Monday, June 28, 2010

The foolishness of naturalism


I've been fascinated with the recent flurry of words from atheists and naturalists attacking Christianity and faith of any kind. Suddenly, atheism is the hot new product and identity everyone wants. It's now "cool" to be an atheist. It's fascinating to me because atheism is a vacuum of thought and belief. An atheist is never an atheist for intellectual reasons. Atheists are always created for emotional reasons. Reason itself is absent when an atheist is created. My thoughts on this have been reinforced as I read some of C.S. Lewis' work this morning. Over the last few months I've been slowly working through his book, God in the dock, and slowly because you can't read this amazing book quickly. In the portion of the book I was working through this morning I came to these words and thought you would enjoy them as well. So, here are the brilliant thoughts of Mr. C.S. Lewis on the topic of naturalism:
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"It would be impossible to accept naturalism itself if we really and consistently believed naturalism. For naturalism is a system of thought. But for naturalism all thoughts are mere events with irrational causes......if naturalism were true then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes, Therefore, all thoughts would be equally worthless. Therefore, naturalism is worthless. If it is true, then we can know no truths. It cuts its own throat....when it takes the final step and we attempt a naturalistic account of thought itself, suddenly the whole thing unravels. The last fatal step has invalidated all the preceding ones: for they were all reasoning and reason itself has been discredited. We must, therefore, either give up thinking altogether or else begin again from the ground floor. There is no reason, at this point, to bring in either Christianity or spiritualism. We do not need them to refute naturalist. It refutes itself."
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The naturalist, in his great "wisdom," has created a system that is self defeating. A naturalist (atheist) becomes one because of events of life, and never because of reason and sound thinking. Reason would not take you there. Sound thinking may make you question our world and how we got here, but would never lead you to a world of order created by chance.
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Faith is foundational for all of us. The key question is what is your faith founded upon? The naturalist would call my faith foolish because I believe in a God I have never seen. I, in response, would call his views foolish because he has created a world system that is self defeating built completely on chance. I think I will continue to trust in the God of the bible. It's the most logical decision available.

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