The Summit Lecture Series: Scientific Naturalism Worldview with JP Moreland, part 4

Last updated on: September 2, 2014 at 3:24 pm by Christian Podcast Central

The Summit Lecture Series: Scientific Naturalism Worldview with JP Moreland, part 4 2014-09-02T15:24:57-08:00 Christian Podcast Central

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There are some moral issues that are difficult, but there are very clear moral propositions that everybody universally knows, such as: being kind and honest are virtues not vices. These two are good things, no matter what perspective of life or upbringing or geographic region of the world you hail from.

Then there’s what is known as Knowledge of Our Own Consciousness. Now, when I refer to “consciousness”, I mean what you are aware of when you introspect. So, suppose someone just had surgery and while they begin to come off their anesthesia in the recovery room, they begin to feel a mild throb in their knee, then he will begin thinking to himself, “Where am I? Why is my knee hurting?” Then, he gets in touch with one of his beliefs: Oh yeah, I just had surgery on my knee. Then, out of his thirst, he has a desire: something to drink. Then, he asks for a glass of water to sooth his thirst.

Throughout this process, this individual is gaining consciousness. Consciousness turns out to be things like: sensations, thoughts, beliefs, desires, and acts of free choice. Now notice that these states of consciousness are not known primarily through science.

We can’t know our conscious states by plugging a “brain meter” onto ourselves and concluding that we must be feeling pain because our C-fibers are firing. Rather, we know that we’re in pain by simply feeling the pain. But, we don’t see, touch, smell, taste or hear pain.

What’s the point? The point is that you have introspective knowledge of consciousness that is different than scientific knowledge.

So, a Naturalist sees the world by way of an ontology and an epistemology. They say the only thing that’s real is the cosmos, and that’s completely made of matter. This is because they view that only things that can be seen, touched, smelled, tasted or heard can be known. And the best way of knowing things is through physics, chemistry, biology and the hard sciences. So, to them, if you can’t offer scientific proof of something, then it’s unknowable. Therefore, if you can’t prove that a painting is beautiful, it’s ridiculous to say that it is, since there is no scientific proof of the matter.

That’s the culture we live in.

All this to say that I believe that their epistemology is flawed.

Therefore empiricism and the scientism are fundamentally flawed.

First of all, they are self-refuting. You can’t empirically know empiricism. And you can’t prove that scientism is true by any scientific means.

Secondly, if scientism is accepted, then it follows that we can’t know math or logic, and that we would have no moral knowledge.

But the truth is that we DO know these things. So, there must be something flawed in scientism’s epistemology.

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