Evolutionary Argument Against Homosexuality

Let us scrap the whole idea of religious condemnation of the practice of homosexuality and try something else.

What if homosexuality is wrong on purely atheistic and evolutionary grounds? What if it is wrong simply because it is a teleologically infertile form of sexual practice (that is, as a prescribed form of sexual practice it can never produce life necessary for evolution)?

Here are a couple of arguments:

Argument 1:

1. Natural human behavior involves the behavior necessary for the survival of the species.
2. Any behavior that would destroy the species is unnatural.
3. Homosexuality, if taken to be normative, would result in the sterilization of the species.
4. Homosexuality is unnatural.

Or ... Argument 2:

1. If evolution has so composed humanity as to procreate heterosexually, then the only behavior that comports with nature's design plan is heterosexual behavior.

2. If heterosexual behavior is the only behavior that comports with nature's design plan, then homosexual behavior is an act of violence against nature's design plan.

3. Therefore, if nature built us to be heterosexual to survive, then to be homosexual is to live unnaturally.

Perhaps the objection to this is that nature could have produced human beings capable of homosexual reproduction "if that were the will of evolution." But this is the trouble in evolutionary theory--namely, how to determine what is natural and what is unnatural. In one sense, evolution makes no preferences, and so everything is natural, including the pedophile's predilections. And so we are led to a dilemma in arguments based in naturalistic evolution. Which to prefer...

Argument 3:

1. Nature gives us no guidance as to what is "natural" and what is "unnatural."
2. We determine these labels through a dialectic process (discussion and group consensus).
3. But group consensus can often be wrong (i.e. racism, the flat earth, etc.).
4. Since nature makes no preferences, and since our conclusions are merely fallible human judgments, it is reasonable for us not to make preferences with respect to sexual behavior.
5. We should not prefer any form of sexuality over another, to include bestiality, necrophilia, pedophilia, polygamy and the whole colorful spectrum of sexual behaviors.
6. (Or... We should prefer whatever form of behavior we think natural and demonize the rest, since we cannot arrive at "truth" in these matters through dialectic, and since nature is giving us no guidance.)

Is it "right" that nature has produced human beings that reproduce in a rather limited way--that is, heterosexually? It is "right" in the sense that it is clearly the "will of evolution," and in that sense it could be argued that the will of evolution is heterosexuality, which brings us back to Argument 1.

Homosexual couples dedicated to having children must wholly rely on resources not available to them naturally. In that sense, no homosexual family can ever be purely homosexual. It must borrow from the opposite sex the necessary equipment for human reproduction. Even if it were to become possible to chemically transform sperm into eggs, it would necessarily recreate the conditions naturally required for reproduction, which are heterosexual conditions.

Another way to think of this is that in reproduction the genetic code of the parents is preserved in the child. The child is an expression of both of them. But this can never be the case with any gay couple. The child will never be an expression of merely their union. It will perhaps be an expression of one of them, and an unknown heterosexual partner. Should this be considered natural? Perhaps if we decide so, but what if we don't? (Argument 3)

In conclusion then, we see two issues here: One, the epistemological issue that frees the evolutionist to define "natural" however he may choose (Argument 3); and two, the reasonable conclusion that, in evolutionary models, what is natural is what is necessary for survival (Arguments 1 and 2).

Perhaps the best way to understand these two points is to join the evolutionist in his dilemma. If he cannot rely on philosophical speculation to answer what is natural and what is unnatural, then he must turn to nature itself for the answer. But, as we have seen, nature gives no guidance here except the behavior that tends to the survival of the species or undermines it. Thus, we cannot rely on human opinions of sexual behaviors to determine whether they are "right or wrong" or even "natural or unnatural."

So what is the solution, from a strictly evolutionary perspective? One option is that there can be no "right or wrong" with respect to human sexuality, or at least if there is we cannot know it. But this leads to all manner of complications, such as giving up the right to condemn pedophilia and a whole host of other "perverse" sexual behaviors.

Perhaps the evolutionist can claim that we can't know that it is wrong, but we must manage human sexuality nonetheless, and so we can't permit certain behaviors. Indeed this would solve some problems, but it does nothing to say that the child molester is wrong; it only says that we can't tolerate his "natural" and "normal" behavior. His kind of nature just doesn't work well with the group, but it surely cannot be morally wrong. You may note that an unintended consequence of this kind of thing will be mob rule. What if society came to believe that everyone belonged to everyone else sexually and that marriage was a kind of destructive and possessive egoism (something like Huxley's vision)? And what if that society decided that marriage was no longer legal? Is morality only a matter of consensus? If it is, one loses any right to claim that another persons behavior can ever be wrong.

And so the evolutionist is, in my estimation, paralyzed by his epistemology. He can only work with what is and not what ought to be. The moment he uses the word ought, he claims authority, but why should we listen to his authority and not those with whom he disagrees? But surely in turning to what is, he finds no solution to this simple question, "is homosexuality natural or unnatural?" For nature is what is and not what ought to be. It seems foolish, in the evolutionary sense, to claim that nature ought to be other than it is. Human beings ought to have three arms, ought to have telekinetic powers, ought to be able to reproduce homosexually, etc. Foolish! Nature has made us as we are, and there seems no point in arguing these things.

Is the homosexual then something like a cheetah born with only three legs? Or is he more like the cheetah born with wings--that is, something that looks unnatural, but is really the next step in evolution? Can one turn to human deliberations on these matters to solve such a question? Of course not, because of the epistemological problem already enunciated. The only way to adjudicate this matter is to turn again to what is and not what ought to be. Currently the reality is that human beings propagate heterosexually, and so nature is telling us that the homosexual is a cheetah with 3 legs (back to Arguments 1 and 2).

Or if you like it in one sentence: Homosexuality runs counter to the manner in which natural selection has fashioned us to reproduce.

Lecture Series: Lecture 9: Key Terms in Philosophy

We reserve this lecture to discuss certain fundamental terms in philosophy, and perhaps to review some we have already discussed.

1. Epistemology: The study of sources of knowledge. The controlling question of epistemology is, "How do you know what you know?"

A philosopher friend of mine has a bumper sticker that asks, "Are you epistemologically self-aware?" While this is about as nerdy as it gets, the question is absolutely essential. And the answer of most people is a resounding No!

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that one's epistemology may be the single most important aspect of a philosophy of life.

Dr. Noebel in his fine work has cited six primary sources of knowledge. They are experience, reason, intuition, culture, witness and revelation.

It is worth asking yourself how you came to believe what you believe. To simplify all of this, consider why you are Christian (assuming you are)? How do you know Christianity is true? It seems to me this is so fundamental a question that it can be asked of nearly any religious, historical, political or social perspective. If someone says, for example, that I ought to "save the whales," then my question ought to be, "Who says?" "On whose authority?" "How do I know it is right to save the whales?" Asking this simple question reveals a person's epistemological sources and whether or not I should accept them.

When considering the three major worldviews, we see that each has different, even opposing, epistemologies.

In Pantheism (the belief that all things are god or are animated by god), it is clear that certain sources of knowledge cannot be trusted. The senses, for example, are notoriously deceptive, and so we must detach from our limited perceptions of the world. Human reason is likewise often deceptive and confining. The source of knowledge prized most by pantheists is direct mystical encounter (a form of subjective revelation... often referred to as intuition).

In Atheism (the belief that there is no God and no spiritual dimension), an opposite epistemology to pantheism emerges as prominent. Atheists are proud of being scientifically minded people, controlled by the precautions of reason, logic and evidence. Atheists would universally discount any divine revelation, either mystical or propositional (written in books). They would also highly doubt intuition as any relevant source of truth.

Christians, unlike both atheists and pantheists, want to recognize the contribution of each of the six sources listed above. There is a place in Christianity for the mystical and subjective, as well as for the rational and objective. The best Christians have maintained that there will be no conflict in Christianity between the discoveries of reason and science and the discoveries of the spiritual life. The two are distinguishable domains with their necessary tasks, but they are not opposed to one another. When there is conflict between them, it is usually because there has been an error with respect either to our observations or our passions. No Christian would suggest, however, that because it is difficult to align the spiritual and the physical, one or the other must not exist.

2. Cosmology: The study of the universe and its causal relations. The controlling question of epistemology is, "How is there something?" "How did everything begin?"

And again each worldview answers this question according to its first principles.

Atheists would say that the universe is self-generating. The big bang must have banged on its own, somehow. Most atheists today maintain that the universe was finite in the past but came into existence of its own accord. One physicist, named Victor Stenger, claims that the big bang must have been something like the particles generated in nuclear decay--that is, they seem to come out of nowhere.

Pantheists are not really interested in mechanistic explanations of the universe. They don't care about tracing causal connections between events back to a first cause. And the reason for this is that their philosophy precludes any meaning to the notion of a "beginning" to the existence of the world. If the world is indistinguishable from man and all other entities in creation, and all of it is God, then certainly it would be foolish to look for a beginning to "God." Everything simple is!

Christians believe there is rational order to the universe, and that everything is knit together by the principle of causality. As such, we can trace causation back to an absolute beginning to time. This of course is where the Cosmological argument takes over (see article on the various arguments for God's existence) and explains that it is reasonable to conclude that all of time and space began to exist as a result of God's creative act.

3. Ontology: The study of reality. We also referred to this as "Metaphysics." Both touch on a philosopher's understanding of reality. The controlling question here is, "What is real?"

Atheists would answer that matter alone is real. This is a position called "materialistic monism." Monism simply means "one substance." In this case, the only substance that exists is matter. Matter may be configured in various ways, but everything we find in the universe is reducible to various forms of the composite parts of the universe. And the only reason matter is constructed in the ways we now see it reduces to "luck." Even natural laws and their various values (such as the strength of gravity) are accidental and not essential features of nature. The only essential, apparently, is the "stuff" of the universe itself.

Pantheists assert precisely the opposite position to atheists on the question of ontology. Their position is often referred to as "spiritual monism." Here the only substance in the universe is spirit, or God. Any beliefs about particular expressions of matter are karmic illusions. Through various spiritual practices, one can be led to abandon one's belief in the dizzying multiplicity of perceived material things. One will be able to see that everything is already dissolved into an ocean of interrelated spiritual unity.

Christians maintain the age old philosophy of dualism, which means that there is a dynamic tension between the spiritual and the physical. Both exist and can be distinguished, but they cannot be wholly separated. The spiritual and the physical are intertwined. Plato also believed in this dualism, except without using explicitly Christian categories. He believed that there was a realm of perfect and changeless spiritual entities, known as the forms. And there was also the realm of the material world, which is a kind of shadow of the ideal world. Christians can certainly agree with Plato to some extent, but there also exists several serious points of disagreement. For example, Plato suggests that the reason we know about this realm of spirit is because our spirits were once happily enthroned in the realm of the forms, but they were unfortunately imprisoned within bodies and have since been yearning for escape back into the realm of the forms. Christianity on the other hand claims that God made us in His image, and has in various ways revealed His good character, causing us to yearn again for perfection.

4. Ethics: The study of human behavior. The controlling question is, "What ought mankind to do?" "How should we behave and how do you know?"

Ultimately both Pantheism and Atheism reduce to relativism, but the routes by which they travel to this end differ.

In atheism, one must ultimately assume that authority in ethics comes from our nature, which is the product of a mindless, purposeless process. And of course ethics appears to be a deliberate precondition for ordered and optimal human conduct. But it must be clear that any system of ethics based on the authority of an accidental phenomenon must itself be accidental. Thus human beings are perfectly within their natural rights to reject the imperatives dictated by a random and unreliable process. This is a simple logical path really. If ethics is derived from our nature, which is itself derived from a wholly mindless process, then we can of course question and disobey it. Certainly there is nothing "outside" of nature to enforce it. If it is not objective, then it is subjective, or open to discussion and disagreement. If it is subjective, then it is by definition relative.

Pantheists arrive at relativism through a different route. Since their view of reality suggests that everything in the universe is an expression of the divine, then of course one has to wonder if war, serial killers and disease are also expressions of the divine. A strict pantheist would have to admit that these so called "evils" are necessary to understand the multifaceted beauty of the divine. How can one appreciate health unless there is disease, they might ask. Perhaps there would be no context for generosity if there was no such thing as greed. Evil and good are interdependent realities. Since this is true, then the only "evil" in the universe is one's insistance on calling anything evil. To do so is to hold the universe at arms length in an effort to define oneself over against the universe as superior to it in some way.

The way the Stoics put this was to imagine a mighty river. This river is good and its outcome is good, but people begin to believe there is evil in the river when they focus too much on particular points within the river. For example, a soldier who dies unjustly in battle may have a short and miserable life, but he has given his life for the greater good. If his focus, or the focus of his family, rests too much on his individual suffering and not on the good produced from it, then they will only bring greater suffering on themselves. Thus in the end there is no real "evil" in the river of nature or in the flow of nature. There is only the belief that there is real evil. If people can learn to see the "big picture," then they will come to accept their own suffering as necessary to bring about the good of the whole.

The problem here is that this process is wholly subjective. In the Bhagava Gita, there is a story of a young prince, named Arjuna, who must decide whether or not he will kill some rivals to his throne. Krishna, an Avatar of Brahman (the pantheistic notion of God in Hinduism), tells Arjuna that he shoud do what he will do, but to do so in a spirit of detachment. And if he can do that, he can "slay thousands and be no slayer--" meaning he can murder and not "feel" guilty because he is merely participating with the flow of nature, so to speak. Of course one is led to wonder whether Arjuna could have forgiven these rivals to the throne also in a spirit of detachment, so that even if they killed him he would be "murdered and yet be no victim." Thus, in Pantheism, ethics reduces to the subjectivity of one's "internal" state alone. One can presumably do the most heinous crimes but do so in a spirit of internal detachment. In the end, there is no right or wrong action; only right or wrong "intentions."

5. Theology: The study of the question of God. The controlling questions are two: "Is there a God." And "If there is a God, what is He/It like?"

The atheist of course believes there is no God or gods. This is a conviction for the atheist, even though fair atheists will affirm they cannot prove it. It is a belief, presumably drawn from the best evidence. Since there is no God, there is no ultimate being that will take care of everything in the end. We are on our own to make of the world whatever we will.

The pantheist claims that God is not an anthropomorphic projection of our psychological yearnings, but it rather the sum of everything in the universe. God and the universe are indistinguishable. Some would say that God is "in" everything in the universe, in much the same way we think our soul is "in" our bodies. This is sometimes referred to as the "Gaia" hypothesis, or "panentheism." If this is true, the the goal of life is not to "relate" to God as something external to oneself, but rather to come to recognize one's own innate divinity. Jesus, Buddha, even Muhammad, are all really just guides, who come to help us experience our own long denied divinity.

The Christians claim that there is an all-powerful, all-good, all-loving being behind the universe, or above it, or beyond it. God has created beings "like" himself, but they are distinguishable from Him. He is God and we are not! God, as a distinct being in the universe, can be misunderstood and slandered in various ways. He has set forth a clear statement of who He is and what He is up to through Holy Writ.

6. Anthropology: The study of man and his moral nature. The controlling questions here are also two: "What is man?" And, "What is his moral nature?"

Atheists believe that man is nothing more than a fortuitous biochemical accident. In the end, there can be no meaningful assertion of man's dignity apart from his particular collection of abilities--namely, he is smart enough to dominate the planet. But this does nothing to ensure that he is, was, or will ever be, the most important being that has existed in the universe. It is at least conceivable that another creature exists in the universe, whose intelligence is as far above our own as ours is above cattle. And it would therefore be equally plausible to suggest that such a being would have the same right to do with us what we do with cattle.

For the atheist, man's moral nature must be, on balance, an irrelevant question. Even if one could argue that evolution has hard wired us with a kind of moral law, why would anyone be compelled to obey it, since this "law" is itself the product of a wholly random process? Why not simply conclude that the sociopath (the man without a conscience) is at least possibly the most evolved being? What can "most evolved" even mean in a purposeless universe governed by nothing?

The pantheist would suggest that man is divine. His problem is that he is not aware of his divinity, and thus he must go through a process of enlightenment, either through reincarnation or various spiritual practices now. The lovely sentiment of pantheism is that everyone is, or will be, "saved"--that is, all will be absorbed into the universal some day.

This means that man's moral nature can only be "good." In strict terms, pantheists don't like to speak of dichotomies like "good" and "evil." This is the language of Karma, they might suggest, since the use of such terms leads to an inability to see the necessary interdependence of "good" and "evil." Pantheism at base is amoral, because the universe is amoral. It just is! One thinks that cancer is evil or that a war is evil because one can only see how such things affect one's immediate physical existence. When we see beyond such things, we can come to transcend the labels "good" and "evil."

Back to our Stoic example of the rushing river. Remember it is a good river and its outcome is good, but there may be events that take place within the river that tempt us to use the term "evil." For example, a bear might drown in the river while attempting to hunt for fish, or a man might be crushed to death while attempting to navigate its rapids. But this is to isolate a single incident in the whole life of the river and claim that such an event somehow makes the whole less good. In the same way, we are tempted to claim that "evil" takes place in nature, but when we see these events from a larger perspective, we become aware of their necessity in producing the good. A fruit fly may live a short and miserable life, but it is needed by creatures above it in the food chain.

7. History: The study of events over time. The questions here are two: "Where is history going?" And, "Why do things happen as they do?"

For the atheist, history is moving towards eventual universal heat death, in the words of famed atheist Bertrand Russell. As I've mentioned elsewhere, the destiny of the universe in atheism is a particularized junkyard of dead matter floating about in a vacuous black sea. But of course, what is happening now is not all that much more dignified. We think it is, but perhaps we are merely deceiving ourselves. If the universe is meaningless, so is everything in it. To conclude this is not a division fallacy either, simply because in some cases what is true of the whole is necessarily true of the parts. If, objectively speaking, the universe has no value, then neither does anything in the universe, just as it is also true that the whole human race is mortal and that also means that every human being is mortal. It is also reasonable to suggest that if an entire garbage heap is worthy of being rejected by man, then so is every individual thing in it. But that is what Russell has done to the universe; he has turned it into a garbage heap of mind reeling proportions.

There is a fatalistic strand in atheism, and in every worldview really, depending on what one emphasizes. The fatalism in atheism sounds something like this: Perhaps we are nothing more than the products of chemical and environmental factors outside of our control, and that these factors were set up for us by chance. We are all playing a gigantic lottery game, and some of us have been lucky while others have been unlucky. It remains only for the lucky to assert their advantage and for the unlucky to hope for the "scraps of the table" of the fortunate.

It seems to me that even if an atheist could summon an argument for free will, such an argument would be swallowed up by the sheer futility of asserting one's will timidly before the crushing pointlessness of the universe.

Pantheists maintain a cyclical view of the universe, unlike either atheists or Christians. It should be noted that the universe works in cycles only in our perceptions and not in reality. In reality, there must be only one unchanging, wholly stable reality--namely, God. What is constantly in violent flux is the individual's perceptions of this whole. And thus "he" is led through various experiences (reincarnation) so that he might ultimately give up any attachment to any one perception, or life, and then at last be set free to see the interconectedness of all things.

Pantheism as such is fatalistic--meaning, all things happen exactly as they must. Even the individual, apparently asserting his independence from the whole, is led by the whole to a place where he cannot deny his submersion into the whole. And he makes this discovery in exactly the way that "God" has planned it. There is no isolation or liberty from the "Godness in all."

Christians believe in the ultimate just outcome of the universe. God is sovereign over history, meaning He is not in any way surprised by anything that is happening in time. He is causally active at every moment of history, leading it to its ultimate outcome. History will be exactly what God predetermines it must be, and human freedom is limited by God's predetermined design. Christians deny that there is only one will in the universe and that God is the cause of evil. But all Christians also confess that God, in order to be God, must bring all things together in the end. There will be a perfect resolution to the chaos and injustice of the world as it presently stands.

8. Death: The study of life's end. The question is one: "What happens after we die?"

There are only three options in the various worldviews with respect to this question: annihilation, reincarnation and final judgment. It probably seems clear which of these fits with which worldview.

Atheists are annihilationists. All of humanity is an accident of evolution destined for annihilation. Matter is simply recycled until there is no heat energy to appropriate.

Pantheists are reincarnationists. All people eventually come to see their lives in the light of the unchanging and eternal, and at this point there is merger with the eternal.

Christians believe in final judgment and resurrection. It must be clear that the Bible teaches that all human beings are immortal creatures, not just the ones that go to heaven. Believers are "resurrected" to newness of life in God's eternal kingdom. Unbelievers are "resuscitated" in order to face the "second death." In other words, they are not given "new life," but are rather restored to their old minds, spirits and bodies, and sustained in them forever and ever.

To get a sense for this, we should look at two cases of life after death in the Bible. The one case involves Lazarus, who was simply restored to his old body and spirit after he had died, and he was left in this world only to die again. In the other case, we must consider Jesus' resurrected body as an example of a glorified body, purged of all disease and suffering. Of course, in our case, this body will also be reunited with a spirit that is wholly cleansed of any defect as well, so that there will be a perfect harmony of body and spirit.

Lecture Series: Lecture 8: Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism

Alvin Plantinga is an important Christian philosopher, formerly with the University of Notre Dame. We will soon consider his "free will defense" as a solution to the problem of evil. We also have noted his ontological argument for God's existence. Now we turn to his critique of naturalism, referred to simply as the EAAN argument--the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism.

Since this is to be a brief summary, I'll start with the end of the argument and work backwards. If naturalism is true, then the human mind is a biochemical machine thrown together by chance, the product of random genetic drift over time. Such a mind cannot be relied upon to produce true beliefs about the world, including the belief that naturalism is true. Thus naturalism is an "undercutting defeater" of itself.

What does evolution ensure? Does it guarantee that we will develop true beliefs about the world, ourselves, God, etc.? No, evolution at best ensures only that we survive, but it is not obvious that survival is dependent on true beliefs. The philosopher Patricia Churchland puts it bluntly, "Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F’s: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing. The principal chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive… Truth, whatever it is, takes the hindmost (back seat).” The point here is that true beliefs are largely irrelevant to survival, or are at the very least totally superfluous to it.

Consider the two statements, "survival is the goal of all living creatures," and "survival is not the goal of all living creatures--understanding is." Why should we believe that our ancestors, who perhaps taught us that understanding is the goal of life, are not wholly in the wrong? Is there anything in evolutionary theory to suggest to us that either opinion recommends itself over the other?

The illustration Plantinga uses to back his thesis is simple and effective. It is probable that primitive cavemen ran away from Tigers. But why? Did they run away from them because their beliefs about Tigers were true beliefs? It is at least conceivable that the first human beings ran away from Tigers because they wanted to pet them and believed that running away was necessary to draw them nearer. They could have believed that the appearance of the Tiger indicated the beginning of a race. They could have believed the Tiger was a demon of hell and must be avoided at all costs. Perhaps the first caveman believed the Tiger was a regularly recurring illusion, and, wanting to keep his weight down, decided to run a mile every time the illusion appeared. Perhaps the first caveman confused running toward it with running away from it. His behavior was sufficient to ensure his survival even though his beliefs were wholly in the wrong.

Other examples of this phenomenon are myriad. For example, we know that our beliefs about the earth, the universe and our relationship to it are constantly updated by scientific discoveries. And the curious thing is that primitive man, with so little knowledge about the nature of the world, somehow survived. In what way did knowledge of the earth's spherical shape increase our ability to survive? In point of fact, the human belief that the earth was flat could have prevented a lot of deaths because it kept men safely ashore during a period when sea travel was quite dangerous.

Plantinga's argument briefly summarized then:

The probability of the accuracy of human reason is low or inscrutable (unknowable) given...

A. Chance production of the mind.

B. Evolution ensures survival but not true beliefs.

C. Conclusion: Therefore, since there is a low probability that human reason can be relied upon to produce true beliefs, and two of the conclusions of human reason are naturalism and evolution, then we can doubt both.

Another angle at Plantinga's argument is to consider the matter from the perspective of Hume and Darwin combined. As I have discussed in other blog entries, Hume asserts that causation itself could be manufactured by our intellect subjectively rather than existing as an objective feature of the world. In other words, it is very possible that the universe is a random collection of events and that we impose causal relations on events that merely succeed one another but do not determine each other in any measurable fashion. Then Darwin comes along and provides humanists with a reason to believe that the world is, in reality, a random collection of events, and the mind is a product of nothing more than luck. But if the atheist is looking for some reason to believe that there is any pattern to how and why things happen in the world, surely he has not only given up any hope of finding it, but has answered his question by diffusing the value and import of all questions.

In the end, all Darwinian and Neo-Darwinian Evolution end up saying is that random changes in an environment meet random changes in organisms. When there is a lucky correspondence, the organism survives. But what could be more irrelevant to any life-form in those circumstances than true beliefs, including the belief that these conditions are lucky, or the belief that these conditions are ordained? Darwin himself said it this way: “The horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind.”

Lecture Series: Lecture 7: The Moral Argument

The person who best articulated the moral argument for the existence of God was C.S. Lewis. In his Mere Christianity, the first five chapters are dedicated to the idea that our moral conscience is evidence of an objective source of moral values outside of mankind. The best candidate for this is God, for various reasons we will discuss.

While Lewis is the most elegant on this issue, William Lane Craig provided perhaps the cleanest logical defense of the idea by use of a simple Modus Tollens syllogism:

Premise 1 - If God does not exist, then objective morality does not exist.

Premise 2 - But objective morality does exist.

Conclusion - Therefore, God exists.

It surely is curious that the average skeptic relies so heavily upon the "problem of evil" to assail the Christian argument when evil as a concept only has meaning if there exists some objective basis for determining what is evil and what is good. In a purely materialistic universe, what could it mean to complain about "evil?" Evil in such a world would be nothing more than our cultural labeling of certain actions we simply do not prefer. In other words, we could never call one animal group (say, Al Queda) any more or less moral than any other. They think we are "evil" and we think they are "evil." But there is nothing outside these two cultures that might provide some meaningful arbitration between the two opinions.

Thus, the syllogism is enriched by Dr. Craig as follows:

Premise 1 - If God does not exist, then objective morality does not exist.

Premise 2 - Some things are really evil.

Premise 3 - But that entails that objective morality exists (in order to determine what "evil" and "good" are).

Conclusion - Therefore God exists.

So, in the end, the existence of evil in the world is another proof of God's existence, for what can evil mean without God's existence.

And now a summation of Lewis' argument:

Lewis' basic argument is that we carry with us a shared internal law of right conduct. We feel this "law of human nature" constantly pressing on us, and it seems clear that none of us made it. It is something that is a feature of the world, or the natural structure of the world, that we merely discover and do not invent. Lewis feels that the best accounting for this is a supreme mind behind the universe who made us this way, to reflect His/Its own moral character. But none of us keep this moral law, and so we put ourselves at odds with the power behind the universe.

There are, of course, various challenges to this position, and Lewis answers each in turn.

Objection 1 - There are so many different moral systems, so there must not be an objective foundation to the moral law.

Lewis' response here is sufficient. He maintains that perhaps the idea that there is no objective morality does not follow from a mere observation of differences in moral systems. Perhaps the differences are minor in nature, at least in comparison to the striking similarities. Lewis asks us to consider the ancient moral systems of the Babylonians, Greeks, Persians and the like, and in really looking into them one is struck by how alike they are to each other rather than how dissimilar they are.

In essence, Lewis contends that all moral systems have crucial similarities. For example, one is hard pressed to think of a culture in which men are praised for running way in battle. Selfishness is never admired either. It is as if Lewis is suggesting that all cultures have the same moral infrastructure (foundation and pillars) and then they build around these structures to their own liking. For example, all cultures would claim that fidelity in marriage is a good thing, but some cultures allow for 1 wife, some 4 wives and others even more. Simply treating a woman however you want to treat her is not acceptable in any culture, etc.

An additional point can be raised to defend the biblical view here. Christianity acknowledges the reality of moral erosion over time. It begins with individuals ignoring conscience on certain matters. A classic example in the high school context would be cheating. There are many students who have decided to ignore their consciences on this question. If one does this long enough, conscience will become a blunted instrument. There will be an internal loss of moral sensitivity to cheating. It is also unlikely that such a person will surround himself with people who find cheating morally reprehensible and face their criticism. Instead, he will surround himself with other cheaters. If he does this, he will have lost any internal sensitivity to moral law on the question of cheating, but he will also have lost any external points of reference to the moral law, because he is now isolated from those people who might remind him of his moral responsibilities. I frankly think this process is a sufficient explanation for the divisions of culture and subculture in our world. Look at the gay subculture and you will see this same process. Look at "pot-heads" in high school and again you will see this process of ignoring conscience and then isolation with others who have done the same thing on the particular moral issue in question.

Objection 2 - Moral Law is merely put into us by parents and teachers.

Two responses here are sufficient. Lewis points out that it is silly to suggest that just because something is taught to us, it must be a human invention. We are taught math and logic this way, but no thinking human being would suggest that the core principles of these subjects were made up by men, as if they could be anything we want them to be .

But perhaps the most important response is that this idea is philosophically inane. It amounts to believing that there can be no moral progress and no moral exemplars. It forces one to accept the conclusion that what we believe about right conduct is a simple feature of our cultural environment. If what we believe to be moral comes directly from our culture, then if we were raised in Nazi Germany, we would default to the view that it is moral to hate Jews, etc. The death knell for this objection is that relativism in morality results in nothing more than the rule of the stronger. One loses any objective basis to complain about radical Islam, the Nazi's or any other hated moral position. The most one can ever say is that "we don't like it," which of course will be irrelevant if one lacks sufficient firepower to do something about it.

Objection 3 - Moral law is nothing more than a feature of our evolutionary development, an instinct making "herd survival" possible.

We hear a lot on this in our day, and the reason we do is that the secularists among us are trying desperately to find some objective basis for morality without God. Of course, nature is the only candidate, and so morality becomes some hidden feature of our genetics. Bats develop sonar and we have this super-instinct we call "morality."

A lot can be said in response to this. For his part, Lewis offers only one rather elegant argument. Essentially, he says that if in fact morality was an instinct, we would find that one of our instincts was always aligned with the moral law, but that is not what we experience. Instead, we experience the odd phenomenon of recognizing that sometimes our instincts are to be encouraged and sometimes suppressed. For example, our instinct for sex is sometimes to be encouraged and sometimes suppressed, depending on time and context.

If we saw a person drowning, we would face conflicting instincts; one for self-preservation and the other for "herd survival." What are we to do? Lewis thinks it too simplistic to suggest that we do what our instincts tell us to do because we are facing conflict between instincts. There is a third voice that comes in and tells us, in this case, to encourage the weaker of the two instincts and save the man. But of course the thing commanding instincts cannot be an instinct.

Secondly, we must ask why it is obvious that a "super-instinct" is sourced in genetics? It is clear that genetic information codes for the production of proteins, but is it clear that it codes for the production of beliefs? And even if it were clear, we would still encounter the problem generally faced by geneticists--namely, the source of genetic information in the first place. The only naturalistic solution is the chemicals themselves (amino acids and the like). It is maintained that they had to randomly arrange themselves into spectacularly encyclopedic configurations on their own. In short, chance is again trotted out as the explanation for all genetic information. But if that is the case, then the genetically coded beliefs we call "morals" are also artifacts of chance. What of course makes this whole idea credulous is the nature of the information systems we are talking about. Both genetics and morality are information rich systems that govern biological and social life. This information appears to be logically anterior (foundational) to biological and social systems working. For the Christian, information indicates intelligence, plain and simple. The nature of these systems requires a God who could compose nature with these information systems embedded.

Thirdly, and related to this second point, we must ask why it is imperative to obey an "instinct" that is the product of a random material process alone. Fine, my moral instinct is telling me to save some kids life, but why should I care to obey it? It is not as if it is "best" for my nature. How can I know what is best for my nature if my nature is produced by a mindless, purposeless process? We all know that the state can make as many laws as it wants to, but if it cannot enforce them, they are largely meaningless. In the same way, I can call any one of my instincts a law created by evolution, but evolution cannot enforce it, so there is no reason for me to listen to my instincts. Perhaps I choose to kill a man because he listens to bad rap music, in defiance of my "moral instinct." Even if I am caught by the authorities and sentenced to die, I can still maintain that it is my right as an evolved being to deny any of the supposed instincts to which I am allegedly bound, and to do so in experimental boldness.

Fourthly, and as a continuation of the previous point, perhaps in asserting my freedom to live counter to my moral inclinations, I am actually more evolved than someone else. Someone may claim that I have social responsibilities as an evolved animal, but why? If I choose to deny social responsibilities, perhaps that will be the key to the expression of my utmost individuality. Perhaps what is needed for total self actualization is the denial of others. Perhaps the sociopath is the most evolved human animal. Why should we conclude otherwise? If the atheist is going to condemn the sociopath, it seems to me he will have to do so on evolutionary grounds. He is going to have to say that "most" humans have this sense, just as most cheetahs have 4 legs for optimal speed, and so the "moral sense" is the "will of evolution." But evolution is arbitrary, causing unpredictable reconfigurations of genetics and various changes in the population. What if we came across a cheetah that couldn't run very well, but was clever enough to kill the other cheetahs while they slept? We might be tempted to say that the clever cheetah is broken because it wants to kill other cheetahs, but are we going too fast (pardon the cheetah pun)? If evolution really is a random process, then who are we to judge what it should produce? It seems to be rationally plausible that the pure isolationist sociopath could be the next step in evolution. And even if he isn't, the only way to condemn him, provided naturalism is true, is not to say that he is wrong, but that he is "unacceptable to the pack."

One final peculiarity about moral law: Lewis points out that it is strange that other laws of nature consist in simply observing how nature regularly behaves. But moral law is different. It is equally objective, but tells us not observational data about how things are, but rather provides ongoing critical interpretation of how things ought to be. This is Lewis' way of addressing what ethicists refer to as the "is/ought" dilemma. Morality is not merely experimental, discovered and evolved over the long course of human history. It is rather something by which we evaluate all of human history, and it is only a moral law that is not produced by random changes over time that can give us some meaningful reason to believe that what we have now in moral systems is better than the systems of our distant ancestors. Indeed, often we look at the ancients and note that they had things right in various ways from which we have departed. But note well that this thing that is used to evaluate historical evolution or devolution is not itself the product of evolution.

In short, the atheistic system can give us observation of moral systems--the "is" of ethical language. What atheism cannot give us is any meaningful foundation for "ought" language. It reduces to something like, "person A in circumstance A1 killed person B." But then the atheist goes on to note that, "person C in circumstance A1 did not kill person B." We are tempted to evaluate the circumstance and conclude that one was right and the other wrong, but how can atheism provide any such conclusion?

Lecture Series: Lecture 6: Rational Arguments for The Existence of God

And now to the rational arguments for the existence of God. At the outset of such an endeavor there are some who are offended. "God cannot be proved by human arguments," they say. "It is plain arrogance that makes men think they can capture God in an argument," etc.

Let me make it clear that I believe that God's existence, according to the argument of Scripture, is a rational necessity. It is abundantly clear that God exists, wholly apart from any biblical revelation (Rom 1). The atheist who denies God's existence or the pantheist who worships creature rather than creator have both violated what they know to be true--namely, that God exists and that He is not us! They are not "seekers" or "neutral reasoners" considering all sides of an argument. They deny what they know to be true! They are like the man standing on the train tracks with a train bearing down on him denying that trains exist or claiming that the train is only an illusion.

It occurs to me that the various arguments for God's existence are merely an extension of the logic of Romans 1. "What may be known about God is obvious, having been clearly seen by what has been made." So let's look at each argument in turn:

1. The Cosmological Argument:

Premise 1 - Everything that comes into being has a cause of its being.
Premise 2 - The universe came into being.
Conclusion - The universe has a cause of its being.

(For the structure of this argument I am indebted to William Lane Craig)

Of course the question then becomes, "what is a sufficient cause for the appearance of something like the universe?" When we consider everything that the universe contains, particularly in our small section of it, then one must look for a cause that makes sense. One would not say that the ingredients of the cake are the cause of the cake. Simply finding the composite parts of the universe does nothing to explain why they are composed in the precise ways that they are. Descartes principle is perhaps helpful here. He said that in our experience causes are greater than their effects. We do not see order caused by disorder or intelligence by non-intelligence. Thus the sufficient cause of the universe must be something greater than the universe. God certainly fits that description and thus cause and effect leads us back to an absolute beginning of cause and effect.

One critic, Gordon Stein, suggested that this same argument could be applied to God. If everything must have a cause, then God of course must have a cause. But again, that is not exactly what Christians are saying. We are saying that "everything that comes into being" must have a cause. And God did not come into being. If he did, then of course we need to start looking at the conditions prior to God for an explanation of His existence. But surely, as Aristotle has noted, there can be no "infinite regress of causes" here. Surely there is something that is stable and original, whether that be matter or God. The question posed by the Cosmological argument is simple. Which is a better candidate for an absolute causal origin to the universe, matter or God?

2. The Kalam Cosmological Argument:

Premise 1 - Adding one event to another can never result in an infinite number of events in time.
Premise 2 - The universe is just such a collection of events.
Premise 3 - The universe is not actually infinite, but had a beginning.

Imagine for a moment a ladder. Each rung of the ladder represents a specific temporal event, like the moment that just passed. Now imagine that there are an infinite number of rungs on the ladder going downward. If the present moment is a specific rung on the ladder, how could that rung be reached if one needed to pass an infinite number of rungs before one could touch it? Such is the dilemma presented by the Kalam scholars of the middle ages.

If there is an infinite collection of events going into the past, how did the present moment ever come into being? Zeno's paradoxes relate somewhat to the various challenges to Kalam. For example, Geometry tells us that there are an infinite number of points between where I sit and the wall, thus I will never reach the wall, because to do so I must traverse the distance by half, and then that distance by half, and so on without end. But of course I know that I can walk to the wall. So is mathematics deceiving me about the nature of reality or is reality deceiving me about the nature of mathematics? Zeno believed that reality was deceiving me and that math was more nearly real. His conclusion was that reality was a kind of wholly stable mathematical entity, a kind of complex equation, and that there is no such thing as motion or change. Motion and change are illusory, based completely on our inadequate perceptions. The way to move beyond these deceptions is to practice mathematics.

The implications of this are rather interesting. For example, if you stare at the clock right now, there are an infinite number of points between where the second hand is now and the next number on the clock. Since it must traverse an infinite number of points, the next second can never arrive, correct?
Neurotransmitters travel between cells in the brain over a space, which also contains an infinite number of points, which means that thoughts can never be completed because they can never cross this microscopic yet infinite distance.

All of this seems to indicate, as the Kalam argument suggests, that there is a difference between potential infinites (a number of points on a graph in the abstract) and actual infinites (what it would mean if there really were an infinite number of points between point a and point b in our experience).
The Kalam argument suggests that there is a difference between math in the abstract and actual events in time. Math is merely analogous to our experiences, but is not identical (isn't that comforting). Thus the best explanation for an absolute origin of events in time is something outside of time, not subject to it, who is a sufficient explanation for the nature of motion and change. Surely something that is itself subject to change cannot be an explanation for change anymore than a moving universe can explain the movement of the universe.

Another way to say this is simply to note that time is not the same thing as the measurement of time. One is mathematical, the other reality. The measurement is merely analogous to the reality. In that sense, 5:30 is not really all that significant, at least not nearly as significant as the events that take place in that space of time labeled with the numbers 5:30. But the point is that before 5:30 was 5:28, and before that yesterday, and before that last year, and so on until the absolute beginning of time. God is the best accounting for an absolute beginning to the events we measure mathematically.

3. The Telelogical Argument:
Premise 1 - The fine tuning of the universe for the appearance of intelligent life is either due to necessity, chance or design.
Premise 2 - It is not due to necessity or chance.
Premise 3 - The universe was designed.

The core of this argument rests on premise 2. Why is it unacceptable to believe that the universe is necessary as it is or is due to chance?

On the necessity argument, two things can be mentioned. The first is a rather philosophical point and the second a more scientific one. First, we continue our enquiries into a question until we have a simple and satisfactory answer for a phenomenon. By simple we mean an answer that is a kind of indivisible, rock bottom answer, requiring no further parsing. For example, no one really asks why we are breathing animals. The answer we have for this is sufficient and requires no further probing. It just is that way! It is futile to spend one's life studying why there are laws of attraction or why 2 and 2 make 4. On such enquiries, simple, rock-bottom answers requiring no further explanation have been reached.
Now is that the case with the universe as we know it. Which is a simple explanation of the fine tuning of the universe? Matter or God? Matter is simply not sufficient as an explanation for order. One can think of many follow up questions to such a solution. Why does matter behave as it does? Why is it organized as it is? Why did it come alive on this planet? How did it come alive? Is there anything significant about it or is it in itself accidental to the structure of the universe, etc.

The second reason we can reject necessity as an explanation of the order in the universe relates to new discoveries in physics. This fits now under the heading, "Fine tuning." Essentially the argument here is that even the physical laws and constants of the universe are set for the appearance of material diversity like we find on the earth. From gravity to atomic forces to electromagnetism, all of the physical constants are set within an extremely narrow range for the appearance of a life-permitting planet like the earth. The point here is that the universe could have been different, could have possessed greater gravity, greater electromagnetic radiation, etc. So these values for gravity and atomic forces, etc. are not necessary. What, or who, created a universe with the primary conditions necessary for the emergence of stars, planets, light and heavy elements? The only other explanations available are chance or design.
Chance is an absurd explanation for fine tuning. Is it possible that a tornado passing through a junk yard can produce a 747 jumbo jet? Sure, it is remotely possible, but is anyone going to bet one's life on it? And, is it a better explanation than design?

Dr. Victor Stenger, an atheist physicist, has accused Christians of merely "arbitrarily excluding" low probability as an explanation for the emergence of an ordered universe. He points out that there are many low probability events that occur in the world, such as the birth of any one child. How many thousands of sperm are involved? And how many millions and even billions were involved if one considers all of one's ancestors as well? And no one reaches for "divine guidance" to explain the fortuitous birth of a particular baby from these billions of options.

Or consider the lottery. Here is a game with extremely low probabilities of winning. And yet somebody always wins. Is it a miracle? Divine design? No, says Stenger.

Now these objections are rationally absurd for any adolescent trained in rudimentary logic. His first argument commits the fallacy, "affirming the consequent." Consider the argument as a syllogism:
Premise 1 - If evolution occurred, then the improbable is possible.
Premise 2 - The improbable is possible (cite an example or two).
Conclusion - Therefore, evolution occurred.

One can see readily that the argument offends by affirming the second part of the conditional statement, and this of course proves nothing about the antecedent (first part of the conditional statement). Just because one can prove that some improbable events occur does not mean that the particular improbable event in view also occurred. If I tell you that some person was struck by lightening (an improbable event) and then go on to tell you that an alien culture will invade the earth in 20 years, killing all humanity, will you believe me? Remember, I just cited an improbable event, so you should believe me when I tell you that another improbable event is going to occur. Silly, right?

Another significant point can be mentioned: Is the birth of a child really a low probability event? Perhaps the joining of a particular egg and sperm is a low probability event, but that event operates within the framework of an extremely high probability event--namely, that when a man and women join in intercourse at the appropriate time, the likelihood of a sperm and an egg joining is significant.
The same can be said of the lottery. Perhaps it is a low probability that a particular participant in the lottery game will win it, but it is highly probable, even certain, that someone will win it, because that is how the game was "set up." One would not conclude that just because a low probability event takes place within the game that the game itself is an artifact of chance. Even Aristotle noted that chance explains some things, but not everything. More will be said on this when we get to the science and Christianity unit.

4. The Ontological Argument:

Anselm's version reads thus:
Premise 1 - Even a fool can conceive of a perfect being. (This Anselm based on our common experience. We all have the idea of a perfect being in our minds.)
Premise 2 - Things that exist in reality are greater than things that exist in the imagination alone. (Think Santa Clause... wouldn't he be even greater if he existed?)
Premise 3 - The perfect being must exist in reality, otherwise we could think of something greater.
Conclusion - The perfect being exists in reality and we call Him God.

Now this version of the ontological argument was, in the estimation of most philosophers, fairly well dismantled by Immanuel Kant. Kant noted that "existence cannot be predicated of a subject." When considering the subject/predicate relationship, we don't consider "existence" to be a property. While it may be true that an imaginary island would come with a certain set of predicates (properties, adjectives, descriptions), existence itself is not something that comes with the idea of any island, real or imagined. And if you added "existent" to an imaginary island, it would do nothing to add to its greatness.
Perhaps this is the best way to say this: "existence" does not add to the perfection of something--it merely identifies whether or not there is such a perfect thing in that class of things. It is a separate judgment from the quality of the thing under question.

An illustration of this point: I cannot meaningfully say that so and so is intelligent, beautiful, kind and "exists."

Or say it this way: Descartes and Anselm said, "If it's perfect, it must exist." Kant says, "If it exists, then it exists; and if it doesn't, then it doesn't... but this says nothing about its perfection." Thus, whether or not God exists is a separate question, for Kant, from those properties would make Him a great being, real or imagined. But simply acting as though "existence" is a property of His perfection does not "define Him into being."

Now this criticism may seem devastating, but there are efforts alive today among Christian philosophers to resurrect the ontological argument. Perhaps the best attempt comes from the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga. Here is his attempt:

Premise 1 - It is possible that there is a maximally great being.
Premise 2 - A maximally great being would exist in every possible world (that is, His existence would be necessary).
Premise 3 - One of the possible worlds is Alpha (the actual world).
Conclusion - God exits in Alpha.

Surely most people can agree that it is at least possible that a maximally great being exists. But if a person acknowledges this premise, the argument pulls him in, because it would surely count against the greatness of a "maximally great being" if He could not exist in all logically possible worlds. But among the logically possible worlds will be the actual one, so God must exist in it.

To be clear, Plantinga's ambitions are realistic here. He does not believe that this argument proves God's existence, but he does believe that it makes belief in the existence of God reasonable. There is surely nothing to keep a person from denying premise 1, but there is also nothing to prevent someone from affirming it. It does seem reasonable after all, and the logic of the argument from there is sound.

5. The Moral Argument:

Premise 1 - If there is no God, then there is no objective morality.
Premise 2 - There is objective morality.
Conclusion - There is a God.

Again, I am indebted to William Lane Craig for the logical structure of this age old argument. Here is an eminently clear statement of the Christian argument from objective morality. Much more will be said on this particular argument in the next lecture as we examine C.S. Lewis' concise summation of the moral argument in book one of Mere Christianity.

Bad Arguments:

6. Appeal to the Bible:

The Bible says that God exists and the Bible is God's Word, so God must exist. One can readily see that this argument commits the fallacy "begging the question." It assumes the thing it is trying to prove. One has a lot of work to do before one can say anything about the link between God's existence and the Bible. Perhaps it would be best to demonstrate that theism is reasonable first, and then to ask which of the theistic religions provides the necessary evidence of divine revelation. Once we do this, I think it is clearly true that Christianity offers compelling bibliography (textual evidence).

7. Appeal to Miracles:

This commits the same fallacy as the appeal to the Bible. Here are the most common atheistic objections and a few responses to those objections:

"Miracles are unusual occurrences. Shouldn't there be more evidence of them." But of course this is non-sense, because they are, by definition, unusual occurrences, meaning that not everyone is going to see one. If they did, then they would be "normal" or "usual" occurrences, and then the atheist is merely going to question the origin of the "normal," just as he does in cases such as DNA or other forms of design in nature. And so we reach stalemate.

"Miracles violate nature." It is seen by many atheists as self-contradictory that we claim that God is the source of natural law and then he "violates" natural law by doing miracles. But surely this isn't obvious. If the world God creates includes the possibility of bending nature for His purposes initially, then it is not a violation. What the naturalist is saying is merely this: "In a purely material world, any intrusion of the supernatural would be impossible." But only he believes that the world is purely material. If the world contains God, spirits, souls and the like, then nature is rather unpredictably interacting with forces outside of her. And thus when unusual events happen, the naturalist says, "ah, nature is mysterious and splendid." And the supernaturalist says, "ah, providence is mysterious and splendid." And we reach stalemate again.

"You have burden of proof." This is just an uninteresting objection. Whether we are talking about something that is an unusual natural event or a super-natural event, either requires some evidence. So the naturalist, with his claim that life came from non-living chemicals, or the supernaturalist, with his claim to miracles, both have burden of proof, and both have faith that their theories will be vindicated. And so we reach stalemate again.

"Do a miracle and I'll believe." If we produce a miracle, it is conceivable that our skeptical friends will simply claim that it is merely an "unusual natural occurrence." Certainly there are many unrepeatable natural occurrences in the history of the world, so the skeptic has an easy out. And we reach stalemate again.

Perhaps for the true observers of miracles stalemate is obliterated by a shining undeniable event. But then again, it occurs to me that if a skeptic is committed to his skepticism, he would touch the wounds in Jesus hands and then accuse him of being an illusionist. Stalemate!

All I'm pointing to is the reality that even if we supply the event, it must still be interpreted, and the interpretation will be according to an underlying worldview. If that worldview simply cannot allow for the possibility of miracles, then it becomes a kind of "unassailable naturalism" as Geisler puts it.

9. Appeal to Pascal's Wager:

Blaise Pascal suggested that if we bet on God and turn out to be wrong, then we have lost nothing. If we bet on atheism and it turns out there is a God, then we have lost eternity.

But again it is simply not obvious that Pascal is right on this. If we bet on God and turn out to be wrong, it is still the case that we lose much. If the Christian dedicates his life to Jesus, but God does not exist, and thus Jesus was deluded, then the Christian has wasted his life. The stakes are high indeed!
It is still true that if the atheist bets there is no God, and there turns out to be a God, he has lost a great deal, but Pascal's wager says nothing about whether such a God really exists or doesn't exist. It only highlights the fact that such a choice requires an assessment of the cost. Curiously though, it only calls attention to the cost to the atheist. The cost for being wrong in this is high to both the atheist and the Christian. Paul himself says in I Cor 15 that if there is no resurrection, Christians are to be "pitied" and they are "still in their sins."

Lecture Series: Lecture 5: Foundations for Worldview Apologetics

The thesis for this class is from Dr. Greg Bahnsen, a presuppositionalist (a particular kind of Christian intellectual... we'll discuss later) of the first order: "We set forth the absolute necessity of Christianity in order to make sense of reason, love, moral law, human dignity and every other intelligible human experience."

Bahnsen spent most of his career comparing the various major worldviews in order to demonstrate the inherent superiority of Christianity. And that will be the program of this class in the second semester.

We will demonstrate that when these major worldviews are compared, Christianity emerges as necessarily true! Yes, you heard me! True! Not probable or possible or relatively better than others. Necessarily true! But the only way to be convinced of this is to learn to think "worldviewishly." One must have sufficient knowledge of the worldviews in question to be able to establish first that they are antithetical (they are incompatible... not different paths to the same place); and second, one must then demonstrate that there are good reasons to believe that one of them is right and the others, while possessing certain truthful ideas, on the whole are wrong.

Before we can make progress, we must establish a few foundational terms. Nothing of what we will say in this semester will make sense unless there is first some understanding of these foundational terms:

1. Fideism: Essentially this is the idea that we simply "believe something into being." You can detect a Christian fideist by asking the simple question, "How do you know Christianity is true?" He or she will respond with something along the lines of... "well, you can't know for sure--that's why it's called faith..." or... "I don't know, but I believe it," etc.

Christianity unfortunately has a long history with fideism. Perhaps a couple of examples would be instructive. First, consider the case of Galileo. When he proved that Copernicus was right about the notion of a heliocentric (sun centered) solar system, he was invited to a discussion with Catholic authorities who believed otherwise. When he would not recant, he was shown the implements of torture, at which point he reconsidered and signed the letter of recantation. Only in the 20th century did the Catholic Church apologize for this.

When Darwin offered his theory during the 19th century, few Christians knew what exactly to do with it. Since they could not offer an informed response, many of them simply covered their ears and pretended they didn't hear these difficult intellectual and scientific challenges. Then they surrounded themselves with others who wouldn't ask difficult questions. As a result, Christianity lost much of its influence in academia. This is perhaps best displayed by the infamous "Scopes Monkey Trial" in the early 20th century in Dayton, Tennesee. Christians won, but only because we were still in the majority and not because our arguments were particularly compelling. In time it became clear that in winning that trial, Christians lost the intellectual battle. We won by force alone. Curiously, in winning the legal battle, we lost the "worldview" war, and as a result, evolution is far more intellectually respected in our day than is creationism.

This is all classic fideism at base. When Christians don't know what to say in response to serious intellectual and evidentiary challenges to the faith, and doggedly cling to belief anyway, then that is pure fideism. When a person responds to the thoughtful skeptic by saying, "I don't know what to say to you, but I just believe," then they are a fideist.

Let me make it very clear: This class in no way endorses or promotes fideism as a substitute for true faith.

Fideists are often revealed when "good little Christian boys and girls" go off to college. There they are exposed to a wider world and impressive, genial (nice) secularists. They don't know what to say to all of these new ideas, so they do one of two things: One, they are simply overwhelmed and assimilated, their Christianity broken down and discarded. They join the party because clearly Christianity cannot survive the process of growing up and becoming a cosmopolitan progressive thinker. One must abandon Christianity like one abandons belief in magic. They are features of childhood artifically maintained by adults, for some odd reason. Of course, those simply absorbed into the culture are not in danger of becoming fideists, but the process that forces some to throw in the towel causes others to become fideists.

The college fideist allows a split to occur in her psychic life, resulting in a practical rearrangement of life. Since she knows that Christianity cannot answer difficult intellectual challenges, she retreats from these challenges and then surrounds herself with others who do the same. These people never talk about such "dry" and "philosophical" matters. The mind is for school; the heart is for the church. They may even have to endure a philosophy class or two, but all of us can do that. We can switch on our brains, do the bare minimum, and then switch them back off again. Christianity is an affair of the heart and not the mind. One is called to feel something about the Trinity and not think about it or explain it. The problem here is that some people want to hear reasons as to why we are Christians. If we always say, "we feel that it is right," then of course they will rightly reply, "Well, I feel that it is wrong," and we make no progress.

To simplify this notion, let us call fideism an "all heart, no head" kind of philosophy, or perhaps a "mostly heart and only a little head" kind of philosophy.

2. Intellectual or Philosophical Phariseeism: If fideism is an "all heart, no head" philosophy, philosophical phariseeism is precisely the opposite; "all head, no heart." The best representatives of this group in literature are, well, the Pharisees in the New Testament, and the Sophists in the writings of Plato.

It seems clear from the New Testament that the Pharisees didn't particularly impress Jesus. They were generally well respected, even among the elite of their society. But read Matthew chapter 23 and you'll see that Jesus looses most of his venom on these respectable men.
For Jesus, the issue seemed to be that they were far more dangerous than other corrupt human beings because they were also intelligent and externally virtuous human beings. They wielded power and influence in their corrupt attitudes and motivations. The evil of most men is like a poisened glass of water. The evil of some select men is like a poisened well spring. Such were the Pharisees.
They knew their doctrine and could argue it with anyone. They commanded the admiration of their countrymen, but they did not love God. They loved what God could "do for them." They loved to use his name for leverage with the people.
In our day the philosophical pharisee is the student who can earn straight A's in Bible classes at a Christian school, but could not possibly care less about God. He may even be clever enough to make everyone around him think he is a "good Christian" kid, but he is manipulating everyone to feed his own selfish desires. He needs to "play" the religious power brokers just as he needs to "play" other power brokers if he wishes to get ahead in life. And so he plays the game, and he is a good player. But of course even if he deceives everyone, God is not deceived.
Plato's reaction to the Sophists is similar to Jesus' reaction to the Pharisees, and for many of the same reasons. The Sophists were trained in rhetoric, attended the finest schools for Greek boys, and could argue any position, and often did so. They were even paid to argue a particular political, ethical or religious issue before a watching crowd. They didn't really believe the positions they were arguing, but loved the game. They loved to out-manuever an opponent in rhetorical combat. They argued for the sake of argument alone. This is why to this day we say that the person who argues merely to hear the sound of his own voice is guilty of "sophistry." If one does not believe there is an end to argument, a truth to be discovered and applied, then surely all argument reduces to sophistry.
The curious thing about the sophist is that when his arguments are exposed as unworthy, his ego is wounded, and he becomes defensive, angry. He has been bested in argument and that is all he can see. He stopped believing in truth and so cannot humbly accept defeat as an opportunity for growth. He only knows to redouble his efforts at asserting his will, perhaps even seeking the destruction of his enemy. This is how Plato views the death of Socrates, his mentor. It was a group of inferior men killing a superior man for no other reason than the affront to their egos.

3. Faith: And so the man or woman of faith is neither a fideist nor a pharisee. But this means that Christianity, and philosophy in general, has both a head and a heart. Lewis says that the Christian should have a child's heart and a grown-up's head. He is humble, teachable, trusting, but is also logical, critical, careful and competent. My definition of faith, which I'm sure is largely stolen from my own mentors in life, is simply: Trusting good authority in what is unknown, because that authority has shown itself (or himself/herself) trustworthy in the known.
The case of Abraham in Gen. 22 is instructive here. Abraham of course is celebrated in Hebrews and elsewhere as the prototypical "man of faith." He trusted God and it was credited to him as righteousness. What does it mean to trust God? Genesis 22 tells us. Why did Abraham actually obey the instruction to offer his son as a human sacrifice to God? It made no sense. After all, God had required only animal sacrifice, unlike many of the Canaanite deities, who did require human sacrifices. Not only that, but God had systematically eliminated every natural possibility of Abraham and Sarah having a child. They waited 25 years for the child to be born. God promises that through this child a nation as numerous as the stars will emerge. God allows a period of bonding between child and parents and then asks Abraham to kill the child. It makes no sense at all.
Does God want Abraham to embrace contradictions? Does God want Abraham to do the absurd? God says, "I'm not like the Canaanite gods," and then acts exactly like one, capricious, malicious, merely asserting arbitrary power because no one is going to stop him.

No. None of this is adequate as an explanation for Abraham's actions. Abraham must surely know that God will not contradict His clearly revealed character. He trusts God in the unknown, not because he is making a "leap into the absurd," and thereby embracing an irrational God. His trust in God is motivated by an understanding of God's clearly revealed character and consistent actions. He knows God, and thus He knows that God will "make a way" that will not result in the loss of his son, the very son promised and delivered by God in the first place.
Faith and reason are thus inextricably linked, as we have already discussed in the philosophy of education unit.

4. Worldview: Perhaps the best way to understand a worldview is to imagine a set of glasses. If you are wearing blue glasses, everything in the world will appear to be blue. It won't be that the things are actually blue, but they are filtered to one's vision because the blue lenses are thus "interpreting" everything you see. A worldview is therefore an "interpretive lens through which we view the major issues of life."
Occasionally I meet a student who insists that he does not have a worldview, that "he would not live in such a box," that "his vision of the world is larger than any limiting worldview," etc. This usually comes with a reminder that I should not "box him in" or "label him," etc. All lovely sentiments, but predictable, and, in the end, silly.
To reject worldviews is to embrace an anti-worldview worldview, or to default uncritically to what other worldviews say on various issues without analyzing each opinion on various issues for consistency. In my estimation, the student who says this fits quite neatly into the worldview of postmodernism without even realizing it. He just wants to say whatever he wants to say and doesn't want to believe he could ever be wrong or have to defer to those wiser than he is. Socrates described such a life when he said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."
We discuss the three major worldviews in a bit. (see below)

5. Apologetics: This term comes from the Greek word apologia, meaning "answer or defense." When Christians first encounter the idea, they might be tempted to think this term has something to do with "apologizing" for the Christian faith, or acting defensively. The simple definition is, "a rational defense of a worldview." And since Christianity is a worldview, it also requires a rational defense. One can be a "Christian apologist," an "Atheistic apologist," etc. The term "defense" is also somewhat misleading, since one can also be aggressive in one's representation of a particular worldview.

6. Presuppositional Apologetics: Perhaps the best way to understand this approach to Christian apologetics is to state it briefly: If Christianity is not true, then some other worldview must be true, but all others are untenable (irrational), therefore Chrsitianity wins by attrition (the others die off or logically self-destruct).

7. Evidentiary Apologetics: Historically, this has been the major emphasis of Christian apologetics. The basic idea is that there is sufficient historical evidence to validate belief in Christianity. The big three areas here are evidences for the Bible, the resurrection and the general design argument. In this class we will discuss all three.

The Three Major Worldviews: Every worldview holds a position on three major areas of philosophy. They are epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. Mr. Martin, our senior ethics teacher at BCHS, has captured the ingredients of a worldview with a helpful acronym; R.I.P.E. Every worldview involves a position on reality (this would be the notion of metaphysics). Every worldview contains a view of identity, purpose and ethics. And these all come from a particular authority (epistemology). So, let's break that down again.

Mr. Martin's worldview criteria: Reality (what is real?), Identity (who am I, what is humanity?), Purpose (why am I here?) and Ethics (how ought I to behave?).
The general criteria for a worldview: Metaphysics (what has substance/reality?), Epistemology (how do I know anything, how do I come to knowledge of truth?), Ethics (how ought I to behave?).
With these criteria in mind, lets look at the three major worldviews we will discuss in this class:

Atheism:
1. Atheistic Epistemology: It is a fascinating question to ask the atheist, "From whence comes your authority?" In the end, he must say mankind. This is also why atheism is synonymous with "humanism." It becomes humanistic epistemologically. There is no authority outside of humanity we can rely on to guide us into what we might name "truth."

In fairness, most atheists would refer to themselves as "scientific thinkers" or even "empiricists," meaning that they base all their knowledge on observation and reason. Religions are therefore a creation of mankind, once he has taken in various impressions from the environment. We experience various things and then the mind goes to work creating ideas from these physical experiences. For the atheist, God did not create man in his image; it was man that created God in his image.

2. Atheistic Metaphysics: The atheist believes that reality reduces to "matter in motion," and "upredictable" motion at that. The philosophical term for this is "material monism." Matter is all there is, was, or ever will be. It takes on various forms, randomly, but in the end, there is only the stuff of the universe.

3. Atheistic Ethics: It would not be unfair to the atheistic position to refer to their various ethical systems as "relativistic" essentially. Since various perceptions of truth ultimately originate in mankind, then it must be the case that moral values also originate in mankind. The truth is that many atheistic thinkers plainly acknowledge that atheism ultimately leads to relativism in ethics.

One way to expose this relativism is to look at the motive/action problem in atheism. Since they believe that we are only physical beings with no eternal soul, then ultimately nothing outlives the body or the culture. As such, one is hard pressed to see why motive matters at all in ethics. All one need do is appease the controlling legal power by outward signs of obeisance. But what place can compassion or a deisre to benefit one's fellow man have in atheism?

A simple case in point. If atheism is true and there is no soul, then why should I not steal? Ultimately he is going to have to say something along the lines that I will be punished if I steal. In other words, my actions alone are measured and enforced by laws, but how can law impose ideals or motives upon a person? No law is ever going to make me want to protect my neighbor's belongings. If I find them exposed, and there is no chance of legal retribution, then I will take them, at least I would do so in an atheistic universe. The only thing an atheist can offer in the way of motivation to keep laws is "threat of punishment" or "promise of reward." The motive of individuals in keeping social laws is ultimately irrelevant.

Pantheism:
1. Pantheistic Epistemology: Knowledge does not come from observation, but from "within." Knowledge is not "imprinted" by the external world, and then tinkered around with by the mind. Knowledge is "created" by the mind and projected upon the world. If atheism is "externally" heavy in its epistemology, pantheism is "internally" heavy in its epistmology. Reality, including God, is not to be "known" by the mind, but "experienced" through a kind of mystical rapture. Pantheists often complain that westerners are always trying to master the universe with their puny minds instead of being caught up in the beauty of the mysterious and majestically interrelated universe in which we find ourselves.

2. Pantheistic Metaphysics: Both pantheism and atheism are monistic worldviews at bottom. The difference is that one tends toward the notion that observable material phenomena alone exist, and the other that unobservable spiritual or mystical phenomena alone exist. I say phenomena because reality to the monist appears to be "many" when in truth it is one thing. The pantheist believes that there exists one majestic interellated entity. God "is" everything, or perhaps is "in" everything. There are different names for this. The Hindu's call it Brahman. The Buddhists call it Nirvana. The American Transcendentalists called it Oversoul. New Ager's call it Gaia, or some, looking for scientific legitimacy, make appeals to the notion of energy. And of course George Lucas calls it The Force.

3. Pantheistic Ethics: Like Atheism, pantheistic ethics is relativistic, but it arrives at this via a more complicated path. Since God, or "ultimate reality" is an awareness of the interconnectedness and interdependency of the universe, then anything that prevents such an awareness must be the only "evil." This "evil" is most frequently referred to as "Karma." Karma involves attachment to the cycle of action and reaction, and can cause one, depending on the level of attachment, to be reborn into a lower life form through the process of reincarnation.

But note clearly that Karma is a purely subjective phenomenon. It is not an "objective" evil, but involves an individual's personal level of attachment. What this means is that there can be no action or person that is objectively wrong. As an illustration let's consider the case of a divorce. In pantheism, divorce itself is not right or wrong. But let's imagine that a person goes through with a divorce, but spends all of her time thinking about the loss, grieving indefinitely, obsessing over the good times now lost, etc. Such a person is doing something wrong because she is defining herself by the action and reaction of the divorce. She is bound up in Karmic attachments to the old relationship. Now imagine the reverse. She doesn't go through with the divorce, but constantly imagines the freedom that doing so might have brought, and obsesses about her spouses flaws. Again, but in this case making the opposite ethical choice, she is guilty of Karmic attachments to action and reaction. You'll note that in pantheism there is no objective moral value outside the individual that guides him or her into the right ethical choice. There is no right ethical choice; there is only the subjective manner in which the choice is made.
If the atheist discards motive and maintains that only actions can be right or wrong, determined of course by group consensus, then the pantheist holds the opposite position. Since the whole universe is good, even god-like, then nothing in it can be "wrong" or "bad." Thus, there can be no action or person that is right or wrong; only motives can be right or wrong. But notice what happens here. If that is true, then relativism naturally emerges. For I can kill thousands, and do so in a spirit of detachment. I can divorce, and do so in a spirit of detachment, etc. My "guilt" or "innocence" both come down to a mental trick.

Christianity:
1. Christian Epistemology: Christians learn through science, reason, experience, intuition and revelation from God.

But of course, the ultimate source of knowledge for the Christian comes from God himself in the form of Christian revelation. The primary source of this revelation is the Bible and Jesus Christ.
Once a college biology professor challenged this idea by asking his Christian students to study their Bibles for two weeks and then asked another group of students to study their biology texts for two weeks, after which there would be a comprehensive biology exam. He taunted that if the Bible is all the knowledge one needs then the Christians should outperform the biology students in the biology exam.
Now is there anyone more asinine than this college professor? No thinking Christian has ever suggested that the Bible contains all truth; only that what is in it is all true. And of course Scripture itself says that it contains everything necessary for "life and godliness," not that it contains everything for automobile mechanics. Truth is found elsewhere, but the Scriptures contain the central truths for managing life and for restoration of relationship with the God who made us. In that sense, it is the core philosophy that should manage all other philosophies of life and indeed all other knowledge.

2. Christian Metaphysics: The term most often used to describe the Christian metaphysic is "dualism." The term simply means a dynamic tension between two realities; in this case the spiritual and the material. It should be noted that it is not only strict religionists that maintain this notion, but also largely worldly people, like Plato. Plato's view was that there was a realm of changeless spiritual entities, called the forms, and a realm of shadows, or materialistic approximations of these changeless ideals.
Christians are not really Platonic dualists, but one must acknowledge some overlap between Plato and Christianity, especially in the realm of "moral ideals." Christians believe, for example, that mankind is a unique creature indeed. Man is, in the words of Lewis, a "spirit-beast." There is an organic interaction between the spiritual and physical aspects of man. We are neither angels (pure spirits), nor are we simply animals (pure biology). What happens to our bodies will affect our spirits and what happens to our spirits will affect our bodies. It is even questionable whether there can be any unambiguous Christian notion of "man" without this integration of spirit and body. On the one hand, Christians cannot confess a spirit existence for man wholly dismebodied; and, on the other hand, he certainly cannot conceive of man as a simple biological machine either.
3. Christian Ethics: Perhaps the simplest way to describe Christian ethics is to affirm the centrality of both motive and actions. There is such a thing as "human nature," in that we are built to function in a certain way with respect to moral virtue. And there is such a thing as a pattern of virtuous behavior, so that regardless of the man, a certain line of behavior is always right given a certain set of circumstances. Thus in the case of divorce, there are only very clear situations in which it is to be deemed acceptable, and those cases are clearly communicated and argued. One can get divorced with the right set of motivations, but that is still wrong. One can stay married with the wrong set of motivations, and that is a moral defect as well. Only doing the right thing for the right reasons in all cases is finally acceptable to the Christian. Of course, no one lives like this, and this fact leads to the notion of Christian salvation, but that must be saved for another day.

Lecture Series Lecture 4: Challenges to Education, Part III, The Narcissistic Culture

I'm struck by the Social Media/Reality TV world in which we live. Everyone thinks his or her life is fascinating. People today are always complaining that they have so little time and yet so many have ample time to nourish an endless vapid preoccupation with emotional narrative for its own sake.

As a philosophy teacher, I'm beginning to wonder what my teaching is going to mean to the increasing numbers of narcissists in my classes. The ideas are king in my class, not personal stories about my life or the lives of my students. Frankly I think that the Trinity doctrine is fascinating (because God is fascinating) and my life compared to the central theological and philosophical ideas is like comparing the scribblings of a child to the genius of Michelangelo. The irony is not lost on me. I'm utterly enthralled with topics like the nominalist/realist discussion while my students are captivated by stories, and stories that aren't even that interesting. They like stories about how funny a movie was, or how militant their parents are, or how another celebrity cheated on his wife. If I were to stop one of my lectures and just share a story about my daughter throwing up on me they would sit at rapt attention, even if the story was utterly unrelated to anything significant.

Some of my complaint here falls into the category of, "the ravings of a cranky, middle-aged high school teacher," and I'm fine with that. But just as teens have so little interest in the things I find profoundly important, so I have little interest in their insufferable preoccupation with the dramatics of high school dating relationships or Instagram selfies. And I'm tired of the excuse that they are immature, and so I should cut them some slack. There are, of course, exceptions to this staggering shallowness, but those few don't constitute a large enough number to challenge the present generalization.

And it is not wholly, or even primarily, their fault. This is a culture that is ideally suited to the production of narcissists. As I understand the term, the modern narcissist is the sort of person so self focused that he simply cannot develop a worldview or philosophy of life. He defaults to a self-view. The world exists as a stage upon which he is the star attraction. Other people exist only as mirrors, reflecting back to him some feedback on himself. In fact, he ceases to be interested in individuals. His interaction with the outside world becomes one unbroken self defining and self promoting exercise. For the narcissist, one is either above this mass of humanity or one is subsumed into it, and the narcissist feels entitled to be above it.

The curious thing about the modern narcissist is that, as students of our culture, they have seen others rise above the mass without doing anything significant. They watch regular people become celebrities on reality shows just because they have abrasive and colorful personalities, and for no other reason. They watch others become fashion experts on entertainment programs. They amass hundreds of followers on various social media sites and write a blog (cough, cough), all because they have come to believe that what they presently are is what the whole world should notice and value. The only problem for the narcissist apparently is being noticed by the right people rather than being the right person to notice. In fact, what I just said is so abstract that the narcissist would think it both boring and unworthy of the time necessary to understand it.

And so the narcissist firmly believes that she is presently a wonder of the world, worthy of a larger share of attention. She need not study, pursue a craft, improve on a talent or be a team player to build something larger than her name or image. All of that is for the nameless, faceless nobodies of society. They may need time for training or improvement, but she is ready for primetime. Just look at how hot her selfies are.

The narcissist is not a listener. She is a commentator... on everything, because she is an expert on everything, including the things that people should or should not be experts about. Anything she doesn't know is deemed unworthy of knowing, of course. Her most devastating attack against anything uninteresting to her is to call it "boring," meaning, in most cases, things she can't understand. What to others is listening to her is only a pause in her running monologue about the world as she sees it. Every story, every idea, every metaphor in literature, every discussion of politics, movies, or any interaction with the outside world is a prompt for her to share some thrilling aspect of her life or perspective to others.

This is why the narcissist cannot understand philosophy. Philosophy has to do with thinking deeply about the nature of the world, how we come to know anything, what is real, what happens after death, what is ethically right, etc. But the narcissist already knows all of this without reference to "other people." Just raise any philosophical question and he'll tell you the answer. His emotions and intuition are sufficient to guide him wisely, and to guide you wisely. If you respond by saying that philosophers have already rejected his rather shallow ideas, he will just stare at you blankly, and up will come his devastatingly bored expression. And the conversation will be over. He need not develop a worldview because the world has shrunk to the narrow circumference of his life and experiences. Anything else is utterly irrelevant. He won't even argue with you about whether your answers are better than his. He will just yawn at you and proceed to the party, where a hundred friends writhe rhythmically to music that blares so loudly that it crushes all conversation, and people laugh at one liners while stumbling in the fog of consciousness brought on by beer, drugs and the role playing world of adolescent thought. Greatness is found there, but it is all make believe; a kind of translation back into reality of the realm of social media. It is a place to be seen and not to find love, truth, humanity or anything of substance. It is a world of walking three dimensional selfies.

The narcissist is dreadfully discontented. Eventually reality intrudes. What is the percentage of people who become even pseudo-famous (reality show famous)? Minimal at best. How many high school narcissists will actually achieve fame and fortune? Precious few! And even the ones that do, if they do so as narcissists, will have won the world and lost their souls. But what about the rest of them? Those who expected the world to rise up in ceaseless applause, and never realize this dream, come to hate the world. And why should they respond any other way? Imagine the poor pathetic narcissist in the winter of her days, having desperately attempted to be noticed only to discover that she remains insignificant, nameless, unknown to the world.

The narcissist cannot even be good at something because she obsesses about greatness. To be good is to be nothing. To be a good mother is not to be a famous mother. To be a good singer, perhaps making a modest living at it and improving one's craft, is to be nothing. To be a good writer or teacher or lawyer is not to be great, famous, noticed, and so to be good is to be insignificant, another member of the herd. If the narcissist discovers that she will never be great--that is, noticed--at something, then she will no longer bother trying to be good at that thing. Only being noticed for greatness matters. She has turned all goods into instrumental goods, in the words of Plato. She doesn't want to be a good mother because it is good in itself. She wants to be a great mother because there will be some personal payoff, some glory, that will belong to her if she works to that end.

Further, the narcissist will never view life as meaningful if it is not noticed on a grand scale. Curiously the narcissist equates meaning with attention. Attention is meaning. Name any person who was significant in your family, who substantially moved your whole family line towards civility, grace, wisdom and happiness, and then consider if they were known. If they were not known, and certainly if we don't know them now, then their lives are without meaning. This is truly how the narcissist thinks. No wonder she responds so easily to half-wit celebrities and responds with vacant eyes to the teachings of Jesus, or even Confucius.

Let us say at the end of this discussion that the quintessential opposite of the narcissist is the humble man or woman, whose life exists for glories beyond himself or herself.