THE LIMITS OF REASON – NOTHING BUTTERY

Enlightenment thinkers in the eighteenth century understood the world through the lens of experimental science. Believing that all phenomena operated according to universal natural laws, they judged every intellectual proposition according to the test of reason. Their attitude was one of skepticism of anything seeming improbable or unreasonable, one of questioning supernatural religion and divine revelation. The Enlightenment embraced the idea of progress, trusting in the perfectibility of humanity, and the gradual elimination of superstition and prejudice. Radical Enlightenment philosophers in Europe rejected Christianity as improbable and superstitious, considering the miracles of the Bible as mere hoaxes. They embraced Deism, a religion of nature and reason. The Deists’ god, like a watchmaker having wound his watch, stood aloof from his creation, allowing it to run on its own according to natural laws. This distanced God from the world of people.

The Enlightenment made the search for faith more difficult by depersonalizing the object of faith. Because of the concern to establish the objectivity of truth, there has been the concentration on the necessity of having to agree with the facts of faith. This reduced the exercise of faith to acceptance of doctrine about God rather than personal trust in the Savior. People became brainwashed by the prevailing intellectual requirements for objective criteria for belief. This is not to say that doctrinal statements are not useful and necessary expressions of what we believe. The revelation of God was not a statement of faith, but a person, yet we must be able to state who that person was. Christianity is not an undefined mysticism. Being able to state its truth in words is essential if we are to understand its nature and be able to communicate it to others.

Today, while there are still some secularists who would deny it, there is a philosophical consensus that the Enlightenment dogma that there are universally agreed principles of human rationality is no longer accepted. There is no universal human reason to which we can objectively appeal. There is no single set of objective criteria by which all beliefs can be tested. There is no objective, rational authority that has displaced God. There are many different ways of reasoning. Different people at different times and places have differing concepts of what is true and rational. The criterion for truth is determined by the nature of the subject matter. The natural sciences and mathematics have their own criteria to evaluate the truth of their research. They utilize objective means appropriate to their disciplines, but such means are not appropriate to other areas of reality. What works for the physical sciences, such as biology, chemistry and physics, does not work for philosophy and theology. To claim that the Enlightenment has eliminated the spiritual, the supernatural, or the religious, because we have evolved to the point where scientific knowledge has disproved their claims, is to fail to appreciate the differences between areas of knowledge of each subject matter.

Roger Poole in his ground-breaking critique of objectivity, Toward Deep Subjectivity, defined it in this way:

“Objectivity is what is commonly received as valid, all the attitudes, presuppositions, unquestioned assumptions typical of any given society… Objectivity in any given society in fact gets defined as the political and social status quo…. Objectivity contends that ‘facts’ have to be accepted if there is to be objective discourse. It is considered subrational to question the status of facts. In mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry there are facts. It is therefore evident to objectivity that all human ratiocination which claims to be objective should adopt the impersonal stance of the scientist… Objectivity has ended up as being the equivalent of that truncated fragment of rationality which is generally called scientific. In the scientific objectivity, the thinker is excluded from the thought, and the personal involvement of the thinker in his work is denied and frustrated.”[i]

One of the problems with scientific objectivity as a way of understanding life is that it eliminates much of our experience of life – our sense-impressions, our emotions, and all the realities that make up our everyday world. In their place science substitutes a knowledge of the mathematical properties of the world. Instead of a total, complete human world filled with meaning, we are given a formula. Perception and experience is replaced with data, with mathematical abstraction. The philosopher and rationalists of the scientific revolution proclaimed that we can only know what we can measure.

Donald M. Mackay, a research scientist specializing in the functioning of the brain at the University of Keele in England, wrote The Clockwork Image: A Christian perspective on science, in which he debunked the fallacy underlying many scientific arguments against Christianity. He called it ‘nothing buttery’.

“Its current philosophical label is ‘ontological reductionism’. Nothing-buttery is characterized by the notion that by reducing any phenomenon to its components you not only explain it, but explain it away. You can debunk love, or bravery, or sin for that matter, by finding the psychological or physiological mechanisms underlying the behavior in question.”[ii]

To illustrate his point he asks an electrician to tell us what is on the board of a neon sign. The electrician can give a careful description in electrical terms what makes the sign work without telling us the meaning of the sign. He can fail to mention the advertisement or message of the sign. The illustration demonstrates that scientific language can give us an accurate, technical, nothing but, explanation without giving us the whole story, the point or significance of the apparatus. A scientific description of the universe is limited to the components but doesn’t tell the whole story of life.

The ultimate reality for anyone is themselves. It is the individual, through his or her perception, who judges and evaluates the worth and meaning of life.

“What one takes to be true, evident, obvious is a function of perspective. We select and arrange our impressions in accordance with our deepest fears or ambitions or both. Very often we are concerned not to find out what is true, but what will best support the argument or cause to which we are known to adhere, or which will show us up to be the brighter or the better man.” [iii]

Everything selected for the purposes of the argument, everything useful for the argument, is filtered through assumptions of the individual. These assumptions are already in existence. By a process of selection and exclusion, a worldview which is helpful and advantageous will be filtered through the hopes and fears, the expectations and the experiences of the subjective existing individual. What finally gets through to our mind is a set of perspectives which have been modified in the transmission of impressions.

We each have a private perspective on our personal history, which is shaped by our interpretation of what happens to us over the years. Every day we filter through a certain set of perspectives, and these integrate and stick together. We get used to them, they mold us to receiving a certain kind of perspective tomorrow. What is true for us is true because the way we view our personal history has shaped us into the people we are. When we argue for a certain point of view, we argue from the center of our personal history. What is true for us is true because of our already existing structure of belief.

“It is to a person who already exists, complete in his hopes and fears, complete in his perspective on his history, that one addresses one’s arguments. He possesses already a vision of the world, a vision peculiarly his, which he has built up over the years with care and concern. What he does not want to understand, he will not accord the status of an argument. What runs against his interests, is not a ‘fact’. What is antipathetic to his own view, is not ‘objective’. What he disapproves of, is immoral. What he does, is right. What he stands for, is not to be questioned.”[iv]

Each of us, therefore, has an existing structure of belief, a worldview, a set of presuppositions or assumptions, a set of categories we have developed through which we interpret the data of our daily experiences to give life meaning. We have a set of lenses through which we view our lives and the world. Faith is the decision I make on the worldview I wish to make my own. Faith is my perspective on which realities, which truth, which vision, I wish to make my assumption. It is my subjective, personal commitment to the reality that is compelling to me. It is my understanding of the reality that confronts me. Jesus came into the world to confront each individual with the necessity to make a decision about him. Some people found it difficult to believe in him because they were looking for objective ‘facts’ to scientifically verify his claims. Jesus said,

“This is a wicked generation. It asks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and no one greater than Jonah is here.”[v]

The fact, or sign, that Jesus provided was himself. Just as Jonah, delivered from death by drowning through the whale, was the sign in his day, so is Jesus in his day. The message of Jonah evoked an immediate response in the Ninevites. The message of Jesus should evoke a greater response because of who he is. The assumptions of the people precluded them from seeing Jesus as the God-Man. They could only see him as ‘nothing but’ a Galilean preacher. They could not see the Message he embodied. This is still the case today for many. Later generations would also have the evidence of the resurrection. Just as the Ninevites were affected by the resurrected Jonah, so many would be affected by the appearance of the risen Jesus. Even the queen of Sheba (Yemen) had been prepared to make a long trip to hear the wisdom of Solomon. Yet the people hearing Jesus had no journey to make. He was in their midst but they would not perceive in him the reality of God. Therefore they would be condemned for their blindness and refusal to believe what was in front of their eyes. Jesus goes on to say,

“No one lights the lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead he puts it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body also is full of darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness. Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be completely lighted, as when the light of a lamp shines on you.”[vi]

I have a responsibility to receive the light that shines on my life and illuminates my understanding. If I have good eyes (i.e. believing eyes that are not veiled by reductionist or skeptical assumptions), the light will fill me. If I have bad eyes (i.e. sinful, unbelieving eyes that filter out the message that God is sending me in Jesus Christ), I will not receive the light he brings. “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”[vii]  The Pharisees, who refused to believe that Jesus was the Messiah when he healed the blind man, were characterized by Jesus as having bad eyes. “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?” Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.”[viii]

The source of light, or truth, is outside me. I perceive it and interpret it according to my assumptions. When by faith I receive the light of Jesus as the lamp of God’s truth, I will be fully illuminated. Faith is my subjective reception of the objective light of Christ, that enables me to interpret my other assumptions. Christ throws light on my world.

Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the subjectivity of truth, not what I am to know, but what I am to do, and indirect communication – to make choices for one’s existence – was compelling to me. I was raised to think and communicate in a rationalistic way – to think abstractly and objectively. This distanced me and turned me into an observer, to think universally and generally rather than concretely and specifically. Objective truths of Christianity cannot reach people. Reason has its limits. Reason cannot compel belief. To be born again requires the subjective experience of appropriation. The absurdity of faith, contradiction and mystery challenge us beyond the bounds of reason. Personal passion is a condition of faith. “Come, follow me,” requires a personal commitment to act. Just do it!

(Ted Schroder, BURIED TREASURE, pp.77-84)

[i] Roger Poole, Towards Deep Subjectivity (Harper, New York, 1972), 44-48

[ii] Donald M. Mackay, The Clockwork Image (Inter-Varsity, London, 1974), 43

[iii] Poole, op.cit., 120

[iv] Poole, op.cit., 121

[v] Luke 11:29-32

[vi] Luke 11:33-36

[vii] 1 Corinthians 2:14

[viii] John 9:39-41