Is naturalism (the worldview that that there is no God, and that the physical universe is all that exists) actually a self-defeating idea? That is, is it making a truth claim which undermines the ability to make truth claims?

Let's discuss.

We're back in another episode

of Philosophy in Faith, and last

2

episode we were talking about the

four great worldviews and how they

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would view the questions of knowledge

in the category epistemology.

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And Daniel, brought up something saying

that it's possible that an objection

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can be made against materialism and

naturalism that is self defeating

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yeah, I think a good argument

could be made that way.

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Wow.

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So we're going to explore that and dive

quite a bit more deeply into that today.

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But as we get started, I just

want to ask you, okay, so , why

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are we having this discussion?

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What's the goal of today's episode?

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It's good to remind ourselves of the goal

of what we're trying to do in the podcast.

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We are not trying to add

to the noise and argument.

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We're not trying to prove

other people are wrong.

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our goal.

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is rather to make the case that

theism is at least as intellectually

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satisfying and coherent as any other

worldview, including naturalism.

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And therefore, a person is

intellectually justified in

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choosing that if they desire to.

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We're just trying to free up a person

to make that choice without feeling like

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they're leaving their brains at the door.

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Yeah, too often you hear that faith

is blind or that kind of thing.

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Yeah, it drives me crazy.

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Yeah we're going to do this

one today, asking the question,

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is naturalism self defeating?

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And then we'll have two more

episodes on the four worldviews

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dealing with eschatology or

history, where is history headed?

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And then also aesthetics,

what is beautiful, in light

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of those four worldviews.

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So two more on the worldviews.

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And then I think.

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We'll have one or two dealing with the

idea of certainty and faith and doubt.

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Some people think that you have

to have certainty to have faith,

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and I think that's very mistaken.

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So we'll talk about that.

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So in this episode you're

talking about whether or not

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naturalism is self defeating.

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Will you talk about what it means?

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What is self defeating?

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What does that mean?

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Yeah, very similar to, just saying

that it's self contradictory.

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But in terms of analyzing arguments, self

defeating is a little bit more precise.

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. What it means is that you are making

a claim which by its nature undermines

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the foundation for making that claim.

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Let me give you an example.

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I was teaching Intro to Philosophy class

and we came to the part about truth.

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And we were just kind of

beginning the discussion and one

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student volunteers says, well,

I don't believe there is truth.

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I don't believe you can know the truth.

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There is no absolute truth.

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And I said, Oh, so you believe

there is no truth that you can know?

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Yes.

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Okay, Bill.

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I think that was new.

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Do you mean that as a true statement?

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And I was amazed because you could

see the light bulb going off in

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his head and his eyes kind of got

bigger and he stepped back and

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thought, I never thought about that.

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And I was surprised.

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Yeah.

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Because that, objection to that

claim that there is no absolute

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truth undermines the concept of

truth goes at least back to Socrates.

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So wow.

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He used that against the skeptics.

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So, I thought it was going to

be pretty obvious that that

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was a self defeating statement.

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To say that there is no truth is making

a truth claim, but you've just undermined

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the ability to make truth claims.

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Wow.

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So, that's a self defeating statement.

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So, what we're arguing here about

naturalism is that to make the

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statement that naturalism is true is

a self defeating statement because it

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undermines your ability to make that

true statement and to know it's true.

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Will you walk us through it?

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Yeah, I'd be glad to.

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So, naturalism is basically the worldview

that says there is no God or gods.

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This material world is all that there

is, or this natural world And however

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you want to define that, you can

call it the cosmos, you can call

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it the universe, you can, this is a

more generic term, world or reality.

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however you want to define that,

what you're doing is you're excluding

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the supernatural element to it.

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Okay.

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That's at the heart of naturalism.

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So, Naturalism is making the claim,

the natural world is the only reality.

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So, who are, who are some of

the naturalistic thinkers?

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Well, There's all kinds of them.

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so Darwin would be one of them?

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Darwin would be a yes and no.

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Okay.

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So he actually claimed to have

a belief in God who organized

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and supervised evolution.

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It's unclear to me and maybe some other

people whether he meant that or if he was

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just trying to stave off the trouble of

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Okay.

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Um, but certainly most of the people

we would call Evolutionary biologists

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or the new atheists, Richard Dawkins,

Christopher Hitchens, Steven Pinker, those

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would, embrace the label of naturalism.

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What's interesting here, though,

is that naturalism is almost

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assumed in some academic fields.

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they're going to operate on

naturalistic assumptions, even

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if no one says, I'm a naturalist.

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They're going to, by principle, exclude

anything but naturalistic explanations

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for whatever data they're dealing with.

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, like which academic areas or fields?

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biology, anthropology, but also I

think you would say the chemistry

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or physics perhaps medicine.

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So if you're asking the question.

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You're looking for naturalistic answers.

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Now, methodologically, In my opinion,

that is exactly what you should do.

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But there's also a drip then from,

a methodological naturalism to a

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philosophical naturalism where more

and more people just kind of assume

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then that there is no God, but

the natural world is all there is.

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So you're saying that that's how it should

be methodologically because you don't want

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to bank on the supernatural intervening?

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Yes.

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And you can't measure it.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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So, yeah, when you're doing

science, you operate on.

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principles of cause and effect as

established by the scientific method,

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but there's a drift from that to the

philosophical position of naturalism

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that I think goes unnoticed.

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Gotcha.

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So anyway, that is naturalism.

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So, naturalism making the claim the

natural world is all that there is.

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The argument is that naturalism

is self defeating because it

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undermines the ability to make

truth claims, including the claim.

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Naturalism is true.

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Okay, go on and and unpack

that a little bit for us.

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Alright, so if we're gonna make this

into syllogism, it would, it would

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look like this for the statement.

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Naturalism is true.

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To be accepted as true one has

to be able to know the tree.

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Second premise, if naturalism is

true, one cannot know the truth.

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And then, conclusion, therefore,

naturalism cannot be known as true.

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That would be the basic argument there.

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Can you say that one more time?

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The basic form of the argument

in a syllogism form, so you got

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premise, premise, conclusion,

would look something like this.

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For naturalism to be known as true, we

must be able to make valid judgments about

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the truth, about metaphysical questions.

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And then the premise two is.

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Premise two is if

naturalism is true, however.

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It undermines our ability to make valid

truth claims about metaphysical ideas,

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including naturalism, because naturalism

is certainly a metaphysical claim.

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you know, you're, you're making as big of

a claim as you can about human knowledge.

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And the third, then, naturalism is self

defeating and cannot be known as true.

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So let's dive into this here,

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you know who is the surprising

originator of this argument?

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Um, you'll be surprised.

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I will be surprised?

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You will be surprised.

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Jesus.

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No, no.

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Standard answer, but not in this space.

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It may have arisen before, but this

particular argument, it takes its potency.

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Plato.

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No.

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It takes its potency from,

the theory of evolution.

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And the first one who raised the objection

that if naturalism is true, then we cannot

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know the truth was Charles Darwin himself.

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Really?

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Okay.

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Yeah.

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Let me, quote him here.

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This is from a letter

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Quoted in the Autobiography of

Charles Darwin in Selective Letters.

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He once said, The horrid doubt always

arises whether the convictions of

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man's mind, which has developed from

the mind of lower animals, Are of

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any value or at all trustworthy?

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Would anyone trust the conviction

of a monkey's mind if there were

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any convictions in such a mind?

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Now where I don't know that he followed

through on that is this idea that

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if that's true and all knowledge

is therefore suspect, that would

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include his own theory of evolution.

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Hmm.

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So.

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This is recognizing that on the

naturalistic premises, you have one

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mechanism for humans developing the

way that we are, and therefore thinking

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the things that we think right now.

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If we are a theist, we have two options.

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We can believe in spontaneous

creation, that God created humanity

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in pretty much its present form

in the relatively recent past.

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But we can also believe that God oversaw

the development of an evolutionary

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process through many, many millions of

years to create mankind as he is now.

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Philosophically, a theist can

believe either one of those is true.

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But in either one of those, we can

say, yeah, we can know truth because it

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was given to us by God, not, we can't

know truth because the process was

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just for the purpose of reproduction,

not for the purpose of knowing truth.

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Unless truth gave us some

sort of competitive advantage.

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Yeah, you're getting

ahead of me a little bit.

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Okay, okay.

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No, that's fine.

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On either of these viewpoints, whether

it took six days or it took, 60 million

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years, what's important philosophically

for this point, especially in the

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area of epistemology, is this.

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It was guided by a rational being for

rational purpose, and that includes making

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mankind in his own image Including a

rational ability that works like his does.

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So, that is consistent with that premises.

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Whichever mechanism you choose.

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But if you reject that.

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If you believe that the natural world

is all that there is or ever has been.

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That there is nothing outside the universe

that caused it to come into being.

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Or that created mankind

in any shape or form.

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Or guided humanity's evolution

towards a certain place.

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It all happened by

natural processes alone.

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well, that's a horse of a different color

because you think through this now, if

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it's true, the natural selection alone,

and we should probably define this.

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This is just the idea that certain

traits are naturally selected to

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increase in a proportion in the

next generation, only because it

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gave them evolutionary, increased

evolutionary fitness, usually defined

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as they're able to get more resources.

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So natural selection means it's

naturally selected on that basis alone.

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That's the only reason that any species

is the way it is, including us, every

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species is formed by that alone.

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Including humanity, including homo

sapiens, and that includes every organ

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in your body, including your brain.

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Now, if that's true then

it's also necessarily true.

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That our brains are formed

by natural selection alone.

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Unguided natural selection.

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That's where the problem comes in.

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Because then you realize, that your

brain and therefore your thoughts,

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which arise out of your brain,

are formed not to find truth,

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for evolutionary fitness, to be

useful for reproductive fitness in

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different kinds of environments.

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That's not the same as, being able to say

that your mind is formed to find truth.

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So when you think through that, all

of a sudden then you have a problem.

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Saying that the human mind is able

to form true statements, especially

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about anything beyond immediate sense

experience, including the statement,

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the natural world is all that there is.

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So that's the argument in a nutshell.

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So how do you know that

evolutionary fitness and finding

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truth are mutually exclusive?

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I mean, Can they both be true?

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Yeah, so the question is, how do you

know that they are mutually exclusive?

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The answer is you don't know that, but

you don't know the converse either.

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On naturalist premises, you

cannot know evolutionary fitness

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and truth are the same thing.

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Or the mind development of one will

also be able to find the other.

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So the argument you're making is one that

naturals will obviously tend to make.

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Mm hmm.

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But the assumption and the

premise of that argument is this.

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If useful, then true.

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If it's useful for producing evolutionary

fitness, if it's useful for propagating

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more genes of that, of the species who

think that particular way, Then it's true.

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And when you think about it

as okay, that's a premise, but

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that's a premise that has not

been established or proven at all.

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It's an assumption made

to say of a theory.

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Hmm.

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It's not been proven.

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In fact, one can easily

think of counterexamples.

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Many ideas that may make a person

more successful at passing on

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genes, are maybe quite false or

at least not proven to be true.

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The denial of a personal God who

places restrictions on human sexual

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activity is just one of those.

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So that certainly would not be chosen

naturally because if anything, the

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opposite would be chosen naturally.

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Oh, I see what you're saying.

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So you're saying that if we're just the

byproduct of natural selection, that

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it's unlikely that a worldview with

a God that places sexual restrictions

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on people, it's, it's unlikely

that that would ever even emerge.

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Probably but that's not the

main point of my argument.

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The main point again is naturalism

has to make the unproven assumption

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that what is useful is what is true.

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Okay.

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And because it's not proven because

it's not even really readily apparent.

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I think you have to conclude

that the second premise is true.

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The naturalism undermines a

notion of regarding our brains

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as being able to find abstract.

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But can't you just say that

it doesn't, matter that we

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have to find absolute truth?

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I mean, does that matter?

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Well, it matters if you're trying to

develop a worldview that's coherent, that

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the parts don't contradict each other.

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Okay.

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I see.

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So if I'm arguing for a worldview,

but the premise of that worldview

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undermines the ability to argue for

it, that's a very deep intellectual

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problem with that worldview.

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Okay.

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Which is what we're talking about here.

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Right.

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I'm just learning all this for the first

time and trying to wrap my mind around it.

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So obviously we are not saying

that most naturalists do not

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believe in absolute truth.

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I would not begin to know how to

quantify how many of you are that.

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We're just saying that on the premises

of naturalism, it becomes difficult to

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make truth claims about naturalism.

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I see.

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I see.

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So not saying naturalists

aren't reasonable or logical

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or anything like that.

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Just that if you're, if you're looking

from a logical perspective, this

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is an objection to pay attention to.

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Yeah.

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Because if true, it's, it's a fatal.

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Gotcha.

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you can't hold a worldview that has.

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a self contradiction at its very heart.

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Yeah, unless you're okay with,

not having internal coherence.

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Right, but to me, I don't know how you

could be intellectually okay with that.,

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But I'm just curious because I feel

like at the heart of Christianity is the

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Trinitarian God and also the two natures

of Jesus, which are at least paradoxical,

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not necessarily contradictory, I guess.

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Yeah, I think there's a paradox that could

be worked out there, but that's not the

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same as having a fundamental contradiction

in the ability to make the claim

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about the heart of the belief system.

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The only analogy would be that

someone could argue that to make

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the statement that there is a God

undermine the ability to make that

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statement as a true statement.

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So it's not the same thing.

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Oh, no, no.

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Just an interesting point there.

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Yeah.

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There's a difference between a paradox

and an inherent contradiction at the very

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basis of a, of a world peace metaphysics.

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So anyway, let me read you a

quote here by Steven Pinker.

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Uh, do you know Steven Pinker?

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Who's that?

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he's an evolutionary biologist and he

was at Harvard for most of his career.

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I don't know if he's still there or not.

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Anyway.

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He was very influential, very smart

man, and he wrote a very large

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book called How the Mind Works.

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And he's writing this from an

evolutionary biologist's perspective

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and as a committed atheist.

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Okay.

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So he's a naturalist.

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and he gets to the chapter, after

explaining so many things about how he

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thinks the mind developed this way, uh,

according to the laws of natural selection

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alone, where he begins talking about

some of the questions we talked about.

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Free will.

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Meaning, morality, sentience, and

basically on all these, he gives

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some half hearted explanations

of how they might've developed,

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but even he sees that he doesn't

really have an answer for these.

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So at the end of it, he comes and he

says on page 516, we are organisms,

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not angels, and our minds are

organs, not pipelines to the truth.

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Our minds evolved by natural

selection to solve problems.

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There were life and death matters

to our ancestors, not to commune

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with correctness or to answer any

question we are capable of asking it.

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Let me read that again, quote, We are

organisms, not angels, and our minds

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are organs, not pipelines to the truth.

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Our minds evolved by natural

selection to solve problems.

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There were life and death

matters to our ancestors.

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Not to commune with correctness,

or to answer any question

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we are capable of making.

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But, but he means that

as a true statement.

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Yeah.

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It's just like, it's

just like your student.

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I mean, he's, he's, right?

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Isn't he saying the same thing?

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He is.

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No, I think he would qualify

that, that on other questions

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he was able to give a point.

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A true answer, but his

summary is, is interesting.

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He's like, we're we aren't designed

well, I don't think he'd use that

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word, but we are, we are here in

order to make truth statements.

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Exactly.

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And about the most important issues,

especially, he says, we have no

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reason to believe that we can

commune with correctness or answer

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any question we're able to ask.

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Wow.

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We are, my eyes are not

pipelined to the truth.

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So basically his words are qualified,

but the attitude is dismissive of the

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human mind's ability to find truth,

especially about anything of importance,

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like we're just talking about, especially

about something like the statement

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that nature is all that there is.

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Wow.

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he's a heavy hitter.

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This isn't an offhand remark he just made

in a question and answer session, right?

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This is the published writing

of a leading Darwinian atheist.

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And he just came to recognize it's

hard to escape the logic of the

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statement that if natural selection

is true, we have a truth problem.

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Wow.

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And, well, I don't know if it's

at the end, it's at least 500

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pages into his, his big work.

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Or just to the way in.

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Yeah.

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Wow.

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Yeah.

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let me read you one more quote.

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This is by Ann Wilson,

who was a brilliant man.

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He was a critic of theism and an

atheist for most of his years.

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Is he still alive?

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I don't know.

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In April 2009, in an article

in Mail Online, he wrote this.

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Quote, Our bishops and theologians,

frightened as they have been by

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the pouting of secularist guns,

need the kind of bravery like Sir

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Thomas More's more than ever now.

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Sadly, they have all but

accepted that only stupid people

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actually believe in Christianity.

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And that the few intelligent people left

in the churches are there only for the

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music, or believe it all in some symbolic

or contorted way, which when examined

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turns out to not be belief after all.

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As a matter of fact, he says, I

am sure the opposite is the case.

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And that materialistic atheism

is not merely an arid creed

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but totally irrational.

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Materialistic atheism says that we

are just a collection of chemical.

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There's no answers whatever

to the question of how we

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should be able to capable.

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or poetry if we are simply

animated pieces of meat.

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so what's he, what's he saying?

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basically is that we need people

who believe and have the courage

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to act on those convictions.

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The worldview of atheistic materialism

that he has embraced most of his life can

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get there because we're just basically

animated pieces of meat where we're the

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result of chemical processes that had no.

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No rationality attached to them at all.

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That's that's all we are.

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So he's an atheist who at least sees

the value of Religion and society.

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I don't know if he was an atheist

when he wrote that he was most of

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his way Okay, that's so interesting.

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I crossed that quote and I was surprised

because I knew And Wilson, he was

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pretty harsh critic of, like, C.

415

S.

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Lewis and many of his theistic arguments.

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Wow, uh, that's kind of how I knew him.

418

So I was surprised when I read that.

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so the view that's consistent

is, make decisions and we hold

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beliefs based on how they help us

related to our evolutionary fitness.

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And so, because that's the goal, the

goal is not to find truth, the goal

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is To reproduce, and because of that

we're really in no position to make

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absolute statements related to really

any of these philosophical questions.

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But especially in the relation to

epistemology it's self defeating.

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That's so, that's so fascinating.

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And very thought provoking, because if

we want to give answers to some of

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these questions, then we got to think

through, okay, is my mind actually

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capable of giving some thoughts and

suggestions on these kinds of, topics?

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Right.

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Naturalism is a worldview.

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It's a philosophy.

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It's not something you have

immediate experience about,

433

like the color of your shirt.

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It is making a statement about

the ultimate nature of reality.

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It's a metaphysical question.

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And yet, at its heart, it

undermines the ability to make

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metaphysical statements at all.

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That's the heart of what I'm arguing.

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Wow.

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If listeners want to go into

more depth, they can look at the

441

arguments by Alvin Flantica, who

is a professional philosopher.

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I'm not a professional philosopher.

443

I'm just a dabbler, but he has

developed this argument and written

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at least one book, maybe two.

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I think the second one he

responds to people who argue

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against him and push back.

447

So there's some good

literature about this.

448

This isn't just my idea.

449

we'll drop that title in the

show notes and maybe put some

450

links or something there.

451

Sure.

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again, Darwin recognized as soon as

he developed and thought through the

453

theory of evolution that it had a

challenge at its heart in terms of

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what that says about human knowledge.

455

The first person I see really

developed this fully was Arthur

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Balfour in the Gifford Lectures.

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And then later a book that came out

of that called Theism and Humanism.

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And then C.

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S.

460

Lewis carried that argument forward.

461

I forget which chapter but

it's in his book, Miracles.

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And he goes about it a little

bit different way, his is a

463

little bit more complicated.

464

And then I think Alvin planned to get a

good job advancing that, uh, advancing

465

the, this objection to naturalism.

466

Yeah.

467

Gotcha.

468

Gotcha.

469

so this, objection is not a new thing.

470

It's been around for at

least a hundred years.

471

Yes.

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it goes back at least a hundred years

to Balfour, maybe to Darwin because

473

he had an inkling of the problem.

474

But Alan Plantinga is the modern

theologian who has developed, I

475

think he calls it the evolutionary

argument against naturalism.

476

Okay.

477

So evolution itself argues against

naturalism on naturalism's premises.

478

So I'm sure if people Google that,

they'll find a number of articles

479

or blog posts based on the E A N,

480

all right.

481

again, our goal here is not to tell

people what to believe or recriticize.

482

What we're trying to do is say

there are some very basic families

483

of worldviews that we're going

to interact with in this world.

484

In our culture, especially, those

are theism and naturalism, or

485

sometimes called materialism.

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And out of those two, we're

trying to argue that theism is at

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least as intellectually coherent

and valuable and satisfying as

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naturalism, in my opinion, more so.

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And because of that, it allows

a person to make a genuine faith

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commitment that they choose to

without sacrificing their intellect.

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That's our goal.

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We'll see if people feel like, we've

advanced towards that goal or not.

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Well, thanks so much for your time.