School of Athens

The Boston Review has a great article up about Brazil’s new policy to require high school students to learn philosophy. From my experience, some people would look at this and think, “What a waste of time.” It wasn’t even that long ago that Stephen Hawking ignorantly stated that “philosophy is dead” (apparently unaware that such a statement is a philosophical statement…perhaps it would be better to say that Stephen Hawking is holding the memorial service for Philosophy and having her preach at the memorial).

Of course, having philosophy drilled into the minds of young people is always a good thing. After all, it used to be (prior to the 19th century) that people received liberal arts degrees not for a vocation, but to become better people. After gaining their degrees they would either take up a trade (and then apply their knowledge as they saw fit) or pursue an advanced degree where then they specified their vocational training. The liberal arts (which included philosophy, or reasoning) was always meant to round out an individual, to teach him how to think and not what to think. We have certainly lost that; one of the most common questions brought before anyone getting a degree in philosophy is, “But what are you going to do with that?” It never dawns on people that focusing four years of your life on nothing but thinking actually prepares you better for the world than getting a vague degree in business or management or even pre-law.

Studying philosophy opens people up to a world of ideas. It forces people to be open-minded because they must constantly be subject to changing their minds. They must evaluate everything they see and think through all possible solutions for problems they encounter. We can look to some of our political problems and see that good ole’ American pragmatism has ended up an abysmal failure. Thus, we must go back to our roots (our nation was founded by men trained in the classical arts) or accept the fact that our government will not last.

With that said, in some hypothetical world where I was allowed to develop a four year program for students in high school focused on philosophy, that they were required to take, I would make it look something like this, using the following books (as a side note, this list will also be helpful to anyone who wants to get into philosophy on his or her own):

First Semester

Textbooks: Socratic Logic: Socratic Method, Platonic Questions and Philosophy 101 by Socrates, both by Peter Kreeft.

The reasoning behind these two choices is very simple. The first book deals with proper thinking (logic, reasoning, etc). In order to study the history of ideas, one must first know how to think properly. Thus, it only makes sense to help students learn how to think in a logical manner. The reason I would pick Socratic Logic is that (1) it’s a very easy read since Peter Kreeft is a masterful writer, (2) it comes with built-in homework, but in an easy to understand format, and (3) the appendixes cover how to dialogue in a Socratic manner as well as how to properly structure an essay – all tools that are essential for the development of every student.

The second book is a very simple introduction to philosophy. The book doesn’t really present the various ideas, but instead shows the importance of philosophy. Kreeft finds a way to demonstrate to everyone why philosophy is important to study. This would help ground the student and answer the inevitable question, “Why do I need to know this?”

One research paper would be required. The paper would be the student’s explanation of why the study of philosophy is or is not important. After getting comments and grades back from the teacher, the student would be allowed to rewrite the paper, either changing his thesis or defending his thesis against his teacher’s critiques. The purpose of the papers, however, would simply be to help the student learn how to structure an essay and to think critically – the content wouldn’t be all that relevant.

The quizzes in this class would be more in the traditional multiple choice, short answer format as the majority of the semester would be dealing with reasoning and logic (leaving little room for open-ended questions).

Second Semester

Textbooks: The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and Sophists, Plato’s Republic, and Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Nicomachean Ethics 

The second semester would essentially begin the student’s leap into the world of philosophy by beginning with the Greeks. Before anyone says, “But this is Western!” it should be noted that Plato was influenced by Pythagoras, who was influenced by early Eastern philosophy while he was off in India studying. Thus, the hard line between East and West isn’t really all that hard; much of what we get from the Presocratics and even Plato matches up with Eastern thought.

That being said, it is important to understand the ideas that really shaped our modern world. Since we are dealing with Freshmen in high school, only exerts would be selected from each of these books (preferably the most important parts, with the other parts being summarized in lectures – but it would all be up to the teacher’s discretion). The overall goal would be for the student to learn the foundations of Western thinking.

In this class, one position paper (6-8 pages) would be required, with the focus being on anticipating objections to the student’s position taken in the paper. This too would help foster critical thinking. The tests would need to be more open-ended questions allowing for more short answers and essays; this is to ensure the students don’t simply regurgitate the lectures, but are in fact wrestling with the ideas.

Third Semester

Textbooks: Fountain of Knowledge by John of Damascus, City of God by Augustine, The Metaphysics of the Healing by Avicenna (Ibn Sina), and the Philosophical Writings of Duns Scotus

The objective would be to introduce students to Western Christian philosophy, Islamic philosophy, and scholasticism. These three branches have influenced the Western world tremendously, so it’s good to study their origins. While all three works cover and assume the existence of God, these books are meant to challenge the student into evaluating and interacting with the ideas, not necessarily accepting them.

In this class, one position paper (8-10 pages) would be required. The tests would be more essay based.

Fourth Semester

Textbooks: A Shorter Suma of the Suma or On Being and Essence by Thomas Aquinas, The Prince by Machiavelli, Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

Essentially this semester would serve as the break in the history of philosophy, covering the major philosophers up to the Enlightenment. It would show where scholasticism and classic philosophy ended up, with the thinking of Aquinas, Machiavelli, and Hobbes. The students would need to write a position paper (10-12 pages) explaining how one or all three of these philosophers were influenced by those who came before them. It provides the student time to see the connections between everything they’ve read up to this point.

Fifth Semester

Textbooks: The Second Treatise on Government by John Locke, Discourse on Methods: Meditations on First Philosophy by Renee Descartes, Ethics by Spinoza, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by David Hume

Here is where students would be thrown into the Enlightenment (beginning with reading Sarte). They would learn the beginnings of it with Descartes, the influence it had on ethics (via Spinoza, where they would also learn of Spinoza’s opposition to Descartes), the influence it held on the government (via Locke, where they’d learn about the beginning of democracy), and the impact it had on religion (via Hume, where they’d learn about modern-day atheism). Here students would be required to take a position (10-12 pages) on one of the Enlightenment issues presented, either arguing for a certain philosopher’s viewpoint or against it. The tests would be completely essay based.

Sixth Semester

Textbooks: Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, Thus Spake Zarathustra by Nietzsche, Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life by Soren Kierkegaard

This class would be interesting because they would read the last great Enlightenment thinker (Kant) and begin with the post-modern period (via Nietzsche). Kierkegaard would introduce the students to existentialism while Freud would introduce the students to modern philosophy. The class would serve as a transition from the ideas of the Enlightenment into postmodernism.

The students would need to do a position paper (12-14 pages). The tests would be essay based.

Seventh Semester

Textbooks: The Plague by Albert Camus, Being and Time by Martin Heidegger, Of Grammatology by Jacques Derrida, The Essential Zizek, by Slavoj Zizek

The beginning of their senior year, the students should be prepared to cover modern continental philosophy from Camus and Heidegger to Derrida and Zizek. The objective would be for the students to evaluate the beliefs, understand why those beliefs exist, and then to critique those beliefs.

No paper would be required as they would begin on their senior thesis paper. This paper only applies for the class and does not hold the majority grade for the class, thus there is no fear of failing to graduate if the paper is less than stellar. However, the paper would be a project that dealt with a subject in philosophy that they wanted to research and take a position on. They would need to research other philosophers for this paper as well as utilizing the ones they’ve already covered. All told, the paper would need to be 20-30 pages long.

Eighth Semester

Textbooks: Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell, God and Other Minds by Alvin Plantinga, Practical Ethics by Peter Singer, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory by Alasdair MacIntyre

Their final semester would cover two of the biggest issues in analytic philosophy – theism and ethics. Both sides of theism issue would be presented, with students reading about how God doesn’t exist (or how it’s irrational to believe God exists) and about how God does exist (or how it’s at least rational to believe God exists). On ethics, one of the more popular ethicists would be covered (Singer) as well as a counter to Singer via MacIntyre. The main objective of this class would be for the student to take everything they’ve studied and apply it to modern philosophical problems, whether it be over the existence of God, ethics, and so on. They could even take this chance to develop their own political philosophy, ethics within business, vocations that need philosophers and why, and the list goes on. This could even be their senior project. So long as they could demonstrate that they held the ability to synthesize and evaluate everything they’ve read up to this point.

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Now, of course the above is a pipe dream, and not an ideal one at that. However, it’s just what I’d like to see at some point. Of course, if such classes were added, it’d only make sense to offer electives for students who are highly interested in philosophy. Those electives could cover metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, social institutions (government), anthropology, economics, and law. This would allow students who are interested in philosophy (or in vocations impacted by those categories, which is almost all vocations) to hone their studies. It would also introduce them to other thinkers, such as Plotinus, Cicero, Anselm, Blaise Pascal, Karl Marx, Adam Smith, Renee Descartes, Jean-Paul Sartre, Richard Swinburne, and the list goes on.

Some may debate the practicality of having this in a high school and certainly there are legitimate arguments against it. Perhaps I’ll never see anything like this instilled in a high school. Even so, there’s no excuse for this current program not to exist across college campuses. Whether one is going to be a doctor, a lawyer, or anything else, he should understand philosophy as philosophy guides everything we do. To be ignorant of ideas is to be ignorant of the self; ignoring philosophy is like ignoring one’s need to eat healthy food. And if our society is to last, we need to go back to our roots, otherwise we’ll have nothing to stand upon.

Though modern humanists have attempted to cast doubt both on God’s goodness and whether or not His goodness begets an ethical ought, one can know via deductive reasoning that God is good and from His goodness derive a moral ought (found in the theological concept of theosis). The philosopher Stephen Law, as recently as 2009, issued what he called the “Evil-God Challenge,” stating that theists have no rational position to assume that God is good. Along the same lines, Kai Nielsen argues that Christians lack sufficient reasons to label God good; Nielsen takes the argument further to state that even if it were shown that God was good, such a statement would carry no moral ought with it. In contradiction to both claims, it is seen that one can know via deductive reasoning that God is good. Likewise, in knowing that God is good, Christianity points to theosis as the ought derived from the statement, “God is good.”

The Issue at Hand

From the view of the humanist, theistic ethics, specifically Christian ethics, seems to be without justification for both its belief that God is good and that one ought to follow the divine commands of God. The humanist argues that one must know God is good before accepting His commands, but in order to know that God is good, one must utilize a standard external to God – ‘God is good’ does not necessarily follow from ‘God is powerful’ or ‘God is perfect’.[1] In doing so, the theist concedes that the moral foundation of goodness is found in human reasoning and not in God, for God must be evaluated.

However, the Christian would be wise to argue that knowing God is good logically follows from a belief in God; if something finite exists then God is good as anything finite requires a creator. The claim is seemingly self-evident, meaning to question the claim borders on delusion. Just as it is self-evidently known to a person that he is conscious, so too should it self-evidently be known that if God exists and there is a creation, He is good.

Furthermore, since Christians believe that humans are made in the image of God, it follows that if God is good then humans are to be good as well. One can take this even further to read that not only should humans be good, but also they should be good as God is good (i.e. humans should be morally perfect). Christianity teaches that such moral perfection, or holiness or righteousness, is found in the act of theosis.

Definitions

Before continuing, it is important to understand exactly what is meant by some terms that will be used to support the thesis. To understand the term theosis, one can use Donald Fairbairn’s definition that theosis is, “…[T]he process by which human beings are made, in some sense, divine.”[2] Of course, as Fairbairn points out later in the same paragraph, in the process of becoming divine there is still a clear distinction between humans and God; one becomes divine while still remaining human, or one becomes like God in all things except essence and being. Drawing from St. Maximus the Confessor, theosis is the idea that God becomes incarnate within the individual, allowing the person to be morally perfect as God is morally perfect.[3]

Theosis begins with virtue ethics, the idea that one’s inner disposition must be changed in order to change one’s outer actions. According to Peter Kreeft, “…[V]irtue means, the power of anything to accomplish its specific function…Presently, virtue also signifies moral goodness; the practice of moral duties and the conformity of one’s life to the moral law; uprightness; rectitude.”[4] Thus, the idea of theosis rests upon the implied belief within virtue theory that there is a grand function to human life, or a telos, and the call of all humans is to live up to that telos. Virtue, however, is different from theosis in that while virtue makes humans better humans, theosis makes them divine.

Finally, one should understand that when the term “humanist” is used, it is meant to read “secular humanist.” For the sake of redundancy and space, however, it is safest to shorten the term and simply clarify it. While a Christian can be a humanist – and should be a humanist – Christian humanism, while loving humans, recognizes God as properly above humans. Secular humanism, however, seeks to bring man to great heights without acknowledging God; in short, secular humanism refers to anyone who is an atheist, agnostic, or finds God’s existence irrelevant to anthropic ethics.

Theanthropic Ethics

Before understanding the ought from theanthropic ethics, it is first important to understand that God is good. One must understand that God is wholly good and not imperfectly good, or good with a little bit of evil. God is a whole and must be perfect. To use the language of Robert Spitzer, since God is the unconditioned reality (nothing precedes Him), by logical necessity God must be simple (not composed) and perfect (lacking in nothing).[5] Since God is perfect, He must either be good or evil, and wholly so. He cannot be both (as this would violate the law of non-contradiction).

Therefore, if God were evil then He would be perfectly evil. Were one to treat evil as a substance (which is difficult to imagine), one would ask what is at the core of all evil acts. Through a simple use of deductions, one would easily arrive at the conclusion that pride is at the core of all evil acts.[6] Yet, pride can still be used in some good ways when it is used in moderation. In its extreme, however, pride is motivated by narcissism, or extreme love of the self. The more narcissistic a person is, the more apathetic he is to those around him. Narcissism requires the love of the self to the exclusion of all others. A narcissistic mother does not torture her baby; rather she neglects the baby if the baby interferes with the mother’s desires. Therefore, if God were evil He would be the ultimate narcissist.

If God were the ultimate narcissist, then nothing would exist; since something exists, it shows that God is not a narcissist and therefore God is not evil. If the root of evil is narcissism and narcissism is the focus on the self to the exclusion of others, and if God were wholly perfect in all things, then God would be too focused on Himself to have ever created anything to begin with. Yet, something exists. Therefore, God is not evil, which apophatically means God is good.

Since God is good and has created humans in His image, He has called humans to live a theanthropic life. The theanthropic life (or theanthropic ethics) is one where an individual human lives as God. It is the constant act of prayer, contemplation, action on that contemplation, and the petition of the soul to wholly trust in God.[7] Theanthropic ethics goes beyond natural ethics, teaching that the ultimate good, or moral perfection, can only be found in the person of Jesus Christ. While those outside of Christ can accomplish the ‘good,’ they cannot accomplish the ‘Good,’ which is only obtained through theosis. Yet, the Good is recognized as more than an abstract concept, but rather as a Person.[8] Therefore, the theanthropic life is not one in search of conformity to an ideal, but instead conformity to a Person.

Since God, being good, created the world, it follows that He created man with a good telos. The entire point of virtue within the theanthropic life is to make humans better humans, to achieve their telos.[9] In order to be good as God is good, humans must first live up to being humans. Sadly, in Christian teachings, the Fall (the events of Genesis 3) inhibited the ability to always choose the good. Due to sin, humans are incapable of achieving their telos and moving beyond their telos, which in turn puts a divide between them and God.

Through Christ, however, God has made it possible for humans not only to be good, but also to become divine. As St. John Damascene writes,

“Now, the virtues are natural, and they are also naturally inherent in all men, even though all of us do not act naturally. For, because of the fall, we went from what is according to nature to what is against it. But the Lord brought us back from what is against nature to what is according to it – for this last is what is meant by ‘according to his image and likeness.’”[10]

Thus, while virtue is inherent to the nature of humanity, due to sin men abandon the natural and partake in the unnatural. Through the Incarnation, however, Christ assumed the entirety of what it means to be human and thus gave power to man to achieve his telos.[11]

It should be noted, however, that the theanthropic life does not end with virtue, but rather uses virtues as a means. It could be said that while virtue aids man in becoming man, theosis aids man in becoming God (or divine). As Lossky points out, “The virtues are not the end but the means, or, rather, the symptoms, the outward manifestations of the Christian life, the sole end of which is the acquisition of grace.”[12] Virtue is the changing of the intellect and the attitude, but in conjunction with theosis grace works within a person to allow him to act on the intellect and become good as God is good.[13]

Humanist Objections to Christian Ethics

Of course, to some the above explanation of the theanthropic ethic – that God is good, created humans to be good, and then calls humans to be good as He is good – fails to provide a satisfactory defense for Christian ethics. Turning again to the critiques of Christian ethics, one would question how one can know God is good and, further, how one can develop a moral oughtness from God being good. Turning to Stephen Law, one reads,

“Consider a different hypothesis. Suppose the universe has a creator. Suppose also that this being is omnipotent and omniscient. However, suppose he is not maximally good. Rather, imagine that he is maximally evil. His depravity is without limit. His cruelty knows no bounds. There is no other god or gods – just this supremely wicked being. Call this the evil-god hypothesis.”[14]

Thus, one could argue that even if God is supremely narcissistic, He created humans simply to gain pleasure from torturing them. Certainly, this would still be an act of narcissism. One could also theorize that being a narcissist God wanted other lesser beings to recognize how great He is and to serve Him fully, irrespective of how He treats them.

Nielsen points out the contradiction Christians end up in if they wish to show that God is good, they must rely on a non-theistic standard of good. Since the believer is left pointing to an “outside criteria” to prove God’s goodness, “…God cannot be the only criterion for moral belief, let alone the only fundamental or adequate moral criterion. We must look elsewhere for the foundations of morality.”[15] The argument is a type of Euthyphro dilemma where either God arbitrarily declares what is good or God is good by some standard external to Himself, negating that He is actually God.

The final objection is that even if God is good, there is no reason to believe there is a grand telos to human ethics. As Nielsen theorizes, humans have a ‘purpose’ in everyday life, but there is no grand purpose, or a metanarrative of purpose.[16] He states that one can pursue happiness and purpose, but only the happiness and purpose one creates. The ultimate end for Peter is different from the ultimate end of Paul. Even if God is good, it does not follow that humans are called to be good as God is good; one must still rely on a source external to God in order to know the moral ought.

Christianity Triumphant

Law’s objection to God’s goodness holds no weight when one considers narcissism as the root of all evil. In fact, the implications of his argument actually defeat the argument. First, if God created humans in order to torture them so He could gain pleasure, this would indicate that God had a need for something. Of course, a perfect being can have need of nothing, thus if God had need of something then he would not be God.

The traditional Christian narrative concerning creation is that God created out of love, not out of need; He created as a sacrifice, not as a gain. He gained nothing out of creation, thus no perceived need was met. If God needed humans in order to be more loving, then He would not (1) be loving (as He would be creating humans for personal gain) and (2) God would not be God, as He would need something. Likewise, if God created humans to torture them, He would not be God, as He would have need of something.

Secondly, and more importantly, we can imagine a God who would create humans in order to torture them. Yet, we can think of a God even more evil that would not create humans because He would be so concentrated on Himself He would never think of humans. Therefore, the original syllogism – that because something exists, God must be good – stands true.

In referring to Nielsen’s argument that in order to prove God’s goodness one must point to an outside standard, the argument is that God’s goodness should really be self-evident. One can think of a man who thinks he is dead. He continues to argue he is dead. In order to prove to the man he is alive, one will have to use circular reasoning; this is because the act of denying what is self-evident is inherently illogical, thus any defense will give the appearance of being illogical as well. Humans innately know by the mere fact they exist that God is good; this is not relying on an outside criterion, but simply recognizing the tautological fact, that God is God.

Likewise, there certainly is an oughtness derived from God’s goodness. As Vigen Guroian explains, humans are incapable of choosing the goodness (their telos) because of sin, thus God, in His goodness, came down in human form in order to deify humanity.[17] Being created in the image of God and called to the theanthropic life, to become like God, creates one of the strongest forms of oughtness provided among all systems of ethics.

Being created by God also implies a telos for all humans. As some Thomists have pointed out, the very fact that humans try to find everyday purpose in life shows that within human nature is a natural inclination to find an overall purpose.[18]

Ultimately, Christian ethics points beyond virtue ethics and requires man to work with God to become God in all things except essence and being.[19] One can trust that God is good as such knowledge is self-evident, but also recognize that God is not arbitrarily laying down laws for His followers to follow, but calling His followers to partake in His ontological goodness by living the theanthropic life.[20] Thus, God is good, not by some external standard but by His own nature and He calls humans, who are in His image, to fulfill their telos by virtue, but then to exceed their telos by partaking in His goodness.

For those who aren’t familiar with the premise of The Walking Dead (WD), it’s a show on AMC that deals with how society would handle the zombie apocalypse. As you can imagine, society doesn’t handle it very well. What differentiates the show from normal zombie flicks, however, is that it’s more focused on the human response to the apocalypse rather than millions of zombies running around in shopping malls attempting to devour whatever is in their path (except for each other, which leads to one of the great mysteries of the universe: Why don’t zombies eat each other?).  The show focuses on the human interaction during a time of great crisis when the future is entirely uncertain; while WD has its fair share of monsters (or, “walkers” as they’re called in the show), in many ways the show demonstrates both the greatness of humanity and how, in our own way, we too can be monstrous even without being zombies.

Season 2 demonstrates the above brilliantly, specifically in the last few episodes. Earlier in the season, one of the characters – a boy named Carl – was accidentally shot by a stranger named Otis. Otis was shooting at a deer for food and the bullet passed through the deer and into Carl. As it happens, Otis lives on a farm with a family where the patriarch is a veterinarian (yet somehow knows how to operate on humans – the MacGyver of veterinarians). Problem is, he lacks the necessary equipment to operate on Carl. Thus Shane (another character in the show, not the boy’s father) and Otis embark on a quest to bring back the equipment. The good news is the equipment is easily found a few miles away at an abandoned FEMA shelter. The bad news is the FEMA shelter is abandoned because there’s a bunch of zombies wandering around it. Why they chose to stay there rather than wandering off, who knows.

Shane and Otis break in, get the equipment, but are noticed by the zombies. Rather than letting bygones be bygones, the mindless horde of flesh-eaters decides that Shane and Otis look quite tasty. The two men, objecting to the advances of the zombies, decide to make a run for it. In the process, Shane hurts his leg and hops along. As he and Otis slowly move towards their truck it becomes obvious that the zombie horde will catch up with the two men. Shane tells Otis to take the equipment and get it back to the farm to save the boy. Otis rejects the offer and chooses to continue to help Shane. Shane, realizing a sacrifice needs to be made, pulls out his gun and shoots Otis in the leg, leaving Otis as zombie bait while Shane makes his escape. Shane gets the equipment to the farm and in turn saves Carl’s life.

The show presents the act as disgusting and Shane is obviously the villain in the act and to most people Shane certainly is a villain; leave it to a philosopher to question common sense. The moment I saw what Shane did I was appalled, and then I realized that what he did is entirely ethical under most modern ethical theories. So I did what any sensible Christian philosopher would do, I asked what Thomas Aquinas would do. If Thomas Aquinas lived during the zombie apocalypse, what would his response be on how we who are living should act against the (un)living?

Sadly, Aquinas was a rather large man, so chances are if the zombie apocalypse broke out he wouldn’t last. After all, being large we know he wouldn’t be able to run for long distances or very fast. But in the brief time period of his survival from the zombie horde it would be safe to say that Aquinas would roundly reject Shane’s actions; in fact, under Thomistic ethics there is simply no way to justify killing an innocent in order to save the life of another innocent. Yet, I’m not sure that Aquinas goes far enough. Is virtue enough to stop Shane from killing Otis?

I argue that only through theanthropic ethics (theanthropic = God-man, or a human life lived in the Divine) could one look at Shane’s actions and find a justification for moral repulsion. Ultimately, Shane’s actions are selfish and not sacrificial; theanthropic ethics relies on love as the foundation and Shane’s actions simply weren’t loving.

The Failure of Current Ethical Theories to Explain Our Moral Outrage

Most audience members experienced some initial revulsion at Shane’s actions. There was almost a prima facie rejection of Shane’s actions, as though collectively everyone thought, “I would never do that!” Yet, while the show is fictional, it serves as an appropriate analogy for real life situations; remember that in Nazi Germany many people faced the decision of killing an innocent in order to save their own lives, or to save the lives of others. German soldiers were told to kill Jews or face having their own families killed or being killed themselves. We can also think of the modern-day tragedies in Africa where RUF soldiers, or some other guerilla group, forces young children to kill innocent farmers or face being put to death themselves. So while I do write this article a bit tongue-in-cheek, we should understand WD does a magnificent job of presenting a very real ethical dilemma.

Sadly, almost all systems of ethics can justify Shane’s action of killing an innocent man in order to save Carl’s life (or to save Shane’s life). I can give a brief run-down here, though the list (and explanations) are hardly comprehensive:

Utilitarianism – this is the ethic that easily justifies Shane’s actions (and for those keeping up with the show, we’re seeing this ethic continue to arise on whether or not they should search for the missing girl, how to handle the zombie barn hoedown, and the like). Utilitarianism teaches that one is obligated to beget the greatest good (or happiness) for the greatest number of people. When looking to Shane’s actions we see Shane was faced with a few options:

(1) Continue to run with Otis, which would almost certainly lead to their deaths and subsequently Carl’s death, thus leading to the loss of three people from their group

(2) Sacrifice himself by shooting his own leg, forcing Otis to continue on. Of course, Otis had no obligation to Shane’s own group, thus Shane would be committing an act of disservice for his group because they would lose him

(3) Sacrifice Otis in order to get the medical supplies to Carl, thus saving the life of a young member of the group, someone who could help repopulate the earth once the zombies had sated their appetites

Thus, from the Utilitarian perspective Shane was merely aiding the human race by ensuring that (1) Carl was saved and (2) a more productive member of the two groups (himself) survived the ordeal. One can’t show any moral outrage at Shane because he brought about a greater good, even if the means are a bit uncomfortable.

Ethics of the Übermensch – Under Nietzsche’s view of ethics, Shane was simply creating a new ethical framework and then living within that framework. That framework put Shane at the center and gave him the power to act above all others. As the episodes go on, one can see that Shane is attempting to persuade those of influence within the group that his own ethical viewpoint is the valid one. He is acting as the Übermensch, so he can’t be faulted; as Nietzsche would say (or as I would paraphrase Nietzsche), “There is no right or wrong, just interpretations of actions.”

  Evolutionary Ethics – Shane is simply ensuring the survival of the fittest. By finding a way to survive the situation and outwit the circumstances that nature has thrown in his way, one cannot say he is wrong; he is allowing his genes to continue on (and by the time the show is over, he will probably have slept with at least half of the female survivors on earth).

Deontology – If Kant lived during the zombie crisis he would be the ultimate survivor; he would simply read his works to them and the monotony of his works would convince them he was a fellow zombie. Aside from this, however, Kant’s ethics simply wouldn’t work for most people. That’s because Kant’s ethics do not bend, but are rigid. Is it wrong to lie to the Nazis to save the life of a Jew? Most people would agree that it’s not only ethical to lie in this situation, it would be unethical to tell the truth. Kant would stamp his German foot down in a fit of rage and say that if it’s wrong to lie, it’s wrong to lie. So while Kant’s deontology would condemn Shane, it would inevitably lead to everyone dying because it wouldn’t allow for a change in conditions (in fact, Hershel could be viewed as a deontologist; that even in the zombie apocalypse he won’t kill the zombies because they’re “people”).

Theanthropic Ethics in the Zombie Apocalypse

Certainly the “theanthropic ethic” is a Christian ethic, which begets the question, “Is a Christian ethic really better to anything else presented?” After all, Christians seem to be jerks. The most famous and celebrated Christian holiday, Christmas, elicits images of a zombie apocalypse (or is it zombpocolypse?) every year during “Black Friday.” Atheists and non-Christians are obviously sometimes far more moral than their Christian counterparts – think about how American Christians tend to focus on homosexual marriage and abortion, but how hard it is to find them fighting poverty, slave labor overseas, climate change, or other social ills. In the zombie apocalypse one of the last places you’d run to is a church, out of fear of being turned away or finding out the church had allied with the zombies (zombies are the walking dead and if you’ve seen some Christian services then you’ve seen the walking dead).

Thankfully, in discussing Christian ethics or ethics in general we’re not dealing with what is, but with what ought to be, or the justification behind what ought to be. Though Christian ethics is more than an ideal, it is best to say that we’re dealing with the ideal and not the real. We’re not dealing with the present state of affairs, but with what all Christians (and humans) should aim toward.

Christian ethics begins with virtue ethics, the teaching that humans were created to pursue happiness and must gain an inner disposition to achieve this happiness. This happiness isn’t meant in an epicurean way, that each one pursues pleasure, but instead that in finding “happiness” one will have found the ultimate good. Basically, it’s vague, which has been a plague for virtue ethics since Socrates began to toy around with the idea. While virtue ethicists would like to treat this happiness as the ultimate good, when asked to define the happiness you’re going to get a lot of absolute answers (meaning none of them are absolute).

We’ll put aside the issue of happiness for now, except to say that happiness cannot deal with temporal happiness or material items for happiness. After all, how could we obtain happiness in a zombie apocalypse? At that point, happiness becomes hard to find in the situations of life, leading us to conclude that life isn’t worth living unless there is an ultimate happiness we’re heading towards.

Putting the issue of happiness aside (for now) we can look to exactly what virtue teaches us. Aristotle brought up a lot about the habits of virtue – we come to know what the right thing is, or what the good is, and then make a habit of acting towards it. At first we have to force ourselves to act good, but eventually it just becomes a natural thing we do without even thinking about. We think of how we raise children; we teach them to open doors for the elderly and at first they have to make a conscious decision to do so, but as they get older and get used to doing it, it simply becomes a habit, something they naturally do. Thus, they become “naturally” good.

Essentially, virtue teaches that we are to change our inner disposition so that we’re consistently choosing to do the right thing regardless of the situation. Rather than setting up rules – like deontology – we ‘organically’ pursue the good so that we will act different in certain circumstances, yet remain good. When we see a zombie, we’ll recognize that it’s okay to kill it in self-defense (unlike Hershel), but we’ll realize it’s wrong to kill an innocent to save our own lives (unlike Shane).

One doesn’t have to be a Christian to accept the virtues either, especially considering that virtue theory really arises from a Socratic-Platonic-Aristotelian base. Even Thomistic Virtue is better seen as Ibn Sina’s (Avicenna) virtue theory, which is based on Aristotle. The four cardinal virtues – justice, courage, prudence, and temperance – make us better humans, something you don’t have to be a Christian to recognize. As fallen humans we tend to be beasts, we tend to be zombies without being actual zombies; we become mindless drones who lose control of our brains and walk around devouring the minds of the living, the thinkers, to satisfy our sinful desires (don’t believe me? Look at the political process in America). Virtue fixes this, virtue makes us more than a zombie and restores our humanity.

If virtue can be said to make us human, then theosis is what makes us divine. It’s hard to give a definition to theosis not because it hasn’t been defined, but because in our modern times when we face pantheism and the “New Age” movement, the idea that we become “a god” inherently sets off the heresy alarm. But it should be noted that this teaching has been around since the beginning; we’ve just abandoned it in the West.

Essentially, theosis is the process that makes us like God in all things except essence and being and all of this is accomplished through grace. We don’t become “gods” in the Mormon sense where we get our own planets, nor do we become one with God in the Hindu sense, where God is just a type of Brahma that we unify with. We still remain distinct from God, yet unified to Him through grace. This is best represented in the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and love.

Paul teaches that faith, hope, and love drive the Christian ethic, but love is at its foundation. I would contend that what Paul says is almost a commentary on Christ’s teaching of the two greatest commandments; we are to love the Lord God with all our hearts, minds, and souls (our entire being), and the second is like it, to love our neighbors as ourselves. In short, the two greatest commandments summarize the theanthropic life, and Paul is merely adding commentary on what that means. Whereas virtue makes us better humans by living in a good fashion, theosis makes humans Divine by teaching them to live in love, to live in a God-fashion. In other words, happiness is God, the purpose of life is God.

Thus, humans are called to love God and to love God’s image (humans), and this is true happiness. This is why Jesus says the second greatest commandment is like the first, because if we love God then we must love those who have His image. This would mean that to destroy the image of God would display a lack of love towards God Himself. The perfect verse that demonstrates this is one I wrote about a while ago, Proverbs 14:31. As I stated in that post, depending which translation one reads, it’ll either say that if one loves God, one will help the poor, or that if one helps the poor, one then loves God. This is a case where though the two readings are different, both are true if we take them in light of the two greatest commandments; if we love God, we will love humans, and if we love humans, we will love God.

Now of course there are times where destroying the image of God becomes a tragic necessity. In the case of self-defense, the case of a just war (and they do exist), or other similar situations justifies killing. No one is saying it is morally good to kill in those situations, merely that it does become necessary. What is always wrong and never justified, however, is the intentional murder of innocent humans to save the life of others.

So what about Shane? Does the theanthropic life teach us anything about Shane’s actions?

First, did Shane kill an innocent man? After all, it was because of Otis that Carl was in that predicament. It was Otis’ carelessness that caused the entire situation to come about. At the same time, Otis did not intentionally shoot Carl. If it happened in a civilized society (you know, one that didn’t have zombies) then Otis would be held for an involuntary act. Even our legal system sees a difference between voluntary acts of aggression and involuntary acts. Thus, while Otis was responsible for the situation, morally he was innocent because he did not intentionally cause Carl’s pain. Furthermore, in the zombie apocalypse you simply don’t expect a child to be standing on the other side of a deer.  In killing Otis, Shane took the life of an innocent man.

Second, the motivation for killing Otis wasn’t entirely pure. The primary motivation for Shane’s action was to save Carl, of that there is no doubt. In fact, Shane even told Otis to continue on without him and offered himself up as a sacrifice. Otis, however, refused to leave Shane behind, which of course ran the risk of both Otis and Shane dying. At the same time, how was Shane showing love to his neighbor by sacrificing Otis?

At the end of the day, Shane put his life ahead of another’s life. Rather than forcing Otis to move ahead or by fighting on against his impending death. He wanted to make sure he was around to make advances on Carl’s mom (the wife of Rick, who’s still alive, but there’s some very awkward backstory there) and protect Carl as well. When he got back he acted as the hero, reminding everyone that he saved Carl’s life.

No mater how you look at it, from the theanthropic view it’s better to suffer an evil than to cause an evil. It’s better to be tortured and murdered rather than be the torturer and murderer. It’s better to be eaten by the zombie than to be the zombie (let’s face it, either way that’s just a bad situation). For Shane, it would be better to be attacked by zombies and lose his life than to escape the zombies but lose his soul.

Going back to virtue, if doing the right thing becomes a habit, then it’s true that choosing to do the wrong thing is also a habit (or habit forming). One doesn’t wake up one day and decide that it’s okay to kill innocent humans to save other people; that comes through years of choosing to do the wrong thing or to act immorally. This is even prevalent from the first season where Shane is shown making advances on Rick’s wife just a few weeks after Rick was thought to be dead (told you there was an awkward backstory). It simply goes to show that Shane has already formed a habit of making the wrong choices before killing Otis.

Under virtue, one would say that Shane should have chosen the good and formed the habit of choosing the good. Had he, perhaps he could have been creative enough to choose the good in the situation and still survive. At the very least, even if he lost his life, he would have gained his soul.

More importantly, however, is how Shane’s actions look in the theanthropic life. Shane’s actions were the antithesis of loving. Had he sacrificed himself then he would have proven to be loving (as love is a sacrifice). The theanthropic life, then, is one of constant sacrifice, or at a minimum it’s not sacrificing others to achieve your goal. It’s treating people as people (love your neighbor) rather than means to an end or zombie bait.

On a more serious note within this hypothetical, in many ways humans in their present state are far worse than they are as zombies. After all, no one chooses to be a zombie. Once a zombie, no one chooses to eat the living, that’s just a part of its nature. Humans, on the other hand, choose to be beastly to one another. A zombie eats a human and goes on, not knowing what it has done; a business owner uses slave labor in Africa to bring over cheaper chocolate, but does so willfully. Which one is the real monster? Which one should we truly fear, the one who commits evil acts by nature or the one who chooses evil though he doesn’t have to?

Along those same lines, it is into this morally reprehensible world that God spoke to bring light, to show people that they were called to be more than what they are. God sacrificially created the world and then sacrificially gave it a way to live as He lives (via the Incarnation). That is the foundation of theanthropic ethics.

In the end, if we live in the ethics of love (theanthropic ethics) then we can never sacrifice an innocent to save another, or to save our own lives. We must always put the other before us. While it’s fun to contemplate how that looks in a zombie apocalypse, consider it in the real world as well. It’s wrong for the business owner to put himself before his employees. It’s wrong for the father to put his needs before those of his family. It’s wrong to elevate ourselves and to use other people as a means rather than as ends. Theanthropic ethics means we are self-sacrificial, even if it costs us our lives.

This is part of a larger paper that I am writing and working on. Law’s “Evil-God Challenge” is simply a section in the paper. In coming across Law’s “Evil-God” challenge, I’ve seen numerous Christian philosophers offer up an explanation to how we can know God is good (such as Edward Feser). While all make good points, I think they are overcomplicating the issue and that the answer is actually quite simple. Hence, I post part of my solution here: 

One must understand that God is wholly good and not imperfectly good, or good with a little bit of evil. God is a whole and must be perfect. To use the language of Robert Spitzer, since God is the unconditioned reality (nothing precedes Him), by logical necessity God must be simple (not composed) and perfect (lacking in nothing).[1] Since God is perfect, He must either be good or evil, and wholly so. He cannot be both (as this would violate the law of non-contradiction).

Therefore, if God were evil then He would be perfectly evil. Were one to treat evil as a substance (which is difficult to imagine), one would ask what is at the core of all evil acts. Through a simple use of deductions, one would easily arrive at the conclusion that pride is at the core of all evil acts.[2] Yet, pride can still be used in some good ways when it is used in moderation. In its extreme, however, pride is motivated by narcissism, or extreme love of the self. The more narcissistic a person is, the more apathetic he is to those around him. Narcissism requires the love of the self to the exclusion of all others. A narcissistic mother does not torture her baby; rather she neglects the baby if the baby interferes with the mother’s desires. Therefore, if God were evil He would be the ultimate narcissist.

If God were the ultimate narcissist, then nothing would exist; since something exists, it shows that God is not a narcissist and therefore God is not evil. If the root of evil is narcissism and narcissism is the focus on the self to the exclusion of others, and if God were wholly perfect in all things, then God would be too focused on Himself to have ever created anything to begin with. Yet, something exists. Therefore, God is not evil, which apophatically means God is good.

Turning to Stephen Law, one reads,

“Consider a different hypothesis. Suppose the universe has a creator. Suppose also that this being is omnipotent and omniscient. However, suppose he is not maximally good. Rather, imagine that he is maximally evil. His depravity is without limit. His cruelty knows no bounds. There is no other god or gods – just this supremely wicked being. Call this the evil-god hypothesis.”[3]

Thus, one could argue that even if God is supremely narcissistic, He created humans simply to gain pleasure from torturing them. Certainly, this would still be an act of narcissism. One could also theorize that being a narcissist God wanted other lesser beings to recognize how great He is and to serve Him fully, irrespective of how He treats them.

Law’s objection to God’s goodness holds no weight when one considers narcissism as the root of all evil. In fact, the implications of his argument actually defeat the argument. First, if God created humans in order to torture them so He could gain pleasure, this would indicate that God had a need for something. Of course, a perfect being can have need of nothing, thus if God had need of something then he would not be God.

The traditional Christian narrative concerning creation is that God created out of love, not out of need; He created as a sacrifice, not as a gain. He gained nothing out of creation, thus no perceived need was met. If God needed humans in order to be more loving, then He would not (1) be loving (as He would be creating humans for personal gain) and (2) God would not be God, as He would need something. Likewise, if God created humans to torture them, He would not be God, as He would have need of something.

Secondly, and more importantly, we can imagine a God who would create humans in order to torture them. Yet, we can think of a God even more evil that would not create humans because He would be so concentrated on Himself He would never think of humans. Therefore, the original syllogism – that because something exists, God must be good – stands true.

Some months ago I wrote a series of posts critiquing the Reformed doctrine of total depravity.  As a result, I was promptly accused, by some readers, of being a Pelagian.  It was then that I realized that I had made a rather notable mistake: I had failed to expound upon what I believed with regards to sin, the human condition, and man’s salvation.  Having failed to explain what I believe, some readers misunderstood my critiques of total depravity and jumped to some rather extreme conclusions about my theology.

In consequence, I have decided to write this post in an effort to further clarify my position.  This essay reflects, however poorly, what I believe about the depravity of man, the  nature of sin and evil, and, in an extremely limited way, salvation.  I will not discuss, in any detail, my theory of the atonement, justification, or sanctification; rather, I will simply emphasize man’s utter dependence upon God for life and his unavoidable dependency upon God’s grace and mercy to be saved.

I will begin by making several metaphysical observations.  First of all, it’s important to understand that everything that God has made is good and no matter how twisted or broken it becomes, it will never cease to maintain some vestige of its original goodness (Gen. 1:31).  St. Augustine understood this fundamental point of ontology and communicated it very clearly:

“All things that exist, therefore, seeing that the Creator of them all is supremely good, are themselves good.  But because they are not, like their Creator, supremely and unchangeably good, their good may be diminished and increased.  But for good to be diminished is an evil, although, however much it may be diminished, it is necessary if the being is to continue, that some good should remain to constitute the being.  For however small or of whatever kind of being it may be, the good which makes it a being cannot be destroyed without destroying the being itself.”

Please note that St. Augustine is speaking of the good in an ontological sense and not in an ethical sense.  Also note that, for him, evil does not  have a substantial existence, in and of itself, but only exists in the form of a degradation of or corruption of something which is substantial good.  Thus, when I say that human beings are by nature good I’m not claiming that they are without sin (i.e. ethically good) but that they are made in the image and likeness of God and, hence, in the image of Goodness and Perfection Himself.  Therefore, no matter how much sin twists and degrades us, we never stop being human–for if the image of God was completely eradicated the good which sustains our being would have been destroyed and we would cease to exist.

St. John of Damascus is also extremely helpful in clarifying this point:

“. . . evil is no more than a negation of good and a lapse from what is natural to what is unnatural, for there is nothing that is naturally evil.  Now, as they are made, all things that God made were very good.  So, if they remain as they were created, then they are very good.  But, if they freely withdraw from the natural and pass to the unnatural, then they become evil.  All things, then, by nature serve and obey the Creator.  So, whenever any creature freely rebels and becomes disobedient to Him who made him, he has brought the evil upon himself.  For evil is not some sort of substance, nor yet a property of a substance, but an accident, that is to say, a deviation from the natural into the unnatural, which is just what sin is.”

It’s clear, therefore, that sin is a corruption of what is substantially good and is fundamentally an ethical problem rooted in the will of man.  With his capacity of self-determination, man choses to act in a way which is contrary to his nature, to turn himself away from the Good, and thus, to subject himself to futility.  Hence, to speak of man being depraved, is to speak in terms of ethics and not in terms of ontology.  Nevertheless, it is also clear that our sin, our depravity has profound ontological consequences.  These truths are evident in Psalm 53:

“The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity, there is none that does good.  God looks down from heaven, upon the sons of man, to see if there are any that are wise, who seek after God.  They have all fallen away; they are all alike depraved; there is none that does good, no, not even one.”  (Psalm 53:1-3)

Further down the Psalmist continues:

“There they [those who have rejected God] are, in great terror, in terror such as has not been!  For God will scatter the bones of the ungodly; they will be put to shame, for God has rejected them” (Psalm 53: 5).

Having rejected God in their hearts (which is clearly an act of the will) mans behavior becomes corrupt and he chooses to live an unethical life.  His sinful choices, as the Psalmist makes clear, lead to his dissolution and destruction.  This point is also made by St. Paul in no uncertain terms, who proclaimed that:  “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).  Therefore, from a Biblical perspective, the depravity of man is an ethical problem with profound ontological consequences (1).

Furthermore, according to Psalm 53, this ethical problem is pervasive and universal; that is to say, every human being chooses, of his own free will, to turn away from God in order to serve his own self-interest; to worship the Creation rather than the Creator (this idea is more fully developed by St. Paul in Romans 1).

So, although man is by nature good, being made in the image of God, he suffers from the consequences of Adam’s sin:  namely, he is born outside the garden and, hence, estranged from God, he is subject to physical corruption and bodily death, he is tempted and manipulated by evil spirits, and constantly suffering from and profoundly affected by the sinful choices of others.  Consequentially, this Fallen environment, this twisted and broken world system, drives man to make unethical choices and so, he also suffers from the consequences of his own personal sin.

The Bible teaches that there is only One who can save us from this horrible mess–Jesus Christ.  For man, on his own, cannot save himself; he is utterly incapable of rescuing himself from this dilemma.  Let me repeat this lest I be accused, once more, of being a Pelagian: man, on his own, cannot save himself; he is utterly incapable of rescuing himself from this dilemma.  Salvation is an act of God who lavishes us with his love and grace. (2)  St. Paul, speaking to the Christians in Ephesus, states:

“and you he made alive, when you were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirt that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.  Among these we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of the body and mind, and so we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.  But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus . . . for by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:1-8).

In summary, man is by nature good, being made in the image of God; thus, he is not totally depraved.  However, man is born into a broken and corrupted world, subject to the consequences of Adam’s sin, influenced by the sins of his forefathers and by the, “prince of the power of the air,” and, hence, he inevitably chooses to sin (i.e. to act in a manner which is contrary to his own nature).  In this way, in an ethical sense, man is radically depraved.  Trapped in a dying world and being guilty of personal sin, man is unable to do anything, on his own, to save himself.  He needs Jesus to pull him out of the mire, to give him life, and to fully restore the image and likeness of God which has been soiled by his sin and the sin of others.

(1) On this point, it should be noted, Reformed theology teaches the exact opposite of what we have just outlined; namely, it teaches that man has a serious ontological problem (being totally depraved or having a sin nature) with profound ethical consequences.  This notion, aside from being unbiblical, is also incoherent (see my previous writings on total depravity).

(2) This statement does not negate man’s responsibility or choice in the matter; nor does it deny he has free will.  Man must chose to participate in God’s work to save and restore Creation, he must chose to believe in Jesus; nevertheless, salvation is the work of God in man.

“The problem I have here is not what ought to succeed mankind in the sequence of species ( — the human being is a conclusion — ):  but what type of human being one ought to breed, ought to will, as more valuable, more worthy of life, more certain of the future.

           This more valuable type has existed often enough already:  but as a lucky accident, as an exception, never as willed.  He has rather been the most feared, he has hitherto been virtually the thing to be feared — and out of fear the reverse type has been willed, bred, achieved:  the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick animal man — the Christian . . .”

1

 If the world we live in is, as Nietzsche asserts, one in which immaterial substances, or ideas, or forms, or gods do not exist, then it is utterly preposterous to believe that the,  “human being is a conclusion.”  On the contrary, it is painfully obvious that the physical world is as Heraclitus observed long ago: constantly in a state of flux — constantly evolving.  Within a matter of years every molecule within your body will be replaced; physically speaking, you will be an entirely different person.  Everything changes; nothing stays the same; the species is forever evolving.  On naturalism, there is nothing to ground your identity in and absolutely no good reason to believe that the evolution of human beings has come to a close.  In fact, there is absolutely no good reason to believe that human beings, as we know them, will always exist.

Modern naturalists have come to embrace this view with great enthusiasm.  As Gregory Stock notes with great excitement:  “we know that Homo Sapiens is not the final word in primate evolution, but few have yet grasped that we are on the cusp of profound biological change, poised to transcend our current form and character on a journey to destinations of new imagination” — It is a hallmark of current naturalistic thinking to believe that mans ever increasing power over nature, thanks to advances in science and technology, has brought about profound liberation – total freedom to control our destiny; to shape man into whatever image seems most desirable.

Therefore, Nietzsche’s attempt at redefining the ideal man, under the assumption that man, “is a conclusion”, is incredibly limited in scope when compared to the aspirations of contemporary naturalists.  Nevertheless, like contemporary naturalists, it is equally incoherent . . .

2

It should be clear now, that if we accept the naturalistic framework, it is impossible to say objectively, “what type of human being one ought to breed, ought to will, as more valuable, more worthy of life.”  Without a transcendent reference point, there simply is no concrete answer to this question.  In point of fact, there is no ought at all; there is simply what you think is the ideal man or what society believes is the ideal man.  At the end of the day, those with the strongest will to power will determine what the ideal man is—and this is nothing more than tyranny.  Consequentially, Nietzsche’s discussion about the ideal man (as if such a thing actually existed within the naturalistic worldview) seems rather disingenuous; or, at least, naïvely optimistic.

Considering the total fluidity of reality and the complete absence of absolute universal truths entailed by naturalism it is surprising, to me, that Nietzsche actually believes in his ideal man.  It is also surprising, to me, that he believes his ideal man actually exercises a certain amount of freedom—in contrast to the wretched domesticated animal.  At the end of the day, even Nietzsche’s ideal man is completely subject to the mindless and impersonal laws of nature which, if we accept naturalism, dictate his every thought and action.  Not even the super man can escape the laws of physics or transcend the controlling influence of his biochemistry.

3

In the final analysis, Nietzsche’s diatribe only communicates two things—his subjective opinion of what the ideal man is and his personal distain for Christians.  Perhaps, thirdly, it communicates the dissonance in his own thought—the inconsistent ramblings of a man bent on refuting objective values while simultaneously arguing for that which he deems most valuable.  At the end of the day, in order to fully embrace Nietzsche’s worldview, we must abandon the notion that there is an ideal human being and accept the fact that ideals are simply subjective opinions generated within the human brain through the brute physical processes of nature.  We must be willing to embrace the fact that human beings do not have a nature and that we simply reflect one fleeting moment in a constantly evolving reality.  We must also accept, in spite of the claims of contemporary naturalists, that mankind has absolutely no control over his destiny.

4

Freedom is, arguably, the chief aim of naturalism: freedom from a controlling omnipotent God, freedom from outmoded and irrational religious dogmas, freedom from puritanical ethical systems, freedom to redefine the human race and guide the course of evolution . . .

Sadly, this supposed freedom is completely illusory.  Consider these two points: (1) human beings are a part of nature, and hence, themselves locked in the endless, and fundamentally, meaningless, cycle of material causes and effects, and (2) those human beings currently in existence will ultimately decide the fate of those human beings (or other humanoid species) in the future.

Regarding the first point, although human beings seem to be gaining more knowledge of and, hence, better control over nature, human beings are not transcendent from nature.  Therefore, human beings are just as much subject to the laws of physics and chemistry which guide the rest of the universe.  Accordingly, on naturalism, human decisions, in fact, our very thoughts and emotions can be explained in terms of purely physical processes.  In other words, our very thoughts and actions are exclusively determined by the mindless physical laws of nature.  Under such circumstances, any freedom we imagine having over our destiny is truly delusional–in fact, the very notion of freedom, itself, was brought about by an unbroken chain of physical causes and effects completely out of our control.

We must also face the fact that all succeeding generations will be subject to the biological and psychological manipulations enacted by those scientists, academics, and politicians who currently control the new eugenics project.  In fact, the leaders of every generation will exercise total control over the genetic and psychological outcome of the next.  In essence, our species (or any new species) will forever be enslaved to the choices of those in the past.  A similar formulation of this argument can be found in C. S. Lewis’s book The Abolition of Man. 

In summary: there is no real freedom under the naturalistic framework–just enslavement:  enslavement to the blind, impersonal, unbroken laws of nature, and enslavement to those who exercise greater power over the weak (and even over those who do not yet exist).

5

True freedom can only be found in Christ because it is only in Christ that we understand, objectively, who we are and what it means to live.  For it is only if we have a transcendent reference point that we can say, definitively, that there is an ideal man, and in fact, an ideal way to live.  Jesus is our transcendent reference point—“the way, and the truth, and the life”–and, therefore, truly the ideal man.  Ironically, it is only the domesticated animal who can know, objectively, “what type of human being one ought to breed, ought to will, as more valuable, more worthy of life, more certain of the future.”

This is part three of a series; to read the rest of the series click here.

Recently, Christian Watershed author Joel Borofsky published an article on ViewsHound.com dealing with the supposed complexity of the abortion debate.  Follow this link to the article: The Abortion Issue isn’t that Complicated.

This is part two of a new series–to read the introduction click here.

“What is good? — All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.
What is bad? — All that proceeds from weakness.
What is happiness? — The feeling that power increases — that a resistance is overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at all, but war; not virtue, but proficiency (virtue in the Renaissance style, virtu, virtue free of moralic acid).
The weak and ill-constituted shall perish:  first principle of our philanthropy.  And one shall help them to do so.
What is more harmful than any vice? — Active sympathy for the ill-constituted and weak — Christianity . . .”

It’s important to remember that any definition of the good or of happiness proceeding from a naturalistic framework, such as Nietzsche’s, is completely arbitrary and, if I dare say, totally farcical — that is to say, it is a rather deceptive act in which moralistic language is ascribed to fundamentally neutral, amoral, categories.  So, when Nietzsche speaks about the good as being, “the will to power, power itself in man,” it’s important to remember that he is not outlining a system of morality; rather, he is simply describing a brute process of nature using moralistic terminology.

Any student of Biology can tell you that life is a power struggle — those organisms with the strongest will to survive and the power to do so will inevitably outlast other organisms with a weaker constitution.  In evolutionary terms, this is commonly described as the survival of the fittest.  Consequentially, a brute physical process, such as this, can hardly be described as “the good” in any objective moral sense on naturalism.  For this would imply teleology within nature — which is precisely the thing that a naturalistic view of reality denies.  Hence, to assign the, “feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man,” or, “all that proceeds from weakness,” the terms “good” or “bad” says absolutely nothing about the true goodness or badness of such things — it is merely to state a brute fact about reality.

According to naturalism, values are completely dependent upon the observer and therefore totally subjective.  In other words, they have very little to do with reality and everything to do with one’s personal opinions or feelings.  What we are left with, under this  scheme, are merely objects and events.  How we interpret the objects and events we find in nature is purely a matter of personal taste.  This mindset explains  why we often hear the term “meaning-making” used to describe values.  What this heart warming little term is actually communicating is that nature, in and of itself, has no intrinsic meaning; you, the observer, must make meaning.

The reason I’ve gone through great pains to express the above point is that many, these days, mistakenly believe it is possible to have objective morality within the naturalistic framework.  This belief, however, is entirely incompatible with the naturalistic worldview.  For there is nothing, objective, to ground values in under this framework–and this is something that Nietzsche understood all too well.  This is precisely why he speaks of the desire for power and the will to power–because this is, essentially, what life boils down to in a world without God and without objective  moral standards or purpose.  So, do not be confused by Nietzsche’s use of the terms “good” or “bad” and suppose that he is speaking of morality; on the contrary, what he is proposing is the complete antithesis of morality.  He is proposing that those who believe God to be dead embrace the implications of this belief and recognize what life truly is:  a cold, and fundamentally meaningless, struggle for power; the brutal battle for survival.

It is no wonder that Nietzsche viewed Christianity with such contempt; for Christianity stands in complete contrast to this view of reality.  It teaches that there is an overarching meaning and purpose to reality and that values are grounded in the source of existence Himself.  It asserts that man is made in the very image and likeness of the source of his existence and is, therefore, intrinsically valuable and important.  It further insists that, as creatures made in the image of their Creator, man is accountable to Him and obligated to care for all the things which He has made–even the lowly.  Hence, Psalm 41 implores us to, “consider the poor,” and Jesus says, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it for me” (Matt. 25:40).

As  you can see, the Christians attitude towards the “ill-constituted and weak” and his mindset that our existence is rooted in notions like love, service, and self-sacrifice, stands in total contrast to the naturalistic worldview which explains human existence in terms of a desire for and will to power.  Under the naturalistic view such care for the weak is truly absurd: for, “the weak and ill-constituted shall perish:  first principle of our philanthropy.  And one shall help them to do so.”  This is simply a brute fact about reality that one must accept, or else, continue to live in a delusional state and be subject to the control and power of those few human beings who do accept it.

Now, you must ask yourself, at this moment, what view of reality you are prepared to accept.  If you truly believe that “God is dead” and that the physical world is all there is then you must be willing to embrace Nietzsche’s assertions with all of your being–for this is the only honest position to take.  However, if Nietzsche makes you uncomfortable, if you sense that love must somehow enter the picture, that the acquisition of power is somehow shallow and ultimately meaningless, that there is intrinsic value to all human beings–and, in fact, in every organism–that somehow morality must be objective and grounded in something, and that somehow you were made for a purpose, then you must come to terms with the fact that God may not be as dead as you had originally thought.

In the forward to his attack on Christianity, The Anti-Christ, Fredrick Nietzsche wrote the following:

“This book belongs to the very few.  Perhaps none of them is even living yet.  Possibly they are the readers who understand my Zarathustra: how could I confound myself with those for whom there are ears listening today? — Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me.  Some are born posthumously.

The conditions under which one understands me and then necessarily understands — I know them all too well.  One must be honest in intellectual matters to the point of harshness to so much as endure my seriousness, my passion.  One must be accustomed to living on mountains — to seeing the wretched ephemeral chatter of politics and national egoism beneath one.  One must have become indifferent, one must never ask whether truth is useful or fatality . . . . Strength which prefers questions for which no one today is sufficiently daring; courage for the forbidden; predestination for the labyrinth.  An experience out of seven solitudes.  New ears for new music.  New eyes for the most distant things.  A new conscience for truths which have hitherto remained dumb.  And the will to economy in the grand style:  to keeping one’s energy, one’s enthusiasm in bounds . . . . Reverence for oneself; love for oneself; unconditional freedom with respect to oneself . . .

Very well!  These alone are my readers, my rightful readers, my predestined readers:  what do the rest matter? — The rest are merely mankind. — One must be superior to mankind in force, in loftiness of soul — in contempt . . .”

In the coming months, I, a lowly pastor, will attempt to scale the lofty mountaintops of Nietzsche’s thought; to brave the questions, “for which no one today is sufficiently daring,” to find the courage to ponder that which is forbidden.  I invite you to walk with me as I wrestle with the philosophical ravings of the “Anti-Christ” — perhaps, we will discover that we, indeed, are his “rightful” readers; or, perhaps, we will discover something altogether unexpected: a way out of the labyrinth . . .

Click here to read part two.

Contrary to most straw-men arguments, ID theorists accept many premises within evolution, but simply deny that natural selection works as an explanation for everything. They believe that across time God has intervened in order to direct evolution or to create irreducibly complex organisms. But by stating that God has directly interjected within creation along the process of evolution means that God has done some pretty nasty things. It would mean that God, not natural selection (which can be attributed to the Fall, even prior to humans) caused multiple natural evils. Even once humans were sentient and in His image, it would mean that He, not natural selection, caused death and suffering in order to help the species evolve as a whole.

Overall, if God interjected along the evolutionary track then He necessarily had to cause evil and take part in evil. Furthermore, it would mean that God’s creation wasn’t up to His standards when it was originally created. Now, one who believes that God sustains creation could easily argue that God allowed creation to exist in a fallen state in preparation of the Fall, but that His standard remained perfect. In fact, this is what William Dembski essentially argues in the previously linked book. But a problem exists when God acts in order to cause an evil rather than simply allowing the evil to occur. Hence, ID poses a serious problem when it comes to the problem of evil. Along with many other reasons, I can no longer consider it a tenable theory for Christians (or theists) to rely upon.