No answers in philosophy

While many university students choose to study the scientific field of psychology in order to get closer to answers about their personal inner quest, others hope that there will be some light shed on their dilemma by studying philosophy. When I studied philosophy I was struck by the fact that these great minds were trying to explain reality by starting out from themselves. That is obligatory in philosophy, though of course, philosophers build on those who have gone before them. But ultimately, it is a human being who sits down and tries to think through reality and come to some sense of it all. A huge task! And who has ever succeeded at it?

After many centuries of serious effort by the greatest minds of humanity, nowadays philosophers admit that they have not been able to come up with the answers. Already Blaise Pascal in his day, (whom the modern French atheist philosopher André Comte-Sponville calls “an exceptional man, one of the greatest ever – by his intelligence, by the lucidity and depth of his thought”) had this enlightening pensée: “Men, it is in vain that you seek within yourselves the cure for your miseries. All your intelligence can only bring you to realise that it is not within yourselves that you will find either good or truth. The philosophers made such promises and they have failed to keep them”.

The modern thinker Peter Van Inwagen avers that after a few thousand years of beginning with the tool of reason, metaphysics has yet to establish any viable body of knowledge, and K. Scott Oliphant comments that since this is the case “a good argument could be made that a change in thinking is long overdue. It seems high time to introduce into the discussion something altogether different”.

This failure of philosophy to find the answers can have one of two consequences. Post-modernity is one of them – where people give up hope of ever finding rational answers at all, and this produces the despair and hopelessness and meaninglessness of our generation. The other, which Scott Oliphant proposes, is to take as “starting point… the basic truth provided by Scripture”.

Philosophical reasoning obligatorily has to start out from given propositions which are neither proved nor even absolutely provable. Humans, building their philosophy on postulates (i.e. presuppositions or assumptions) that are merely their own ideas, cannot come to absolute truth – hence the relativism of our day. Human reason cannot justify its own ability to establish truth. In pensée §188/267, Pascal says that “reason’s last step [or finest effort] is to recognise that there are an infinite number of things that are beyond it”. It is the supreme accomplishment of reason to realise there is a limit to reason; and from there to seek a higher source of truth.

We should be very grateful to God, who, seeing our total inability to come up with truly helpful answers, has been pleased to send us One who brings us truth from God, which does provide the answers we seek.

Clive Every-Clayton

July 19, 2023 0

No answers in science

Maybe some reading these blogs will not be keen on a “God” path to truth, but rather hold to a hope that science or philosophy would have the key to the answers. So I will briefly comment first on whether science can come up with answers; then next, about philosophy.

We are all grateful for the many blessings that science has brought into our lives, from smartphones, to electric cars, to vaccinations and so much more. Although science studies the body with very positive effects in medicine, it is inept in trying to grasp the soul, our inner spiritual reality, our consciousness, our personality – in short our heart that longs for answers to questions about who we are and why we are here.

Science brilliantly studies the physics of existence, matter, energy, scientific laws of nature etc. But our existential questions are of a different order. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project affirms: “Science is powerless to answer questions such as, ‘Why did the universe come into being?’ ‘What is the meaning of human existence?’ ‘What happens after we die?’”

It is therefore helpful to recognise the limits of science: in its own domain, it is wonderful; but sometimes scientists use the authority of their science to endorse their personal philosophy of life or moral values. When they do that, they step out of their proper domain. They have the right to their opinions, of course, but in non-scientific matters, that is all they are – opinions. Some scientists are atheists; others are Christians. If an atheistic scientist uses his reputation as a scientist to put forward the philosophy of atheism he is misusing his authority. The unfortunate thing is that many people take the irreligious opinions of such scientists as scientific truth; they even adopt them as generally-held assumptions. But it is this that actually adds to the complication of finding real answers to our inner questions. For example, to deal with humans as if they were just complicated amalgams of matter, or freak advanced animals thrown up by chance processes, is of no help at all to people suffering with issues of self-esteem: rather such beliefs, or assumptions – for all their seeming scientific backing – actually contribute to our psychological disarray, for they undermine our personal value.

It is worth bearing in mind that according to numerous commentators, it was the Christian consensus in place after the Reformation that enabled the rise of modern science. Science flourished from Isaac Newton’s day, on the basis of the freshly rediscovered biblical worldview made widely known through the Protestant Reformation – which made a biblical basis accessible as it had not been under Roman Catholicism. Biblical Christianity is perfectly reconcilable with the efforts and findings of science – which can be seen as, in Kepler’s words, “thinking God’s thoughts after him”.

Clive Every-Clayton

July 19, 2023 0

God must speak and has

The really big question concerns God, because if we can get that one answered we have a basis on which to build what may well turn out to be divine guidance for our many existential questions.

So let’s rethink. We don’t want God simply as an assumption. That would be pure wishful thinking with no basis in reality; that would not help us, but would continue to bury us under the load of unproved assumptions. We cannot “assume” God is there, because the next task would be up to us to put content into the God we have dreamed up – it would all be in our minds.

No, what we need is for God to have “got in touch” with us. That bright French thinker Blaise Pascal saw it clearly, when after saying that only the rich man is entitled to speak properly about riches, and only a king can speak properly about kingship, he said, “God can well speak of God” (Pensée §303/799). Only God is entitled to speak properly about God. So we must listen, if we can, to God himself, if he should speak to humankind.

Now unfortunately, many down the centuries have taken it upon themselves to speak as if in God’s place, telling us so-called religious “truths” we ought to believe about God. But it is not necessarily the case that God did actually say those things himself; they were put in his mouth by gurus of all kinds. So we must use our discernment.

And yet, occasionally – indeed rarely – God has verbally intervened in human history: he has spoken! This is the key we need to finally find authentic answers to our human dilemmas.

Clive Every-Clayton

July 19, 2023 0