Darkly Through the Lens of Materialism

Over at a site called choiceindying, Eric MacDonald takes on John Polkinghorn, or at least a video of Polkinghorn. John Polkinghorn is a physicist turned priest, a person who has a claim to both disciplines. This is a threat to Atheists, and this shows in the preliminary treatment of Polkinghorn's persona:

Quoting John Polkinghorn, and dismissing him first:

”He’s reassuring, confident, and uses his scientific persona to lend weight to what he says about God, religion and spirituality. It’s a pose, and a deeply misleading one.

A claim without substance or evidence, which is just an Ad Hominem. It is likely that Polkinghorn has more knowledge of both arenas than does his attacker here, as we will see as we progress through the Atheist attack.

”The video itself focuses attention on the physicist turned priest John Polkinghorne, of whom Thomas D’Evelyn of the Christian Science Monitor had this to say:

“Polkinghorne is a model public intellectual; he refuses to distort one body of knowledge to advance his own position on another.”

But this is just wrong. In the video, entitled “Science vs. religion,” Polkinghorne deliberately distorts religion by putting it in the same context as science — just what D’Evelyn says he does not do.”

The Scientistic presupposition is asserted as a pre-emptive strike against any other “body of knowledge” which might be available. Polkinghorn is thus precluded from having any other knowledge, by the personal definition of the attacker. Knowledge is declared tautological with Science, a declaration without support, a non-evident claim which is self-evident only to Atheists. Nonetheless it is a Poisoning of the Well for the rest of the analysis.

Polkinghorn attempts to discuss the intellectual bind that free-thinking puts on the pursuit of validity and truth; he calls it “individualism”, meaning that the individual is the top of the hierarchy:

“The tendency towards individualism turns God into a tool for us to manipulate.” We’ve just heard that if we do this, and do not encounter God with awe, worship and obedience, we are not meeting God as God truly is. This disarming of our critical minds then leads us to take the next step. The impression is given that this is a personal encounter, and just as we know that we should not use other people as instruments for our own satisfaction, so it is assumed that this language is perfectly applicable here as well. Individualism thus comes to seem wrong, even dangerous. We are, it is suggested, manipulating our encounter with the ultimate, towards which our response should be submission and obedience, not individualism. That is what is right at the heart of religion: the power to disarm us, to get us at our weakest, to discredit the natural tendency to look for evidence and confirmation.

Evidence and confirmation are the buzz words of Philosophical Materialism. The demand for physical cause and effect in all things, religion included, is set in stone as applicable to all and everything which could possibly exist, despite the obvious examples and evidence to the contrary which are available in everyday life, including the agency in life itself. Polkinghorn is politely (too politely?) following the intellectual thread that if there be truth, then our opinions and denials of that truth are without any force and are actually absurd. Submission and obedience? The Materialist will never bow to any external truth – except that [science = all knowledge = truth], which is a fallacy easily refuted. So under the constraints of acknowledging one’s inability to assert individual mental gynastics to overpower any external truths, the Atheist chafes and looks for character faults in whoever proposes that.

”Religion doesn’t provide predictable outcomes, we are told. But no questions are asked, no doubts are raised. The fact that there are no predictable outcomes in religion, no definite answers to prayer, but instead a range of possibilities or options (as though it were all laid on just for us), should have raised questions, suggested doubts, and yet this is precisely what is discouraged.”

Because of the Principle of Cause and Effect, prayer should work like a mechanical candy machine: prayer in, goodies out. Nothing less is expected of the deity which Atheists imagine in their minds to be the “right kind” of deity.

”“It’s valid, it’s true, it’s supported,” says Polkinghorne, who should know better. It’s not valid, true and supported. There is simply no evidence for making this claim.”

If Polkinghorn is discussing a first cause, then the argument is valid, the presumption is more probable than its converse, and thus the logic supports it. Atheists reject this with mere claims: “no evidence”. That is the mantra of the physicalist, Philosophical Materialist, yes, that very person who has a fully unsupported and non-coherent worldview.

”Questions can and should be raised, but Polkinghorne assures us that even though the outcomes can be very various and unpredictable, whatever the outcome, it will be for the best. Praying for healing may lead you to accept the ultimate destiny of death with trust. And this is plainly dishonest. A priest saying this to a grieving person would soon get short shrift, and rightly too. Praying — as Polkinghorne must know — has no effect whatever on disease outcomes, and if it’s just a kind of psychological self-help program he should say so, instead of resorting to the mumbo-jumbo of religion.”

The assertion of knowledge of a universal negative is absurd. It is even more absurd when there are studies which show the opposite. Atheists assume that what they make up in their own prejudiced mind is actually the case with all the world. And that is part of the result of individualism, the elevation of the individual Atheist to the pinnacle of all intellect, the arbiter of knowledge and what is “true”, without even any evidence for their own case. It is the hegemony of hubris and chosen ignorance.

”Since religious beliefs are widely shared and socially respected they may seem true. This makes fringe beliefs or new religions seem unsubstantial and fantastical. But tradition itself cannot provide support for religious claims. They are just as fantastical as the newest cult. The Bible or the Qu’ran, or any other sacred text, regardless of the respect in which they are held, simply cannot sustain claims made upon them.”

Exactly which claims? Claims of current (contingent ) science? Or claims of an existence outside science, which cannot be even addressed by science? This attack is too general to even be meaningful; it is just a stock Atheist assertion without evidence to back it up.

”By placing them in the context of science — which is precisely what he is doing by referring to religious tradition — Polkinghorne is deliberately misleading his audience. In any other language this is called lying, and to my mind, it just shows how desperate religious believers are, that they can shamelessly tout their beliefs in this hucksterish way, like a carnie in the midway of a country fair.

Here we have the egomania of the presumed elitist, scientistic, fallacy laden Atheist charging Polkinghorn with lying and huckstering. The attack on “religion” here is not backed with any evidence or even argumentation; the attack is made in the religious faith that the attacker’s position is Truth, and therefore the opposition must be false by definition and without any need for actual analysis, other than the continuous assertion of the “need for evidence” and “liar”.

A. BECAUSE: [Religion is false and Naturalism is True], Then [Polkinghorn is a liar. And a Huckster. And a poseur. ]

B. [”Religion is false and Naturalism is True”]; (Actual Quote:”Religion itself is fantasy. There is no reason to think it is anything else.”

C. Therefore, [”Polkinghorn is a liar”].

This is the syllogism of the overall Atheist argument being made. The antecedent in assertion A is presupposed True, as in self-evident to the Atheist, and thus needs no other grounding. It is an Atheist First Principle, a universal Truth which never, ever needs evidence or logical support. All an Atheist needs to do is to accept it as an Article of Faith in the Atheist religious view. All the rest is merely Atheodicy and Atheist ecclesiasticism which is rationalized to fit the First Principle of Atheism.

Since it is a First Principle which is self-evident to the chosen few who can see its Truth, then no argument which robustly demonstrates its logical fallacy can succeed against it. Those arguments are rejected, usually without comment or sometimes with charges of trickery or foul play. That is a demonstration of just how much the Atheist is not dedicated to logic, or to rational thought. Atheism is more closely related to a cult than to any rational logician. And as a cult, Atheists are doomed to use invective and ridicule rather than logic, because they are logic deprived, and they go without.