Dr Greg Bahnsen - Seminary Apologetics: Worldview Issues Part 2 (Part 14)

This message is a continuation of the previous tape. Let's move ahead. We've looked at metaphysical questions, epistemological questions that are part of everybody's worldview. What is the nature of truth and what is the nature of objectivity? Is all truth soldiers subject is true something that's part of the subject, part of the subject's desire or way of seeing, or is through something that's public and outside the subject and therefore true for everybody? Another epistemological question is what's the nature of belief? What is it to believe something and then what is it to know something rather than to just believe it? What's the difference between belief and knowledge? One of the key epistemological questions is what are our standards for justifying beliefs and what procedures should we follow to justify them? What are our standards and our procedures for justifying belief? Epistemology deals with science, the nature of science discovery. And once again, it should be obvious that as Christians, our theology gives us some kind of epistemology, doesn't it? Because our theology is based upon and speaks of a doctrine of revelation. How God discloses himself and how he discloses himself in our experience, in our minds, in history, in His Word, in His Son. There's a revelational epistemology in the Bible. And then let's turn to ethics in philosophy. Every worldview has a particular approach to ethics. It may not be consistent, it may not be well thought out, but everybody has some basic idea of the nature of good and evil. And if I can again speculate for a moment, I'd say in our culture, most all of us have some notion that good is that which is fair to everybody. Maybe it is the case that good is fair to everybody, and maybe it isn't the case. But that is a pervasive cultural zeitgeist right now. Zeitgeist spirit of the age, okay? And our way of looking at things, our pervasive mindset as a culture, says that good is what's fair to everybody. Well, if you don't hold that, well, it's more than just that. But that and other things are embraced in what I'm getting at, when we say there's a fundamental view of the nature of good and evil, our ethic involves a standard of morality. It involves a view of guilt, atonement and personal peace. And everybody's got to have some view of that because everybody what deals with guilt and everybody has to have some notion of personal peace, its value, and how it's achieved. It would be a fascinating study Maybe a nice Sunday school class for you sometimes, just to go through the various views of personal peace in our world today. What is the nature of personal peace and how do we gain it? Does personal peace come when I get the most poise? I'm on top of the heat and I can set myself apart from everybody else's. Does personal peace come when I'm at one with everybody? Boy, those are radically different views than personal peace, aren't they? How do you gain personal peace? Do you feel guilty? A lot of people take drugs. Some people take drugs, obviously, through the thrill of it. Some people take drugs because they want to be dull. Anyway, everyone has some view of personal peace, atonement and guilt. And more generally, everyone has some view of social order, how we should relate to one another in society. What's the nature of social. And then taking it a step further, how should authority be exercised in society? What's the nature of the state? Our ethical outlook involves questions about how we attain and how we produce moral character. Okay, so if you're not a patient person, how should you attain patience? How can you produce a better moral character in yourself? Well, these ethical questions obviously bear on all sorts of things that we as Christians believe theologically about the Fall, right? About the nature of God and his holiness and about redemption. So everyone has a worldview, and everyone's worldview not necessarily in a rational, consistent and well thought out way, but everyone's worldview addresses the nature of the real. What's this world like? What's man like, what's God like, what's real, the nature of knowledge, how we know what we know. And everyone's worldview addresses how we should live our lives. Metaphysics, epistemology, ethics. Now, I said I wanted to do this two times. I'm going to run past it twice. That's an attempt to organize things according to category. Now, I'm going to give you a list of philosophical questions that has historically developed. In fact, I'm going back to the origins of philosophy in the Greek world and give you a summary of the sorts of things that originally philosophers were mystified by and they argued over. And there's a method to this madness. And I want you to see that the questions that I'm giving you from the very beginning days of philosophy turn out to be the very questions that we're struggling with today, which leads some people to say, philosophy. What a waste of time. These guys don't make any progress. Well, these are the enduring, if not endearing, enduring questions of human life. Some People go home and they just want a beer and turn on the tv. But one degree or another, everybody is going to ask philosophical questions. And if you think systematically and long about them, you'll find that those who are reputed to be the philosophers have pretty much come on to what are the central issues. I mean, I can make fun of philosophers as well as any lawyer can make fun of lawyers. But in the end, the reason I've given a good portion of my life studying is because I really think it's important. Philosophers can act like real jackasses, no doubt about it, but what they're working with is critical. And so you should have some respect for the enduring question. Why are they still there? What is philosophy? Philosophy is the desire to find explanations. How do things happen? Why do things happen? The baby in the crib is a very, very, very, very, very low level philosopher. A child going to elementary school would have been more of a philosopher. A child learning about science, a child going to college, organizing things in a disciplined way. These explanations are developing, but ultimately the most abstract and general questions about how we know what we know, what the nature of reality is, and so forth, those are the philosophical questions. So philosophy began many, many, many years ago with the desire to find explanations. How do we justify those explanations? When I explain this happened because of that, this event was caused by that, what are the methods or the standards by which I justify that comment? What method should I use, what standard should I use to justify my explanation? And then in this desire to find explanations, how do I resolve internal conflict in my explanation? How do I resolve internal conflicts in my explanation? I'll stick with the illustrations I've already used. Hopefully they sink in. Why is it I say man is a physical entity, part of the physical world, but my explanation of man's behavior is not governed by the same laws by which I explain an apple falling from a tree. Why do I explain man's behavior by reference to creativity and freedom and responsibility? But I explain other things in the physical world in terms of the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, and what have you? The philosopher desires to find explanations, but explanations that are one, justified and two, the internal conflicts have been resolved. Nearly Greeks struggled with that. Next question. How are we to understand nature? How are we to understand matter in motion? What is the stuff of which the world is made? I know that sounds funny, to put it that way, but I don't think there's any more basic ways to what is the world made of? What is this stuff? And how is it possible that it changes Is there one basic stuff of which everything is made? Saley said, yes. If there wasn't one basic stuff, we wouldn't have an ultimately rational explanation for the world. And so everything's got to basically do the same thing, water. But then the problem is, well, if everything's water, why do some things look different than other things? Why do some things seem more like water than other things? So now he has to have an explanation of change, right? How the one becomes a minute. How does the central stuff, the one rational unifying factor, reality, become the diverse things that we experience in our day to day lives? Why is there sand? Why are there rocks? Why are there plums and pumpkins? If everything's water, other people come along and say, well, your explanation of change isn't really helpful. Maybe this world's not made up of the same basic one kind of thing, the one stuff. Maybe it's made up of four kinds of things. Maybe it's earth, air, fire and water. Well, you know, that really improves the richness and the ability to provide explanations. Now you've got four factors that you can use, but of course that has been purchased at quite a price. And the price is, how do you unify the four? Now the world seems to be all diverse. And so then someone says, oh, how about this? Why don't we say instead of four factors that are all different in character, that the world's made up of things that are all the same character, but there's an infinite number of them. We'll call them atoms, those things of which there is no smaller. They're the undivided, they're the indivisible or uncuttable elements. But the atoms are not made up of different qualities. They all have the same quality. And so we have now a rational unity. Everything is the same quality, but we also have room for motion and change because there's an infinite number of them that can be repackaged and reorganized. Well, that seems like an improvement. Until you say, well then how do you get a rational understanding of how things change? And then there are those who say, well, all the atoms fall through space and they don't ever change. Everything is determined. In which case our experience of freedom is what? An illusion. And then you have those who are unwilling to give up the illusion of freedom as being an illusion that is unwilling to give up freedom as an illusion. And they say, well, then we must have some account for how the atoms have that kind of creativity. There must have been a swerve in the fall of the atoms. But now that raises another question. If one of the atoms swerves so that it now creates all this billiard ball effect of the atoms impinging on one another, why did that one swerve? And if you don't have any explanation of that, then it's irrational. It has no reason. It's irrational, which means human freedom is what? Irrational. So now you have in your worldview the rational atoms falling through space and the irrational, the atoms that are bumping up against one another, which account for our making choices and being creative. Well, I'm not going to go through the whole history of Greek philosophy for you. But you see, when you ask, what is nature? What is this world in which we live? You have to come up with simultaneously an answer for what matter is? What is the stuff? What is the thing or things of which the world is made? And then how is change possible among those things? But the minute you answer the question how change is possible, you have to also have to have an answer for how there's identity through through change. What if everything's changing all the time? If everything's changing all the time, Could I utter the sentence everything's changing all the time? In the first place, when I say everything is changing all the time, I have some concept of enduring identity through the changes. And I say that thing changed, okay, that thing that was a baby in the crib turned into a 16 year old driving the family car. It changed. Well, I said it changed, but in the process of saying it changed, I also said it didn't change because it's the same thing, the same thing under two different qualities or characteristics. So now how is their identity through change? Pretty heavy. What is the relation between the underlying stuff of the world, whatever you say nature is made of, and how change is possible, and how there's identity through change? What is the relation between whatever that is and the way things appear to me? Now we have the tough question of putting together how things are in fact what Kant would call the thing in itself and how it appears to me the phenomena of my experience. Parmenides had, from a certain point of view, a pretty good philosophical handle on these things. He gave us a nice rounded out theory. Only one problem is it called for us to deny the reality of our experience. Parmenides said, well, all is one and there is no change. That settles all the philosophical questions. Boy, put them to bed. But then again, as I walk through this world and have lunch today, I have to be telling myself at all times, this is illusion. This is illusion. There is no Change. I'm not different from the burrito that I'm eating. That's a high price to pay, isn't it? So then Heraclitus, to the opposite approach. He said, well, then, everything's changing. Parmenides, you were wrong. It's not that everything is one and unchanging. Everything's always changing. You can't step in the same river twice. Why? Because the minute you pull your foot out, or the second that you pull your foot out and put it back in the river has changed. Everything's always changing. All is flux. But then Parmenides had to say, and therefore, don't trust them. Excuse me. Then Heraclitus said, those of you who haven't had the history of philosophy, this is going to confuse you. I'm sorry. Parmenides said, nothing changes, so don't trust your senses. Heraclitus comes along and says, everything changes. And he concludes, so don't trust your senses because your senses will tell you what the status is not changing. It's changing in the very same desk since I started the lecture today. Now, if you have some advanced knowledge of biology, you might be willing to say, in a theoretical sense, well, Dr. Bonson has changed. I mean, there are molecular changes in his body since he began the lecture. But generally, when we look at the world, we don't see everything changing all the time. We rely on permanence. You know, when you get ready to go home today, I don't think many of you are going to worry too much about, well, I wonder if my house is in the same place. I wonder if there is even a house anymore. I wonder if this car will stay a car while I'm trying to go home. Here's Harry Potter saying, everything's in flux, everything's changing. Now, granted, it doesn't look like that, so don't trust your senses. Isn't that great? Opposite views of reality. They both lead to what you can't count on what you see. Then other people say, forget these philosophers. Our philosophy should be based on what we see. So that raises the next basic question in philosophy. This is number three in my outline. Is reason an instrument for obtaining objective knowledge of reality? Is reason an instrument for obtaining objective knowledge of reality? Or do we have to throw up our hands and say, we can't know. Can't know anything for sure. That's what some people say, can't ever know. I only want to ask one thing of those people who say, you can't know anything. Can you know that you can't Know anything, philosopher? I feel like it'd be good when lunch rolls around so I can get away from you for a while, because I can see the fire in your eyes. Philosophers infuriate people. You know why? Because they cross examine opinions and they say, you know, you can't be comfortable right there. You can't really take that for granted. And then people try to adjust what they believe so it becomes a little more rational. And then they get attacked for this side, like there's always something, right? People begin to feel, I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't. So I give up. Is reason an instrument for obtaining objective knowledge of reality? You say no. And I ask, did reason lead you to that conclusion? If it didn't, then don't we want to say it's unreasonable to say this. Is the knowledge that we gain using the instrument of our senses? Objective? The great crisis that was introduced in the history of Western thought after Kant was just this. It may be that my mind organizes the sensations in a particular way, in a uniform way. But since my mind is working on these sensations, I can never know that what I think I see is the way it really is, because my mind is creatively not interfering, but it's being involved in the process of forming my thoughts and perception. And so sensation comes in, but my mind works on it before I really have any phenomena, any experience of it. And so what I experience has nothing to do with ultimate reality, the way things really are. And so he gained rational order. Kant did. At the cost of what? Objectivity. Now, the order that we have which is rational is subjective in nature, rather than being based on the rational order that's really in the world out there. So is reason an instrument for obtaining objective knowledge of reality? And if it is, what approach should we take to look and see approach? Of the stop and reflect approach? Approach. I'm trying to make this easy for you. Anybody in the philosophy department would say, why are you giving it to them that way? Why don't you tell them what that is? Okay, you take the empirical approach, look and see, or do you take the rational approach, stop and reflect? Thales took the look and see approach. Daly said, all is water. How did he come up with that? It's not because he was sitting back in his armchair speculating. It's because he was out in the world. And he said, you know, if there's one thing that has to unify everything, a good candidate would be what there's a lot of. By the way, he was an Ionian Philosopher, he's on one of the Greek islands. So there was a lot of water. In his experience, there was water all around him. You know, when you get up in the morning you find what dew on the grass, on the flowers. When you cut into things, you find things, you know, like you cut your finger. Something like water comes out. I mean it's red, but there's some kind of fluid there. So maybe it's the development of water. When you cut into an orange, it's juicy. Water comes out of the sky. Now I don't know, Salis doesn't tell us just exactly what he looked at to get to this, but it would appear reasonable as a reconstruction of this. That Thales said, if there's one thing that reality is made of, if I look around, if I check my observations, it would appear to be water. Now the next guy who came along, Anaximandra, said no, it can't be water. Why can't can it be water? He said, because there are things which are non watery in this world. But that's just observation, right? No, he was making a very significant rational point. He said, in fact, anything, any particular quality or thing that I offer in the place of Thales water is going to be subject to the same reputation. Thales says everything's water. But I look at non watery things and say, boy, you got quite a task here now to get from what is water to what is not water. But if I were to say something else, let's say fire. But then I'd have the problem that those things which don't look like fire, how do they become like that? How do you get some fire on fire? And so Anaximander came up with this conclusion. The basic stuff of reality, I'll give you the English translation is boundless. It has no characteristic, it has no boundary. Aperon in Greek, aperon. The thing that is boundless is not red or white or blue, cold or hot, solid or liquid, sweet or bitter, and on and on and on. Because it has anything that you say definitely, you know, any definite character that you attribute will have its opposite, won't it? And so in order to avoid that problem of the opposite, he said, I'll say it's something that has no opposite. It's the boundless. Now all I'm getting at here is how did Anaximander reach his conclusion that reality is made up of the boundless, the stuff which has no definite characteristic? Did he do this by looking and seeing anybody, you know, run into a puddle of the boundless? Lately, oh, this looks like a good can't buy a boundless. And the nature of the king had to be a rational instruction. Instead of going out and looking for a better candidate than water, Anaxamenes did that. Anaxamenes said, no, no, it's not water, it's air. But instead of doing that sort of thing, Anaximander, it's like he was the armchair rational philosopher. He sat back and said, now what is required if I'm going to have an intellectually adequate answer to this question? And so he took a rational approach rather than an empirical approach. He took the stop and reflect approach rather than the look and see. And so this is one of the enduring questions of philosophy. Should we be empirical or rational in our approach? Is reason an instrument for obtaining objective knowledge of reality? Fourth basic question. Now, there's been a lot of sub questions, so I'll review for you. I don't want to confuse you. The first one is how do we find explanations? How do we justify them and resolve internal conflicts? The desire to find explanations. Two, how do we understand nature? What is man, the world, God, etc. Three, the one we just looked at is reason an instrument for obtaining objective knowledge of reality. And now four, by what kind of values should man live? By what kind of values should man live? Are there in fact objective values? The Greeks had to ask that question because if some have proposed, supposed that the world is purely natural, if the world is purely natural, then there are no values, right? That's just what happens in nature. And it does you no good to rail against that. Fate is fate, nature is nature. And whenever you talk about value, you're not gaining that from nature itself, as though it real in and of itself. That's just your imagination imposing value on the world. Is man morally distinct and unique from the animals? Can we treat men like we treat other animals? If not, why not? Should reason control our passions? Some people say, you know, you don't want to start thinking because then you want to enjoy life. Passion should be at the heart of your life. What place should pleasure have in the way that I live? The hedonist said, you should live for pleasure. One school of hedonism said, you should live for the most pleasure point you can get. The other said, no, you should live for the higher quality pleasures. That too is a value question, isn't it? Which one's right, which one's wrong? Should we live for moderation, peace of mind, honor, justice? And our culture continues to ask those very same questions. That's fascinating. To me, we have people, I mean, in university settings. And then they have people who offer their weekend seminars, too. Google, tell people, you need to get passion back in your life. Turn off your mind. Stop being so type a personality, stop being so intellectualistic. Get in touch with yourself. Right? The ancient Greeks were telling people that. And then you have people who go the other way too. You know, you know what's wrong with your life. You're at loose ends. Get organized, guy. Let me show you how to have a daily planner and have all your phone numbers with you. And isn't that right? We have people going. Is honor more important than pleasure? Is peace of mind more important than justice? The Greeks ask these questions and we're still trying to answer them. Number five, let me give you four summary questions from the beginning of Greek philosophy down to our own day. Four summary questions. Number five is four summary questions. Must be getting close to lunch. You don't have much of a sense of humor, fellas. Come on. Number one, is, is man's mind self sufficient when all is said and done? Throughout history, philosophers have been asking, is man's mind self sufficient sufficient? Two, is there an objective moral order? Is there an objective moral order? Three, is there public truth that's accessible by reason? Is there public truth, objective truth that's accessible by man's reasoning? And four, what is man's place in the universe? What is man's dignity and what is the meaning of his life? That's all one long question. What is man's place in the universe, dignity and meaning for life? Please turn the cassette over at this time. I told you there was a method in my madness. I wanted to tell you what these basic questions of philosophy were at the very opening of Greek philosophy so that you'd appreciate that they are enduring questions. But now I want to look at them again and say, I want you to notice they're also endearing questions. Because as a Christian, it turns out I'm the one who by God's grace, is an answer to these questions. Is man self. Is man's mind self sufficient? No, man's mind is dependent upon God's mind. That's why I believe in revelation. Is there an objective moral order? Yes, because God exist objectively in his holy character in order for our living. Is their public truth accessible by reason? Yes, because God created the world and all human beings and their minds and made them capable of understanding the world he made. What is man's place in the universe he's created? A little lower than the angels, right? Created as the image of God? What is his dignity? That is the image of God. What's his problem? That he's violated that dignity and rebelled against God? What's the meaning of life to get right with God and to glorify him and enjoy him forever? I said, you've all been doing philosophy. You said, well, those are theological answers, yes, but they're also philosophical answers. The underlying, enduring questions of philosophy should be endearing to the apologist because we're the ones who have the answers. The reason why the Greeks have asked These questions and 20th century philosophers are still struggling is because they refuse to do what? Turn to the grace of God and the Gospel. They refuse to affirm our worldview. And so they keep spinning their wheels. They keep going round and round and finding frustration and not being able to resolve these questions. Before we break for lunch, I do want to rehearse for you, since many of you will not have done the study yourself, but rehearse for you by way of boiling it down the basic answers or worldview types that are available out there. I do think we'll take a two minute break though. But there was shipping too. Sorry about that, before our lunch break. Let's see if I can outline for you. I think every Christian, you don't have to have this. Well, you don't have to have this course to do apologetics, obviously, and you don't have to have an understanding of the various worldview types. But I trust you can see how valuable it would be for you, how practical it would be if you'd have some idea of what the options are out there, that you're going to encounter a caveat. You are not necessarily going to encounter people who say, oh, well, I'm a monist. They may not even know what the word means. They may not even be able to give you a list of what the options are from which they chose. But you need to know what the various views are. So when you talk to people, you can categorize where they're coming from. And if you know what some of the problems of these worldviews are, when you run into that kind of worldview, you know automatically what kinds of questions you're going to press. So that's why we're doing this. Not because people know the vocabulary and not because it's absolutely necessary that you have all of these now. But to make it very practical, I think a lot more efficient for you to know the questions to address the people, if you can identify the category of thought in which to locate them. And this vision of worldview types is my own development. I've done this for the sake of simplicity. See? So someone does love you. I told you. I'm going to stretch you today. But I've tried to simplify this. There are four basic fundamental types of worldview. Monistic, Dualistic, Atomistic, And finally pragmatic. I have purposely mixed metaphysical and epistemological categories. Here is we're to do this in a more purest way. If I was in a university setting teaching you a course on this, I would not do it this way. But if you want to have it, you know, just like, you know, something you can hold on to and put in your pocket and pull out and consult and so forth, this will be the easiest way, because everyone's going to fall into one of these in one way or another. A monistic worldview is one that says that everything is one. There's no duality, there's no plurality, there's no diversity. Everything is one. The Western way of looking at the world finds this boring as well as unconvincing. Because, you see, if everything's one, there are no color differences, there's no quality differences. In fact, there's no ethical differences. Hinduism, which is the best example of a monistic worldview. Hinduism says even good and evil are the same ultimately because everything is God. So as an example of monism, you may want to put in your notes Hinduism, the kind of monism that I'm mentioning here is actually spiritual monism. Spiritual monism, the view that all is one and that one is spirit rather than matter. Now, there's a problem, of course, because if all is one, then it can't be spirit or matter, can it? It really should be something that's neither spirit nor matter. But Hinduism holds to a spiritual monism. Now, there's another kind of monism that is not spiritual in nature, but rather material in nature. And many people, sadly today are materialist. Materialism in philosophy doesn't refer to greed. You know, the materialistic outlook. I got to get a better car, a better home, and so forth. Materialism is the view that everything that's real is matter. It's materialistic. But I'm going to go consider materialism under atomism for the sake of this simple summary. All right? I want you to see, I told you already, it's not a systematic outline. This is the convenient outline. It's like this is what you're going to run into. So you have Hinduism, the monist approach of Eastern religions. You also have monism. At this level of a material sort. But when we get there, we'll call that atomic. Before we get there, let's. Before we get to many kinds of reality or bits of reality from the one, there's an intermediate stop that's very important, I believe, but not always paid attention to by Christian philosophers today. And that's dualism. Dualism, the view that there are two types of things that are real. And among the dualists you will find idealist. Idealists on the one hand, and Stoics on the other. Idealism says that ultimate reality does not matter but as idea, concepts, forms, universals. And Plato obviously is the leading illustration of that. Now, if you are an idealist, then you also believe what? That you know things by way, or you know things in a way that goes beyond sensation, that goes beyond observation of your eyes, ears. And so idealism is linked in one way or another with some kind of intuitional epistemology. So Plato said, how do we know the forms or ideas? We recollect them from a previous life. We intuit them. That's just part and parcel of what's in us when we are born. And I'm giving you a simple summary. I realize I can't develop this. Time doesn't allow. So under the dualist approach, you're going to find most of what we call rationalism in the history of philosophy. Rationalism is subject to many definitions. Three important definitions which are quite different from one another have to be given. So then I'll go back and tell you which one this is. Rationalism sometimes is used for that attitude of autonomy that says I don't need supernatural revelation. In that sense, rationalism is secularism. We don't need revelation. Sometimes. Rationalism is that school of thought totally apart from the question of whether we need revelation that says that man's reason should dominate in his personality, we should be rational in what we are doing, that we're subject to the laws of rationality, that we shouldn't despise intellect and submit to emotion, our pure will. Now, just in those first two definitions, you see the difference in that a Christian is not a rationalist. If you mean some somebody who rejects revelation, a Christian is a rationalist. It means somebody who believes the intellect is subject to the laws of logic and so forth. So we should use our intellect in a proper way, but then as a specific school of philosophy. In the history of Western thought, rationalism is the view that it's possible to know certain things apart from observation. It's possible to know certain things apart from observation, a good example of the laws of mathematics. There are certain things that we know, but we did not learn them from observation. And that third sense of the word rationalism is what I'm referring to here in my little outline, the idealist approach that it says there are ideas and they are the fundamental reality. And all of our thinking is to be governed by the laws of ideas or rationality as a form of rationalism. Another dualist approach is that of the Stoics. This is tied with what I'll call a moralistic approach to life. The Stoics taught that there was a logos that flows through the natural world. A logos is a reason there's a word or a reason that flows through the natural world and makes it the way it is. And our job is to get in line with the logos. See why early Christian apologists like the Stoics. That sounds like we should get in line with Jesus, the logos. He's the controller of the world. It's fascinating to draw those connections, but for another day because it's almost lunchtime. The Stoic approach to life says you've got a natural world out there, but you're supposed to live in a particular way in this natural world. Really easy illustration. The Stoic said, don't buck it. The way things are going in the world, fit into it. Or as we say in California, go with the flow. You're on the BQE and you've got to make it to this party. And you do that at 6:30. So already 6:20, you got 10 more miles to go. And there are cars all over the place because of accidents. Now what do you do? Well, people are different, but I've seen some people drive in Brooklyn and I tend to get uptight, you know, and get in here, get in this. The Stoic would say, hey, be stoic about this. Take it with indifference. Fall back, realize you're not going to make it on time. That's just the way nature is. Chill out now. Wouldn't you think that the Roman Empire would love to have soldiers that were stoic? And they, they were. Stoicism was real popular in the Roman army because you see, that fits into the soldiers mentality, right? I can't control everything. It's just my place to submit. Hit in stiff upper lip, be tough about it, be stoic as they say. So the Stoic says, we've got a world out there that's different from us and yet there are certain ideals by which we should live. This develops into the notion of natural law. We should fit into nature and so forth. But the point is I should be moralistic. There are moralistic worldviews that say not only do we have atoms and chemicals or matter in motion out there, but we also should live our lives in a certain way in response to it. We're going to talk about the difficulty of such a worldview. When we get to presuppositional apologetics again, I'll anticipate it. Stop and think about that. When you talk to people who say, I think matter is what's fundamentally real, but it's wrong to kill people immediately, you say, now you have to explain to me how you get an immaterial value. Don't kill, and there's nothing but matter. How do you bring this together? How do you get matter and immaterial values together in your worldview? Dualism two types of things. The basic problem of every dualist system is how do you get unity between the two types of things? Is one more fundamental than the other? Did the one arise from the other? And then we come to a materialistic worldview in its more sophisticated form as we know it today. Atomism. It's monistic, just like the Hindu. But I'm taking monism in the spirit of sense or the non physical sense up here, materialistic atomism. And among the materialists, by the way, materialism goes hand in hand with the empiric. Goes hand in hand with the epistemology of empiricism. Empiricism says everything that we know is based on observation. Everything, not just that we can observe and learn things, but the only things we can learn are based on observation. So you have rationalism here, empiricism here, rationalism tied to idealism and a dualist approach, empiricism tied to atomism or a materialistic approach. But among those, those that you're going to encounter in this world that are materialistic, there's a fundamental difference of opinion that we have to recognize in our outline, and that is between those who are deterministic. And those that are hedonistic. Again, I've mixed categories. One's metaphysical, one's ethical. But I'm just trying to filter things out to what you're finally going to encounter out there. And it will be enough if you remember that among the materialists, some say there is no freedom. No freedom. Everything happens in a deterministic way. And there are some who say that there is freedom. They affirm free will. A couple of examples of deterministic atomism would be behavioristic psychology and a Marxist view of history. The behaviorist is a determinist with respect to the individual person. How what you do and say is controlled by your stimulus response mechanisms, your previous conditioning. And then Marxism has a deterministic view of history that everything is working its way out to a particular conclusion and that there's no way for you really to fight it. It's going to take place. They're very optimistic in their eschatology in that sense, those who are not deterministic. I call them hedonistic. They affirm free will. They affirm free will. And I can see three different versions of those who affirm free will. Quickly you have the egoist. Secondly, the utilitarians. And thirdly, the existentialist. First, the egoist. The egoist says that I should live for what brings me pleasure. I'm at the center of everything. So this is epicureanism. Live for pleasure. But that means your own pleasure. Now among them, some say, live for all the pleasure you can get, some for the better pleasures. But we'll let that go. Go for right now you have egoistic hedonism. A second version of hedonism is utilitarian. Here the pleasure we should be living for is the pleasure of the greatest good. So one is focused on the individual, the other is focused on society. Have you noticed this morning as we've gone through these, how often the questions come down to one and many relationships? That's just a hint for some of you who will go on to read Van Til. The one in the many problem is the central question. But it takes all different forms, you know. But here's one of them. Is my pleasure more important than the pleasure of the many? Or is the pleasure of the many more important than mine? The utilitarian says we should do what will bring the greatest good, that is the greatest happiness for the greatest number. And so utilitarian is easily aligned with a socialist approach to political and societal questions. The socialist approach. The third form of hedonism, the affirmation of free will, is existentialism. Existentialists are not interested in whether you make your choices, your free choices for yourself, your pleasure or society's pleasure. They're only interested that you make them freely. I mean, this is the purest form of a free will philosophy. The only value is the value of free will. And so you are authentic if you choose to do whatever you're going to do for yourself. And you don't let other people or other factors control you. Okay, Monism, the Hindus, Eastern religions, dualism, the rationalist, and the moralist in our world, optimism, those who are deterministic or hedonistic. And then finally again, I'm changing categories. The pragmatic or skeptical approach, Pragmatism and skepticism essentially say no one knows for sure. That's the cop out that people will run to because philosophers and religionists debate all these big metaphysical questions, all these big epistemological questions, all these big ethical questions. The pragmatist says, no one knows. Let's just do what works, let's just get by. Or the skeptic says, no one knows for sure. The ancient sophist said, no one can know anything for sure. So what we should learn is how to get our way in the assembly. That is, learn to use the techniques of debate to convince people to do what you want. Now, do we have anybody in our society today that seems to fit into that category? Major denomination? Encumbrance? Yeah. Okay, well. Well, I think that's appropriate. But I was thinking really of a particular vocation in our society that's known for being sophistic. The lawyers. Right? Hired guns. What's important. I don't think this is right, but I have to tell you, it's pretty much the way things work. What we ought to do in court is not try to objectively find the truth, but what try to get our side to win. Politicians are a close second to the lawyers in terms of that. The ancient Greeks had that problem as well. The sophist. No one knows for sure. So let's just look at the cash value. Let's just look at what gets us by or what solves our problems. Okay. What have you learned this morning? Well, you can learn. First of all, you don't have to be intimidated by philosophy. Has this been so bad? Well, I have to tell you, I chose this to begin with so I wouldn't frighten you off. It's going to be a little bit tougher after lunch. But philosophy isn't that hard. Everybody's a philosopher. Not everybody's self conscious and does it well. But everybody ends up doing philosophy. It's inevitable, this process of finally getting to the level of abstraction. Reascular questions about how do you relate this to that? How do I know what I know? What is fundamentally real? Everybody's got a worldview, and I've defined that for you and shown you its characteristics. These key philosophical questions are not there just for your, you know, idle listening pleasure. But you should realize that these enduring questions are also the endearing questions for an apologist. Because philosophers, philosophers can't answer them. And if philosophers through the ages have failed to gain unanimity on these matters, those are the kinds of questions you need to be prepared to do, what to use with the unbeliever that you talk to. He doesn't have to be a university graduate, he doesn't have to be philosophy major. He's still got to answer these questions in the inevitable process of figuring out what life is all about and how he knows what he knows. And then I now shared with you the basic answers that are there. And if you see the defects of these various worldviews as we're going to be talking about over the next two days, then whatever you run into out there in the world, even if it's not identified clearly as this or that category, you now know these are the weak points that I'm going to start pushing on. And we come back from lunch, I'm going to give you a basic introduction to epistemology. Now you've learned philosoph philosophy. Now we're going to learn something particularly about epistemology. This recording is distributed by Covenant Media Foundation, a non profit educational organization. Unauthorized reproduction of this tape is strictly prohibited. A free catalog of the Foundation's tapes and articles is available by calling 1-800-553-3938. It.