I had an atheist friend who believed in materialism, the
denial of any transcendent reality. I asked him why? He answered that by
believing that there was no freewill and absolute moral truths, he had no
reason to feel guilty for his behavior, since he had been materially programmed
to do whatever his biochemistry caused him to do. This had enabled him to
reduce his sense of guilt and shame.
He was probably unaware that many thinkers of the Enlightenment
also believed similarly. According to historian Richard Weikart, materialist
and Enlightenment figure, Julien La Mettrie:
·
recognized that if humans are machines, they
cannot be blamed for their behavior. He claimed this made it easier to live
with others. (The Death of Humanity)
La Mettrie had written:
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Lack of confidence in a friend and lack of
faithfulness in a wife or a mistress are only slight defects in humanity, and
even theft, seen with the same eyes, is a bad habit rather than a crime. Do you
know why I still have some respect for men? Because I seriously believe them to
be machines. If I believed the opposite hypothesis, I know few of them with
whom I would wish to associate. Materialism is the antidote to misanthropy.
(Weikart)
Is “Materialism the antidote to misanthropy?” Among
materialists, compassion is commonly based upon the idea that we are machines
who couldn’t have done otherwise. However, it is hard to maintain compassion
for a TV or even your car when they go on the blink. Our cars eventually find
their way into the junk yard, where their only value is derived from their
harvested parts.
Monists have found another basis for compassion in the
oneness of all humanity. However, this “compassion” also comes at a great price
- the denial of our personhood, an “illusion.” How then can compassion rest
upon a mere illusion! Instead, we are simply a part of one universal
consciousness, eternally conscious only of itself.
Is there not any other basis for respect and compassion?
Does it always require us to blind ourselves to the tangible reality of friends
and family?
Christianity needs not minimize or deny the marvel of
humanity. Instead, compassion is based on two foundations. We are created in
the likeness of our Creator and, therefore, bear His transcendent concern and
love. Secondly, we are all struggling, succumbing, and are in desperate need of
a healing relationship with one another, especially with our Savior.
However, La Mettrie was unable to apply his solution
consistently. Weikart wrote:
·
La Mettrie had utter disdain for any of his
fellow humans who were uneducated, whether because of mental disability or lack
of opportunity. In his view they were no better than animals. He told his
readers, “Only open wide your eyes . . .[and] you will be persuaded that the
imbecile and the fool are animals with human faces.”
Materialists exemplify the glaring gap between ideal and
actuality. Solutions that fail to accord with reality eventually become its
casualty. We cannot blind our eyes to what they see. Instead, we require
another basis for our respect and compassion for the disabled. We need to
borrow God’s eyes and ask, “How does God regard them?”
In their attempt to elevate humanity, many Enlightenment
thinkers inevitably brought humanity down:
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The historian Lester Crocker summarized it well,
saying that Holbach, Diderot, and Helvétius, as well as many other
Enlightenment thinkers, not only situated humans entirely within nature
[materialism], but thereby made humans cosmically unimportant. (Weikart)
It is inevitable that if we regard ourselves and humanity
solely as biochemical machines, we un-dignify ourselves. Consequently, we spend
our lives vainly seeking to reclaim our value through our accomplishments and
popularity.
Although Auguste Compte didn’t regard himself as a
materialist, his approach was materialistic:
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The only valid road to knowledge, he maintained,
was through scientific investigation, which would supplant not only religion
but all kinds of metaphysical speculation. Since science could not tell us
anything about God, religion, or metaphysics, they were outside the purview of
human knowledge. (Weikart)
Therefore, God must be dismissed from enlightened consideration.
This led to scientism, the unscientific belief that science was the only means
to knowledge. Why unscientific? It could not be scientifically verified.
Not only does materialism fail to keep in step with reality,
it dehumanizes and degrades our relationships:
·
While preaching universal altruism—a word he
[Compte] coined to describe benevolent feelings he considered innate—he could
not manage to get along with his parents, siblings, wife, or most other people.
His wife finally left him in 1842. (Weikart)
Materialistic idealism fails to pay the interpersonal bills.
While it superficially exalts virtue, it denies the possibility of objective
virtue in a purposeless material world. Unsurprisingly, the lives of many
idealists were hardly models of virtue:
·
Comte believed that a science of morality was
possible. He was convinced that humans were innately altruistic, and he hoped
that his philosophy would promote the betterment of humanity—indeed the worship
of Humanity. (Weikart)
Compte’s philosophy failed. While he preached the “Religion
of Man” and the goodness of altruism, he was unable to apply it:
·
“speaking in an absolute sense, there is nothing
good, there is nothing bad; the only absolute is that everything is relative.”
(Weikart)
If there is nothing good, how could Compte claim that
altruism is good! Weikart concluded that Compte, as were other materialists, had
been wildly inconsistent in his life and philosophy:
·
…he was more concerned with Humanity as a
collective entity than he was with specific individuals. (Weikart)
This is a common theme. Although Bertrand Russell wrote that
“the good life is characterized by love,” he also wrote that all of humanity
are “tiny parasites,” and it is hard to love those you demean as “parasites”:
·
Not only did he condemn “undesirable” parents to
second-class status, but he patronizingly called children of mentally disabled
(“feeble-minded”) women “wholly worthless to the community.” (Weikart)
Why the inconsistency? Once the ideal of serving the One who
created and loves us is rejected, the human must fulfill his ideal of being a “somebody”
in this vast universe in another higher meaning and purpose. However, they have
rejected the only possible Source. Therefore, the burden rests upon their own
shoulders to prove themselves worthy.
Karl Marx presented himself as a compassionate idealist.
However, he treated his own family as garbage. As a result:
·
Four [of his seven children by his wife] died in
childhood, probably from complications of malnourishment. Marx, the man who
united the workers, didn’t want to do much work himself preferring to pen a
manifesto and many, many defenses of his theory the world laughed at. Two of
the daughters who survived childhood died by their own hand in despair and
disillusion. https://ricochet.com/667975/archives/the-children-of-karl-marx/
Loving humankind but hating those closest seems to have been
a common theme among idealistic, materialistic intellectuals.
How can we explain this? What can explain the appeal of
materialism and their pursuit of often destructive and incoherent ideals:
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For his invisible attributes, namely, his
eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the
creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without
excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give
thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish
hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the
glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and
animals and creeping things (Materialism). (Romans 1:20–23)
The answer is the same for all of us: Turn from our false
hopes to the One who breathes meaning and clarity into all of our vain
strivings.
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