Is it possible that the maladaptive effects of secular materialism (which I’ve been writing about in these pages since at least as far back as this post from 2009) have now become so obvious, and so painful, that belief in God is making a comeback? Longtime readers will know that I’ve slowly turned toward theism myself over the past several years, as I’ve described in a linked series of posts, and a number of prominent intellectuals seem to be headed that way as well. The latest is the great social scientist Charles Murray, who has a new book out about his gradual change of heart. (He discussed it in a recent interview with Michael Shermer.)
For people like me, and apparently for Charles Murray as well, what caused this shift is a growing awareness of the explanatory failure of naturalism; a problem that gradually became impossible to ignore. A little while back we looked at a paper about this by philosopher Tomas Bogardus; the philosopher Patrick Flynn also has a book about this that I’m currently reading.
The issue boils down quite succinctly to whether or not we are going to accept as explanatory a system that rests ultimately on “brute facts”, and whether criteria of simplicity and ultimate explanation are sufficient to adjudicate between competing models of the world. (These are not, of course, the only things that might move an intelligent person toward belief in God — not by a long shot — but they may well be sufficient all by themselves.)
My friend Bill Vallicella, in discussions last spring about Bogardus’ paper (see here, here, and here) remained unpersuaded about the plausibility of brute facts (of the kind where there actually is no explanation, not just one that we don’t know), but to admit them is so fundamentally disruptive to our ability to make reliable models of anything that a serious belief in them as a fundamental part of reality may in fact be incoherent, or self-refuting. (At the very least, brute facts make a shaky foundation for a logical and demonstrable cosmology, and for persuasive argument.)
More on this to come.
4 Comments
Adducing natural order of any sort, however minimal, as an account of the origin of natural order is manifestly circular. Accounts of natural order that rest on brute fact reduce to the zero of understanding. Theism is the only viable alternative. I’ve been going on about this for years.
But I doubt that’s the root of the vibe shift. Rather, I think it began because of trannies, and the other patently absurd causes of the woke left, such as criminal aliens. Plus just massive numbers of immigrants. And, finally, the utter meaninglessness of life as modernism proposes it, with attendant social and personal pathologies, too widespread to overlook.
Hi Kristor, and thanks for dropping by.
I agree with you: we have a deepening crisis of meaning, and the tidal forces become stronger the closer we get to the nihilistic singularity at the heart of secular materialism. The closer you get to the event horizon, the more dangerous it is — and I think people can feel this in their hearts. (I certainly do.)
So I guess you’re now a believer Malcolm in God, and no longer an agnostic (much less an atheist). Wow, that’s quite a jump. To have faith, that takes nerve, something rather different in my mind from a comfortable “maybe the divine exists, or maybe not.”
Jason,
Faith is the hardest part, and I can’t honestly say I’m there yet (although I’m getting closer). It’s very difficult completely to unwind a worldview that I had built, and strongly reinforced and defended, over a (now longish) lifetime.
Where I am right now is this: the intellectual, logical, and philosophical objections I had to theism are now outweighed, in my mind, by the intellectual, logical, philosophical, historical, cultural, prosocial, and emotional weight on the other side of the scale. (Yes, emotional, in the sense of having a preference, ceteris paribus, for a model of reality that offers hope, meaning, and purpose over one that leads only to nihilism and futility, and offers no solid ground for reason, order, beauty, love, or morality.)
I should cook up a post about this, I think.