Apologetics Session 6: Atheism: Empiricism and Materialism

Establish the need: What do you do when someone say they don’t believe in God because they never seen God? There is an assumption of empiricism in that objection and that needs to be dealt with.

Purpose: We will look at four focus to help us think about worldview in apologetics

1. Reminder of how to refute worldviews
2. Definitions with the atheist worldview
3. Problem with Empiricism
4. Problem with Materialism

Reminder of how to refute worldviews

This was from the last session: How do we refute worldviews? It is helpful to think of the circuit board as ways worldview does not work:

1. One critique: Is their epistemology, ethics and metaphysics arbitrary? (Analogy: The wires and switches are taken apart and laid all over the place)
2. Second critique: Is their epistemology, ethics and metaphysics inconsistent? (Analogy: The switches are broken, does not allow electricity to flow)
3. Third critique: Is their epistemology, ethics and metaphysics have explanatory power to give account for reality?(Analogy: No battery)

Why we do this is because it’s a clash of systems and not just an argument over minor facts.

Definitions with the atheist worldview

1. Atheism: The belief there is no God who exist.
2. Naturalism: “Naturalism is the basic belief that the material universe is all that there is in existence. This means the universe is a closed system, with no supernatural explanation for any of life’s questions.”[1]
3. What is materialism: “Materialism is the view that everything is ultimately in nature. At the most fundamental level, everything that exists consists of nothing but matter and energy.  Everything is governed by the basic laws of physics and, in principle, can be complete explained in terms of those physical laws.  Every object is a purely physical object.  Every event that occurs have a purely physical cause (if it has any cause at all).  In short, the universe is just a collection of clumps of matter following the laws of physics.”[2]
4. What is empiricism:
   1. “Knowledge is limited to the senses.”[3]
   2. “empiricism, in philosophy, the view that all concepts originate in experience, that all concepts are about or applicable to things that can be experienced, or that all rationally acceptable beliefs or propositions are justifiable or knowable only through experience. This broad definition accords with the derivation of the term empiricism from the ancient Greek word empeiria, ‘experience.’”[4]
   3. In my own words empiricism is the means of knowing things only through your five senses (see, taste, touch, smell, hear); this can involve tools enhancing our senses such as telescopes and microscopes.
5. The relationship of Materialism to empiricism
   1. According to John Frame: “One’s view of reality will determine, to a great extent, his view of knowledge, and vice versa.”[5]
   2. Given this interdependence I want to give an illustration: See Apologetics Sermon Illustration #75: Shape Sorter Toy and how epistemology shape Metaphysics

Problem with Empiricism

1. Remember Empiricism’s criteria: For something to be considered knowledge it is through the five senses.
2. Problem 1: Senses themselves should not rule out an existence of things beyond the five senses
   1. The senses are tools to know about aspect of the physical world; it should not be made absolute as the only way to know things.
   2. An analogy: “Yet the deaf person has no right to deny the existence of sound just because he cannot hear. Likewise, because scientific knowledge is limited to the study of the cosmos, it is insufficient to make the claim that only the cosmos existed.”[6]
3. Problem 2: Categorical fallacy
   1. The nature of the Biblical God is Spirit (immaterial) and He is distinct from His creation and creatures; it is then using the wrong tools to try to establish directly His existence through the five senses.
   2. To use the senses to disprove God is the equivalent of asking what is the color of musical note C and therefore since we don’t see musical note C has colors, therefore it does not exist.
   3. An analogy: “Looking for empirical and material evidence for a spiritual and invisible God in a physical and material universe is like looking for the builder of a house in the parts of the house itself.”[7]
4. Problem 3: Empiricism means we cannot know other things that we do know and taken for granted
   1. We would also not know ordinary things in daily life. Jeffery Johnson states: “If we assume that personal experience is the only way to prove anything, then we will not believe houses have builders unless we meet those builders in person.”[8]
   2. If empiricism is true would not be able to know things that are not empirical in nature: Laws of logic, mathematics, morality and the existence of other minds.
5. Problem 4: Empiricism is self-refuting
   1. Empiricism is an idea.
   2. One does not see, taste, touch, smell or hear “empiricism.”
   3. Therefore if empiricism is true you can’t know the idea of empiricism itself!
6. Problem 5: Rather than Empiricism being foundation for knowledge it turns out the empirical method actually needs other non-empirical presuppositions that’s foundational for empirical knowledge to work.
   1. One cannot know empirically the concept of space and time. As Gordon Clark explains: “If knowledge is a result of sensory experience, or even of internal experience—if after Hume there can be any internal experience—how could the ideas of space and time be obtained?  Time has never been impressed on the senses so that we might have an image of it.  If anyone thinks he has an image of time, let him describe its color, its shape, and smell…Similarly, with respect to pace Kant argues that the idea of space is not abstracted from external sensations, for I cannot conceive anything external to me except by representing it as in a place where I am not.  Therefore external perceptions do not originate but presuppose the idea of space.”[9]
   2. Also the reliability of our sense needs God who designed it to be reliable: “The hearing ear and the seeing eye, The LORD has made both of them” (Proverbs 20:12)

Problem with Materialism

1. Remember Materialism’s criteria: What is real and anything that exists would have size, shape, speed and mass.
2. Problem 1: Materialism is self-refuting
   1. Materialism is an idea.
   2. Materialism does not have size, shape, speed and mass.
   3. Therefore if materialism is true, materialism is false.
   4. Anytime something is true and is right away false, it is self-refuting.
3. Problem 2: Materialism destroys rationality, since no opinions of men are ultimately any better than another
   1. James Anderson explains: “In a godless, mindless, purposeless material universe, on what basis could one clump of matter be ultimately considered any better or worse than any other clump of matter?” [10]
   2. Thus if materialism is true it makes it is meaningless for the materialist to argue for materialism, between one carbon bag of space dust to another carbon bag of space dust.
   3. The point here is there’s no point in comparing different minds (rational vs irrational).
4. Problem 3: Materialism destroys the prescriptive nature of morality and laws of logic
   1. James Anderson explains: “In the Materialist worldview, the only real laws are the laws of physics. But the laws of physics only tell us how clumps of matter do  They tell us nothing at all how clumps of matter ought to behave, in any meaningful moral sense.” [11]
   2. Thus the very conclusion the materialist subscribe to, to say there is no God, that Christianity is false, etc., makes the debate meaningless since he cannot say you ought to believe this, or ought not to believe that, but there’s not the possibility of prescription and ethics in his worldview.
5. Problem 4: Fatalism
   1. Atheist Francis Crick said “You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules”[12]
   2. If everything is physical determinism by impersonal forces, then its fatalism: gone with it is responsibility, choice, hope, etc.
   3. It also makes belief in God by someone as something that they is their fate for believing so why would a materialist even have a good reason to argue against Christianity if materialism is true?
6. Problem 5: Materialism destroys rationality, since thinking is based upon the irrational
   1. See: Apologetics Sermon Illustration #36: Doing Math with Dice and Atheism’s Destruction of Knowledge

[1] Jeffery Johnson, The Absurdity of Unbelief, (Conway, AR: Free Grace Press, 2021), 129.

[2] Jeffery Johnson, The Absurdity of Unbelief, (Conway, AR: Free Grace Press, 2021), 129-130.

[3] James Anderson, What’s Your Worldview?: An Interactive Approach to Life’s Big Questions, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2014), 69.

[4] Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/empiricism

[5] John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1987), 87.

[6] Jeffery Johnson, The Absurdity of Unbelief, (Conway, AR: Free Grace Press, 2021), 164.

[7] Jeffery Johnson, The Absurdity of Unbelief, (Conway, AR: Free Grace Press, 2021), 165.

[8] Jeffery Johnson, The Absurdity of Unbelief, (Conway, AR: Free Grace Press, 2021), 165.

[9] Gordon Clark, A Christian View of Men and Things, (Unicoi, TN: The Trinity Foundation, 1998), 205.

[10] James Anderson, What’s Your Worldview?: An Interactive Approach to Life’s Big Questions, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2014), 70.

[11] James Anderson, What’s Your Worldview?: An Interactive Approach to Life’s Big Questions, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2014), 70.

[12] Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, (New York, NY: Touchstone, 1994), 266.  Quoted in Jeffery Johnson, The Absurdity of Unbelief, (Conway, AR: Free Grace Press, 2021), 168.

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