| The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. —Benjamin Franklin |
Naturalism’s Touchstone Proposition August 6, 2007
Posted by Rastaban in : Naturalism, Theologians , 4 commentsIn his book, Faith & Reason, Ronald Nash introduced what he calls Christianity’s “touchstone proposition.” A touchstone proposition, Nash explained, is the “control-belief or ultimate presupposition” that encapsulates the “fundamental truth ” of a worldview. [p. 46] Nash followed with a quick introduction to Naturalism as “the major competition to the Christian world-view” [p. 47]. He then explained what he considers Naturalism’s touchstone proposition to be. I will disagree.
Nash declared that Naturalism’s touchstone proposition is that
Nothing exists outside the material, mechanical (that is, nonpurposeful), natural order.
We see right away that in phrasing this, Nash put his Christian thumb on the scale. He made sure to throw in “mechanical” and “nonpurposeful” because that provides something juicy to attack. (more…)
Intro to Thomas Aquinas July 29, 2006
Posted by Rastaban in : Existence Arguments, Naturalism, Non-Existence Arguments, Theologians , add a commentThomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274) sought to find a workable fusion of Aristotle and the Church; nonetheless he strongly objected to Plato’s formulation of man as strictly a thinker and the Platonic abandonment of matter. In particular, Plato’s program consisted of separating “being” from “becoming”. What exactly is meant by being as opposed to becoming — who knows?1
It is the kind of philosophical mumbo-jumbo that drives people away from philosophy. Whatever the distinction is supposed to be, it’s probably a poorly chosen one. But let’s see if we can figure it out. Being, one must suppose, refers to abstract Form or Ideas existing in our minds (Plato was enamored of mental talk like this) while becoming must refer, in the Platonic canon, to material things: always changing, growing, decaying and generally being messy (something Plato wanted nothing to do with).
Plato’s attitude toward bodily things strikes me more as the product of mental illness than of a rational thought process. Only a diseased mind, cut off from the rest of the self or warped by infection or chemical imbalance, concludes that mental imaginings alone are real, that the body is nothing. Indeed there is something very unreal about such an attitude, something pathological. Nor is the foolishness of the Platonic attitude difficult to show even relying strictly on reason — which brings us back from parenthesis to Aquinas.
Aquinas understood the distinction Plato was trying to make between being and becoming, and he strenuously objected to it. Plato had to try to wash matter — the material world of bodies — out of the picture as if it didn’t exist. But it does exist, Aquinas said, and Plato’s philosophy can’t account for why.
If I understand him correctly, Aquinas maintained that Plato’s abstract ideas (the abstract idea of a tree, for instance) have in themselves (whether held in our mind or in God’s) absolutely no power to bring real, material trees into existence. The particulars of the world can’t be thought into being by thinking universals, no matter who is doing the thinking. But not being able to explain how matter comes to exists is only part of the problem. In the Platonic system, Aquinas saw, there could never be a satisfactory explanation of why matter exists. (more…)
