used and abused by adherents and critics alike. Some clarification of terms is in order here.

First, secular humanism is one form of humanism in general, but not the only form. Humanism itself is the overall attitude that human beings are of special value; their aspirations, their thoughts, their yearnings are significant. There is as well an emphasis on the value of the individual person.

Ever since the Renaissance, thoughtful people of various convictions have called themselves and been called humanists, among them many Christians. John Calvin (1509–1564), Desiderius Erasmus (1456?–1536), Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599), William Shakespeare (1564–1616), and John Milton (1608–1674), all of whom wrote from within a Christian theistic worldview, were humanists, what are sometimes today called Christian humanists. The reason for this designation is that they emphasized human dignity, not as over against God but as deriving from the image of God in each person. Today there are many thoughtful Christians who so want to preserve the word humanism from being associated with purely secular forms that they signed a Christian humanist manifesto (1982) declaring that Christians have always affirmed the value of human beings.47

I would like to claim that the coming of modern secularity . . . has been coterminous with the rise of a society in which for the first time in history a purely self-sufficient humanism came to be a widely available option. I mean by this a humanism accepting no final goals beyond human flourishing, nor any allegiance to anything else beyond this flourishing. Of no previous society was this true. . . . [A] secular age is one in which the eclipse of all goals beyond human flourishing becomes conceivable; or better, it falls within the range of an imaginable life for masses of people.

Charles Taylor, A Secular Society

The tenets of secular humanism are well expressed in the Humanist Manifesto II.48 Secular humanism is a form of humanism that is completely framed within a naturalistic worldview. It is fair to say, I believe, that most who would feel comfortable with the label “secular humanist” would find their views reflected in propositions 1 through 6 above. Secular humanists, in other words, are simply naturalists, though not all naturalists are secular humanists.

NATURALISM IN PRACTICE: MARXISM

Since the latter part of the nineteenth century, one of the most historically significant forms of naturalism has been Marxism.49 The fortunes of Marxism have ebbed and flowed over the years; the collapse of Communism in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has left only a few “officially” Marxist countries. Nevertheless, for the better part of the twentieth century a huge section of the globe was dominated by ideas that stemmed from the philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883). At the current time, though communism as an ideology seems down and out, many ideas of Marx remain influential among social scientists and other intellectuals in the West. Even in eastern Europe the former communists, somewhat chastened and professing a commitment to democracy, seem to be making a political comeback.

It is difficult to define or analyze Marxism briefly, for there are many different types of “Marxists.”50 Enormous differences exist between Marxist theories of various kinds, ranging from thinkers who are humanistic and committed to democracy in some form to hardline “Stalinists” who identify Marxism with totalitarianism. There is another huge difference between Marxist theories of all kinds and the reality of Marxist practice in the Soviet Union and other places. In theory, Marxism is supposed to benefit working people and enable them to gain economic control over their own lives. In reality, the bureaucratic rigidities of life under communism led to economic stagnation as well as loss of personal freedom.

Although Marxism has generally claimed to be a scientific theory (as in the name “scientific socialism”), this claim has not been generally accepted. It is in many ways more helpful to think of Marxism as a kind of humanism, though of course most humanists are not Marxists. While Marxist humanism has characteristic themes of its own, Marxism and secular humanism, as forms of naturalism, share many assumptions.

All forms of Marxism can of course be traced back to the writings of Karl Marx. The question of who are Marx’s “true heirs” is bitterly contested, but the more humanistic Marxists can certainly point to some important themes in Marx’s writings. In one of his earliest essays, he says clearly that “man is the supreme being for man.”51 It is from this humanist theme that Marx deduces his revolutionary imperative to “overthrow all those conditions in which man is an abased, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being.”52

Marx arrived at his humanism through an encounter with two important nineteenth-century philosophers: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1830) and Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872). Hegel’s philosophy was a form of idealism that taught that God or “absolute spirit” is not a being distinct from the world but a reality that is progressively realizing itself in the concrete world. For Hegel this process is dialectical in nature; that is, it proceeds through conflicts in which each realization of spirit calls forth its own antagonist or “negation.” Out of this conflict a still higher realization of spirit emerges, which in turn calls forth its negation, and so on. This philosophy is in essence a highly speculative philosophy of history. For Hegel the highest vehicle for the expression of spirit was human society, particularly the modern societies that were coming to fruition in the capitalistic states of nineteenth-century western Europe.

Feuerbach was a materialist who was famous for asserting that human beings “are what they eat” and that religion is a human invention. As Feuerbach saw it, God is a projection of human potentiality, an expression of our unrealized ideals. Religion functions perniciously, since as soon as we invent God we devote ourselves to pleasing our imaginary construction instead of working to overcome the shortcomings that led to the invention in the first place. Feuerbach extended his critique of religion to Hegel’s philosophical idealism, seeing in Hegel’s concept of “spirit” yet another human projection, a slightly secularized version of the Christian God.

Marx accepted Feuerbach’s critique of religion wholeheartedly, and atheism remains a part of most forms of Marxism to this day. However, he was struck by the fact that even if Feuerbach’s criticism of Hegel is right, Hegel’s philosophy may still contain truth. If Hegel’s concept of spirit is simply a misleading projection of our human reality, then the dialectical process Hegel described may be real, just as a film when projected may give an accurate picture of the reality that was filmed. It is only necessary to “turn Hegel right side up” by translating Hegel’s idealistic talk of spirit into materialistic talk of concrete human beings. Once we realize that in Hegel we are seeing a projection or “film,” we can interpret his view in a way that makes it true. History has proceeded through conflict in which the contending parties create their own antagonists, and this series of historical conflicts is “going somewhere.” The goal of history is a perfect or ideal human society, but it is misleading and confusing to call such a society “spirit.”

Marx does call himself a “materialist,” and in some sense he certainly is one. Despite this, Marx hardly ever talks about matter. His materialism is historical and dialectical; it is primarily a doctrine about human history, and it sees that history as a series of dialectical struggles. Economic factors are the primary determinants of that history. Since human beings are material, their lives must be understood in terms of the need to work to satisfy their material needs.

Marx believed that human history began with relatively small human communities organized in family-like tribes. Private property is unknown; a kind of primitive or natural communism holds in which individuals identify with the community as a whole, though these communities are poor and unable to allow their members to flourish. As societies develop technology, gradually a division of labor occurs. Some people in a society control the tools or resources the society depends on; this gives them the power to exploit others. Thus out of division of labor and consequent control over the means of production social classes emerge.

For Marx social classes are the dialectical antagonists of history rather than Hegel’s spiritual realities. History for Marx is the history of class struggle. Since the demise of primitive societies, societies have always been dominated by the class that controls the means of production. The process by which the material goods society requires are created is the key to understanding society. This process is termed by Marxists the “base” of society. A particular system for producing material goods, such as feudal agriculture or industrial capitalism, produces a particular class structure. On that class structure depends in turn what Marx calls the “superstructure” of society: art, religion, philosophy, morality, and most important, political institutions.

Social changes occur when one system of production “dialectically” gives rise to a new system. The new economic base comes into being within the womb of the old superstructure. The dominant social classes of the old order of course try to maintain their power as long as possible, relying on the state to maintain their position. Eventually, however, the new economic system and the emerging class become too powerful. The result is a revolution in which the old superstructure is swept away in favor of a new political and social order that better reflects the underlying economic order.

The history of capitalism illustrates these truths clearly, according to Marx. Medieval feudal societies created modern industrial society, which is its dialectical opposite. For a long time the feudal aristocracy tried to hold on to its power, but in the French Revolution Marx saw the triumph of the new middle class, who controlled the means of production in capitalist society. However, the same dialectical forces that led to capitalism will also destroy it. Capitalism requires a large body of propertyless workers, the proletariat, to exploit. As Marx saw it, the economic dynamics of capitalism will necessarily lead to a society in which the proletariat are more and more numerous and more and more exploited. Capitalist societies become more and more productive, but wealth is more and more narrowly distributed. Eventually the concentration of wealth leads to a society in which more is produced than can be purchased; overproduction leads to unemployment and more suffering. At last the proletariat will be forced to revolt.

For Marx the revolt of the proletariat will be different from any previous revolution. In the past, one social class overthrew a rival oppressing class and became in its turn the oppressor. The proletariat will, however, be the majority, not a minority. They have no vested interest in the old order of things, so it will be in their own best interests to abolish the whole system of class oppression. The material abundance created by modern technology makes this a real possibility for the first time in human history, since without such abundance, struggle, competition, and oppression would inevitably break out in new forms.

The new classless society that will emerge will make possible what Marxists call “the new socialist individual.” People will supposedly be less individualistic and competitive, more apt to find fulfillment in working for the good of others. The “alienation” of all previous societies will be overcome, and a new and higher form of human life will emerge. This vision in many ways parallels the Christian vision of the coming of the kingdom of God, and it is therefore easy to see why some have characterized Marxism as a Christian heresy.

One can also easily see why this vision of Marx was appealing to so many for so long. Marx had a deep understanding of the human need for genuine community and for fulfillment in work. He was sensitive not merely to the problem of poverty but to the loss of dignity that occurs when human beings are seen merely as cogs in a vast industrial machine. He looked for a society in which people would creatively express themselves in their work and see in their work an opportunity to help others as well as themselves.

It is by no means clear that at some point changing conditions will not rekindle interest in Marx. Some theorists, for example, worry that in the United States there is an increasing gap between an economic elite and the great mass of people who are stagnating economically, and that this increasing inequality may make Marx’s theories relevant once more.

However, there are also hard questions that Marx does not convincingly answer. One crucial set of questions deals with the reality of life under communism. How could a theory that seems so committed to humanistic liberation produce the dehumanization and oppression of Stalinism? Part of the answer here surely lies in the changes that Vladimir Lenin introduced into Marxism. Marx had predicted that socialism would develop in the most economically advanced societies, such as England and the United States; and he had little faith that true socialism would be possible in a backward country such as Russia. Lenin believed that if society were rigidly controlled by a monolithic Communist party, this would compensate for economic backwardness. So many Western Marxists committed to “democratic socialism” argue that Leninist-style Communism was a heretical form of Marxism and that Marx’s own ideas were never given a fair chance.

Nevertheless, even if one ignores the reality of life under communism and the horrors of the Gulag, there are many respects in which Marx’s ideas appear vulnerable. One crucial concern is his faith that human history is moving toward an ideal society. Having abandoned any religious belief in providence, as well as Hegel’s belief in absolute spirit as underlying history, Marx has no real basis for this expectation. He bases his own hope on empirical study of history, particularly his analysis of economic forces. However, many of Marx’s predictions, such as his claim that workers in advanced capitalist countries will become increasingly impoverished, have been far off the mark. Can any social scientist—Marxist or non-Marxist—accurately predict the future?

A second problem for Marx concerns our motivation for working toward the future society, especially when we recognize that this society is by no means inevitable. Why should I work for a better society and try to end social exploitation? Marx rejects any moral values as a basis for such motivation. As a naturalist, he views morality as simply a product of human culture. There are no transcendent values that can be used as a basis for critically evaluating culture. Yet Marx himself often seems full of moral indignation as he looks at the excesses of capitalism. What is the basis for Marx’s condemnation of capitalism if such moral notions as “justice” and “fairness” are just ideological inventions?

Two final grave problems for Marx lie in his vision of human nature and his analysis of the fundamental human problem. For Marx human beings are fundamentally self-creating; we create ourselves through our work. When our work or life activity is alienated, we are alienated, and when our work has become truly human, we will be human as well. Greed, competition, and envy all arise because of social divisions and poverty; an ideal society will eliminate these evils.

The question is whether Marx’s view of human nature and analysis of the human problem go deep enough. Is it really plausible to think that selfishness and greed are solely a product of scarcity and class division? Is it really possible to make human beings fundamentally good if we have the right environment for them? Whether we look at capitalist or professedly socialist societies, the lesson of history would seem to be that humans are very inventive in finding ways to manipulate any system for their own selfish benefit. Perhaps the problem with human nature lies deeper than Marx thought. And this problem may expose a problem with his view of human beings: are we purely material beings?

Marx was certainly right to emphasize work and economic factors as crucially important in shaping human society, but there is more to human life than economics. Certainly many young people in the most economically advanced countries struggle with finding meaning and purpose for their lives. Marxism, like all forms of naturalism, has a difficult time providing such meaning and purpose for human beings.

THE PERSISTENCE OF NATURALISM

Naturalism has had great staying power. Born in the eighteenth century, it came of age in the nineteenth and grew to maturity in the twentieth. While signs of age are now appearing and postmodern trumpeters are signaling the death of Enlightenment reason, naturalism is still very much alive. It dominates universities, colleges, and high schools. It provides the framework for most scientific study. It poses the backdrop against which the humanities continue to struggle for human value, as writers, poets, painters, and artists in general shudder under its implications.53 It is seen as the great villain of the postmodern avant-garde. Nonetheless, no rival worldview has yet been able to topple it. Still, it is fair to say that the twentieth century provided some powerful options: Christian theism is experiencing a rebirth at all levels of society and Islamic theism is posing a challenge just off stage.

What makes naturalism so persistent? There are two basic answers. First, it gives the impression of being honest and objective. One is asked to accept only what appears to be based on facts and on the assured results of scientific investigation or scholarship. Second, to a vast number of people it appears to be coherent. To them the implications of its premises are largely worked out and found acceptable. Naturalism assumes no god, no spirit, no life beyond the grave. It sees human beings as the makers of value. While it disallows that we are the center of the universe by virtue of design, it allows us to place ourselves there and to make of ourselves and for ourselves something of value. As Simpson says, “Man is the highest animal. The fact that he alone is capable of making such a judgment is in itself part of the evidence that this decision is correct.”54 It is up to us then to work out the implications of our special place in nature, controlling and altering, as we find it possible, our own evolution.55

All of this is attractive. If naturalism were really as described, it should, perhaps, be called not only attractive or persistent but true. We could then proceed to tout its virtues and turn the argument of this book into a tract for our times.

But long before the twentieth century got under way, cracks began appearing in the edifice. Theistic critics always found fault with it. They could never abandon their conviction that an infinite-personal God is behind the universe. Their criticism might be discounted as unenlightened or merely conservative, as if they were afraid to launch out into the uncharted waters of new truth. But more was afoot than this. As we shall see in more detail in the following chapter and chapter nine on postmodernism, within the camp of the naturalists themselves came rumblings of discontent. The facts on which naturalism was based—the nature of the external universe, its closed continuity of cause and effect—were not at issue. The problem was coherence. Did naturalism give an adequate reason for us to consider ourselves valuable? Unique, maybe. But gorillas are unique. So is every category of nature. Value was the first troublesome issue. Could a being thrown up by chance be worthy?

Second, could a being whose origins were so “iffy” trust his or her own capacity to know? Put it personally: If my mind is conterminous with my brain, if “I” am only a thinking machine, how can I trust my thought? If consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter, perhaps the appearance of human freedom which lays the basis for morality is an epiphenomenon of either chance or inexorable law. Perhaps chance or the nature of things only built into me the “feeling” that I am free but actually I am not.

These and similar questions do not arise from outside the naturalist worldview. They are inherent in it. The fears that these questions raised in some minds led directly to nihilism, which I am tempted to call a worldview but which is actually a denial of all worldviews.

If I should cast off this tattered coat,

And go free into the mighty sky;

If I should find nothing there

But a vast blue,

Echoless, ignorant—

What then?

STEPHEN CRANE,

THE BLACK RIDERS AND OTHER LINES

NIHILISM IS MORE a feeling than a philosophy, more a solitary stance before the universe than a worldview. Strictly speaking, nihilism is a denial of any philosophy or worldview—a denial of the possibility of knowledge, a denial that anything is valuable. If it proceeds to the absolute denial of everything, it even denies the reality of existence itself. In other words, nihilism is the negation of everything—knowledge, ethics, beauty, reality. In nihilism no statement has validity; nothing has meaning. Everything is gratuitous, de trop—that is, just there.

Those who have been untouched by the feelings of despair, anxiety, and ennui associated with nihilism may find it hard to imagine that nihilism could be a seriously held orientation of the heart. But it is, and it is well for everyone who wants to understand the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to experience, if only vicariously, something of nihilism as a stance toward human existence.

Modern art galleries are full of its products—if one can speak of something (art objects) coming from nothing (artists who, if they exist, deny the ultimate value of their existence). As we shall see later, no art is ultimately nihilistic, but some art attempts to embody many of nihilism’s characteristics. Marcel Duchamp’s ordinary urinal purchased on the common market, signed with a fictional name, and labeled Fountain will do for a start. Samuel Beckett’s plays, notably End Game and Waiting for Godot, are prime examples in drama. But Beckett’s nihilistic art perhaps reached its climax in Breath, a thirty-five-second play that has no human actors. The props consist of a pile of rubbish on the stage, lit by a light that begins dim, brightens (but never fully), and then recedes to dimness. There are no words, only a “recorded” cry opening the play, an inhaled breath, an exhaled breath, and an identical “recorded” cry closing the play. For Beckett life is such a “breath.”

Douglas Adams’s cosmic science-fiction novels picture the situation for those who seek an answer to human meaning in computer science. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, the Universe and Everything; and So Long and Thanks for All the Fish Adams tells the story of the universe from the point of view of four time travelers who hitchhike back and forth across intergalactic time and space, from creation in the Big Bang to the final destruction of the universe.1 During the course of this history a race of hyperintelligent, pandimensional beings (mice, actually) build a giant computer (“the size of a small city”) to answer “The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.” This computer, which they call Deep Thought, spends seven and a half million years on the calculation.

For seven and a half million years, Deep Thought computed and calculated, and in the end announced that the answer was in fact Forty-two—and so another, even bigger, computer had to be built to find out what the actual question was.

And this computer, which was called the Earth, was so large that it was frequently mistaken for a planet—especially by the strange apelike beings who roamed its surface, totally unaware that they were simply part of a gigantic computer program.

And this is very odd, because without that fairly simple and obvious piece of knowledge, nothing that ever happened on the Earth could possibly make the slightest bit of sense. Sadly, however, just before the critical moment of read-out, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished by the Vogons to make way—so they claimed—for a new hyperspace bypass, and so all hope of discovering a meaning for life was lost for ever. Or so it would seem.3

By the end of the second novel, the time travelers discover that the “question itself” (the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything) is “What is six times nine?”4 So, they discover, both the question and the answer are inane. Not only is forty-two a meaningless answer to the question on a human level (the level of purpose and meaning), it is bad mathematics. The most rational discipline in the university has been reduced to absurdity.

By the end of the third novel, we have an explanation for why the question and the answer do not seem to fit each other. Prak, the character who is supposed to know the ultimate, says this: “I’m afraid . . . that the Question and the Answer are mutually exclusive. Knowledge of one logically precludes knowledge of the other. It is impossible that both can ever be known about the same Universe.”5 (Physics students will detect here a play on Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, where the position and momentum of an electron can each be known, but not with precision at the same time.)

So we can know the Answers—like forty-two—which don’t mean anything without the Questions. Or we can have the Questions (which give direction to our quest). But we can’t have both. That is, we cannot satisfy our longing for ultimate meaning. To read Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, Eugène Ionesco, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and more recently, Douglas Adams is to begin to feel—if one does not already in our depressing age—the pangs of human emptiness, of life that is without value, without purpose, without meaning.6

But how does one get from naturalism to nihilism? Wasn’t naturalism the enlightened readout of the assured results of science and open intellectual inquiry? As a worldview, did it not account for human beings, their uniqueness among the things of the cosmos? Did it not show human dignity and value? As the highest of creation, the only self-conscious, self-determined beings in the universe, men and women are rulers of all, free to value what they will, free even to control the future of their own evolution. What more could one wish?

Most naturalists are satisfied to end their inquiry right here. They do in fact wish for no more. For them there is no route to nihilism.7

But for a growing number of people the results of reason are not so assured, the closed universe is confining, the notion of death as extinction is psychologically disturbing, our position as the highest in creation is seen either as an alienation from the universe or as a union with it such that we are no more valuable than a pebble on the beach. In fact, pebbles “live” longer! What bridges led from a naturalism that affirms the value of human life to a naturalism that does not? Just how did nihilism come about?

Nihilism came about not because theists and deists picked away at naturalism from the outside. Nihilism is the natural child of naturalism.

THE FIRST BRIDGE: NECESSITY AND CHANCE

The first and most basic reason for nihilism is found in the direct, logical implications of naturalism’s primary propositions. Notice what happens to the concept of human nature when one takes seriously the notions that (1) matter is all there is and it is eternal, and (2) the cosmos operates with a uniformity of cause and effect in a closed system. These mean that a human being is a part of the system. Though they may not understand the implications for human freedom, naturalists agree, as we saw in proposition 3 of chapter four: Human beings are complex machines whose personality is a function of highly complex chemical and physical properties not yet understood. Nietzsche, however, bites the bullet and recognizes the loss to human dignity: Human beings are simply deluded about having free will.

Still many naturalists try to hold on to human freedom within the closed system. Their argument goes like this. Every event in the universe is caused by a previous state of affairs, including each person’s genetic makeup, environmental situation, and even the person’s wants and desires. But each person is free to express those wants and desires. If I want a sandwich and a deli is around the corner, I can choose to have a sandwich. If I want to steal the sandwich when the owner isn’t looking, I can do that. Nothing constrains my choice. My actions are self-determined.

Thus human beings who are obviously self-conscious and, it would appear, self-determined can act significantly and be held responsible for their actions. I can be arrested for stealing the sandwich and reasonably required to pay the penalty.

But are things so simple? Many think not. The issue of human freedom goes deeper than these naturalists see. To be sure I can do anything I want, but what I want is the result of past states of affairs over which ultimately I had no control. I did not freely select my particular genetic makeup or my original family environment. By the time I asked whether I was free to act freely, I was so molded by nature and nurture that the very fact that the question occurred to me was determined. That is, my self itself was determined by outside forces. I can indeed ask such questions, I can act according to my wants and desires, and I can appear to myself to be free, but it is appearance only. Nietzsche is right: “the acting man’s delusion about himself, his assumption that free will exists, is also part of the calculating mechanism.”

If one were omniscient, one would be able to calculate each individual [human] action in advance, each step in the progress of knowledge, each error, each act of malice. To be sure, the acting man is caught in his illusion of volition; if the wheel of the world were to stand still for a moment and an omniscient calculating mind were there to take advantage of this interruption, he would be able to tell into the farthest future of each being and describe every rut that wheel will roll upon. The acting man’s delusion about himself, his assumption that free will exists, is also part of the calculating mechanism.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

The problem is that if the universe is truly closed, then its activity can be governed only from within. Any force that acts to change the cosmos on whatever level (microcosmic, human, macrocosmic) is a part of the cosmos. There would thus seem to be only one explanation for change: the present state of affairs must govern the future state. In other words, the present must cause the future, which in turn must cause the next future, and so on.

The objection that in an Einsteinian universe of time-relativity simultaneity is impossible to define and causal links are impossible to prove is beside the point. We are not talking here about how the events are linked together, only noting that they are linked. Events occur because other events have occurred. All activity in the universe is connected this way. We cannot, perhaps, know what the links are, but the premise of a closed universe forces us to conclude that they must exist.

Moreover, there is evidence that such links exist, for patterns of events are perceivable, and some events can be predicted from the standpoint of earth time with almost absolute precision, for example, precisely when and where the next eclipse will take place. For every eclipse in the next fifteen centuries the exact shadow can be predicted and tracked in space and time across the earth. Most events cannot be so predicted, but the presumption is that that is because all the variables and their interrelations are not known. Some events are more predictable than others, but none is uncertain. Each event must come to be.

In a closed universe the possibility that some things need not be, that others are possible, is not possible. For the only way change can come is by a force moving to make that change, and the only way that force can come is if it is moved by another force, ad infinitum. There is no break in this chain, from eternity past to eternity future, forever and ever, amen.

To the ordinary person determinism does not appear to be the case. We generally perceive ourselves as free agents. But our perception is an illusion. We just do not know what “caused” us to decide. Something did, of course, but we feel it was our free choice. Such perceived freedom—if one does not think much about its implications—is quite sufficient, at least according to some.8

In a closed universe, in other words, freedom must be a determinacy unrecognized, and for those who work out its implications, this is not enough to allow for self-determinacy or moral responsibility. For if I robbed a bank, that would ultimately be due to inexorable (though unperceived) forces triggering my decisions in such a way that I could no longer consider these decisions mine. If these decisions are not mine, I cannot be held responsible. And such would be the case for every act of every person.

A human being is thus a mere piece of machinery, a toy—complicated, very complicated, but a toy of impersonal cosmic forces. A person’s self-consciousness is only an epiphenomenon; it is just part of the machinery looking at itself. But consciousness is only part of the machinery; there is no “self” apart from the machinery. There is no “ego” that can stand over against the system and manipulate it at its own will. Its “will” is the will of the cosmos. In this picture, by the way, we have a rather good description of human beings as seen by behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner. To change people, says Skinner, change their environment, the contingencies under which they act, the forces acting on them. A person must respond in kind, for in Skinner’s view every person is only a reactor: “A person does not act on the world, the world acts on him.”9

The nihilists follow this argument, which can now be stated briefly: Human beings are conscious machines without the ability to affect their own destiny or do anything significant; therefore, human beings as valuable beings are dead. Their life is Beckett’s “breath,” not the life God “breathed” into the first person in the Garden (Genesis 2:7).

But perhaps the course of my argument has moved too fast. Have I missed something? Some naturalists would certainly say so. They would say that I went wrong when I said that the only explanation for change is the continuity of cause and effect. Jacques Monod, for example, attributes all basic change—certainly the appearance of anything genuinely new—to chance. And naturalists admit that new things have come into being by the uncountable trillions: every step on the evolutionary scale from hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and so forth in free association to the formation of complex amino acids and other basic building blocks of life. At every turn—and these are beyond count—chance introduced the new thing. Then necessity, or what Monod calls “the machinery of invariance,” took over and duplicated the chance-produced pattern. Slowly over eons of time through the cooperation of chance and necessity, cellular life, multicellular life, the plant and animal kingdoms, and human beings emerged.10 So chance is offered as the trigger for humanity’s emergence.

But what is chance? Either chance is the inexorable proclivity of reality to happen as it does, appearing to be chance because we do not know the reason for what happens (making chance another name for our ignorance of the forces of determinism), or it is absolutely irrational.11 In the first case, chance is just unknown determinism and not freedom at all. In the second case, chance is not an explanation but the absence of an explanation.12 An event occurs. No cause can be assigned. It is a chance event. Not only might such an event have not happened, it could never have been expected to happen. So while chance produces the appearance of freedom, it actually introduces absurdity. Chance is causeless, purposeless, directionless.13 It is sudden givenness—gratuity incarnated in time and space.

But as Monod says, it introduced into time and space a push in a new direction. A chance event is causeless, but it itself is a cause and is now an integral part of the closed universe. Chance opens the universe not to reason, meaning, and purpose but to absurdity. Suddenly we don’t know where we are. We are no longer a flower in the seamless fabric of the universe, but a chance wart on the smooth skin of the impersonal.

Chance, then, does not supply a naturalist with what is necessary for a person to be both self-conscious and free. It only allows one to be self-conscious and subject to caprice. Capricious action is not a free expression of a person with character. It is simply gratuitous, uncaused. Capricious action is by definition not a response to self-determination, and thus we are still left without a basis for morality.14 Such action simply is.

To summarize: The first reason naturalism turns into nihilism is that naturalism does not supply a basis on which a person can act significantly. Rather, it denies the possibility of a self-determining being who can choose on the basis of an innate self-conscious character. We are machines—determined or capricious. We are not persons with self-consciousness and self-determination.

THE SECOND BRIDGE: THE GREAT CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

The metaphysical presupposition that the cosmos is a closed system has implications not only for metaphysics but also for epistemology. The argument in brief is this: if any given person is the result of impersonal forces—whether working haphazardly or by inexorable law—that person has no way of knowing whether what he or she seems to know is illusion or truth. Let us see how that is so.

Naturalism holds that perception and knowledge are either identical with or a byproduct of the brain; they arise from the functioning of matter. Without matter’s functioning there would be no thought. But matter functions by a nature of its own. There is no reason to think that matter has any interest in leading a conscious being to true perception or to logical (that is, correct) conclusions based on accurate observation and true presuppositions.15 The only beings in the universe who care about such matters are humans. But people are bound to their bodies. Their consciousness arises from a complex interrelation of highly “ordered” matter. Why should whatever that matter is conscious of be in any way related to what actually is the case? Is there a test for distinguishing illusion from reality? Naturalists point to the methods of scientific inquiry, pragmatic tests and so forth. But all these utilize the brain they are testing. Each test could well be a futile exercise in spinning out the consistency of an illusion.

For naturalism nothing exists outside the system itself. There is no God— deceiving or nondeceiving, perfect or imperfect, personal or impersonal. There is only the cosmos, and humans are the only conscious beings. But they are latecomers. They “arose,” but how far? Can they trust their mind, their reason?

Charles Darwin himself once said, “The horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust the conviction of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”16 In other words, if my brain is no more than that of a superior monkey, I cannot even be sure that my own theory of my origin is to be trusted.

Here is a curious case: If Darwin’s naturalism is true, there is no way of even establishing its credibility, let alone proving it. Confidence in logic is ruled out. Darwin’s own theory of human origins must therefore be accepted by an act of faith. One must hold that a brain, a device that came to be through natural selection and chance-sponsored mutations, can actually know a proposition or set of propositions to be true.

C. S. Lewis puts the case this way:

If all that exists is Nature, the great mindless interlocking event, if our own deepest convictions are merely the by-products of an irrational process, then clearly there is not the slightest ground for supposing that our sense of fitness and our consequent faith in uniformity tell us anything about a reality external to ourselves. Our convictions are simply a fact about us—like the colour of our hair. If Naturalism is true we have no reason to trust our conviction that Nature is uniform.17

What we need for such certainty is the existence of some “Rational Spirit” outside both ourselves and nature from which our own rationality could derive. Theism assumes such a ground; naturalism does not.

Not only are we boxed in by the past—our origin in inanimate, unconscious matter—we are also boxed in by our present situation as thinkers. Let us say that I have just completed an argument on the level of “All men are mortal; Aristotle Onassis is a man; Aristotle Onassis is mortal.” That’s a proven conclusion. Right?

Well, how do we know it’s right? Simple. I have obeyed the laws of logic. What laws? How do we know them to be true? They are self-evident. After all, would any thought or communication be possible without them? No. So aren’t they true? Not necessarily.

Any argument we construct implies such laws—the classical ones of identity, noncontradiction, and the excluded middle. But that fact does not guarantee the “truthfulness” of these laws in the sense that anything we think or say that obeys them necessarily relates to what is so in the objective, external universe. Moreover, any argument to check the validity of an argument is itself an argument that might be mistaken. When we begin to think like this, we are not far from an infinite regress; our argument chases its tail down the ever- receding corridors of the mind. Or, to change the image, we lose our bearings in a sea of infinity.

But haven’t we gone astray in arguing against the possibility of knowledge? We do seem to be able to test our knowledge in a way that generally satisfies us. Some things we think we know can be shown to be false or at least highly unlikely—for example, that microbes are spontaneously generated from totally inorganic mud. And all of us know how to boil water, scratch our itches, recognize our friends and distinguish them from others in a crowd.

Almost all our discoveries are due to our violences, to the exacerbation of our instability. Even God insofar as He interests us—it is not in our inmost selves that we discern God, but at the extreme limits of our fever, at the very point where, our rage confronting His, a shock results, an encounter as ruinous for Him as for us. Blasted by the curse attached to acts, the man of violence forces his nature, rises above himself only to relapse, an aggressor, followed by his enterprises, which come to punish him for having instigated them. Every work turns against its author: the poem will crush the poet, the system the philosopher, the event the man of action. Destruction awaits anyone who, answering to his vocation and fulfilling it, exerts himself within history; only the man who sacrifices every gift and talent escapes: released from his humanity, he may lodge himself in Being. If I aspire to a metaphysical career, I cannot, at any price, retain my identity: whatever residue I retain must be liquidated; if, on the contrary, I assume a historical role it is my responsibility to exasperate my faculties until I explode along with them. One always perishes by the self one assumes: to bear a name is to claim an exact mode of collapse.

E. M. Cioran, The Temptation to Exist

Virtually no one is a full-fledged epistemological nihilist. Yet naturalism does not allow a person to have any solid reason for confidence in human reason. We thus end in an ironic paradox. Naturalism, born in the Age of Enlightenment, was launched on a firm acceptance of the human ability to know. Now naturalists find that they can place no confidence in their knowing.

The whole point of this argument can be summarized briefly: Naturalism places us as human beings in a box. But for us to have any confidence that our knowledge that we are in a box is true, we need to stand outside the box or to have some other being outside the box provide us with information (theologians call this “revelation”). But there is nothing or no one outside the box to give us revelation, and we cannot ourselves transcend the box. Ergo: epistemological nihilism.

A naturalist who fails to perceive this is like the man in Stephen Crane’s poem:

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;

Round and round they sped.

I was disturbed at this;

I accosted the man.

“It is futile,” I said,

“You can never—”

“You lie,” he cried,

And ran on.18

In the naturalistic framework, people pursue a knowledge that forever recedes before them. We can never know.

One of the worst consequences of taking epistemological nihilism seriously is that it has led some to question the very facticity of the universe.19 To some, nothing is real, not even themselves. People who reach this state are in deep trouble, for they can no longer function as human beings. Or, as we often say, they can’t cope.

We usually do not recognize this situation as metaphysical or epistemological nihilism. Rather, we call it schizophrenia, hallucination, fantasizing, daydreaming, or living in a dream world. And we treat the person as a “case,” the problem as a “disease.” I have no particular quarrel with doing this, for I do believe in the reality of an external world, one I hold in common with others in my space-time frame. Those who cannot recognize this are beyond coping. But while we think of such situations primarily in psychological terms and while we commit such people to institutions where someone will keep them alive and others will help them return from their inner trip and get back to waking reality, we should realize that some of these far-out cases may be perfect examples of what happens when a person no longer knows in the common-sense way of knowing. It is the “proper” state, the logical result, of epistemological nihilism. If I cannot know, then any perception or dream or image or fantasy becomes equally real or unreal. Life in the ordinary world is based on our ability to make distinctions. Ask the man who has just swallowed colorless liquid, which he thought was water but which was actually wood alcohol.

Most of us never see the far-out “cases.” They are quickly committed. But they exist, and I have met some people whose stories are frightening. Most full epistemological nihilists, however, fall in the class described by Robert Farrar Capon, who simply has no time for such nonsense:

The skeptic is never for real. There he stands, cocktail in hand, left arm draped languorously on one end of the mantelpiece, telling you that he can’t be sure of anything, not even of his own existence. I’ll give you my secret method of demolishing universal skepticism in four words. Whisper to him: “Your fly is open.” If he thinks knowledge is so all-fired impossible, why does he always look?20

As noted above, there is just too much evidence that knowledge is possible. What we need is a way to explain why we have it. This naturalism does not do. So the one who remains a consistent naturalist must be a closet nihilist who does not know where he is.

THE THIRD BRIDGE: IS AND OUGHT

Many naturalists—most, so far as I know—are very moral people. They are not thieves; they do not tend to be libertines. Many are faithful husbands and wives. Some are scandalized by the personal and public immorality of our day. The problem is not that moral values are not recognized but that they have no basis. Summing up the position reached by Nietzsche and Max Weber, Allan Bloom remarks, “Reason cannot establish values, and its belief that it can is the stupidest and most pernicious illusion.”21

Remember that for a naturalist the world is merely there. It does not provide humanity with a sense of oughtness. It only is. Ethics, however, is about what ought to be, whether it is or not.22 Where, then, does one go for a basis for morality? Where is oughtness found?

As I have noted, every person has moral values. There is no tribe without taboos. But these are merely facts of a social nature, and the specific values vary widely. In fact, many of these values conflict with each other. Thus we are forced to ask, Which values are the true values, or the higher values?

Cultural anthropologists, recognizing that this situation prevails, answer clearly: Moral values are relative to one’s culture. What the tribe, nation, social unit says is valuable is valuable. But there is a serious flaw here. It is only another way of saying that is (the fact of a specific value) equals ought (what should be so). Moreover, it does not account for the situation of cultural rebels whose moral values are not those of their neighbors. The cultural rebel’s is is not considered ought. Why? The answer of cultural relativism is that the rebel’s moral values cannot be allowed if they upset social cohesiveness and jeopardize cultural survival. So we discover that is is not ought after all. The cultural relativist has affirmed a value—the preservation of a culture in its current state—as more valuable than its destruction or transformation by one or more rebels within it. Once more, we are forced to ask why.

Cultural relativism, it turns out, is not forever relative. It rests on a primary value affirmed by cultural relativists themselves: that cultures should be preserved. So cultural relativism does not rely only on is but on what its adherents think ought to be the case. The trouble here is that some anthropologists are not cultural relativists. Some think certain values are so important that cultures that do not recognize them should recognize them.23 So cultural relativists must, if they are to convince their colleagues, show why their values are the true values.24 Again we approach the infinite corridor down which we chase our arguments.

But let’s look again. We must be sure we see what is implied by the fact that values do really vary widely. Between neighboring tribes values conflict. One tribe may conduct “religious wars” to spread its values. Such wars are. Ought they to be? Perhaps, but only if there is indeed a nonrelative standard by which to measure the values in conflict. But a naturalist has no way of determining which values among the ones in existence are the basic ones that give meaning to the specific tribal variations. A naturalist can point only to the fact of value, never to an absolute standard.

This situation is not so critical as long as sufficient space separates peoples of radically differing values. But in the global community of the twenty-first century this luxury is no longer ours. We are forced to deal with values in conflict, and naturalists have no standard, no way of knowing when peace is more important than preserving another value. We may give up our property to avoid doing violence to a robber. But what shall we say to white racists who own rental property in the city? Whose values are to govern their actions when a black person attempts to rent their property? Who shall say? How shall we decide?

The argument can again be summarized like that above: Naturalism places us as human beings in an ethically relative box. For us to know what values within that box are true values, we need a measure imposed on us from outside the box; we need a moral plumb line by which we can evaluate the conflicting moral values we observe in ourselves and others. But there is nothing outside the box; there is no moral plumb line, no ultimate, nonchanging standard of value. Ergo: ethical nihilism.25

But nihilism is a feeling, not just a philosophy. And on the level of human perception, Franz Kafka catches in a brief parable the feeling of life in a universe without a moral plumb line.

I ran past the first watchman. Then I was horrified, ran back again and said to the watchman: “I ran through here while you were looking the other way.” The watchman gazed ahead of him and said nothing. “I suppose I really oughtn’t to have done it,” I said. The watchman still said nothing. “Does your silence indicate permission to pass?”26

When people were conscious of a God whose character was moral law, when their consciences were informed by a sense of rightness, their watchmen would shout halt when they trespassed the law. Now their watchmen are silent. They serve no king and protect no kingdom. The wall is a fact without a meaning. One scales it, crosses it, breaches it, and no watchman ever complains. One is left not with the fact but with the feeling of guilt.27

One knows my demand of philosophers that they place themselves beyond good and evil—and that they have the illusion of moral judgement beneath them. This demand follows from an insight formulated by me: that there are no moral facts whatever. Moral judgment has this in common with religious judgment that it believes in realities which do not exist.

Friedrich Nietzsche, “The ‘Improvers’ of Mankind”

In a haunting dream sequence in Ingmar Bergman’s film Wild Strawberries, an old professor is arraigned before the bar of justice. When he asks the charge, the judge replies, “You are guilty of guilt.”

“Is that serious?” the professor asks.

“Very serious,” says the judge.

But that is all that is said on the subject of guilt. In a universe where God is dead, people are not guilty of violating a moral law; they are only guilty of guilt, and that is very serious, for nothing can be done about it. If one had sinned, there might be atonement. If one had broken a law, the lawmaker might forgive the criminal. But if one is only guilty of guilt, there is no way to solve the very personal problem.28

And that states the case for a nihilist, for no one can avoid acting as if moral values exist and as if there is some bar of justice that measures guilt by objective standards. But there is no bar of justice, and we are left not in sin, but in guilt. Very serious, indeed.

THE LOSS OF MEANING

The strands of epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical nihilism weave together to make a rope long enough and strong enough to hang a whole culture. The name of the rope is Loss of Meaning. We end in a total despair of ever seeing ourselves, the world, and others as in any way significant. Nothing has meaning.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., in a parody of Genesis 1, captures this modern dilemma:

In the beginning God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.

And God said, “Let Us make creatures out of mud, so mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.

“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.

“Certainly,” said man.

“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God. And he went away.

his may first appear to be a satire on theism’s notion of the origin of the universe and human beings, but it is quite the contrary. It is a satire on the naturalist’s view, for it shows our human dilemma. We have been thrown up by an impersonal universe. The moment a self-conscious, self-determining being appears on the scene, that person asks the big question: What is the meaning of all this? What is the purpose of the cosmos? But the person’s creator—the impersonal forces of bedrock matter—cannot respond. If the cosmos is to have meaning, we must manufacture it for ourselves.

As Stephen Crane put it in the poem quoted in the opening of the first chapter, the existence of people has not created in the universe “a sense of obligation.” Precisely: We exist. Period. Our maker has no sense of value, no sense of obligation. We alone make values. Are our values valuable? By what standard? Only our own. Whose own? Each person’s own. Each of us is monarch and bishop of our own realm, but our realm is Pointland. For the moment we meet another person, we meet another monarch and bishop. There is no way to arbitrate between two free value makers. There is no monarch to whom both give obeisance. There are values, but no Value. Society is only a bunch of windowless monads, a collection of points, not an organic body obeying a superior, all-encompassing form that arbitrates the values of its separate arms, legs, warts, and wrinkles. Society is not a body at all. It is only a bunch.

Thus does naturalism lead to nihilism. If we take seriously the implications of the death of God, the disappearance of the transcendent, the closedness of the universe, we end right there.

Why, then, aren’t most naturalists nihilists? The obvious answer is the best one: Most naturalists do not take their naturalism seriously. They are inconsistent. They affirm a set of values. They have friends who affirm a similar set. They appear to know and don’t ask how they know they know. They seem to be able to choose and don’t ask themselves whether their apparent freedom is really caprice or determinism. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, but for a naturalist he is wrong. For a naturalist it is the examined life that is not worth living.

INNER TENSIONS IN NIHILISM

The trouble is that no one can live the examined life if examination leads to nihilism, for nobody can live a life consistent with nihilism. At every step, at every moment, nihilists think, and think their thinking has substance, and thus they cheat on their philosophy. There are, I believe, at least five reasons that nihilism is unlivable.

First, from meaninglessness nothing at all follows, or rather, anything follows. If the universe is meaningless and a person cannot know and nothing is immoral, any course of action is open. One can respond to meaninglessness by any act whatsoever, for none is more or less appropriate. Suicide is one act, but it does not “follow” as any more appropriate than going to a Walt Disney movie.

Yet whenever we set ourselves on a course of action, putting one foot in front of the other in other than a haphazard way, we are affirming a goal. We are affirming the value of a course of action, even if to no one other than ourselves. Thus we are not living by nihilism. We are creating value by choice. From this type of argument comes Albert Camus’s attempt to go beyond nihilism to existentialism, which we will consider in the following chapter.30

Second, every time nihilists think and trust their thinking, they are inconsistent, for they have denied that thinking is of value or that it can lead to knowledge. But at the heart of a nihilist’s one affirmation lies a self-contradiction. There is no meaning in the universe, nihilists scream. That means that their only affirmation is meaningless, for if it were to mean anything it would be false.31 Nihilists are indeed boxed in. They can get absolutely nowhere. They merely are; they merely think; and none of this has any significance whatsoever. Except for those whose actions place them in institutions, no one seems to act out their nihilism. Those who do we treat as patients.

Third, while a limited sort of practical nihilism is possible for a while, eventually a limit is reached. The comedy of Catch-22 rests on just this premise. Captain Yossarian is having a knock-down theological argument with Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife, and God is coming in for a good deal of hassling. Yossarian is speaking:

[God] is not working at all. He’s playing. Or else He’s forgotten all about us. That’s the kind of God you people talk about—a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed.

Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His system of creation?32

After several unsuccessful attempts to handle Yossarian’s verbal attack, Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife turns to violence.

“Stop it! Stop it!” Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife screamed suddenly, and began beating him ineffectually about the head with both fists. “Stop it!” . . .

“What the hell are you getting so upset about?” he asked her bewilderedly in a tone of contrite amusement. “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”

“I don’t,” she sobbed, bursting violently into tears. “But the God I don’t believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He’s not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be.”33

Here is another paradox: In order to deny God one must have a God to deny. In order to be a practicing nihilist, there must be something against which to do battle. Practicing nihilists are parasites on meaning. They run out of energy when there is nothing left to deny. Cynics are out of business when they are the last ones around.

Fourth, nihilism means the death of art. Here, too, we find a paradox, for much modern art—literature, painting, drama, film—has nihilism for its ideological core. And much of this literature is excellent by the traditional canons of art. Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” Samuel Beckett’s End Game, Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, Francis Bacon’s various heads of popes spring immediately to mind. The twist is this: to the extent that these artworks display the human implication of a nihilistic worldview, they are not nihilistic; to the extent that they themselves are meaningless, they are not artworks.

Art is nothing if not formal, that is, endowed with structure by the artist. But structure itself implies meaning. So to the extent that an artwork has structure, it has meaning and thus is not nihilistic. Even Beckett’s Breath has structure. A junkyard, the garbage in a trash heap, a pile of rocks just blasted from a quarry have no structure. They are not art.

Some contemporary art attempts to be antiart by being random. Much of John Cage’s music is predicated on sheer chance, randomness. But it is both dull and grating, and very few people can listen to it. It’s not art. Then there is Kafka’s “Hunger Artist,” a brilliant though painful story about an artist who tries to make art out of public fasting, that is, out of nothing. But no one looks at him; everyone passes by his display at the circus to see a young leopard pacing in his cage. Even the “nature” of the leopard is more interesting than the “art” of the nihilist. Breath too, as minimal as it is, is structured and means something. Even if it means only that human beings are meaningless, it participates in the paradox I examined above. In short, art implies meaning and is ultimately nonnihilistic, despite the ironic attempt of nihilists to display their wares by means of it.

Fifth, and finally, nihilism poses severe psychological problems for a nihilist. People cannot live with it because it denies what every fiber of their waking being calls for—meaning, value, significance, dignity, worth. “Nietzsche,” Bloom writes, “replaces easygoing or self-satisfied atheism with agonized atheism, suffering its human consequences. Longing to believe, along with intransigent refusal to satisfy that longing, is, according to him, the profound response to our entire spiritual condition.”34

A younger and an older waiter are closing a “clean, well-lighted” bar for the night. When the young waiter leaves, the older lonely waiter thinks to himself:

What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. He smiled and stood before a bar with a shining steam pressure coffee machine.

Ernest Hemingway, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”

Nietzsche ended his life in an asylum. Ernest Hemingway affirmed a “lifestyle” and eventually committed suicide. Beckett writes black comedy. Vonnegut and Adams revel in whimsy. And Kafka—perhaps the greatest artist of them all—lived an almost impossible life of tedium, writing novels and stories that boil down to a sustained cry: God is dead! God is dead! Isn’t he? I mean, surely he is, isn’t he? God is dead. Oh, I wish, I wish, I wish he weren’t.

It is thus that nihilism forms the hinge for modern people. No one who has not plumbed the despair of the nihilists, heard them out, felt as they felt—if only vicariously through their art—can understand the past century. Nihilism is the foggy bottomland through which we modern people must pass if we are to build a life in Western culture. There are no easy answers to our questions, and none of these answers is worth anything unless it takes seriously the problems raised by the possibility that nothing whatever of value exists.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance. I leaned back and closed my eyes. The images, forewarned, immediately leaped up and filled my closed eyes with existences: existence is a fullness which man can never abandon. . . . I knew it was the World, the naked World suddenly revealing itself, and I choked with rage at this gross absurd being.

ROQUENTIN IN JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, NAUSEA

IN AN ESSAY PUBLISHED in 1950, Albert Camus wrote, “A literature of despair is a contradiction in terms. . . . In the darkest depths of our nihilism I have sought only for the means to transcend nihilism.”1 Here the essence of existentialism’s most important goal is summed up in one phrase: to transcend nihilism. In fact, every important worldview that has emerged since the beginning of the twentieth century has had that as a major goal. For nihilism, coming as it does directly from a culturally pervasive worldview, is the problem of our age. A worldview that ignores this fact has little chance of proving relevant to modern thinking people. Existentialism, especially in its secular form, not only takes nihilism seriously, it is an answer to it.

From the outset it is important to recognize that existentialism takes two basic forms, depending on its relation to previous worldviews, because existentialism is not a full-fledged worldview. Atheistic existentialism is a parasite on naturalism; theistic existentialism is a parasite on theism.2

Historically, we have an odd situation. On the one hand, atheistic existentialism developed to solve the problem of a naturalism that led to nihilism, but it did not appear in any fullness till well into the twentieth century, unless we count a major theme in Nietzsche that quickly became distorted.3 On the other hand, theistic existentialism was born in the middle of the nineteenth century as Søren Kierkegaard responded to the dead orthodoxy of Danish Lutheranism. Yet it was not until after World War I that either form of existentialism became culturally significant, for it was only then that nihilism finally gripped the intellectual world and began affecting the lives and attitudes of ordinary men and women.

World War I had not made the world safe for democracy. The generation of flappers and bathtub gin, the rampant violation of an absurd antiliquor law, the quixotic stock market that promised so much—these prefaced in the United States Dust Bowl 1930s. With the rise of National Socialism in Germany and its incredible travesty of human dignity, students and intellectuals the world over were ready to conclude that life is absurd and human beings are meaningless. In the soil of such frustration and cultural discontent, existentialism in its atheistic form sank its cultural roots. It was to flower into a significant worldview by the 1950s.

To some extent all worldviews have subtle variations. Existentialism is no exception. Camus and Sartre, both existentialists and once friends, had a falling-out over important differences, and Martin Heidegger’s existentialism is quite different from Sartre’s. But as with other worldviews, we will focus on major features and general tendencies. The language of most of the propositions listed below derives from either Sartre or Camus. That is quite intentional, because that is the form in which it has been most digested by today’s intelligentsia, and through their literary works even more than their philosophic treatises, Sartre and Camus are still wielding enormous influence. To many modern people the propositions of existentialism appear so obvious that people “do not know what they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them.”5

BASIC ATHEISTIC EXISTENTIALISM

Atheistic existentialism begins by accepting naturalism’s answers to worldview questions 1 (prime reality), 4 (death), 5 (knowledge), 6 (ethics), and 7 (history). In short: Matter exists eternally; God does not exist. Death is extinction of personality and individuality. Through our innate and autonomous human reason, including the methods of science, we can know the universe. The cosmos, including this world, is understood to be in its normal state. Ethics is related only to human beings. History is a linear stream of events linked by cause and effect but without an overarching purpose.

In other words, atheistic existentialism affirms most of the propositions of naturalism except those relating to human nature and our relationship to the cosmos. Indeed, existentialism’s major interest is in our humanity and how we can be significant in an otherwise insignificant world.

The world, it is assumed, existed long before human beings came on the scene. It is structured or chaotic, determined by inexorable law or subject to chance. Whichever it is makes no difference. The world merely is.

Then came a new thing, conscious beings—ones who distinguished he and she from it, ones who seemed determined to determine their own destiny, to ask questions, to ponder, to wonder, to seek meaning, to endow the external world with special value, to create gods. In short, then came human beings. Now we have—for no one knows what reason—two kinds of being in the universe, the one seemingly having kicked the other out of itself and into separate existence.

The first sort of being is the objective world—the world of material, of inexorable law, of cause and effect, of chronological, clock-ticking time, of flux, of mechanism. The machinery of the universe, spinning electrons, whirling galaxies, falling bodies and rising gases and flowing waters—each is doing its thing, forever unconscious, forever just being where it is when it is. Here, say the existentialists, science and logic have their day. People know the external, objective world by virtue of careful observation, recording, hypothesizing, checking hypotheses by experiment, ever-refining theories, and proving guesses about the lay of the cosmos we live in.

The second sort of being is the subjective world—the world of mind, of consciousness, of awareness, of freedom, of stability. Here the inner awareness of the mind is a conscious present, a constant now. Time has no meaning, for the subject is always present to itself, never past, never future. Science and logic do not penetrate this realm; they have nothing to say about subjectivity. Subjectivity is the self’s apprehension of the not-self; subjectivity is making that not-self part of itself. The subject takes in knowledge not as a bottle takes in liquid but as an organism takes in food. Knowledge turns into the knower.

Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of from a distance: it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast—or else there is nothing more at all.

Roquentin in Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

Naturalism had emphasized the unity of the two worlds by seeing the objective world as the real and the subjective as its shadow. “The brain secretes thought,” said Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis, “as the liver secretes bile.” The real is the objective. Sartre says, “The effect of all materialism is to treat all men, including the one philosophizing, as objects, that is, as an ensemble of determined reactions in no way distinguished from the ensemble of qualities and phenomena which constitute a table or a chair or a stone.”6 By that route, as we saw, lies nihilism. The existentialists take another path.

Existentialism emphasizes the disunity of the two worlds and opts strongly in favor of the subjective world, what Sartre calls “an ensemble of values distinct from the material realm.”7 For people are the subjective beings. Unless there are extraterrestrial beings, a possibility most existentialists do not even consider, we are the only beings in the universe who are self-conscious and self-determinate. The reason we have become that way is past finding out. But we perceive ourselves to be self-conscious and self-determinate, and so we work from these givens.

Science and logic do not penetrate our subjectivity, but that is all right because value and meaning and significance are not tied to science and logic. We can mean; we can be valuable; or better, we can mean and be valuable. Our significance is not up to the facts of the objective world over which we have no control, but up to the consciousness of the subjective world over which we have complete control.

Atheistic existentialism is at one with naturalism’s basic view of human nature; there is indeed no genuinely transcendent element in human beings, but they do display one important unique feature. To put it in Sartre’s words, “If God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and . . . this being is man.” This sentence is the most famous definition of the core of existentialism. Sartre continues, “First of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself.”8

Note again the distinction between the objective and subjective worlds. The objective world is a world of essences. Everything comes bearing its nature. Salt is salt; trees are tree; ants are ant. Only human beings are not human before they make themselves so. Each of us makes himself or herself human by what we do with our self-consciousness and our self-determinacy. Back to Sartre: “At first he [any human being] is nothing. Only afterwards will he be something, and he himself will have made him what he will be.”9 The subjective world is completely at the beck and call of every subjective being, that is, of every person.

How does this work out in practice? Let us say that John, a soldier, fears he is a coward. Is he a coward? Only if he acts like a coward, and his action will proceed not from a nature defined beforehand but from the choices he makes when the bullets start to fly. We can call John a coward if and only if he does cowardly deeds, and these will be deeds he chooses to do. So if John fears he is a coward but does not want to be, let him do brave deeds when they are called for.

From proposition 2 it follows that each person is totally free. Each of us is uncoerced, radically capable of doing anything imaginable with our subjectivity. We can think, will, imagine, dream, project visions, consider, ponder, invent. Each of us is monarch of our own subjective world.

We run into just such an understanding of human freedom in John Platt’s existential defense of B. F. Skinner’s naturalistic behaviorism:

The objective world, the world of isolated and controlled experiments, is the world of physics; the subjective world, the world of knowledge, values, decisions, and acts—of purposes which these experiments are in fact designed to serve—is the world of cybernetics, of our own goal-seeking behavior. Determinism or indeterminism lies on that side of the boundary, while the usual idea of “free will” lies on this side of the boundary. They belong to different universes, and no statement about one has any bearing on the other.11

So we are free within. And thus we can create our own value by affirming worth. We are not bound by the objective world of ticking clocks and falling water and spinning electrons. Value is inner, and the inner is each person’s own.

The objective world considered in and of itself is as the naturalist has said: a world of order and law, perhaps triggered into new structures by chance. It is the world of thereness.

To us, however, the facticity, the hard, cold thereness of the world, appears alien. As we make ourselves to be by fashioning our subjectivity, we see the objective world as absurd. It does not fit us. Our dreams and visions, our desires, all our inner world of value runs smack up against a universe that is impervious to our wishes. Think all day that you can step off a ten-story building and float safely to the ground. Then try it.

The objective world is orderly; bodies fall if not supported. The subjective world knows no order. What is present to it, what is here and now, is.

So we are all strangers in a foreign land. And the sooner we learn to accept that, the sooner we transcend our alienation and pass through the despair.

The toughest fact to transcend is the ultimate absurdity—death. We are free so long as we remain subjects. When we die, each of us is just an object among other objects. So, says Camus, we must ever live in the face of the absurd. We must not forget our bent toward nonexistence, but live out the tension between the love of life and the certainty of death.

Here is how an existentialist goes beyond nihilism. Nothing is of value in the objective world in which we become conscious, but while we are conscious we create value. The person who lives an authentic existence is the one who keeps ever aware of the absurdity of the cosmos but who rebels against that absurdity and creates meaning.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “underground man” is a paradigm of the rebel without a seemingly reasonable cause. In the story the underground man is challenged:

Two and two do make four. Nature doesn’t ask your advice. She isn’t interested in your preferences or whether or not you approve of her laws. You must accept nature as she is with all the consequences that that implies. So a wall is a wall, etc., etc.

The walls referred to here are the “laws of nature,” “the conclusions of the natural sciences, of mathematics.” But the underground man is equal to the challenge:

But, Good Lord, what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmetic if I have my reasons for disliking them, including the one about two and two making four! Of course, I won’t be able to breach this wall with my head if I’m not strong enough. But I don’t have to accept a stone wall just because it’s there and I don’t have the strength to breach it.12

It is thus insufficient to pit the objective world against the subjective and point to its ultimate weapon, death. The person who would be authentic is not impressed. Being a cog in the cosmic machinery is much worse than death. As the underground man says, “The meaning of a man’s life consists in proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.”13

Ethics—that is, a system of understanding what is the good—is solved simply for an existentialist. The good action is the consciously chosen action. Sartre writes, “To choose to be this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good.”14 So the good is whatever a person chooses; the good is part of subjectivity; it is not measured by a standard outside the individual human dimension.

If I’ve discarded God the Father, there has to be someone to invent values. You’ve got to take things as they are. Moreover, to say that we invent values means nothing else than this: life has no meaning a priori. Before you come alive, life is nothing; it’s up to you to give it meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning you choose. In that way, you see, there is a possibility of creating human community.

The problem with this position is twofold. First, subjectivity leads to solipsism, the affirmation that each person alone is the determiner of values and that there are thus as many centers of value as there are persons in the cosmos at any one time. Sartre recognizes this objection and counters by insisting that every person in meeting other persons encounters a recognizable center of subjectivity.15 Thus we see that others like us must be involved in making meaning for themselves. We are all in this absurd world together, and our actions affect each other in such a way that “nothing can be good for us without being good for all.”16 Moreover, as I act and think and effect my subjectivity, I am engaged in a social activity: “I am creating a certain image of man of my own choosing. In choosing myself, I choose man.”17 According to Sartre, therefore, people living authentic lives create value not only for themselves but for others too.

The second objection Sartre does not address, and it seems more telling. If, as Sartre says, we create value simply by choosing it and thus “can never choose evil,” does good have any meaning? The first answer is yes, for evil is “not-choosing.” In other words, evil is passivity, living at the direction of others, being blown around by one’s society, not recognizing the absurdity of the universe, that is, not keeping the absurd alive. If the good is in choosing, then choose. Sartre once advised a young man who sought his counsel, “You’re free, choose, that is, invent.”18

Does this definition satisfy our human moral sensitivity? Is the good merely any action passionately chosen? Too many of us can think of actions seemingly chosen with eyes open that were dead wrong. In what frame of mind have the Russian pogroms against the Jews been ordered and executed? And the bombing of Vietnamese villages or the Federal Building in Oklahoma City or the targets of the Unabomber? What about the terrorist leveling of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001? Sartre himself has sided with causes that appear quite moral on grounds many traditional moralists accept. But not every existentialist has acted like Sartre, and the system seems to leave open the possibility for the Unabomber to claim ethical immunity for his murders, or for the perpetrators of the events of 9/11 to glory in the nobility of their cause.

Placing the locus of morality in each individual’s subjectivity leads to the inability to distinguish a moral from an immoral act on grounds that satisfy our innate sense of right, a sense that says others have the same rights as I do. My choice may not be the desired choice of others though in my choosing I choose for others, as Sartre says. Some standard external to the “subjects” involved is necessary to shape truly the proper actions and relationships between “subjects.”

Ordinary naturalists can choose to commit themselves to their families or neighbors, their communities or country, the environment or the world. They need not display overarching egotism or selfishness. But full-blown atheistic existentialists have already committed themselves to themselves. If they are indeed committed to this Sartrean notion of human selves making themselves who they will come to be, they are the monarchs and bishops of their own Pointland. Since they themselves make themselves who they are, they are responsible only to themselves. They admit they are finite beings in an absurd world, subject to death without exception. The authenticity of their value comes solely by virtue of their own conscious choices.

Before we abandon existentialism to the charge of solipsism and a relativism that fails to provide a basis for ethics, we should give more than passing recognition to Albert Camus’s noble attempt to show how a good life can be defined and lived. This, it seems to me, is the task Camus set for himself in The Plague.

A SAINT WITHOUT GOD

In The Brothers Karamazov (1880) Dostoyevsky has Ivan Karamazov say that if God is dead everything is permitted. In other words, if there is no transcendent standard of the good, then there can ultimately be no way to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, and there can be no saints or sinners, no good or bad people. If God is dead, ethics is impossible.

Albert Camus picks up that challenge in The Plague (1947), which tells the story of Oran, a city in North Africa, in which a deadly strain of infectious disease breaks out. The city closes its gates to traffic and thus becomes a symbol of the closed universe, a universe without God. The disease, on the other hand, comes to symbolize the absurdity of this universe. The plague is arbitrary; one cannot predict who will and who will not contract it. It is not “a thing made to man’s measure.”19 It is terrible in its effects—painful physically and mentally. Its origins are not known, and yet it becomes as familiar as daily bread. There is no way to avoid it. Thus the plague comes to stand for death itself, for like death it is unavoidable and its effects are terminal. The plague helps make everyone in Oran live an authentic existence, because it makes everyone aware of the absurdity of the world they inhabit. It points up the fact that people are born with a love of life but live in the framework of the certainty of death.

The story begins as rats start to come out from their haunts and die in the streets; it ends a year later as the plague lifts and life in the city returns to normal. During the intervening months, life in Oran becomes life in the face of total absurdity. Camus’s genius is to use that as a setting against which to show the reactions of a cast of characters, each of whom represents in some way a philosophic attitude.

M. Michel, for example, is a concierge in an apartment house. He is outraged at the way the rats are coming out of their holes and dying in his apartment building. At first he denies they exist in his building, but eventually he is forced to admit it. Early in the novel he dies cursing the rats. M. Michel represents the man who refuses to acknowledge the absurdity of the universe. When he is forced to admit it, he dies. He cannot live in the face of the absurd. He represents those who are able to live only inauthentic lives.

The old Spaniard has a very different reaction. He had retired at age fifty and gone immediately to bed. Then he measured time, day in and day out, by moving peas from one pan to another. “‘Every fifteen peas,’ he said, ‘it’s feeding time. What could be simpler?’”20 The old Spaniard never leaves his bed, but he takes a sadistic pleasure in the rats, the heat, and the plague, which he calls “life.”21 He is Camus’s nihilist. Nothing in his life—inside or out, objective world or subjective world—has value. So he lives it with a complete absence of meaning.

M. Cottard represents a third stance. Before the plague grips the city, he is nervous, for he is a criminal and is subject to arrest if detected. But as the plague becomes severe, all city employees are committed to alleviating the distress, and Cottard is left free to do as he will. And what he wills to do is live off the plague. The worse conditions get, the richer, happier, and friendlier he becomes. “Getting worse every day isn’t it? Well, anyhow, everyone’s in the same boat,” he says.22 Jean Tarrou, one of the chief characters in the novel, explains Cottard’s happiness this way: “He’s in the same peril of death as everyone else, but that’s just the point; he’s in it with the others.”23

When the plague begins to lift, Cottard loses his feeling of community because he again becomes a wanted man. He loses control of himself, shoots up a street, and is taken by force into custody. Throughout the plague his actions were criminal. Instead of alleviating the suffering of others, he feasted on it. He is Camus’s sinner in a universe without God—proof, if you will, in novelistic form that evil is possible in a closed cosmos.

If evil is possible in a closed cosmos, then perhaps good is too. In two major characters, Jean Tarrou and Dr. Rieux, Camus develops this theme. Jean Tarrou was baptized into the fellowship of nihilists when he visited his father at work, heard him argue as a prosecuting attorney for the death of a criminal, and then saw an execution. This had a profound effect on him. As he puts it, “I learned that I had had an indirect hand in the deaths of thousands of people. . . . We all have the plague.”24 And thus he lost his peace.

From then on, Jean Tarrou has made his whole life a search for some way to become “a saint without God.”25 Camus implies that Tarrou succeeds. His method lies in comprehension and sympathy and ultimately issues in action.26 He is the one who suggests a volunteer corps of workers to fight the plague and comfort its victims. Tarrou works ceaselessly in this capacity. Yet there remains a streak of despair in his lifestyle: “winning the match” for him means living “only with what one knows and what one remembers, cut off from what one hopes for!” So, writes Dr. Rieux, the narrator of the novel, Tarrou “realized the bleak sterility of a life without illusions.”27

Dr. Rieux himself is another case study of the good man in an absurd world. From the very beginning he sets himself with all his strength to fight the plague—to revolt against the absurd. At first his attitude is passionless, detached, aloof. Later, as his life is deeply touched by the lives and deaths of others, he softens and becomes compassionate. Philosophically, he comes to understand what he is doing. He is totally unable to accept the idea that a good God could be in charge of things. As Baudelaire said, that would make God the devil. Rather, Dr. Rieux takes as his task “fighting against creation as he found it.”28 He says, “Since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn’t it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him and struggle with all our might against death, without raising our eyes toward the heaven where He sits in silence.”29

Dr. Rieux does exactly that: he struggles against death. And the story he tells is a record of “what had had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts, despite their personal afflictions, by all who, while unable to be saints but refusing to bow down to pestilences, strive their utmost to be healers.”30

I have dwelt at length on The Plague (though by no means exhausting its riches either as art or as a lesson in life)31 because I know of no novel or work of existential philosophy that makes so appealing a case for the possibility of living a good life in a world where God is dead and values are ungrounded in a moral framework outside the human frame. The Plague is to me almost convincing. Almost, but not quite. For the same questions occur within the intellectual framework of The Plague as within the system of Sartre’s “Existentialism.”

Why should the affirmation of life as Dr. Rieux and Jean Tarrou see it be good and Cottard’s living off the plague be bad? Why should the old Spaniard’s nihilistic response be any less right than Dr. Rieux’s positive action? True, our human sensibility sides with Rieux and Tarrou. But we recognize that the old Spaniard is not alone in his judgment. Who then is right? Those who side with the old Spaniard will not be convinced by Camus or by any reader who sides with Rieux, for without an external moral referent there is no common ground for discussion. There is but one conviction versus another. The Plague is attractive to those whose moral values are traditional, not because Camus offers a base for those values but because he continues to affirm them even though they have no base. Unfortunately, affirmation is not enough. It can be countered by an opposite affirmation.

It may be that in the last two years of his life Camus recognized his failure to go beyond nihilism. Howard Mumma, the summer pastor of the American Church in Paris, recounts private talks with Camus during these two years in which Camus gradually came to feel that the Christian explanation was true. He asked Mumma what it meant to be “born again” and whether Mumma would baptize him. The baptism did not take place, first, because Mumma considered Camus’s childhood baptism valid and, second, because Camus was not yet ready for a public display of his conversion. The issue was not resolved when Mumma left Paris at the end of summer, expecting to see Camus again the following year. Camus died in an automobile accident the following February.32

Since I have been coming to church, I have been thinking a great deal about the idea of a transcendent, something that is other than this world. . . . And since I have been reading the Bible, I sense that there is something—I don’t know if it is personal or if it is a great idea or powerful influence—but there is something that can bring meaning to my life.

Camus, in Howard Mumma, Albert Camus and the Minister

HOW FAR BEYOND NIHILISM?

Does atheistic existentialism transcend nihilism? It certainly tries to—with passion and conviction. Yet it fails to provide a referent for a morality that goes beyond each individual. By grounding human significance in subjectivity, it places it in a realm divorced from reality. The objective world keeps intruding: death, the ever-present possibility and the ultimate certainty, puts a halt to whatever meaning might otherwise be possible. It forces an existentialist forever to affirm and affirm and affirm; when affirmation ceases, so does authentic existence.

Considering precisely this objection to the possibility of human value, H. J. Blackham agrees to the terms of the argument. Death indeed does end all. But every human life is more than itself, for it stems from a past humanity and it affects humanity’s future. Moreover, “there is heaven and there is hell in the economy of every human imagination.”33 That is, says Blackham, “I am the author of my own experience.”34 After all the objections have been raised, Blackham retreats to solipsism. And that seems to me the end of all attempts at ethics from the standpoint of atheistic existentialism.

Atheistic existentialism goes beyond nihilism only to reach solipsism, the lonely self that exists for fourscore and seven (if it doesn’t contract the plague earlier), then ceases to exist. Many would say that that is not to go beyond nihilism at all; it is only to don a mask called value, a mask stripped clean away by death.

BASIC THEISTIC EXISTENTIALISM

As was pointed out above, theistic existentialism arose from philosophic and theological roots quite different from those of its atheistic counterpart. It was Søren Kierkegaard’s answer to the challenge of a theological nihilism—the dead orthodoxy of a dead church. As Kierkegaard’s themes were picked up two generations after his death, they were the response to a Christianity that had lost its theology completely and had settled for a watered-down gospel of morality and good works. God had been reduced to Jesus, who had been reduced to a good man pure and simple. The death of God in liberal theology did not produce among liberals the despair of Kafka but the optimism of one English bishop in 1905 who, when asked what he thought would prevent humankind from achieving a perfect social union, could think of nothing.

Late in the second decade of the twentieth century, however, Karl Barth in Germany saw what ought to happen when theology became anthropology, and he responded by refurbishing Christianity along existential lines. What he and subsequent theologians such as Emil Brunner and Reinhold Niebuhr affirmed came to be called neo-orthodoxy, for while it was significantly different from orthodoxy, it put God very much back in the picture.35 It is not my goal to look specifically at any one form of neo-orthodoxy. Rather, I will seek to identify propositions that are common to the theistic existential stance.

Theistic existentialism begins by accepting theism’s answers to worldview questions 1 (prime reality), 2 (external reality), 3 (human beings), 4 (death), 6 (ethics), and 8 (core commitments). In short: God is infinite and personal (triune), transcendent and immanent, omniscient, sovereign, and good. God created the cosmos ex nihilo to operate with a uniformity of cause and effect in an open system. Human beings are created in the image of God and thus possess personality, self-transcendence, intelligence, morality, gregariousness, and creativity. Human beings were created good, but through the fall the image of God became defaced, though not so ruined as to be incapable of restoration; through the work of Christ, God redeemed humanity and began the process of restoring people to goodness, though any given person may choose to reject that redemption. For each person death is either the gate to life with God and his people or the gate to eternal separation from the only thing that will ultimately fulfill human aspirations. Ethics is transcendent and is based on the character of God as good (holy and loving). As a core commitment Christian theists live to seek first the kingdom of God, that is, to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

This list of propositions, identical to that of theism, suggests that theistic existentialism is just Christian theism. I am tempted to say that is in fact what we have, but this would do an injustice to the special existential variations and emphases. The existential version of theism is much more a particular set of emphases within theism than it is a separate worldview. Still, because of its impact on twentieth-century theology and its confusing relation to atheistic existentialism, it deserves a special treatment. Moreover, some tendencies within the existential version of theism place it at odds with traditional theism. These tendencies will be highlighted as they arise in the discussion.

As with atheistic existentialism, theistic existentialism’s most characteristic elements are concerned not with the nature of the cosmos or God, but with human nature and our relation to the cosmos and God.

Theistic existentialism does not start with God. This is its most important variation from theism. With theism God is assumed certainly to be there and of a given character; then people are defined in relationship to God. Theistic existentialism arrives at the same conclusion, but it starts elsewhere.

Theistic existentialism emphasizes the place in which human beings find themselves when they first come to self-awareness. Self-reflect for a moment. Your certainty of your own existence, your own consciousness, your own self-determinacy—these are your starting points. When you look around, check your desires against the reality you find, look for a meaning to your existence, you are not blessed with certain answers. You find a universe that does not fit you, a social order that scratches where you don’t itch and fails to scratch where you do. And, worse luck, you do not immediately perceive God.

The human situation is ambivalent, for evidence of order in the universe is ambiguous. Some things seem explicable by laws that seem to govern events; other things do not. The fact of human love and compassion gives evidence for a benevolent deity; the fact of hatred and violence and the fact of an impersonal universe point in the other direction.

It is here that Father Paneloux in The Plague images for us an existential Christian stance. Dr. Rieux, you will recall, refused to accept the “created order” because it was “a scheme of things in which children are put to torture.”36 Father Paneloux, on the other hand, says, “But perhaps we should love that which we cannot understand.”37 Father Paneloux has “leaped” to faith in and love for the existence of a good God, even though the immediate evidence is all in the other direction. Rather than accounting for the absurdity of the universe on the basis of the fall, as a Christian theist would do, Father Paneloux assumes God is immediately responsible for this absurd universe; therefore he concludes that he must believe in God in spite of the absurdity.

Camus elsewhere calls such faith “intellectual suicide,” and I am inclined to agree with him. But the point is that while reason may lead us to atheism, we can always refuse to accept reason’s conclusions and take a leap toward faith.

To be sure, if the Judeo-Christian God exists, we had better acknowledge it because in that case our eternal destiny depends on it. But, say the existentialists, the data is not all in and never will be, and so every person who would be a theist must step forth and choose to believe. God will never reveal himself unambiguously. Consequently each person, in the loneliness of his or her own subjectivity, surrounded by a great deal more darkness than light, must choose. And that choice must be a radical act of faith. When a person does choose to believe, a whole panorama opens. Most of the propositions of traditional theism flood in. Yet the subjective, choice-centered basis for the worldview colors the style of each Christian existentialist’s stance within theism.

As in atheistic existentialism, theistic existentialism emphasizes the disjunction between the objective and the subjective worlds. Martin Buber, a Jewish existentialist whose views have greatly influenced Christians, uses the terms I-Thou and I-It to distinguish between the two ways a person relates to reality. In the I-It relationship a human being is an objectifier:

Now with the magnifying glass of peering observation he bends over particulars and objectifies them, or with the field-glass of remote inspection he objectifies them and arranges them as scenery, he isolates them in observation without any feeling of their exclusiveness, or he knits them into a scheme of observation without any feeling of universality.38

This is the realm of science and logic, of space and time, of measurability. As Buber says, “Without It man cannot live. But he who lives by It alone is not man.”39 The Thou is necessary.

In the I-Thou relationship, a subject encounters a subject: “When Thou is spoken [Buber means experienced], the speaker has nothing for his object.”40 Rather, such speakers have a subject like themselves with whom to share a mutual life. In Buber’s words, “All real living is meeting.”41

Buber’s statement about the primacy of I-Thou, person-to-person relationships is now recognized as a classic. No simple summary can do it justice, and I encourage readers to treat themselves to the book itself. Here we must content ourselves with one more quotation about the personal relationship Buber sees possible between God and people:

Men do not find God if they stay in the world. They do not find Him if they leave the world. He who goes out with his whole being to meet his Thou and carries to it all being that is in the world, finds Him who cannot be sought. Of course God is the “wholly Other”; but He is also the wholly Same, the Wholly Present. Of course He is the Mysterium Tremendum that appears and overthrows; but He is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I.42

So theistic existentialists emphasize the personal as of primary value. The impersonal is there; it is important; but it is to be lifted up to God, lifted up to the Thou of all Thous. To do so satisfies the I and serves to eradicate the alienation so strongly felt by people when they concentrate on I-It relations with nature and, sadly, with other people as well.

This discussion may seem rather abstract to Christians whose faith in God is a daily reality that they live out rather than reflect on. Perhaps the chart in table 6.1 comparing two ways of looking at some basic elements of Christianity will make the issues clearer. It is adapted from a lecture given by theologian Harold Englund at the University of Wisconsin in the early 1960s. Think of the column on the left as describing a dead orthodoxy contrasted with the column on the right describing a live theistic existentialism.

When put this way, the existential version is obviously more attractive. Of course, traditional theists may well respond in two ways: first, the second column demands or implies the existence of the first column and, second, theism has always included the second column in its system. Both responses are well founded. The problem has been that theism’s total worldview has not always been well understood and churches have tended to stick with column one. It has taken existentialism to restore many theists to a full recognition of the richness of their own system.

An existentialist’s stress on personality and wholeness leads to an equal emphasis on the subjectivity of genuine human knowledge. Knowledge about objects involves I-It relationships; they are necessary but not sufficient. Full knowledge is intimate interrelatedness; it involves the I-Thou and is linked firmly to the authentic life of the knower. In 1835 when Kierkegaard was faced with deciding what should be his life’s work, he wrote,

What I really need is to become clear in my own mind what I must do, not what I must know—except in so far as a knowing must precede every action. The important thing is to understand what I am destined for, to perceive what the Deity wants me to do; the point is to find the truth for me, to find that idea for which I am ready to live and die. What good would it do me to discover a so-called objective truth, though I were to work my way through the systems of the philosophers and were able, if need be, to pass them in review?43

Some readers of Kierkegaard have understood him to abandon the concept of objective truth altogether; certainly some existentialists have done precisely that, disjoining the objective and subjective so completely that the one has no relation to the other.44 This has been especially true of atheistic existentialists like John Platt. It is not that the facts are unimportant but that they must be facts for someone, facts for me. And that changes their character and makes knowledge become the knower. Truth in its personal dimension is subjectivity; it is truth digested and lived out on the nerve endings of a human life.

When knowledge becomes so closely related to the knower, it has an edge of passion, of sympathy, and it tends to be hard to divide logically from the knower himself. Buber describes the situation of a person standing before God: “Man’s religious situation, his being there in the Presence, is characterized by its essential and indissoluble antinomy.” What is one’s relation to God as regards freedom or necessity? Kant, says Buber, resolved the problem by assigning necessity to the realm of appearances and freedom to the realm of being.

But if I consider necessity and freedom not in worlds of thought but in the reality of standing before God, if I know that “I am given over for disposal” and know at the same time that “It depends on myself,” then I cannot try to escape the paradox that has to be lived by assigning irreconcilable propositions to two separate realms of validity; nor can I be helped to an ideal reconciliation by any theological device: but I am compelled to take both to myself, to be lived together, and in being lived they are one.45

The full truth is in the paradox, not in an assertion of only one side of the issue. Presumably this paradox is resolved in the mind of God, but it is not resolved in the human mind. It is to be lived out: “God, I rely completely on you; do your will. I am stepping out to act.”

The strength of stating our understanding of our stance before God in such a paradox is at least in part a result of the inability most of us have had in stating our stance nonparadoxical. Most nonparadoxical statements end by denying either God’s sovereignty or human significance. That is, they tend either to Pelagianism or to hyper-Calvinism.

The weakness of resting in paradox is the difficulty of knowing where to stop. What sets of seemingly contradictory statements are to be lived out as truth? Surely not every set. “Love your neighbor; hate your neighbor.” “Do good to those who persecute you. Call your friends together and do in your enemies.” “Don’t commit adultery. Have every sexual liaison you can pull off.”

So beyond the paradoxical it would seem that there must be some noncontradictory proposition governing which paradoxes we will try to live out. In the Christian form of existentialism the Bible taken as God’s special revelation sets the bounds. It forbids many paradoxes, and it seems to encourage others. The doctrine of the Trinity, for example, may be an unresolvable paradox, but it does justice to the biblical data Among those who have no external objective authority to set the bounds, paradox tends to run rampant. Marjorie Grene comments about Kierkegaard, “Much of Kierkegaard’s writing seems to be motivated not so much by an insight into the philosophical or religious appropriateness of paradox to a peculiar problem as by the sheer intellectual delight in the absurd for its own sake.”47 Thus, this aspect of theistic existentialism has come in for a great deal of criticism from those holding a traditional theistic worldview. The human mind is made in the image of God’s mind, and thus though our mind is finite and incapable of encompassing the whole of knowledge, it is yet able to discern some truth. As Francis Schaeffer puts it, we can have substantial truth but not exhaustive truth, and we can discern truth from foolishness by the use of the principle of noncontradiction.48

What logic does is to articulate and to make explicit those rules which are in fact embodied in actual discourse and which, being so embodied, enable men both to construct valid arguments and to avoid the penalties of inconsistency. . . . A pupil of Duns Scotus demonstrated that . . . from a contradiction any statement whatsoever can be derived. It follows that to commit ourselves to asserting a contradiction is to commit ourselves to asserting anything whatsoever, to asserting anything whatsoever that it is possible to assert—and of course also to its denial. The man who asserts a contradiction thus succeeds in saying nothing and also in committing himself to everything; both are failures to assert anything determinate, to say that this is the case and not this other. We therefore depend upon our ability to utilize and to accord with the laws of logic in order to speak at all, and a large part of formal logic clarifies for us what we have been doing all along.

Alasdair MacIntyre, Herbert Marcuse: An Exposition and a Polemic

Theistic existentialism took two steps away from traditional theism. The first step was to begin to distrust the accuracy of recorded history. The second step was to lose interest in its facticity and to emphasize its religious implication or meaning.

The first step is associated with the higher criticism of the mid-nineteenth century. Rather than taking the biblical accounts at face value, accepting miracles and all, the higher critics, such as D. F. Strauss (1808–1874) and Ernest Renan (1823–1892), started from the naturalistic assumption that miracles cannot happen. Accounts of them must therefore be false, not necessarily fabricated by writers who wished to deceive but propounded by credulous people of primitive mindset.

This, of course, tended to undermine the authority of the biblical accounts even where they were not riddled with the miraculous. Other higher critics, most notably Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918), also turned their attention to the inner unity of the Old Testament and discovered, so they were sure, that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses at all. In fact, the texts showed that several hands over several centuries had been at work. This undermined what the Bible says about itself and thus called into question the truth of its whole message.49

Rather than change their naturalistic presuppositions to match the data of the Bible, they concluded that the Bible was historically untrustworthy. This could have led to an abandonment of Christian faith in its entirety. Instead it led to a second step—a radical shift in emphasis. The facts the Bible recorded were not important; what was important were its examples of the good life and its timeless truths of morality.

Matthew Arnold wrote in 1875 that Christianity “will live, because it depends upon a true and inexhaustible fruitful idea, the idea of death and resurrection as conceived and worked out by Jesus. . . . The importance of the disciples’ belief in their Master’s resurrection lay in their believing what was true, although they materialized it. Jesus had died and risen again, but in his own sense not theirs.”50 History—that is, space-time events—was not important; belief was important. And the doctrine of death and resurrection came to stand not for the atonement of humankind by the God-man Jesus Christ but for a “new life” of human service and sacrifice for others. The great mystery of God’s entrance into time and space was changed from fact to myth, a powerful myth, of course, one that could transform ordinary people into moral giants.

These steps took place long before the nihilism of Nietzsche or the despair of Kafka. They were responses to the “assured results of scholarship” (which as those who pursue the matter will find are now not so assured). If objective truth could not be found, no matter. Real truth is poetically contained in the “story,” the narrative.

It is interesting to note what soon happened to Matthew Arnold. In 1875 he was saying that we should read the Bible as poetry; if we did it would teach us the good life. In 1880 he had taken the next step and was advocating that we treat poetry in general in the same way we used to treat the Bible: “More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. . . . Most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.”51 For Arnold, poetry in general had become scripture.

In any case, when theistic existentialists (Reinhold Niebuhr, Rudolf Bultmann, and the like) began appearing on the theological scene, they had a ready-made solution to the problem posed for orthodoxy by the higher critics. So the Bible’s history was suspect. What matter? The accounts are “religiously” (that is, poetically) true. So while the doctrine of the neo-orthodox theologians looks more like the orthodoxy of Calvin than like the liberalism of Matthew Arnold, the historical basis for the doctrines was discounted, and the doctrines themselves began to be lifted out of history.

The fall was said not to have taken place back there and then in space and time. Rather, each person reenacts in their own life this story. Each enters the world like Adam, sinless; each one rebels against God. The fall is existential—a here-and-now proposition. Edward John Carnell summarizes the existential view of the fall as “a mythological description of a universal experience of the race.

Likewise the resurrection of Jesus may or may not have occurred in space and time. Barth believes it did; Bultmann, on the other hand, says, “An historical fact that involves a resurrection from the dead is utterly inconceivable!”53 Again, no matter. The reality behind the resurrection is the new life in Christ experienced by the disciples. The “spirit” of Jesus was living in them; their lives were transformed. They were indeed living the “cruciform life style.”54

Other supernatural doctrines are similarly “demythologized,” among them creation, redemption, the resurrection of the body, the second coming, the antichrist. Each is said to be a symbol of “religious” import. Either they are not to be taken literally or, if they are, their meaning is not in their facticity but in what they indicate about human nature and our relationship to God.55

It is here—in the understanding of history and of doctrine—that traditional theists most find fault with their existential counterparts. The charge is twofold. First, theists say that the existentialists start with two false, or certainly highly suspect, presuppositions: (1) that miracles are impossible (Bultmann here, but not Barth) and (2) that the Bible is historically untrustworthy. On the level of presuppositions Bultmann simply buys the naturalist notion of the closed universe; Bultmann, although usually associated with the neo-orthodox theologians, is thus not really a “theistic” existentialist at all. Much recent scholarship has gone a long way toward restoring confidence in the Old Testament as an accurate record of events, but existential theologians ignore this scholarship or discount the importance of its results. And that brings us to the second major theistic critique.

Theists charge the existentialists with building theology on the shifting sand of myth and symbol. As a reviewer said about Lloyd Geering’s Resurrection: A Symbol of Hope, an existential work, “How can a nonevent [a resurrection which did not occur] be regarded as a symbol of hope or indeed of anything else? If something has happened we try to see what it means. If it has not happened the question cannot arise. We are driven back on the need for an Easter event.”56

There must be an event if there is to be meaning. If Jesus arose from the dead in the traditional way of understanding this, then we have an event to mean something. If he stayed in the tomb or if his body was taken elsewhere, we have another event and it must mean something else. So a theist refuses to give up the historical basis for faith and challenges the existentialist to take more seriously the implications of abandoning historical facticity as religiously important. Such abandonment should lead to doubt and loss of faith. Instead it has led to a leap of faith. Meaning is created in the subjective world, but it has no objective referent.

In this area theistic existentialism comes very close to atheistic existentialism. Perhaps when existentialists abandon facticity as a ground of meaning, they should be encouraged to take the next step and abandon meaning altogether. This would place them back in the trackless wastes of nihilism, and they would have to search for another way out.

THE PERSISTENCE OF EXISTENTIALISM

The two forms of existentialism are interesting to study, for they are a pair of worldviews that bear a sibling relationship but are children of two different fathers. Theistic existentialism arose with Kierkegaard as a response to dead theism, dead orthodoxy, and with Karl Barth as a response to the reduction of Christianity to sheer morality. It took a subjectivist turn, lifted religion from history, and focused its attention on inner meaning. Atheistic existentialism came to the fore with Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus as a response to nihilism and the reduction of people to meaningless cogs in the cosmic machinery. It took a subjectivist turn, lifted philosophy from objectivity, and created meaning from human affirmation.

Siblings in style though not in content, these two forms of existentialism are still commanding attention and vying for adherents. So long as those who would be believers in God yearn for a faith that does not demand too much belief in the supernatural or the accuracy of the Bible, theistic existentialism will be a live option. So long as naturalists who cannot (or refuse to) believe in God are searching for a way to find meaning in their lives, atheistic existentialism will be of service. I would predict that both forms—in probably ever-new and changing versions—will be with us for a long time.

The Universe Next Door

James W. Sire

Sire, J. W. (2020). The Universe Next Door. InterVarsity Press. 

https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9780830849390

IF THEISM LASTED SO LONG, what could possibly have happened to undermine it? If it satisfactorily answered all our basic questions, provided a refuge for our fears and hope for our future, why did anything else come along? Answers to these questions can be given on many levels. The fact is that many forces operated to shatter the basic intellectual unity of the West.1

Deism developed, some say, as an attempt to bring unity out of a chaos of theological and philosophical discussion which in the seventeenth century became bogged down in interminable quarrels—even religious wars—over what began to seem even to the disputants like trivial questions. Perhaps John Milton had such questions in mind when he envisioned the fallen angels making an epic game of philosophical theology:

Others apart sat on a Hill retir’d

In thoughts more elevate, and reason’d high

Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will and Fate,

Fixt Fate, Free will, Foreknowledge absolute,

And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.2

After decades of wearying discussion, Lutheran, Puritan, and Anglican divines might well have wished to look again at points of agreement. Deism to some extent is a response to this, though the direction such agreement took put deism rather beyond the limits of traditional Christianity.

Another factor in the development of deism was a change in the location of the authority for knowledge about the divine; it shifted from the special revelation found in Scripture to the presence of Reason, “the candle of God,” in the human mind or to intuition, “the inner light.”3 Why should such a shift in authority take place?

One of the reasons is especially ironic. It is linked with an implication of theism which, when it was discovered, was very successfully developed. Through the Middle Ages, due in part to the rather Platonic theory of knowledge that was held, the attention of theistic scholars and intellectuals was directed toward God. The idea was that knowers in some sense become what they know. And since one should become in some sense good and holy, one should study God. Theology was thus considered the queen of the sciences (which at that time simply meant knowledge), for theology was the science of God.

If people studied animals or plants or minerals (zoology, biology, chemistry, and physics), they were lowering themselves. This hierarchical view of reality is really more Platonic than theistic or Christian, because it picks up from Plato the notion that matter is somehow, if not evil, then at least irrational and certainly not good. Matter is something to be transcended, not to be understood.

But as more biblically oriented minds began to recognize, this is God’s world—all of it. And though it is a fallen world, it has been created by God and has value. It is indeed worth knowing and understanding. Furthermore, God is a rational God, and his universe is thus rational, orderly, knowable. Operating on this basis, scientists began investigating the form of the universe. A picture of God’s world began to emerge; it was seen to be like a huge, well-ordered mechanism, a giant clockwork, whose gears and levers meshed with perfect mechanical precision. Such a picture seemed both to arise from scientific inquiry and to prompt more inquiry and stimulate more discovery about the makeup of the universe. In other words, science as we now know it was born and was amazingly successful.

At the same time, of course, there were those who distrusted the findings of the scientists. The case of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) is famous and, in a quite distorted form, is often cited today as proof of the antiscientific nature of Christian theism. In fact, Galileo as well as other Renaissance scientists such as Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), Francis Bacon (1561–1626), and Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) held fully Christian worldviews.4 Moreover, in Bacon’s words, knowledge became power, power to manipulate and bring creation more fully under human dominion. This view is echoed in modern parlance by J. Bronowski: “I define science as the organization of our knowledge in such a way that it commands more of the hidden potential in nature.”5 If this way of obtaining knowledge about the universe was so successful, why not apply the same method to knowledge about God?

In Christian theism, of course, such a method was already given a role to play, for God was said to reveal himself in nature. The depth of content, however, that was conveyed in such general revelation was considered limited; much more was made known about God in special revelation. But deism denies that God can be known by revelation, by special acts of God’s self- expression in, for example, Scripture or the incarnation. Having cast out Aristotle as an authority in matters of science, deism began to cast out Scripture as an authority in theology and to allow only the application of “human” reason. As Peter Medawar says, “The 17th-century doctrine of the necessity of reason was slowly giving way to a belief in the sufficiency of reason.”6 Deism thus sees God only in “Nature,” by which was meant the system of the universe. And since the system of the universe is seen as a giant clockwork, God is seen as the clockmaker.

In some ways, we can say that limiting knowledge about God to general revelation is like finding that eating eggs for breakfast makes the morning go well, and then eating only eggs for breakfast (and maybe lunch and dinner too) for the rest of one’s life (which now unwittingly becomes rather shortened!). To be sure, theism assumes that we can know something about God from nature. But it also holds that there is much more to know than can be known from nature and that there are other ways to come to know.

BASIC DEISM

As Frederick Copleston explains, deism historically is not really a “school” of thought. In the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries more than a few thinkers came to be called deists or called themselves deists. These thinkers held a number of related views, but not all held every doctrine in common. John Locke (1632–1704), for example, did not reject the idea of revelation, but he did insist that human reason was to be used to judge it.7 Some cold deists, like Voltaire (1694–1778), were hostile to Christianity; some warm deists, like Locke, were not.8 Some, like Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), believed in the immortality of the soul; some did not. Some believed God left his creation to function on its own; some believed in providence. Some believed in a mildly personal God; others did not. So deists were much less united on basic issues than were theists.9 Moreover, as we will see later on, some forms of popular deism, such as moralistic therapeutic deism, are thought of by some people as fully Christian.

Still, it is helpful to think of deism as a system and to state that system in a relatively extreme form, for in that way we will be able to grasp the implications various “reductions” of theism were beginning to have in the eighteenth century. Naturalism, as we shall see, pushes these implications even further.

Whatever God hath revealed is certainly true: no doubt can be made of it. This is the proper object of faith: but whether it be a divine revelation or no, reason must judge. . . . Nothing that is contrary to, and inconsistent with, the clear and self-evident dictates of reason, has a right to be urged or assented to as a matter of faith, wherein reason hath nothing to do.

John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding 4.18

As in theism, the most important proposition regards the existence and character of God. Warm deism—such as that of Franklin, who confessed, “I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his Providence” —retains enough sense of God’s personality that Franklin thought this God “ought to be worshipped.”10 But cold deism eliminates most features of personality God is said to display. He is only a transcendent force or energy, a Prime Mover or First Cause, a beginning to the otherwise infinite regress of past causes. But he is really not a he, though the personal pronoun remains in the language used about him. He does not care for his creation; he does not love it. He has no “personal” relationship to it at all. Certainly he did not become incarnate in Jesus. He is purely monotheistic. As Thomas Paine said, “The only idea man can affix to the name of God is first cause, the cause of all things.”11

A modern deist of sorts, Buckminster Fuller, expressed his faith this way: “I have faith in the integrity of the anticipatory intellectual wisdom which we may call ‘God.’”12 But Fuller’s God is not a person to be worshiped, but merely an intellect or force to be recognized.

To the deist, then, God is distant, foreign, alien. The lonely state this leaves humanity in, however, was not seemingly felt by early deists. Almost two centuries passed before this implication was played out on the field of human emotions.

In cold deism the system of the universe is closed in two senses. First, it is closed to God’s reordering, for he is not “interested” in it. He merely brought it to be. Therefore, no miracles or events that reveal any special interests of God are possible. Any tampering or apparent tampering with the machinery of the universe would suggest that God had made a mistake in the original plan, and that would be beneath the dignity of an all-competent deity.

Second, the universe is closed to human reordering because it is locked up in a clocklike fashion. To be able to reorder the system, any human being alone or with others would have to be able to transcend it, get out of the chain of cause and effect. But this we cannot do. We should note, however, that this second implication is not much recognized by deists. Most continue to assume, as we all do apart from reflection, that we can act to change our environment.

To be sure, deists do not deny that humans are personal. Each of us has self-consciousness and, at least on first glance, self-determination. But these have to be seen in the light of human dimensions only. That is, as human beings we have no essential relation to God—as image to original—and thus we have no way to transcend the system in which we find ourselves.

Bishop François Fénelon (1651–1715), criticizing the deists of his day, wrote, “They credit themselves with acknowledging God as the creator whose wisdom is evident in his works; but according to them, God would be neither good nor wise if he had given man free will—that is, the power to sin, to turn away from his final goal, to reverse the order and be forever lost.”13 Fénelon put his finger on a major problem within deism: human beings have lost their ability to act significantly. If we cannot “reverse the order,” then we cannot be significant. We can only be puppets. If an individual has personality, it must then be a type that does not include the element of self-determination.

Deists, of course, recognize that human beings have intelligence (to be sure, they emphasize human reason), a sense of morality (deists are very interested in ethics), a capacity for community and for creativity. But none of these, while built into us as created beings, is grounded in God’s character. None has any special relationship to God; each is on its own.

Here there is a distinction between warm and cold deists. Deism is the historical result of the decay of robust Christian theism. That is, specific commitments and beliefs of traditional Christianity are gradually abandoned. The first and most significant belief to be eroded was the full personhood and trinitarian nature of God. Reducing God to a force or ultimate intelligence eventually had catastrophic results. In fact, as we shall see, not only naturalism but nihilism is the final result. Were the history of worldviews a matter of the immediate working out of rational implications of a change in the idea of the really real, a belief in an afterlife would have immediately disappeared. But it didn’t. Nor did a belief in morality; that took another century. So warm deists, those closest to Christian theists, persisted in the notion of an afterlife, and cold deists, those further away, did not.

In deism human reason becomes autonomous. That is, without relying on any revelation from the outside—no Scripture, no messages from God via living prophets or dreams and visions—human beings have the ability to know themselves, the universe, and even God. As John Locke put it, “Nothing that is contrary to, and inconsistent with, the clear and self-evident dictates of reason, has a right to be urged or assented to as a matter of faith, wherein reason has nothing to do.”14

Because the universe is essentially as God created it, and because people have the intellectual capacity to understand the world around them, they can learn about God from a study of his universe. The Scriptures, as we saw above, give a basis for it, for the psalmist wrote, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1). Of course, theists too maintain that God has revealed himself in nature. But for a theist God has also revealed himself in words—in propositional, verbalized revelation to his prophets and the various biblical writers. And, Christian theists maintain, God has also revealed himself in his Son, Jesus—“the Word became flesh” (John 1:14). But for deists God does not communicate with people. No special revelation is necessary, and none has occurred.

Émile Bréhier, a historian of philosophy, sums up well the difference between deism and theism:

We see clearly that a new conception of man, wholly incompatible with the Christian faith, had been introduced: God the architect who produced and maintained a marvelous order in the universe had been discovered in nature, and there was no longer a place for the God of the Christian drama, the God who bestowed upon Adam “the power to sin and to reverse the order.” God was in nature and no longer in history; he was in the wonders analyzed by naturalists and biologists and no longer in the human conscience, with feelings of sin, disgrace, or grace that accompanied his presence; he had left man in charge of his own destiny.15

The God who was discovered by the deists was an architect, but not a lover or a judge or personal in any way. He was not one who acted in history. He simply had left the world alone. But humanity, while in one sense the maker of its own destiny, was yet locked into the closed system. Human freedom from God was not a freedom to anything; in fact, it was not a freedom at all.

One tension in deism is found at the opening of Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man (1732–1734). Pope writes,

Say first, of God above or man below,

What can we reason but from what we know?

Of man what see we but his station here

From which to reason, or to which refer?

Through worlds unnumbered though the God be known,

’Tis ours to trace him only in our own.16

These six lines state that we can know God only through studying the world around us. We learn from data and proceed from the specific to the general. Nothing is revealed to us outside that which we experience. Then Pope continues, He who through vast immensity can pierce,

See worlds on worlds compose one universe,

Observe how system into system runs,

What other planets circle other suns,

What varied being peoples ev’ry star,

May tell why heav’n has made us as we are.

But of this frame the bearings and the ties,

The strong connections, nice dependencies,

Gradations just, has thy pervading soul

Looked through? or can a part contain the whole?17

Pope assumes here a knowledge of God and of nature that is not capable of being gained by experience. He even admits this as he challenges us as readers on whether we really have “looked through” the universe and seen its clockwork. But if we haven’t seen it, then presumably neither has Pope. How then does Pope know it is a vast, all-ordered clockwork?

One can’t have it both ways. Either (1) all knowledge comes from experience and we, not being infinite, cannot know the system as a whole, or (2) some knowledge comes from another source—for example, from innate ideas built into us or from revelation from the outside. But Pope, like most deists, discounts revelation. So we have a tension in Pope’s epistemology. And it was just such tensions that made eighteenth-century deism an unstable worldview.

Deism’s ethics in general is founded on the notion that built into human nature is the capacity to sense the difference between good and evil. Human reason is not “fallen” as in Christian theism; so when it is employed by people of good will, it results in moral discernment. Of course, human beings are free not to do what they discern as good; evil then is a result of human beings not conforming to their inherent nature.18

So much for human good and evil. But what about natural evil? Natural events—floods, hurricanes, earthquakes—bring disaster, massive pain, and suffering to many. Deists do not consider either human reason or the universe itself to be “fallen.” Rather it is in its normal state. How, then, can the normal universe in which we experience so much tragedy still be good? Isn’t God, the omnipotent Creator, responsible for everything as it is? Doesn’t this world reflect either what God wants or what he is like? Is God, then, really good?

While it is probably unfair to charge deism itself with the confusion illustrated by Alexander Pope, it is instructive to see what can happen when the implications of deism are exposed. Pope writes:

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;

All chance, direction which thou canst not see;

All discord, harmony not understood;

All partial evil, universal good;

And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,

One truth is clear, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.19

This position ends in destroying ethics. If whatever is is right, then there is no evil. Good becomes indistinguishable from evil. As Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) said, “If God exists, he must be the devil.” Or, worse luck, there must not be good at all. For without the ability to distinguish, there can be neither one nor the other, neither good nor evil. Ethics disappears.

It is surely necessary to point out that not all deists saw (or now see) that their assumptions entail Pope’s conclusions. Some felt, in fact, that Jesus’ ethical teachings were really natural law expressed in words. And, of course, the Sermon on the Mount does not contain anything like the proposition “Whatever is, is right.” A deeper study of the deists would, I believe, lead to the conclusion that these early deists simply were inconsistent and did not recognize it.

Alexander Pope himself is inconsistent, for while he held that whatever is is right, he also berated humanity for pride (which, if it is, must be right!).

In pride, in reas’ning pride our error lies;

All quit their sphere and rush into the skies.

Pride still aiming at blessed abodes;

Men would be angels, angels would be gods. . . .

And who but wishes to invert the laws

Of order sins against th’ Eternal Cause.20

For a person to think of himself more highly than he ought was pride. Pride was wrong, even a sin. Yet note: a sin not against a personal God but against the “Eternal Cause,” against a philosophic abstraction. Even the word sin takes on a new color in such a context. More important, however, the whole notion of sin must disappear if one holds on other grounds that whatever is, is right.

If deists were to be consistent to the clockmaker/clockwork metaphor, they would be little interested in history. As Bréhier has pointed out, they sought knowledge of God primarily in nature as understood in the growing content of natural science. The course of Jewish history as recorded in the Bible was largely dismissed as legend, at least partially because it insisted on God’s direct action on and among his chosen people. The accounts of both Testaments are filled with miracles. The deists say miracles can’t happen. Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), for example, produced The Life and Morals of Jesus, better known as The Jefferson Bible. His popular version excluded narratives of all the miracles. By such a procedure the Bible became largely discounted as giving insight into God or human beings or, especially, the natural order. Jefferson became the judge of what could be true or worthy of belief. At best the biblical narratives were illustrations of divine law from which ethical principles could be derived. Then, too, H. S. Reimarus (1694–1768) attempted “to reconstruct the life and preaching of Jesus with the tools of critical history.”21 And John Toland (1670–1722) argued that Christianity was as old as creation; the gospel was a “republication” of the religion of nature. With views like those, even the specific acts of history are not important for true religion. The stress is on general rules. As Pope says, “The first Almighty Cause / Acts not by partial but by gen’ral laws.”22 God is quite uninterested in individual men and women or even whole peoples. Besides, the universe is closed, not open to his reordering at all.

Nonetheless intellectuals, historians, and philosophers with a basically deistic bent were, as Synnestvedt says, “fascinated by history.” He cites major works by seven major deistic scholars, including a History of England by David Hume (1711–1776), The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (1737–1794), and Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind by Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794).23 All these “histories” are, of course, based totally on the autonomy of human reason; none of them appeal to perspectives derived from revelation. As a result they display a wide variety of interpretations of the meaning and significance of human events.

Because, unlike Christian theism, there is no orthodox deism, each deist is free to use reason, intuition, tradition, or whatever squares with his or her view of ultimate reality. Deists’ core commitments will thus reflect their personal passions or, in common parlance, what turns them on—the flourishing of their individual personal life, their family life, public life. Early deists such as Franklin and Jefferson took public welfare as a key commitment. Others like Paine combined their commitment to public life with a passion for their own personal freedom (and the freedom of everyone in the commonwealth) from the dictates of religion. But the more a deist becomes divorced from allegiance to a personal God, the less religious mores and traditional goals characterize their core commitments. As a result, societies themselves become more pluralistic and less socially cohesive. Thus the tie between deism as a worldview and freedom as a personal and social goal inspired the bloody violence of the French Revolution and spurred on the development of democracy and eventually the vast cultural diversification of American society. Each year the Western World, especially America, becomes more pluralistic than the year before.

MODERN DEISM

As can be seen from the above description, deism has not been a stable compound. The reasons for this are not hard to see. Deism is dependent on Christian theism for its affirmations. It is dependent on what it omits for its particular character. The first and most important loss was its rejection of the full personal character of God. God, in the minds of many in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, kept his omnipotence, his character as creator and, for the most part, his omniscience, but he lost his omnipresence (his intimate connection with and interest in his creation). Eventually he lost even his will, becoming a mere abstract intelligent force, providing a sufficient reason for the existence of the universe whose origin otherwise could not be explained. The spectrum from full personality to sheer abstraction is represented by a variety of deistic types. We have already noticed the differences between warm and cold deism as represented by early deists. Now we will examine some modern forms and introduce new labels for them: (1) sophisticated scientific deism, (2) sophisticated philosophic deism, and (3) popular deism of which moralistic therapeutic deism is a particular illustration.

Sophisticated scientific deism. A cold deism continues to thrive in some scientists and a few humanists in academic centers across the world. Scientists like Albert Einstein, who “see” a higher power at work in or behind the universe and want to maintain reason in a created world, can be considered deists at heart, though no doubt many would not wish to claim anything sounding quite so much like a philosophy of life.24

It’s hard for me to believe that everything out there is just an accident. . . . [Yet] I don’t have any religious belief. I don’t believe that there is a God. I don’t believe in Christianity or Judaism or anything like that, okay? I’m not an atheist. . . . I’m not an agnostic. . . . I’m just in a simple state. I don’t know what there is or might be. . . . But on the other hand, what I can say is that it seems likely to me that this particular universe we have is a consequence of something which I would call intelligent.

Robert Wright, Three Scientists and Their Gods

Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking also leaves room for a deistic God. The fundamental laws of the universe “may have originally been decreed by God,” he writes, “but it appears that he has since left the universe to evolve according to them and does not now intervene in it.”25 His rejection of a theistic God is clear. Actress and New Age leader Shirley MacLaine once asked Hawking if there is a God who “created the universe and guides his creation.” “No,” he replied simply in his computer-generated voice.26 After all, if the universe is “self-contained, having no boundary or edge,” as Hawking suspects is true, then there is no need for a Creator; God becomes superfluous.27 Hawking therefore uses “the term God as the embodiment of the laws of physics.”28 Hawking is not alone among scientists and other intellectuals in holding such a view.29

Sophisticated philosophic deism. In 2004 Antony Flew (who died in 2010), a long-time vocal atheist and opponent of Christian theism, declared himself a deist. His change of mind came from his growing sense that a variety of arguments, from those of Aristotle to the fine-tuning of the universe, are really compelling. As he put it, “he simply had to go where the evidence led.”30 God, for Flew, has most of the “classical theological attributes.” Though he rejects the notion of special revelation from this God, he is open to its possibility. The authenticity of this move by such a formerly convinced atheist has been questioned, but the evidence for it is rock solid.31

One of the clearest exponents of a more humanistic warm deism is Václav Havel, the playwright, public intellectual, and former president of the Czech Republic. The defining characteristic of Havel’s worldview is his understanding of prime reality, his answer to the first worldview question. Havel uses several terms to label his answer: Being, mystery of being, order of existence, the hidden sphere, absolute horizon, or final horizon. All these terms suggest a cold deism. But there is nothing cold about his experience of this sheer Being. Havel, for example, ponders why, when he boards a streetcar late at night with no conductor to observe him, he always feels guilty when he thinks of not paying the fare. Then he comments about the interior dialogue that ensues:

Who, then, is in fact conversing with me? Obviously someone I hold in higher regard than the transport commission, than my best friends (this would come out when the voice would take issue with their opinions), and higher, in some regards than myself, that is, myself as subject of my existence-in-the-world and the carrier of my “existential” interests (one of which is the rather natural effort to save a crown). Someone who “knows everything” (and is therefore omniscient), is everywhere (and therefore omnipresent) and remembers everything; someone who, though infinitely understanding, is entirely incorruptible; who is for me, the highest and utterly unequivocal authority in all moral questions and who is thus Law itself; someone eternal, who through himself makes me eternal as well, so that I cannot imagine the arrival of a moment when everything will come to an end, thus terminating my dependence on him as well; someone to whom I relate entirely and for whom, ultimately, I would do everything. At the same time, this “someone” addresses me directly and personally (not merely as an anonymous public passenger, as the transport commission does).32

These reflections are close, if not identical, to a fully theistic conception of God. Surely some Being that is omniscient, omnipresent, and good, and who addresses you directly and personally, must himself (“itself” just doesn’t fit these criteria) be personal.

Havel, too, sees this. And yet he draws back from the conclusion:

But who is it? God? There are many subtle reasons why I’m reluctant to use that word; one factor here is a certain sense of shame (I don’t know exactly for what, why and before whom), but the main thing, I suppose, is a fear that with this all too specific designation (or rather assertion) that “God is,” I would be projecting an experience that is entirely personal and vague (never mind how profound and urgent it may be), too single-mindedly “outward,” onto that problem-fraught screen called “objective reality,” and thus I would go too far beyond it.33

So, while Being manifests characteristics that seem to demand a commitment to theism, Havel avoids this conclusion by shifting his attention from Being (as an objective existent) to himself (as a reflector on his conscious experience). What Havel does draw from this experience—to very good advantage, by the way—is that Being has a moral dimension. Being, then, is the “good” ontological foundation for human moral responsibility.34

Popular deism. Popular deism is popular in two senses. It is both a simple, easygoing belief in the existence of an omnipotent, impersonal, transcendent being, a force or an intelligence, and it is a vague belief held by millions of Americans and, I suspect, millions more throughout the Western world.

In its cold versions, God is simply the abstract force that brought the world into existence and has largely left it to operate on its own. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that many well-educated people, especially academics and professionals, would acknowledge the probable existence of such a being but would largely ignore his existence in their daily lives. Their moral sensitivity would be grounded in the public memory of common Christian virtues, the mores of society, the occasional use of their own mind when dealing with specific issues, such as honesty in business, attitudes to sexual orientation, and practices. They live secular lives without much thought of what God might think. Surely a good life will prepare one for life after death, if, indeed, there is such a thing.

In its warmest versions, God clearly is personal and even friendly. University of North Carolina sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton in 2005 published a massive study of the religious beliefs of teenagers. Their conclusion was that most of these teenagers adhered to what they called moralistic therapeutic deism. They summed up this worldview as follows.

1. A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.

2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most religions.

3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.

5. Good people go to heaven when they die.35

God, ultimate reality, in this view makes no demand on his creation to be holy, righteous, or even very good. “As one seventeen-year-old conservative Protestant girl from Florida told us [the researchers], ‘God’s all around you, all the time. He believes in forgiving people and whatnot and he’s there to guide us, for somebody to talk to and help us through our problems. Of course, he doesn’t talk back.’”36 When asked what God is like, a Bryn Mawr College student drew a big smiley face and wrote, “He’s one big smiley face. Big hands . . . big hands.”37 This form of deism is certainly not limited to youth; it is, I suspect, very much like that of their parents and adult neighbors.

AN UNSTABLE COMPOUND

Enlightenment deism did not prove to be a stable worldview. Historically it held sway over the intellectual world of France and England from the late seventeenth into the first half of the eighteenth century. Then its cultural significance declined. But few, if any, major shifts in worldview disappear completely. Deism is indeed still alive and well.

What made and continues to make deism so unstable? The primary reasons, I think, are these:38

First, autonomous human reason replaced the Bible and tradition as the authority for the way ultimate reality was understood. Everyone could decide for themselves what God was like. Once the concept of God was up for grabs, there was no stopping his being reduced from the complex Christian theistic idea of God to a minimal, simple force or abstract intelligence. The gradual slide from a full-blooded Christian theism was thus inevitable; what replaced the biblical God was a variety of gods, each with fewer and fewer features of personality.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT

The Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason, is the intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas throughout Europe during most of the eighteenth century. An important element of the Enlightenment was the scientific revolution. Authority, especially religious authority, was rejected in favor of what unaided reason could establish on its own terms. Romanticism in the early nineteenth century provided a counterbalancing reaction, rejecting the dominance of reason alone and stressing the place of feelings and the human spiritual response to nature. Postmodernism has offered an even greater challenge to Enlightenment reliance on reason, though the world of scientific investigation continues apace, seemingly little affected.

Second, autonomous human reason replaced the Bible and tradition as the authority for morality. At first autonomous reason and traditional morality tracked well together. The human mind exposed to the surrounding culture assumed that, for the most part, those cultural values were in fact reasonable. In the early years, deists placed confidence in the universality of human nature; people who used their reason would agree on what was right and wrong.39 This eventually turned out to be a false hope. However universal human nature may be, in practice people do not agree on matters of good and evil or what constitutes “good” behavior as much as the early deists thought.

Third, deists rejected the biblical notion of the fall and assumed that the present universe is in its normal, created state. As Pope said, “whatever is, is right.” One could derive one’s values from clues from the natural order. One clue was the universality of human nature. But if whatever is, is right, then no place is left for a distinctive content to ethics.

Fourth, since the universe is closed to reordering, human action is determined. What then happens to human significance? People become cogs in the clockwork mechanism of the universe. Human significance and mechanical determinism are impossible bedfellows.

Fifth, today we find even more aspects of deism to question. Scientists have largely abandoned thinking of the universe as a giant clock. Electrons (not to mention other even more baffling subatomic particles) do not behave like minute pieces of machinery. If the universe is a mechanism, it is far more complex than was then thought, and God must be quite different from a mere “architect” or “clockmaker.” Furthermore, the human personality is a “fact” of the universe. If God made that, must he not be personal?

So historically, deism was a transitional worldview, and yet it is not dead in either popular or sophisticated forms. On a popular level, many people today believe that God exists, but when asked what God is like, they limit their description to words like Energy, The Force, First Cause, something to get the universe running and often capitalized to give it the aura of divinity. As Étienne Gilson says, “For almost two centuries . . . the ghost of the Christian God has been attended by the ghost of Christian religion: a vague feeling of religiosity, a sort of trusting familiarity with some supreme good fellow to whom other good fellows can hopefully apply when they are in trouble.”40

In what was to follow even the ghost of the Christian God disappeared. It is to that worldview we now turn.

Without warning, David was visited by an exact vision of death: a long hole in the ground, no wider than your body, down which you were drawn while the white faces recede. You try to reach them but your arms are pinned. Shovels pour dirt in your face. There you will be forever, in an upright position, blind and silent, and in time no one will remember you, and you will never be called. As strata of rock shift, your fingers elongate, and your teeth are distended sideways in a great underground grimace indistinguishable from a strip of chalk. And the earth tumbles on, and the sun expires, an unaltering darkness reigns where once there were stars.

JOHN UPDIKE, “PIGEON FEATHERS”

DEISM IS THE ISTHMUS between two great continents—theism and naturalism. To get from the first to the second, deism is the natural route. Perhaps without deism, naturalism would not have come about so readily. Deism in its warm eighteenth-century versions has become almost an intellectual curiosity, handy for an explanation of the foundation of American democracy, but not much held today. Other than Christian theists, there are few today who explain our situation as an indication of God’s providence. Deism’s sophisticated twentieth-century versions are mostly cold and limited to a few scientists and intellectuals and to those who, while they say they believe in God, have only a vague notion of what he, she, or it might be. Naturalism, on the other hand, was and is serious business.

In intellectual terms the route is this: In theism God is the infinite-personal Creator and sustainer of the cosmos. In deism God is reduced; he begins to lose his personality, though he remains Creator and (by implication) sustainer of the cosmos. In naturalism God is further reduced; he loses his very existence.

Swing figures in this shift from theism to naturalism are legion, especially between 1600 and 1750. René Descartes (1596–1650), a Christian theist by conscious confession, set the stage by conceiving of the universe as a giant mechanism of “matter” which people comprehended by “mind.” He thus split reality into two kinds of being; ever since then the Western world has found it hard to see itself as an integrated whole. The naturalists, taking one route to unification, made mind a subcategory of mechanistic matter.

John Locke, a Christian theist for the most part, believed in a personal God who revealed himself to us; Locke thought, however, that our God-given reason is the judge of what can be taken as true from the “revelation” in the Bible. The naturalists removed the “God-given” from this conception and made “reason” the sole criterion for truth.

One of the most interesting figures in this shift was Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751). In his own day La Mettrie was generally considered an atheist, but he himself says, “Not that I call in question the existence of a supreme being; on the contrary it seems to me that the greatest degree of probability is in favor of this belief.” Nonetheless, he continues, “it is a theoretic truth with little practical value.”1 The reason he can conclude that God’s existence is of so little practical value is that the God who exists is only the maker of the universe. He is not personally interested in it nor in being worshiped by anyone in it. So God’s existence can be effectively discounted as being of no importance.2

It is precisely this feeling, this conclusion, which marks the transition to naturalism. La Mettrie was a theoretical deist but a practical naturalist. It was easy for subsequent generations to make their theory consistent with La Mettrie’s practice, so that naturalism was both believed and acted on.3

Behavior does indeed fuel intellectual development. In fact, if we take seriously the last phrase of the definition of worldview in chapter one (“foundation on which we live and move and have our being”), we could label La Mettrie a full-fledged naturalist.

BASIC NATURALISM

This brings us, then, to the first proposition defining naturalism.

As in theism and deism, the prime proposition concerns the nature of basic existence. In the former two the nature of God is the key factor. In naturalism it is the nature of the cosmos that is primary; for now, with an eternal Creator God out of the picture, the cosmos itself becomes eternal—always there, though not necessarily in its present form, in fact certainly not in its present form.4 Carl Sagan, astrophysicist and popularizer of science, has said it as clearly as possible: “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”5

Nothing comes from nothing. Something is. Therefore something always was. But that something, say the naturalists, is not a transcendent Creator but the matter of the cosmos itself. In some form all the matter of the universe has always been. Or so naturalists have traditionally held. Some more recent naturalist philosophers and astrophysicists, however, reject the logic that holds that something has always had to be. The universe may rather have originated out of “a singularity at which space-time curvature, along with temperature, pressure and density, becomes infinite.”6 Space and time (all we know of reality) come into being together. Moreover, nothing spiritual or transcendent emerged from this cosmic event. It makes no sense to say there was a before before the singularity. In short, matter (or matter/energy in a complex interchange) is all there is. Ours is a natural cosmos.

ATHEISM, AGNOSTICISM, APATHEISM

Atheism is a bold philosophical claim that no God/god exists and that we can know the claim to be true. Agnosticism, in its strong form, is equally bold—the philosophical claim that we cannot know whether God exists. (I’ve examined the evidence and have concluded we cannot know whether God exists or not.) In its weaker form, agnosticism may simply indicate a lack of knowledge of whether God exists or not. (I don’t know whether God exists or not; I’ve never looked closely at the evidence.) Apatheism (combining “apathy” and “theism”), a term coined in 1972 by sociologist Stuart D. Johnson, holds that whether God/gods exist is simply an irrelevant question. (Why should I care whether God exists or not? The answer to the question has no practical relevance to my life.)

The word matter is to be understood in a rather general way, for since the eighteenth century, science has refined its understanding. In the eighteenth century scientists had yet to discover either the complexity of matter or its close relationship with energy. They conceived of reality as made up of irreducible “units” existing in mechanical, spatial relationship with each other, a relationship being investigated and unveiled by chemistry and physics and expressible in inexorable “laws.” Later scientists were to discover that nature is not so neat, or at least so simple. There seem to be no irreducible “units” as such, and physical laws have only mathematical expression. Physicists like Stephen Hawking may search for nothing less than a “complete description of the universe” and even hope to find it.7 But confidence about what nature is, or is likely to be discovered to be, has almost vanished.8

Still, the proposition expressed above unites naturalists. The cosmos is not composed of two things—matter and mind, or matter and spirit. As La Mettrie says, “In the whole universe there is but a single substance with various modifications.”9 The cosmos is ultimately one thing, without any relation to a Being beyond; there is no “god,” no “creator.”

This proposition is similar to proposition 2 in deism. The difference is that the universe may or may not be conceived of as a machine or clockwork. Modern scientists have found the relations between the various elements of reality to be far more complex, if not more mysterious, than the clockwork image can account for.

Nonetheless, the universe is a closed system. It is not open to reordering from the outside—either by a transcendent Being (for there is none) or, as I shall discuss later at length, by self-transcendent or autonomous human beings (for they are a part of the uniformity). Émile Bréhier, describing this view, says, “Order in nature is but one rigorously necessary arrangement of its parts, founded on the essence of things; for example, the beautiful regularity of the seasons is not the effect of a divine plan but the result of gravitation.”10

The Humanist Manifesto II (1973), which expresses the views of those who call themselves “secular humanists,” puts it this way: “We find insufficient evidence for belief in the existence of a supernatural.”11 Without God or the supernatural, of course, nothing can happen except within the realm of things themselves. Writing in The Columbia History of the World, Rhodes W. Fairbridge says flatly, “We reject the miraculous.”12 Such a statement, coming as it does from a professor of geology at Columbia University, is to be expected.

What is surprising is to find a seminary professor, David Jobling, saying much the same thing:

We [that is, modern people] see the universe as a continuity of space, time, and matter, held together, as it were, from within. . . . God is not “outside” time and space, nor does he stand apart from matter, communicating with the “spiritual” part of man. . . . We must find some way of facing the fact that Jesus Christ is the product of the same evolutionary process as the rest of us.13

Jobling is attempting to understand Christianity within the naturalistic worldview. Certainly after God is put strictly inside the system—the uniform, closed system of cause and effect—he has been denied sovereignty and much else that Christians have traditionally believed to be true about him. The point here, however, is that naturalism is a pervasive worldview, to be found in the most unlikely places.

What are the central features of this closed system? It might first appear that naturalists, affirming the “continuity of space, time, and matter, held together . . . from within,” would be determinists, asserting that the closed system holds together by an inexorable, unbreakable linkage of cause and effect. Most naturalists are indeed determinists, though many would argue that this does not remove our sense of free will or our responsibility for our actions. Is such a freedom really consistent with the conception of a closed system? To answer we must first look more closely at the naturalist conception of human beings.

While Descartes recognized that human beings were part machine, he also thought they were part mind; and mind was a different substance. A great majority of naturalists, however, see mind as a function of machine. La Mettrie was one of the first to put it bluntly: “Let us conclude boldly then that man is a machine, and that in the whole universe there is but a single substance with various modifications.”14 Putting it more crudely, Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis (1757–1808) wrote that “the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile.”15 William Barrett, in a fascinating intellectual history of the gradual loss of the notion of the soul or the self in Western thought from Descartes to the present, writes:

Thus we get in La Mettrie . . . those quaint illustrations of the human body as a system of imaginary gears, cogs, and ratchets. Man, the microcosm, is just another machine within the universal machine that is the cosmos. We smile at these illustrations as quaint and crude, but secretly we may still nourish the notion that they are after all in the right direction, though a little premature. With the advent of the computer, however, this temptation toward mechanism becomes more irresistible, for here we no longer have an obsolete machine of wheels and pulleys but one that seems able to reproduce the processes of the human mind. Can machines think? now becomes a leading question for our time.16

In any case, the point is that as human beings we are simply a part of the cosmos. In the cosmos there is one substance: matter. We are that and only that. The laws applying to matter apply to us. We do not transcend the universe in any way.

Of course we are very complex machines, and our mechanism is not yet fully understood. Thus people continue to amaze us and upset our expectations. Still, any mystery that surrounds our understanding is a result not of genuine mystery but of mechanical complexity.17

It might be concluded that humanity is not distinct from other objects in the universe, that it is merely one kind of object among many. But naturalists insist this is not so. Julian Huxley, for example, says we are unique among animals because we alone are capable of conceptual thought, employ speech, possess a cumulative tradition (culture), and have had a unique method of evolution.18 To this most naturalists would add our moral capacity, a topic I will take up separately. All of these characteristics are open and generally obvious. None of them imply any transcendent power or demand any extramaterial basis, say the naturalists.

Ernest Nagel points out the necessity of not stressing the human “continuity” with the nonhuman elements of our makeup: “Without denying that even the most distinctive human traits are dependent on things which are nonhuman, a mature naturalism attempts to assess man’s nature in the light of his actions and achievements, his aspirations and capacities, his limitations and tragic failures, and his splendid works of ingenuity and imagination.”19 By stressing our humanness (our distinctness from the rest of the cosmos), a naturalist finds a basis for value, for, it is held, intelligence, cultural sophistication, a sense of right and wrong not only are human distinctives but are what make us valuable. This we will see developed further under proposition 6 below.

Finally, while some naturalists are strict determinists with regard to all events in the universe, including human action, thus denying any sense of free will, many naturalists hold that we are free to fashion our own destiny, at least in part. Some, for example, hold that while a closed universe implies determinism, determinism is still compatible with human freedom, or at least a sense of freedom.20 We can do many things that we want to do; we are not always constrained to act against our wants. I could, for example, stop preparing a new edition of this book if I wanted to. I don’t want to.

This, so many naturalists hold, leaves open the possibility for significant human action, and it provides a basis for morality. For unless we are free to do other than we do, we cannot be held responsible for what we do. The coherence of this view has been challenged, however, and is one of the soft spots in the naturalist’s system of thought, as we will see in the following chapter.

This is, perhaps, the “hardest” proposition of naturalism for people to accept, yet it is absolutely demanded by the naturalists’ conception of the universe. Men and women are made of matter and nothing else. When the matter that goes to make up an individual is disorganized at death, then that person disappears.

The Humanist Manifesto II states, “As far as we know, the total personality is a function of the biological organism transacting in a social and cultural context. There is no credible evidence that life survives the death of the body.”21 Bertrand Russell writes, “No fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave.”22 And A. J. Ayer says, “I take it . . . to be fact that one’s existence ends at death.”23 In a more general sense humankind is likewise seen to be transitory. “Human destiny,” Nagel confesses, “[is] an episode between two oblivions.”24

Such statements are clear and unambiguous. The concept may trigger immense psychological problems, but there is no disputing its precision. The only “immortality,” as the Humanist Manifesto II puts it, is to “continue to exist in our progeny and in the way that our lives have influenced others in our culture.”25 In his short story “Pigeon Feathers” John Updike gives this notion a beautifully human dimension as he portrays the young boy David reflecting on his minister’s description of heaven as being “like Abraham Lincoln’s goodness living after him.”26 Like the seminary professor quoted above, David’s pastor is no longer a theist but is simply trying to provide “spiritual” counsel within the framework of naturalism.

That man is the product of causes which had no prevision 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 labors 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.

Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship”

Notice the similarity between the deist and the naturalist notion of how we come to know. Both accept the internal faculty of reason and the thoughts human beings come to have as givens. From a cosmic standpoint, reason developed under the contingencies of natural evolution over a very long period of time. From a human standpoint, a child is born with innate faculties which merely have to develop naturally. These faculties work on their own within the framework of the languages and cultures to which they are exposed. At no time is there any information or interpretation or mental machinery added from outside the ordinary material world. As children grow, they learn which of their thoughts help them understand and enable them to deal with the world around them. The methods of modern science are especially helpful in leading us to more and more profound knowledge of our universe. Human knowledge, then, is the product of natural human reason grounded in its perceived ability to reach the truth about human beings and the world.27

We should notice that I have used the word truth to describe the end result of human reason when it is successful. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries few would question its propriety. As Aristotle said in the first lines of his Metaphysics, “All men desire to know,” meaning “All human beings desire to know the truth, that is, the way reality really is.” Naturalists today, especially scientists and ordinarily educated people, may continue to think this way. When most people say that water is hydrogen and oxygen, two parts to one, they think they have accurately described its chemical makeup; that’s what water is. More philosophically minded modern naturalists are content to say that we can learn to describe what we take to be reality in language that allows us to live successfully in the world, but no one can know what something is. There is a rift between words and things that cannot be bridged.28 We will see how this plays out in chapter nine on postmodernism. What is important to note here is that naturalists ground human reason in human nature itself.

Ethical considerations did not play a central role in the rise of naturalism. Naturalism rather came as a logical extension of certain metaphysical notions —notions about the nature of the external world. Most early naturalists continued to hold ethical views similar to those in the surrounding culture, views that in general were indistinguishable from popular Christianity. There was a respect for individual dignity, an affirmation of love, a commitment to truth and basic honesty. Jesus was seen as a teacher of high ethical values.

Though it is becoming less and less so, it is still true to some measure today. With a few twists—for example, a permissive attitude to premarital and extramarital sex, a positive response to euthanasia, abortion, and the individual’s right to suicide—the ethical norms of the Humanist Manifesto II (1973) are similar to traditional morality. Theists and naturalists can often live side by side in communal harmony on ethical matters. There have always been disagreements between them; these disagreements will, I believe, increase as humanism shifts further and further from its memory of Christian ethics.29 But whatever the disagreements (or agreements) on ethical norms, the basis for these norms is radically different.

For a theist, God is the foundation of values. For a naturalist, values are constructed by human beings. The naturalist’s notion follows logically from the previous propositions. If there was no consciousness prior to the existence of humans, then there was no prior sense of right and wrong. And if there were no ability to do other than what one does, any sense of right and wrong would have no practical value. So for ethics to be possible, there must be both consciousness and self-determination. In short, there must be personality.

Naturalists say both consciousness and self-determination came with the appearance of human beings, and so ethics, too, came then. No ethical system can be derived solely from the nature of “things” outside human consciousness. In other words, no natural law is inscribed in the cosmos. Even La Mettrie—who fudged a bit when he wrote, “Nature created us all [man and beast] solely to be happy,” betraying his deistic roots—was a confirmed naturalist in ethics: “You see that natural law is nothing but an intimate feeling which belongs to the imagination like all other feelings, thought included.”30 La Mettrie, of course, conceived of the imagination in a totally mechanistic fashion, so that ethics became for him simply people’s following out a pattern embedded in them as creatures. Certainly there is nothing whatever transcendent about morality.

The Humanist Manifesto II states the locus of naturalistic ethics in no uncertain terms: “We affirm that moral values derive their source from human experience. Ethics is autonomous and situational, needing no theological or ideological sanction. Ethics stems from human need and interest. To deny this distorts the whole basis of life. Human life has meaning because we create and develop our futures.”31 Most conscious naturalists would probably agree with this statement. But exactly how value is created out of the human situation is just as much up for grabs as is the way we ought to understand the origin of the universe.

The major question is this: How does ought derive from is? Traditional ethics, that is, the ethics of Christian theism, affirms the transcendent origin of ethics and locates in the infinite-personal God the measure of the good. Good is what God is, and this has been revealed in many and diverse ways, most fully in the life, teachings, and death of Jesus Christ.

Naturalists, however, have no such appeal, nor do they wish to make one. Ethics is solely a human domain. So the question: How does one get from the fact of self-consciousness and self-determination, the realm of is and can, to the realm of what ought to be or to be done?

One observation naturalists make is that all people have a sense of moral values. These derive, G. G. Simpson says, from intuition (“the feeling of rightness, without objective inquiry into the reasons for this feeling and without possible test as to the truth or falseness of the premises involved”),32 from authority, and from convention. No one grows up without picking up values from the environment, and while a person may reject these and pay the consequences of ostracism or martyrdom, seldom does anyone succeed in inventing values totally divorced from culture.

Of course values differ from culture to culture, and none seems absolutely universal. So Simpson argues for an ethic based on objective inquiry and finds it in a harmonious adjustment of people to each other and their environment.33 Whatever promotes such harmony is good; what does not is bad. John Platt, in an article that attempts to construct an ethic for B. F. Skinner’s behaviorism, writes,

Happiness is having short-run reinforcers congruent with medium-run and long-run ones, and wisdom is knowing how to achieve this. And ethical behavior results when short-run personal reinforcers are congruent with long-run group reinforcers. This makes it easy to “be good,” or more exactly to “behave well.”34

The upshot of this is a definition of good action as group-approved, survival-promoting action. Both Simpson and Platt opt for the continuance of human life as the value above all values. Survival is thus basic, but it is human survival that is affirmed as primary.35

Both Simpson and Platt are scientists with a consciousness of their responsibility to be fully human and thus to integrate their scientific knowledge and their moral values. From the side of the humanities comes Walter Lippmann. In A Preface to Morals (1929) Lippmann assumes the naturalists’ stance with regard to the origin and purposelessness of the universe. His tack is to construct an ethic on the basis of what he takes to be the central agreement of the “great religious teachers.” For Lippmann, the good turns out to be something that has been recognized so far only by the elite, a “voluntary aristocracy of the spirit.”36 His argument is that this elitist ethic is now becoming mandatory for all people if they are to survive the twentieth-century crisis of values.

To discover the true principles of morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of gods; they need only common sense. They have only to commune with themselves, to reflect upon their own nature, to consult their visible interests, to consider the objects of society and the individuals who compose it, and they will easily perceive that virtue is advantageous, and vice disadvantageous, to such beings as themselves. Let us persuade them to be just, beneficent, moderate, sociable, not because such conduct is demanded by the gods, but because it is a pleasure to men. Let us advise them to abstain from vice and crime, not because they will be punished in the other world, but because they will suffer for it in this.

Baron D’Holbach (1723–1789), “Common Sense”

The good itself consists of disinterestedness—a way of alleviating the “disorders and frustrations” of the modern world, now that the “acids of modernity” have eaten away the traditional basis for ethical behavior. It is difficult to summarize the content Lippmann pours into the word disinterested. The final third of his book is addressed to doing that. But it is helpful to notice that his ethic turns out to be based on a personal commitment of each individual who would be moral, and that it is totally divorced from the world of facts—the nature of things in general:

A religion which rests upon particular conclusions in astronomy, biology, and history may be fatally injured by the discovery of new truths. But the religion of the spirit does not depend upon creeds and cosmologies; it has no vested interest in any particular truth. It is concerned not with the organization of matter, but with the quality of human desire.37

Lippmann’s language must be carefully understood. By religion he means morality or moral impulse. By spirit he means the moral faculty in human beings, that which exalts people above animals and above others whose “religion” is merely “popular.” The language of theism is being employed, but its content is purely naturalistic.

In any case, what remains of ethics is an affirmation of a high vision of right in the face of a universe that is merely there and has no value in itself. Ethics thus are personal and chosen. Lippmann is not, to my knowledge, generally associated with the existentialists, but, as we shall see in chapter six, his version of naturalistic ethics is ultimately theirs.

Naturalists have tried to construct ethical systems in a wide variety of ways. Even Christian theists must admit that many of the naturalists’ ethical insights are valid. Indeed theists should not be surprised by the fact that we can learn moral truths by observing human nature and behavior, for if women and men are made in the image of God and if that image is not totally destroyed by the fall, then they should yet reflect—even if dimly—something of the goodness of God.

First, the word history, as used in this proposition, includes both natural history and human history, for naturalists see them as a continuity. The origin of the human family is in nature. We arose out of it and most likely will return to it (not just individually but as a species).

Natural history begins with the origin of the universe. Something happened an incredibly long time ago—a Big Bang or sudden emergence—that ultimately resulted in the formation of the universe we now inhabit and are conscious of. But exactly how this came to be few are willing to say. Lodewijk Woltjer, formerly an astronomer at Columbia University and later director general of the European Southern Observatory, spoke for many: “The origin of what is—man, the earth, the universe—is shrouded in a mystery we are no closer to solving than was the chronicler of Genesis.”38 A number of theories to explain the process have been advanced, but none have really won the day.39 Still, among naturalists the premise always is that the process was self- activating; it was not set in motion by a Prime Mover—God or otherwise.

How human beings came to be is generally held to be more certain than how the universe came to be. The theory of evolution, long toyed with by naturalists, was given a “mechanism” by Darwin and has won the day. There is hardly a public-school text that does not proclaim the theory as fact. We should be careful, however, not to assume that all forms of evolutionary theory are strictly naturalist. Many theists are also evolutionists. Evolution has, in fact, become a far more vexed issue among both Christians and naturalists than when this book was first written.40

A theist sees the infinite-personal God to be in charge of all natural processes. If the biological order has evolved, it has done so by conforming to God’s design; it is teleological, directed toward an end personally willed by God. For a naturalist, the process is on its own. George Gaylord Simpson puts this so well he is worth quoting at some length:

Organic evolution is a process entirely materialistic in its origin and operation. . . . Life is materialistic in nature, but it has properties unique to itself which reside in its organization, not in its materials or mechanics. Man arose as a result of the operation of organic evolution and his being and activities are also materialistic, but the human species has properties unique to itself among all forms of life, superadded to the properties unique to life among all forms of matter and of action. Man’s intellectual, social, and spiritual natures are exceptional among animals in degree, but they arose by organic evolution.41

This passage is significant for its clear affirmation of both human continuity with the rest of the cosmos and special uniqueness. Yet lest we conclude that our uniqueness, our position as nature’s highest creation, was designed by some teleological principle operative in the universe, Simpson adds, “Man was certainly not the goal of evolution, which evidently had no goal.”42

In some ways the theory of evolution raises as many questions as it solves, for while it offers an explanation for what has happened over the eons of time, it does not explain why. The notion of a Purposer is not allowed by naturalists. Rather, as Jacques Monod says, humanity’s “number came up in the Monte Carlo game,” a game of pure chance.43 And Richard Dawkins, one of the more vocal of neo-Darwinian evolutionists, confirms this: “Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view.”44 Any intentionality is ruled out as a possibility from the beginning.45

In any case, naturalists insist that with the dawn of humanity, evolution suddenly took on a new dimension, for human beings are self-conscious —probably the only self-conscious beings in the universe.46 Further, as humans we are free consciously to consider, decide, and act. Thus while evolution considered strictly on the biological level continues to be unconscious and accidental, human actions are not. They are not just a part of the “natural” environment. They are human history.

In other words, when human beings appear, meaningful history, human history—the events of self-conscious, self-determining men and women— appears. But like evolution, which has no inherent goal, history has no inherent goal. History is what we make it to be. Human events have only the meaning people give them when they choose them or when they look back on them.

History proceeds in a straight line, as in theism (not in a cycle as in Eastern pantheism), but history has no predetermined goal. Rather than culminating in a second coming of the God-man, it is simply going to last as long as conscious human beings last. When we go, human history disappears, and natural history goes on its way alone.

Each individual is free to choose whatever goal or commitment he or she wishes. Most naturalists are an integral part of a particular cultural community and orient their personal lives within the norms of their community. But there is nothing in the naturalist worldview to require this, and rebels to any society-given notion of the good life cannot reasonably be criticized for their rebellion to social norms. Still, while naturalism provides no rational justification to act selflessly, naturalists often choose to serve their community or promote a purely secular human flourishing. Naturalists will not, of course, choose to live in order to please any God or gods.

NATURALISM IN PRACTICE: SECULAR HUMANISM

Two forms of naturalism deserve special mention. The first is secular humanism, a term that has come to be both used and abused by adherents and critics alike. Some clarification of terms is in order here.

First, secular humanism is one form of humanism in general, but not the only form. Humanism itself is the overall attitude that human beings are of special value; their aspirations, their thoughts, their yearnings are significant. There is as well an emphasis on the value of the individual person.

Ever since the Renaissance, thoughtful people of various convictions have called themselves and been called humanists, among them many Christians. John Calvin (1509–1564), Desiderius Erasmus (1456?–1536), Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599), William Shakespeare (1564–1616), and John Milton (1608–1674), all of whom wrote from within a Christian theistic worldview, were humanists, what are sometimes today called Christian humanists. The reason for this designation is that they emphasized human dignity, not as over against God but as deriving from the image of God in each person. Today there are many thoughtful Christians who so want to preserve the word humanism from being associated with purely secular forms that they signed a Christian humanist manifesto (1982) declaring that Christians have always affirmed the value of human beings.47

I would like to claim that the coming of modern secularity . . . has been coterminous with the rise of a society in which for the first time in history a purely self-sufficient humanism came to be a widely available option. I mean by this a humanism accepting no final goals beyond human flourishing, nor any allegiance to anything else beyond this flourishing. Of no previous society was this true. . . . [A] secular age is one in which the eclipse of all goals beyond human flourishing becomes conceivable; or better, it falls within the range of an imaginable life for masses of people.

Charles Taylor, A Secular Society

The tenets of secular humanism are well expressed in the Humanist Manifesto II.48 Secular humanism is a form of humanism that is completely framed within a naturalistic worldview. It is fair to say, I believe, that most who would feel comfortable with the label “secular humanist” would find their views reflected in propositions 1 through 6 above. Secular humanists, in other words, are simply naturalists, though not all naturalists are secular humanists.

NATURALISM IN PRACTICE: MARXISM

Since the latter part of the nineteenth century, one of the most historically significant forms of naturalism has been Marxism.49 The fortunes of Marxism have ebbed and flowed over the years; the collapse of Communism in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has left only a few “officially” Marxist countries. Nevertheless, for the better part of the twentieth century a huge section of the globe was dominated by ideas that stemmed from the philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883). At the current time, though communism as an ideology seems down and out, many ideas of Marx remain influential among social scientists and other intellectuals in the West. Even in eastern Europe the former communists, somewhat chastened and professing a commitment to democracy, seem to be making a political comeback.

It is difficult to define or analyze Marxism briefly, for there are many different types of “Marxists.”50 Enormous differences exist between Marxist theories of various kinds, ranging from thinkers who are humanistic and committed to democracy in some form to hardline “Stalinists” who identify Marxism with totalitarianism. There is another huge difference between Marxist theories of all kinds and the reality of Marxist practice in the Soviet Union and other places. In theory, Marxism is supposed to benefit working people and enable them to gain economic control over their own lives. In reality, the bureaucratic rigidities of life under communism led to economic stagnation as well as loss of personal freedom.

Although Marxism has generally claimed to be a scientific theory (as in the name “scientific socialism”), this claim has not been generally accepted. It is in many ways more helpful to think of Marxism as a kind of humanism, though of course most humanists are not Marxists. While Marxist humanism has characteristic themes of its own, Marxism and secular humanism, as forms of naturalism, share many assumptions.

All forms of Marxism can of course be traced back to the writings of Karl Marx. The question of who are Marx’s “true heirs” is bitterly contested, but the more humanistic Marxists can certainly point to some important themes in Marx’s writings. In one of his earliest essays, he says clearly that “man is the supreme being for man.”51 It is from this humanist theme that Marx deduces his revolutionary imperative to “overthrow all those conditions in which man is an abased, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being.”52

Marx arrived at his humanism through an encounter with two important nineteenth-century philosophers: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1830) and Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872). Hegel’s philosophy was a form of idealism that taught that God or “absolute spirit” is not a being distinct from the world but a reality that is progressively realizing itself in the concrete world. For Hegel this process is dialectical in nature; that is, it proceeds through conflicts in which each realization of spirit calls forth its own antagonist or “negation.” Out of this conflict a still higher realization of spirit emerges, which in turn calls forth its negation, and so on. This philosophy is in essence a highly speculative philosophy of history. For Hegel the highest vehicle for the expression of spirit was human society, particularly the modern societies that were coming to fruition in the capitalistic states of nineteenth-century western Europe.

Feuerbach was a materialist who was famous for asserting that human beings “are what they eat” and that religion is a human invention. As Feuerbach saw it, God is a projection of human potentiality, an expression of our unrealized ideals. Religion functions perniciously, since as soon as we invent God we devote ourselves to pleasing our imaginary construction instead of working to overcome the shortcomings that led to the invention in the first place. Feuerbach extended his critique of religion to Hegel’s philosophical idealism, seeing in Hegel’s concept of “spirit” yet another human projection, a slightly secularized version of the Christian God.

Marx accepted Feuerbach’s critique of religion wholeheartedly, and atheism remains a part of most forms of Marxism to this day. However, he was struck by the fact that even if Feuerbach’s criticism of Hegel is right, Hegel’s philosophy may still contain truth. If Hegel’s concept of spirit is simply a misleading projection of our human reality, then the dialectical process Hegel described may be real, just as a film when projected may give an accurate picture of the reality that was filmed. It is only necessary to “turn Hegel right side up” by translating Hegel’s idealistic talk of spirit into materialistic talk of concrete human beings. Once we realize that in Hegel we are seeing a projection or “film,” we can interpret his view in a way that makes it true. History has proceeded through conflict in which the contending parties create their own antagonists, and this series of historical conflicts is “going somewhere.” The goal of history is a perfect or ideal human society, but it is misleading and confusing to call such a society “spirit.”

Marx does call himself a “materialist,” and in some sense he certainly is one. Despite this, Marx hardly ever talks about matter. His materialism is historical and dialectical; it is primarily a doctrine about human history, and it sees that history as a series of dialectical struggles. Economic factors are the primary determinants of that history. Since human beings are material, their lives must be understood in terms of the need to work to satisfy their material needs.

Marx believed that human history began with relatively small human communities organized in family-like tribes. Private property is unknown; a kind of primitive or natural communism holds in which individuals identify with the community as a whole, though these communities are poor and unable to allow their members to flourish. As societies develop technology, gradually a division of labor occurs. Some people in a society control the tools or resources the society depends on; this gives them the power to exploit others. Thus out of division of labor and consequent control over the means of production social classes emerge.

For Marx social classes are the dialectical antagonists of history rather than Hegel’s spiritual realities. History for Marx is the history of class struggle. Since the demise of primitive societies, societies have always been dominated by the class that controls the means of production. The process by which the material goods society requires are created is the key to understanding society. This process is termed by Marxists the “base” of society. A particular system for producing material goods, such as feudal agriculture or industrial capitalism, produces a particular class structure. On that class structure depends in turn what Marx calls the “superstructure” of society: art, religion, philosophy, morality, and most important, political institutions.

Social changes occur when one system of production “dialectically” gives rise to a new system. The new economic base comes into being within the womb of the old superstructure. The dominant social classes of the old order of course try to maintain their power as long as possible, relying on the state to maintain their position. Eventually, however, the new economic system and the emerging class become too powerful. The result is a revolution in which the old superstructure is swept away in favor of a new political and social order that better reflects the underlying economic order.

The history of capitalism illustrates these truths clearly, according to Marx. Medieval feudal societies created modern industrial society, which is its dialectical opposite. For a long time the feudal aristocracy tried to hold on to its power, but in the French Revolution Marx saw the triumph of the new middle class, who controlled the means of production in capitalist society. However, the same dialectical forces that led to capitalism will also destroy it. Capitalism requires a large body of propertyless workers, the proletariat, to exploit. As Marx saw it, the economic dynamics of capitalism will necessarily lead to a society in which the proletariat are more and more numerous and more and more exploited. Capitalist societies become more and more productive, but wealth is more and more narrowly distributed. Eventually the concentration of wealth leads to a society in which more is produced than can be purchased; overproduction leads to unemployment and more suffering. At last the proletariat will be forced to revolt.

For Marx the revolt of the proletariat will be different from any previous revolution. In the past, one social class overthrew a rival oppressing class and became in its turn the oppressor. The proletariat will, however, be the majority, not a minority. They have no vested interest in the old order of things, so it will be in their own best interests to abolish the whole system of class oppression. The material abundance created by modern technology makes this a real possibility for the first time in human history, since without such abundance, struggle, competition, and oppression would inevitably break out in new forms.

The new classless society that will emerge will make possible what Marxists call “the new socialist individual.” People will supposedly be less individualistic and competitive, more apt to find fulfillment in working for the good of others. The “alienation” of all previous societies will be overcome, and a new and higher form of human life will emerge. This vision in many ways parallels the Christian vision of the coming of the kingdom of God, and it is therefore easy to see why some have characterized Marxism as a Christian heresy.

One can also easily see why this vision of Marx was appealing to so many for so long. Marx had a deep understanding of the human need for genuine community and for fulfillment in work. He was sensitive not merely to the problem of poverty but to the loss of dignity that occurs when human beings are seen merely as cogs in a vast industrial machine. He looked for a society in which people would creatively express themselves in their work and see in their work an opportunity to help others as well as themselves.

It is by no means clear that at some point changing conditions will not rekindle interest in Marx. Some theorists, for example, worry that in the United States there is an increasing gap between an economic elite and the great mass of people who are stagnating economically, and that this increasing inequality may make Marx’s theories relevant once more.

However, there are also hard questions that Marx does not convincingly answer. One crucial set of questions deals with the reality of life under communism. How could a theory that seems so committed to humanistic liberation produce the dehumanization and oppression of Stalinism? Part of the answer here surely lies in the changes that Vladimir Lenin introduced into Marxism. Marx had predicted that socialism would develop in the most economically advanced societies, such as England and the United States; and he had little faith that true socialism would be possible in a backward country such as Russia. Lenin believed that if society were rigidly controlled by a monolithic Communist party, this would compensate for economic backwardness. So many Western Marxists committed to “democratic socialism” argue that Leninist-style Communism was a heretical form of Marxism and that Marx’s own ideas were never given a fair chance.

Nevertheless, even if one ignores the reality of life under communism and the horrors of the Gulag, there are many respects in which Marx’s ideas appear vulnerable. One crucial concern is his faith that human history is moving toward an ideal society. Having abandoned any religious belief in providence, as well as Hegel’s belief in absolute spirit as underlying history, Marx has no real basis for this expectation. He bases his own hope on empirical study of history, particularly his analysis of economic forces. However, many of Marx’s predictions, such as his claim that workers in advanced capitalist countries will become increasingly impoverished, have been far off the mark. Can any social scientist—Marxist or non-Marxist—accurately predict the future?

A second problem for Marx concerns our motivation for working toward the future society, especially when we recognize that this society is by no means inevitable. Why should I work for a better society and try to end social exploitation? Marx rejects any moral values as a basis for such motivation. As a naturalist, he views morality as simply a product of human culture. There are no transcendent values that can be used as a basis for critically evaluating culture. Yet Marx himself often seems full of moral indignation as he looks at the excesses of capitalism. What is the basis for Marx’s condemnation of capitalism if such moral notions as “justice” and “fairness” are just ideological inventions?

Two final grave problems for Marx lie in his vision of human nature and his analysis of the fundamental human problem. For Marx human beings are fundamentally self-creating; we create ourselves through our work. When our work or life activity is alienated, we are alienated, and when our work has become truly human, we will be human as well. Greed, competition, and envy all arise because of social divisions and poverty; an ideal society will eliminate these evils.

The question is whether Marx’s view of human nature and analysis of the human problem go deep enough. Is it really plausible to think that selfishness and greed are solely a product of scarcity and class division? Is it really possible to make human beings fundamentally good if we have the right environment for them? Whether we look at capitalist or professedly socialist societies, the lesson of history would seem to be that humans are very inventive in finding ways to manipulate any system for their own selfish benefit. Perhaps the problem with human nature lies deeper than Marx thought. And this problem may expose a problem with his view of human beings: are we purely material beings?

Marx was certainly right to emphasize work and economic factors as crucially important in shaping human society, but there is more to human life than economics. Certainly many young people in the most economically advanced countries struggle with finding meaning and purpose for their lives. Marxism, like all forms of naturalism, has a difficult time providing such meaning and purpose for human beings.

THE PERSISTENCE OF NATURALISM

Naturalism has had great staying power. Born in the eighteenth century, it came of age in the nineteenth and grew to maturity in the twentieth. While signs of age are now appearing and postmodern trumpeters are signaling the death of Enlightenment reason, naturalism is still very much alive. It dominates universities, colleges, and high schools. It provides the framework for most scientific study. It poses the backdrop against which the humanities continue to struggle for human value, as writers, poets, painters, and artists in general shudder under its implications.53 It is seen as the great villain of the postmodern avant-garde. Nonetheless, no rival worldview has yet been able to topple it. Still, it is fair to say that the twentieth century provided some powerful options: Christian theism is experiencing a rebirth at all levels of society and Islamic theism is posing a challenge just off stage.

What makes naturalism so persistent? There are two basic answers. First, it gives the impression of being honest and objective. One is asked to accept only what appears to be based on facts and on the assured results of scientific investigation or scholarship. Second, to a vast number of people it appears to be coherent. To them the implications of its premises are largely worked out and found acceptable. Naturalism assumes no god, no spirit, no life beyond the grave. It sees human beings as the makers of value. While it disallows that we are the center of the universe by virtue of design, it allows us to place ourselves there and to make of ourselves and for ourselves something of value. As Simpson says, “Man is the highest animal. The fact that he alone is capable of making such a judgment is in itself part of the evidence that this decision is correct.”54 It is up to us then to work out the implications of our special place in nature, controlling and altering, as we find it possible, our own evolution.55

All of this is attractive. If naturalism were really as described, it should, perhaps, be called not only attractive or persistent but true. We could then proceed to tout its virtues and turn the argument of this book into a tract for our times.

But long before the twentieth century got under way, cracks began appearing in the edifice. Theistic critics always found fault with it. They could never abandon their conviction that an infinite-personal God is behind the universe. Their criticism might be discounted as unenlightened or merely conservative, as if they were afraid to launch out into the uncharted waters of new truth. But more was afoot than this. As we shall see in more detail in the following chapter and chapter nine on postmodernism, within the camp of the naturalists themselves came rumblings of discontent. The facts on which naturalism was based—the nature of the external universe, its closed continuity of cause and effect—were not at issue. The problem was coherence. Did naturalism give an adequate reason for us to consider ourselves valuable? Unique, maybe. But gorillas are unique. So is every category of nature. Value was the first troublesome issue. Could a being thrown up by chance be worthy?

Second, could a being whose origins were so “iffy” trust his or her own capacity to know? Put it personally: If my mind is conterminous with my brain, if “I” am only a thinking machine, how can I trust my thought? If consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter, perhaps the appearance of human freedom which lays the basis for morality is an epiphenomenon of either chance or inexorable law. Perhaps chance or the nature of things only built into me the “feeling” that I am free but actually I am not.

These and similar questions do not arise from outside the naturalist worldview. They are inherent in it. The fears that these questions raised in some minds led directly to nihilism, which I am tempted to call a worldview but which is actually a denial of all worldviews.

If I should cast off this tattered coat,

And go free into the mighty sky;

If I should find nothing there

But a vast blue,

Echoless, ignorant—

What then?

STEPHEN CRANE,

THE BLACK RIDERS AND OTHER LINES

NIHILISM IS MORE a feeling than a philosophy, more a solitary stance before the universe than a worldview. Strictly speaking, nihilism is a denial of any philosophy or worldview—a denial of the possibility of knowledge, a denial that anything is valuable. If it proceeds to the absolute denial of everything, it even denies the reality of existence itself. In other words, nihilism is the negation of everything—knowledge, ethics, beauty, reality. In nihilism no statement has validity; nothing has meaning. Everything is gratuitous, de trop—that is, just there.

Those who have been untouched by the feelings of despair, anxiety, and ennui associated with nihilism may find it hard to imagine that nihilism could be a seriously held orientation of the heart. But it is, and it is well for everyone who wants to understand the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to experience, if only vicariously, something of nihilism as a stance toward human existence.

Modern art galleries are full of its products—if one can speak of something (art objects) coming from nothing (artists who, if they exist, deny the ultimate value of their existence). As we shall see later, no art is ultimately nihilistic, but some art attempts to embody many of nihilism’s characteristics. Marcel Duchamp’s ordinary urinal purchased on the common market, signed with a fictional name, and labeled Fountain will do for a start. Samuel Beckett’s plays, notably End Game and Waiting for Godot, are prime examples in drama. But Beckett’s nihilistic art perhaps reached its climax in Breath, a thirty-five-second play that has no human actors. The props consist of a pile of rubbish on the stage, lit by a light that begins dim, brightens (but never fully), and then recedes to dimness. There are no words, only a “recorded” cry opening the play, an inhaled breath, an exhaled breath, and an identical “recorded” cry closing the play. For Beckett life is such a “breath.”

Douglas Adams’s cosmic science-fiction novels picture the situation for those who seek an answer to human meaning in computer science. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, the Universe and Everything; and So Long and Thanks for All the Fish Adams tells the story of the universe from the point of view of four time travelers who hitchhike back and forth across intergalactic time and space, from creation in the Big Bang to the final destruction of the universe.1 During the course of this history a race of hyperintelligent, pandimensional beings (mice, actually) build a giant computer (“the size of a small city”) to answer “The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.” This computer, which they call Deep Thought, spends seven and a half million years on the calculation.

For seven and a half million years, Deep Thought computed and calculated, and in the end announced that the answer was in fact Forty-two—and so another, even bigger, computer had to be built to find out what the actual question was.

And this computer, which was called the Earth, was so large that it was frequently mistaken for a planet—especially by the strange apelike beings who roamed its surface, totally unaware that they were simply part of a gigantic computer program.

And this is very odd, because without that fairly simple and obvious piece of knowledge, nothing that ever happened on the Earth could possibly make the slightest bit of sense. Sadly, however, just before the critical moment of read-out, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished by the Vogons to make way—so they claimed—for a new hyperspace bypass, and so all hope of discovering a meaning for life was lost for ever. Or so it would seem.3

By the end of the second novel, the time travelers discover that the “question itself” (the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything) is “What is six times nine?”4 So, they discover, both the question and the answer are inane. Not only is forty-two a meaningless answer to the question on a human level (the level of purpose and meaning), it is bad mathematics. The most rational discipline in the university has been reduced to absurdity.

By the end of the third novel, we have an explanation for why the question and the answer do not seem to fit each other. Prak, the character who is supposed to know the ultimate, says this: “I’m afraid . . . that the Question and the Answer are mutually exclusive. Knowledge of one logically precludes knowledge of the other. It is impossible that both can ever be known about the same Universe.”5 (Physics students will detect here a play on Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, where the position and momentum of an electron can each be known, but not with precision at the same time.)

So we can know the Answers—like forty-two—which don’t mean anything without the Questions. Or we can have the Questions (which give direction to our quest). But we can’t have both. That is, we cannot satisfy our longing for ultimate meaning. To read Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, Eugène Ionesco, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and more recently, Douglas Adams is to begin to feel—if one does not already in our depressing age—the pangs of human emptiness, of life that is without value, without purpose, without meaning.6

But how does one get from naturalism to nihilism? Wasn’t naturalism the enlightened readout of the assured results of science and open intellectual inquiry? As a worldview, did it not account for human beings, their uniqueness among the things of the cosmos? Did it not show human dignity and value? As the highest of creation, the only self-conscious, self-determined beings in the universe, men and women are rulers of all, free to value what they will, free even to control the future of their own evolution. What more could one wish?

Most naturalists are satisfied to end their inquiry right here. They do in fact wish for no more. For them there is no route to nihilism.7

But for a growing number of people the results of reason are not so assured, the closed universe is confining, the notion of death as extinction is psychologically disturbing, our position as the highest in creation is seen either as an alienation from the universe or as a union with it such that we are no more valuable than a pebble on the beach. In fact, pebbles “live” longer! What bridges led from a naturalism that affirms the value of human life to a naturalism that does not? Just how did nihilism come about?

Nihilism came about not because theists and deists picked away at naturalism from the outside. Nihilism is the natural child of naturalism.

THE FIRST BRIDGE: NECESSITY AND CHANCE

The first and most basic reason for nihilism is found in the direct, logical implications of naturalism’s primary propositions. Notice what happens to the concept of human nature when one takes seriously the notions that (1) matter is all there is and it is eternal, and (2) the cosmos operates with a uniformity of cause and effect in a closed system. These mean that a human being is a part of the system. Though they may not understand the implications for human freedom, naturalists agree, as we saw in proposition 3 of chapter four: Human beings are complex machines whose personality is a function of highly complex chemical and physical properties not yet understood. Nietzsche, however, bites the bullet and recognizes the loss to human dignity: Human beings are simply deluded about having free will.

Still many naturalists try to hold on to human freedom within the closed system. Their argument goes like this. Every event in the universe is caused by a previous state of affairs, including each person’s genetic makeup, environmental situation, and even the person’s wants and desires. But each person is free to express those wants and desires. If I want a sandwich and a deli is around the corner, I can choose to have a sandwich. If I want to steal the sandwich when the owner isn’t looking, I can do that. Nothing constrains my choice. My actions are self-determined.

Thus human beings who are obviously self-conscious and, it would appear, self-determined can act significantly and be held responsible for their actions. I can be arrested for stealing the sandwich and reasonably required to pay the penalty.

But are things so simple? Many think not. The issue of human freedom goes deeper than these naturalists see. To be sure I can do anything I want, but what I want is the result of past states of affairs over which ultimately I had no control. I did not freely select my particular genetic makeup or my original family environment. By the time I asked whether I was free to act freely, I was so molded by nature and nurture that the very fact that the question occurred to me was determined. That is, my self itself was determined by outside forces. I can indeed ask such questions, I can act according to my wants and desires, and I can appear to myself to be free, but it is appearance only. Nietzsche is right: “the acting man’s delusion about himself, his assumption that free will exists, is also part of the calculating mechanism.”

If one were omniscient, one would be able to calculate each individual [human] action in advance, each step in the progress of knowledge, each error, each act of malice. To be sure, the acting man is caught in his illusion of volition; if the wheel of the world were to stand still for a moment and an omniscient calculating mind were there to take advantage of this interruption, he would be able to tell into the farthest future of each being and describe every rut that wheel will roll upon. The acting man’s delusion about himself, his assumption that free will exists, is also part of the calculating mechanism.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

The problem is that if the universe is truly closed, then its activity can be governed only from within. Any force that acts to change the cosmos on whatever level (microcosmic, human, macrocosmic) is a part of the cosmos. There would thus seem to be only one explanation for change: the present state of affairs must govern the future state. In other words, the present must cause the future, which in turn must cause the next future, and so on.

The objection that in an Einsteinian universe of time-relativity simultaneity is impossible to define and causal links are impossible to prove is beside the point. We are not talking here about how the events are linked together, only noting that they are linked. Events occur because other events have occurred. All activity in the universe is connected this way. We cannot, perhaps, know what the links are, but the premise of a closed universe forces us to conclude that they must exist.

Moreover, there is evidence that such links exist, for patterns of events are perceivable, and some events can be predicted from the standpoint of earth time with almost absolute precision, for example, precisely when and where the next eclipse will take place. For every eclipse in the next fifteen centuries the exact shadow can be predicted and tracked in space and time across the earth. Most events cannot be so predicted, but the presumption is that that is because all the variables and their interrelations are not known. Some events are more predictable than others, but none is uncertain. Each event must come to be.

In a closed universe the possibility that some things need not be, that others are possible, is not possible. For the only way change can come is by a force moving to make that change, and the only way that force can come is if it is moved by another force, ad infinitum. There is no break in this chain, from eternity past to eternity future, forever and ever, amen.

To the ordinary person determinism does not appear to be the case. We generally perceive ourselves as free agents. But our perception is an illusion. We just do not know what “caused” us to decide. Something did, of course, but we feel it was our free choice. Such perceived freedom—if one does not think much about its implications—is quite sufficient, at least according to some.8

In a closed universe, in other words, freedom must be a determinacy unrecognized, and for those who work out its implications, this is not enough to allow for self-determinacy or moral responsibility. For if I robbed a bank, that would ultimately be due to inexorable (though unperceived) forces triggering my decisions in such a way that I could no longer consider these decisions mine. If these decisions are not mine, I cannot be held responsible. And such would be the case for every act of every person.

A human being is thus a mere piece of machinery, a toy—complicated, very complicated, but a toy of impersonal cosmic forces. A person’s self-consciousness is only an epiphenomenon; it is just part of the machinery looking at itself. But consciousness is only part of the machinery; there is no “self” apart from the machinery. There is no “ego” that can stand over against the system and manipulate it at its own will. Its “will” is the will of the cosmos. In this picture, by the way, we have a rather good description of human beings as seen by behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner. To change people, says Skinner, change their environment, the contingencies under which they act, the forces acting on them. A person must respond in kind, for in Skinner’s view every person is only a reactor: “A person does not act on the world, the world acts on him.”9

The nihilists follow this argument, which can now be stated briefly: Human beings are conscious machines without the ability to affect their own destiny or do anything significant; therefore, human beings as valuable beings are dead. Their life is Beckett’s “breath,” not the life God “breathed” into the first person in the Garden (Genesis 2:7).

But perhaps the course of my argument has moved too fast. Have I missed something? Some naturalists would certainly say so. They would say that I went wrong when I said that the only explanation for change is the continuity of cause and effect. Jacques Monod, for example, attributes all basic change—certainly the appearance of anything genuinely new—to chance. And naturalists admit that new things have come into being by the uncountable trillions: every step on the evolutionary scale from hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and so forth in free association to the formation of complex amino acids and other basic building blocks of life. At every turn—and these are beyond count—chance introduced the new thing. Then necessity, or what Monod calls “the machinery of invariance,” took over and duplicated the chance-produced pattern. Slowly over eons of time through the cooperation of chance and necessity, cellular life, multicellular life, the plant and animal kingdoms, and human beings emerged.10 So chance is offered as the trigger for humanity’s emergence.

But what is chance? Either chance is the inexorable proclivity of reality to happen as it does, appearing to be chance because we do not know the reason for what happens (making chance another name for our ignorance of the forces of determinism), or it is absolutely irrational.11 In the first case, chance is just unknown determinism and not freedom at all. In the second case, chance is not an explanation but the absence of an explanation.12 An event occurs. No cause can be assigned. It is a chance event. Not only might such an event have not happened, it could never have been expected to happen. So while chance produces the appearance of freedom, it actually introduces absurdity. Chance is causeless, purposeless, directionless.13 It is sudden givenness—gratuity incarnated in time and space.

But as Monod says, it introduced into time and space a push in a new direction. A chance event is causeless, but it itself is a cause and is now an integral part of the closed universe. Chance opens the universe not to reason, meaning, and purpose but to absurdity. Suddenly we don’t know where we are. We are no longer a flower in the seamless fabric of the universe, but a chance wart on the smooth skin of the impersonal.

Chance, then, does not supply a naturalist with what is necessary for a person to be both self-conscious and free. It only allows one to be self-conscious and subject to caprice. Capricious action is not a free expression of a person with character. It is simply gratuitous, uncaused. Capricious action is by definition not a response to self-determination, and thus we are still left without a basis for morality.14 Such action simply is.

To summarize: The first reason naturalism turns into nihilism is that naturalism does not supply a basis on which a person can act significantly. Rather, it denies the possibility of a self-determining being who can choose on the basis of an innate self-conscious character. We are machines—determined or capricious. We are not persons with self-consciousness and self-determination.

THE SECOND BRIDGE: THE GREAT CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

The metaphysical presupposition that the cosmos is a closed system has implications not only for metaphysics but also for epistemology. The argument in brief is this: if any given person is the result of impersonal forces—whether working haphazardly or by inexorable law—that person has no way of knowing whether what he or she seems to know is illusion or truth. Let us see how that is so.

Naturalism holds that perception and knowledge are either identical with or a byproduct of the brain; they arise from the functioning of matter. Without matter’s functioning there would be no thought. But matter functions by a nature of its own. There is no reason to think that matter has any interest in leading a conscious being to true perception or to logical (that is, correct) conclusions based on accurate observation and true presuppositions.15 The only beings in the universe who care about such matters are humans. But people are bound to their bodies. Their consciousness arises from a complex interrelation of highly “ordered” matter. Why should whatever that matter is conscious of be in any way related to what actually is the case? Is there a test for distinguishing illusion from reality? Naturalists point to the methods of scientific inquiry, pragmatic tests and so forth. But all these utilize the brain they are testing. Each test could well be a futile exercise in spinning out the consistency of an illusion.

For naturalism nothing exists outside the system itself. There is no God— deceiving or nondeceiving, perfect or imperfect, personal or impersonal. There is only the cosmos, and humans are the only conscious beings. But they are latecomers. They “arose,” but how far? Can they trust their mind, their reason?

Charles Darwin himself once said, “The horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust the conviction of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”16 In other words, if my brain is no more than that of a superior monkey, I cannot even be sure that my own theory of my origin is to be trusted.

Here is a curious case: If Darwin’s naturalism is true, there is no way of even establishing its credibility, let alone proving it. Confidence in logic is ruled out. Darwin’s own theory of human origins must therefore be accepted by an act of faith. One must hold that a brain, a device that came to be through natural selection and chance-sponsored mutations, can actually know a proposition or set of propositions to be true.

C. S. Lewis puts the case this way:

If all that exists is Nature, the great mindless interlocking event, if our own deepest convictions are merely the by-products of an irrational process, then clearly there is not the slightest ground for supposing that our sense of fitness and our consequent faith in uniformity tell us anything about a reality external to ourselves. Our convictions are simply a fact about us—like the colour of our hair. If Naturalism is true we have no reason to trust our conviction that Nature is uniform.17

What we need for such certainty is the existence of some “Rational Spirit” outside both ourselves and nature from which our own rationality could derive. Theism assumes such a ground; naturalism does not.

Not only are we boxed in by the past—our origin in inanimate, unconscious matter—we are also boxed in by our present situation as thinkers. Let us say that I have just completed an argument on the level of “All men are mortal; Aristotle Onassis is a man; Aristotle Onassis is mortal.” That’s a proven conclusion. Right?

Well, how do we know it’s right? Simple. I have obeyed the laws of logic. What laws? How do we know them to be true? They are self-evident. After all, would any thought or communication be possible without them? No. So aren’t they true? Not necessarily.

Any argument we construct implies such laws—the classical ones of identity, noncontradiction, and the excluded middle. But that fact does not guarantee the “truthfulness” of these laws in the sense that anything we think or say that obeys them necessarily relates to what is so in the objective, external universe. Moreover, any argument to check the validity of an argument is itself an argument that might be mistaken. When we begin to think like this, we are not far from an infinite regress; our argument chases its tail down the ever- receding corridors of the mind. Or, to change the image, we lose our bearings in a sea of infinity.

But haven’t we gone astray in arguing against the possibility of knowledge? We do seem to be able to test our knowledge in a way that generally satisfies us. Some things we think we know can be shown to be false or at least highly unlikely—for example, that microbes are spontaneously generated from totally inorganic mud. And all of us know how to boil water, scratch our itches, recognize our friends and distinguish them from others in a crowd.

Almost all our discoveries are due to our violences, to the exacerbation of our instability. Even God insofar as He interests us—it is not in our inmost selves that we discern God, but at the extreme limits of our fever, at the very point where, our rage confronting His, a shock results, an encounter as ruinous for Him as for us. Blasted by the curse attached to acts, the man of violence forces his nature, rises above himself only to relapse, an aggressor, followed by his enterprises, which come to punish him for having instigated them. Every work turns against its author: the poem will crush the poet, the system the philosopher, the event the man of action. Destruction awaits anyone who, answering to his vocation and fulfilling it, exerts himself within history; only the man who sacrifices every gift and talent escapes: released from his humanity, he may lodge himself in Being. If I aspire to a metaphysical career, I cannot, at any price, retain my identity: whatever residue I retain must be liquidated; if, on the contrary, I assume a historical role it is my responsibility to exasperate my faculties until I explode along with them. One always perishes by the self one assumes: to bear a name is to claim an exact mode of collapse.

E. M. Cioran, The Temptation to Exist

Virtually no one is a full-fledged epistemological nihilist. Yet naturalism does not allow a person to have any solid reason for confidence in human reason. We thus end in an ironic paradox. Naturalism, born in the Age of Enlightenment, was launched on a firm acceptance of the human ability to know. Now naturalists find that they can place no confidence in their knowing.

The whole point of this argument can be summarized briefly: Naturalism places us as human beings in a box. But for us to have any confidence that our knowledge that we are in a box is true, we need to stand outside the box or to have some other being outside the box provide us with information (theologians call this “revelation”). But there is nothing or no one outside the box to give us revelation, and we cannot ourselves transcend the box. Ergo: epistemological nihilism.

A naturalist who fails to perceive this is like the man in Stephen Crane’s poem:

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;

Round and round they sped.

I was disturbed at this;

I accosted the man.

“It is futile,” I said,

“You can never—”

“You lie,” he cried,

And ran on.18

In the naturalistic framework, people pursue a knowledge that forever recedes before them. We can never know.

One of the worst consequences of taking epistemological nihilism seriously is that it has led some to question the very facticity of the universe.19 To some, nothing is real, not even themselves. People who reach this state are in deep trouble, for they can no longer function as human beings. Or, as we often say, they can’t cope.

We usually do not recognize this situation as metaphysical or epistemological nihilism. Rather, we call it schizophrenia, hallucination, fantasizing, daydreaming, or living in a dream world. And we treat the person as a “case,” the problem as a “disease.” I have no particular quarrel with doing this, for I do believe in the reality of an external world, one I hold in common with others in my space-time frame. Those who cannot recognize this are beyond coping. But while we think of such situations primarily in psychological terms and while we commit such people to institutions where someone will keep them alive and others will help them return from their inner trip and get back to waking reality, we should realize that some of these far-out cases may be perfect examples of what happens when a person no longer knows in the common-sense way of knowing. It is the “proper” state, the logical result, of epistemological nihilism. If I cannot know, then any perception or dream or image or fantasy becomes equally real or unreal. Life in the ordinary world is based on our ability to make distinctions. Ask the man who has just swallowed colorless liquid, which he thought was water but which was actually wood alcohol.

Most of us never see the far-out “cases.” They are quickly committed. But they exist, and I have met some people whose stories are frightening. Most full epistemological nihilists, however, fall in the class described by Robert Farrar Capon, who simply has no time for such nonsense:

The skeptic is never for real. There he stands, cocktail in hand, left arm draped languorously on one end of the mantelpiece, telling you that he can’t be sure of anything, not even of his own existence. I’ll give you my secret method of demolishing universal skepticism in four words. Whisper to him: “Your fly is open.” If he thinks knowledge is so all-fired impossible, why does he always look?20

As noted above, there is just too much evidence that knowledge is possible. What we need is a way to explain why we have it. This naturalism does not do. So the one who remains a consistent naturalist must be a closet nihilist who does not know where he is.

THE THIRD BRIDGE: IS AND OUGHT

Many naturalists—most, so far as I know—are very moral people. They are not thieves; they do not tend to be libertines. Many are faithful husbands and wives. Some are scandalized by the personal and public immorality of our day. The problem is not that moral values are not recognized but that they have no basis. Summing up the position reached by Nietzsche and Max Weber, Allan Bloom remarks, “Reason cannot establish values, and its belief that it can is the stupidest and most pernicious illusion.”21

Remember that for a naturalist the world is merely there. It does not provide humanity with a sense of oughtness. It only is. Ethics, however, is about what ought to be, whether it is or not.22 Where, then, does one go for a basis for morality? Where is oughtness found?

As I have noted, every person has moral values. There is no tribe without taboos. But these are merely facts of a social nature, and the specific values vary widely. In fact, many of these values conflict with each other. Thus we are forced to ask, Which values are the true values, or the higher values?

Cultural anthropologists, recognizing that this situation prevails, answer clearly: Moral values are relative to one’s culture. What the tribe, nation, social unit says is valuable is valuable. But there is a serious flaw here. It is only another way of saying that is (the fact of a specific value) equals ought (what should be so). Moreover, it does not account for the situation of cultural rebels whose moral values are not those of their neighbors. The cultural rebel’s is is not considered ought. Why? The answer of cultural relativism is that the rebel’s moral values cannot be allowed if they upset social cohesiveness and jeopardize cultural survival. So we discover that is is not ought after all. The cultural relativist has affirmed a value—the preservation of a culture in its current state—as more valuable than its destruction or transformation by one or more rebels within it. Once more, we are forced to ask why.

Cultural relativism, it turns out, is not forever relative. It rests on a primary value affirmed by cultural relativists themselves: that cultures should be preserved. So cultural relativism does not rely only on is but on what its adherents think ought to be the case. The trouble here is that some anthropologists are not cultural relativists. Some think certain values are so important that cultures that do not recognize them should recognize them.23 So cultural relativists must, if they are to convince their colleagues, show why their values are the true values.24 Again we approach the infinite corridor down which we chase our arguments.

But let’s look again. We must be sure we see what is implied by the fact that values do really vary widely. Between neighboring tribes values conflict. One tribe may conduct “religious wars” to spread its values. Such wars are. Ought they to be? Perhaps, but only if there is indeed a nonrelative standard by which to measure the values in conflict. But a naturalist has no way of determining which values among the ones in existence are the basic ones that give meaning to the specific tribal variations. A naturalist can point only to the fact of value, never to an absolute standard.

This situation is not so critical as long as sufficient space separates peoples of radically differing values. But in the global community of the twenty-first century this luxury is no longer ours. We are forced to deal with values in conflict, and naturalists have no standard, no way of knowing when peace is more important than preserving another value. We may give up our property to avoid doing violence to a robber. But what shall we say to white racists who own rental property in the city? Whose values are to govern their actions when a black person attempts to rent their property? Who shall say? How shall we decide?

The argument can again be summarized like that above: Naturalism places us as human beings in an ethically relative box. For us to know what values within that box are true values, we need a measure imposed on us from outside the box; we need a moral plumb line by which we can evaluate the conflicting moral values we observe in ourselves and others. But there is nothing outside the box; there is no moral plumb line, no ultimate, nonchanging standard of value. Ergo: ethical nihilism.25

But nihilism is a feeling, not just a philosophy. And on the level of human perception, Franz Kafka catches in a brief parable the feeling of life in a universe without a moral plumb line.

I ran past the first watchman. Then I was horrified, ran back again and said to the watchman: “I ran through here while you were looking the other way.” The watchman gazed ahead of him and said nothing. “I suppose I really oughtn’t to have done it,” I said. The watchman still said nothing. “Does your silence indicate permission to pass?”26

When people were conscious of a God whose character was moral law, when their consciences were informed by a sense of rightness, their watchmen would shout halt when they trespassed the law. Now their watchmen are silent. They serve no king and protect no kingdom. The wall is a fact without a meaning. One scales it, crosses it, breaches it, and no watchman ever complains. One is left not with the fact but with the feeling of guilt.27

One knows my demand of philosophers that they place themselves beyond good and evil—and that they have the illusion of moral judgement beneath them. This demand follows from an insight formulated by me: that there are no moral facts whatever. Moral judgment has this in common with religious judgment that it believes in realities which do not exist.

Friedrich Nietzsche, “The ‘Improvers’ of Mankind”

In a haunting dream sequence in Ingmar Bergman’s film Wild Strawberries, an old professor is arraigned before the bar of justice. When he asks the charge, the judge replies, “You are guilty of guilt.”

“Is that serious?” the professor asks.

“Very serious,” says the judge.

But that is all that is said on the subject of guilt. In a universe where God is dead, people are not guilty of violating a moral law; they are only guilty of guilt, and that is very serious, for nothing can be done about it. If one had sinned, there might be atonement. If one had broken a law, the lawmaker might forgive the criminal. But if one is only guilty of guilt, there is no way to solve the very personal problem.28

And that states the case for a nihilist, for no one can avoid acting as if moral values exist and as if there is some bar of justice that measures guilt by objective standards. But there is no bar of justice, and we are left not in sin, but in guilt. Very serious, indeed.

THE LOSS OF MEANING

The strands of epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical nihilism weave together to make a rope long enough and strong enough to hang a whole culture. The name of the rope is Loss of Meaning. We end in a total despair of ever seeing ourselves, the world, and others as in any way significant. Nothing has meaning.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., in a parody of Genesis 1, captures this modern dilemma:

In the beginning God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.

And God said, “Let Us make creatures out of mud, so mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.

“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.

“Certainly,” said man.

“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God. And he went away.

his may first appear to be a satire on theism’s notion of the origin of the universe and human beings, but it is quite the contrary. It is a satire on the naturalist’s view, for it shows our human dilemma. We have been thrown up by an impersonal universe. The moment a self-conscious, self-determining being appears on the scene, that person asks the big question: What is the meaning of all this? What is the purpose of the cosmos? But the person’s creator—the impersonal forces of bedrock matter—cannot respond. If the cosmos is to have meaning, we must manufacture it for ourselves.

As Stephen Crane put it in the poem quoted in the opening of the first chapter, the existence of people has not created in the universe “a sense of obligation.” Precisely: We exist. Period. Our maker has no sense of value, no sense of obligation. We alone make values. Are our values valuable? By what standard? Only our own. Whose own? Each person’s own. Each of us is monarch and bishop of our own realm, but our realm is Pointland. For the moment we meet another person, we meet another monarch and bishop. There is no way to arbitrate between two free value makers. There is no monarch to whom both give obeisance. There are values, but no Value. Society is only a bunch of windowless monads, a collection of points, not an organic body obeying a superior, all-encompassing form that arbitrates the values of its separate arms, legs, warts, and wrinkles. Society is not a body at all. It is only a bunch.

Thus does naturalism lead to nihilism. If we take seriously the implications of the death of God, the disappearance of the transcendent, the closedness of the universe, we end right there.

Why, then, aren’t most naturalists nihilists? The obvious answer is the best one: Most naturalists do not take their naturalism seriously. They are inconsistent. They affirm a set of values. They have friends who affirm a similar set. They appear to know and don’t ask how they know they know. They seem to be able to choose and don’t ask themselves whether their apparent freedom is really caprice or determinism. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, but for a naturalist he is wrong. For a naturalist it is the examined life that is not worth living.

INNER TENSIONS IN NIHILISM

The trouble is that no one can live the examined life if examination leads to nihilism, for nobody can live a life consistent with nihilism. At every step, at every moment, nihilists think, and think their thinking has substance, and thus they cheat on their philosophy. There are, I believe, at least five reasons that nihilism is unlivable.

First, from meaninglessness nothing at all follows, or rather, anything follows. If the universe is meaningless and a person cannot know and nothing is immoral, any course of action is open. One can respond to meaninglessness by any act whatsoever, for none is more or less appropriate. Suicide is one act, but it does not “follow” as any more appropriate than going to a Walt Disney movie.

Yet whenever we set ourselves on a course of action, putting one foot in front of the other in other than a haphazard way, we are affirming a goal. We are affirming the value of a course of action, even if to no one other than ourselves. Thus we are not living by nihilism. We are creating value by choice. From this type of argument comes Albert Camus’s attempt to go beyond nihilism to existentialism, which we will consider in the following chapter.30

Second, every time nihilists think and trust their thinking, they are inconsistent, for they have denied that thinking is of value or that it can lead to knowledge. But at the heart of a nihilist’s one affirmation lies a self-contradiction. There is no meaning in the universe, nihilists scream. That means that their only affirmation is meaningless, for if it were to mean anything it would be false.31 Nihilists are indeed boxed in. They can get absolutely nowhere. They merely are; they merely think; and none of this has any significance whatsoever. Except for those whose actions place them in institutions, no one seems to act out their nihilism. Those who do we treat as patients.

Third, while a limited sort of practical nihilism is possible for a while, eventually a limit is reached. The comedy of Catch-22 rests on just this premise. Captain Yossarian is having a knock-down theological argument with Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife, and God is coming in for a good deal of hassling. Yossarian is speaking:

[God] is not working at all. He’s playing. Or else He’s forgotten all about us. That’s the kind of God you people talk about—a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed.

Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His system of creation?32

After several unsuccessful attempts to handle Yossarian’s verbal attack, Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife turns to violence.

“Stop it! Stop it!” Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife screamed suddenly, and began beating him ineffectually about the head with both fists. “Stop it!” . . .

“What the hell are you getting so upset about?” he asked her bewilderedly in a tone of contrite amusement. “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”

“I don’t,” she sobbed, bursting violently into tears. “But the God I don’t believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He’s not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be.”33

Here is another paradox: In order to deny God one must have a God to deny. In order to be a practicing nihilist, there must be something against which to do battle. Practicing nihilists are parasites on meaning. They run out of energy when there is nothing left to deny. Cynics are out of business when they are the last ones around.

Fourth, nihilism means the death of art. Here, too, we find a paradox, for much modern art—literature, painting, drama, film—has nihilism for its ideological core. And much of this literature is excellent by the traditional canons of art. Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” Samuel Beckett’s End Game, Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, Francis Bacon’s various heads of popes spring immediately to mind. The twist is this: to the extent that these artworks display the human implication of a nihilistic worldview, they are not nihilistic; to the extent that they themselves are meaningless, they are not artworks.

Art is nothing if not formal, that is, endowed with structure by the artist. But structure itself implies meaning. So to the extent that an artwork has structure, it has meaning and thus is not nihilistic. Even Beckett’s Breath has structure. A junkyard, the garbage in a trash heap, a pile of rocks just blasted from a quarry have no structure. They are not art.

Some contemporary art attempts to be antiart by being random. Much of John Cage’s music is predicated on sheer chance, randomness. But it is both dull and grating, and very few people can listen to it. It’s not art. Then there is Kafka’s “Hunger Artist,” a brilliant though painful story about an artist who tries to make art out of public fasting, that is, out of nothing. But no one looks at him; everyone passes by his display at the circus to see a young leopard pacing in his cage. Even the “nature” of the leopard is more interesting than the “art” of the nihilist. Breath too, as minimal as it is, is structured and means something. Even if it means only that human beings are meaningless, it participates in the paradox I examined above. In short, art implies meaning and is ultimately nonnihilistic, despite the ironic attempt of nihilists to display their wares by means of it.

Fifth, and finally, nihilism poses severe psychological problems for a nihilist. People cannot live with it because it denies what every fiber of their waking being calls for—meaning, value, significance, dignity, worth. “Nietzsche,” Bloom writes, “replaces easygoing or self-satisfied atheism with agonized atheism, suffering its human consequences. Longing to believe, along with intransigent refusal to satisfy that longing, is, according to him, the profound response to our entire spiritual condition.”34

A younger and an older waiter are closing a “clean, well-lighted” bar for the night. When the young waiter leaves, the older lonely waiter thinks to himself:

What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. He smiled and stood before a bar with a shining steam pressure coffee machine.

Ernest Hemingway, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”

Nietzsche ended his life in an asylum. Ernest Hemingway affirmed a “lifestyle” and eventually committed suicide. Beckett writes black comedy. Vonnegut and Adams revel in whimsy. And Kafka—perhaps the greatest artist of them all—lived an almost impossible life of tedium, writing novels and stories that boil down to a sustained cry: God is dead! God is dead! Isn’t he? I mean, surely he is, isn’t he? God is dead. Oh, I wish, I wish, I wish he weren’t.

It is thus that nihilism forms the hinge for modern people. No one who has not plumbed the despair of the nihilists, heard them out, felt as they felt—if only vicariously through their art—can understand the past century. Nihilism is the foggy bottomland through which we modern people must pass if we are to build a life in Western culture. There are no easy answers to our questions, and none of these answers is worth anything unless it takes seriously the problems raised by the possibility that nothing whatever of value exists.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance. I leaned back and closed my eyes. The images, forewarned, immediately leaped up and filled my closed eyes with existences: existence is a fullness which man can never abandon. . . . I knew it was the World, the naked World suddenly revealing itself, and I choked with rage at this gross absurd being.

ROQUENTIN IN JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, NAUSEA

IN AN ESSAY PUBLISHED in 1950, Albert Camus wrote, “A literature of despair is a contradiction in terms. . . . In the darkest depths of our nihilism I have sought only for the means to transcend nihilism.”1 Here the essence of existentialism’s most important goal is summed up in one phrase: to transcend nihilism. In fact, every important worldview that has emerged since the beginning of the twentieth century has had that as a major goal. For nihilism, coming as it does directly from a culturally pervasive worldview, is the problem of our age. A worldview that ignores this fact has little chance of proving relevant to modern thinking people. Existentialism, especially in its secular form, not only takes nihilism seriously, it is an answer to it.

From the outset it is important to recognize that existentialism takes two basic forms, depending on its relation to previous worldviews, because existentialism is not a full-fledged worldview. Atheistic existentialism is a parasite on naturalism; theistic existentialism is a parasite on theism.2

Historically, we have an odd situation. On the one hand, atheistic existentialism developed to solve the problem of a naturalism that led to nihilism, but it did not appear in any fullness till well into the twentieth century, unless we count a major theme in Nietzsche that quickly became distorted.3 On the other hand, theistic existentialism was born in the middle of the nineteenth century as Søren Kierkegaard responded to the dead orthodoxy of Danish Lutheranism. Yet it was not until after World War I that either form of existentialism became culturally significant, for it was only then that nihilism finally gripped the intellectual world and began affecting the lives and attitudes of ordinary men and women.

World War I had not made the world safe for democracy. The generation of flappers and bathtub gin, the rampant violation of an absurd antiliquor law, the quixotic stock market that promised so much—these prefaced in the United States Dust Bowl 1930s. With the rise of National Socialism in Germany and its incredible travesty of human dignity, students and intellectuals the world over were ready to conclude that life is absurd and human beings are meaningless. In the soil of such frustration and cultural discontent, existentialism in its atheistic form sank its cultural roots. It was to flower into a significant worldview by the 1950s.

To some extent all worldviews have subtle variations. Existentialism is no exception. Camus and Sartre, both existentialists and once friends, had a falling-out over important differences, and Martin Heidegger’s existentialism is quite different from Sartre’s. But as with other worldviews, we will focus on major features and general tendencies. The language of most of the propositions listed below derives from either Sartre or Camus. That is quite intentional, because that is the form in which it has been most digested by today’s intelligentsia, and through their literary works even more than their philosophic treatises, Sartre and Camus are still wielding enormous influence. To many modern people the propositions of existentialism appear so obvious that people “do not know what they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them.”5

BASIC ATHEISTIC EXISTENTIALISM

Atheistic existentialism begins by accepting naturalism’s answers to worldview questions 1 (prime reality), 4 (death), 5 (knowledge), 6 (ethics), and 7 (history). In short: Matter exists eternally; God does not exist. Death is extinction of personality and individuality. Through our innate and autonomous human reason, including the methods of science, we can know the universe. The cosmos, including this world, is understood to be in its normal state. Ethics is related only to human beings. History is a linear stream of events linked by cause and effect but without an overarching purpose.

In other words, atheistic existentialism affirms most of the propositions of naturalism except those relating to human nature and our relationship to the cosmos. Indeed, existentialism’s major interest is in our humanity and how we can be significant in an otherwise insignificant world.

The world, it is assumed, existed long before human beings came on the scene. It is structured or chaotic, determined by inexorable law or subject to chance. Whichever it is makes no difference. The world merely is.

Then came a new thing, conscious beings—ones who distinguished he and she from it, ones who seemed determined to determine their own destiny, to ask questions, to ponder, to wonder, to seek meaning, to endow the external world with special value, to create gods. In short, then came human beings. Now we have—for no one knows what reason—two kinds of being in the universe, the one seemingly having kicked the other out of itself and into separate existence.

The first sort of being is the objective world—the world of material, of inexorable law, of cause and effect, of chronological, clock-ticking time, of flux, of mechanism. The machinery of the universe, spinning electrons, whirling galaxies, falling bodies and rising gases and flowing waters—each is doing its thing, forever unconscious, forever just being where it is when it is. Here, say the existentialists, science and logic have their day. People know the external, objective world by virtue of careful observation, recording, hypothesizing, checking hypotheses by experiment, ever-refining theories, and proving guesses about the lay of the cosmos we live in.

The second sort of being is the subjective world—the world of mind, of consciousness, of awareness, of freedom, of stability. Here the inner awareness of the mind is a conscious present, a constant now. Time has no meaning, for the subject is always present to itself, never past, never future. Science and logic do not penetrate this realm; they have nothing to say about subjectivity. Subjectivity is the self’s apprehension of the not-self; subjectivity is making that not-self part of itself. The subject takes in knowledge not as a bottle takes in liquid but as an organism takes in food. Knowledge turns into the knower.

Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of from a distance: it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast—or else there is nothing more at all.

Roquentin in Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

Naturalism had emphasized the unity of the two worlds by seeing the objective world as the real and the subjective as its shadow. “The brain secretes thought,” said Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis, “as the liver secretes bile.” The real is the objective. Sartre says, “The effect of all materialism is to treat all men, including the one philosophizing, as objects, that is, as an ensemble of determined reactions in no way distinguished from the ensemble of qualities and phenomena which constitute a table or a chair or a stone.”6 By that route, as we saw, lies nihilism. The existentialists take another path.

Existentialism emphasizes the disunity of the two worlds and opts strongly in favor of the subjective world, what Sartre calls “an ensemble of values distinct from the material realm.”7 For people are the subjective beings. Unless there are extraterrestrial beings, a possibility most existentialists do not even consider, we are the only beings in the universe who are self-conscious and self-determinate. The reason we have become that way is past finding out. But we perceive ourselves to be self-conscious and self-determinate, and so we work from these givens.

Science and logic do not penetrate our subjectivity, but that is all right because value and meaning and significance are not tied to science and logic. We can mean; we can be valuable; or better, we can mean and be valuable. Our significance is not up to the facts of the objective world over which we have no control, but up to the consciousness of the subjective world over which we have complete control.

Atheistic existentialism is at one with naturalism’s basic view of human nature; there is indeed no genuinely transcendent element in human beings, but they do display one important unique feature. To put it in Sartre’s words, “If God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and . . . this being is man.” This sentence is the most famous definition of the core of existentialism. Sartre continues, “First of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself.”8

Note again the distinction between the objective and subjective worlds. The objective world is a world of essences. Everything comes bearing its nature. Salt is salt; trees are tree; ants are ant. Only human beings are not human before they make themselves so. Each of us makes himself or herself human by what we do with our self-consciousness and our self-determinacy. Back to Sartre: “At first he [any human being] is nothing. Only afterwards will he be something, and he himself will have made him what he will be.”9 The subjective world is completely at the beck and call of every subjective being, that is, of every person.

How does this work out in practice? Let us say that John, a soldier, fears he is a coward. Is he a coward? Only if he acts like a coward, and his action will proceed not from a nature defined beforehand but from the choices he makes when the bullets start to fly. We can call John a coward if and only if he does cowardly deeds, and these will be deeds he chooses to do. So if John fears he is a coward but does not want to be, let him do brave deeds when they are called for.

From proposition 2 it follows that each person is totally free. Each of us is uncoerced, radically capable of doing anything imaginable with our subjectivity. We can think, will, imagine, dream, project visions, consider, ponder, invent. Each of us is monarch of our own subjective world.

We run into just such an understanding of human freedom in John Platt’s existential defense of B. F. Skinner’s naturalistic behaviorism:

The objective world, the world of isolated and controlled experiments, is the world of physics; the subjective world, the world of knowledge, values, decisions, and acts—of purposes which these experiments are in fact designed to serve—is the world of cybernetics, of our own goal-seeking behavior. Determinism or indeterminism lies on that side of the boundary, while the usual idea of “free will” lies on this side of the boundary. They belong to different universes, and no statement about one has any bearing on the other.11

So we are free within. And thus we can create our own value by affirming worth. We are not bound by the objective world of ticking clocks and falling water and spinning electrons. Value is inner, and the inner is each person’s own.

The objective world considered in and of itself is as the naturalist has said: a world of order and law, perhaps triggered into new structures by chance. It is the world of thereness.

To us, however, the facticity, the hard, cold thereness of the world, appears alien. As we make ourselves to be by fashioning our subjectivity, we see the objective world as absurd. It does not fit us. Our dreams and visions, our desires, all our inner world of value runs smack up against a universe that is impervious to our wishes. Think all day that you can step off a ten-story building and float safely to the ground. Then try it.

The objective world is orderly; bodies fall if not supported. The subjective world knows no order. What is present to it, what is here and now, is.

So we are all strangers in a foreign land. And the sooner we learn to accept that, the sooner we transcend our alienation and pass through the despair.

The toughest fact to transcend is the ultimate absurdity—death. We are free so long as we remain subjects. When we die, each of us is just an object among other objects. So, says Camus, we must ever live in the face of the absurd. We must not forget our bent toward nonexistence, but live out the tension between the love of life and the certainty of death.

Here is how an existentialist goes beyond nihilism. Nothing is of value in the objective world in which we become conscious, but while we are conscious we create value. The person who lives an authentic existence is the one who keeps ever aware of the absurdity of the cosmos but who rebels against that absurdity and creates meaning.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “underground man” is a paradigm of the rebel without a seemingly reasonable cause. In the story the underground man is challenged:

Two and two do make four. Nature doesn’t ask your advice. She isn’t interested in your preferences or whether or not you approve of her laws. You must accept nature as she is with all the consequences that that implies. So a wall is a wall, etc., etc.

The walls referred to here are the “laws of nature,” “the conclusions of the natural sciences, of mathematics.” But the underground man is equal to the challenge:

But, Good Lord, what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmetic if I have my reasons for disliking them, including the one about two and two making four! Of course, I won’t be able to breach this wall with my head if I’m not strong enough. But I don’t have to accept a stone wall just because it’s there and I don’t have the strength to breach it.12

It is thus insufficient to pit the objective world against the subjective and point to its ultimate weapon, death. The person who would be authentic is not impressed. Being a cog in the cosmic machinery is much worse than death. As the underground man says, “The meaning of a man’s life consists in proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.”13

Ethics—that is, a system of understanding what is the good—is solved simply for an existentialist. The good action is the consciously chosen action. Sartre writes, “To choose to be this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good.”14 So the good is whatever a person chooses; the good is part of subjectivity; it is not measured by a standard outside the individual human dimension.

If I’ve discarded God the Father, there has to be someone to invent values. You’ve got to take things as they are. Moreover, to say that we invent values means nothing else than this: life has no meaning a priori. Before you come alive, life is nothing; it’s up to you to give it meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning you choose. In that way, you see, there is a possibility of creating human community.

The problem with this position is twofold. First, subjectivity leads to solipsism, the affirmation that each person alone is the determiner of values and that there are thus as many centers of value as there are persons in the cosmos at any one time. Sartre recognizes this objection and counters by insisting that every person in meeting other persons encounters a recognizable center of subjectivity.15 Thus we see that others like us must be involved in making meaning for themselves. We are all in this absurd world together, and our actions affect each other in such a way that “nothing can be good for us without being good for all.”16 Moreover, as I act and think and effect my subjectivity, I am engaged in a social activity: “I am creating a certain image of man of my own choosing. In choosing myself, I choose man.”17 According to Sartre, therefore, people living authentic lives create value not only for themselves but for others too.

The second objection Sartre does not address, and it seems more telling. If, as Sartre says, we create value simply by choosing it and thus “can never choose evil,” does good have any meaning? The first answer is yes, for evil is “not-choosing.” In other words, evil is passivity, living at the direction of others, being blown around by one’s society, not recognizing the absurdity of the universe, that is, not keeping the absurd alive. If the good is in choosing, then choose. Sartre once advised a young man who sought his counsel, “You’re free, choose, that is, invent.”18

Does this definition satisfy our human moral sensitivity? Is the good merely any action passionately chosen? Too many of us can think of actions seemingly chosen with eyes open that were dead wrong. In what frame of mind have the Russian pogroms against the Jews been ordered and executed? And the bombing of Vietnamese villages or the Federal Building in Oklahoma City or the targets of the Unabomber? What about the terrorist leveling of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001? Sartre himself has sided with causes that appear quite moral on grounds many traditional moralists accept. But not every existentialist has acted like Sartre, and the system seems to leave open the possibility for the Unabomber to claim ethical immunity for his murders, or for the perpetrators of the events of 9/11 to glory in the nobility of their cause.

Placing the locus of morality in each individual’s subjectivity leads to the inability to distinguish a moral from an immoral act on grounds that satisfy our innate sense of right, a sense that says others have the same rights as I do. My choice may not be the desired choice of others though in my choosing I choose for others, as Sartre says. Some standard external to the “subjects” involved is necessary to shape truly the proper actions and relationships between “subjects.”

Ordinary naturalists can choose to commit themselves to their families or neighbors, their communities or country, the environment or the world. They need not display overarching egotism or selfishness. But full-blown atheistic existentialists have already committed themselves to themselves. If they are indeed committed to this Sartrean notion of human selves making themselves who they will come to be, they are the monarchs and bishops of their own Pointland. Since they themselves make themselves who they are, they are responsible only to themselves. They admit they are finite beings in an absurd world, subject to death without exception. The authenticity of their value comes solely by virtue of their own conscious choices.

Before we abandon existentialism to the charge of solipsism and a relativism that fails to provide a basis for ethics, we should give more than passing recognition to Albert Camus’s noble attempt to show how a good life can be defined and lived. This, it seems to me, is the task Camus set for himself in The Plague.

A SAINT WITHOUT GOD

In The Brothers Karamazov (1880) Dostoyevsky has Ivan Karamazov say that if God is dead everything is permitted. In other words, if there is no transcendent standard of the good, then there can ultimately be no way to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, and there can be no saints or sinners, no good or bad people. If God is dead, ethics is impossible.

Albert Camus picks up that challenge in The Plague (1947), which tells the story of Oran, a city in North Africa, in which a deadly strain of infectious disease breaks out. The city closes its gates to traffic and thus becomes a symbol of the closed universe, a universe without God. The disease, on the other hand, comes to symbolize the absurdity of this universe. The plague is arbitrary; one cannot predict who will and who will not contract it. It is not “a thing made to man’s measure.”19 It is terrible in its effects—painful physically and mentally. Its origins are not known, and yet it becomes as familiar as daily bread. There is no way to avoid it. Thus the plague comes to stand for death itself, for like death it is unavoidable and its effects are terminal. The plague helps make everyone in Oran live an authentic existence, because it makes everyone aware of the absurdity of the world they inhabit. It points up the fact that people are born with a love of life but live in the framework of the certainty of death.

The story begins as rats start to come out from their haunts and die in the streets; it ends a year later as the plague lifts and life in the city returns to normal. During the intervening months, life in Oran becomes life in the face of total absurdity. Camus’s genius is to use that as a setting against which to show the reactions of a cast of characters, each of whom represents in some way a philosophic attitude.

M. Michel, for example, is a concierge in an apartment house. He is outraged at the way the rats are coming out of their holes and dying in his apartment building. At first he denies they exist in his building, but eventually he is forced to admit it. Early in the novel he dies cursing the rats. M. Michel represents the man who refuses to acknowledge the absurdity of the universe. When he is forced to admit it, he dies. He cannot live in the face of the absurd. He represents those who are able to live only inauthentic lives.

The old Spaniard has a very different reaction. He had retired at age fifty and gone immediately to bed. Then he measured time, day in and day out, by moving peas from one pan to another. “‘Every fifteen peas,’ he said, ‘it’s feeding time. What could be simpler?’”20 The old Spaniard never leaves his bed, but he takes a sadistic pleasure in the rats, the heat, and the plague, which he calls “life.”21 He is Camus’s nihilist. Nothing in his life—inside or out, objective world or subjective world—has value. So he lives it with a complete absence of meaning.

M. Cottard represents a third stance. Before the plague grips the city, he is nervous, for he is a criminal and is subject to arrest if detected. But as the plague becomes severe, all city employees are committed to alleviating the distress, and Cottard is left free to do as he will. And what he wills to do is live off the plague. The worse conditions get, the richer, happier, and friendlier he becomes. “Getting worse every day isn’t it? Well, anyhow, everyone’s in the same boat,” he says.22 Jean Tarrou, one of the chief characters in the novel, explains Cottard’s happiness this way: “He’s in the same peril of death as everyone else, but that’s just the point; he’s in it with the others.”23

When the plague begins to lift, Cottard loses his feeling of community because he again becomes a wanted man. He loses control of himself, shoots up a street, and is taken by force into custody. Throughout the plague his actions were criminal. Instead of alleviating the suffering of others, he feasted on it. He is Camus’s sinner in a universe without God—proof, if you will, in novelistic form that evil is possible in a closed cosmos.

If evil is possible in a closed cosmos, then perhaps good is too. In two major characters, Jean Tarrou and Dr. Rieux, Camus develops this theme. Jean Tarrou was baptized into the fellowship of nihilists when he visited his father at work, heard him argue as a prosecuting attorney for the death of a criminal, and then saw an execution. This had a profound effect on him. As he puts it, “I learned that I had had an indirect hand in the deaths of thousands of people. . . . We all have the plague.”24 And thus he lost his peace.

From then on, Jean Tarrou has made his whole life a search for some way to become “a saint without God.”25 Camus implies that Tarrou succeeds. His method lies in comprehension and sympathy and ultimately issues in action.26 He is the one who suggests a volunteer corps of workers to fight the plague and comfort its victims. Tarrou works ceaselessly in this capacity. Yet there remains a streak of despair in his lifestyle: “winning the match” for him means living “only with what one knows and what one remembers, cut off from what one hopes for!” So, writes Dr. Rieux, the narrator of the novel, Tarrou “realized the bleak sterility of a life without illusions.”27

Dr. Rieux himself is another case study of the good man in an absurd world. From the very beginning he sets himself with all his strength to fight the plague—to revolt against the absurd. At first his attitude is passionless, detached, aloof. Later, as his life is deeply touched by the lives and deaths of others, he softens and becomes compassionate. Philosophically, he comes to understand what he is doing. He is totally unable to accept the idea that a good God could be in charge of things. As Baudelaire said, that would make God the devil. Rather, Dr. Rieux takes as his task “fighting against creation as he found it.”28 He says, “Since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn’t it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him and struggle with all our might against death, without raising our eyes toward the heaven where He sits in silence.”29

Dr. Rieux does exactly that: he struggles against death. And the story he tells is a record of “what had had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts, despite their personal afflictions, by all who, while unable to be saints but refusing to bow down to pestilences, strive their utmost to be healers.”30

I have dwelt at length on The Plague (though by no means exhausting its riches either as art or as a lesson in life)31 because I know of no novel or work of existential philosophy that makes so appealing a case for the possibility of living a good life in a world where God is dead and values are ungrounded in a moral framework outside the human frame. The Plague is to me almost convincing. Almost, but not quite. For the same questions occur within the intellectual framework of The Plague as within the system of Sartre’s “Existentialism.”

Why should the affirmation of life as Dr. Rieux and Jean Tarrou see it be good and Cottard’s living off the plague be bad? Why should the old Spaniard’s nihilistic response be any less right than Dr. Rieux’s positive action? True, our human sensibility sides with Rieux and Tarrou. But we recognize that the old Spaniard is not alone in his judgment. Who then is right? Those who side with the old Spaniard will not be convinced by Camus or by any reader who sides with Rieux, for without an external moral referent there is no common ground for discussion. There is but one conviction versus another. The Plague is attractive to those whose moral values are traditional, not because Camus offers a base for those values but because he continues to affirm them even though they have no base. Unfortunately, affirmation is not enough. It can be countered by an opposite affirmation.

It may be that in the last two years of his life Camus recognized his failure to go beyond nihilism. Howard Mumma, the summer pastor of the American Church in Paris, recounts private talks with Camus during these two years in which Camus gradually came to feel that the Christian explanation was true. He asked Mumma what it meant to be “born again” and whether Mumma would baptize him. The baptism did not take place, first, because Mumma considered Camus’s childhood baptism valid and, second, because Camus was not yet ready for a public display of his conversion. The issue was not resolved when Mumma left Paris at the end of summer, expecting to see Camus again the following year. Camus died in an automobile accident the following February.32

Since I have been coming to church, I have been thinking a great deal about the idea of a transcendent, something that is other than this world. . . . And since I have been reading the Bible, I sense that there is something—I don’t know if it is personal or if it is a great idea or powerful influence—but there is something that can bring meaning to my life.

Camus, in Howard Mumma, Albert Camus and the Minister

HOW FAR BEYOND NIHILISM?

Does atheistic existentialism transcend nihilism? It certainly tries to—with passion and conviction. Yet it fails to provide a referent for a morality that goes beyond each individual. By grounding human significance in subjectivity, it places it in a realm divorced from reality. The objective world keeps intruding: death, the ever-present possibility and the ultimate certainty, puts a halt to whatever meaning might otherwise be possible. It forces an existentialist forever to affirm and affirm and affirm; when affirmation ceases, so does authentic existence.

Considering precisely this objection to the possibility of human value, H. J. Blackham agrees to the terms of the argument. Death indeed does end all. But every human life is more than itself, for it stems from a past humanity and it affects humanity’s future. Moreover, “there is heaven and there is hell in the economy of every human imagination.”33 That is, says Blackham, “I am the author of my own experience.”34 After all the objections have been raised, Blackham retreats to solipsism. And that seems to me the end of all attempts at ethics from the standpoint of atheistic existentialism.

Atheistic existentialism goes beyond nihilism only to reach solipsism, the lonely self that exists for fourscore and seven (if it doesn’t contract the plague earlier), then ceases to exist. Many would say that that is not to go beyond nihilism at all; it is only to don a mask called value, a mask stripped clean away by death.

BASIC THEISTIC EXISTENTIALISM

As was pointed out above, theistic existentialism arose from philosophic and theological roots quite different from those of its atheistic counterpart. It was Søren Kierkegaard’s answer to the challenge of a theological nihilism—the dead orthodoxy of a dead church. As Kierkegaard’s themes were picked up two generations after his death, they were the response to a Christianity that had lost its theology completely and had settled for a watered-down gospel of morality and good works. God had been reduced to Jesus, who had been reduced to a good man pure and simple. The death of God in liberal theology did not produce among liberals the despair of Kafka but the optimism of one English bishop in 1905 who, when asked what he thought would prevent humankind from achieving a perfect social union, could think of nothing.

Late in the second decade of the twentieth century, however, Karl Barth in Germany saw what ought to happen when theology became anthropology, and he responded by refurbishing Christianity along existential lines. What he and subsequent theologians such as Emil Brunner and Reinhold Niebuhr affirmed came to be called neo-orthodoxy, for while it was significantly different from orthodoxy, it put God very much back in the picture.35 It is not my goal to look specifically at any one form of neo-orthodoxy. Rather, I will seek to identify propositions that are common to the theistic existential stance.

Theistic existentialism begins by accepting theism’s answers to worldview questions 1 (prime reality), 2 (external reality), 3 (human beings), 4 (death), 6 (ethics), and 8 (core commitments). In short: God is infinite and personal (triune), transcendent and immanent, omniscient, sovereign, and good. God created the cosmos ex nihilo to operate with a uniformity of cause and effect in an open system. Human beings are created in the image of God and thus possess personality, self-transcendence, intelligence, morality, gregariousness, and creativity. Human beings were created good, but through the fall the image of God became defaced, though not so ruined as to be incapable of restoration; through the work of Christ, God redeemed humanity and began the process of restoring people to goodness, though any given person may choose to reject that redemption. For each person death is either the gate to life with God and his people or the gate to eternal separation from the only thing that will ultimately fulfill human aspirations. Ethics is transcendent and is based on the character of God as good (holy and loving). As a core commitment Christian theists live to seek first the kingdom of God, that is, to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

This list of propositions, identical to that of theism, suggests that theistic existentialism is just Christian theism. I am tempted to say that is in fact what we have, but this would do an injustice to the special existential variations and emphases. The existential version of theism is much more a particular set of emphases within theism than it is a separate worldview. Still, because of its impact on twentieth-century theology and its confusing relation to atheistic existentialism, it deserves a special treatment. Moreover, some tendencies within the existential version of theism place it at odds with traditional theism. These tendencies will be highlighted as they arise in the discussion.

As with atheistic existentialism, theistic existentialism’s most characteristic elements are concerned not with the nature of the cosmos or God, but with human nature and our relation to the cosmos and God.

Theistic existentialism does not start with God. This is its most important variation from theism. With theism God is assumed certainly to be there and of a given character; then people are defined in relationship to God. Theistic existentialism arrives at the same conclusion, but it starts elsewhere.

Theistic existentialism emphasizes the place in which human beings find themselves when they first come to self-awareness. Self-reflect for a moment. Your certainty of your own existence, your own consciousness, your own self-determinacy—these are your starting points. When you look around, check your desires against the reality you find, look for a meaning to your existence, you are not blessed with certain answers. You find a universe that does not fit you, a social order that scratches where you don’t itch and fails to scratch where you do. And, worse luck, you do not immediately perceive God.

The human situation is ambivalent, for evidence of order in the universe is ambiguous. Some things seem explicable by laws that seem to govern events; other things do not. The fact of human love and compassion gives evidence for a benevolent deity; the fact of hatred and violence and the fact of an impersonal universe point in the other direction.

It is here that Father Paneloux in The Plague images for us an existential Christian stance. Dr. Rieux, you will recall, refused to accept the “created order” because it was “a scheme of things in which children are put to torture.”36 Father Paneloux, on the other hand, says, “But perhaps we should love that which we cannot understand.”37 Father Paneloux has “leaped” to faith in and love for the existence of a good God, even though the immediate evidence is all in the other direction. Rather than accounting for the absurdity of the universe on the basis of the fall, as a Christian theist would do, Father Paneloux assumes God is immediately responsible for this absurd universe; therefore he concludes that he must believe in God in spite of the absurdity.

Camus elsewhere calls such faith “intellectual suicide,” and I am inclined to agree with him. But the point is that while reason may lead us to atheism, we can always refuse to accept reason’s conclusions and take a leap toward faith.

To be sure, if the Judeo-Christian God exists, we had better acknowledge it because in that case our eternal destiny depends on it. But, say the existentialists, the data is not all in and never will be, and so every person who would be a theist must step forth and choose to believe. God will never reveal himself unambiguously. Consequently each person, in the loneliness of his or her own subjectivity, surrounded by a great deal more darkness than light, must choose. And that choice must be a radical act of faith. When a person does choose to believe, a whole panorama opens. Most of the propositions of traditional theism flood in. Yet the subjective, choice-centered basis for the worldview colors the style of each Christian existentialist’s stance within theism.

As in atheistic existentialism, theistic existentialism emphasizes the disjunction between the objective and the subjective worlds. Martin Buber, a Jewish existentialist whose views have greatly influenced Christians, uses the terms I-Thou and I-It to distinguish between the two ways a person relates to reality. In the I-It relationship a human being is an objectifier:

Now with the magnifying glass of peering observation he bends over particulars and objectifies them, or with the field-glass of remote inspection he objectifies them and arranges them as scenery, he isolates them in observation without any feeling of their exclusiveness, or he knits them into a scheme of observation without any feeling of universality.38

This is the realm of science and logic, of space and time, of measurability. As Buber says, “Without It man cannot live. But he who lives by It alone is not man.”39 The Thou is necessary.

In the I-Thou relationship, a subject encounters a subject: “When Thou is spoken [Buber means experienced], the speaker has nothing for his object.”40 Rather, such speakers have a subject like themselves with whom to share a mutual life. In Buber’s words, “All real living is meeting.”41

Buber’s statement about the primacy of I-Thou, person-to-person relationships is now recognized as a classic. No simple summary can do it justice, and I encourage readers to treat themselves to the book itself. Here we must content ourselves with one more quotation about the personal relationship Buber sees possible between God and people:

Men do not find God if they stay in the world. They do not find Him if they leave the world. He who goes out with his whole being to meet his Thou and carries to it all being that is in the world, finds Him who cannot be sought. Of course God is the “wholly Other”; but He is also the wholly Same, the Wholly Present. Of course He is the Mysterium Tremendum that appears and overthrows; but He is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I.42

So theistic existentialists emphasize the personal as of primary value. The impersonal is there; it is important; but it is to be lifted up to God, lifted up to the Thou of all Thous. To do so satisfies the I and serves to eradicate the alienation so strongly felt by people when they concentrate on I-It relations with nature and, sadly, with other people as well.

This discussion may seem rather abstract to Christians whose faith in God is a daily reality that they live out rather than reflect on. Perhaps the chart in table 6.1 comparing two ways of looking at some basic elements of Christianity will make the issues clearer. It is adapted from a lecture given by theologian Harold Englund at the University of Wisconsin in the early 1960s. Think of the column on the left as describing a dead orthodoxy contrasted with the column on the right describing a live theistic existentialism.

When put this way, the existential version is obviously more attractive. Of course, traditional theists may well respond in two ways: first, the second column demands or implies the existence of the first column and, second, theism has always included the second column in its system. Both responses are well founded. The problem has been that theism’s total worldview has not always been well understood and churches have tended to stick with column one. It has taken existentialism to restore many theists to a full recognition of the richness of their own system.

An existentialist’s stress on personality and wholeness leads to an equal emphasis on the subjectivity of genuine human knowledge. Knowledge about objects involves I-It relationships; they are necessary but not sufficient. Full knowledge is intimate interrelatedness; it involves the I-Thou and is linked firmly to the authentic life of the knower. In 1835 when Kierkegaard was faced with deciding what should be his life’s work, he wrote,

What I really need is to become clear in my own mind what I must do, not what I must know—except in so far as a knowing must precede every action. The important thing is to understand what I am destined for, to perceive what the Deity wants me to do; the point is to find the truth for me, to find that idea for which I am ready to live and die. What good would it do me to discover a so-called objective truth, though I were to work my way through the systems of the philosophers and were able, if need be, to pass them in review?43

Some readers of Kierkegaard have understood him to abandon the concept of objective truth altogether; certainly some existentialists have done precisely that, disjoining the objective and subjective so completely that the one has no relation to the other.44 This has been especially true of atheistic existentialists like John Platt. It is not that the facts are unimportant but that they must be facts for someone, facts for me. And that changes their character and makes knowledge become the knower. Truth in its personal dimension is subjectivity; it is truth digested and lived out on the nerve endings of a human life.

When knowledge becomes so closely related to the knower, it has an edge of passion, of sympathy, and it tends to be hard to divide logically from the knower himself. Buber describes the situation of a person standing before God: “Man’s religious situation, his being there in the Presence, is characterized by its essential and indissoluble antinomy.” What is one’s relation to God as regards freedom or necessity? Kant, says Buber, resolved the problem by assigning necessity to the realm of appearances and freedom to the realm of being.

But if I consider necessity and freedom not in worlds of thought but in the reality of standing before God, if I know that “I am given over for disposal” and know at the same time that “It depends on myself,” then I cannot try to escape the paradox that has to be lived by assigning irreconcilable propositions to two separate realms of validity; nor can I be helped to an ideal reconciliation by any theological device: but I am compelled to take both to myself, to be lived together, and in being lived they are one.45

The full truth is in the paradox, not in an assertion of only one side of the issue. Presumably this paradox is resolved in the mind of God, but it is not resolved in the human mind. It is to be lived out: “God, I rely completely on you; do your will. I am stepping out to act.”

The strength of stating our understanding of our stance before God in such a paradox is at least in part a result of the inability most of us have had in stating our stance nonparadoxical. Most nonparadoxical statements end by denying either God’s sovereignty or human significance. That is, they tend either to Pelagianism or to hyper-Calvinism.

The weakness of resting in paradox is the difficulty of knowing where to stop. What sets of seemingly contradictory statements are to be lived out as truth? Surely not every set. “Love your neighbor; hate your neighbor.” “Do good to those who persecute you. Call your friends together and do in your enemies.” “Don’t commit adultery. Have every sexual liaison you can pull off.”

So beyond the paradoxical it would seem that there must be some noncontradictory proposition governing which paradoxes we will try to live out. In the Christian form of existentialism the Bible taken as God’s special revelation sets the bounds. It forbids many paradoxes, and it seems to encourage others. The doctrine of the Trinity, for example, may be an unresolvable paradox, but it does justice to the biblical data Among those who have no external objective authority to set the bounds, paradox tends to run rampant. Marjorie Grene comments about Kierkegaard, “Much of Kierkegaard’s writing seems to be motivated not so much by an insight into the philosophical or religious appropriateness of paradox to a peculiar problem as by the sheer intellectual delight in the absurd for its own sake.”47 Thus, this aspect of theistic existentialism has come in for a great deal of criticism from those holding a traditional theistic worldview. The human mind is made in the image of God’s mind, and thus though our mind is finite and incapable of encompassing the whole of knowledge, it is yet able to discern some truth. As Francis Schaeffer puts it, we can have substantial truth but not exhaustive truth, and we can discern truth from foolishness by the use of the principle of noncontradiction.48

What logic does is to articulate and to make explicit those rules which are in fact embodied in actual discourse and which, being so embodied, enable men both to construct valid arguments and to avoid the penalties of inconsistency. . . . A pupil of Duns Scotus demonstrated that . . . from a contradiction any statement whatsoever can be derived. It follows that to commit ourselves to asserting a contradiction is to commit ourselves to asserting anything whatsoever, to asserting anything whatsoever that it is possible to assert—and of course also to its denial. The man who asserts a contradiction thus succeeds in saying nothing and also in committing himself to everything; both are failures to assert anything determinate, to say that this is the case and not this other. We therefore depend upon our ability to utilize and to accord with the laws of logic in order to speak at all, and a large part of formal logic clarifies for us what we have been doing all along.

Alasdair MacIntyre, Herbert Marcuse: An Exposition and a Polemic

Theistic existentialism took two steps away from traditional theism. The first step was to begin to distrust the accuracy of recorded history. The second step was to lose interest in its facticity and to emphasize its religious implication or meaning.

The first step is associated with the higher criticism of the mid-nineteenth century. Rather than taking the biblical accounts at face value, accepting miracles and all, the higher critics, such as D. F. Strauss (1808–1874) and Ernest Renan (1823–1892), started from the naturalistic assumption that miracles cannot happen. Accounts of them must therefore be false, not necessarily fabricated by writers who wished to deceive but propounded by credulous people of primitive mindset.

This, of course, tended to undermine the authority of the biblical accounts even where they were not riddled with the miraculous. Other higher critics, most notably Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918), also turned their attention to the inner unity of the Old Testament and discovered, so they were sure, that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses at all. In fact, the texts showed that several hands over several centuries had been at work. This undermined what the Bible says about itself and thus called into question the truth of its whole message.49

Rather than change their naturalistic presuppositions to match the data of the Bible, they concluded that the Bible was historically untrustworthy. This could have led to an abandonment of Christian faith in its entirety. Instead it led to a second step—a radical shift in emphasis. The facts the Bible recorded were not important; what was important were its examples of the good life and its timeless truths of morality.

Matthew Arnold wrote in 1875 that Christianity “will live, because it depends upon a true and inexhaustible fruitful idea, the idea of death and resurrection as conceived and worked out by Jesus. . . . The importance of the disciples’ belief in their Master’s resurrection lay in their believing what was true, although they materialized it. Jesus had died and risen again, but in his own sense not theirs.”50 History—that is, space-time events—was not important; belief was important. And the doctrine of death and resurrection came to stand not for the atonement of humankind by the God-man Jesus Christ but for a “new life” of human service and sacrifice for others. The great mystery of God’s entrance into time and space was changed from fact to myth, a powerful myth, of course, one that could transform ordinary people into moral giants.

These steps took place long before the nihilism of Nietzsche or the despair of Kafka. They were responses to the “assured results of scholarship” (which as those who pursue the matter will find are now not so assured). If objective truth could not be found, no matter. Real truth is poetically contained in the “story,” the narrative.

It is interesting to note what soon happened to Matthew Arnold. In 1875 he was saying that we should read the Bible as poetry; if we did it would teach us the good life. In 1880 he had taken the next step and was advocating that we treat poetry in general in the same way we used to treat the Bible: “More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. . . . Most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.”51 For Arnold, poetry in general had become scripture.

In any case, when theistic existentialists (Reinhold Niebuhr, Rudolf Bultmann, and the like) began appearing on the theological scene, they had a ready-made solution to the problem posed for orthodoxy by the higher critics. So the Bible’s history was suspect. What matter? The accounts are “religiously” (that is, poetically) true. So while the doctrine of the neo-orthodox theologians looks more like the orthodoxy of Calvin than like the liberalism of Matthew Arnold, the historical basis for the doctrines was discounted, and the doctrines themselves began to be lifted out of history.

The fall was said not to have taken place back there and then in space and time. Rather, each person reenacts in their own life this story. Each enters the world like Adam, sinless; each one rebels against God. The fall is existential—a here-and-now proposition. Edward John Carnell summarizes the existential view of the fall as “a mythological description of a universal experience of the race.

Likewise the resurrection of Jesus may or may not have occurred in space and time. Barth believes it did; Bultmann, on the other hand, says, “An historical fact that involves a resurrection from the dead is utterly inconceivable!”53 Again, no matter. The reality behind the resurrection is the new life in Christ experienced by the disciples. The “spirit” of Jesus was living in them; their lives were transformed. They were indeed living the “cruciform life style.”54

Other supernatural doctrines are similarly “demythologized,” among them creation, redemption, the resurrection of the body, the second coming, the antichrist. Each is said to be a symbol of “religious” import. Either they are not to be taken literally or, if they are, their meaning is not in their facticity but in what they indicate about human nature and our relationship to God.55

It is here—in the understanding of history and of doctrine—that traditional theists most find fault with their existential counterparts. The charge is twofold. First, theists say that the existentialists start with two false, or certainly highly suspect, presuppositions: (1) that miracles are impossible (Bultmann here, but not Barth) and (2) that the Bible is historically untrustworthy. On the level of presuppositions Bultmann simply buys the naturalist notion of the closed universe; Bultmann, although usually associated with the neo-orthodox theologians, is thus not really a “theistic” existentialist at all. Much recent scholarship has gone a long way toward restoring confidence in the Old Testament as an accurate record of events, but existential theologians ignore this scholarship or discount the importance of its results. And that brings us to the second major theistic critique.

Theists charge the existentialists with building theology on the shifting sand of myth and symbol. As a reviewer said about Lloyd Geering’s Resurrection: A Symbol of Hope, an existential work, “How can a nonevent [a resurrection which did not occur] be regarded as a symbol of hope or indeed of anything else? If something has happened we try to see what it means. If it has not happened the question cannot arise. We are driven back on the need for an Easter event.”56

There must be an event if there is to be meaning. If Jesus arose from the dead in the traditional way of understanding this, then we have an event to mean something. If he stayed in the tomb or if his body was taken elsewhere, we have another event and it must mean something else. So a theist refuses to give up the historical basis for faith and challenges the existentialist to take more seriously the implications of abandoning historical facticity as religiously important. Such abandonment should lead to doubt and loss of faith. Instead it has led to a leap of faith. Meaning is created in the subjective world, but it has no objective referent.

In this area theistic existentialism comes very close to atheistic existentialism. Perhaps when existentialists abandon facticity as a ground of meaning, they should be encouraged to take the next step and abandon meaning altogether. This would place them back in the trackless wastes of nihilism, and they would have to search for another way out.

THE PERSISTENCE OF EXISTENTIALISM

The two forms of existentialism are interesting to study, for they are a pair of worldviews that bear a sibling relationship but are children of two different fathers. Theistic existentialism arose with Kierkegaard as a response to dead theism, dead orthodoxy, and with Karl Barth as a response to the reduction of Christianity to sheer morality. It took a subjectivist turn, lifted religion from history, and focused its attention on inner meaning. Atheistic existentialism came to the fore with Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus as a response to nihilism and the reduction of people to meaningless cogs in the cosmic machinery. It took a subjectivist turn, lifted philosophy from objectivity, and created meaning from human affirmation.

Siblings in style though not in content, these two forms of existentialism are still commanding attention and vying for adherents. So long as those who would be believers in God yearn for a faith that does not demand too much belief in the supernatural or the accuracy of the Bible, theistic existentialism will be a live option. So long as naturalists who cannot (or refuse to) believe in God are searching for a way to find meaning in their lives, atheistic existentialism will be of service. I would predict that both forms—in probably ever-new and changing versions—will be with us for a long time.

1.

Audio: What does Freedom of ‘Religion Mean’ I

2.

Audio: What does Freedom of ‘Religion Mean’ II

3.

Audio: Lessons for America, From Winston Churchill

4.

Audio: A Nation Abandoned by God I

5.

Audio: A Nation Abandoned by God II

6.

Presentation: Helping a Single Mom

7.

Presentation: How Tough It Is to Be a Parent

How Tough It Is to Be a Parent:

Just how tough is it to be a good parent today? Dr. James Dobson for family talk, a

couple of years ago, I asked 11000 mothers

and fathers to describe their

greatest frustrations and raising kids. I heard all kinds of

goofy stories and response about Sticky

telephones and wet toilet seats and shoe strings and

and not one mother actually wanted to know why it is that a toddler never throws up

in the bathroom. That would violate

some kind of great unwritten law of the universe to be sure. But in my poll, parents didn’t merely laugh about their frustrations. They tended to

blame themselves. They said they were overwhelmed and

we’re losing confidence and

didn’t really know how to cope anymore. How sad it is that this angel

responsibility of raising children

has become so burdensome and

guilt latent. Actually the facts won’t support that self

condemnation. In the majority of cases, millions of parents

have handled their child-rearing

responsibility with great skill and it’s time that someone patted him on the back for their commitment

and their sacrifice. And someday when

the frustrations of toddlerhood and the turmoil of adolescence have passed, they’ll enjoy this

sweet benefits of a job well done. Hang in their

moms and dads. Your kids will be for the mere blink of an

eye here more head. My family talks.com,

my family talk.com.

Helping a Single Mom

Dr James Dobson. Many years ago my wife Shirley

was working around the house. Came at the front door when she opened

it there stood a young woman in her late teens who called herself Sally I’m

selling brushes she said and I wonder if you’d like to buy and. Told her she wasn’t interested in. No one else’s either and with that she began to cry Shirley invited

Sally to come in for a cup of coffee and she asked her to share her story Sally

turned out to be an unmarried mother who was just struggling mightily SUPPORTER

two year old son that night we went to her shabby little apartment above a garage

to see how we could help this mother and her toddler when we opened the cupboards

there was nothing there for them and nothing they had. A can of spaghetti we took

her to the market and we did what we could to help her get her

feet now Sally is obviously not the only single mother out there who is desperately

trying to survive in a very hostile world and they could sure use a little kindness

to babysit to have a meal brought over to have someone repair

the washing machine or just show a little thoughtfulness raising

kids all alone is that toughest job in the universe you suppose there’s someone

in your neighborhood who’s going down for the third time how about giving

that single mother a helping hand not only will it bring encourage went

to the mom but one or more children. To change stocks and.

What Does Freedom of ‘Religion’ Mean I

Hi everyone, Ryan

Dobson here. Hope you’re enjoying

your coursework this week today we’re

going to listen to a classic broadcast

on religious liberty. So without any

further ado, here’s family talk. Well Ryan, we’re

going to talk about human liberty on

our program today. And I want to begin by asking you a

question and I’ll put you on the spot here. This is a one-item

test pass or fail. Do you remember

the primary reason the Pilgrims came to

this country in 1620. What led them to leave

the East Midlands in England for what became Plymouth,

Massachusetts. And why did

they start life over in the new world despite not only

the inconvenience, but the danger

and the other trials that they experienced, why

did do that? But I think it was in the third or fourth grade that I learned

they were escaping religious persecution

and came to the New World to have religious freedom and freedom of worship

where you are, I don’t target Ryan, you pass the test. It’s why religious liberty is the most fundamental of all our freedoms and why it must be guarded

and protected, especially today when it is under such

unrelenting Assault. We’ve seen the passage of hate crimes

legislation this year, which threatens the rights of pastures and clergy to preach their

interpretation of Scripture

from the pulpit. I still can’t believe that’s happened,

but it has. And of course, we’re now witnessing the

court striking down the expression

of faith in the public square

in numerous venues, including the District Court Judge in Wisconsin who declared the

national day of prayer is

unconstitutional this year. And of course, the war on religious freedom just

continues on and on. It’s gathering momentum throughout the nation. We did a radio program on that just several

weeks ago. But now, a new threat to religious liberty

has begun to appear. In the words of

President Obama and Secretary of State

Hillary Clinton. That has culture

watchers alarmed. And I want to let

our listeners here what Mr. Chuck Golson said several days ago on what he calls the

two minute warning. We’re going to

play it again, but you can hear it on our website at my

family talk.com. Let’s let our

listeners here. What Misty Copeland said. Hi, I’m Tucker

Carlson with this week’s

two-minute warning. If you read George

Orwell’s classic novel, 1984, you’ll recognize

the term Newspeak. Newspeak was the

language of big brother, used to control

people’s minds. Newspeak

manipulated words, change their

meaning and even eliminated some

of them like freedom from

the vocabulary. Well, that’s December Georgetown

University secretary of State Hillary

Clinton delivered a speech where she ever so subtly engaged

in Newspeak. And I can only conclude she knew what

she was saying. Speech was about

human rights. And here’s the heart

of what she said. And I quote, to fulfill

their potential, people must be free

to choose laws and leaders to share and

access information, to speak, criticize

and debate. They must be free to

worship, associate, and the love and the

way that they choose. Just two sentences. Mrs. Clinton reveal the

government’s desire to diminish freedom of religion and elevate

the Gay Agenda to the level of

undeniable even right? Yeah. Okay. I can hear

some of you saying Chucky going to go

for on this one. I only wish I were

twice in her speech, Mrs. Clinton referred

to freedom of worship. But freedom of worship

is not the same as freedom of religion

is guaranteed. And the Bill of

Rights, writing in the Denver

Catholic registers, theologians,

George, why go hit the nail on the

head? Let me read. Religious freedom

includes the right to preach and evangelize, to make religiously

informed moral arguments in the public square

and the conduct the affairs of one’s

religious community without undue interference

from the state. If religious freedom only involves the

freedom to worship, then there’s

religious freedom in Saudi Arabia where Bibles and evangelism or

forbidden but expatriate. Filipino labor is

kinda 10 mass and the US Embassy

compound in Riyadh. Mrs. Clinton was not so subtle when it came

to the gay agenda. Is there a fundamental human freedom as

she claims to love in the way

you choose Apple, not with incest,

bigamy, and pedophilia. Nevertheless, as

why they wrote, the promotion of the

so-called lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender agenda

had just been declared a human rights priority of the

United States. In the same sentence in which the

secretary of state, often an anorexic description of

religious freedom. The distinction between

freedom of worship and freedom of

religion is critical. Can you imagine a day when the government

says to a church or religious organization worship anyway you want. But EBITDA higher

practicing homosexuals, you’d better buy

insurance to cover your employees.

Abortions. Due to their fruits

and homosexual, The he did this. Well, I can imagine. I’m also not surprised that the administration

has yet to fill that they can post of ambassador at large for international

religious freedom. It’s managed to

appoint someone to the Equal Opportunity

Employment Commission. That was said she can

imagine the case where gay rights wouldn’t

trumps religious rights. Here’s the point.

Soaks. We Christians must never forget this. Freedom of religion is a fundamental human right, precisely because we are made in God’s image and freedom itself is inherent in the very nature of God. God is His

goodness gives us the freedom to solve

the endpoints. Thus, freedom of

religion is from dad, not a gift from the

Secretary of State. It’s not a concession

by government. No, No Secretary of State, government has

the right to take it or define it away. Make this point clear to your friends

and associates why you still can. I’m Chuck, goals. That’s this week’s

two-minute warning. Well, those are

very strong words and we place to call to check wholesome to discuss his concern with us and to elaborate on it. He of course is the founder of Prison

Fellowship and the author of many

books that have had a great impact on

Christian thought. Also with us by phone is Professor

Robert George, who is a Professor of Jurisprudence at

Princeton University and one of the most

articulate defenders of the Christian

faith in the world. And I’m delighted to have him both the

with us today. Chuck, let me let

me go to you and ask you to elaborate on why there is that urgency that I

detect and others do. And in what you

had to say, Well, John, thank you for doing this broadcast. I’m thrilled that we’re going to be able to

talk to your audience about this issue because it is absolutely

fundamental. Liberties depend on the

freedom of religion. It’s so basic,

as Ryan said, it’s why people came to this country in

the first place. Why people tweeting

today where people take refuge

here because we’re free to exercise

or religious faith, which is entirely different than

just worship. I first heard

about those months ago and I didn’t do much about it because I thought maybe she just misspoke. And then I discovered that no, she

didn’t misspeak. This is a policy or the Department of State than it is to treat the two terms

interchangeably. That’s never been

said before. It’s never been part

of any policy before. Franklin Roosevelt,

what’s called the four freedoms and included

the freedom of worship. But that was the time when religious liberty

wasn’t even. There was no threat

to it whatsoever. The day it is a

very pregnant word in a very critical

distinction, what I also

discovered was that President Obama has used the term several

times and speeches. Now, that’s no

coincidence, That’s right,

puedo correctly. I know having

been on the way that I was working

with the president, you massage every

single word speech. There’s no word in there

That’s inadvertent. But there is a wheel

concern on my part, a deep concern that Christian people

have got to understand this. I

spoke about this. My pastor called me up

suddenly ago in church to explain us to

the people and I did what people call

them afterwards. We never thought there

was any difference between worship

and religion. At a couple of

people said to me, we’ve heard your

explanation, was still not sure

we understand it. I’m thinking to myself, we’re going brain-dead. If we don’t get

this, this is really vital. This is good. But this is the

greatest threat to religious liberty

of my lifetime, because it’s all well, it’s redefining

the word and will give new

meaning to it. But the words

are the costs. Bill of Rights are

very, very clear. Congress shall make no law respecting an

establishment of religion that

has no state, church, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. That means free

exercise of religion, not just the

right to worship in the privacy of my home. Where do you think

the president and the secretary want to

take us with this? What’s their goal? Why snake, once

again, BM blade year, I have to I to challenge anybody’s motives

and I don’t want to impugn any

one’s motives. Like I don’t

know for a fact, but I can only conclude that in the light of many other

statements that have been made and the

way in which they’ve created the faith-based

office and the way in which they’ve created the International Commission on

religious liberty. That they are downplaying the role of religion

in public life. They are perfectly happy

to have us worship, but they sure don’t want us talking about abortion, homosexuality or rights, or human rights issues

that they look at. Hillary Clinton

went to Beijing when she was

the First Lady, made a passionate

speech on human rights and no word. And now she lived

her first trip to China as

Secretary of State. He, there were

mentioned human rights, the right to the issues they were concerned with, with the environment and international economics

and military. The questions and she’s specifically ignore it. Human rights. So

what am I to say? Makeup all of this. They want to

reduce religion simply to the privacy of our homes or our churches and keep us out of

the public square. That’s exactly and

that’s what every person who has been a

totalitarian or a statist, someone who values in

the central power. The state has always tried to do this

because they are offended by the scandal of the Star of David and the scandal of the Cross. Professor George,

thank you for joining us today to are you also

concerned about that, what some people would see as merely a shift

in language? Yes, Jim, I’m I’m deeply

concerned about it, but I have to

say that this does not surprise me. The liberal

project over many, many years now

has included what the great church

state scholar at Notre Dame Law

School Professor Gerard Bradley calls the privatization of religion. This is the idea that religion certainly

should be tolerated, freedom of worship

should be respected. The private practice of religion should

be respected. But religion has no

legitimate place in the public square

engaging with issues such as abortion

and, and marriage. So the project

really has been, and this is not something

under the table, it’s not something that

liberal activists, scholars have hidden. They’d been quite

explicit that the project is to

render religion is essentially private

matter and to remove it from the public sphere. Let’s Jim, look at a couple of examples

that I think will make clear the difference

to your listeners. It’s one thing to respect the right of Catholics

to attend to mass, the right of Protestants to tend to

worship service, the right of Jews to participate in a theater, in their films

and so forth. Those are regarded

as private. I have it matters.

But what about this? What about a Catholic or Evangelical

Protestants were Eastern Orthodox

agency that assists with the and children

to adoptive parents. May a law such as law in Massachusetts

legitimately require them to place children in same sex homosexual

households or not. Now, I would argue, and people who

believe in the public role of religion would argue that no state should not be able to require religious

organizations, Christian and other

organizations, to violate their

moral beliefs. In that way. The folks on the other side

think it’s perfectly legitimate and

no violation of anybody’s rights to force. Those religious

organizations choose either to violate their

conscience and place children in

homosexual homes, or go out of business. Or take one more

quick example. Another real life example. The example I just gave is real life for

Massachusetts. Here’s a real life

example from New Mexico. An evangelical

Protestant woman who have a little

business as a wedding photographer

was asked by a same-sex couple to photograph their

blessing ceremony. She very nicely, very respectfully explained

that as a Bible, believing Christian,

she could not perform that service. She could not participate in same-sex

blessing ceremony. It would violate

or moral beliefs, the Christian

moral beliefs. Well, she was reported to a state agency that

imposed upon her a $7,500 fine for allegedly violating the civil

rights code in the state, which forbids

discrimination based on sexual

orientation. In other words, that

woman’s freedom of worship may have

been respected. She can still go to

church on Sunday. She can pray in her home. But her right to live

her faith and honor, her own Christian

moral beliefs was utterly taken away. She was deprived

of that right. And the liberal movement

seems perfectly content to have

that be the case. In fact, they want to

advance that agenda. And I really hope

that our listeners heard within your words, both of you is that there appears to be

a linkage between the change in wording from freedom

of religion to freedom of worship to

the homosexual agenda. And that, that is what’s

driving this change, this word game

that’s going on? Can I add

something to that AS it’s not just

the gay agenda, it’s the abortion

agenda as well. If I find it more example, they would be examples of situations like this. Nine nurses in LA on Long Island and working at a hospital on Long Island. Our disciplined by the hospital that

they worked for, for declining

to participate in abortions because their Christian

faith forbids them from taking

part in that, taking in the killing of innocent human beings. Now, these women stood

up for their rights. They fought back and they got their jobs back, and they also

got an apology. But this just shows you that it is not simply

the gay rights agenda, that’s the abortion

agenda as well. There are many,

many people in this country on the

liberal side of the, of the fence, who, in good faith, it’s what they

honestly believe. Believe that

people should be forced either to

participate in abortions or perform

abortions if they are nurses or doctors or other health care workers, or go find another job. There’s no respect

offered to their religious

consciousness to him. Let me, let me add one thing to what

we just said. Because this poison

beautifully with what we’re deeply

involved in losses. Why? A year ago, a lot of us got together and started writing it, working on something that you Jim supported

enthusiastically. Original signers called

them and I haven’t declaration and get that up Manhattan

declaration.org. But that’s the statement

in which we reaffirm our commitment

to the three fundamental moral truths of society the day. Three fundamental

moral issues, life and liberty. And it concludes with words and become

very prophetic. When we say, we will want to grudgingly

render to Caesar, what is Caesar’s, but

under no circumstances will we render to

Caesar, what does God? And we’re going

to have to make that choice pretty soon. I think that’s one of the reasons we wrote

that document. It’s one of the

reasons for 165 thousand people have signed a Manhattan

declaration. 65 thousand find a corresponding

document in Britain. It’s because

around the world I think people need to are waking up to the fact that if we

don’t take our stand, that we are going to

be run over quickly. We will be no better off than the Christians in China who can worship

in the state church. If they talk

about any issue, they end up

thrown in jail at Jackie and I were talking last week about that. And that’s you actually said to me that

we might not have a great deal of

time to defend the religious

liberty that we’ve inherited from our

founding fathers. So I don’t think

we do a gym. I think that’s why

that might happen. Declaration is so urgent. That’s why I did this, this broadcast

on my website, which by the way of

Carlsen Center.org. And people would

go and see them and send it

to their friends because this was

a wake-up call that the Hastings case for Hastings Law

School case, which the Supreme

Court just decided five to four against

the Christians. He’s white, to keep homosexuals out of

positions of leadership. The deciding vote was cast by Justice Kennedy, our friend who appears and all the abortion cases for personal autonomy

of defining life according to

your own values. But what he says at the very dismissively says, loyalty oaths are on

the way out anyway. What does he

really saying? If somebody believes that they are loyal

to the Bible, loyal to God’s teachings, that we can’t

make that oath, we can’t live that. That is exactly the wedge point and

Robbie is right. It’s not just over

homosexual relations, it’s over the whole sexual and personal

autonomy issue. That’s what’s driven

every wanted. Going back into

Roe versus Wade, the right to privacy implied in the

constitution. And you take every one of the major cases that have shifted a mol balance in this country

from one that respected Godly values to one that has

become secular. Every single one. It’s over the issue of sex and personal

autonomy. Jim. Yeah, I’ll just add

to what Chuck said. The Hastings

case, which is also known as the

Martinez case. In that case, the

Christian group who’s right to restrict

its membership to those who shared

Christian belief. And we’re willing

to live up to the Christian moral

code. In that case. And group did not exclude

people who happened to be homosexually

oriented or experience

same-sex attraction. Anyone who was willing to live by the moral code, live by Christian

biblical principles, regardless of their

inward desires, was welcome to

be a member of the group and indeed a

leader of the group. So the, the only

question was, will the group be

entitled to insist that its members and

its leaders actually live by the

Christian faith, hold Christian beliefs

and their shockingly, the court said that

the university state sponsored law school

was within ifs right? In work wiring that this Christian

group at MIT, quote, all commerce, even into leadership

positions. So under this rule, they’d be forced

to accept people who were atheists as

leaders of the group. People who practice

the fatal masochism or group sex or

anything else, there could be

no exclusions. Now, I don’t the risk I think quite as good as grave at it sometimes

made out to be i, there will be real

consequences like people forced out of

their professions. Agencies,

religious agencies forced out of business, religious institutions losing their

accreditation. People subjected to

monetary fines for violations called the non-discrimination

rules. So there’s a

real threat to religious liberty

here that we can acknowledge and rightly

begin to combat, even if you share my view that we’re not

at the risk of, of what goes on in

China or Korea. You know, Professor

Jones just seems this is a one-way street. You know, you talked about the nine nurses being penalized for not

participating and abortion, which is actually telling the lice, the yield. Has. A high school sued if they pray before

a football game, which is essentially

somebody sitting and

listening because you don’t want to listen, don’t listen,

but you’re not being asked to kill somebody and they’ll be internalized and

signed for that. That seems egregious,

in my opinion. Ryan, you’re

absolutely right. I agree just that the

right word, chuck, as I already introduced some concepts from

George Orwell, there was another

English writer who we might invoke here. That’s Lewis Carroll. You remember

what happens in Lewis Carroll and

Alice in Wonderland? His great work when, when Alice Goes Through

the Looking Glass, everything is upside

down and topsy turvy and the reverse

of what it should be. And to some extent, the courts and some other governmental institutions

are taking us through the looking

glass where right is considered wrong

and wrong is considered right up

is down, down is up. Martha Copley who

lost her bid for the United States

Senate when she ran for the Edward

Kennedy’s seat. Made this statement. You can have

religious freedom, but you probably

shouldn’t work in emergency

rooms, flights. That’s what she said. Because what did she want to do in emergency rooms? She wanted to force nurses to participate

in abortion. That’s it. Now. Now, that

is a great task. Violation, not only

of human rights, not only have the

right to life, but of the human right, we call freedom

of religion, which shows but

that right is not just freedom

of worship. Freedom of worship

is merely a, the sentiment of

the larger right of freedom of religion. That right must

be respected in all its integrity, which means not

simply the right in one’s private affairs to express religious

sentiments or to prayer, to worship, but to act in the public sphere on

one’s religious beliefs. And GM and Chuck,

you know, and Ryan, this is part of our

history as Americans, the abolitionist movement, the movement

against slavery, was led by

Christian believers who did not keep

their faith and in the cloth it, in the privacy

of the cloth it, but took their faith

into the public square. The civil rights

movement was led by people

like the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King and the Reverend

Ralph Abernathy, man who took their

religious faith into the public sphere

in order to fight for what was

Justin and right? And it’s the same

if you look at any other major

reform movement in the history

of our country, we would really be acting against our own best traditions in

this country if we reduced freedom of religion merely to

freedom of worship. Well, professor

Robbie George from Princeton and Mr. John Coles and the founder of

prison fellowship. Both of them authors, both of them speakers. You can see them on

television off on, they’re out there on the frontlines

doing what’s right. I appreciate you guys

being with us today. The time went

by Solvay very quickly and we’re

just not true. There’s a lot more to say. And you both are so

very, very busy. Maybe it’s better to just continue

talking right now and we’ll record it and let our

listeners here. What we’re about to

say Is that okay? Absolutely, with

all of you, what do you all

what coronoid. Love it and I appreciate

the leadership. Catholic will be in touch. Thank you. Thank you all

for listening and don’t miss Part 2. Next time on Dr. James

Dobson, family top.

What Does Freedom of ‘Religion’ Mean II

Religious freedom,

freedom of speech, freedom to assemble,

and they’re all written into the

Constitution, dad, and we kind of take

for granted that we have those rights

and we always will, but as we’ll hear today, and as we heard yesterday, it’s not quite as cut and dried

as that isn’t. Ryan. We’ve now been

doing this program for a couple of months,

nearly three months. And I thought yesterday’s

program was one of the best in details,

totally blown away. And it’s not because we’re congratulating

ourselves, but cause Chuck Golson and professor

Robbie George, who are our guest. And I’ll tell you every

time we have him on, they say things

that make me think for days

and we’re going to hear the other half of that conversation which was recorded at the end of the program last time. If people missed that one, seriously, go

to our website, my family talk.com

yesterday is they don’t

miss broadcast. Well, they were talking about

religious freedom and our concerns about what’s happening

in this country. Every day it seems we’re receiving new word about court cases or

legislation that slowly chipping away at our most

fundamental rights. As we heard last time, the freedom of religion, this particularly

in jeopardy, as revealed by recent

statements made by President Obama

and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, where they purposefully

referred to freedom to worship instead of freedom of religion. And that there is an enormous difference between those two phrases. And it’s vitally important to the future

of the nation that our listeners

understand that distinction. Freedom of worship refers to a private enterprise. How nice of the President and Mrs. Clinton that to give us the rights

to think what we want. But freedom of religion is protected by the

Constitution and that gives us the right to practice our beliefs and advocate for them

in the public square. That’s the difference

between them. And it’s a difference with enormous implication. He’s just can’t overstate the importance of what

you just said, Dad. I found what our

guest had to say. Absolutely fascinating. They’re both so brilliant

and encouraging. A lot of times

you talk about this stuff and

it kinda gets a little bit

doom and gloom OR the sky is falling, but they’re

encouraging their hopeful for the future. And they want us to get

involved throughout our country and

our freedoms do hang in the balance. Ryan and I feel a personal

responsibility to share what we talked about yesterday and other things that I’m reading about what’s

taking place in our culture with

our listeners. Guest last time are

very, very busy men. Chuck Carlson is

the founder of prison fellowship

ministries and the author of a number

of outstanding books. Most of them have

been best sellers, focusing on the tenants of the Christian faith and how Christians should

engage the culture. Highly relevant to what we were talking

about last time. Professor Robert George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at

Princeton University. And he lectures mostly on constitutional law and

the philosophy of law. Now, we’re going

to jump right into the conversation

with you, Ryan. As you got to the

heart of the issue, you mentioned that

hesitancy that some Christians have about involving themselves in cultural issues

and politics. You know, it’s

almost an insult to political

correctness to even participate in this great representative

form of government. And I don’t

understand that. And as our friends listen to what was

recorded last time, I hope it becomes

clear that, that absolutely must occur at this time in American

history. Let’s roll. I was meeting with a

person yesterday who’s a strong believer

who was in the abolition movement

to end slavery. And he said, You

know, we really don’t care about politics. We don’t really care

how people vote. Any went on and on and on and I thought, okay, the only thing that matters more than anything you can possibly believe, of course, you’re

working to end slavery. Politics matters in that our whole

Christian heritage was involved in this. And the young

people have heard this language so often, so many times in so many different forms

that you’re right, they have been led down that path well or intimidated to

go speaking out. And because we think we’re being called the goods and people say we’re trying to impose our

views on others. What everybody forget. Conveniently, bills

that we didn’t start this culture or were

living their lives, life was being respected, marriage was

being respected. And all of a sudden, this juggernaut

starts moving. And we wake up and realize that

was taking away fundamental liberties

that we use in protections that

we have enjoyed as a nation from

our founding. We’re stuck. We

react and saying, wait a minute, what

are you doing here? But we’re not imposing,

I want anybody. They’re imposing.

Their values are not exactly what

is happening. It just in the last week, I’ve become aware of something that

I should have known before because it’s, it’s out there

and it’s been in the historical

literature for, for a couple of 100 years, but it goes back to the Revolutionary

War and it’s called the black

robe brigade. Yeah, that’s right, yeah, about 1776 pastures

and the clergy became alarmed over

this same issue because they were losing their religious freedoms. Freedoms to preach and speak from the Pokemon. And so they stripped off their black robes

and they took up their muskets and they follow George Washington

into the war. And the NO, the

implication here is that we’re calling for another Revolutionary

War and we’re not. But we are saying that the American people

had better be prepared to defend

their liberties are they surely

will lose them. And Jim, we can defend them at the ballot box. That’s what this

comes down to Ryan is absolutely right. We need to go into the

political sphere and work at the ballot

box to make sure that people are elected who will honor religious liberty to

religious liberty, honor the

sanctity of life, honor, the dignity

of marriage. Marriage is the

conjugal union of husband and wife, the equivalent

of muskets at day 4 or bandwith? Yeah. Chug. I don’t want to make you say publicly what

I know you think, but I’m going to do I’m going to

do it any way. You are very, very concerned that the

pastures don’t seem to understand

the challenge in the threat to their

religious liberty. Absolutely. I would like to get up on the

rooftops and show, wake up, Kurt,

wake them up, don’t realize

what’s happening. Used a perfect example of the Revolutionary War. They wouldn’t have

been a revolution if all of the past, as particularly

in New England, who were

loyalists, largely read Romans 13 as many of them

were reading it. But they realized

that they had gotten to a

point where they have fundamental

liberties and freedoms were jeopardized

and therefore they supported

the revolution, even though it

was contrary to what many of them had read into

the scriptures, that was contrary to their ideas as

conservatives, it was contrary to

their loyalist feelings and attitudes

towards the Cloud. But they’d get

it because they wanted to protect

their freedoms. And one thing I hope every American has hearing who’s listening to that, this isn’t just a

Christian issue. If religious liberty goes, so does freedom

of association, so does freedom of speech. So, so, and we’ll

go freedom at the ballot box and

we’re going to watch, or a country, its basic human liberty and freedom of religion. We, as Americans fight

for the freedom of religion of all people,

not just Christians. Tell me where the

black robe brigade is today. Well, there are some

great leaders, some HTML characters. I don’t know what

we would have done in California

where we want a great victory for marriage on

Proposition eight. I don’t know what

we would’ve done without pastor Jim Carla. Easter, easy road to me. And the

African-American church ironically kept the

vote in California. I away and won’t be

the supreme irony. If ten years

from now we see that movement through blood, the black churches, to protect human

rights where they are the most

sensitive of all, did as much as anything to protect our human

liberties? Yes. There is a quote that

Ryan just handed to me that’s outstanding is from Thomas Jefferson. And he said, rebellion to tyrants is

obedience to God. I’m not sure that many of our religious

brothers and sisters, I agree with that, but I certainly do well

around the world. They do. What up

and broke down the Iron Curtain was

the playful trick, which remain playful with the Soviet Union,

Eastern Europe, and the church

today in China, which is the great hope, a Christian church which is resisting mistake. Let’s, let’s go back to the Manhattan

declaration. Both of you gentlemen Not only had a role in it, but essentially

eroded, then along with a few others,

made it possible. Chuck, you are

pleased I know with the fact that they’re more than 400 thousand people who have signed

this declaration. But that given the

fact that we’re a nation of 300

million people, that seems embarrassingly

modest to me. There ought to be

millions who sign it. How can we promote it? Now I suggest going

to be forgotten or is it continuing to

gather support? If continuing

together supports, I’m not as fast as

I would like it, but I think those a chimp gorilla you

are referring to as got up fasting

and prayer campaigns starting for this fall. I think that’s

going to give a lot of stimulus do it. The more we can

talk about it, and the more

people recognize why it is so

important and timely. It is a document that actually the three

of us who wrote it, primarily written

by Robby George and Dr. Timothy Jordan, BCE and Divinity School. I kinda held their

coach while they wrote. To, it actually is aimed at the very question we’re dealing

with here too. But it’s time for the

church to speak up. I don’t want to be too

harsh on the church. The church has some wonderful banks

in this country. But I’m getting a lot of serious evangelical

leaders today. For the first time in

the last 30 years, they’re saying that

I have in my memory. There are saying, Well, we really ought to

lay off we take, a prominent author has written a book saying

we should take a vacation from politics or a sabbatical

from politics. Please know the hope must be engaged in every

area of life, bringing Christian truth

to bear everything, and protecting

our liberties, what we’re doing

and not just for ourselves but for the

good of the country. Everybody listening

has a stake in this. Absolutely. I’m

a signatory to it and believe in it and do hope that many thousands of people who are listening to us today, We’ll take that moment to to sign the

Declaration. Tell us how they

can do that. Sure. If they’ve got a pencil

and a piece of paper, they can write down

the web address. It is simply www dot Manhattan

declaration.org. Org. And if

they go on gym, they’ll be able

to join many, many wonderful

religious leaders who have spoken out in defense of the three

foundational issues that are addressed in a Manhattan declaration. The sanctity of

human life at all stages of

the conditions. They already of

marriage, a great conjugal union of

husband and wife, and the rights of religious freedom

of conscience. Are I TO what we are suggesting

to our people? I guess the main

weapons that we have with which to

defend what we believe, our prayer first

and foremost. But then also to, to vote, to make sure

everybody’s registered to urge our

fellow believers, those who are concerned about

what’s happening in the country to

vote this ball. That is the mechanism that’s been given to us. That is a freedom that

we must not ignore. And yet 26 percent of evangelicals in

the last election, general election

did not vote it. That just takes

my breath away. I and then of course, to defend of what we believe through

these documents, including in primarily the Manhattan declaration. Are there other things

you can do up to a declaration but

distributed to all their friends,

to their posture. They’re posted a

picture of it. We have a study

guide that they can download on the website, which is a really

great study guide because at 4700 Word

document is one of the finest worldview

propositions or statements that

I’ve ever seen. It’s extremely well-read. We got The only way we’ll multiply this and

get to a million, which I want

to see it, but for those jurors out. So anyway, that’ll

happen is if you get your friends

to sign out, don’t just listen

and say, Well, I’ve signed that,

I’ve done my part. No, you haven’t. You

gotta keep promoting it. And this latest thing, this latest website

posting that idea that the

two-minute warning that this kind of thing

to be circulated. Because once

people yes, yes. Don’t leave

this broadcast. Don’t turn your radio. Don’t go away

until you have agree right now that you will go out and explain

to somebody else today is the difference between worship

and religion. And then somebody else tomorrow and then

in your church. Get that discussed

because this is the, this is what I see

as the sneak attack. Redefining the

words and then control people’s

ideas and values. Ij II. And we’ve got a very important

election coming up. Remember, all of

the issues we care about will either be significantly advanced

or significantly set back by what

happens in November. That’s just the reality. Whether we’re talking

about abortion and the sanctity

of human life, protecting marriage

or protecting religious freedom and the rights of conscience. So people need to be

engaged and involved. They need to be

registered to vote. If they’re not registered to vote, my goodness, get out there and

register right away. They need to appear

at candidate forums. They need to ask those who were seeking

their votes, those who would represent them in public office. Are you going to stand for the sanctity

of human life? Are you going to stand for the dignity of marriage? Are you going to oppose this administration’s

attempt to advance the gay agenda in

foreign policy and to reduce

freedom of religion, freedom of warship, hold the politicians

feet to the fire. This is a great

opportunity. There’s a wave

in the country, everybody is feeling it. There’s a wave in

the country in a more conservative

direction. Now is the time to

make a difference. People need to be

part of history. Or Robbie, and I’m

going to ask you, checked the same

question in a minute. The wobble is

country look like in five years if we

remain asleep, they absolutely refused to defend religious liberty. It simple, our rights will be severely

constricted. We will be looking back to an earlier time when

Americans truly enjoyed the robust right to religious freedom and not merely the right to private worship

and prayer. We’ll be looking

back to a day when people had

the right to honor their own consciences by not participating

in activities they thought were immoral

and wouldn’t put their own jobs

and careers in jeopardy if

they say refuse to participate and taking innocent human life by abortion or in other

evil practices will look back

to those days as if they were golden years. But Jim, I believe in

the American people, I really believe

in America and I believe that our Christian and Jewish

and other friends and brothers and sisters are going to step forward. I have a very positive attitude and a lot

of people don’t. But I think that this

message is getting out. People are beginning

to understand and they’re rallying

to the cause. And in November I

think we’re going to see a real difference

being made. Ryan year great passion is the next generation. It is the younger, younger people who have

been propagandize. They have been

twisted and warped. Many of them in

what they’ve heard in school

and what they’ve heard in the

culture at large. Is there a chance

of getting through to those who

are 20 and 25 and 30? There is a, you know, I speak a sudden ministry, summer long duck,

David nobles camp and those

kids are on fire. I think it comes

to revival. I think it comes through

the Holy Spirit. It knows. It comes from

knowing the word. It comes from believing in Jesus Christ and pouring

yourself into that. That’s where all of my social action

comes from. That’s where my

civic mindedness comes from because I am compelled by Christ

to be involved. And you see hope I do, I do see hope if I didn’t, I’d be moving

to New Zealand. Better there, Ryan.

Country. Yeah. Just don’t take

that grand kid. Chuck, answer the

same question. I’m different from

Rebecca, generation older. And so perhaps I see things and more

apocalyptic terms. I’m really worried about this country

surviving. And I’m worried about it because I think we’re staring at the

best in terms of spending money recklessly

and incurring debt. Unless this country

get full of itself and as

willing to start living by its means and start behaving

responsibly and getting off this kick a

personal autonomy and realizing that as

American citizens, we’re all in this

thing together. We’ve gotta work for

the common good. We’ve got to work

for justice. And why does this

align with Robbie, I think the

American people are going to

wake up in time. But look back

in five years, like we wake up and

there’s not much time. Last rep has very little. We probably don’t

have five years. No, I don’t think we

do unless we change. And as America goes, so goes the world. Free world,

that’s for sure. Yeah, that’s certainly

writing it was free. I think it’ll

end of the day. It’s very important

to remind ourselves and to remind your listeners that this is really all about love. Not love considered as just some emotional

reaction. But love considered

as genuinely, actively willing the

good of other people. And willing

they’re good for the sake of their

good because we understand them as

a precious child of God made in his own

image and likeness. The sexual revolution

been a disaster. It’s, it’s, it’s

carnage is there for everyone to see

broken relationships, ruined lives. It’s not love to

advance the gay agenda. It’s not love to advance a culture of promiscuity. A fame with abortion. Abortion is not love. Taking the life of

an innocent child is not, is not love. We stand for the child because we

believe in love, we believe in

human dignity. We stand for marriage and sexual morality

because we believe in the dignity of

the human person and we know how the sexual revolution

has damaged people, ruin their relationships, wounded their lives. And we stand for

religious freedom because it’s at

the foundation of the dignity of the human

being as a creature made in the image

and likeness of God. A God who is, as we Christians

understand of love. Well, our time is gone and I can’t

tell you how much I appreciate Professor

Robby George and Mr. Chuck Golson

joining us along with Ryan and me here today to talk

about what may be the most important

subject we will deal with this year or

for many years. Because everything we care about is on the line and we need to provide

more information. Ryan, the 40 day fast that Jim Carlo

and others are calling for is going to be

explained on our website. That’s right. We’ve got the

Manhattan declaration to sign and download

at my family talk.com, the 40 days of

fasting and a lot of other things that we talked

about the day. We’ll all be on

our website for our listeners to come

and download and we’d really like them

to come there. And that’s my

family talk.com. For the two of

you on the phone, is there any last

thing you want to say to our constituency? I think Jimmy, you go, I really appreciate

you’re thinking, Oh, well you don’t. And I think it is not. We’re not talking about politics and part

of this division, we’re talking about

working for justice and righteousness in

the name of God’s. Whoa, that’s

exactly what’s beautiful wrap up

by rubbing gym. It’s, it’s high time that we Christians joined with others who are willing

to join with us. Show the world what the real Audacity

of Hope is. The willingness

to hope for a world that

really is made better because we

respect the dignity of the human being and that’s what we’re

fighting for. Well, it’s talking about

hope a minute ago. Part of my hope is rooted in what the Lord is

doing with each of you. And I appreciate

your courage and so much of what you’ve done in

recent years and please stay

in touch with us. We want to stand

with you and we want to do

what we can to awaken those who don’t yet understand the

gravity of the situation. I love you both and that

we will be in touch. Thank you. And thank you all

for listening. God bless, and we’ll

see you next time for another edition of Dr. James Dobson family time.

Lessons for America, From Winston Churchill

Welcome to

family talk with your hosts

psychologist and author Dr. James Dobson, along with Ryan Davisson

and Luann Crane. Thanks for joining us on this family talk

broadcast today. We have something

pretty unique planned, which I know you’re

going to enjoy. Doctor, I understand. You’d like to share a little something

about one of your favorite

historical characters. Well then for those

who visit my office at family talk in

Colorado Springs. And they’ll notice

very quickly and the entire wall

dedicated to the memory of

Winston Churchill, one of my all time he rose and favorite military

and political leaders. On display there is a huge painting

of Churchill, which again is one of

my prized possessions. Churchill was his

most of our listeners know the Prime Minister of Britain for many years. And he rallied

his countrymen during World War II when all appeared to be lost in response to

the armies of Germany. His speeches are so inspiring and they

gave hope and courage to those who thought that

nation was doomed, including those in

the United States. People around the

world thought britain was a goner, but cause France had

fallen in six weeks. And why would

that Britain, without the French armies, be able to withstand

Hitler’s onslaught. And at that moment, Churchill stepped

up and gave hope to the peoples of the

free world everywhere. If there was

anybody who ever stepped in for such

a time as this, it was that

gentleman inductor. That painting is enormous. It really does.

Amanda present. How did you come to

get that painting? Well, it’s an

interesting story because we were in California and a little

desert town called desert falls right

near Palm Springs. And we were walking

through a mall and there was a little art shop, a little gallery there. And that picture was in the window and I

was captivated. It’s a painting that was copy of a

photograph where Western Churchill was

very angry because they had just taken

away his cigar. And he has that

look on his face. But I wanted that painting and it was $3 thousand, which was far

too much money. And Charlene, I had a little argument about it and she was pretty

sure I didn’t want it. Then I was pretty

sure I did. She was afraid that we’re going to put it

over the bed. Not what I had

in my foreign. But anyway, she won the argument and

I didn’t buy it. But our board of

directors heard about this and they took up a collection and got

it for $2 thousand. And when our new

campus was dedicated, they presented

it to me and I’ve had it on the

wall every sector. I can certainly understand your admiration for

this gentleman, but why do you have it in such a prominent place? You can’t miss it when you walk

into your area. There’s symbolism

related to it. Luann, as he stood firm, WHO and it was so dark

as I just described. And when there seemed

to be no hope, I have at times felt like I was

in that position, not with that kind

of prominence. But there have

been times in the last 20 years when the battle to defend righteousness

in the culture, to fight for the

unborn child, to fight for the

traditional marriage and its understanding

as being between one man and one woman

was very lonely. Because even sometimes

Christian people didn’t seem to get it. I’ve had people stop

me on the street even as far back as the

mid 1980s and say, Well, I don’t

understand why you’re excited about

these things, what are the problems? So it was lonely at times, as I’m sure,

Western Churchill was lonely at a time. And for Western Churchill, the one hope that he had that Britain

would be able to beat Germany was that the Americans would

get involved. And when Pearl

Harbor occurred, it was a fantastic

day for him. Cause for the

first time he knew that he would

probably win. And that wasn’t

the only way. Well, I have felt that way about

the Church of Jesus Christ

until it decides, has a stake in the defense of

the unborn child. When partial-birth

abortion, where you suck the brains out of a

child, is a wicked, evil thing that has to be an affront to God

until the church sees that as evil and also gets involved

in the fight. There was no hope that people like me could win. And so that picture was assembled to

meet to never, never, never give up, even when it was dark. Because you never know what God’s going to do. So that’s a

fitting backdrop for year October

newsletter, which is absolutely

inspiring. And let me say quickly,

if listeners haven’t signed up yet to get

your monthly letter. They definitely

want to do that. They can do so online at my family talk.com

or give us a call 87773 to 68 25. Doctor, Would you

share that with us here on the rest of his family talk broadcast? I would like to do

it because it’s very relevant to what

we just talked about, but also to where

we are as a nation, being right

around the corner from the national

elections. And that’s where I start with my monthly letter. All right, let’s hear

that difference. Greetings to you all. As you’re aware, this country is

only a few weeks away from one of the most important elections

in history. On November the

second candidates for Congress, governors, state representatives,

and local officials, will be chosen

throughout the nation. Together, these men

and women will have the power to promote

the general welfare and protect the

constitution or to damage them irreparably at stake are policies that should concern millions

of Americans, including federal

funding for abortions, amnesty for

illegal aliens, open homosexuality

in the military. Further assaults on

religious liberty and universal health care legislation mounting

to rationing and the denial of

medical services for older Americans. The possibility

of death panels, looms before us. $500 billion in

Medicare funding are expected to be

siphoned from the budget. All of these issues

and many more will hang in the balance

early next month. If the wrong people are retained or put in office, they indiscriminate

taxing, borrowing and

spending practices of the last five years. We’ll continue unabated. That will undermine the financial integrity of the family and leave the nation

severely weakened. And none of these major concerns are really new. However, nations grow, we can dye for many of

the same reasons, usually related to

poor leadership, had been reading an

outstanding book that deals with some

of the issues that we’re facing which mirror the problems of

the 20th century. It is titled

Churchill by himself, edited by Richard

Lang worth. The book presents 350 thousand of

Sir Winston, 15 million

published words, including 600 pages

of quotations, aphorisms, speeches, letters, and papers from his school days at

Harrell to his death, that is London

home in 1965. He was 90 year. So if you’ve listened to our broad gas

through the years, you’ve heard me express great admiration for

this intellectual giant. He served for five decades in the British

government and was Prime Minister during the challenging

and bloody days of World War Two. I was a child at that

time and I heard my father and other

adults referring with awe to the man who stood alone against

the Nazi minuss. I grew up wanting

to know more about this

indomitable leader. And that’s been a

lifelong quest. Sir Winston was a

prolific reader with a photographic

memory, which explains the breadth of his literary genius. Much of it is captured in Churchill by himself. A compendium of wisdom with history, government

in philosophy. What strikes me is how

amazingly relevant his perspectives

and pronouncements are to our world today. The challenges we face

are in many regards, recycled and repackaged

from an earlier era. That brings me to the

point of this letter. Churchill’s recorded

and written words stand in stark contrast to the policies

and beliefs of the current President of the United States,

Barack Obama. They couldn’t be

farther apart. In most instances. For example,

President Obama and his administration

believe that when an economy falters, the government

should increase taxes and spend like

there’s no tomorrow. Doing so will supposedly

bring recovery. It’s called Kenzie and economics and

it never works. This is what

Churchill wrote. Can’t have people tax themselves into

prosperity. Can a man stand

in a bucket and lift himself

up by the handle? And the next, taxes

are in the evil, a necessary evil,

but still an evil. And the fewer of them

we have, the better. And another, when you

borrow money from another country for the sacred purpose of National Rehabilitation, it’s wrong to squander

it upon indulgences. That third quote is

sames to condemn the concept of a massive

stimulus package, which in the Obama

era has been funded by loans,

mostly from China. I’ve over a trillion

dollars and spent on a shameful

array of pork, it became a slush fund for those seeking

re-election. How I wish more of the American people in their congressional

leaders understood the

straightforward principles Sir Winston articulated in these three quotes. It is foolish to believe that a

government can solve an economic crisis by taxing and spending

itself into prosperity. If that were possible, every poor country in the world would confiscate the financial holdings of its people and

wasted on pork and projects and programs motivated by

political power. That predictable into

such wild spending is not national wealth. It’s bankruptcy. And that’s where

President Obama appears to be

taking us as he and his friends in

Congress are burning their way through the accumulated wealth

past and present, of the most

prosperous nation in the history

of the world. The national debt stands

now at $13 trillion. That projected deficit for the next ten years is

another 11 trillion. With a combined

national debt, 24 trillion or more. That’s not sustainable. It was 4 trillion

in the year 2000. Present projections

are only the beginning of our economic troubles. Medicare and Social Security

are almost broke. Anticipated spending

on cap and trade. To address the

global warming myth and further bailouts and giveaways and

redistributions are beyond comprehension. All of this spending

is on the table less than two years into the new

administration. Sadly, we do appear to be on our way to

the poor house. Frankly, I shudder

to think of what US Bankruptcy would mean for the stability

of the world. Gone would be America’s ability

to defend itself and the democracies

against tyranny and subjugation. We live in a

dangerous world where biological,

chemical, nuclear, and conventional

weapons are proliferating

rapidly and where electromagnetic

pulse bombs may already be in the

hands of our enemies. Evil dictators such as AAC Medina John from Iran, have already announced

their intention of incinerating the

nation of Israel. America must also

be destroyed if those seeking

world domination or to have their way. Have we forgotten lessons

of 9, 11 already? Churchill wrote, if

you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without

bloodshed. If you will not fight

when you’re victory will be sure and

not too costly. You may come to the

moment when you will have to fight

with all the odds against you and only a precarious

chance of survival. There may even

be a worst case. You may have to fight when there is no

hope of victory because it is better to perish than

live as slaves. He also wrote, and

this was back in 1934. Wars come suddenly. I have lived through

a period when one look forward as we do now with anxiety and uncertainty to what would happen in the future. Suddenly something

did happen. Tremendous, Swift, overpowering,

irresistible. And of course,

that was 930 for looking forward

to 930 nine, when World War

II broke out, only a strong

military gives us any hope of survival

in such a world. But as we all know, modern militaries

are horrendously expensive to develop

and maintain, and they cannot

be supported by nations in financial ruin. Furthermore, there’s

little motivation to support our

armed forces. Indeed, when the

President wanted to demonstrate his fiscal responsibility

to the media, that was in 2009, he selected a

tiny fraction of the federal

budget to be cut. Guess what? He

considered expendable. You guessed it. Half

of the programs to be eliminated came

from the military, including a new

jet fighter, the F 22 that was already designed and

ready for production, and a vital missile

defense system. We desperately need

another Western Churchill in either political party, the common sense to

support our military. And now some quotes

that mean a lot to me. Let’s review what the old Prime Minister

had to say about socialism versus free enterprise

and capitalism. He wrote, the inherent

vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings some people

have more than others. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal

sharing of miseries. Isn’t that terrific? And that’s really what

it comes down to. Yeah, well annexed quote was also about socialism. Elimination of

the prophet motif and of self interests as a practical guide in the myriad transactions of daily life,

we’ll restrict, parallelize and destroy British ingenuity, thrift, contrivance and

Good Housekeeping at every stage of our

life and production and will reduce all

our industries from a profit-making to a

loss-making process. Yet another, socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. And another, the choices between two ways of life, between individual

liberty and state. Domination. Between

concentrations of ownership in the hands of the state and

the extension of ownership over the widest number

of individuals. Between the dead hand of monopoly and the

stimulus of competition. Between the policy of increasing restraint and a policy of

liberating energy and ingenuity

between a policy of leveling down and a policy of

opportunity for all to rise upwards from

a basic standard. I would hope Luann, that people would obtain a copy of this letter. And in fact,

we’re going to send it to those on our mailing list or get a CD of my reading it and studied

that paragraph, particularly because

it is very relevant, you really have a choice

between two paths. And when I’m

socialism, the other, free enterprise

and capitalism, and one is better

than the other. Here’s another. You may try to destroy

wealth and find that all you have done is

to increase poverty. Isn’t that where

we are right now? We’ve got more

poverty than we’ve had in many, many years. Because we have chosen principles of socialism. When I see the present

socialist government needs referring to the

British government. When I see that present

socialist government denouncing capitalism

in all its forms. Mocking with derision

and contempt. The tremendous

free enterprise, capitalistic

system on which the mighty production of the United States

is founded. I cannot help feeling

that as a nation we’re not acting honorably

or even honestly. Referring to this system of checks and balances, which are Founding Fathers incorporated into

the Constitution. And frankly that

we’ve lost. Now, Churchill said this, the British race

has always abhorred arbitrary and

absolute government in every form. The great man who founded the American

constitution express this same separation

of authority and the strongest and

most durable form. Not only did they

divide executive, legislative, and

judicial functions, the three branches

of government, but also by instituting

a federal system, they preserved immense

and sovereign rights to the local communities. And by all these means, they have maintained, often at some

inconvenience, a system of law

and liberty under which they thrived and

reached the physical. And at this

moment, he says, the moral leadership

of the world. I love that, quote, Churchill’s

perspective on Islam, this May 1 surprise you. The fact that in

Mohammed and law, every woman must belong to some man as his

absolute property. Either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the

final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great

power among men. Individual Muslims may show splendid

qualities. Thousands become the

brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen all

know have to die. But the influence of

the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retro, grade force exists in the world. Far from being more

Bund are dying. Mohammed then ism is a militant and

proselytizing faith. Here’s a quote from

Churchill about British pieces after

the decision was made in 1933 not to rearm in response

to the Nazi threat. He knew this lack of foresight would

lead to war. And he wrote, it’s much better for parties

and politicians to be turned out

of office than to imperil the life

of the nation. Amen to that. You might be interested to know how Churchill

felt about the American press or what he called journalism. This is how he

described it. The essence of American journalism

is vulgarities, the vested of truth. There, speaking

of Americans, their best papers, right, for a class of snotty

housemaids and footmen. And even the nicest people here have so

much vitiate it, their taste as to

appreciate the style. I think that last

sentence means that the British are copying their American cousins. He pulled no punches. Here are two other

pression statements made by Sir Winston. The Americans can always be trusted to do

the right thing. Once all other

possibilities have been exhausted. His very interesting

comment, and here’s another

silly people. And there are many, not only an

enemy countries might discount the force of the United States. Some said they were soft, others that they would

never be united. They would fool

around at a distance. They would never

come to grips. They would never

stand bloodletting. Their democracy and system of recurrent

elections would paralyze their war

horizon to friend or foe. Others said that we

should recognize the weakness of this

numerous but remote, wealthy and pocket

the people. That’s what they

say about us. But I had studied the

American Civil War, fought out to the

last desperate inch. And he goes on to talk

about World War Two and how the Americans

gave their blood, gave their wealth, and fought to the last

battle for liberty. And of course,

that saved Britain as well as the

United States and the rest of

the free world. Alas, I’ve run

out of space and time for

this discussion. There are

hundreds of other quotes that are

irrelevant to our political

circumstances and to the upcoming election. As for the views of

Western Churchill as compared to those

of Barack Obama. Let me remind you that on Inauguration Day 20091 of the first decisions the new president made was to send back to the British government

a bronze bust, none other than

Winston Churchill, thereby insulting

our allies from his first

day in office. Perhaps we now know why Obama in Churchill’s

perspectives on the world and on governmental policies

radically different. Close by reminding

you again to vote on November

the second 2010, how you mark your

balances your business. The important thing

is that you let your voices be

heard then that to help select the leaders and the policies

that will guide this country for the next two

years and longer. America does

indeed stand at a crossroads that

will determine the direction it takes

in years to come. I pray that you will

join millions of your countrymen at the

polls on election day. May God’s blessings be on you and on this

great nation. Well, what a passionate

message from our family talk host,

Dr. James Dobson. And it’s so timely as

we’re literally just weeks away from the Election Day

here in the US. As he indicated there, this really

could be one of the most important

elections in our lifetime. So please exercise your

right and privilege and go out and vote. Now, if you’d

like a copy of this October newsletter

which Dr. Dobson just shared either for your own reference

or to pass along to someone else, asked for it when

you give us a call, 87773260825, or you can find

that also online at my family talk.com and also online there

you’ll be able to see a picture of that wonderful painting of Sir Winston Churchill, which is hanging right outside dr. Dobson office. Take a look at that. My family talk.com

also there. You’ll want to

sign up to be on the family talk

mailing lists so that you will regularly receive

information like this from Dr. Dobson

one last time, the phone number 87773 to 68 25 or online at

my family talk.com.

A Nation Abandoned by God I

Hello everyone

and welcome to another edition of Dr. James Dobson,

his family talk. I’m Ryan Dobson with Lou and Crane and our host, psychologist and

best-selling author, Dr. James Dobson. Dad, you and mom watched a DVD and it affected you so profoundly that we’re going to play the

audio from it today. Tell us a little

bit about what you watched when Sure. And I first saw the DVD of Dr. John MacArthur delivering this message. We were stunned

by what we heard. And we could tell

that the audience was also the silence that came from that

large audience was palpable and

thousands of people were there and

they were sitting in rapt attention as this

warning unfolded. Now, some of our listeners

are not going to agree with what Dr. MacArthur has to say here. But it’s going to

make all of us think. And I do agree with what he had to

say on this day. It is consistent with my own perspectives of where we are as a nation, where the American

people are and it is really a world

wide phenomenon. Message that were

about they hear, needs to be heard, especially at this time in our nation’s history. Well, let me give a

quick introduction of our guest today. He’s a fifth

generation pastor, has served at Grace

Community Church in Sun Valley,

California since 1969. He has a radio ministry that extends

around the globe. It’s called grace to you. And those daily

broadcasts are heard on nearly 2000 English and Spanish outlive the way. And dad, He’s also

written nearly listen to this 400 books

and study guides. And the MacArthur

Study Bible received the 998 ECPAT gold

medallion award. I’ve got a copy of

that and we do, do. He is so respected as a biblical

scholar and I know we need

to pay careful attention to his comments. Yeah, I want to say

to our listeners to brace yourself folks. Because you’re about to hear something that’ll require great

thought and prayer. And as you listen, asked the Lord to eliminate your

understanding of the words that Dr. John MacArthur

was speaking. I believe they

were inspired. Well, let’s go ahead

and listen in now here is Dr. John

MacArthur speaking to a packed church at Woodman Valley

chapel here in Colorado Springs on

the National Day of Prayer a short while ago. One of the most tragic

scenes in the Bible. And yet one of the

most familiar to us is the scene of the strongest man

who ever lived, a man by the

name of Samson, finding out he

had no strength. Judges Chapter

16 records this. And here’s the

Telling line written by God,

the Holy Spirit. But he did not know that the Lord had

departed from him. So the Philistine

seized him, gouged out his eyes, brought him down at Giza, bound him with

bronze chains, and he became a

grinder in the prison. Sad. He didn’t know that the Lord had

departed from him. I can’t imagine

anything worse than being abandoned by God to the sons of Israel. Earlier in the book of

Judges in Chapter ten, god said this, you

have forsaken me. You have served

other gods. Therefore, I will

deliver, you know, more. Go and cry out to the gods which

you have chosen. Let them deliver you in the time of

your distress. This was God

saying to Israel, I’m done with you. Abandoned by God. A haunting line. I found tucked away in a little prophecy

of Hosea, chapter four and verse 17. And it refers to Israel

by the name ethereum. And it says this

ethereum is joined to idols,

so says God. The next line,

leave him alone. Sounds out of character

for God, doesn’t it? Ethereum is

joined to idols. Bring him back.

Might sound a little more like God. Let him alone. People and nations. Even, even the covenant

nation Israel, can come to a point. Where they are

abandoned by God. Jesus reiterated

this in Matthew 15 when he confronted

the Pharisees. And then describe them

to the disciples. He said this, they’re blind leaders

of the blind. Let them alone. When God let you go. It’s serious. When Jesus

pronounces over you. Abandonment, it’s serious. And I’m going to

say something, you’re going to

have to hold it. Hold on to your

seat a little bit. I’m convinced beyond doubt that in the same sense, God has abandoned America. I know that’s a

strong thing to say. And I’m going to

show you why. I believe you can see that clearly in Scripture. Open your Bible

to Romans one. Here in Romans

chapter one, beginning in

verse 18, running to the end of the chapter, you have the most

clear presentation of God abandoning

a nation, what that looks like, what happens and

why he does it. This is the most

graphic and the most detailed

and the most comprehensive

discussion of what it means for a people, a society, to be

abandoned by God. And it perfectly describes the moral chaos in

our own nation today. It starts with very

familiar words. Verse 18, For the wrath of God is revealed

from heaven. Now let me stop you

there for just a moment. We’re talking about

the wrath of God. And I need to just

let you know that in the scripture and

in reality there are five different

manifestations of God’s wrath, Okay? And you will

recognize them. There is eternal wrath. That is that Wrath which God unleashes on the, on believing dead in ****. Eternal rat,

suffering forever, eternal punishment,

that’s eternal red. There is also

in the Bible, eschatological wrath, that is the unfolding of divine wrath at the end of the age described in

detail, for example, in Revelation six

through 19, the, the pouring out of God’s wrath and the

breaking of seven seals, the blowing of

seven trumpets, and the dumping

of seven bowls of wrath,

eschatological wrath. That wrath is yet to come, as is eternal wrath

for all society it, yet right now there are many experiencing

eternal wrath. All the unbelieving

who have left this world are experiencing third

kind of wrath is what I guess you could

call calamitous wrath. That is that wrath

of God which produces calamity

in the world. And the most notable

illustration of that is the flood, which drowned the

entire world. Only eight people

were saved. Massive wrath on the part of God against sinful men. Fortunately, there is

consequential wrath That’s sowing and

reaping wrath. That’s the natural end of patterns and

choices of sin, whatever a man

sows you what the reach that’s

consequential wrath. But there’s this

other category of the wrath of abandonment. It is a form of

God’s wrath in which he lets go

of a society and lets it catapult full speed without

restraint in the direction of its

own sinful desires, devices, and choices. That’s the wrath

being described here. This is the

cyclical reality of this wrath that has

defined human history. And we’ll always, until Jesus comes, as Paul said, in all the

generations gone by, God permitted

the nations to go their own way. I don’t believe we’re waiting for God’s wrath. In this society. We haven’t had

massive calamity such as the destruction of an entire city that we, we certainly don’t

want that to happen. Pray that does not happen. But it could happen. And God would be just in any calamity that

he brought upon us. We have not entered into eschatological wrath. That comes in

the end times. We are experiencing

all of us do consequential

wrath of sin. But this massive concept of the wrath of

abandonment, I’m convinced, is now

at work in our society. We’d like to talk

about the fact that America

was founded on Christian principles

and God was at the center of it

and all of that. Whatever it might have

been in our founding, it’s no longer

the way it is. And I want to

show you how you know that has happened.

Go down to verse 24. You see in verse

24, first word. Therefore, this means

we’re now going to see a description

that connects to what has been said. To go back to verse 18, the wrath of God

is revealed from heaven against all on godliness and

unrighteousness of men. And we can stop

at that point, the wrath of God

is revealed. And then it goes on to talk about the wrath of God and the reasons

for the wrath of God. And then in verse 24, it then describes

the wrath of God. And here’s the

description. Therefore, God gave them over or God gave them

up in the less of their hearts to impurity that their bodies

might be dishonored among them for they exchanged the truth

of God for a lie worshiped and served the

creature rather than the creator who’s

blessed forever amen. For this reason,

God gave them over to degrading

passions for their women, exchanged the

natural function for that which

is unnatural. In the same way

also, the men abandoned the natural

function of the woman, burned in their desire

toward one another. Men with men committing

indecent acts and receiving in

their own persons the due penalty

of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge

God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind to do the things that

are not proper. Being filled with

all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed,

envy full of evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit,

malice, gossip, slander, haters of God,

insolent, arrogant, boastful inventors of evil disobedient

to parents without understanding

untrustworthy, unloving on merciful. And although they know the ordinance of God that those who practice such things are

worthy of death. And not only do them, but also give

hearty approval to those who

practice them. Now let me break that

down for a little bit. Three times the verb

gave them over is used. Three times. The wrath of

abandonment is when God gives a nation

over. This verb. Peritomy can have

a judicial sense. It’s used often in Greek

literature in terms of law courts and

criminal courts. It comes down to handing a prisoner over

for punishment to even use in the

case of Jesus being handed over for

crucifixion. Each of these uses

of the verb in this text express the

fact that the wrath of God has acted to hand over a society,

to sentence. Hand them over. There comes a time in a nation when God

has had enough. And he literally, let’s go and turn them over to the sentence that

they have passed upon themselves by their

incessant sinful choices. See it another

way, they are deprived of

restraining grace. Now how do we know when

this has happened? Note the progression.

Verse 24. God gave them over

in the less of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies

might be dishonored. Among them. Impurity speaks

of sexual sin. The first thing

that happens in a nation when

it is abandoned by God is a sexual

revolution. Moral, sexual perversion, pornographic desire describes the general character of the culture. You can’t even count how many million pornographic

websites there are. When a society is

abandoned by God, it operates out of its own perverse

sexual passion without restraint. You can go back to

the sixties and the sexual revolution of the flower children are Hugh Hefner,

Playboy world. And it has gone like

a flood since then. It is characterized by, as you look at verse 24, last, coming

from withinside, as Jesus said,

what comes out of the heart of a man is

what the files him. Leading to impurity. This means sexual

impurity and to the dishonoring

of their bodies, the heart is wicked and the body’s

demonstrated. The body follows

the heart. **** conceives

in the heart, James says and

brings forth sin, and sin brings

forth death. So the first

thing that you look for in a society, you’re trying to

discern whether God has abandoned that

society is whether or not that

society has gone through the sexual

revolution. So that illicit

sex, adultery, every form of

a morality is accepted as normal

in that society. And were there.

The second step in the progression,

verse 26. God gave them over. Not just two passions

that are explicable, because they’re

men and women. But two inexplicable

degrading passions for their women exchanged

the natural function for that which

is unnatural. You know, a society has

been abandoned by God when it’s celebrates

lesbian sex. God has given him over gross affections,

unnatural, unthinkable. So you follow a

sexual revolution with a homosexual

revolution. And homosexuality

becomes normalized. Verse 27 adds

the male part. In the same way,

the men abandoned the natural function

of the woman burned in their desire

toward one another. But interestingly enough, the Holy Spirit puts the women first tier

and the men after. Why? The Holy Spirit

refers first to the degradation

of women because they’re usually

the last to be affected in the

decay of morals because their hearts are so naturally inclined toward a husband

and toward the responsibility of

nurturing children. But when they

lead the parade, god has removed

his restraint. And the amazing thing

of it is this verse 27. The man abandoning the

natural function of the women burning

and their desire toward one another. Men with men committing

indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error right

into this wrath of abandonment

comes the wrath, the consequential wrath. And even though it generates venereal

disease and aids, they keep doing it. This is what step

2 looks like. And we know this has

come like a flood, but it’s not

the final step. The final step

comes in verse 28, middle of verse

28, God gave them over to a depraved mind. Now the version of Bible you may

have unwritten, the numeric

standard might have a different

translation for depraved. Let me tell you what

the word means. Non functional. Than work. Useless. Can’t think. Can reason, can

comprehend. And you look at this

world and you say, rampant sexual immorality

out of control, destroying people,

willy nilly, even in the church, even in the leadership

of the church. Homosexuality, same thing, rampant

out of control, demanding to be

accepted as normal. And the society rushing to affirm that acceptance, isn’t there anybody in the system who would

stand up and call this what it really is a massive moral disaster. Can’t they see it? Can’t they figure it out? No. No. First Corinthians

1 says Man by wisdom knew not God. Human wisdom just on its own, doesn’t

get there. Then you add that the

god of this world has blinded the minds of them that do not believe. And you’ve got a

compounding blindness. And then you add the fact that they are blinded by virtue of the sweeping, dominating elements

of their culture. And you’re just

not going to get anybody to rise up and take that position and have people

rally around it. This is Dr. James

Thompson, family talk. And if you have

just tuned in, we’ve been hearing

the first part of a message

delivered by Dr. John McArthur on

a National Day of Prayer not long ago. We will finish up

with that tomorrow. And DR. And Ryan,

the audience, there was

absolutely silent in listening to

this presentation. I mean, there was none of the usual shuffling and

stirring and noise, Lu, and there was a hush over that audience.

I mean dead. What a sobering theme to talk about there that sometimes God does handed people over to their

own wickedness. While I have no doubt that he does that

on occasion, Ryan, and only God knows, when people have

crossed that line. But it does happen then

we know that because we can read about it in a number of places

in Scripture. We heard one example

from Dr. MacArthur who was telling us about Paul’s writings

in Romans one, saying that the

people became so evil that God finally gave them up to

a rep, probate mine. That is a terrifying you to think about

it for God to say, I want to listen

to you anymore. In fact, one place in

Scripture, he says, I will stop my ears

when you cry because you have rejected the God of Abraham,

Isaac, and Jacob. He also turned his

back on King Saul. My father used to preach about this and

I remember how dramatic it was when

he talked about Saul sending

grievously and repeatedly

against the Lord. And the Lord finally

cast him off. Solve understood that and even admitted that he had violated the Lord’s

command and he asked samuel to

forgive him. And Samuel said, you have rejected

the Word of the Lord and he

has rejected you as king over Israel. There is a later

verse where we read of Samuel

grieving over Saul. He loved Saul. Saul was his king and he

was grieving before the Lord for

what it app and desal and was obviously

praying for him. He doesn’t say that,

but it’s inferred. And the Lord said

to them, Samuel, How long will you

mourn for Saul? I have rejected

him telling him essentially

stop praying form. Yes, not going to work. I’ve rejected him. I don’t hear is

cries anymore. It makes me wonder about my own country which has now murdered more than 50 million

babies since 1973. And we have done

it cold-bloodedly. And I wonder how

long a just God, a righteous

God, will allow us to continue without turning his back on us. It is very scary, doctor. I mean, really

today we’ve heard a warning message

to our generation. There really needs

to be circulated. I encourage listeners

to pick up the phone, send an email or Facebook message

telling your friends to tune in because Ryan, this has great

implications for the upcoming generation

though it does Lewin. For more information,

please go to Dr. James Dobson.org or call

us at 8777326825. Thanks for listening

and join us again tomorrow for the

conclusion of this presentation with

Dr. John MacArthur right here on Dr. James

Dobson family talk.

A Nation Abandoned by God II

Hi everyone, Ryan

Dobson here, rolling back the

clock to 2012 on the National

Day of Prayer. So here now is Dr. James

Dobson, Family Talk. Welcome to this edition of Dr. James Dobson

family tongue. I’m Ryan Dobson here with Luann crane and

our host is psychologist and

best-selling author and my dad, Dr.

James Dobson. And as we recognize the National Day

of Prayer today, we’re going to

hear the balance of a powerful

message we started yesterday about man’s

accountability to God. In this series

is definitely full of some

alarming content. But it’s especially

important as we learn how we

can pray for our nation and

for ourselves right here on this

National Day of Prayer, last time on

Wednesdays program, dr. John MacArthur started a message about the

different ways that God’s wrath is

expressed when a nation turns

away from him. In fact, here’s

what your dad had to say about

that yesterday. We heard one example

from Dr. MacArthur who was telling us about Paul’s writings

in Romans one, saying that the

people became so evil that God finally gave them up to

a rep, robe, a mine. That is that terrifying you to think about

it for God to say, I want to listen

to you anymore. In fact, one place in

Scripture, he says, I will stop my ears

when you cry because you have rejected the God of Abraham,

Isaac, and Jacob. He also turned his

back on King saw. My father used to preach about this and

I remember how dramatic it was when

he talked about Saul sending

grievously and repeatedly

against the Lord. And the Lord finally

cast him off. And Saul understood

that and even admitted that he had violated the

Lord’s command, and he asked samuel

to forgive him. And Samuel said, you have rejected

the Word of the Lord and he

has rejected you as king over Israel. There is a later

verse where we read of Samuel

grieving over Saul. He loved salts,

all was his king. And he was grieving

before the Lord for what had happened to Saul and was obviously

praying for him. He doesn’t say that,

but it’s inferred. And the Lord said

to them, Samuel, How long will you

mourn for Saul? I have rejected Him. It makes me wonder

about my own country, which has now murdered more than 50 million

babies since 1973. And we have done

it cold-bloodedly. And I wonder how

long a just God, a righteous

God, will allow us to continue without turning his back on us. Lewin, that is a truly terrifying

thought that God would leave us and we

wouldn’t even know it because we are so

cold spiritually. Dr. MacArthur was so

articulate through this message that

was given on the National Day of

Prayer short time ago, right here in

Colorado Springs. And he was talking

about what he explained as God’s wrath

of abandonment. And if anyone didn’t hear yesterday’s part of

the presentation, we have that

archived online at Dr. James

stops and.org. I will mention that

Dr. MacArthur, as a respected

Biblical scholar, a powerful man of

God who has written nearly 400 books

and study guides. And to begin today, we’re going to roll

back a little bit to give you context to what he’s about to say. So here now on

this family talk broadcast, Dr.

John McArthur. The final step

comes in verse 28. Middle of verse 28. God gave them over

to a depraved mind. First, Corinthians

1 says Man by wisdom knew not God. Human wisdom just on its own, doesn’t

get there. Then you add that the

god of this world has blinded the minds of them that do not believe. And you’ve got a

compounding blindness. And then you add the fact that they are blinded by virtue of the sweeping, dominating elements

of their culture. And you’re just

not going to get anybody to rise up and take that position and have people

rally around it. You’re going to have more people in

leadership in the country outing themselves as

homosexuals evening, as you seen a lot of

that even see any of it. Yet. As it becomes more

and more accepted. A depraved mind in the original language

is one that’s tested and found useless, therefore disqualified

for its intended use. The reasoning faculty

has been corrupted by the influences

that surround it. And when that happens, and your entire

sense of morality is warped than your conscience

is ill informed, and it doesn’t function. We have unconscionable

behavior. And then you laugh at the Jerry

Springer show. Instead of falling

on your face and weeping at the

aberrations. A depraved mind,

reasoning faculty so corrupt that it must be rejected as none

functioning. And as a result of

that, what happens? God gave them

over verse 28 to a depraved mind. So as a result, they do the things

that are not what? Proper, fitting,

sensible, reasonable. What do they do? They’re filled with

all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, envy, murder, strife,

deceit, malice. What’s that? That’s

the nightly news. The local newspaper. Slanders, haters

of God and on and on and on and on. It goes there,

unconscionable. Sweat conscience is,

it’s a mechanism God gave you that accuses

you or excuses you. Romans two says, but

only functions if it is morally informed

accurately. And if you have a

culture that has developed an

aberrant morality, then you have

conscience says that function off of that and aberrant

morality. And you get all the stuff, all the inexplicable

behaviors. And that’s why in

verse 32, it says, Although they know

the ordinance of God, well, they know, they

know inherently in them Romans to what is right

and what is wrong. They, who practice

such things are worthy of death. They know that they

do him anyway, and they give

hearty approval to those who

practice them. Sexual revolution

down one more step, homosexual revolution

down one more step. Can’t ever get your

way out of it. Because the mind, the

cultural mind is Dawn. And I would put it this

way, maybe simply, there’s no surer

indicator of a corrupted, wicked, and abandoned society under God’s wrath. Then when that

society does not tolerate anger

against sin. It was CS Lewis who said the last experience of the center is the

horrible enslavement of the freedom he desired. So Paul is

unfolding for us this picture of what a society looks like

when it’s abandoned. That’s not my description. Now you see why I said, I think America is here going through

the cycle of Romans. One. Here’s why

it happens. Verse 18, the wrath

of God is revealed from heaven in this form of abandonment against

all on godliness and unrighteousness

of men that makes up this society. Verse 18. Who

suppress way? There it is. That’s it. They suppress the truth. It’s always

about the truth. What truth? Real truth is. Francis Shaffer

used to say the true truth.

Biblical truth. You suppress, this

is where you go. It’s amazing how people mock biblical truth today. Amazing. Well, you can figure out a

way to make it so smooth and soft and take out all

the hard parts so it doesn’t

have the sting. But if you give the unadulterated

annexed for gated, pure word of God, it will generate a

negative reaction. In many environments. You need to speak

the truth in love, but all we got

is the true. Suppress the truth. Let me expand that

a little bit. Give me four

things to think about for reasons for wrath that have to do with the suppressing

the truth. Number 1, revelation. We’ve been given

the truth, suppress the truth in

unrighteousness because that which is known about God is evident

within them. For God made it

evident to them. Since the creation

of the world, His invisible attributes,

eternal power, divine nature

have been clearly seen being understood

through what has been made so that they are without excuse. What is this? This is not even talking

about the Scripture. This is talking

about the fact that God is inlaid his truth into the

fabric of man’s being. He is not without a

witness to the truth. Look at Chapter

2 for a moment, dropped down

into verse 14. The Gentiles who do

not have the law, do instinctively the

things of the law, these not having the law, our law to themselves

and that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience

bearing witness. Part of being human, like all the other

parts of being human. To be able to think and to make relationships, to speak, and to act in the ways

that humans act. Those kinds of things are the familiar components of what it means

to be human. But another one is the

law of God written in the very fabric of man’s nature so that he cannot plead ignorance. In fact, it says in

verse 20 that he has enough of the

law in himself, enough of reason to

be without excuse. Reason is simply a cause

and effect device. Reason is simply thinking our way through patterns

of cause and effect. This leads to this,

this leads to this, this leads to

this, and that’s how reason works. Then eventually

you get back to the first cause of the massive universal

effect of creation. So reason is advice

given by God to all human beings

that leads them directly back to him. Don’t tell me that one time there was a pile up protoplasm and it

decided to become this. My reason tells me there

has to be a creator. And do you know the

whole world believe that until Darwin came along, Jonah out on the boat. And the sailors, pagan

sailor say to him, well, why is

this going on? He says, well, my

guess, my God, he’s dune because

he’s punishing me. And so it’s my God and this Well,

who’s your guy? He didn’t say,

well, let’s see. He’s the Hebrew God. He’s, he’s the god of the Hebrew people. That’s, that’s who he is. He didn’t say that.

He said this. He said, well, he’s

the God who made the earth and the sea. That’s a natural

assumption. Natural assumption. Go to Mars Hill,

pulls up there, They have a deal there

for the unknown god. Pulses won’t tell you who this unknown goddess, he doesn’t say, this is. This is the Christian

God of New Testament. He says, This is the

God created everything. This is the God in whom

we live and move and have our,

Everybody got it. Only in a modern

world when I get it. You go back to God. The massive first

cause of everything. So that’s in the

fabric of being human. And you know,

you have to work hard for a couple

of 100 years to convince an

entire society that that’s nonsense. And that what makes sense is nobody times nothing

equals everything. And though it

doesn’t make sense, it works in a totally

immoral culture. Because if there’s

no creator, There’s no judge. So reason is

the first thing shows you’ve got the second thing

is morality, which is built into the

fabric of all of us. And has to again

be cultivated to the point where

you’ve got a society of people whose

reason doesn’t need God and whose sense of morality has been

totally perverted. Here we are. The

society as rejected. God, That’s our

second.1 revelation. God has revealed himself

to every person. Second, rejection,

men have turned away from the

truth. Verse 21. Interesting, even

though they knew God, that is humanity, that is society in any given period of time by God’s creative design, have the knowledge of moral law and reason

that leads them back to a moral law giver and a judge and a creator. Even though they

know that innately, they did not honor Him

as God or give thanks. But instead of doing what was reasonable

and moral, became empty in

their speculations and their foolish

heart was darkened. And the bottom line is

that they don’t like the god there reason

leads them to, and they don’t

like the God that their innate sense of what is right and

wrong leads them to. And so they

abandoned that God. And the lights go out. And then you come

up with stuff like a rock is a rap, is a dog, is a boy. Life is random. Truth is relative. People are basically free to do whatever they

want. It’s all good. Everyone ought to be free to do

whatever he wants. The goal of life is self satisfaction.

Live it up. And don’t let anybody tell you you can’t do anything. So they didn’t

honor Him as God. They weren’t

thankful to him for what he had given. And the lights went

out, they became empty and they’re

speculations. They’re thinking

their patterns, their ideologies, their foolish

heart went black. Empty human ideas. Now you can’t know, God, can’t know the truth. But you think

you’re smart. We could verse 22. Professing to be wise. Professing to be wise. They became fools. That’s the third

step. You go from revelation to rejection

to rationalization. Men insist they’re

doing fine, never did better.

We’re very advance. Professing to be wise. In fact, it says, professing to be wise,

they became fools. The word is Marina, from which we get more on proud morons giving

each other PhDs. And finally, it

comes down to, goes from revelation

to rejection to rationalization,

to religion. Religion. Right? Verse 23. The exchange, the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form

of corruptible man, Berg’s four footed animals and crawling creatures. What religion is at all? How about

environmentalism? Or you worship What? The creation,

not the creator. Wow. Yeah, this is madness. You say, isn’t

this man and his highest sees

worshiping? Knows man, it is flavus. False religion is

man. In the pit. He’s gone so far down. He’s created the fantasy

of false religion. Religion is not man

at his highest, it is man at his lowest. The ultimate insanity is to worship any other than the true guy, right? And so we see

what happens in a society when God turns them over and we see why he turns

them over. And that was just

a quick overview. So we look at our nation. Our hearts are broken,

mind is depraved. They think they’re

smart, they’re morons. They can’t get

to the truth. The mind is

completely gone. They invent

bizarre religions, they become religious. It today they like to talk about being

spiritual, right? I’m very religious,

I am very spiritual. What does that mean?

What does that mean? This is if you can invent your own worship

and urine religion, that’s man at his lowest. That’s all the way

at the bottom. Total, complete rejection

of the true God and the true faith.

That’s where we are. Now the question

is, how do we pray? Turn to Psalm 81. And I want the Holy

Spirit to give you direction here as we

think about this. See if this doesn’t

sound familiar. Verse 11. But my people did not

listen to my voice. My word. Israel

did not obey me. So first one,

I want him up. Wow. If he would do that with Israel, the

covenant people. What do you think’s

going on in America? We’re not a

covenant people. So I gave him over to the stubbornness of

there aren’t hard to walk in their own

devices. I let them go. Let them go to

the consequences of their choices. This is God, He’s

abandon them. But look at verse 13. And here’s the heart

of God that I think we have to grasp in

America in this hour. Here’s God, his words, oh, that my people would do what? Yeah, there it is. But they listen

to me. Listen to me that that Israel

would walk in my eyes. Right there, folks, is

your mandate to pray. What do you have

to pray for? You have to pray

for the Word of the living God to be proclaimed across

this nation. It’s the answer. Do you think God might react? He said, I love this. Verse 14. I would

quickly like that word. Good word. I don’t

get the picture. God’s dragon is

Yale’s there. I would quickly

subdue their enemies. I would turn my hand against their adversaries. And it would be so great that even the

people who hate me, what pretend to obey me. And then I love this.

I love verse 16. And I would feed you

with the finest of the wheat and with

honey from the rock, I would satisfy you.

That’s metaphoric. I just just drown

you and bless the data only once one

thing out of a nation. Listen and believe

this book. There’s only one solution, and that’s the truth. The truth by

which God saves, by which God sake defies. And if this nation will respond and listen

to his truth, god will open

the floodgates. And we might be the greatest recovery

story in history. But there’s no other

way than that. People listen

to me and walk. In my ways. It’s not going to

happen. If there’s a famine of the hearing

of the Word of God. Pray that the word, as Paul said, would

have free course. And that it would run with all its power

across this land, with all its beauty

and magnificence, all its power and grace, that people would hear and believe and be saved and be obedient all that

to the glory of God. I don’t know what

God’s plan is. I just see here,

what is hard is that my people

would listen to me. That’s the heart of God. And we end with that word of encouragement

there from Dr. John MacArthur during

these last two days on Dr. James Dobson

family talk. They’re really we do pray that you

will seek out God more earnestly

and a beseech him on behalf of

our nation, Hulu. And there is great

encouragement and the hope that

he offered in the end of his message, there is redemption

through Jesus Christ. If we come to

him in prayer, asking for forgiveness and falling on our faces

in repentance. And as Dr. MacArthur

said, if we do that, the Lord will quickly

subdue our enemies. Even the people who hate God would pretend

to obey Him. And that is a

wonderful prompt. And that is our

prayer today, on this 60 first

National Day of Prayer is that our nation would truly repent

before God. Christians included

as we asked him to save our great nation and restore himself to us. Now some 3312 says, bless it is the nation

whose God is the Lord. And we will be blessed

if we turn to Him. Amen Luann, thank you all for listening

and God bless, and we’ll see you

again next time for another edition of Dr. James Dobson family talk.

many interventions for autism have been developed, effective
approaches to improving social adaptation and quality of life
remain challenging. The integration of Chinese cultural elements,
especially clothing design, may provide new ideas for the reha-
bilitation of autistic youth.
Subjects and Methods. The study included 30 autistic young
people aged 18-25, who were randomly divided into the experi-
mental group and the control group with 15 people each. The
experimental group received 12 weeks of Chinese element cos-
tume design adjuvant therapy, including traditional costume
making and cultural learning. The control group received social
skills training. Stress response and cognitive status were evaluated
with SASRQ and 3D-CAM. SPSS23.0 statistical analysis and
independent sample T-test were used to compare the differences
between the two groups.
Results. After treatment, the scores of the Stanford acute stress
response questionnaire in the experimental group were signifi-
cantly lower than those in the control group (P<0.05), indicating that their stress response had been alleviated to some extent. On the 3-minute disorder assessment scale, the cognitive status score of the experimental groupwas also significantly better than that of the control group (P < 0.05), indicating that the cognitive function had improved. Conclusions. Chinese element clothing design assisted therapy actively reduces stress response and enhances cognitive state. Traditional costume design and cultural learning improve emo- tional management and cognition. Innovative psychological intervention supports the comprehensive treatment of autism, and cultural integration therapy is supported by empirical evi- dence.

Cognitive impairment analysis of
public health emergencies from
cognitive psychology perspective

Jing Yan

Qujing Medical College, Qujing 655011, China

Background. Public health emergencies (such as epidemics, nat-
ural disasters and chemical accidents) have aroused widespread
concern in society, threatening physical health and affecting
mental health and cognitive function. Despite concerns about
these effects, the cognitive impairment of the masses during such
events remains unclear. Cognitive psychology studies individual
thinking, perception, learning, etc., and provides a useful frame-
work for analyzing the impact of emergencies on mass cognitive
function.
Subjects and Methods. The Stanford Acute Stress Response
Questionnaire (SASRQ) and 3-minute Disorder Assessment
Scale (3D-CAM) were used to study the effects of emergency
events on cognitive function. 500 participants were randomly
selected and divided into an exposed group and a non-exposed
group. The exposed group received cognitive tests after the event,
while the non-exposed group was tested at the same time as the
control group.

Results. The SASRQ scores of the emergency exposure group
showed a significant increase in cognitive stress (P<0.05). The cognitive confusion in the exposed group was significantly higher than that in the non-exposed group (P<0.01). SPSS23.0 statistical analysis confirmed the significance of these differences. Conclusions. Studies have shown that public health emergencies can negatively impact cognitive function in the population, including increased cognitive stress and confusion. This high- lights the importance of cognitive psychology in understanding and responding to the impact of unexpected events on individual cognition. In the future, more attention should be paid to the psychological cognitive state of the masses to better meet the challenges of public health emergencies.

Motivational interviews in health
education management on
adolescent depression reduction

Zhengzhou Zhu1, Youchun Shen2 and Erkang Zhu3*

1Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China, 2Wuhan Xinhe Street
School, Wuhan 430061, China and 3Ningbo University, Ningbo 315210, China
*Corresponding author.

Background. Adolescent depression presents a problem that
cannot be ignored in modern society. Motivational interviews
for planned health education management are considered a
potential intervention method to address this issue.
Subjects and Methods. The study selected adolescent students
from several schools as the research subjects and divided them
into an experimental group and a control group. The experimen-
tal group received motivational interviews on planned health
education management, including individual interviews and
group discussions; The control group continued to receive rou-
tine health education. To clarify the grouping, we used a random
samplingmethod to randomly assign students to two groups. The
study collected depression scores and mental health question-
naire survey data from adolescents as research indicators and
used Stata statistical software for data processing and analysis.
Results. In the experimental results, the depression scores of the
experimental group students were significantly reduced. The
depression score of the experimental group students decreased
from the initial 25.6 to 18.9, while the depression score of the
control group students decreased from the initial 26.3 to 24.5. The
results of Stata statistical software showed that the difference
between the experimental group and the control group was
statistically significant.
Conclusions. The research results indicate that motivational
interviews in planned health education management have a pos-
itive effect on adolescent depression. Motivational interviews
such as individual interviews and group discussions can signifi-
cantly reduce adolescent depression scores and help alleviate their
depressive symptoms.

S140 Abstracts

Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction
prohibited without permission.

• Motivational interviews in health education management on adolescent depression reduction
• Landscape design and the therapeutic effect of haloperidol on BD

Malays J Med Sci. 2023;30(3):42–59

www.mjms.usm.my © Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia, 2023
This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

42

To cite this article: Sherif Y, Azman AZF, Awang H, Mokhtar SA, Mohammadzadeh M, Alimuddin AS. Effectivenes

s

of life skills intervention on depression, anxiety and stress among children and adolescents: a systematic review.
Malays J Med Sci. 2023;30(3):42–59. https://doi.org/10.21315/mjms2023.30.3.4

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.21315/mjms2023.30.3.4

Abstract
Children and adolescents are at a significantly high risk of mental health problems

during their lifetime, among which are depression and anxiety, which are the most common.
Life skills education is one of the intervention programmes designed to improve mental well-
being and strengthen their ability to cope with the daily stresses of life. This review aimed to
identify and evaluate the effect of life skills intervention on the reduction of depression, anxiety
and stress among children and adolescents. Following the Population, Intervention, Compariso

n

and Outcome (PICO) model and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews an

d

Meta-analyses (PRISMA) 2009 checklist, eight databases (Academic Search Complete, CINAHL,
Cochrane, MEDLINE, Psychology and Behavioural Sciences Collection, PubMed, Scopus and Web
of Science) were systematically reviewed from 2012 to 2020. The search was limited to English
papers only. It included published experimental and quasi-experimental studies addressing
the effect of life skills interventions on the reduction of at least one of the following mental
health disorders: depression, anxiety and stress among children and adolescents (from the age
of 5 years old to 18 years old). We used the Joanna Briggs Institute checklist for experimental
and quasi-experimental studies to evaluate the quality of the included studies. This study was
registered in PROSPERO [CRD42021256603]. The search identified only 10 studies (three
experimental and seven quasi-experimental) from 2,160 articles. The number of the participants
was 6,714 aged between 10 years old and 19 years old. Three studies in this review focused on
depression and anxiety, whereas one study investigated depression and the other anxiety. Three
studies targeted only stress and two examined the three outcomes, namely, depression, anxiety
and stress. Almost in all studies, the life skills intervention positively impacted mental disorders,
considering the differences among males and females. The overall methodological quality of the
findings was deemed to be moderate to high. Our results clearly indicated the advantages of life
skills programmes among adolescents in different settings and contexts. Nonetheless, the results
highlight some important policy implications by emphasising the crucial roles of developers and

Effectiveness of Life Skills Intervention
on Depression, Anxiety and Stress
among Children and Adolescents:
A Systematic Review

Yosra Sherif1, Ahmad Zaid Fattah AzmAn1, Hamidin AwAng2,
Siti Aisha mokhtAr1, Marjan mohAmmAdzAdeh3, Aisha Siddiqah
Alimuddin4

1 Department of Community Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences,
Universiti Putra Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia

2 Psychiatry Unit, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Sains
Islam Malaysia, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia

3 Institute of Health and Nursing Sciences, Charité-Universitätsmedizin
Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-
Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, German

y

4 Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences,
Universiti Putra Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia

Submitted: 15 Oct 202

1

Accepted: 3 Feb 2022
Online: 27 Jun 2023

Review Article

https://doi.org/10.21315/mjms2023.30.3.4

https://doi.org/10.21315/mjms2023.30.3.4

www.mjms.usm.my 43

Review Article | Effectiveness of life skills intervention

stage youth and the 15th and 6th in early-stage
adolescents, respectively (12). Moreover, these
disorders could have a long-term and repeating
effect and are more likely to co-occur together up
to 50% (4, 11). Depression is the primary cause
of disability-adjusted life years lost in teenagers
worldwide. It occurs in 2%–8% of children and
adolescents, with the highest prevalence during
puberty. Of the affected individuals, around 40%
experience repeated episodes and approximately
33% think about suicide, with 3% to 4% actually
committing it (13, 14).

Meanwhile, 1 in 10 young individuals
suffers from anxiety disorders before reaching
the age of 16 (15). According to the World Health
Organization (WHO), the prevalence of this
disorder was between 5.7% and 17.7% in children
and adolescents (16). Similarly, stress is a mental
health condition that negatively impacts people’s
lives. During adolescence, the susceptibility to
stress is highly increased, adversely affecting
individuals’ psychological and physical well-
being (17).

Prevention is one strategy to reduce
the burden of these illnesses, which can be
categorised as either universal or targeted
programmes (11). It is necessary to address
these disorders by implementing educational
programmes targeting diverse children and
teenagers to introduce and reinforce essential
knowledge and skills in mental well-being
(18). School is a suitable atmosphere for
targeting adolescents. It demonstrates the most
effective social settings that can help students
practice cognitive and social skills as they
spend a significant amount of their time there.
Furthermore, it offers intervention opportunities
with the support of social relationships. School-
based mental health programmes can reduce and
alleviate many common barriers to treatment
in the community, such as cost, location, time,
transportation and stigmatisation, by offering
alternatives that are of low cost, have high
utilisation levels, are convenient and non-
threatening (19, 11, 20, 21). School plays a vital
role in identifying those with symptomatic and
those at risk of becoming symptomatic (11).

Introduction

One of the growing public health issues
among children and adolescents is mental
disorders (1), which is recognised as a priority
topic for more research and government
intervention (2). It is estimated that 10% to
20% of children and adolescents globally
have experienced mental health problems.
Furthermore, a more significant proportion
of mental health problems has been observed
for specific subgroups of teenagers, those with
socioeconomically disadvantaged positions
and those who lack appropriate health or social
services, are identified as minority ethnic groups
and live in more rural or distant locations (2–4).

In Europe and the USA, mental illnesses
account for most disability-adjusted life years
among children between 5 years old and
14 years old (5). The findings from previous
research indicated that anxiety and depression
are common among children aged 8 years
old–12 years old, with reported prevalence
rates of approximately 2% and 5%, respectively
(6). Moreover, adolescence is a sensitive and
crucial stage for development from childhood
to adulthood (7). Multiple physical, emotional
and social changes occur during this formative
time of adolescence (8). These changes can
make adolescents vulnerable to mental health
problems and nearly half of these problems begin
before the age of 14 (9). Mental health conditions
account for 16% of the global burden of disease
and injury among adolescents (8). Furthermore,
these problems have been demonstrated to
increase the risk of adverse consequences,
such as impairment, lack of productivity and
ability to contribute to society, low educational
performance and increased probability of
exhibiting risky behaviours, such as alcoholism
and sexual, and suicidal behaviours (10).

Anxiety and depression are the most
prevalent mental health conditions during
the early life (11). These disorders commonly
emerge during childhood and adolescence but
might continue until adulthood if left untreated.
Depression and anxiety are the 4th and 9th
leading causes of illness and disability in late-

policymakers in the implementation of appropriate modules and activities. Further research
examining life skills intervention with a cultural, gender perspective, age-appropriate and long-
term effect is recommended.

Keywords: mental health, depression, anxiety, stress, children, adolescent, life skills

Malays J Med Sci. 2023;30(3):42–59

www.mjms.usm.my44

a person (an individual with a collection of
previous experiences), their environment
(the external social circumstances) and their
behaviour (responses to stimuli to achieve goals)
(26–28).

Life skills education includes activities
that support critical and creative thinking,
coping with emotions and stress, self-awareness
and empathy, decision-making and problem-
solving, communication skills and interpersonal
relations (25). Life skills education has been
used in different countries and targets different
health outcomes, such as improvement and
promotion of mental (25, 29), psychosocial
(30), and physical health and prevention of
acquired immunodeficiency syndrome AIDS (31),
substance abuse (32) and teenage pregnancy
(22, 33). Thus, life skills education has been
established for preventive measures, promoting
healthy positive behaviour, and strengthening
communication and socialisation skills.

Therefore, this systematic review aimed
to provide an overview and summarise the
available literature about the effect of life skills
programmes on the reduction of depression,
anxiety and stress among children and
adolescents. In addition, it would provide
good insight into the appropriate approach for
implementing the accurate methods. Following
the PICO model, the main review question of the
current systematic review is as follows: What is
the effect of life skills intervention on depression,
anxiety and stress levels among children and
adolescents (5 years old–18 years old of age)?

Life skills education is an organised
educational programme designed to improve
children and adolescents’ skills and abilities,
enabling them to deal more effectively with the
daily demands of life (22, 23). It also aims to
improve mental health and boost the positive
and adaptive behaviours of the target individuals
(24). According to the WHO, life skills are
generally defined as ‘abilities for adaptive and
positive behaviour that enables individuals
to deal effectively with the demands and
challenges of everyday life’ (25). The theoretical
foundation of the life skills programme is based
on the social learning theory developed by
Albert Bandura in 1977 (24, 25). He stated that
people learn through observational learning,
imitation and modelling. Bandura introduced
the term ‘observational learning’ and defined
the components of appropriate observational
learning as attention, retention, reproduction
and motivation (Figure 1).

He posited that individuals observe and
copy the behaviour of others in their social
worlds and develop an idea of how new actions
are performed. This recorded information
serves as a guide for action on subsequent
occasions. His explanation on observational
learning enables an individual to rapidly gather
knowledge by observing and imitating models
found in his/her environment. Then, in 1986,
Bandura highlighted the cognitive aspects of
observational learning, and manner, behaviour,
cognition and environment interact to shape
individuals. He introduced the principle of the
dynamic and reciprocal relationship between

• Ability to reproduce and replicate the observed behaviour. Learn from observations by
recreating and reconstructing the memories

• Ability to be motivated and imitate the behaviour with important role of “reinforcement and
punishment”. If a viewer is rewarded for the observed behaviour, they will be more motivated
to replicate it later. If it is punished behaviour, they will be less motivated to replicate it.

• Ability to store and retain information. Remembering observed material in order to recall
and rebuild it afterwards correctly.

• Paying attention to the model. Individual may choose to observe real-world models or
models in media.

Attention

Retention

Reproduction

Motivation

Figure 1. Schematic outline of observational learning and modelling process in social learning theory
Source: Nabavi (27)

www.mjms.usm.my 45

Review Article | Effectiveness of life skills intervention

Data Collection and Analysis

All citations were uploaded into the
Mendeley software and duplicated studies were
removed. Two reviewers screened the titles,
abstracts, and, finally, full texts based on the
inclusion criteria. Disagreements were resolved
through a discussion between the two reviewers.
If the disagreement remained, a third person was
available to arbitrate.

Data Extraction and Management

Two reviewers independently collected
the standardised data extraction forms. The
information extracted included the following:
first author, year of publication, country,
study design (RCT or non-RCT), participant’s
age, sample size, instrument, intervention
characteristics and findings.

Quality Appraisal

Two independent reviewers used the
Critical Appraisal Checklist for RCTs and Quasi-
Experimental studies developed by the Joanna
Briggs Institute (JBI) (35) to evaluate the risk
of bias for the eligible studies. In addition, they
calculated the overall risk score based on the
number of items checked for each evaluation.
The purpose of this appraisal was to assess
the methodological quality and determine the
possibility of bias in the study design, conduct
and analysis. Any disagreement between the
reviewers was addressed by discussion.

The instruments consisted of 13 and
9 questions for the RCTs checklist and the
quasi-experimental checklist, respectively.
These questions were answerable by ‘yes,’ ‘no,’
‘unclear,’ or ‘not applicable.’ The appraisal score
represented the percentage of (yes) responses
from the total number of questions. At least 50%
of the ‘yes’ scores on the JBI critical evaluation
instruments were used as the cut-off point for
inclusion in the RCT and quasi-experimental
trial review (36). When a criterion was ‘not
reported,’ it was considered as ‘unclear’ and
treated as a ‘no’ response. If a measure did
not apply (N/A) to the study, that item was not
counted in the total number of criteria (37).

Results

Study Selection

According to the PRISMA diagram
(Figure 2), a total of 2,160 articles were identified
in the initial database search. After removing the

Methods

The current systematic review and the
bibliometric study were conducted by following
the ‘PRISMA’ 2009 checklist (34). The protocol
of this systematic review was registered in the
International Prospective Register of Systematic
Reviews (PROSPERO) (registration number:
CRD42021256603).

Literature Search and Eligibility Criteria

A comprehensive search was initially
conducted on eight electronic databases, namely,
Academic Search Complete, CINAHL, Cochrane
Library, MEDLINE, Psychology and Behavioural
Sciences Collection, PubMed, Scopus and Web
of Science. The following keywords were used
in the search: Population: (Children OR child
OR adolescents OR youth OR young OR teen
OR teenage OR young people OR young adult),
Intervention: AND (‘life skills’), Outcome: AND
(‘mental disorders’ OR ‘mental health’ OR
‘internalising problems’ OR ‘emotional problems’
OR ‘anxiety disorders’ OR ‘depressive disorders’
OR ‘depression’ OR ‘stress’ OR ‘anxiety’ OR
‘Psychological stress’ OR ‘Life Stress’ OR
‘emotional stress’). Only databases from 2012 to
2020 were searched. The literature was limited
to the English language due to the expected
translation problem. The detailed search strategy
of the electronic databases is illustrated in the
supplementary table (Table S1).

The inclusion criteria were as follows:
i) participants were children or adolescents
with ages between 5 years old and 18 years old;
ii) intervention was the life skills programme;
iii) life skills intervention groups compared
with either school-as usual control groups,
waitlist control groups or other educational
interventions or no control groups; iv) the
studies reported at least one mental health
outcome, either depression, anxiety and stress,
at baseline and post-intervention at a minimum;
v) randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and non-
randomised controlled trials (non-RCT), such
as quasi-experimental and pre-post studies
design. Studies were excluded if: i) the studies
evaluated drug and alcohol use, physical and
sexual activities, and nutritional interventions;
ii) non-English studies and iii) non-experimental
studies, such as observational (e.g. cross-
sectional, case-control and cohort studies) and
qualitative ones.

Malays J Med Sci. 2023;30(3):42–59

www.mjms.usm.my46

Participants’ Characteristics

The total number of participants in the
included studies was 6,714 with varying sample
sizes from 40 adolescents in Australia (46) to
2,522 in Taiwan (38). Most studies recruited
individuals from schools, one in Malaysia from
orphanages (29) and one in Iran from paediatric
hospitals (40). The age range in all studies was
10 years old–19 years old; however, no research
was conducted among children. Both gender,
males and females, participated in most studies,
only one study was conducted among boys (43)
and another one among girls (41).

Intervention Characteristics

All studies in this review investigated
the effect of life skills intervention on the
reduction of depression, anxiety and stress
among adolescents (Table 2). Three studies
targeted only stress (39, 42, 43), and one study

duplicates, 1,231 articles were further examined,
of which 1,136 were excluded during the title and
abstract screening. A total of 18 full-text articles
were left for eligibility assessment. Finally,
10 articles were found to meet the eligibility
criteria.

Study Characteristics

Detailed information about the authors,
year of publication, countries, study design,
sample size, participants, instrument,
intervention characteristics, findings and
summary of the results is provided in Table 1.
The studies included in the review were seven
quasi-experimental ones and three were RCTs.
All the included studies were conducted in seven
different countries: one study in Malaysia (29);
one study in Taiwan (38); three studies in Iran
(39–41); two studies in India (42, 43); one study
in Uganda (44); one study in Kenya (45) and one
study in Australia (46).

Id
en

ti
fic

at
io

n
Sc

re
en

in

g

In
cl

ud

ed

E
lig

ib
ili

ty

Record identified through systematic
searching on electronic databases

between 2012 and 2020
n = 2160

Records after duplicates
removed
n = 1231

Duplicates excluded
n = 929

Excluded after title and
abstract Screening

n = 1136

Excluded after full text screening (n = 77

)

• Fail to meet the criteria

Excluded full text (n =

8)

• Fail to meet the criteria

Records screened on title
and abstract

n = 95

Full-text articles assessed
for eligibility

n = 18

Total records analysed
n = 10

Figure 2. Prisma flow diagram of the selected articles

www.mjms.usm.my 47

Review Article | Effectiveness of life skills intervention

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(1
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%
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cM

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d

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2
01

8
(4

4)
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ga
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xp
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(p

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up

62
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st
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ts

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ge

d
13

y
ea

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18
y

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17
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st
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t p

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te

rv
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pa

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at

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Sc
ho

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ac
he

rs
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h

(8
8%

)

R
oy

e
t a

l.,
2

01
6

(4
3)

In
di

a
In

te
rv

en
ti

on
s

tu
dy

(p

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t-

fo
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w
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42

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do

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sc

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m
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(S

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38

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5)

ye
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d
Sc

ho
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es

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od

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e
(6

6%
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N
de

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t a
l.,

2
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9
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5)
K

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ya

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te

rv
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(p

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t-

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w
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2,

27
3

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1,

07
5

co
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fo
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9
m

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fr

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1

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ye

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to
1

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ye

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d

Sc
ho

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Tr

ai
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te

ac
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rs
M

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er

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M
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m

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ur

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be

ri
, 2

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8

(4
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Ir
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q

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ta

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12

0
Ir

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ia

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ad

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es

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nt

c
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r

pa
ti

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ts

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ge

d
9

ye
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d–
18

y
ea

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ld
H

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pi

ta
l

C
lin

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al

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st
M

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er

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e

(7
7%

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E
sl

am
i e

t a
l.,

2
01

6

(4
1)

Ir
an

A
q

ua
si

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xp

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ta

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dy
12

6
fe

m
al

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st

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ts
, t

he
m

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e

gr
ou

p

w

as

16
y

ea
rs

o
ld

Sc
ho

ol
R

es
ea

rc
he