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| Consistency, Comrade Marx, Consistency. In a preface to The Communist Manifesto Frederick Engels states that the Marxist proposition, that the history of mankind is a history of class struggles which will inevitably evolve into a communistic state, “is destined to do for history what Darwin’s theory has done for biology…” (Engels, 5). Whether history has proven this statement true or not is not up for consideration, but rather I wish to propose that this view has some inherent logical discrepancies that it cannot deal with.
First of all, let us expand upon the Marxist position for a bit. Heavily influenced by Darwin, Marx held a progressive view of history and society. The Marxist assumes that man has always been improving and progressing to a better stage and that history testifies to this fact. The question then moves to “what causes these improvements and progressions?” For the Marxist, coming from a strictly materialist point of view, they are the result of material forces working upon society. History is the result of pure physical combinations of matter and is well beyond the notion that ideas influence the actions of man. Not only that, but in order to interpret history, Marx claims that we must understand a society’s production and exchange as those factors that evolve a society.
“The economic structure of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions as well as of religious, philosophical and other ideas of a given historical period,” Engels states (Noebel, 745). Marx and Engels go on to claim that these economic structures of history, without fail, result in conflict between social classes. This conflict proceeds to create tension that eventually leads to a violent revolution. After the bloodbath drains, we are left with a new, better and more highly evolved society which will eventually repeat the process and do so again and again until we have arrived at a classless (and therefore tensionless and revolution-less) society.
Here we come to a crossroads. If Marx were to be consistent, we would have no independence as everything about us, from our actions to our desires, would be conditioned by our circumstances which would be determined by the laws of economy. Marx denies this completely however, insisting that somehow economics—while being the framework and forming all aspects of mankind and society—does not actually remove all possibility of freewill without providing us with any reasoning behind this illogical claim (Noebel, 747). Following a logical progression of the argument, history should be governed by predictable and unavoidable economic laws, laws that are beyond the realms of human alteration. Marx should be a hard determinist, and if he were correct there is nothing one can do to alter the course of history in any way. Not only this, but such a belief disallows morality and /or reason as neither will hold any effect on the world. You could not punish anyone for killing another person as it was beyond their control; their circumstances and the laws of economy fated them to perform the deed. They have no free will and could not be expected to do anything different.
Not only would they be incapable of doing anything different, but the murderous deed would be part of the natural progressive process of history and necessary for the improvement of society. The only “freedom” bestowed upon man in Marxism is the “freedom” to influence history must be a) in accordance with the laws and b) being influenced by circumstances that are in harmony with those laws. Regardless of whether or not one is in such a state or not, communism is inevitable as it is dictated by the laws that require the cycle of class tension to continue until this classless utopia evolves.
In conclusion, Marx has to deal with the fact that his view of history cannot allow for the freedom he used to promote the communist system. The very fact that he was campaigning for communism and trying to convert citizens to the proletariat cause shows the lack of consistency in his thinking. There is no freedom in hard determinism and, as history has shown, there can be no freedom in Marxism. Only the laws of economy rule; one is not free to choose.
Works Cited
Engels, Frederick., and Karl Marx. Marx & Engels: Basic Writings on Politics & Philosophy. Ed. Lewis S. Feuer. New York: Anchor Books Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1959.
Noebel, David A. Understanding the Times: The Story of the Biblical Christian, Marxist/Leninist and Secular Humanist Worldviews. Manitou Springs, CO: Summit Press, 1991.
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| PHI101: Reflective EssayConsistency, Bishop Berkeley, Consistency
by Anna Marie H.
“Does possessing an Empiricist Epistemology as well as a belief in God necessarily lead to Idealism?” is the question at hand. Despite many lengthy hours spent within the realms of Berkeley, I find myself unconvinced of the subsequent necessity of Idealism.
To give credit where it is due, Berkeley did do a superb job debunking the materialist position of his contemporary John Locke in his Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. As an empiricist, Berkeley began by asserting what was, for him, a basic premise: that the only way we know things is through sense experience. He first argued in his hot/cold water example that secondary qualities are completely subjective and exist only in the mind (something that Locke had already admitted) but he pushes further (Pojman, 185-189). Locke put forth the argument that the primary qualities of an object add up to create its “extension”, something which we are unable to affect no matter what we do to the object itself. Extension is impossible without material, therefore we know matter exists and we can trust that our ideas are correct when it comes to the experiencing the world (Pojman, 176-182). This is where Berkeley disagrees. Philonous (Berkeley’s own idealist voice of the dialogue) proceeds to explain to Hylas (the materialist) that primary qualities are absolutely dependent upon our mind’s perceptions and therefore are not an “extension” of the object itself (Pojman, 190). If Locke were to be consistent with the basic empiricist premise, primary qualities would be no different than secondary qualities as far as our perceptions are concerned. Because we can have no knowledge of material substance, there is no way to assert that it exists, and therefore only our ideas exist. “Sensible things cannot exist otherwise than in a mind or spirit,” Philonous states, and Hylas is forced to agree (Pojman, 191).
So far, so good for Berkeley, but now we enter the splitting hairs part. Berkely goes on to insist that (1) Real things (ideas) continue to exist even when no one is perceiving them, (2) Real things (ideas) must be being perceived by something other than people, and (3) That something is the infinite mind of God. Such an easy hop, jump, and skip right? When one shuts and then opens his eyes, the world would appear to have remained the same. All the laws of motion, nature, morality, etc. seem to be functioning just as before, and the clocks still keep time. Obviously, if everything is an idea as has been argued, and if all ideas must be perceived, something must be perceiving them in order for things to continue to exist even when humans are sleeping or comatose, etc. The only answer for this the omnipotent, infinite mind of God. Everything in this world continues to exist because God perceives all of it all the time (Pojman, 191).
Enter the skeptic. “What evidence is there to lead us to believe that all things do indeed continue to exist when no person is there perceiving them?” he might ask. “How can any empiricist know that a room remains as it is when he is no longer experiencing it with his own mind?” he might demand. If one only knows from perceiving, how can one know that the world continues to revolve when he does not perceive its continuous revolving? Why could it not just stop, and start up again once we finished blinking? Berkeley has successfully argued that ideas are indeed real and that ideas must be perceived to exist, but he has no argument for why there must be someone else beside himself perceiving them.
Just as we cannot experience someone else’s experiencing and we therefore cannot know that they, indeed, perceive; we cannot experience God’s experiencing so we cannot know that He exists. That is Berkeley’s pitfall. If we gave him his premise, the others would, indeed, follow decently enough, but his premise is unsound.
I also discovered what would seem to be another hole in the Idealist argument (or at least Berkeley’s version of it) while researching outside of Pojman. According to Daniel E. Flage, a professor of philosophy at James Madison University, it would seem that Berkeley had a rather un-empiricist take on any sort of knowledge of the mind’s existence. Flage sites a few quotes from Berkeley’s Dialagues (“George Berkeley,” Section 5):
I own I have properly no idea, either of God or any other spirit; for these being active, cannot be represented by things perfectly inert, as our ideas are. I do nevertheless know, that I who am a spirit or thinking substance, exist as certainly, as I know my ideas exist. Farther, I know what I mean by the terms I and myself; and I know this immediately, or intuitively, though I do not perceive it as I perceive a triangle, a colour, or a sound. (DHP3 2:231, all editions)
How often must I repeat, that I know or am conscious of [my emphasis] my own being; and that I my self am not my ideas, but somewhat else, a thinking active principle that perceives, knows, wills, and operates about ideas. (DHP3 233, 1734 edition)
Reading these statements, it would seem that Berkeley would be in possession of knowledge which would be intuitive instead of based on experience, causing him to be, once again, in departure of his empiricist epistemology.
Given all of this, I am rather persuaded that Hylas would be correct after all. Berkeley’s empiricist arguments, if followed consistently, would eventually lead us straight to skepticism instead of idealism. You can’t really know anything. Indeed we have no reason to assume anything at all in this world, as we have no reason to assume that any one cause will result in any one effect. Unless we can experience every single instance of the sun rising in the past, present, and future, we can not assume that it will do so tomorrow. We act upon habit and custom, but there is no logical reason why there should be a cause for every effect and vice versa. (Pojman, 199-201)
As such an empiricist, one is free to believe in God if one should want to. One is also free to believe in purple elephants if one should want to. However, one cannot claim to know that either God or purple elephants exist based upon any sort of “intuition” (as Berkeley wants to do) as there is no way for one to perceive one’s intuitions. Not only that, but Berkeley has no way to perceive that he has a mind or anything else besides his own perceptions. The “intuitions” he has of his mind or God’s hold no weight in the realm of the empiricist. One cannot know that there is anything to regulate one’s perceptions, so one is left to live a life in which the sun rising in the west should cause no surprise –as the belief that the sun always rises in the east is based on faith alone. Of course, one could do so while living in a world where everyone else could just as easily perceive the sun rising in the north. This is, of course, providing that anyone else is capable of having his own perceptions and therefore capable of forming habits and customs to have faith in but not absolute knowledge.
Work Cited
Flage, Daniel E. “George Berkeley.” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/b/berkeley.htm 2006
Pojman, Louis P., ed. Philosophy: The Quest for Truth. 6th edition. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. | | |
| The Problem of Evil
A Reaction Essay regarding Wesley Adamczyk’s
When God Looked the Other Way
Has God abandoned us? Does He hear our prayers? Is He blind? Has He forgotten me? How could He allow such misery? For what purpose? Adamczyk asked these questions time and time again throughout his memoir, questions that have been asked and demanded by people throughout all of history. Adamczyk concluded that “God had been looking out for me after all,” in his book, but he never provided an answer for his original quandary over what boils down to “the problem of evil.”
The philosopher David Hume explained it like this: “Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is impotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Whence then is evil?” If he were to combine Hume’s logic with the evils he witnessed first hand, Adamczyk would nullify his own conclusion. The righteous omnipotent Lord of Scriptures could not exist, let alone “look out” for him.
However, I believe Adamczyk and Hume are both passing over a key premise that should be added to the discussion: that God has a morally sufficient reason for the evil that exists. That man has to admit that God does not have to provide an account for his actions and that man needs to have faith in Him.
But why should we accept this premise? Why should we admit that our own reasoning is second to a supernatural Being? Because if we refuse, we are faced with a new dilemma. The problem of evil turns from an argument for the nonexistence of God to an argument for the impossibility of the contrary. We still have “the problem of evil.” Without God, we can not give a definition of evil.
Why was it wrong for those soldiers to force the Adamcyks from of their home? Why was it wrong for them to be refused food? Why was it wrong for them to be deprived of what we call “every day necessities”? Why was it wrong for them to be kept in a constant state of humiliation? Why was it wrong for the U.S. and Britain to ignore the Soviet Union’s guilt concerning the Katyn massacre? Who decides what standard of evil we go by?
Without an outside influence, how can mankind state that something is right or wrong? Is something “evil” because it evokes public disapproval? But what if everyone instead agrees to it? What if more people had agreed with and joined the Soviets? Could their actions then be defined as good? At what point would all those cases of tyranny, abuse, starvation, and murder cease to be wrong? Once Britain and the United States approved? When the world as a whole approves? Would that be reasonable? What about the minority who disagrees and insists that murder is wrong? Are they then evil because they disagree with the general consensus? No. The mere fact that any number of people approve or disapprove of something does not --should not-- make something right or wrong. The lack of consistency goes against all reason.
But perhaps standards vary from individual to individual and you'll find the ultimate truth within yourself as everyone from preteen movies to convocation speakers are proclaiming nowadays. Follow your heart, you can't go wrong! But what about Stalin? This line of thinking raises the same problem. Let's ask once again, what is evil? What made the USSR wrong? If the standards of good and evil vary from one person’s heart to another‘s, ethics are entirely subjective and no matter how contradictory their opinions are, everybody is right. You might find murder offensive to your inner being and call it evil, but the Soviets have every right to call it good.
If we hold to this worldview of relativity and reject God and His Law as the ultimate standard of good and evil, Wesley Adamczyk can not call himself a victim of the Soviet Union and we can not object to the deceit of our government. Stalin and Roosevelt both just followed their hearts and we have no grounds to judge.
Adamczyk, Wesley. When God Looked the Other Way. Chicago, IL & London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Hume, David. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. 4 Apr. 2006 <http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/dlgnr10.txt>.
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Of God and Evil:
How Do You Know You Know?
repost: final draft
by me
The existence of God has been in question for as long as man has been in existence himself. Does He really exist, or is He merely the illusion of blind faith? Can one prove or disprove the existence of the Triune Christian God with reason?
One of the most common arguments against the existence of God is what is known as “The Problem of Evil.” Basically, evil is considered to be a logical problem for the Christian religion because believers state that God is completely good and completely powerful --yet evil still exists. The philosopher David Hume explained it like this: “Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?” If it were just the first two premises (the goodness and omnipotence of God) there wouldn't be a problem, so thus the existence of evil is key to this argument.
I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who did not believe that there is evil in our world. With our current poverty, rape, domestic abuse, and murder rates; the lying, discrimination, cheating, and scandal that goes on in the work place; and simply the number of natural disasters, any reasonable person would be forced to agree. Therefore, according to the supporters of this viewpoint, because evil exists, an inherently good and omniscient God is an impossibility.
However, as Dr. Greg Bahnsen points out, all that needs to be added to overthrow this argument is a fourth premise: God has a morally sufficient reason for the evil that exists (“Always” 171-172). That is it. Man merely has to accept that God has a morally sufficient reason and that this morally sufficient reason is something that God did not see fit to reveal to him in His Word. Not only is this fact supported biblically, but the evil that we experience does not challenge God's goodness or omnipotence. Evil ceases to be a problem for the believer's argument.
This fact does not bring our topic to a close however, as it merely shows that the Christian God could exist, and there are those who claim to be able to prove that He does exist. Dr. Greg Bahnsen, Ph.D. is one of these people, and it is through him that I became acquainted with what is known as the transcendental argument, an argument that demands an answer to “how do you know you know?” It argues that there are certain preconditions to intelligibility that require the existence of God.
First of all, we must examine what evidence is permissible in this discussion. It must be understood that you cannot prove the existence of God in the same manner that you would prove that there is a dog in the backyard. For the latter you would just go look out a window and see for yourself, but the former demands a different kind of attention. Bahnsen points out that one cannot answer the questions raised concerning love, natural laws, logic, grammar, causation, beauty, elasticity, etc. --let alone the existence of God-- by using the same method used to prove that there is a dog in the backyard (Bahnsen, “The Great Debate”). But then the question arises, “what is evidence?” What determines that something is acceptable as evidence? Logic and reason, right? Dr. Bahnsen quotes Dr. Stein as saying “The use of logic or reason is the only valid way to examine the truth or falsity of a statement which claims to be factual," (“Great Debate”). At first glance, this makes perfect sense. Logic and reason are what we use, but we must put the transcendental argument to use here. How do we know this? How can Dr. Stein prove his statement? He cannot prove it by logic and reason, which would be a circular argument, but if he claims to prove it by something else, the statement would be false.
This leads to my second point, presuppositions. By presupposing his statement to be true, Dr. Stein ceases to be neutral. He is basing everything he knows on his assumption that logic and reason are the means that define the credibility of a claim. In order to examine whether God exists, one must examine his own presuppositions first. There are countless numbers of empirical indicators or evidences of God's existence throughout nature and history, but these are disallowed because they require a theistic presupposition. At this point Bahnsen states that while the unbeliever can argue that the theist is presupposing facts, he is indeed doing the very same thing himself. Just like Dr. Stein, the unbeliever is assuming in advance his naturalistic view of the world without being able to prove it with reason or logic. To go back again to our problem of evil, the unbeliever presupposes only three premises, while the believer presupposes that God has a morally sufficient reason for the existence of evil. Thus the unbeliever and the believer have contrasting presuppositions and neither can claim to be neutral.
If we abandoned the argument at this point, we would have nothing to do but agree to disagree, however Dr. Bahnsen pushes it further. So far he has shown that the existence of God cannot be tested in an ordinary way because the question is metaphysical (outside of the natural world) and epistemological (because we all have presuppositions for or against His existence) in its nature. He goes on to propose the transcendental argument for the existence of God: the impossibility of the contrary, that without Him it is impossible to prove anything.
Logic was the main focus of Dr. Bahnsen's argument in his debate against Dr. Stein, and he had a good reason for this. As quoted before, Dr. Stein stated that we cannot know anything without using logic, but with his presuppositions he is incapable of proving his statement. He cannot tell us why his statement is true or if it is true, that it will remain true. The laws of logic do not extend into space and time yet they are an obvious and necessary part of our lives. They are universal and unchanging. They are abstract. They are transcendental. They are outside the natural realm and therefore he is unable to account for them. If Dr. Stein is going to be consistent with his presuppositions, he is going to have to admit that man is incapable of proving anything in this world to be true or false because without God logic must be a convention of mankind and as such subject to change and contradiction. Without logic, it is impossible to have any sort of law, be it a law against murder or a law of nature that requires gravity to be constant. He, along with any other unbeliever, undermines himself with his presuppositions. “By refusing to think in terms of the truth revealed by God, he undermines his own rational efforts. He is refuted from within his own philosophy of life.” (Bahnsen, “Van Til's Apologetic” 140 n. 135 )
At this point let us return to the discussion of the problem of evil for a moment. The existence of evil has ceased to be illogical for the believer because of his presuppositions, but what about the unbeliever? Can one explain the existence of evil without God? Just the word “evil” brings to mind murderous tyrants in history, corrupt politicians, and child abuse but why? By what standard do we define these things as evil? Without an outside influence, how can mankind state that something is right or wrong? Is something “evil” because it evokes public disapproval? But what if everyone instead agrees to it? Would it then be defined as good? Is that logical? And how is one to measure “public approval”? For instance, at what point would murder cease to be wrong? When a city approves? When a state approves? When a nation approves? When the world approves? The mere fact that any number of people approve or disapprove of something does not --should not-- make something right or wrong. Just like the peer pressure in high schools, a person's standards would depend on the people he associates with.
But perhaps standards vary from individual to individual and you'll find the ultimate truth within yourself as everyone from preteen movies to convocation speakers are proclaiming nowadays. Follow your heart, you can't go wrong! This line of thinking raises the same problem. Let's ask once again, how do you know you know? If the standards of good and evil vary from person to person, reducing ethics to subjectivism, how can you know something is good or know something is evil? This view would make it impossible for people to make ethical judgments as a group because no matter how contradictory their opinions could be, everybody would have to be right. You might find murder to be offensive to your inner being and call it evil, while someone else might not have a problem with it. In order to be consistent with this view, it stands to reason that there couldn't be legislation on anything. Your neighbor could very well be a serial killer and neither you nor anyone one else would be able to judge him because “all judgments are all relative.” Any other standard is nothing more than the personal opinions of fellow men who have no more right to be right than the murderer. Thus, evil is a problem for the unbeliever. Anything that demands an absolute standard is a problem for the unbeliever as he simply cannot provide an answer that is consistent with his naturalist view of the world.
On the other hand, the existence of good, evil, logic, and reason is comprehensible and consistent to the Christian's theistic presuppositions. The believer does not put himself in a bind by admitting that the laws of logic are not conventions of mankind or by stating that there are absolute standards that determine good and evil because his worldview allows for abstract, universal, invariant entities. In the theistic worldview, one cannot contradict himself because that would be lying, which is against the nature of God. Using theistic presuppositions, murder is not wrong because I say it is wrong, or because the government of the United States says it is wrong. It is wrong because it goes against the nature of God.
Without God you cannot account for laws in general. The laws of nature cannot give us moral absolutes. Without God, there would be no reason for me to write this paper because the laws of logic would be convention. Thus it would be permissible for me to define a new set of laws that permits contradiction. I would then be able to say “there is a God” and “there isn't a God” and both statements would be correct. But this is not rational. The laws of logic do exist, we must abide by them, and thus they are an irrefutable transcendental proof for the existence of God ("Great Debate”).
Works Cited (MLA)
Bahnsen, Greg. Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith. Ed. Robert r. Booth. Texarkana, AR: Covenant Media Foundation, 1996.
Bahnsen, Greg., and Gordon Stein. “The Great Debate: Does God Exist?” University of California at Irvine. 11 Feb. 1985.
Bahnsen, Greg. Van Til's Apologetics: Readings & Analysis. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1998.
Hume, David. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. 4 Apr. 2006 <http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/dlgnr10.txt>.
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Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic & the Spirit of Capitalism
Reviewed by Yours Truly
Well, I must say this book has been the hardest book for me to read through for a LONG time. Maybe it's because it was originally written in German and then Translated; maybe the editor screwed it up for this 3rd edition, maybe Max Weber was just lacking in the organizational department of writing, or maybe it was just me, but for being only 126 pages long it was HARD. But, however, I do think it was worth the time and effort.
"A glance at the occupational statistics for any country in which several religions coexist is revealing. They indicate that people who own capital, employers, more highly educated skilled workers, and more highly trained technical or business personnel in modern companies tend to be, with striking frequency, overwhelmingly Protestant." This is what Weber's book attempts to explain, and while I think he made a few mistakes here and there (and some of them quite awful), I think he's pretty close to the truth.
The first two or three chapters are spent giving the reasons behind the above quotation as well as Weber explaining other possible explanations (i.e. Protestants are capitalistic because of their historical possession of wealth) and why they aren't acceptable.
Weber makes a distinction between the Protestant Spirit of Capitalism and the capitalism of our age that has very few (if any) ethical bonds that are not directly enforced by civil law. He also differentiates it from simply making a living using capitalism, as the S.o.C. does not consist of merely working hard enough to live comfortably. Instead he shows how the Spirit of Capitalism is based in the concept of divine calling, which is what he considered to be the most influential achievement of the Reformation. By going through and comparing the beliefs of Protestants vs. Catholics concerning work & he explains just -why- the Catholics didn't have the S.o.C. He makes the case that Luther was the one to introduce (or in my opinion, reintroduce) the belief that every day work has moral attributes and a religious value. While Luther failed in that he viewed striving for gain as an abomination showing one's lack of faith (thus why Lutherans don't have a very strong S.o.C.), Weber expounded on the subject showing how the Protestant churches later rejected this idea of Luther's, particularly those sects following after a certain John Calvin.
And this is where one of my differences comes up. While Weber apparently admired the capitalistic spirit of Calvinists, he had very little else to say about them that was complementary. He believed them to be people who were only concerned with their own salvation due to the doctrine of predestination who then formed a church that encouraged members to look inwardly only and rejected any sort of religious mysteries (i.e. he wrote that they took communion only because God required it, not believing that it was a means of any sort of grace) etc etc. In this I think he failed miserably, especially with his view that Calvinists were not interested in trying to evangelize their neighbors. While he insists that the Spirit of Capitalism is only spread through religious beliefs; that Calvinists are the staunchest participants of the Spirit of Capitalism and that they were primarily responsible for the growth of it, Weber states that they didn't evangelize. What gives!
But while I greatly disagree with him on this, along with some of his other observations concerning Calvinists, he really does make a lot of good points throughout the book. He goes through the primary Protestant sects (Calvinists, Pietists, Methodists, and then "the sects that grew out of the baptizing movement (the Baptists, Mennonites, and Quakers)" ) and explains why or why not they were particularly successful at the S.o.C. all of which was quite interesting.
And what is this Spirit of Capitalism you ask? I guess it's about time I get to that... according to Weber from what I can deduce, the Spirit of Capitalism is the belief that drives a person to be productive and ethically so in their calling (even if it is not directly religious of nature) because they have been convicted of it being the will of God for them to do so. And as I will add myself (as I fail to see Weber mentioning it), a means to give glory to Him.
-AMH | | |
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