Armchair Philosophy

Ever heard this one?

A philosophy student was sitting an exam, and the essay question was "Why?". He wrote "Why not?" and walked out. He got 100%.

I can't believe I was told that story in all seriousness. It's absolute rubbish. Not only is it not an answer, and apart from the fact that there are now two questions and zero answers, and the two questions are almost equivalent anyway, there's a much more fundamental reason why it's rubbish - that's not how philosophy/thinking/logic/metaphysics/whatever works. It's just not.

But this is what people think. Let me give you an example you may be guilty of:

1. If Postmodernism is true, then there are no absolutes
2. That is an absolute statement
3. Postmodernism is not true.

I've heard people say this, I've heard it in sermons, I've heard it many more times than its content warrants. Do we really think that the best minds on the planet have not thought of this three line counter-argument and adequately rebutted it? Of course they have! It's not a counter-argument. It doesn't invalidate postmodernism. And in fact postmodernism has a lot to say to Christians and our view of knowledge and epistemology and authorial intent and many other things. Preachers that discard PM as quickly as they raise it do Christianity no service, and are by no means intellectually rigorous.

Here's another one I hear a lot. It's more of a scenario. It goes like this:

The theology of X states that Y. It has enjoyed many proponents throughout history including A, B, C, and more recently D.

To which I, the know-it-all say "but Ephesians 2:10 says this about pre-arranged good works, therefore that entire theology is nonsense". On the one hand I sympathise with this. There are some pretty lame theologies out there that can be rejected with one counter-verse. But it's pretty rare. And in any case, my concern is with the ease that we do it. Do we honestly think we're the first person on earth to read Ephesians? Are we getting too arrogant these days?

Anyway - the point I wanted to make was that one-line counter-arguments to deep (or even not so deep) philosophical stances are never ok.

The trouble makers here are by no means only Christians.

Last year at uni the Christian group had a table that people could come and write on. The banner advertising the table said "My problem with Christianity is...". It got a really solid response, heaps of people wrote about sex-related stuff and arrogance and fun and hypocrites and all the usual suspects. This was really good stuff to hear for a lot of reasons.

The responses that annoyed me though, went like this:

1. A complex or ordered structure must be designed.
2. A god that is responsible for the creation of a universe would be at least as complicated as the universe that it creates.
3. It too must require a designer
4. Its designer would require a designer also, ad infinitum.
5. The existence of god is then a logical fallacy

Hold on a sec 2000 years worth of great minds, some dude from some backwater has a five line argument against theism - why didn't we think of that! Lets pack up and go home.

In fact, that's a bit rough, even if you're Regius Professor of philosophy you can't presume to do that (I doubt that person would) and actually think it's worth anything.

It's this that makes me angry with Dawkins. He speaks way outside his field on things he simply doesn't have the capacity to handle correctly. Having a phd in one particular field of physics, one important thing I've learnt is that it doesn't mean I'm going to be useful in any other field of physics, let alone biology or whatever.

As Christians we're obliged to be armchair philosophers, theologians, cultural prophets, and many other things. And through the Bible and the Holy Spirit and logic we have some shot at a correct understanding of things. But I guess my concern is that we don't become two dimensional and reductionistic, and most importantly, that we don't reject ostensibly alternative points of view. We must learn from them and figure out how they inform our view of Christianity, or give us a framework to understand and express the truth in new ways.

I reckon...