Speaking at Stand to Reason’s Reality Student Apologetics Conference, Megan Almon traces how Western thought moved from viewing theology and morality as real and knowable to treating them as private, subjective, and unknowable.
Transcript
So, how in the world did we get to this point in time? Let’s look very briefly at what happened in the little history of ideas that we have.
If we start all the way back in ancient times, we know that the Old Testament writers understood that morality was real and knowable. It wasn’t something up to them to decide. It was something that existed as part of the fabric of the way that the world really is, and we could recognize right and wrong. The standard that they had was God and his perfect character. That would dictate what was right, and so they would do what was right. They had the Law.
The New Testament writers very much believed the same thing. There was one little difference. The New Testament writers said not only can we know what is right because of who God is, but when we choose what is right and follow through and do that with our actions, it actually is transformative to our soul in an important way. It’s also transformative when we choose what is wrong because we live in the real world, and when we make these choices, this is what happens, the way that God made it.
But the Jewish and Christian writers of the Old and New Testaments were not the only ones thinking this way. The Greeks also believed—the philosophers also believed—that morality was real and knowable. This was part of, again, the fabric of the ancient world. They understood this. People like Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and those who came from them, they were looking at the world this way. They knew right and wrong was real, which is why they talked about it in the ways that they did.
Plato believed that we have this objective world of rational human beings. We have a soul. And he would ground right and wrong in what he called the forms or the ideals—something transcendent. Aristotle believed that, too, and he believed that because our souls are rational, we could know what was right and what was wrong. So, we have all these writings about virtue and duty, what we ought to do—and that’s transformative to us in ways.
We move all the way to the 13th century. Thomas Aquinas, who loved Aristotle’s stuff, took it and married it with Christian theology in a way that’s been very helpful to us. Aquinas also believed that we are image-bearers—well, that’s not what Aristotle believed, but Aquinas did; that was the Christian theology part—and that there are certain things that are appropriate for us, given the kinds of things that we are, and that we can know right and wrong because of our rational natures.
If we keep on moving all the way up to the 16th century, we see some of this start to get shaky. Not all that very long ago, historically speaking.
I think it’s important to talk about René Descartes for just a second. In the history of philosophy, he was a major player. So, Descartes—brilliant guy. Right? And he was a brilliant scientist in studying the sciences, brilliant philosopher in many ways, but what he wanted to do was something that kind of set up for the thinkers who were going to come later.
See, in the world of science—how many of you love the sciences? Got a lot of science people—yes. So cool. Okay, so, in the world of science, what they found is, if you’re doing the discipline of science within the larger, like, all of these other subjects, it’s a really good idea to start by doubting everything. Because in science, you start by going, “What can I prove to be true?” It’s the study of the natural world.
So, you start with doubting, and then you move toward, we can know this, and we’ve developed these theories about the way the world works. That’s the whole fun of science. It’s like thinking God’s thoughts after him, as the famous thinkers have said. So, wonderful.
Descartes said, “Hey, this is working so well with science. Let’s try this with philosophy, too, so we can make it more efficient.” So, what worked really well with science was a problem when it came to philosophy. Descartes wanted efficiency, so he said, “Let’s start by doubting everything.” And he took the whole floodlight of philosophical ideas and turned it into a laser beam, and so the big picture couldn’t be seen anymore. He was the one famous for saying, “I think, therefore I am.” You guys do remember that.
Blaise Pascal was a contemporary of Descartes. Pascal himself, I think, had a very skeptical nature, but because of it, he tended to see more. He was searching for what was true and what was real. He’s a hero of mine, and he saw what Descartes was trying to do, and basically, he said, “This will not go well.”
Later on, we have the atheist David Hume, who was greatly influenced by Descartes. David Hume was the father of a view called empiricism. Empiricism is the notion that says—it deals with what we can know. And David Hume said, “The only things we can really know are the things that we can know empirically.” So, you scientific people, you know, when I say “empirically,” I’m talking about with my senses. If I can touch it, taste it, see it, hear it, smell it, then I can know it. But if I can’t study it empirically, it doesn’t count as true knowledge.
Now, there’s a problem here with Descartes’ stuff. Because can we study morality and theology and values and all these things empirically? Like, with our touch and with our smell and our taste? No. So, what happened when Descartes’ idea took root is that it was like an atomic bomb in the world of Western thought, and you had this great big division in the things that you could know and then the things that counted as the unknowable things. So, those of you who love, like, Francis Schaeffer’s work—huge contributor to this type of idea—he would call this the “fact-value split,” and it still continues today.
Now, let’s go back to Hume’s big idea. If we look at that idea, I’d love to ask Mr. Hume a question. Now, he was a brilliant philosopher, so I would not want to go toe-to-toe with him in a debate. But I would like to ask him, “Mr. Hume, can you tell me empirically why things that you can study empirically ought to be the things that count as true knowledge?” Do you get what I’m asking there? Can he prove what he’s trying to claim empirically? No. He can’t. He’s making a claim about reality that is no less religious than anyone else’s. But it did take root, and it did cause the divide.
And so on down, coming down from there, what we have is the realm of the hard sciences—what we can know, according to Mr. Hume and those who agreed with him—and then the realm of the values—religion, morality, other values. We can’t really know those, so, why don’t you create those for yourself? Objective reality. Subjective reality.
There’s a lot more history to this. It’s more complex than this, but these are the major strands. And what we see is we had people who tried to salvage it. Immanuel Kant was one who tried to salvage it. He said, no, no, no, we can’t live as if morality isn’t real. That would be bad. If we lose right and wrong, we’re in real trouble. So, here’s what we should do. We should pretend that it exists. But we have a problem. See, Immanuel Kant bought David Hume’s premise. He said, we’re going to pretend that it’s out there. It might even be out there, but we cannot get at it, because we are trapped behind what he called our sense perceptions—our senses. We’re trapped behind what we can sense about the world, so we can’t get at ultimate reality.
Now, I have a question for Immanuel Kant about this. How did he know that? Right? Did he, like, break out of his sense perception so he could look and go, like, “Yeah, you guys are all trapped behind your sense perceptions. I’m going to get back in now.” Do you see the problem with that view? It was kind of self-destructive, but it stuck.
And so, here we are, 20th century, the postmodern turn, and we live in a very fractured reality. It has run right down the middle of who we are and how we think about the world. We live in a world where we have very public things. People go to work. That’s public. People do math and science and English in school. That’s public. People talk about science as public, but as soon as we begin talking about our faith, no, no, no, no, no, that’s private. That’s up to you. That’s your truth. And so, we live in this fractured reality caused by that split, and it has come down the channels. It affects us more than we even realize. And here we are.