Dr Greg Bahnsen - Mid-Level Apologetics: Practice Pt 1 (Part 17)

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute, where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

Lord, we come to you tonight mindful again of the need for humility before you, that we might bow our knee before you and bow our hearts, recognizing that you are a great God, sovereign, incomprehensibly great, infinitely perfect, and that you are a holy God. And we have no right as sinners to stand before you. We come only for the sake of Jesus Christ, that we might, because of his merit and his intercession, stand before you and to be seen in his righteousness accepted by you and justified and filled by his spirit, that we might live new lives that would glorify you and that would be sanctified. We thank you that you have given us your Word. And we acknowledge that if we do not fear you and do not submit to your Word, we really could know nothing at all. We know that only by your grace have we come to be enlightened, to understand the Gospel and be willing to submit to it. We acknowledge these things in all humility, asking that you would bless our time together, then that as we study, as we seek to defend the holy faith that you have given us and revealed in the Scriptures, that you would make this time efficient, you would make us mentally sharp, that you would drive home the lessons to our hearts, and that above all, you would equip us to be your servants, that your word would go forth and be proclaimed with greater clarity and persuasiveness. Through our efforts, we ask that the Lord Jesus Christ would be honored among us and that his spirit might fill us as we speak. In Jesus name, Amen. All right, we're going over different schools of thought and problems in apologetics in our previous session and then tonight's session. And I think we have done a fairly thorough job of dealing with that worldview that will label as atheistic materialism. We've seen the problems of the atheist in dealing with science, the uniformity of nature. We've seen the problems of atheism in dealing with logic and abstract, universal, necessary concepts, the problem of materialistic or atheistic secularism and dealing with just concepts in human language, problems with moral absolutes, human dignity, human freedom, and then how all of these can be brought together. We've seen these many problems with atheistic materialism. And in fact, you can get to the place where you can master slicing and dicing the atheist, and then somebody says, yeah, but what about somebody who comes along who isn't an Atheist who has some modified worldview, who has some way of bringing in abstract entities or laws or uniformity because they aren't a materialist. And so, for a good portion of tonight's lesson, we're going to deal with the non materialist unbelievers, that is, unbelievers who do not hold to a strict materialistic view that only the material world is real. They believe there's something beyond the material world that has to be taken into account. And I'm going to try to divide these worldviews into categories and illustrate each category with one particular religion or philosopher, what have you. So if I can show you how to criticize someone within that category, you can by analogy carry that criticism to anybody else who fits that into that slot, philosophically speaking. So I'm going to take it for granted that atheistic materialism has been slain. We've done a critique, we've answered the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit. But now another fool comes along named Plato, and he says, well, of course the material world is not all that's real. There's also the realm of ideas or ideals, what we might call universals or that realm accounts for logic and justice and moral absolutes and human dignity and things like that. And so Plato thinks that he doesn't have the problems that the atheist does. And our apologetic now has to deal with worldviews like this. Now, many people do not have a grasp, a philosophical grasp of Plato, there's no doubt about that. But there are many people who are Platonists that make sense. Many people who don't master the technical details of Platonic philosophy, nevertheless are under the skin, Platonists. So what is it that makes a person, in just the most general, pedestrian way, a Platonist? A person is a Platonist if he or she believes that there is some realm, an immaterial realm or some reality to immaterial concepts or ideals. They wouldn't want to say that the only thing that's real are atoms and molecules or matter in motion. People like this have often been called idealists. And of course, Plato in a technical sense is an idealist. But I, what I'm getting at is that there are people in the more pedestrian, general, garden variety sense who are idealists, who believe in love, they believe in justice, they believe in human personality, and they are not willing to see all of that reduced down to atoms and molecules and electrochemical reactions. Now, if you were to push them for a description of reality and how things relate to each other, they'd just be befuddled. I mean, they don't know how all this comes together. All they know is that there is something called love and there is something called justice. There is something called beauty. And they're very important. We should seek for these ideals. They know that in some sense human beings have a greater value than animals. That we have funerals for human beings in honor of the dead. We don't bury them like we do horses or dogs or your pigeon. And yet they have no way of accounting for these things. They cannot explain why we shouldn't look upon human beings as just matter in motion. Why we shouldn't totally disregard the dignity or freedom of man, totally disregard concepts of justice and, and just live selfish lives and take advantage of people, murder them, steal from them. They couldn't tell you. They would just say, well, that's wrong. That's not loving, that's not fair, that's not right. You say, well, what's love? What's fair, what's right, given your worldview? And they just don't know how to bring the two together. They have an immaterial realm, we'll call it. And they have a material realm. They have the body, the world in which we live, the cosmos round about us. And then they have something, something that isn't like bodies, isn't like electrical chemical responses. But they don't know what that is, and they don't know how what that is would relate to the very familiar world of the body. Now, interestingly, when all is said and done, that was Plato's problem too. He was a much better philosopher than your next door neighbor. But if you could follow what I was saying, which is a very easy, again, common understanding of your next door neighbor, you could follow why your next door neighbor is confused to say there is such a realm, but I don't know what it is and how it relates to the physical realm and so forth. Then I think you can understand the problem I'm going to lay out for you with Plato as well. Let's talk about the details of Plato, because somebody might, let's say you run across an unbeliever who says, well, I don't know how to account for all this, but there are philosophers out there that are a lot smarter than me. They could explain it to you and you'd say, like Plato, because Plato is the greatest idealist of them all. So let's look at the greatest idealist of them all and see if we run into any problems or if we can find Anything from a Christian standpoint, on the basis of which we could generate an internal critique of his worldview. Plato said that classes of things or the ideas of which things are an instance or the universals of things are more real than the particulars. Okay, so let's give an illustration. Go back to duckness. The Ides is more real than Huey, Dewey, or Louie out there on the pond. See, Huey, Dewey, and Louis are always changing their physical things. But the universal is abstract. It's ideal, if you will. It's of the nature of idea, and it isn't changing. It's universal and it's uniform. And it's always the same. It's stable. It exists outside of this world in some sense. And particulars are dependent upon universals for their intelligibility. Particulars only make sense when I relate them to this abstract form outside this world. When I see three objects out there on the pond, I wouldn't be able to understand them at all if I did not first categorize them as ducks. And I categorize them as ducks because they have this relationship to the notion or ideal of duckness that is not physical. So the physical duck is intelligible to me. My mind can see that or have that as an intelligible object of knowledge because the duck participates in the universal which is outside of this world. Now, you all remember who Plato's greatest student was. Aristotle. Aristotle said, what good are these abstract, unchanging forms outside of this world? We never encounter the abstract, unchanging forms. We know nothing about them. We only know the particulars of our experience. Huey, Dewey, and Louie out on the pond. So if these abstract, universal ideas are outside of this world, how do they account for anything in this world? How do they account for what happens in this world? How do they account for change if they can't account for change, which is the most persistent thing that we experience? If they can't account for what is the most common thing in our experience, and if we never encountered them, but only the particulars, why do we deal with abstract, unchanging forms at all? When faced with the problem of what these absolutes, these universals, are, Plato wasn't able to give much of an answer because he said they're outside of the realm of experience. According to Plato, we can only have an intuition of what these ideas are, a faint recollection of them and of their reality. And the way he explained this, some people have taken him literally. I'm not of that school of interpretation. I think Plato was struggling to give the notion of intuition. So he told a story, and I don't think he meant it to be taken literally. If he did, so much the worse for him. So I'm going to put him in the most favorable light and still find it wanting. Plato said our souls existed in the realm of the ideas before they were imprisoned in our bodies. And in this pre existent state, our souls became familiar with darkness and triangularity and love and justice and all these ideas. And then our souls were imprisoned in the body, came into this changing world of time and space, this material realm. And because the soul remembers its previous life among the realm of ideas, it can identify ducks and triangularity and so forth. It's able to think in terms of abstract, universal concepts because it had an experience of those before it came into this world. Well, if that's to be taken literally, then that's a very strange story. And we have every right to ask Plato, how do you know about that? How'd you find out that the soul existed before this life and came into the body, as it were, with a remembrance or a vague recollection of the ideas that it experienced before this life? How did you come to know this, Plato? Or if it isn't to be taken literally, if this is just a long way of talking about intuition, then what is an intuition of? What are we talking about? If Plato's just telling a story to get it across, we still don't know exactly what he's saying. We just know the story. But if we don't want to think in terms of the story, but we want to think in terms of the literal reality, what is intuition? What are these abstract forms? And beyond that, what is the relationship between the abstract form and the concrete particular or the physical particular that I run into? Plato said the relationship form and the particular is that of participation. So we have a form that's in a realm beyond time and space. It's unchanging, it's universal. And then we have a number of particulars in this world of time and space, this changing world of time and space that we encounter. And according to Plato, the particulars in some way participate in the form. About the best he could offer, I think, was the analogy of an actor playing a role. You know, there is the form of Hamlet, and then there are any number of actors who have given their interpretation to what Shakespeare wrote as the character Hamlet. Does that help you understand at all? Each particular actor is Hamlet, but no particular actor is Hamlet. Each is participating in the role of Hamlet, but is not Hamlet itself or himself. There are many particular actors, but only one universal known as Hamlet. And in that sense, the things of this world participate like an actor participates in a part. The things of this world participate in the idea of whatever they're a part of. Darkness, humanity, instances of justice or love or what have you. Okay, And I'm only going to hurt you tonight for about four or five minutes. But here's where the hurt comes. I want you to pay real close attention. We're going to be philosophical. Now, the question is, are all participation relationships the same? Are all participation relationships the same? Up here on the board, I have the capital F up high on the board standing for the universal of something. And then I have all these lowercase Fs down here to indicate that down here in this lower world of time and space, we have particular instances of the whatever the form is the F here. And I've got these dotted lines indicating that the small F in this world participates in the large universal F or form of the other world. And my question is about these dotted lines. Plato has said the small F participates in the large F. Huey, Dewey and Louis participate in duckness. They participate. There's a relationship between the idea of duck and these particular ducks. And the question I'm asking is, is that relationship the same? Are all participation relationships the same? Now, some of you, your eyes are lighting up. I think you're seeing Plato's in real trouble, isn't it? Because whichever way he answers, he's sunk. Let's say he claims that all participation relationships are the same. Well, if they're all the same, then participation is a universal, isn't it? It's not a particular, you say. Okay, so what's the problem with that? Well, he's got particulars related to universals by means of a universal. And every one of these participation instances is the same. Now, do we have an idea of participation as well? And if we have an idea of participation, then how do all the particular participations relate to the universal idea of participation? So that these particular Fs can be related to the universal F. If he makes it a universal and therefore an object of knowledge, then there's nothing that distinguishes Peary, Dewey and Louis in their relationship to the form of duckness, which is to say they should all be the same. There shouldn't be three ducks, there should be one. But they are distinct. And so, as it turns out, Plato's answer was relationships are defined by their terms. That's just the philosophical way of saying the things at the end of the relationship. If you have a left of relationship. Then things which are related to each other define the relationship of, left of. Okay? If you say that the building is left of the tree, then that relationship is defined by the building and the tree. Plato said that the relationship of participation is defined by its terms. So each one is particular. That's good. Now we get Huey, Dewey and Louis different because they have a different participation. Then that means participation is unintelligible because it's a particular rather than a universal. Or we could say that for this universal, the F to be related to the small F, the particular, there is another participation relationship. Now, I'm going to do it on this side here. I'm going to call this P to stand for the concept of participation. There's now a relationship between F and P and P and small F. That makes sense out of small F participating in large F. So now we've created another relationship. Now on this side, this F, the large F, and the small left have to be related. And that's going to be a participation relationship. I'm trying to do this in an artistic way. I hope I haven't failed you all here. But if you're watching on the board, it's probably evident to you. We got two P's standing out there unrelated to each other. You see, everything that's known has got to be unified. You can't have two ducknesses, and you can't have two participation. So that means that this P. Okay, I give up. This P and this P have got to be related to each other. Now, what's going to relate those two to each other? Another participation relationship. P2. Okay, now I just kept this real simple. It's going to get pretty nasty in a minute here. Because you notice we really have four ducks out here on the pond. Given my Diagram, we have four small Fs and then one F up here. And what we're going to do for each of these Fs is going to create another web of Ps. Right? But then all those Ps are going to have to be related to each other as well. Correct. So where is this going to end? Answer. It ain't going to end. What you call an infinite regression. In order to explain how particulars participate in a form or an idea or a universal, Plato had to give an account for that relationship of participation. And the only way in which he could give such an account led him to what would be an infinite regress of explanation. And so for Plato's account of reality to explain anything for him, to know anything at all, he would have had to know everything. He would have had to know every relationship. He would have had to have infinite knowledge and infinite regress of participations for any of this to make sense of even one duck on the pond. That has, in one form or another, always been the problem with idealism in the history of philosophy. It's true of Hegel too. I won't get into the details of Hegel, but if you've done any reading or have any familiarity with Hegel, Hegel says thought and reality are going to be identified someday in this evolving world in which we live that's going through the dialectic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, and so forth. Eventually it's going to become one. But until we reach the final form of thought, every thought leading up to it is inadequate. It's like relationship of a tadpole to a frog. We are thinking in tadpole terms when in fact this thing we're looking at is becoming a frog. So it's not so much that it's erroneous to call it a tadpole as it is that it's inadequate because it's really a frog. And so you have to be at the end of history before you can understand anything. In the midst of history, or to generalize, you have to know everything to know anything. With Plato, the same problem. He's an idealist also. And it turns out in another way we can see that for him to know anything, you have to know everything. Okay, the pain is over. That's the only really deep philosophical stuff we're going to get into tonight. But I had to do that for you. So you know that when you get beyond the atheistic materialist and come up against an idealist, a dualist who has a material realm and an immaterial realm, that they've got to relate these two to each other. And in one way or another you're talking to your next door neighbor or the local philosopher, they're going to run into problems relating these two realms to each other. Now, Christians don't have problems relating these two realms to each other. I'll tell you about that in just a minute. Let's say something else about Plato. Plato claimed that before this life I lived in another realm, the realm of ideas. My soul participate on my soul had an experience of the realm of ideas or ideals or the forms. Before this world we have a realm of forms. Up here I'll use capital Fs to indicate forms. Then we have the particulars. Down here, I'll use lowercase Fs to indicate particulars related to them in some way we've just seen. We don't really know what that relationship is. It's really quite mysterious. But now Plato complicates it even more. He now says, my soul was in this realm up here and was becoming familiar with justice and love and darkness and triangularity and everything else that we have particular instances of in this world. Well then, what is the nature of my soul? Is my soul particular? Apparently because it's called mine. It's not your soul. My soul. My soul was familiar with the forms, but my soul is then a particular existing in the realm of what? Universals. Now how'd that come about? How do you get particulars running around in the realm of universals? I mean, if you can do that, Plato, why do you have a different realm at all? Why don't you just bring everything down into this realm? This is a very strange explanation. By the way, certain medieval Islamic philosophers took care of that problem. They said we all have the same soul. There you have it, the oversoul. And we're all just splices off of the block of soulness, you see. But of course they created another problem for themselves because then they have the universal soulness. Being familiar with the universal darkness and the universal of love or justice. How do universals know universals? They aren't personal, they're personal. Then they're particular. And so this getting universals and particulars, or abstract and concrete things together is a problem that non Christian philosophy cannot resolve. Just impossible. It's a great mystery. Oh, there's another problem too. There are some particulars that Plato didn't believe there were forms for. He was kind of embarrassed by them. Plato said there are no forms for filth, which was a euphemism for dung, no forms for warts and other unseemly things in this world. Well then what are they? And how can they be known intelligently if there isn't a form of them? The reason why he didn't want to dignify them by saying they had a form is because a universal has value. The ultimate form is the form of the good. Anything that has the nature of form or universal or idea to it is something that's going to be valuable. Matter is on the other end of things. And that's why, you know, in a Platonic worldview, the material world is kind of looked down upon and despised. It's changing, it's, it's matter. Whereas the abstract realm of forms is where we find goodness and Value. And you don't want to say there's a form of dung, a form of warts, hair, other sorts of things. Because then you'd be saying they're valuable. But on Plato's system they aren't valuable. Now, I guess you could. Somebody in our day and age might get beyond that and say, well, okay, I'm not embarrassed by that. There's a form for dungness too. You can probably imagine other questions you could ask the unbeliever if they wanted to go that far. And one final thing. Is there a form for running rabbit and a form for rabbit at rest? This is one of those questions where if you're the Platonist, you're kind of thinking, which way do I want to jump on this? Pardon the pun. Let's say there's a form for running rabbit and a form for rabbit at rest. Well, what's the problem going to be? You're going to have as many forms as you do particular events in this world then, aren't you? You have a form for Ron running and a form for Vic running. They're quite different forms, I'm sure. You see, if you have a form for every particular event, then why do you have a realm of forms at all? It doesn't solve anything. It doesn't unify the world at all. Say, okay, well, then we'll go the other way. We'll say there's not a form for a running rabbit. There's just a form for rabbit and a form for running. And when you bring those two forms together, you get running rabbit. Well, of course there's more to it than that, because not all running rabbits are the same. Not all rabbits are the same, and not all events of rabbits running are the same. But let's say we could complicate it enough. We can get all these different forms together to account for a particular. Well, how do these forms get together? In fact, while we're at it, let me ask a tougher question. How did anything ever get into this world in the first place? That's the question of creation. How'd this world come about? Plato. And you're gonna love this, because this is the great Plato. And I'm not making fun of him, because if you were to ask me, I mean, there's probably only one or two philosophers in my estimation, that have the greatness in terms of mental ability and creativity of a Plato. I mean, this is a great man, but he just couldn't handle this stuff. Because Plato, when he had to account for how the forms get into this world. How does this blob of matter become ducks and giraffes and human beings and running rabbits? Said, well, I don't know. There must have been a demiurge, the term in Greek thought for a kind of God, a demiurge. We'll call it the big D out here. The big D took the forms. Think of them as cookie cutters. You know, rabbit cookies and duck cookies and justice cookies and all those sorts of things took the forms and then impressed them on the material world and made the instances of ducks and the instances of cats and the instances of giraffes and human beings and all the. That is, the demiurge took the forms and impressed them upon the material world. In my analogy, like a woman might make cookies with a cookie cutter. Does that sound satisfactory to you? If you were witnessing to this man, would you not want to ask a few questions like, where'd the demiurge come from? We're talking about forms and particulars. And now you bring in, just like a deus ex machina, this demiurge. What's the demiurge? Plato said, well, it's really just a myth. He did. He said, it's a myth. I don't know how to explain how the forms and matter got together. Now, a few moments ago, a few moments ago when I told you that if you're talking to your next door neighbor, your next door neighbor believes in justice and love and ideals, but would tell you, but I don't know how that gets involved in the material world. And I'm just real confused by all that. I said, ironically, that's where the best of philosophers is going to end up. Plato didn't know how you brought these two together. You got to have forms. Our ideas are universals. We obviously have a world of particulars that's changing. But he didn't really understand the relationship between the two. And when all said and done, he resorted to mythology. Now, the shoes on the other foot, isn't it? You've been kicked around as a Christian for believing myths and fairy tales and all that. When you're talking to a philosopher who resorts to mythology and stories about participation and souls that existed in the world, I mean, of forms before this life, then you've got to press on that and say, well, then you really don't know, do you? You just have stories to tell. It's as if time, it's fairy tale time. This is what your philosophy comes down to. You explain the world in terms of fairy tales, your imagination. I know that seems very undignified to save a man like Plato. But in the end, that's what it is. It's arbitrary. So let me, for all this talking, summarize the problem with dualistic idealism. Our idealistic dualism, any worldview that believes that there's both matter and idea is that you're going to push on. What's the relationship between these two, remembering that no one has the right to be arbitrary or inconsistent when they give the worldview. So we've dealt with atheistic materialism, and now we've dealt with dualistic idealism, the idea that there's a realm of time and space or matter, as well as another realm, some kind of realm of ideals or ideas or universals, concepts, whatever you want to call them, that are not made out of matter. But then you want to know how the two are related. A few moments ago I started to say, you know, as Christians, we don't face this problem. You know why that is? Because we know that the relationship between the physical world of particulars and the realm of ideas is not a difficult one. It's known as the relationship of creation. We believe in a personal creator. This is not a demiurge that we've run to now as some kind of Deuce X machine. Now we've got to get some account for how the universals got it related to this world. It's rather that we believe that there is a personal God who is almighty, eternal, sovereign, and can create out of nothing. And when God created out of nothing, he created according to his own mind. His mind, you see, is where we find the universals. If you want to talk in Plato, like talk, his mind is what defines cats and dogs and giraffes and justice and love and all the rest. And God created the world according to his own mind. He spoke it into being. And so we don't have a difficulty relating the particulars to the universal. It's the relationship of creator to creature. Interesting. Plato wanted to use the actor, the part, and the individual actors playing the part, in a sense, he was trying to draw close to in his own way, obviously, by general revelation, being pressed to recognize these things. What you have here is the man who created the part, a dog, cat and so forth, creating dogs and cats and giraffes and human beings to play all these roles. Again, I'm mixing Christian and Platonic imagery so I can get the point across that we don't face the kind of difficulty that Plato or even your garden variety idealist does. Because when someone says well, what's the relationship between love and this world? We say, well, God is love, God is justice. And so in order for the things in this world to be related in a loving way, they've got to be related in the way that God tells them to be related. They have to reflect God's own character. Okay, anybody have any problems? I just didn't want to run away from this worldview, having hopefully demolished it without you realizing that. If somebody turns around and says, okay, well, then what do you say about these things? We say, oh, well, thanks for asking. I mean, that's the biblical story. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Let's stop and think about that. You see, and God is love. God is immaterial, but he created a material world by the. By his own power out of nothing. And not only that, he made man in his own image as his own image. And so God has made my mind such that with his own character I can understand this world. He's made me to think his thoughts after him in this world. Okay, now somebody say, well, why do I want to believe all that stuff? You say, that's fine, you may not want to believe all this, but now what's the alternative? Answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit. Questions about idealism cannot relate matter or particulars and ideas or universals cannot account for motion. Okay, now somebody's going to come along and say, well, Dr. Bonson, as you show the atheistic materialist that you have an answer to the problems he can't answer, as you show the dualistic idealist that you have an answer for the things he can't answer, you're appealing to your God. Your God is where you get the ideas or universals. Your God is what is the foundation of logic and the uniformity of nature and these things. So that's right. Well, now the real problem is going to come down to this. Then why should it be your God? The only other kind of worldview that you're going to have to deal with will be a religious worldview. False religious, false religions, or false religious worldviews. These are the three basic categories of worldviews that I'm presenting to you just to make it easy to remember. You have atheistic worldviews which are of necessity materialistic. You have dualistic worldviews that have some realm of idea or concept or universal beyond the material world. You have mind and matter to relate to each other, idea and physical particulars to relate to each other. And then thirdly, we have religious worldviews. So I'm going to spend some time talking about religious worldviews. All religions and cults of this world fall into three categories. Yes, I just wanted to clarify that all the time. You got the idealism, I think, Plato category. Plato was an example of a dualistic idealist. And this is really a mouthful. I realize. What I'm trying to emphasize. He doesn't believe there's only one kind of reality. He's a dualist. There's two kinds of reality, idea and matter. So he's an idealist because he believes that there's something that goes beyond this physical world in the form of ideas or ideals, universals, concepts, what have you. Okay, but you didn't go into the atheistic. No, I did this in a particular lesson. I mean, in a previous lesson. Well, I summarized it real quickly when I said, you remember, they can't account for concepts or logic or science or moral absolutes. That was just by way of hooking into my last class and then taking off. I'm sorry, I took off so fast, and I may have left you back there. This is what we did previously. And then tonight I've introduced. First of all, what if somebody says, okay, well, then I won't be a materialist. I'll say, there are ideas as well, or there's souls or minds or something like that. And all I was getting at is if you take the best of them, even Plato, he can't solve the problems that have to be solved to make sense out of this world in which we live. Now, how do we solve these problems that the materialist can't solve and the idealists can't solve? We appeal to God. We have a religious worldview. So it shouldn't surprise you then that apologetics is going to come down to somebody who says, oh, well, that's just your religion. There are other religions. So now we have to do battle with that false. Religious worldviews. There are three different kinds of religious worldviews. All religions and cults of this world are going to fall into one of these three categories. First, there are religions of transcendent mysticism. Secondly, there are religions of imminent moralism. And thirdly, there are biblical counterfeits. By outlining this on the board, I hope it can be clear to you. You have three basic kinds of worldviews. And this third category of religious has three categories. Now, I didn't set it up this way. I mean, I didn't have it. It wasn't intended. But the Third category here, Biblical counterfeits is going to have three as well. That's kind of nice. The third one always has three more. Okay. Kind of like a Christmas present within a Christmas present within a Christmas present. Look at it that way. I think it's infinite regret. No, no, no. Because it's going to end right there or else I won't go home tonight. Okay. What do these words mean? Transcendent mysticism. By that I am two religions that emphasize some transcendent reality. By transcendent we mean originating beyond or going beyond man's experience in this world. These are religions that emphasize something beyond man's experience. And I'm calling it transcendent mysticism because these religions ultimately say we can't understand it, it's beyond the human mind. So there's something beyond our experience. But the only way we can be in touch with it is mystically. And the example we'll take of that will be Hinduism. There are many religions of this world that are like Hinduism, even though they wouldn't call themselves Hindus. See, philosophers can say that and they. I don't mean to insult anybody, but if you just look at forms of religion, there are others. Like Sikhism is a kind of Hinduism. Though the Sikhs of course fight with the Hindus. They don't believe that they are Hindus. But if you just do a comparison of types, they are in the Hindu type of religion. This may surprise you a bit. Christian science is a Hindu type religion. By that I mean it's a religion of transcendent mysticism. Anybody know enough about Christian science? Just from what little I said about transcendent mysticism to explain why it's in that category? Is there a reality that goes beyond our experience? Yeah. In fact, that's the only reality. Our experience is illusion, ultimately, for the Christian Scientist. Well, if our experience is illusion, then how do we know this ultimate reality? You get hints in the Bible and so forth, but ultimately you can only know it non rationally, mystically. Go ahead. Is there a division that would be called the way that the religion is revealed from a divine source? Yeah, Biblical counterfeit. Can you see, by the way? Okay, this third category of biblical counterfeit would be those religions that claim to have a divine revelation, something in writing that they can refer to? Well, whether it's in writing or not is another question. We're going to push on that point. But right now all I want you to see is that there are some religions that ape Christianity. They try to imitate Christianity without being Christian. But let's look before we get there at the second category, that of imminent moralism. These are religions that are here and now, religions, religions of this world. The emphasis is not on the other world out there, beyond our experience, but the emphasis is upon our experience. And whenever that becomes the focus of religion, it turns into almost always a moralistic faith. That is an emphasis upon a lifestyle, living a certain way, doing good deeds, being a proper kind of person. And Buddhism is an excellent example of this. Of course, there are many others, too. Confucianism is a religion of imminent moralism. That's because the emphasis in Buddhism is on a particular code of behavior. Thirdly, there are religions which, rather than emphasize the mystical or the moralistic, look a little bit like Christianity. And the reason for that is, of course, that they are counterfeiting the reality that God has given either in general revelation or special revelation. We have religions that are biblical counterfeits. Three subcategories. First of all, you have Unitarian counterfeits, that is, attempts to be like Christianity, but falling into the Unitarian mistake. Here we have Islam, a denial of the Trinity, Whereas, what's the biggest Unitarian counterfeit in the history of the Christian church? That's right. Well, the Arians, whose modern expression is Jehovah's Witnesses. And then we have polytheistic counterfeits. Some religions that appear to be like Christianity, religions of revelation. And yet they proclaim that there are many gods. Mormons. Exactly. And then finally there are pseudo messianic religions. Those that present a false messiah will be a good example for us in our day. Sun Young, according to the Unification Church, Sun Young Moon is a. Is actually true Messiah because Jesus failed in the task God gave him to do. And so the Moonies ape Christianity. They're a counterfeit of a biblical approach to religion. But of course, false. False messiah. So these religious worldviews, I'm going to go flying through each one of them and do an internal critique of them before we go home tonight. Do you have any questions about the outline? Though this may be worth the price of admission, if you just. This outline, if you get this into your mind and you know how you would criticize, you know, each category, then you don't have to study all the books about world religions and cults. It helps the time you have to do it. I would encourage you to do it, but you don't have to be intimidated. I'm not intimidated and I haven't read them all. The reason I'm not intimidated is because I believe that I've covered the ground here. And so someone Comes along. Let's say I run into somebody in an airport, you know, maybe I'm going to be seated next to them on the plane for five hours, and I find out they have some strange religious view. I don't sit there and go, oh, I don't know anything about this religion. That's fine. Tell me about your religion. I'd like to know more about it. And as they're talking, what am I doing? I'm scoping out where they go on the chart. Oh, you're one of these. Okay. And then I know the kinds of questions to ask. So you mustn't think there's an infinite variety of unbelief out there that intimidates people that do apologetics. By the way, the Bible tells you there isn't an infinite variety. There's nothing new under the sun. The Bible says. So once you get a pretty good roadmap, the layout of the territory, you're going to be able to handle anything that comes along. I think, let's deal with the first one. A religion of transcendent mysticism, Hinduism. Here's a religion that says ultimate reality goes beyond man's experience. It's transcendent. And because it's transcendent, it is mysterious, it's otherworldly, it cannot be known by our ordinary way of living in this world. In fact, according to Hinduism, our experience in this world is all illusory. It's Maya. Word is Maya. Your experience of this world is illusion. It's Maya. And the reason why we think in terms of illusions is because we think by way of distinction. We distinguish one thing from another. We separate one thing from another. And that's wrong, because ultimate reality, according to the Hindu, is one. Hindus are pantheistic. All is one, and that one is God, y'. All with me, the ultimate reality is one. But as I look out on the class tonight, I. I distinguish you from me, your wallet from my wallet. That probably gives you a lot of peace to know that I know the difference. I distinguish between you and the chair you're sitting on, the chair on the table, the table and the floor, and on and on and on. I think in terms of all these distinctions, that's the problem, because ultimate reality is one. You remember the Beatles, when they got into this phase of their music, you know, you are me, and we are all together. That's what we have to understand. That's the basis of world peace. We're all one. That doesn't mean one in spirit or one in goals and purpose. We're all one, really. We're the same. In fact, we're one with the world around us. So we have to take care of nature and so forth. Much of the ecological movement in our day is implicitly pantheistic. We're all one. So the Hindus teach us. Yes. Is that oneness, one nature. In other words, does that mean everything is spiritual and there is no material? Yes, ultimately it's spiritual. Spiritual oneness. That's right. The material world is an illusion. So it's monistic in a similar way, but on the other end of it. That's right. And I'm putting it in the religious category because most people that are spiritual monist are religionists of one form or another. You don't have many secular monist that are immaterial in their view of the one reality. All right, so mind and float downstream. As the beetle said, it is not dying. You're just learning to become one with the reality round about you. Now, you don't think in terms of that unity. In fact, everything in your experience forces you to think of differences. And so what you need to do is yoga. You need to meditate, you need to be able to pronounce the divine Omn and get your mind above this world and be world into touch with enlightenment and oneness. And that will change the way you see things and the way you do things. Ultimately to the degree that you do not live in terms of this oneness, you are building up bad karma for yourself. Karma is the impersonal divine law of cause and effect, if you will. And so you will be reincarnated after this life. And if your karma is bad karma, you're going to be reincarnated in a form that isn't as good as the one you're now in. You might come back as an aardvark or something, or a snail. But if you're really good, you might come back as a Brahma bull. Okay, well, as you go through, it's very hard for me to take this religion seriously when you're all giggling. It's hard to take this religion seriously, I have to admit, but without any sense of spiritual superiority or pride. I have to tell you, it's just amazing, isn't it, that thousands of the people in this world live this way and believe this stuff. It's just incredible. That's why they want cows, you know, that's why they starve for lack of beef, because they believe that cows are higher on the chain of being and reincarnation, the wheel of life anyway, so you want to finally get off the wheel of life. The wheel of life is another word for reincarnation. Okay, so you don't want to come back as an aardvark or as a brahma bull or anything. You want to. Finally, the image in Hinduism is of the, you know, the teardrop that finally falls into the infinite ocean that has no shore, so forth. So then you're now going to be integrated into the universal oneness of things. And when that happens, you're in nirvana. You finally. That's the Hindu concept of heaven. Isn't that wonderful? No more self, no more self consciousness, no more experience, no more identity. You're gone. You're all with the oneness now. That's heaven for them. Hard to believe. Okay, so what's man's problem, Maya? Illusion. Thinks in terms of distinctions, lives his life selfishly and unto himself, because of these distinctions, thinks logically rather than in terms of all being one. We need to do yoga, we need to meditate. We need to get beyond this and find enlightenment so that we can escape our bad karma, get off the wheel of life and reach nirvana. I'm sorry to be so brief, but we have a lot of ground to cover. So there's a Hindu kind of religion. What's wrong with it? Well, you can approach it from any number of ways and you can read books on this to help you develop an internal critique. But let me give you one fruitful way in. In fact, I don't know that I've ever had a conversation with a Hindu type religionist where this one approach didn't just kind of bring everything to a head in about 10 minutes. What you want to is he had to play Columbo here for himself. Okay, now, now let me get this right. I'm going to make sure I understand you. What you are saying is that my problem is that I'm thinking in terms of distinctions, in terms of Western logic. That's really what's gotten me into this mess, that I am in my life thinking in terms of illusion and separation instead of in terms of oneness. Exactly. And what you're telling me is that I've got to stop doing that. I've got to practice yoga and reflection and meditation so that I can finally reach nirvana and get off this wheel of life, of reincarnation. Right. So then according to your theology, there's a difference between where I am now and where I'm supposed to get. I'm now on the wheel of life and I want to get to nirvana, is that right? Right, but according to your theology, all is one. There are no distinctions, and therefore there is no distinction between Nirvana and where I am right now. Ergo, I don't need your yoga, I'm in Nirvana. I mean, their own theology destroys their theology. And now here's what you usually get as a response. First of all, do you understand the refutation? Their theology assumes a distinction between Nirvana and the wheel of life, where we are right now. But they also say all is one, in which case there can't be that distinction either. So they've refuted themselves. Now, most Hindu religionists that hear that kind of refutation, they get a little snide and they'll say something like, oh, there you go with your Western logic again. I say, yeah, okay, so I'm using my Western logic. So what you're telling me is that in order to be a Hindu, you've got to be irrational, you've got to be willing to contradict yourself. The person says, that's right. We need to get beyond logic. We have to be able to contradict ourselves. To which I say, well, if you contradict yourself, then you don't. You've heard this before, right? If you contradict yourself, then you don't contradict yourself. Person says, now wait a minute, I just said you have to be willing to contradict yourself. I said, okay, and that's what I'm doing. I'm contradicting what you said. If you contradict yourself, if you allow contradictions, then you don't. So now the person says, okay, I get it. In other words, in order to talk, we have to be logical. Yeah, that's right. Okay, well then we can't talk and say, okay, well, that ends our conversation. Right? Because if you're going to be consistent with your theology, you have nothing to say. Hindus cannot be evangelistic, nor can they have an apologetic for their faith. To be consistent, they'd have to be utterly silent. So now we're ready for the next category. Okay, well then, what about a religion that is here and now down to earth, part of human experience?

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