Home > Work > Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes
21 " philosopher Galen Strawson, the denial of consciousness “is surely the strangest thing that has ever happened in the whole history of human thought.” It shows “that the power of human credulity is unlimited, that the capacity of human minds to be gripped by theory, by faith, is truly unbounded.” It reveals “the deepest irrationality of the human mind. "
― Nancy R. Pearcey , Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes
22 " That to which your heart clings and entrusts itself is, I say, really your God. "
23 " When people commit themselves to a certain vision of reality, it becomes their ultimate explainer. It serves to interpret the universe for them, to guide their moral decisions, to give meaning and purpose to life, and all the other functions normally associated with a religion. "
24 " to define what is rational solely by whether it fits the tenets of your own worldview is an invalid move because it rules out all other truth claims by definition. You do not even have to investigate the evidence. A serious search for truth does not start by stacking the deck. "
25 " This reality orientation is the positive intellectual climate in which the core propositions and events of the gospel live and breathe. It is a mentality in which people are liberated by verifiable truth to challenge tradition, question power, and fight for life and healing against death and decay. "
26 " Christians must become independent thinkers with the tools to think critically about diverse points of view—weighing the evidence and judging the validity of arguments. "
27 " But don’t you see that as an inconsistency in your views?” the young man asked. Dawkins replied, “I sort of do, yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with, otherwise life would be intolerable. "
28 " Humans are not self-existent, self-sufficient, or self-defining. They did not create themselves. They are finite, dependent, contingent beings. As a result, they will always look outside themselves for their ultimate identity and meaning. They will define human nature by its relationship to the divine—however they define divinity. Those who do not get their identity from a transcendent Creator will get it from something in creation. "
29 " Postmoderns often accuse Christians of being narrow and closed-minded. But postmodernism is itself confined within a particular strand of Western intellectual history. Thus postmodernists are just as restricted by their own historical horizons as the more traditional people whom they tend to look down on. And they are just as exclusive as anyone else in insisting that their view captures the way things really are. In short, the same reasoning that postmodernists use to debunk traditional concepts of truth applies to their own views. Some "
30 " The whole point of building theoretical systems is to explain what humans know by pre-theoretical experience. That is the starting point for any philosophy. That is the data it seeks to explain. If it fails to explain the data of experience, then it has failed the test. It has been falsified. "
31 " In Britain, some public schools now teach paganism in their religious education courses, including “witchcraft, druidism and the worship of ancient gods such as Thor. "
32 " The idol in paganism is Nature itself, "
33 " Our actions are not simply links in a closed chain of causally connected physical events. We have the capacity to be first causes, starting a new chain of cause and effect. "
34 " Nearly all that we call human history … [is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity "
35 " What do materialists do when they realize that their worldview box is too small to fit the evidence? They suppress the evidence, just as Paul says in Romans 1. They cannot deny that the concept of free will is hardwired into human thinking. What they can do, however, is reduce that concept to an illusion. A useful fiction. You might think of reductionism as a strategy of suppression. If a materialist were to acknowledge the reality of free will, that would give evidence that humans are personal beings whose origin must be a personal Being. Therefore materialists have to suppress the evidence from general revelation. Otherwise it would falsify their worldview. "
36 " if determinism is true, then “we are, in the final reckoning, merely playthings of fortune. "
37 " On one hand, Kant thought science led to the conclusion that humans are elements in a vast machine operating by the laws of physics. On the other hand, he said, to salvage morality, we must act as if we were free. And to ratify our moral standards, we must act as if God existed. And because morality makes no sense unless justice prevails in the end, we must act as if there were an afterlife. "
38 " Powerful logical or metaphysical reasons for supposing we can’t have strong free will keep coming up against equally powerful psychological reasons why we can’t help believing that we do have it.… It seems that we cannot live or experience our choices as determined, even if determinism is true. "
39 " Christianity is total truth—consistent, coherent, and comprehensive. It can be lived out in the real worldview without contradicting our most basic human experience. "
40 " But of course, by carving out an exception for themselves, they have introduced a logical inconsistency into their system. They have stated that there is one thing (namely, their own thinking) that their system does not cover. "