Haven:
I'll do my best. A thorough answer would take quite a long conversation. I'll offer a brief answer here, and if you find it interesting, then we can move forward with a longer conversation.
Haven wrote:Theopoesis, could you explain exactly why you find secular humanism and existential / moral nihilism untenable? The two main arguments I've seen against them are either appeals.to inconsistency (but all worldviews are somewhat inconsistent) or fallacious appeals to emotion.
First, I thought I'd mention inconsistencies. Sure, every worldview has inconsistencies, but if presuppositionalism is correct, one way to evaluate worldviews is to see how fatal the inconsistencies are. I've posted this here about a month ago, but here are some of the inconsistencies I see with secularism. I don't think they are peripheral, but are rather quite central to many secular worldviews:
Secular modernity and postmodernity reveal a series of internal contradictions:
(1) A belief in a self-created, self-actualized individual through self-will; a belief in scientific causal determinism and behaviorism that eliminate the free will which makes self-actualization possible.
(2) A belief in progress and the advancement of human kind; the elimination of objective standards of truth and morality with which to measure progress.
(3) A belief in the inalienable rights of the political individual; the relegation of political truths to popular conventions, thereby guaranteeing that rights are always subject to alienation.
(4) A belief in the sufficiency of human reason to master its environment apart from supernatural revelation; the historicizing of knowledge systems as a product of culture, generation, language, gender, and race, thereby making human reason a captive of its environment instead of master over it.
(5) A belief in the individual autonomously shape his or her own identity; the elimination of a transcendent anchor for identity which relegates identity to temporal relationships, dialectics, or social networks whereby identity is completely determined by the other, and ever fragmented.
(6) A belief in the liberation of sexuality from the constraints of previous moral systems to allow the best sex lives possible; the sexualization of everything through a virtual "plague of fantasies" (to use Zizek's term), whereby our own minds grow bored with the real sex we can actually get.
I find these contradictions and others to be serious flaws that call into question the secular worldviews as a whole.
That being said, let's look at some deeper problems. Really, any serious discussion would have to pick out a specific metaphysical system from a specific thinker or school of thought, so I recognize that this at best can often be generalities. But you suggest nihilism could be an option and want to know why it is untenable. Let's look at the nihilism of Neitzsche, one very specific person with a specific system of thought: there is no good and evil, truth or falsehood, there is just the will to power. Sacrifice is silly, what we need is the ubermensch who through dominance can rise above the others. Simplistic readings of Neitzsche might point out that in making claims like these, Neitzsche is asserting truths, but he is also objecting to the possibility of truth. Therefore, it is a
reductio ad absurdam. But, I think this is a simplistic reading of Neitzsche and that we can give him the benefit of the doubt, where he might suggest that his own claims of metaphysical truth is a power play as much as are other claims of metaphysical truth, but that more basic truths like "my name here is theopoesis" are not subject to such criticism. Instead, we need a more sophisticated version of the same argument. Then, our critique of Neitzsche would be threefold: (1) genealogies are constructed by Neitzsche to explain the origin of these power/truth/morality systems. Neitzsche uses these genealogies to explain how one should be replaced by another. However, his reconstruction of history is undertaken within his own view, and as such is itself a power play to reinforce his point. His genealogy as part of a metaphysical system would not necessarily conform to the factual truth of history, and as such Neitzsche's logical basis for his claims is undermined, and nihilism leaves us with historical agnosticism: we can never know what happened, we can only tell what happened in a way that suits our purposes. (2) Neitzsche seems to argue that, according to "perspectivism" all assessment of particular truth propositions or metaphysical claims takes place within a certain perspective. In this way, Neitzsche is quite similar to presuppositionalism, except that he adjudicates between views through an analysis of power, and not through an analysis of internal coherence. If Neitzsche's perspectives are validated through our ability to "rule the perspective" through power, then we must still wonder: i. whether Neitzsche's perspective can be shared by us today given our different cultural mileau; ii. whether Neitzsche's perspective can actually be considered valid if its power was insufficient to make it accepted in any widespread way since his death; iii. whether Neitzsche's claims as reduced to a perspective can possibly wield as much power as a view which (whether true or not) claims universality for itself. (3) Neitzche claims "God is dead" partly as an objection against an objective view of the whole. However, this theological claim could only be made if such an objective view of the whole could be obtained, so again this claim need not demonstrate a "truth" so much as a desire to obtain control. It claims to know what it cannot, and here alone Neitzsche seems to fall prey to the simplistic version of the objection noted above. Neitzsche in effect is really saying, "I cannot know the truth, but when I accept my own perspective and live by it, I have power over myself through my own will and not that of another." Yet Neitzsche's perspectivism would again delegate the views of the "Self" to the culture/perspective, and as such would immediately rob Neitzsche of all power again. He is not master of his era, but mastered by it.
Thus, I reject Neitzsche as self-defeating. Beyond this, international law would seem to require a universal standard and not simply local perspectives, so pragmatically Neitzsche would fail us completely. Power is prone to corrupt those who have it. Beauty and attraction are often as influencial as power: Neitzsche as a whole seems to have a simplistic view of power relative to modern conceptions of "hard" vs. "soft" power.
I think I'm rambling, and woefully short to explain everything. I hope it made a bit of sense at least. I do not find Neitzsche the least bit compelling as an alternative to Christian theism. Perhaps there are other moral nihilists of which I am unaware that would be more compelling. Perhaps not.
