A Dialogue Between a Christian and a Secularist

*** Note: As this was originally a paper in an Apologetics class with a presuppositionalist professor, the reader will note the emphasis. But this was not just a bone thrown his way. Rather it is an expression of the latitude that a classicalist enjoys knowing that all truth — even effective methods of exploring truth employed within a system that might otherwise be wrongheaded — is God’s truth. That said, enjoy, free from suggested confusion.

Occasion

Rob: I had to reply to the blog you wrote yesterday entitled ‘Pluralism and its Purge.’

Matt: What about it?

R: Really? A purge? Amidst all the pain and suffering of sunny Florida now!

M: I don’t see how the sunshine down here is relevant. The fact is that there are more Christians throughout the world being persecuted today than ever before, and —

R: Yes, yes, yes, and the freedoms we still have left are “rapidly slipping away” and so on and so on. Yes we’ve heard all this before. 

M: Well, then, never mind predictions. Let’s talk presuppositions. 

R: Happy to. But how are you defining that word? 

M: By presupposition I only mean a belief that takes precedence over another, some of which are ultimate. At that ultimate level, they are commitments of the mind over which no other takes precedence. All of us have them in our worldview. These are our answers to the big questions: What is God or ultimate reality? Who are we or why are we here? How do we know? What is right and wrong? What is wrong with the world, and how can what is wrong be made right? 

R: As usual you ask questions like those as if science has not already settled them.

M: Then I will come back to whether those come first or else science. But I am assuming that you wanted to continue our conversation on which is better for the world — your secularism or my Christian faith — and I thought we should cut right to the chase to ask ourselves what are the necessary preconditions for such a “better world.” 

R: Then let me start with something I found very objectionable about your post. That is tolerance. If history has shown anything it is that Christianity has led the way in intolerance. Even you will have to admit this at some level. And please don’t bring in the greater numbers of death by totalitarian governments in the past century. Any atheist can oppose those. In fact, many have. 

M: I believe you that you consciously oppose totalitarian states. We have spent enough time together on political issues for me to know that. I wonder whether or not your resistance to them can be universal. After all there are many who opposed the communists who supported the fascists, and vice versa, even if this support was sometimes only for temporary expedience. 

R: Yes but you know that I oppose all statism in principle. And I would add to that list of statist regimes the medieval statism that I regard to be consistent Christianity, as well as that even more backward statism of consistent Islam. The issue is tolerance and an open society. No one said it better than Christopher Hitchens, that religion poisons everything. The fact that secular societies often ape the intolerance of religion is nothing more than the triumph of a neurotic impulse in the species that manifests itself in both church and state. It is a psychosis that is shared by the abusive husband, the playground bully, and the office control freak: that loathsome need to rule over others with an iron boot. And from this ugly persona you have made a “god” in your own image. I’d say Feuerbach and Freud got it right. 

M: Well that was certainly an impressive psychological profile of everyone who disagrees with you, but I don’t think it gets us any closer to which view can consistently justify tolerance. 

Tolerance

M: Then let me ask you this, How did you come to know that tolerance is a good thing? 

R: I knew it the first time I observed people being shouted down for expressing their opinions. And it was further confirmed in all those stories of Nazi Germany or even the Civil Rights movement in America — both instances of your so-called Christian morality coming to full bloom, by the way.  

M: I will challenge the factual nature of your assertions in a moment. But even if I grant that there were countless professing Christians acting hypocritically in those chapters of history, your burden remains. 

R: And what burden is that?

M: Showing what would have to be true for your morality to be true. What kind of a universe must exist for your moral judgments to have any teeth? 

R: Showing the conditions for tolerance is not my burden. Tolerance is itself a precondition for conversations like this. It is self-evident. Either you have tolerance or you don’t have civil discourse or scientific advancement.

M: Apparently it is not self-evident, on your view, to all those intolerant Christians! 

R: Precisely why Christianity has made itself such a nuisance to both civility and science.

M: But don’t you see that you haven’t answered the question. If I ask you why there should be tolerance, and you reply, “Because it is necessary to civility and science,” is it not plain that my next question will be: “Why should anyone care about civility and science?” From a strictly secular perspective, it is not clear why either of these are worthwhile pursuits. 

R: Now I think you are being dishonest. You and I both know that civilization and human knowledge are good things, and that what we call “civility” and “scientific inquiry” both require tolerance. Why are you plowing under a field we are both working?

M: You misunderstand my interest. I do not doubt that these are in fact good. What I doubt is whether you can justify why they are good. You have not been skeptical enough in your skepticism, and I am only commending to you a new level of doubt.  

R: Nothing you say to me is new. I know what you are doing. You are trying to back me into the dilemma of either affirming or denying objective morality. If I affirm it, then I am supposedly forced to let the supernatural back in. If I deny it, then I lose my right to make moral judgments. But why should I accept this dilemma in the way that you put it?

M: You know me too well — but there is a good reason to accept this dilemma. As a secularist you must reduce all things to this time and this place. For your worldview to make good on its claims, then the objective reason for any “way things ought to be” will be independent of any finite, personal perspective. No individual, nor any group, could justify a moral “ought.”

The Open Society and its Conditions

R: I am perfectly willing to deny that we need “God” to assert that an open society is worth defending — a society complete with civil discourse and free inquiry for the scientist. These are intrinsically good and they need no “God” or “gods.”

M: Very well — why should all people everywhere support or defend an open society?

R: They should do so because nothing else that they desire would be possible without it. It is the open society that functions as what you call the ultimate presupposition. 

M: I don’t know about that. If we go to the Islamic world, it may be that more people value the standards of the Koran than your idea of openness. If we are truly open and that is all we are, then why should anti-secularist values not trump the secularist? If that is what the majority wants, then what becomes of secular openness as the very essence of openness?

R: The basic reason why secular presuppositions should govern public discourse is two-fold and consistent with a public nature: first, they are verifiable by all; second, they are agreeable to all. In a secular society, everybody has access. Notice the all in both elements. 

M: Oh I notice them, but I will have to beg your pardon for being such an outsider to this “all” you speak of. You say that everybody can verify secular objects and agree to secular standards, but I am a somebody, and I cannot. 

R: Why on earth not? You have all five senses and you prefer freedom, don’t you? So stop being so difficult!

M: What I mean is that I cannot locate this “freedom” you speak of with my five senses. I certainly can’t tell what you mean by its conditions with my five senses.

R: Yes, but you can do so with your brain.

M: And my brain is telling me right now to go back to those two things you think allow everyone a place at the table. 

R: Yes, a common way to verify and a common goal. Everyone can agree to count noses by numbers and that we should stick to counting them and not breaking them.  

M: I think what you mean to say is that most people today value these two things. This has not been so universally and there is no guarantee that this trend will continue. What argument would you use to persuade someone that they ought to value it, whether they do or not? 

R: I reject your premise. You keep using the word “ought” expecting me to concede any objective morality to some eternal law. But democracy is a kind of object. It is a thing with a nature. The same can be said for pluralism. They are social conditions, and their good is self-evident. Without them we could not have this conversation. 

M: Democracy is already problematic. Where it lives and breathes at all, it must depend on a certain level of cultural unity. There at least has to be agreement on basic human rights. That bar may be low, but there is at least a bar. And what I was saying about pluralism in my blog is that it compounds the problem already inherent to democracy. It dissolves even the lowest bars of cultural unity. 

R: Civil discourse and free inquiry for the scientists are very low bars. A majority of people will always see the need for them. Those who don’t will always be misfits. And if a majority in any society doesn’t see that, then such a portion of the species weeds itself out. See! My evolution fits even your problems of pluralism and democracy. A society that does not see those values deserves to die. 

M: But what you mean by “deserves to die” is merely descriptive, not normative. You do not really yet mean “they deserve to die,” but only that they inevitably do die, given the laws of societal evolution as you see it.

R: I do not make a distinction between those two.

M: You should. But let me put it like this. You are arguing with me here about which is better for the world — my Christianity or your secularism — but are you willing to go as far as Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and company, and say that religion is evil?

R: Well now you are really are getting predictable, Matt! If I claim that religion is evil, then you will say I must first believe that there is an objective good, against which this evil is such a gross violation. I won’t bite. 

M: Very well, I’m glad you notice that much. But I still have to ask you to apply that same logic to the “better” that you can see about the “bad.” If one needs there to be good for there to be evil, then one needs there to be good for there to be better for the same reason. But beyond that, all right and wrong is a matter of obligation. And one cannot be obligated to, or loyal to, a non-person. There can be no morality without an ultimate obligation to a person. 

R: And I take it there can be no ultimate obligation to a person unless there is an ultimate person?

M: Precisely. 

R: I am unconvinced. 

Which Has Been Better in History—Christianity or Secularism?

R: Surely you wouldn’t discount the historical record completely? Why is it that every page we turn to in a history textbook, there is another Christian burning someone over here, drowning someone over there, and then starting another war for gold or oil, and then carting a few million slaves off on the next page? Here an Inquisition, there a Crusade — you guys have a lot of explaining to do. Aren’t you ever ashamed? 

M: I can offer you an explanation, but I will spare you the shame. Because, as a matter of fact, the Christian worldview both anticipates this very behavior and has the capacity to judge it. You may take note of it, but you still have not given me a sufficient standard by which you judge it. In all your indignation, you have snuck back over to our side to borrow from God’s law again. 

R: I don’t need the wrath of your God to have a little bit of my own. As to his ten commandments, we didn’t need them either to figure out why we shouldn’t kill each other or steal. It is simple evolution. These are the behaviors that did not pay off in the most primitive tribes, and the rest is history, as they say.

M: I will come back to why evolutionary morality won’t answer the question. But as to the record of history itself, it is not the case that Christianity has introduced and perpetuated these evils in the ways or to the degrees that you claim. It was precisely the influence of a legalized Christianity that ended slavery after the fall of Rome — in fact the word vanished from the lips of Europeans —

R: Not so fast! Nothing but the replacing of slavery with serfdom happened. If you ask me, that goes into the category of a rose by another name. And before you compare the two of those, you had better be consistent and compare the kind of house slavery in antiquity to European chattel slavery of your “Christian era.” 

M: You are well aware of the Christian roots of the abolitionist movement, especially in the case of Wilberforce in England. And the initial enslavement of those poor Africans was carried out by fellow Africans under an entirely different worldview. Last of all, as much as you personally want to oppose statism, you are well aware of the materialist roots in the thinking of the Soviets and the Nazis.  

R: Then we are at a draw. Both sides seem to be filled with those who take their presuppositions in directions that we would both agree are bad for society. I think that shows that this “presuppositional” approach is getting us nowhere.

M: I think it shows the opposite. I think it shows that the historical record cannot be the final arbiter in whether or not one’s morality is rationally justified. Comparing battle scars and scoundrels on our rosters is not really the same thing as getting to the heart of truth justification.

R: That may be. But don’t you see that the very essence of religious thinking and scientific thinking fall out on one side or the other of this equation? Faith talks about what cannot be verified and cannot be questioned. That is two strikes against the open society. Speaking of presuppositions, the very notion of moral progress presupposes the opposite of these two closed-doors of faith. It presupposes standards that everyone has access to and then it keeps on following the truth, regardless of what sacred cows have to be slaughtered. 

 

What Exactly Has Modern Science “Settled”?

M: All this time we have been using civility and science as our two values. And we have been trying to get at the preconditions of the first. The fact is that most modern people have assumed too much about science as well.

R: I’ve been waiting for you to bring up your pseudo-science of intelligent design.

M: Maybe next time. For the moment, I would challenge the so-called record of modern science.

R: As everyone committed to the Bible must.

M: No—I mean to challenge your assumption that science and the Scriptures are at odds at all. What has modern science actually told us? Aside from the level of macroevolution (which you know I will contest) what exactly has any other science shown us that contradicts the biblical worldview? Behind that question lies another: Can science “prove” or “disprove” anything?

R: You are going to make an irrelevant distinction between the deduction of math and logic versus the induction of science. Right—strictly speaking, science does not prove, but shows what is probable. On the other hand, if the scientific viewpoint is right, then this just is the only way to know what is objectively true in the universe.

M: You are still begging the question. What you call the “scientific viewpoint” is really just your own “materialist viewpoint,” and I am saying that real scientists will know the difference. 

R: Evolutionary biologists are real scientists and they do not make this distinction.

M: Stephen Jay Gould was a real scientist, and in spite of his evolutionary dogmatism, he nevertheless pointed to science and religion answering equally legitimate questions in separate spheres. I do not necessarily accept his model of the two keeping to their sides, so to speak, but my only point is that to speak of a “scientific consensus” against supernatural realities is very misleading. 

R: Well Dawkins was right to criticize Gould for that, and you really surprise me, citing him when it suits you. 

M: All truth suits the Christian. But let me get back to those philosophical presuppositions of science. Remember that I am saying that no science can occur apart from these preconditions. It cannot justify itself. In order to show this, will you please tell me which science empirically tests the justification for science?

R: I am not sure I know what you are asking for.

M: I want you to tell me how to empirically verify the validity of the scientific method. Or how does one falsify it?

R: You are calling the falsifiability principle into question now!

M: Not at all. I want to show you its limitations. It cannot be applied to matters beyond empirical investigation. It cannot be an ultimate standard of truth. 

R: And why not?

M: Because if all meaningful propositions had to be, in principle, falsifiable, then the falsifiability principle would have to be falsifiable. That would mean that there is a possible world in which the falsifiability principle is false. But if it is possible for the falsifiability principle to be false, then it cannot be a necessary truth. On the other hand, if it is impossible for the falsifiability principle to be false, then there is at least one meaningful proposition that is not subject to falsifiability. Do you now see that you must presuppose it? 

R: Then maybe I do and maybe we must. 

M: Then let me offer ten of my own preconditions for the scientific enterprise: (1) the existence of a world outside of any of our minds, (2) that this world is orderly, (3) that this world is knowable, (4) that truth is objective, (5) that the laws of logic are objective, (6) that our minds and senses are basically reliable, (7) that language is adequate to describe that world, (8) that moral values are objective (e. g. honesty in research), (9) that nature is generally uniform and induction generally reliable, and (10) that mathematical entities are objective. 

R: And you are going to tell me that a skeptic like myself cannot believe in any of these things?

M: On a spectrum, yes. Now I’m sure you would affirm every one of these so long as you can subject them in turn to the definitions of secularism. You would especially object to my claim that the laws of logic and mathematical entities are objective in the sense of being immutable and immaterial. But otherwise I have no doubt that you think you do affirm each of these. 

R: But clearly you do not think I do.

M: I would like to show you that you absolutely cannot. All of these are either strictly metaphysical realities, or else physical realities that depend for their intelligibility on those higher metaphysical realities. If you do not accept that, at least go back and review one of your favorite skeptics, Hume, on the problem with supposing that inductive reasoning can give us direct knowledge of the powers behind causality.  

Concluding Responses

R: Speaking of presuppositions, it sounds as if your religious truth is really something like the “noble lie” of many of the Greek and Romans who disbelieved in the gods and yet defended the pantheon because it was good for society.

M: Far from it. Just because I am arguing that Christianity is the only solid foundation for science and ethics, this does not reduce Christian truth to that practical condition. A true worldview must be livable, but it must be more than that. We could easily see that the Christian worldview alone can demonstrate itself positively and account for all the evidence. But all we were doing here was answering the question “Which is better for the world?” Christianity can answer that. Atheism cannot. Agnosticism can hardly try. So if your secular viewpoint abandons atheism, I do not see how an agnostic starting point will fare any better. 

R: I do not need to identify myself as an agnostic or atheist. You seem to think that atheism is just as dogmatic — indeed, just as “religious” — as your Christian theism. But any good form of unbelief is equally agnostic. If it is rooted in science, then one is open to falsification. On the other hand, your dogma is never open to criticism. And that is what separates my epistemology from yours. You don’t have one. A belief not open to scrutiny never really justifies its ground.

M: If by “open to justification” you mean going around pretending that my view does not have ultimate commitments then I will have to plead guilty to being “closed.” Actually to be aware that we all have ultimate commitments, and to focus the dialogue at that level, is the only honest way to be truly open to where the conversation most hinges. You speak about “openness” as if it were self-evident, as if the “open society” and the “open mind” were things that don’t need scrutiny themselves. But doesn’t that close the debate to what you call open? Do you have any square-circles or married-bachelors in that closed-open? 

R: You are always very humorous, but I think we’ll have to wrap it up for today. Neither one of us will ever persuade the other.