Apologia, pt. 3

Continuing...

Now I'd like to examine these presuppositions from the perspective of the atheistic and pantheistic world views.

Immaterial abstractions are a problem for the atheist, as his world view is materialistic. He exists in a world which he believes has come about as a result of random chance, composed of only that which may be empirically observed. On this belief laws of logic, math, and science can be no more than the subjective mental constructs men have created from looking at the world. This creates at least two problems. First, these constructs are immaterial. They may not be observed; we only observe what we perceive to be their effects or rule over how randomly existing brute facts fit together. Secondly, these abstractions did not exist prior to our evolving and thinking them up. They are therefore the arbitrary pronouncements of randomly evolving brains observing a randomly changing world.

Pantheism fares okay so far. If all is god, then immaterial concepts are, too. Except that certain forms of pantheism conceive of god as an impersonal force, in which case the existence of any organized kind of "law" would be problematic.

The universality of these immaterial laws is not provable by empiricism. In order to know that they are universally true one must have comprehensive knowledge of the entire universe. Otherwise, one can not know whether or not these laws are only applicable locally. Our observation of the universe is relegated to only a very small part that we can see. Though these rules seem to apply everywhere we observe, our pronouncing them as absolute is mere speculation. Thus they are rendered arbitrary.

The predictability of these laws is first called into question by the mere fact that the future is unobservable. In order to know that the future will follow the past, one has to either know the future or have exhaustive control over its outcome. Otherwise all is again reduced to hopeful speculation, even if the speculation has been accurate in the past. One has no way to know two plus two will equal four tomorrow other than to say "it always has," which is again arbitrary. Further, the randomness of the universe leaves no certainty that universal laws will remain constant. They may mutate, as certain astrophysicists have theorized about the initial moments of the Big Bang.

Universals and particulars, the "one and the many," facts and laws, are not equally ultimate for either world view. For the atheist, the universe is one of brute factuality. Particulars are ultimate. Things merely exist, making the connections we latecomers draw between them (as noted above) arbitrary. The physical world, in and of itself, has no inherent meaning. For the pantheist, all is ultimately one. Particulars are at the ultimate level false distinctions dreamt up by men who are, themselves, false distinctions. The cosmic "all," then, has no inherent meaning, because it just is what it is.

To sum up, both atheistic and pantheistic reasoning will reduce to absurdity because their presuppositions about the world have no concrete starting point.