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Reformed Classicalist

Which is Better for the World? Part 2

RTS Papers / Apologetics / Summer 2016

A Dialogue Between a Christian and a Secularist


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 Quran 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.


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