Finding Truth: Test the Idol—Does It Contradict Itself?
Principle #4: Test the idol—Does it contradict itself?
There are 2 major ways to test a worldview.
1…does it fit the real world facts? This was our Principle#3.
2…does it contradict itself? This is our Principle#4.
When a materialist reduces everything, including emotions, reason, morality, etc., this is being reductionistic. The problem is they don’t apply it to themselves or their point of view.
For example, when they reduce our thought process to chemical reactions in our brain, that reduces our reasoning process to chemical reactions also. It means our reasoning process is not really reasoning but something else. So how can we trust our own thoughts if they’re just chemical reactions in our brain? But the only way you can build a worldview is by using reasoning. But if reason isn’t really “reason”, then this view discredits itself. It self-destructs. It reduces human rationality to a non-rational physical process. But once this theory says our ideas are not the product of rational thought, that claim must be applied to itself also. And here’s where it fails.
A Christian worldview is not reductionistic. It doesn’t reduce reason to non-rational physical processes, therefore it does not self-destruct. In John 1:1, the Greek word for “Word” is logos. It not only means ‘a word’, but also means reason & rationality…the principles that unify the world into an orderly, rational universe, as opposed to randomness and chaos. So a materialist must assume the reliability of reason and rationality, which only a biblical worldview supports. C.S Lewis recognized this when he said, “But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an atheist, or anything else.” Can you see where this argument leads only to contradicting itself? It’s a logical dead end.
If our free will is an illusion, how can we judge anything?…including the theory of evolution? Evolutionary biology/materialism cannot invoke reason to explain their viewpoint even as they destroy reasons for our thinking process. Everyone who proposes a reductionistic worldview must make an exception for his own thinking. And that creates the inconsistency and makes the whole process self-refuting.
What about the post-modernist (PM)? They assert that there is no absolute truth. But this is just another example of the statement that “I can absolutely state that there are no absolute truths.” He’s saying his own statement is absolutely true. That statement is self-refuting. At a university level, this means that the truths of each group are right for people in that group and there is no overarching truth for all the people at all time. How does this play itself out? Certain groups are said to be “oppressed”. These groups are then given special attention. Their ‘rights’ become more important that what they consider the oppressor rights are. The much of their actions are permitted to be legal.
For example, gays have been discriminated against in the past. Therefore, their rights become more important than, say, a Christian’s. So the university makes a rule that all university clubs cannot discriminate against gays. In their minds, this means that a Christian club cannot exclude someone who is gay from leadership in the club, even though Christianity believes that homosexuality is a sin. They would normally exclude someone from leadership in their club who unashamedly sins. Think this couldn’t happen? Think again. This has happened at several universities. This has morphed into the following….an atheist challenged a Christian club’s rules for leadership by claiming that they discriminated against atheists. The university agreed with the atheist and decertified the Christian club when they refused to comply. WOW! So you cannot have a university Christian club that says you must believe in Christianity to be a leader in the club.
So political correctness has morphed into a tyranny of speech codes, sensitivity training, book banning and speakers being banished because their views are not considered ‘politically correct’. PM’s do this in the name of “diversity”. They feel they are representing the oppressed against the oppressors. This type of ‘diversity’ is the new tyranny. What PM’s accuse the oppressors of doing to the oppressed is exactly what they’re doing. They’re becoming the oppressors. PM’s feel that they, and only they, have the right to determine who the oppressed and oppressors are. But in their “solution” to the problem, they don’t realize that they have become the oppressors.
Christianity argues against the materialist in that it says we are not machines or robots. That we are made in the image of a personal, moral God and as such, we have worth as individuals. But Christianity also argues against the PM, in that, yes we belong to a group, no other group is elevated above the others. Galatians 3:28 says all of these groups (men, women, slaves, free persons, black, whites, etc.) are equal before God. And while all people have been given different spiritual gifts, none of them are superior to the others (1st Corinthians 12). So Christianity is not self-refuting while all other worldviews are.
For His Kingdom,
Dave Maynard
http://BSSSB-LLC.com