I want to begin by thanking you for agreeing to—as the diplomats might put it—a “frank exchange of views.” And I certainly want to thank the folks at Christianity Today for hosting us.
P. G. Wodehouse once said that some minds are like soup in a poor restaurant—better left unstirred. I am afraid that I find myself sympathizing with him as I consider atheism. I had been minding my own business on this subject for a number of years when I saw Sam Harris’s book on the desk of a colleague, and that led to my book in response, not to mention a review of Richard Dawkins’s most recent book, and now a series of responses to your God Is Not Great, all culminating in this exchange. I am afraid that my problem is this: The more I stir the bowl, the more certain fumes, mystery meats, and questions keep floating to the surface. Here are a few of them.
Your first point was that the Christian faith cannot credit itself for all that “Love your neighbor” stuff, not to mention the Golden Rule, and the reason for this is that such moral precepts have been self-evident to everybody throughout history who wanted to have a stable society. You then move on to the second point, which contains the idea that the teachings of Christianity are “incredibly immoral.” In your book, you make the same point about other religions. Apparently, basic morality is not all that self-evident. So my first question is: Which way do you want to argue this? Do all human societies have a grasp of basic morality, which is the theme of your first point, or has religion poisoned
everything, which is the thesis of your book? The second thing to observe in this regard is that Christians actually do not claim that the gospel has made the world better by bringing us turbo-charged ethical information. There have been ethical advances that are due to the propagation of the faith, but that is not where the action is.
Christians believe—as C. S. Lewis argued in The Abolition of Man—that nonbelievers do understand the basics of morality. Paul the apostle refers to the Gentiles, who did not have the law but who nevertheless knew by nature some of the tenets of the law (Rom. 2:14). But the world is not made better because people can understand the ways in which they are being bad. It has to be made better by Good News—we must receive the gift of forgiveness and the resultant ability to live more in conformity to a standard we already knew (but were necessarily failing to meet). So the gospel does not consist of new and improved law. The gospel makes the world better through Good News, not through guilt trips or good advice.
In your second objection, you gaily dismiss the Old Testament, “which speaks hotly in recommending genocide, slavery, genital mutilation, and other horrors.” Setting aside for the moment whether your representation of the Old Testament is judicious or accurate, let me assume for the sake of discussion that you have accurately summarized the essence of Mosaic ethics here. You then go on to say that we who teach such stories to children have been “damned by history.” But why should this “damnation by history” matter to any of us reading Bible stories to kids, or, for that matter, to any of the people who did any of these atrocious things, on your principles? These people are all dead now, and we who read the stories are all going to be dead.
Why should any of us care about the effeminate judgments of history?
Should the propagators of these “horrors” have cared? There is no God, right? Because there is no God, this means that— you know—genocides just happen, like earthquakes and eclipses. It is all matter in motion, and these things happen.
If you are on the receiving end, there is only death, and if you are an agent delivering this genocide, the long-term result is brief victory and death at the end. So who cares? Picture an Israelite during the conquest of Canaan, doing every bad thing that you say was occurring back then. During one of his outrages, sword above his head, should he have stopped for a moment to reflect on the possibility that you might be right? “You know, in about three and a half millennia, the consensus among historians will be that I am being bad right now. But if there is no God, this disapproval will certainly not disturb my oblivion. On with the rapine and slaughter!” On your principles, why should he care?
In your third objection, you say that if “Christianity is to claim credit for the work of outstanding Christians or for the labors of famous charities, then it must in all honesty accept responsibility for the opposite.” In short, if we point to our saints, you are going to demand that we point also to our charlatans, persecutors, shysters, slave-traders, inquisitors, hucksters, televangelists, and so on. Now allow me the privilege of pointing out the structure of your argument here. If a professor takes credit for the student who mastered the material, aced his finals, and went on to a career that was a benefit to himself and the university he graduated from, the professor must (fairness dictates) be upbraided for the dope-smoking slacker that he kicked out of class in the second week. They were both formally enrolled, is that not correct? They were both students, were they not?
What you are doing is saying that Christianity must be judged not only on the basis of those who believe the gospel in truth and live accordingly but also on the basis of those baptized Christians who cannot listen to the Sermon on the Mount without a horse laugh and a life to match. You are saying that those who excel in the course and those who flunk out of it are all the same. This seems to me to be a curious way of proceeding.
You conclude by objecting to the sovereignty of God, saying that the idea makes the whole world into a ghastly totalitarian state, where believers say that God (and who does He think He is?) runs everything. I would urge you to set aside for a moment the theology of the thing and try to summon up some gratitude for those who built our institutions of liberty. Many of them were actually inspired by the idea that since God is exhaustively sovereign, and because man is a sinner, it follows that all earthly power must be limited and bounded. The idea of checks and balances came from a worldview that you dismiss as inherently totalitarian. Why did those societies where this kind of theology predominated produce, as a direct result, our institutions of civil liberty?
One last question: In your concluding paragraph you make a great deal out of your individualism and your right to be left alone with the “most intimate details of [your] life and mind.” Given your atheism, what account are you able to give that would require us to respect the individual?
How does this individualism of yours flow from the premises of atheism? Why should anyone in the outside world respect the details of your thought life any more than they respect the internal churnings of any other given chemical reaction? That’s all our thoughts are, isn’t that right? Or, if there is a distinction, could you show how the premises of your atheism might produce such a distinction?
Christopher Hitchens – Against Abortion Uploaded by BritishNeoCon on Dec 2, 2010 An issue Christopher doesn’t seem to have addressed much in his life. He doesn’t explicitly say that he is against abortion in this segment, but that he does believe that the ‘unborn child’ is a real concept. ___________________________ I was suprised when I […]
Max Brantley in the Arkansas Times Blog reports that Ron Paul is leading in Iowa. Maybe it is time to take a closer look at his views. In the above clip you will see Chistopher Hitchens discuss Ron Paul’s views. In the clip below you will find Ron Paul’s latest commercial. Below is a short […]
DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 07 Below are some reactions of evangelical leaders to the news of Christopher Hitchens’ death: Christian leaders react to Hitchens’ death Posted on Dec 16, 2011 | by Michael Foust DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 08 Author and […]
DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 04 Below are some reactions of evangelical leaders to the news of Christopher Hitchens’ death: Christian leaders react to Hitchens’ death Posted on Dec 16, 2011 | by Michael Foust DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 05 Author and speaker Christopher […]
DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 01 Below are some reactions of evangelical leaders to the news of Christopher Hitchens’ death: Christian leaders react to Hitchens’ death Posted on Dec 16, 2011 | by Michael Foust Author and speaker Christopher Hitchens, a leader of an aggressive form of atheism that eventually […]
If you want to check out some of the past posts where atheists have been confronted then check out these links below.
Back in March of 2011 my sons, Hunter and Wilson were attending church on a Sunday at Grace Community Church where John MacArthur preached. They actually got to visit with him briefly. Here is a clip of him from “Larry King Live.”
Genesis is filled with Creation myths, myths that appear in one form or another and virtually every culture. Do you want your kid’s teacher talking about the myth of “Adam and Eve”? Leviticus is down right scary, but it is a good place to point out the inconsistencies in Bible and how contrary they are to our common life.
The Gospels? Like 5 blind men describing an elephant. What were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John thinking?
_______________________
I understand how skeptics love to take pot shots at the Bible, but let us take a look at some of the facts.
Archaeologists have unearthed the five porticoes of the pool of Bethesda by the Sheep Gate (John 5:2), the pool of Siloam (9:1-7), Jacob’s well at Sychar (4:5), the ‘Pavement’ (Gabbatha) where Pilate tried Jesus (19:13), and Solomon’s porch in the temple precincts (10:22-23)… Since then, discovery of an ossuary (bone-box) of a crucified man named Johanan from first-century Palestine confirms that nails were driven in his ankles, as in Christ’s; previously some skeptics thought that the Romans used only ropes to affix the legs of condemned men to their crosses. And less than five years ago, in 1990, the burial grounds of Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest, and his family were uncovered in Jerusalem. These and numerous other details create a favorable impression of the Gospel’s trustworthiness in the areas in which they can be tested.
Sir William Ramsay, famed archaeologist, began a study of Asia Minor with little regard for the book of Acts. He later wrote:
I may fairly claim to have entered on this investigation without prejudice in favor of the conclusion which I shall now seek to justify to the reader. On the contrary, I began with a mind unfavorable to it,… It did not then lie in my line of life to investigate the subject minutely; but more recently I found myself brought into contact with the Book of Acts as an authority for the topography, antiquities and society of Asia Minor. It was gradually borne upon me that in various details the narrative showed marvelous truth.
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I wrote the famous atheist Anthony Flew a series of letters during the 1990’s and he was kind to answer several of them. I also sent him several cassette tapes and video tapes of Adrian Rogers messages. I will start a new series on this subject and post his responses. Below is a video clip filmed close to end of Dr Flew’s life.
In today’s news you will read about Kirk Cameron taking on the atheist Stephen Hawking over some recent assertions he made concerning the existence of heaven. Back in December of 1995 I had the opportunity to correspond with Carl Sagan about a year before his untimely death. Sarah Anne Hughes in her article,”Kirk Cameron criticizes […]
Christopher Hitchens vs. Douglas Wilson Debate at Westminster Theological Seminary, Part 12 of 12 Douglas Wilson I am afraid your argument is tangled up with greater difficulties than the ethnicity of the Samaritan, and so that issue really need not detain us any longer. I have been asking you to provide a warrant for morality, […]
In considering the above question (for which my thanks are due to your generosity and hospitality in inviting my response), I have complete confidence in replying in the negative. This is for the following reasons.
1) Although Christianity is often credited (or credits itself) with spreading moral precepts such as “Love thy neighbor,” I know of no evidence that such precepts derive from Christianity. To take one instance from each Testament, I cannot believe that the followers of Moses had been indifferent to murder and theft and perjury until they arrived at Sinai, and I notice that the parable of the good Samaritan is told of someone who by definition cannot have been a Christian.
To these obvious points, I add that the “Golden Rule” is much older than any monotheism, and that no human society would have been possible or even thinkable without elementary solidarity (which also allows for self-interest) between its members. Though it is not strictly relevant to the ethical dimension, I would further say that neither the fable of Moses nor the wildly discrepant Gospel accounts of Jesus of Nazareth may claim the virtue of being historically true. I am aware that many Christians also doubt the literal truth of the tales but this seems to me to be a problem for them rather than a difficulty for me. Even if I accepted that Jesus—like almost every other prophet on record—was born of a virgin, I cannot think that this proves the divinity of his father or the truth of his teachings. The same would be true if I accepted that he had been resurrected.
There are too many resurrections in the New Testament for me to put my trust in any one of them, let alone to employ them as a basis for something as integral to me as my morality.
2) Many of the teachings of Christianity are, as well as being incredible and mythical, immoral. I would principally wish to cite the concept of vicarious redemption, whereby one’s own responsibilities can be flung onto a scapegoat and thereby taken away. In my book, I argue that I can pay your debt or even take your place in prison but I cannot absolve you of what you actually did. This exorbitant fantasy of “forgiveness” is unfortunately matched by an equally extreme admonition—which is that the refusal to accept such a sublime offer may be punishable by eternal damnation. Not even the Old Testament, which speaks hotly in recommending genocide, slavery, genital mutilation, and other horrors, stoops to mention the torture of the dead. Those who tell this evil story to small children are not damned by me, but have been damned by history and should also be condemned by those who shrink from cruelty to children (a moral essential that underlies all cultures).
The late C. S. Lewis helps make this point for me by emphasizing that the teachings of Jesus only make sense if the speaker is the herald of an imminent kingdom of heaven. Otherwise, would it not be morally unsafe to denounce thrift, family, and the “taking of thought for the morrow”?
Some of your readers may believe that this teaching is either true—in the sense of an imminent redemption—or moral. I believe that they would have a difficult time believing both things at once, and I notice the futility as well as the excessive strenuousness (sometimes called “fanaticism” in tribute to the way that the two things pull in opposite directions) of their efforts.
Another way of phrasing this would be to say that if Christianity was going to save us by its teachings, it would have had to perform better by now. And so to my succeeding point.
3) if Christianity is to claim credit for the work of outstanding Christians or for the labors of famous charities, then it must in all honesty accept responsibility for the opposite. I shall not condescend to your readers in specifying what these “opposites” are, but I suggest once more that you pay attention to the Golden Rule. If hymns and psalms were sung to sanctify slavery—just to take a recent example—and then sung by abolitionists, then surely the non-fanatical explanation is that morality requires no supernatural sanction? Every Christian church has had to make some apology for its role in the Crusades, slavery, anti-Semitism, and much else. I do not think that such humility discredits faith as such, because I tend to think that faith is a problem to begin with, but I do think that humility will lead to the necessary conclusion that religion is man-made.
On the other hand from humility, the fantastic idea that the cosmos was made with man in mind strikes me as the highest form of arrogant self-centeredness. And this brings me to what must be (within the limits of this short essay) my closing point. We are not without knowledge on these points, and the boundaries are being expanded at a rate which astonishes even those who do not look for a single cause of such vast and diverse phenomena. There is more awe and more reverence to be derived from a study of the heavens or of our DNA than can be found in any book written by a fearful committee in the age of myth (when Aquinas took astrology seriously and Augustine invented “limbo”).
I cannot, of course, prove that there is no supervising deity who invigilates my every moment and who will pursue me even after I am dead. (I can only be happy that there is no evidence for such a ghastly idea, which would resemble a celestial North Korea in which liberty was not just impossible but inconceivable.) But nor has any theologian ever demonstrated the contrary. This would perhaps make the believer and the doubter equal—except that the believer claims to know, not just that God exists, but that his most detailed wishes are not merely knowable but actually known. Since religion drew its first breath when the species lived in utter ignorance and considerable fear, I hope I may be forgiven for declining to believe that another human being can tell me what to do, in the most intimate details of my life and mind, and to further dictate these terms as if acting as proxy for a supernatural entity. This tyrannical idea is very much older than Christianity, of course, but I do sometimes think that Christians have less excuse for believing, let alone wishing, that such a horrible thing could be true. Perhaps your response will make me reconsider?
Christopher Hitchens – Against Abortion Uploaded by BritishNeoCon on Dec 2, 2010 An issue Christopher doesn’t seem to have addressed much in his life. He doesn’t explicitly say that he is against abortion in this segment, but that he does believe that the ‘unborn child’ is a real concept. ___________________________ I was suprised when I […]
Max Brantley in the Arkansas Times Blog reports that Ron Paul is leading in Iowa. Maybe it is time to take a closer look at his views. In the above clip you will see Chistopher Hitchens discuss Ron Paul’s views. In the clip below you will find Ron Paul’s latest commercial. Below is a short […]
DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 07 Below are some reactions of evangelical leaders to the news of Christopher Hitchens’ death: Christian leaders react to Hitchens’ death Posted on Dec 16, 2011 | by Michael Foust DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 08 Author and […]
DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 04 Below are some reactions of evangelical leaders to the news of Christopher Hitchens’ death: Christian leaders react to Hitchens’ death Posted on Dec 16, 2011 | by Michael Foust DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 05 Author and speaker Christopher […]
DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 01 Below are some reactions of evangelical leaders to the news of Christopher Hitchens’ death: Christian leaders react to Hitchens’ death Posted on Dec 16, 2011 | by Michael Foust Author and speaker Christopher Hitchens, a leader of an aggressive form of atheism that eventually […]
Theologian Douglas Wilson and atheist Christopher Hitchens, authors whose books are already part of a larger debate on whether religion is pernicious, agreed to discuss their views on whether Christianity itself has benefited the world. Below is their exchange, one in a series that will appear on our website over the course of this month.
Douglas Wilson is author of Letter from a Christian Citizen, senior fellow of theology at New Saint Andrews College, and minister at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. He is also the editor of Credenda/Agenda magazine and has written (among other things) Reforming Marriage and A Serrated Edge: A Brief Defense of Biblical Satire and Trinitarian Skylarking . His Blog and Mablog site inevitably makes for provocative reading.
Christopher Hitchens wrote God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Twelve Books). Hitchens is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School. He is the author of numerous books, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man,” Letters to a Young Contrarian , and Why Orwell Matters. He was named, to his own amusement, number five on a list of the “Top 100 Public Intellectuals” by Foreign Policy and Britain’s Prospect.
Christopher Hitchens – Against Abortion Uploaded by BritishNeoCon on Dec 2, 2010 An issue Christopher doesn’t seem to have addressed much in his life. He doesn’t explicitly say that he is against abortion in this segment, but that he does believe that the ‘unborn child’ is a real concept. ___________________________ I was suprised when I […]
Max Brantley in the Arkansas Times Blog reports that Ron Paul is leading in Iowa. Maybe it is time to take a closer look at his views. In the above clip you will see Chistopher Hitchens discuss Ron Paul’s views. In the clip below you will find Ron Paul’s latest commercial. Below is a short […]
DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 07 Below are some reactions of evangelical leaders to the news of Christopher Hitchens’ death: Christian leaders react to Hitchens’ death Posted on Dec 16, 2011 | by Michael Foust DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 08 Author and […]
DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 04 Below are some reactions of evangelical leaders to the news of Christopher Hitchens’ death: Christian leaders react to Hitchens’ death Posted on Dec 16, 2011 | by Michael Foust DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 05 Author and speaker Christopher […]
DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 01 Below are some reactions of evangelical leaders to the news of Christopher Hitchens’ death: Christian leaders react to Hitchens’ death Posted on Dec 16, 2011 | by Michael Foust Author and speaker Christopher Hitchens, a leader of an aggressive form of atheism that eventually […]
Collision is a documentary film. released on October 27, 2009 featuring a debate between prominent atheist Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson, Presbyterian pastor of Christ Church Moscow. Described by Hitchens as a “buddy-and-road” movie, it provides an overview of several days worth of debates following the release of their book Is Christianity Good for the World? The book was generated by correspondence published in Christianity Today.
The partnership between Hitchens and Wilson began in 2007, when Hitchens invited anyone to debate his viewpoints following the release of his book God is not Great. Wilson’s agent heard the offer and put him in touch with Wilson, leading to a series of written debates published in Christianity Today, which eventually were compiled into Is Christianity Good for the World? Filmmaker Darren Doane heard about the exchanges between the two and sought them out to make a film. The film was featured on CNN, Fox News; NPR ; the Laura Ingram show and others.
After the men finally met in person while shooting the film, both got along well, despite the heated exchanges, in part from a shared appreciation for P.G. Wodehouse.
Christopher Hitchens – Against Abortion Uploaded by BritishNeoCon on Dec 2, 2010 An issue Christopher doesn’t seem to have addressed much in his life. He doesn’t explicitly say that he is against abortion in this segment, but that he does believe that the ‘unborn child’ is a real concept. ___________________________ I was suprised when I […]
Max Brantley in the Arkansas Times Blog reports that Ron Paul is leading in Iowa. Maybe it is time to take a closer look at his views. In the above clip you will see Chistopher Hitchens discuss Ron Paul’s views. In the clip below you will find Ron Paul’s latest commercial. Below is a short […]
DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 07 Below are some reactions of evangelical leaders to the news of Christopher Hitchens’ death: Christian leaders react to Hitchens’ death Posted on Dec 16, 2011 | by Michael Foust DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 08 Author and […]
DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 04 Below are some reactions of evangelical leaders to the news of Christopher Hitchens’ death: Christian leaders react to Hitchens’ death Posted on Dec 16, 2011 | by Michael Foust DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 05 Author and speaker Christopher […]
DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 01 Below are some reactions of evangelical leaders to the news of Christopher Hitchens’ death: Christian leaders react to Hitchens’ death Posted on Dec 16, 2011 | by Michael Foust Author and speaker Christopher Hitchens, a leader of an aggressive form of atheism that eventually […]
If you want to check out some of the past posts were atheists have been confronted then check out these links below.
Back in March of 2011 my sons, Hunter and Wilson were attending church on a Sunday at Grace Community Church where John MacArthur preached. They actually got to visit with him briefly. Here is a clip of him from “Larry King Live.”
Genesis is filled with Creation myths, myths that appear in one form or another and virtually every culture. Do you want your kid’s teacher talking about the myth of “Adam and Eve”? Leviticus is down right scary, but it is a good place to point out the inconsistencies in Bible and how contrary they are to our common life.
The Gospels? Like 5 blind men describing an elephant. What were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John thinking?
_______________________
I understand how skeptics love to take pot shots at the Bible, but let us take a look at some of the facts.
Archaeologists have unearthed the five porticoes of the pool of Bethesda by the Sheep Gate (John 5:2), the pool of Siloam (9:1-7), Jacob’s well at Sychar (4:5), the ‘Pavement’ (Gabbatha) where Pilate tried Jesus (19:13), and Solomon’s porch in the temple precincts (10:22-23)… Since then, discovery of an ossuary (bone-box) of a crucified man named Johanan from first-century Palestine confirms that nails were driven in his ankles, as in Christ’s; previously some skeptics thought that the Romans used only ropes to affix the legs of condemned men to their crosses. And less than five years ago, in 1990, the burial grounds of Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest, and his family were uncovered in Jerusalem. These and numerous other details create a favorable impression of the Gospel’s trustworthiness in the areas in which they can be tested.
Sir William Ramsay, famed archaeologist, began a study of Asia Minor with little regard for the book of Acts. He later wrote:
I may fairly claim to have entered on this investigation without prejudice in favor of the conclusion which I shall now seek to justify to the reader. On the contrary, I began with a mind unfavorable to it,… It did not then lie in my line of life to investigate the subject minutely; but more recently I found myself brought into contact with the Book of Acts as an authority for the topography, antiquities and society of Asia Minor. It was gradually borne upon me that in various details the narrative showed marvelous truth.
________________________________________
I wrote the famous atheist Anthony Flew a series of letters during the 1990’s and he was kind to answer several of them. I also sent him several cassette tapes and video tapes of Adrian Rogers messages. I will start a new series on this subject and post his responses. Below is a video clip filmed close to end of Dr Flew’s life.
In today’s news you will read about Kirk Cameron taking on the atheist Stephen Hawking over some recent assertions he made concerning the existence of heaven. Back in December of 1995 I had the opportunity to correspond with Carl Sagan about a year before his untimely death. Sarah Anne Hughes in her article,”Kirk Cameron criticizes […]
Christopher Hitchens vs. Douglas Wilson Debate at Westminster Theological Seminary, Part 12 of 12 Douglas Wilson I am afraid your argument is tangled up with greater difficulties than the ethnicity of the Samaritan, and so that issue really need not detain us any longer. I have been asking you to provide a warrant for morality, […]
John Lofton noted: “DR. FRIEDMAN an evolutionist with ‘values’ of unknown origin but he said they were not ‘accidental.’ “
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If anyone takes time to read my blog for any length of time they can not question my respect for the life long work of Milton Friedman. He has advanced the cause of freedom more than any other person I know of in the last 100 years except for Ronald Reagan who I give credit to for the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
I only had onc chance to correspond with Milton Friedman and he quickly answered my letter. It was a question concerning my favorite christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer. I had read inthe 1981 printing of The Tapestry: the Life and Times of Francis and Edith Schaeffer on page 644 that Edith mentioned “that the KUP SHOW in Chicago, a talk show Francis was on twice, once with the economist Milton Friedman, with whom he still has a good correspondence.” I asked in a letter in the late 1990’s if Friedman remembered the content of any of that correspondence and he said he did not.
1947: Economists representing the emerging Chicago School: Milton Friedman, George Stigler, and Aaron Director,
JUDY GARLAND IRV KUPCINET Kup’s Show 1967
Published on Dec 3, 2013
1969 edit of Judy Garland’s 1967 appearance on Chicago based “Kup’s Show.”
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I was hoping the answer would have been yes because I also wanted to talk to Friedman about some religious subjects. I knew that Friedman had rejected religion at an early age. James A. Nuechterlein noted in 2007, “Milton Friedman grew up in Rahway, New Jersey, the son of Hungarian Jewish immigrants. (His parents were moderately observant, but Friedman, after an intense burst of childhood piety, rejected religion altogether.)
Milton’s mind was bright and alert to the end, although he suffered from pain in his legs and he had a hard time walking. He also had gone through two open-heart surgeries in the 1980s. This year, when he turned 94, I asked him, “Do you think you will live to be 100?” His reply: “I hope not!” But Milton was almost always upbeat about life, even to the end. He was not a particularly religious man, but he expressed interest in religious topics near the end of his life.
One of the saddest things to see is a truly brilliant individual, with a keen intellect, but who does not believe in God, in Jesus Christ, in the Bible. A case in point: Dr. Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning, libertarian, free market economist. In a letter-to-the-editor to the “Wall Street Journal” (10/30/92), Dr. Friedman made the point that he is a “radical,” get-to-the-root-of-the-problem kind of guy. So, although I knew, generally, what his answer would be, but not exactly, I wrote Dr. Friedman, at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, and asked him:
Do you believe in God? And what, if anything, does God have to do with economics? He replied, in a handwritten note on my original letter:
“I am an agnostic. I do not ‘believe in’ God, but I am not an atheist, because I believe the statement, ‘There is a god’ does not admit of being either confirmed or rejected. I do not believe God has anything to do with economics. But values do.”
Okay. So, I write Dr. Friedman again, thank him for his prompt response, and ask: What is the distinction you make between ‘agnosticism’ and ‘atheism?” And where do these ‘values’ you say you believe in come from? Again, Dr. Friedman writes back, quickly:
“(1) Agnosticism ‘I do not know.’ (2) Atheism ‘I know that there is no god.’ (3) I do not know where my values come from, but that does not mean (a) I don’t have them, (b) I don’t hold them as strongly as you hold your belief in God. (c) They turn out — not accidentally, I believe — to be very much like these held by most other people whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, atheist, agnostic, or abstract. (d) Which leads me to believe that they are a product of the same evolutionary process that accounts for the rest of our customs as well as physical characterizations.”
John Lofton rightly notes that “Dr. Friedman was an evolutionist with ‘values’ of unknown origin but he said they were not ‘accidental.’ I encountered the same approach from Carl Sagan. He wanted to say their was no afterlife and we were all products of chance but then he wanted to jump back and grab words like “precious” to describe us as if we could attain lasting meaning to our lives without God in the picture.
I will give agnostics credit when they realize that without God in the picture everything is left to chance. I posted earlier. Neo-Darwinist Richard Dawkins recognized the purposelessness of such a system:
In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.22
On humanist assumptions [the assumption that there is no God and life has evolved by time and chance alone], life leads to nothing, and every pretense that it does not is a deceit. If there is a bridge over a gorge which spans only half the distance and ends in mid-air, and if the bridge is crowded with human beings pressing on, one after another they fall into the abyss. The bridge leads to nowhere, and those who are pressing forward to cross it are going nowhere. . . It does not matter where they think they are going, what preparations for the journey they may have made, how much they may be enjoying it all . . . such a situation is a model of futility (H. J. Blackham et al., Objections to Humanism (Riverside, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1967).)
1. The fossil record. Not only is the so-called missing link still missing, all of the transitional life forms so crucial to evolutionary theory are missing from the fossil record. There are thousands of missing links, not one!
2. The second law of thermodynamics. This law states that energy is winding down and that matter left to itself tends toward chaos and randomness, not greater organization and complexity. Evolution demands exactly the opposite process, which is observed nowhere in nature.
3. The origin of life. Evolution offers no answers to the origin of life. It simply pushes the question farther back in time, back to some primordial event in space or an act of spontaneous generation in which life simply sprang from nothing.
Solomon is said to be the wisest man who ever lived.Solomon went to the extreme in his searching in the Book of Ecclesiastes for this something more, but he did not find any satisfaction in pleasure (2:1), education (2:3), work (2:4), wealth (2:8) or fame (2:9). All of his accomplishments would not be remembered (1:11) and who is to say that they had not already been done before by others (1:10)? Also Solomon’s upcoming death depressed him because both people and animals alike “go to the same place — they came from dust and they return to dust” (3:20).
In 1978 I heard the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas when it rose to #6 on the charts. That song told me thatKerry Livgren the writer of that song and a member of Kansas had come to the same conclusion that Solomon had. I remember mentioning to my friends at church that we may soon see some members of Kansas become Christians because their search for the meaning of life had obviously come up empty even though they had risen from being an unknown band to the top of the music business and had all the wealth and fame that came with that. Furthermore, Solomon realized death comes to everyone and there must be something more.
Livgren wrote:
“All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”
Both Kerry Livgren and Dave Hope of Kansas became Christians eventually. Kerry Livgren first tried Eastern Religions and Dave Hope had to come out of a heavy drug addiction. I was shocked and elated to see their personal testimony on The 700 Club in 1981 and that same interview can be seen on youtube today. Livgren lives in Topeka, Kansas today where he teaches “Diggers,” a Sunday school class at Topeka Bible Church. Hope is the head of Worship, Evangelism and Outreach at Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida.
Solomon’s experiment was a search for meaning to life “under the sun.” Then in last few words in the Book of Ecclesiastes he looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture: “The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.”
You can hear Kerry Livgren’s story from this youtube link:
Milton Friedman – Power of Choice (Biography) Part 2 Published on May 21, 2012 by BasicEconomics My Tribute to Milton Friedman: The Little Giant of Free Market Economics By: admin- 11/17/2006 09:49 AM RESIZE: AAA Milton Friedman, the intellectual architect of the free-market reforms of the post-World War II era, was a dear friend. I […]
Testing Milton Friedman – Preview Uploaded by FreeToChooseNetwork on Feb 21, 2012 2012 is the 100th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth. His work and ideas continue to make the world a better place. As part of Milton Friedman’s Century, a revival of the ideas featured in the landmark television series Free To Choose are being […]
Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan And William F. Buckley Jr. Peter Robinson, 12.12.08, 12:01 AM EST In a time of crisis, don’t forget what they had to say. As the federal deficit surpasses $1 trillion, Congress debates a bailout for the Detroit automakers and President-elect Barack Obama draws up plans for a vast new stimulus package, […]
Charlie Rose interview of Milton Friedman My favorite economist: Milton Friedman : A Great Champion of Liberty by V. Sundaram Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of three US Presidents – Nixon, Ford and Reagan – died last Thursday (16 November, 2006 ) in San Francisco […]
Free or Equal?: Johan Norberg Updates Milton & Rose Friedman’s Free to Choose I got this below from Reason Magazine: Swedish economist Johan Norberg is the host of the new documentary Free or Equal, which retraces and updates the 1980 classic Free to Choose, featuring Milton and Rose Friedman. Like the Friedmans, Norberg travels the globe […]
I must say that I have lots of respect for Reason Magazine and for their admiration of Milton Friedman. However, I do disagree with one phrase below. At the end of this post I will tell you what sentence it is. Uploaded by ReasonTV on Jul 28, 2011 There’s no way to appreciate fully the […]
Milton Friedman on Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” 1994 Interview 1 of 2 Uploaded by PenguinProseMedia on Oct 25, 2011 Says Federal Reserve should be abolished, criticizes Keynes. One of Friedman’s best interviews, discussion spans Friedman’s career and his view of numerous political figures and public policy issues. ___________________ Two Lucky People by Milton and Rose Friedman […]
What a great man Milton Friedman was. The Legacy of Milton Friedman November 18, 2006 Alexander Tabarrok Great economist by day and crusading public intellectual by night, Milton Friedman was my hero. Friedman’s contributions to economics are profound, the permanent income hypothesis, the resurrection of the quantity theory of money, and his magnum opus with […]
Milton Friedman videos and transcripts Part 7 On my blog http://www.thedailyhatch.org I have an extensive list of posts that have both videos and transcripts of MiltonFriedman’s interviews and speeches. Here below is just small list of those and more can be accessed by clicking on “Milton Friedman” on the side of this page or searching […]
Milton Friedman at Hillsdale College 2006 July 2006 Free to Choose: A Conversation with Milton Friedman Milton Friedman Economist Milton Friedman is a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1946-1976. Dr. Friedman received the Nobel Memorial […]
I must say that I have lots of respect for Reason Magazine and for their admiration of Milton Friedman. However, I do disagree with one phrase below. At the end of this post I will tell you what sentence it is.
There’s no way to appreciate fully the contributions of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006), who would have turned 99 years old this weekend, to the growth of libertarian ideas and a free society.
This is the man, after all, who introduced the concept of school vouchers, documented the role of government monopolies on money in creating inflation, provided the intellectual arguments that ended the military draft in America, co-founded the Mont Pelerin Society, and so much more. In popular books such as Capitalism and Freedom and Free to Choose, written with his wife and longtime collaborator Rose, he masterfully drew a through-line between economic freedom and political and cultural freedom.
Yet his ultimate contribution to freedom and liberty is found less in any of the specific argument he made and more in the ways he made them. Friedman provided an all-too-rare example of a public intellectual who was scrupulously honest, forthright, and fair in every debate he entered. Whether he was duking it out with fellow Nobel Prize winners and other high-profile economists or making the case for the morality of capitalism with TV hosts such as Phil Donahue and angry students, he always argued in good faith, admitted when he was wrong, and enlarged the circle of debate.
Long after some of his technical points and social insights have been superseded, that commitment to relentless inquiry and search for truth wherever it takes us will survive.
Milton Friedman gave us something much better than revealed truth: He showed us the process by which we might continue to indefinitely learn about our world and the human condition. In this sense, the Friedman Century is far from over; indeed, it’s just getting started.
Written and narrated by Nick Gillespie. Produced and edited by Jim Epstein, with help from Jack Gillespie.
About 2.30 minutes.
For Reason’s coverage of and interviews with Milton Friedman over the years, go here now.
_________
Here are the words that I take exception to: “Milton Friedman gave us something much better than revealed truth: He showed us the process by which we might continue to indefinitely learn about our world and the human condition.”
I had the chance to correspond with Carl Sagan in the last year of his life. Sagan insisted that prophecies from the Old Testiment were too vague but I have have not found that to be the case. (Also the evidence from archaeology backs up the historicity of the Bible.) Carl Sagan could not rid himself of the “mannishness of man.” Those who have read Francis Schaeffer’s many books know exactly what I am talking about. We are made in God’s image and we are living in God’s world. Therefore, we can not totally suppress the objective truths of our unique humanity. In my letter of Jan 10, 1996 to Dr. Sagan, I really camped out on this point a long time because I had read Sagan’s book Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and in it Sagan attempts to totally debunk the idea that we are any way special. However, what does Dr. Sagan have Dr. Arroway say at the end of the movie Contact when she is testifying before Congress about the alien that communicated with her? See if you can pick out the one illogical word in her statement: “I was given a vision how tiny, insignificant, rare and precious we all are. We belong to something that is greater than ourselves and none of us are alone.”
Dr Sagan deep down knows that we are special so he could not avoid putting the word “precious” in there. Schaeffer said unbelievers are put in a place of tension when they have to live in the world that God has made because deep down they know they are special because God has put that knowledge in their hearts.We are not the result of survival of the fittest and headed back to the dirt forevermore. This is what Schaeffer calls “taking the roof off” of the unbeliever’s worldview and showing the inconsistency that exists.
In several of my letters I quoted this passage below:
Romans 1:17-22 (Amplified Bible)
17For in the Gospel a righteousness which God ascribes is revealed, both springing from faith and leading to faith [disclosed through the way of faith that arouses to more faith]. As it is written, The man who through faith is just and upright shall live and shall live by faith.(A)
18For God’s [holy] wrath and indignation are revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who in their wickedness repress and hinder the truth and make it inoperative.
19For that which is known about God is evident to them and made plain in their inner consciousness, because God [Himself] has shown it to them.
20For ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature and attributes, that is, His eternal power and divinity, have been made intelligible and clearly discernible in and through the things that have been made (His handiworks). So [men] are without excuse [altogether without any defense or justification],(B)
21Because when they knew and recognized Him as God, they did not honor and glorify Him as God or give Him thanks. But instead they became futile and [a]godless in their thinking [with vain imaginings, foolish reasoning, and stupid speculations] and their senseless minds were darkened.
22Claiming to be wise, they became fools [professing to be smart, they made simpletons of themselves].
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro)
The Infinite-Personal God: Thoughts from Francis Schaeffer’s Escape from Reason
Perhaps you are familiar with the indie band Arcade Fire. Their most recent album is entitled Neon Bible. The songs on Neon Bible certainly reflect something of the Bible itself in so far as it raises some of life’s biggest questions. Some of these questions are about fear, faith, love and disappointment. On the album is an update version of their song “No Cars Go” in which we hear the eerie tone of the line “Don’t know where we are goin.’ The line gives the listener the sense that there is no certainty to what our end is. This captures much of what I think indie music captures about our fragmented culture where the greatest questions are asked, but with very few answers.Because we live in a postmodern culture where many are not afraid to ask honest questions about life, the concept of faith is quite popular. Francis Schaeffer’s work and his book Escape from Reason have made a tremendous contribution to an understanding of Christian faith in this type of cultural context. In Escape from Reason, Schaeffer is clear in pointing out that the Bible reveals that God is both infinite and personal.He is the infinite-personal God whom created all things out of nothing and therefore the creation is finite or limited. Only God alone is the infinite Creator, the Creator without limitations. On the side of infinity, Schaeffer points out that, humans are “as separated from God as is the machine.” (pg. 26)On the side of human personality, Schaeffer is clear that humans, being made in the image of God, were made to have a personal relationship with God. Schaeffer states, “On the side of personality you are related to God. You are not infinite but finite; nevertheless, you are truly personal; you are created in the image of the personal God who exists.” (pg. 26-27)
As Schaeffer fleshes this idea out in Escape from Reason, he presents a clear Biblical view of human persons. About the Biblical view of the whole of a human being, Schaeffer states,
“It is not a Platonic view. The soul is not more important than the body. God made the whole man and the whole man is important. The doctrine of the biblical resurrection of the dead is not an old-fashioned thing. It tells us that God loves the whole man and the whole man is important. The biblical teaching, therefore, opposes the Platonic, which makes the soul (“the upper”) very important and leaves the body (“the lower”) with little importance at all. The biblical view opposes the humanistic position where the body and autonomous mind of man become important, and grace becomes very unimportant.”(pg. 28)
God made the whole human being and cares about the whole human being.Schaeffer goes on to point out the importance of understanding historically the philosophical schools that have help to shape where we are today. He points out that in Western philosophy, from the rise of Greek philosophy until now, the commonly held belief that the hope of finding complete answers which would encompass all of thought and life would come through rationalism plus rationality rather than rationality and faith in the God of the Bible. In his book Death in the City Schaeffer states,
“The Bible puts its religious teaching in a historic setting. It is quite the opposite of the new theology and existential thought, quite the opposite of the twentieth century’s reduction of religion to the “spiritual” and the subjective. Scripture relates true religion to space-time history which may be expressed in normal literary form. And that is important, because our generation takes the word religion and everything religious and turns it into something psychological or sociological…a holy and loving God really exists, and He works into the significant history which exists” (Death in the City, pg. 17)
The philosophical thought during the time of Kant and Rousseau in the late 1700’s was a time of fighting for freedom. The freedom that was sought after was an autonomous freedom in which human freedom would have no restraint or limitations. The quest for this kind of freedom took place during a time when Western philosophy was rationalistic, rational, and sought to find a unified field of knowledge.Rationalism as Schaeffer puts it in Escape from Reason is “man begins absolutely and totally from himself, gathers the information concerning the particulars and formulates the universals.” (pg. 34) The term “rational” on the other hand has no relationship to “rationalism.” This term “rational” is the act in which “man’s aspirations for the validity of reason are well founded.” In other words, if something is true the opposite is not true. Schaeffer states,
“The basic position of man in rebellion against God is that man is at the centre of the universe, that he is autonomous – here lies his rebellion. Man will keep his rationalism and his rebellion, his insistence on total autonomy or partially autonomous areas, even if it means he must give up his rationality.”(pg. 42)
With this quest for autonomy, humans began to view reality in which there is a large gap between nature and universals. Schaeffer states,
“The hope of a connecting link between two spheres has completely disappeared. There is a complete dichotomy between the upper and lower storeys. The line between the upper and lower storeys has become a concrete horizontal, ten thousand feet thick, with highly-charged barbed-wire fixed in the concrete…Below the line there is rationality and logic. The upper storey becomes the non-logical and the non-rational.”(pg. 46)
With this dichotomy, on the basis of reason human have no meaning, purpose, or significance. On the basis of the non-rational and non-reasonable humans obtain a sense of optimism. But from this worldview humans are left with the need to take a leap of faith because they cannot rationally search for God.
Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1)
The search for significance is intrinsic to who we are as people made in the image of God. Humans made in the image of God cannot live as though they are insignificant. But humans cannot live in the lower storey and find adequate answers concerning meaning, purpose, and significance. Yet as Schaeffer states, “in our day, the sphere of faith is placed in the non-rational and non-logical as opposed to the rational and logical.” (pg. 75)
Schaeffer points out some consequences of pitting faith against rationality. First, if we separate the upper storey or the world of universals from nature there is no way of establishing a relationship between the upper storey and everyday life in regard to morality. Schaeffer states, “You cannot have real morals in the real world after you have made this separation.” (pg. 80) The second consequence is that the separation creates no adequate basis for law. God revealed something real in the common world of life. Third, the separation, “throws away the answer to the problem of evil.” Schaeffer states,
“the True Christian position is that, in space and time and history, there was an unprogrammed man who made a choice, and actually rebelled against God…without Christianity’s answer that God made a significant man in a significant history with evil being the result of Satan’s and then man’s historic space-time revolt, there is no answer but to accept Baudelaire’s answer [‘If there is a God, He is the devil’] with tears. Once the historic Christian answer is put away, all we can do is to leap upstairs and say that against all reason God is good.”(pg. 81)
Without Christianity’s answer to the problem of evil what we have left is an irrational leap of faith.Christianity thoroughly provides an answer, but rationalism must be renounced and rationality embraced. Christianity provides a world and life view with a unified answer. Schaeffer states,
“On the side of infinity…we are separated from God entirely, but on the side of personality we are made in the image of God. So God can speak and tell us about Himself—not exhaustively, but truly. (We could not, after all, know anything exhaustively as finite creatures.) Then He has told us about things in the finite created realm, too. He has told us true things about the cosmos and history. Thus, we are not adrift.” (pg. 83)
I do recognize now that doubt is real and that doubt’s role is significant in our lives and yet at a fundamental level we have answers to our cry, “Don’t know where were goin.” Although we cannot have ultimate answers without something revealed about God and God indeed is made known in the person of Jesus Christ. The person and work of Christ is communicated to us in the story that the Bible tells. It is the story of the infinite-personal God drawing near because he cares. God cares about the whole of a human being. There is not an area of our life that he does not care about and there is not an area of our life that is autonomous. The Bible says first that there is an infinite-personal God who created all things. Because he created all things the universe begins as personal. Because it is personal the longings of love and communication are intrinsic to all of humanity.God has also always existed and has created all things. Not only has God created all things, but created them outside of himself. Because he created all things outside of himself the world is objectively real and therefore there is a true history and a true me. Schaeffer states,
“If the intrinsically personal origin of the universe is rejected, what alternative outlook can anyone have? It must be said emphatically that there is no final answer except that man is a product of the impersonal, plus time, plus chance.” (pg. 87)
Humanism or rationalism says that humans can built bridges to ultimate answers apart from anyone else, apart from an infinite-personal God. But this is impossible given that humans are finite. Humans cannot point to anything with ultimate certainty. Regarding human quests for answers Schaeffer states,
“beginning only from himself autonomously, it is quite obvious that, being finite, he can never reach any absolute answer. This would be true if only on the basis of the fact that he is finite; but to this must be added the Fall, the fact of his rebellion.” (pg. 89)
We are not only finite and limited, but by nature our own quest for true significance and meaning takes place in autonomous rebellion against the God who is there.But we have hope. The Bible states clearly that humans are made in the image of this infinite-personal God and this gives us a starting point at which to seek for ultimate answers.The Bible says even as lost and broken as we are, seeking to live life apart from the life source, the image of God is still exhibited in humans. We are not like from machines or plants as beautiful as they might be, because we are personal. But how can we seek the infinite-personal God if we ourselves are finite humans?We cannot possess ultimate answers apart from the reference point of the infinite God himself. The humanist or rationalist puts himself at the center of the universe in order to seek ultimate meaning and answers. Schaeffer says this persons “insists on being autonomous with only the knowledge he can gather, and has ended up finding himself quite meaningless.” (pg. 90) The knowledge we can gather is limited and if it comes only from within we have no hope for ultimate answers regarding meaning and life.
Christianity does provide a worldview in which to wrestle with ultimate questions in not simply a theoretical way, but in a personal way. Schaeffer states,
“Christianity is a system which is composed of a set of ideas which can be discussed. By ‘system’ we do not mean a scholastic abstraction, nevertheless we do not shrink from using the word. The Bible does not set out unrelated thoughts. The system it sets forth has a beginning and moves from that beginning in a non-contradictory way. The beginning is the existence of the infinite-personal God as Creator of all else. Christianity is not just a vague set of incommunicable experiences, based on a totally unverifiable ‘leap in the dark.’ Neither conversion (the beginning of the Christian life) nor spirituality (the growth) should be such a leap. Both are firmly related to the God who is there and the knowledge He has given us – and both involve the whole man.”
I would add that the Bible is not just a system, but also a story. It is a story where God is the ultimate actor and also the one who has written the script. It is a story that reveals that the infinite-personal God is there and has drawn near to his people with a passionate pursuit. He is infinite and he is personal. As finite persons we can have hope that God has drawn personally near in the person of Jesus in whom the whole story points to. Jesus is also the one who grants us the privilege of being included in this great story as well. Jesus through his death and resurrection from death provides a way to live personally with this infinite-personal God. Our response to his grace in drawing near ought to be acknowledging our rebellion as we have insistence on being autonomous. The meaningful life comes through acknowledging our dependence on the God who is there and in Jesus Christ as The Way, The Truth, and The Life.The story continues to move forward unfolding toward a day when lost people from all nations will have their story included in the great story of God’s personal restoration of his people and the world. The story unfolds until one day we will know fully the God who is there. No longer must we live out our own story without a script. No longer must we live out our own story by the line, “Don’t no where were goin!”
BERTRAND RUSSELL
But aren’t you now saying in effect, I mean by God whatever is good or the sum total of what is good — the system of what is good, and, therefore, when a young man loves anything that is good he is loving God. Is that what you’re saying, because if so, it wants a bit of arguing.
FATHER COPLESTON
I don’t say, of course, that God is the sum-total or system of what is good in the pantheistic sense; I’m not a pantheist, but I do think that all goodness reflects God in some way and proceeds from Him, so that in a sense the man who loves what is truly good, loves God even if he doesn’t advert to God. But still I agree that the validity of such an interpretation of a man’s conduct depends on the recognition of God’s existence, obviously.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Yes, but that’s a point to be proved.
FATHER COPLESTON
Quite so, but I regard the metaphysical argument as probative, but there we differ.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
You see, I feel that some things are good and that other things are bad. I love the things that are good, that I think are good, and I hate the things that I think are bad. I don’t say that these things are good because they participate in the Divine goodness.
FATHER COPLESTON
Yes, but what’s your justification for distinguishing between good and bad or how do you view the distinction between them?
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I don’t have any justification any more than I have when I distinguish between blue and yellow. What is my justification for distinguishing between blue and yellow? I can see they are different.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, that is an excellent justification, I agree. You distinguish blue and yellow by seeing them, so you distinguish good and bad by what faculty?
BERTRAND RUSSELL
By my feelings.
FATHER COPLESTON
By your feelings. Well, that’s what I was asking. You think that good and evil have reference simply to feeling?
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Well, why does one type of object look yellow and another look blue? I can more or less give an answer to that thanks to the physicists, and as to why I think one sort of thing good and another evil, probably there is an answer of the same sort, but it hasn’t been gone into in the same way and I couldn’t give it [to] you.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, let’s take the behavior of the Commandant of Belsen. That appears to you as undesirable and evil and to me too. To Adolf Hitler we suppose it appeared as something good and desirable, I suppose you’d have to admit that for Hitler it was good and for you it is evil.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
No, I shouldn’t quite go so far as that. I mean, I think people can make mistakes in that as they can in other things. if you have jaundice you see things yellow that are not yellow. You’re making a mistake.
FATHER COPLESTON
Yes, one can make mistakes, but can you make a mistake if it’s simply a question of reference to a feeling or emotion? Surely Hitler would be the only possible judge of what appealed to his emotions.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
It would be quite right to say that it appealed to his emotions, but you can say various things about that among others, that if that sort of thing makes that sort of appeal to Hitler’s emotions, then Hitler makes quite a different appeal to my emotions.
FATHER COPLESTON
Granted. But there’s no objective criterion outside feeling then for condemning the conduct of the Commandant of Belsen, in your view?
BERTRAND RUSSELL
No more than there is for the color-blind person who’s in exactly the same state. Why do we intellectually condemn the color-blind man? Isn’t it because he’s in the minority?
FATHER COPLESTON
I would say because he is lacking in a thing which normally belongs to human nature.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Yes, but if he were in the majority, we shouldn’t say that.
FATHER COPLESTON
Then you’d say that there’s no criterion outside feeling that will enable one to distinguish between the behavior of the Commandant of Belsen and the behavior, say, of Sir Stafford Cripps or the Archbishop of Canterbury.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The feeling is a little too simplified. You’ve got to take account of the effects of actions and your feelings toward those effects. You see, you can have an argument about it if you can say that certain sorts of occurrences are the sort you like and certain others the sort you don’t like. Then you have to take account of the effects of actions. You can very well say that the effects of the actions of the Commandant of Belsen were painful and unpleasant.
FATHER COPLESTON
They certainly were, I agree, very painful and unpleasant to all the people in the camp.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Yes, but not only to the people in the camp, but to outsiders contemplating them also.
FATHER COPLESTON
Yes, quite true in imagination. But that’s my point. I don’t approve of them, and I know you don’t approve of them, but I don’t see what ground you have for not approving of them, because after all, to the Commandant of Belsen himself, they’re pleasant, those actions.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Yes, but you see I don’t need any more ground in that case than I do in the case of color perception. There are some people who think everything is yellow, there are people suffering from jaundice, and I don’t agree with these people. I can’t prove that the things are not yellow, there isn’t any proof, but most people agree with him that they’re not yellow, and most people agree with me that the Commandant of Belsen was making mistakes.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, do you accept any moral obligation?
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Well, I should have to answer at considerable length to answer that. Practically speaking — yes. Theoretically speaking I should have to define moral obligation rather carefully.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, do you think that the word “ought” simply has an emotional connotation?
BERTRAND RUSSELL
No, I don’t think that, because you see, as I was saying a moment ago, one has to take account of the effects, and I think right conduct is that which would probably produce the greatest possible balance in intrinsic value of all the acts possible in the circumstances, and you’ve got to take account of the probable effects of your action in considering what is right.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, I brought in moral obligation because I think that one can approach the question of God’s existence in that way. The vast majority of the human race will make, and always have made, some distinction between right and wrong. The vast majority I think has some consciousness of an obligation in the moral sphere. It’s my opinion that the perception of values and the consciousness of moral law and obligation are best explained through the hypothesis of a transcendent ground of value and of an author of the moral law. I do mean by “author of the moral law” an arbitrary author of the moral law. I think, in fact, that those modern atheists who have argued in a converse way “there is no God; therefore, there are no absolute values and no absolute law,” are quite logical.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I don’t like the word “absolute.” I don’t think there is anything absolute whatever. The moral law, for example, is always changing. At one period in the development of the human race, almost everybody thought cannibalism was a duty.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, I don’t see that differences in particular moral judgments are any conclusive argument against the universality of the moral law. Let’s assume for the moment that there are absolute moral values, even on that hypothesis it’s only to be expected that different individuals and different groups should enjoy varying degrees of insight into those values.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I’m inclined to think that “ought,” the feeling that one has about “ought” is an echo of what has been told one by one’s parents or one’s nurses.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, I wonder if you can explain away the idea of the “ought” merely in terms of nurses and parents. I really don’t see how it can be conveyed to anybody in other terms than itself. It seems to be that if there is a moral order bearing upon the human conscience, that that moral order is unintelligible apart from the existence of God.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Then you have to say one or other of two things. Either God only speaks to a very small percentage of mankind — which happens to include yourself — or He deliberately says things are not true in talking to the consciences of savages.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, you see, I’m not suggesting that God actually dictates moral precepts to the conscience. The human being’s ideas of the content of the moral law depends entirely to a large extent on education and environment, and a man has to use his reason in assessing the validity of the actual moral ideas of his social group. But the possibility of criticizing the accepted moral code presupposes that there is an objective standard, and there is an ideal moral order, which imposes itself (I mean the obligatory character of which can be recognized). I think that the recognition of this ideal moral order is part of the recognition of contingency. It implies the existence of a real foundation of God.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
But the law-giver has always been, it seems to me, one’s parents or someone like. There are plenty of terrestrial law-givers to account for it, and that would explain why people’s consciences are so amazingly different in different times and places.
FATHER COPLESTON
It helps to explain differences in the perception of particular moral values, which otherwise are inexplicable. It will help to explain changes in the matter of the moral law in the content of the precepts as accepted by this or that nation, or this or that individual. But the form of it, what Kant calls the categorical imperative, the “ought,” I really don’t see how that can possibly be conveyed to anybody by nurse or parent because there aren’t any possible terms, so far as I can see, with which it can be explained. it can’t be defined in other terms than itself, because once you’ve defined it in other terms than itself you’ve explained it away. It’s no longer a moral “ought.” It’s something else.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Well, I think the sense of “ought” is the effect of somebody’s imagined disapproval, it may be God’s imagined disapproval, but it’s somebody’s imagined disapproval. And I think that is what is meant by “ought.”
FATHER COPLESTON
It seems to me to be external customs and taboos and things of that sort which can most easily be explained simply through environment and education, but all that seems to me to belong to what I call the matter of the law, the content. The idea of the “ought” as such can never be conveyed to a man by the tribal chief or by anybody else, because there are no other terms in which it could be conveyed. It seems to me entirely….
BERTRAND RUSSELL
But I don’t see any reason to say that — I mean we all know about conditioned reflexes. We know that an animal, if punished habitually for a certain sort of act, after a time will refrain. I don’t think the animal refrains from arguing within himself, “Master will be angry if I do this.” He has a feeling that that’s not the thing to do. That’s what we can do with ourselves and nothing more.
FATHER COPLESTON
I see no reason to suppose that an animal has a consciousness or moral obligation; and we certainly don’t regard an animal as morally responsible for his acts of disobedience. But a man has a consciousness of obligation and of moral values. I see no reason to suppose that one could condition all men as one can “condition” an animal, and I don’t suppose you’d really want to do so even if one could. If “behaviorism” were true, there would be no objective moral distinction between the emperor Nero and St. Francis of Assisi. I can’t help feeling, Lord Russell, you know, that you regard the conduct of the Commandant of Belsen as morally reprehensible, and that you yourself would never under any circumstances act in that way, even if you thought, or had reason to think, that possibly the balance of the happiness of the human race might be increased through some people being treated in that abominable manner.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
No. I wouldn’t imitate the conduct of a mad dog. The fact that I wouldn’t do it doesn’t really bear on this question we’re discussing.
FATHER COPLESTON
No, but if you were making a utilitarian explanation of right and wrong in terms of consequences, it might be held, and I suppose some of the Nazis of the better type would have held that although it’s lamentable to have to act in this way, yet the balance in the long run leads to greater happiness. I don’t think you’d say that, would you? I think you’d say that sort of action is wrong — and in itself, quite apart from whether the general balance of happiness is increased or not. Then, if you’re prepared to say that, then I think you must have some criterion of feeling, at any rate. To me, that admission would ultimately result in the admission of an ultimate ground of value in God.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I think we are perhaps getting into confusion. It is not direct feeling about the act by which I should judge, but rather a feeling as to the effects. And I can’t admit any circumstances in which certain kinds of behavior, such as you have been discussing, would do good. I can’t imagine circumstances in which they would have a beneficial effect. I think the persons who think they do are deceiving themselves. But if there were circumstances in which they would have a beneficial effect, then I might be obliged, however reluctantly, to say — “Well, I don’t like these things, but I will acquiesce in them,” just as I acquiesce in the Criminal Law, although I profoundly dislike punishment.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, perhaps it’s time I summed up my position. I’ve argued two things. First, that the existence of God can be philosophically proved by a metaphysical argument; secondly, that it is only the existence of God that will make sense of man’s moral experience and of religious experience. Personally, I think that your way of accounting for man’s moral judgments leads inevitably to a contradiction between what your theory demands and your own spontaneous judgments. Moreover, your theory explains moral obligation away, and explaining away is not explanation.
As regards the metaphysical argument, we are apparently in agreement that what we call the world consists simply of contingent beings. That is, of beings no one of which can account for its own existence. You say that the series of events needs no explanation: I say that if there were no necessary being, no being which must exist and cannot not-exist, nothing would exist. The infinity of the series of contingent beings, even if proved, would be irrelevant. Something does exist; therefore, there must be something which accounts for this fact, a being which is outside the series of contingent beings. If you had admitted this, we could then have discussed whether that being is personal, good, and so on. On the actual point discussed, whether there is or is not a necessary being, I find myself, I think in agreement with the great majority of classical philosophers.
You maintain, I think, that existing beings are simply there, and that I have no justification for raising the question of the explanation of their existence. But I would like to point out that this position cannot be substantiated by logical analysis; it expresses a philosophy which itself stands in need of proof. I think we have reached an impasse because our ideas of philosophy are radically different; it seems to me that what I call a part of philosophy, that you call the whole, insofar at least as philosophy is rational.
It seems to me, if you will pardon my saying so, that besides your own logical system — what you call “modern” in opposition to antiquated logic (a tendentious adjective) — you maintain a philosophy which cannot be substantiated by logical analysis. After all, the problem of God’s existence is an existential problem whereas logical analysis does not deal directly with problems of existence. So it seems to me, to declare that the terms involved in one set of problems are meaningless because they are not required in dealing with another set of problems, is to settle from the beginning the nature and extent of philosophy, and that is itself a philosophical act which stands in need of justification.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Well, I should like to say just a few words by way of summary on my side. First, as to the metaphysical argument: I don’t admit the connotations of such a term as “contingent” or the possibility of explanation in Father Copleston’s sense. I think the word “contingent” inevitably suggests the possibility of something that wouldn’t have this what you might call accidental character of just being there, and I don’t think is true except int he purely causal sense. You can sometimes give a causal explanation of one thing as being the effect of something else, but that is merely referring one thing to another thing and there’s no — to my mind — explanation in FATHER COPLESTON’s sense of anything at all, nor is there any meaning in calling things “contingent” because there isn’t anything else they could be.
That’s what I should say about that, but I should like to say a few words about Father Copleston’s accusation that I regard logic as all philosophy — that is by no means the case. I don’t by any means regard logic as all philosophy. I think logic is an essential part of philosophy and logic has to be used in philosophy, and in that I think he and I are at one. When the logic that he uses was new — namely, in the time of Aristotle, there had to be a great deal of fuss made about it; Aristotle made a lot of fuss about that logic. Nowadays it’s become old and respectable, and you don’t have to make so much fuss about it. The logic that I believe in is comparatively new, and therefore I have to imitate Aristotle in making a fuss about it; but it’s not that I think it’s all philosophy by any means — I don’t think so. I think it’s an important part of philosophy, and when I say that, I don’t find a meaning for this or that word, that is a position of detail based upon what I’ve found out about that particular word, from thinking about it. It’s not a general position that all words that are used in metaphysics are nonsense, or anything like that which I don’t really hold.
As regards the moral argument, I do find that when one studies anthropology or history, there are people who think it their duty to perform acts which I think abominable, and I certainly can’t, therefore, attribute Divine origin to the matter of moral obligation, which FATHER COPLESTON doesn’t ask me to; but I think even the form of moral obligation, when it takes the form of enjoining you to eat your father or what not, doesn’t seem to me to be such a very beautiful and noble thing; and, therefore, I cannot attribute a Divine origin to this sense of moral obligation, which I think is quite easily accounted for in quite other ways.
BBC Radio Third Programme Recording January 28, 1948. BBC Recording number T7324W. This is an excerpt from the full broadcast from cassette tape A303/5 Open University Course, Problems of Philosophy Units 7-8. Older than 50 years, out of UK/BBC copyright.
Pardon the hissy audio. It was recorded 51 years ago after all. I tried to clean it up but I found that the voices were clearer without any filters. Meh.
This is an excerpt from the famous BBC Radio debate between Father Frederick C. Copleston and Bertrand Russell. In this section, they discuss Leibniz’s Argument from Contingency, which is a form of the Cosmological Argument. It differs from other Cosmological arguments (e.g. Kalam) in that it is consistent with an eternal universe, as it doesn’t appeal to first causes, but rather the principle of sufficient reason. It can be summarized in this way:
(1) Everything that exists contingently has a reason for its existence.
(2) The universe exists contingently.
Therefore:
(3) The universe has a reason for its existence.
(4) If the universe has a reason for its existence then that reason is God.
Therefore:
(5) God exists.
_________________________
There is no audio for part 3.
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
FATHER COPLESTON
Let’s. Well, perhaps I might say a word about religious experience, and then we can go on to moral experience. I don’t regard religious experience as a strict proof of the existence of God, so the character of the discussion changes somewhat, but I think it’s true to say that the best explanation of it is the existence of God. By religious experience I don’t mean simply feeling good. I mean a loving, but unclear, awareness of some object which irresistibly seems to the experiencer as something transcending the self, something transcending all the normal objects of experience, something which cannot be pictured or conceptualized, but of the reality of which doubt is impossible
— at least during the experience. I should claim that cannot be explained adequately and without residue, simply subjectively. The actual basic experience at any rate is most easily explained on the hypotheses that there is actually some objective cause of that experience.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I should reply to that line of argument that the whole argument from our own mental states to something outside us, is a very tricky affair. Even where we all admit its validity, we only feel justified in doing so, I think, because of the consensus of mankind. If there’s a crowd in a room and there’s a clock in a room, they can all see the clock. The face that they can all see it tends to make them think that it’s not an hallucination: whereas these religious experiences do tend to be very private.
FATHER COPLESTON
Yes, they do. I’m speaking strictly of mystical experience proper, and I certainly don’t include, by the way, what are called visions. I mean simply the experience, and I quite admit it’s indefinable, of the transcendent object or of what seems to be a transcendent object. I remember Julian Huxley in some lecture saying that religious experience, or mystical experience, is as much a real experience as falling in love or appreciating poetry and art. Well, I believe that when we appreciate poetry and art we appreciate definite poems or a definite work of art. If we fall in love, well, we fall in love with somebody and not with nobody.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
May I interrupt for a moment here. That is by no means always the case. Japanese novelists never consider that they have achieved a success unless large numbers of real people commit suicide for love of the imaginary heroine.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, I must take your word for these goings on in Japan. I haven’t committed suicide, I’m glad to say, but I have been strongly influenced in the taking of two important steps in my life by two biographies. However, I must say I see little resemblance between the real influence of those books on me and the mystic experience proper, so far, that is, as an outsider can obtain an idea of that experience.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Well, I mean we wouldn’t regard God as being on the same level as the characters in a work of fiction. You’ll admit there’s a distinction here?
FATHER COPLESTON
I certainly should. But what I’d say is that the best explanation seems to be the not purely subjectivist explanation. Of course, a subjectivist explanation is possible in the case of certain people in whom there is little relation between the experience and life, in the case of deluded people and hallucinated people, and so on. But when you get what one might call the pure type, say St. Francis of Assisi, when you get an experience that results in an overflow of dynamic and creative love, the best explanation of that it seems to me is the actual existence of an objective cause of the experience.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Well, I’m not contending in a dogmatic way that there is not a God. What I’m contending is that we don’t know that there is. I can only take what is recorded as I should take other records and I do find that a very great many things are reported, and I am sure you would not accept things about demons and devils and what not — and they’re reported in exactly the same tone of voice and with exactly the same conviction. And the mystic, if his vision is veridical, may be said to know that there are devils. But I don’t know that there are.
FATHER COPLESTON
But surely in the case of the devils there have been people speaking mainly of visions, appearance, angels or demons and so on. I should rule out the visual appearances, because I think they can be explained apart from the existence of the object which is supposed to be seen.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
But don’t you think there are abundant recorded cases of people who believe that they’ve heard Satan speaking to them in their hearts, in just the same way as the mystics assert God — and I’m not talking now of an external vision, I’m talking of a purely mental experience. That seems to be an experience of the same sort as mystics’ experience of God, and I don’t seek that from what mystics tell us you can get any argument for God which is not equally an argument for Satan.
FATHER COPLESTON
I quite agree, of course, that people have imagined or thought they have heard of seen Satan. And I have no wish in passing to deny the existence of Satan. But I do not think that people have claimed to have experienced Satan in the precise way in which mystics claim to have experienced God. Take the case of a non-Christian, Plotinus. He admits the experience is something inexpressible, the object is an object of love, and therefore, not an object that causes horror and disgust. And the effect of that experience is, I should say, borne out, or I mean the validity of th experience is borne out in the records of the life of Plotinus. At any rate it is more reasonable to suppose that he had that experience if we’re willing to accept Porphyry’s account of Plontinus’ general kindness and benevolence.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth.
FATHER COPLESTON
No, but if it could actually be proved that the belief was actually responsible for a good effect on a man’s life, I should consider it a presumption in favor of some truth, at any rate of the positive part of the belief not of its entire validity. But in any case I am using the character of the life as evidence in favor of the mystic’s veracity and sanity rather than as a proof of the truth of his beliefs.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
But even that I don’t think is any evidence. I’ve had experiences myself that have altered my character profoundly. And I thought at the time at any rate that it was altered for the good. Those experiences were important, but they did not involve the existence of something outside me, and I don’t think that if I’d thought they did, the fact that they had a wholesome effect would have been any evidence that I was right.
FATHER COPLESTON
No, but I think that the good effect would attest your veracity in describing your experience. Please remember that I’m not saying that a mystic’s mediation or interpretation of his experience should be immune from discussion or criticism.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Obviously the character of a young man may be — and often is — immensely affected for good by reading about some great man in history, and it may happen that the great man is a myth and doesn’t exist, but they boy is just as much affected for good as if he did. There have been such people. Plutarch’s Lives take Lycurgus as an example, who certainly did not exist, but you might be very much influenced by reading Lycurgus under the impression that he had previously existed. You would then be influenced by an object that you’d loved, but it wouldn’t be an existing object.
FATHER COPLESTON
I agree with you on that, of course, that a man may be influenced by a character in fiction. Without going into the question of what it is precisely that influences him (I should say a real value) I think that the situation of that man and of the mystic are different. After all the man who is influenced by Lycurgus hasn’t got the irresistible impression that he’s experience in some way the ultimate reality.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I don’t think you’ve quite got my point about these historical characters — these unhistorical characters in history. I’m not assuming what you call an effect on the reason. I’m assuming that the young man reading about this person and believing him to be real loves him — which is quite easy to happen, and yet he’s loving a phantom.
FATHER COPLESTON
In one sense he’s loving a phantom that’s perfectly true, in the sense, I mean, that he’s loving X or Y who doesn’t exist. But at the same time, it is not, I think, the phantom as such that the young man loves; he perceives a real value, an idea which he recognizes as objectively valid, and that’s what excites his love.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Well, in the same sense we had before about the characters in fiction.
FATHER COPLESTON
Yes, in one sense the man’s loving a phantom — perfectly true. But in another sense he’s loving what he perceives to be a value.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
FATHER COPLESTON
The Daily Hatch 