Following on from his “Root of all Evil” and “The God Delusion”, the Scientism Evangelist Richard Dawkins has produced a 2 part documentary “Beyond Reason”. Now, I must admit, I haven’t seen it yet. I have, however, read a review that has been written by Roland Sokolowski (http://tinyurl.com/2s9qvm) that can be found on the Damaris site.
In this review, Sokolowski rightly reminds us that while Christians might agree with Dawkins’ rejection of belief in new age philosophies, we disagree with him when he claims that the only proper alternative is to return to modernism, and all that this philosophy brings.
When one sees the world entirely through the lens of modernism, you are caught in a self defeating worldview. Modernism relies on only trusting things which are empirically provable and logically consistent, and proving that this is a true proposition is not itself verifiable through the rigours of logic, observation or evidence.
If we reject modernism, we are also right to reject postmodernism. With postmodernism, we tend to beleive whatever suits us. There is no reference point,: reality revolves around us. As Sokolowski writes,
The danger is that, wrapped up in the story of ourselves, we lose touch with reality. We believe what we want to believe. We believe what is entertaining or titillating, rather than what is true…
Postmodern people do not in the main, as Dawkins suggests, reject science for the paranormal. Most still drive cars and watch TV and go to hospital when they need an operation. What has been challenged is Dawkins’s view that these things constitute all of life; clearly they do not. Faced with questions of love, meaning, right and wrong and so forth, science is utterly powerless to provide an answer. Recent attempts by Dawkins and others to answer these questions essentially boil down to a denial that love, meaning or right and wrong exist at all. Then, having proved positively that love does not exist they return to their wives and husbands and whisper those three words. Likewise, having proved that there is no meaning in life, they continue fervently in their mission to persuade others of the same thing.
True Christianity seeks to bring into balance the role that our mind and perceptions (influenced by our emotions, beliefs, environment and so on) play as we understand reality. Christians consider that the mind and reason is one way of making sense of the world around us, but it is not the only way. Indeed, the mind can and does mislead, because of our sinful nature.
The right balance between all the ways of viewing the world must also include the role that revelation plays, where we can know about reality sometimes relies on us being shown, rather than us seeing or reasoning.
To use the words of “The Truth Project” (building on Romans 1), we can only truly know when we “look outside the box” and allow God to show us His transcendence.
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