WORLDVIEW OVERVIEW: PLAYING MAKE-BELIEVE

 

  WORLDVIEW OVERVIEW: PLAYING MAKE-BELIEVE

 

We judge a worldview as we do a roadmap, by its correspondence with reality. If it doesn’t correspond, then it fails to serve as a reliable roadmap for our lives. Consequently, it will not take us where we need to go. Therefore, we ask, “Is it livable?” Here are some thoughts that I hope will demonstrate that materialism (the belief that there is nothing beyond the material world) is not livable: (Definitions)

·        In a materialistic/deterministic/atheistic universe, there is no room for freewill. Therefore, the materialist must make-believe that he has the freewill to make freewill choices.

 

·        The materialist makes moral judgments but lacks an objective standard to make objective moral judgments. Therefore, he plays make-believe.

 

·        The materialist wants to believe that love has meaning and purpose in his materialistic world, but if these are no more than biochemical reactions, he again must play make-believe that there is something transcendent about his feelings, even worth dying for.

 

·        He wants to live according to his conscience, but if the conscience is no more than material, biochemical reactions, why bother!

 

·        He claims that we do not have to believe in God to be good. However, he doesn’t believe that the “good” is anything more than an evolving social convention. So he makes believe.

 

·        He wants to believe in human equality and the equality of all under the law. However, the materialist is unable to make a case for equality, since materialistically, there is no equality, and we are all different. Therefore, he has no choice but to play make-believe.

 

·        He wants to hold to human primacy over the mosquito and the COVID virus. However, the materialist lacks any coherent basis to value man over the mosquito. Again, he plays make-believe.

 

·        He knows that humanity must distinguish justice from injustice. However, for the materialist, these entities do not exist in his “uncaring and evolving materialistic universe.” Therefore, he makes believe that they do exist.

 

·        He talks about human rights as if they objectively exist but has no basis to believe that they exist anymore than mosquito rights. Therefore, he makes-believe that they do exist.

 

·        His psychology craves for meaning and purpose, which are non-existent in a materialistic meaningless world. He might create them for himself, but he doesn’t fully realize that He is playing make-believe.

 

 

 

SUPERIORITY OF THE CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW

 

COHERENT WORLDVIEW = Conforms to lived reality and navigate through it.

 

Transcendent God vs. Materialistic Determinism?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If

 

Atheist Philosopher Daniel Dennett: …”free will, in their view, is obviously incompatible with naturalism, with determinism, and very likely incoherent against any [materialistic] background, so they cheerfully insist that, of course, they don't have free will, [and] couldn’t have free will, but so what?”

 

PROBLEMS:

·       Sam Harris: Denies freewill but claims that we must play make-believe.

·       Denial of Reason: All thinking formulaic and pre-programmed

·       Wet Machines (Totally dominated!)

·       No Accountability, Responsibility, Praise, Guilt, Innocence, Relationship

·       No Adequate Basis for Criminal Justice System and Punishment

·       Contradicts our experience and intuitions (Existence)

·       Demeans humanity. Psychologist James Hillman: “We dull our lives by the way we conceive then…By accepting the idea that I am the effect of…hereditary and social forces, I reduce myself to a result. The more my life is accounted for by what already occurred in my chromosomes, by what my parents did or didn’t do, and by my early years now long past, the more my biography is the story of a victim. I am living a plot written by my genetic code, ancestral heredity, traumatic occasions, parental unconsciousness, societal accidents.” (The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, Random House, 6)

·       Cannot live according to determinism. Inevitable Self-contradiction (Belief x Life) “Johnny, you bullied Peter because you were biologically determined to do so!” à Find new paradigm or play Make-Believe!

 

 

Human Primacy: Greatest Worth (Anthropocentrism vs. Biocentrism )   1.    Science cannot establish a value! (What is, not what should be!; Hume) or   2.    Feelings/Intuition? (If purely biochemistry = Fire Alarm sounding when no real fire)   3.    GodConscience = Obj. Moral intuitions

 

Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

·       Pragmatic Borrowing? (Ted Bundy)

 

Philosopher F. Nietzsche: “They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to the Christian morality… When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet. (Twilight of the Idols)

 

BIOCENTRISM: Among life-forms, we cannot say that one is more valuable.

Howard J. Moore: The supposed psychical gulf between human and non-human beings has no more existence, outside the flamboyant imagination of man, than has the once-supposed physical gulf. It is pure fiction. The supposition is a relic of the rapidly dwindling vanity of anthropocentrism, and is perpetuated from age to age by human selfishness and conceit. It has no foundation either in science or in common-sense. Man strives to lessen his guilt by the laudation of himself and the disparagement and degradation of his victims. (The Universal Kinship. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co. 1906).

 

Paul Watson: My perspective is biocentric, whereas most of humanity looks on reality from an anthropocentric point of view. I do not expect the anthropocentric mind to understand my position. My position is that a human life is not more important than the life of a gorilla or a whale. (Why not also a mosquito or COVID virus?)

 

·       Science cannot determine values (what should be) but what is! But science can serve our values. (Avoid pain) Values, Desires > Pragmatic Considerations

·       Chaos—Our laws would have to equally protect all life forms

·       “Common-sense?” (Subjective Biochemical Materialism, Not Principled)

·       Laws must protect termites as well as humans

·       Make-Believe after God is Rejected

 

NON-BIBLICAL ANTHROPOCENTRISM: “The individual, cultural, and technological skills of humans are among the attributes that make our species, Homo sapiens, special and different. The qualities of humans have empowered the species to a degree that no other species has achieved during the history of life on Earth, through the development of social systems and technologies that make possible an intense exploitation and management of the environment.”

 

PROBLEMS:

·       No basis for values—not love, skills, development!

·       Anthropocentric bias!

·       Inconsistent with other values (Human Equality)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PROBLEMS:

·       No physical basis

·       Pragmatism inadequate (UPR—Borrowing, Hypocrisy!)?

·       Pragmatism unable to retain objective values (Nepotism, CRT)

·       Division, Suspicion, Intolerance (Roebling)

·       Nietzsche: No Christian GodàNo Christian Values

·       “Human Equality” must be protected by religion. Pragmatic considerations secondary

·       Otherwise—Playing Make-Believe

 

Human Rights   Sanctity of Life (God) or Quality of Life (Man)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Genesis 9:5–6 “…From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.’”

 

Preamble - Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." (Deist)

 

PROBLEMS:

·       Arbitrary (QL)

·       Rejection of God: (Sanctity of Life) replaced by  Quality-of-Life (QL)

·       “Professionals” and gov. determine QL à euthanasia; abortion

·       Slippery Slope

·       If HR come from government, government can retract.

·       Dignity of Humanity

·       Materialism - Wet Machines

·       Disposable

·       Denial (Communism, Totalitarianism) or Play Make-Believe

 

Atheist, humanist author of the Humanist Manifesto II, Paul Kurtz, maintained that pragmatism [not divine moral principles] is the only possible justification for morality:

·       How are these [moral] principles to be justified? They are not derived from a divine or natural law nor do they have a special metaphysical [beyond the material world] status. They are rules offered [by people] to govern how we shall behave. They can be justified only by reference to their results [costs/benefits]. (Preamble)

 

PROBLEMS:

·       Pragmatism always governed human history and its horrors

·       RESULTS—for whom? Ted Bundy

·       Personal benefits/cost analysis, generally governed by Selfishness (Pragmatism is enlisted in service to values/desires.)

·       No Objective Moral Judgments (Hitler, Stalin)

·       “This is just the way I feel. I have not done wrong!”

·       No Resolution of Conflict through Appeal to Obj. Principles

·       Playing Make-Believe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Karen Wright: “Eudemonia refers to a state of well-being and full functioning that derives from a sense of living in accordance with one’s deeply held values.” (Psychology Today, May 2008, 76)

·       PROBLEM: But how can we have deeply held values by just creating them? Can we take them seriously? We take the laws of science seriously because we know we didn’t create them. Instead, we regard them as reality!

 

Atheist Richard Dawkins: "They say to me, how can you bear to be alive if everything is so cold and empty and pointless? Well, at an academic level I think it is - but that doesn't mean you can live your life like that. One answer is that I feel privileged to be allowed to understand why the world exists, and why I exist, and I want to share it with other people."   

 

PROBLEMS:

·       Schizoid—Truth vs. Personal Beliefs/Feelings.

·       Internal Struggle; Lack of Integration

·       Self-Obsessed to resolve struggle --> Confusion -->

·       Hopelessness—No relief from tyranny of our changing feelings.

·       Not always feel that way. Nothing to provide stability and purpose.

·       No Eudemonia/No Deeply Held Beliefs-->Instability

·       Playing Make-Believe! Nietzsche: “If you have a “why” to live for, you can bear almost any setback.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Psalm 51:6 Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

 

PROBLEMS:

·       No Evidence

·       False Religious Claims—“Christians anti-Science)”—Minds are closed

o   British scientist Robert Clark: "However we may interpret the fact, scientific development has only occurred in Christian culture. The ancients had brains as good as ours. In all civilizations—Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, India, Rome, Persia, China and so on—science developed to a certain point and then stopped. It is easy to argue speculatively that, perhaps, science might have been able to develop in the absence of Christianity, but in fact, it never did. And no wonder. For the non-Christian world believed that there was something ethically wrong about science. In Greece, this conviction was enshrined in the legend of Prometheus, the fire-bearer and prototype scientist who stole fire from heaven, thus incurring the wrath of the gods." (Christian Belief and Science, quoted by Henry F. Schaefer, 14)

·       Materialism cannot account for design. (DNA)

·       Laws of science--Transcendent

·       Must play make-believe that there exists an undiscovered naturalistic explanation.

 

 

 

 

 

·       Psychiatrist Edward Hallowell: The sum of our meaningful connections [to people and groups] is…the key to emotional health and the surest protection we have against the psychological ravages of worry.” (Worry, 26)

 

PROBLEMS:

·       True, but expecting too much from others—co-dependency

·       Refusal to accept the limitations of others

·       Resentment, Disappointment

·       Only God can rescue us” Matthew 11:28–30 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

 

 

 

 

 

In Noonday Demon, Andrew Solomon wrote about his struggles with depression, but was discouraged about the hope–-a sense of humor—he offers:

 

·       Of course, it can be hard to sustain a sense of humor during an experience that is really not so funny. It is urgently necessary to do so…Whatever time is eaten by a depression is gone forever. The minutes that are ticking by as you experience the illness are minutes that you will not know again. No matter how bad you feel you have to do everything you can to keep living, even if all you can do for the moment is breathe. Wait it out and occupy the time of waiting as fully as you can. That’s my big piece of advice to depressed people.

 

PROBLEMS:

·       Self-Hope --> More anxiety/depression—Can’t lift ourselves of ground by pulling our legs up

·       Positive Affirmations = A drug that requires increasingly greater doses

·       Self-Absorption

·       Need to look beyond ourselves to the One Hope that guarantees to never fail!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

·       Subjective—Can you take your own private opinions seriously?

·       Denial of Relationship

·       Self-Deception

·       Self-Love = Narcissistic:

·       Arthur C. Brooks:  A 2010 study in the Journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that the percentage of college students exhibiting narcissistic personality traits, based on their scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, a widely used diagnostic test, has increased by more than half since the early 1980s, to 30 percent. 

 

·       This is a costly problem. While full-blown narcissists often report high levels of personal satisfaction, they create havoc and misery around them. There is overwhelming evidence linking narcissism with lower honesty and raised aggression. It’s notable for Valentine’s Day that narcissists struggle to stay committed to romantic partners, in no small part because they consider themselves superior.

 

Thankfulness

 

Positive Psychology: Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky

·       One way to do this is with a “gratitude journal” in which you write down three to five things for which you are currently thankful – from mundane (your peonies are in bloom) to the magnificent (a child’s first steps). Do this once a week, say, on Sunday night. Keep it fresh by varying your entries as much as possible. (Time)

 

PROBLEMS:

·       Focus on Feelings

·       Death

·       Denial of Reality (Suffering)

·       Make-Believe! Thankful to God, the One who addresses all our problems, even death.

 

PROOF OF GOD   We cannot live without Him!

 

1.     Parsimonious (Simplicity) = Only one leap-of-faith!

2.     Adequate Causal Foundation – Omnipotence

3.     Supremely Beneficial/Pragmatic—

4.     Reason: We bet on a solution which promises maximal returns for the least investment.

5.     Provides viable worldview = Roadmap

6.     Already know God—Ubiquitous Design, Conscience, Guilt, Shame.

7.     Denial of God--> Endless Internal Conflict

8.     To reject God is to reject our nature and needs (Meaning, Purpose, Eudemonia, Hope, Love…)

 

ANSWERING ATHEISTS

Prove God!

 

All of the discussions with atheists devolve into the demands for proofs of God. You might therefore respond:

We are surrounded by the proofs of God. Everything is designed from the smallest atom and strand of DNA to life, the elegant laws of science, the fine-tuning of the cosmos, consciousness and freewill. If you are unwilling to acknowledge what your eyes tell you or what science has revealed, then my flimsy words and proofs will make no difference to you.

In contrast, we find no example of non-design (naturalism). Nor is there any evidence that anything has ever been naturally caused. Nevertheless, naturalism is the reigning god in the classroom and laboratory.

 

Those who attempt to find fault with God need to demonstrate how He has fallen short of an objective moral law. However, there is no basis for objective moral laws without God. Instead, we are limited to merely charging that “God has violated my moral preferences.”

 

I want a scientific proof that God exists!

 

If science is a matter of systematic observations, then science is also dependent upon observations in general. As the foundation buttresses the house, so do observations support science.

 

Since everything has the appearance of design, whether, molecules, proteins, or DNA, then science must endorse the validity of these observations, lest the foundation of science is pulled out from beneath its entire enterprise.

 

Interestingly, no chemicals, atoms, or substances have the appearance of non-design. I think this says something, even from the voice of science.