I can't remember where exactly (maybe in his book, Miracles?), but C. S. Lewis somewhere in his writings notes a certain incoherence in the philosophical stance of scientific materialism. Father Neuhaus in American Bablyon makes the same point in his usual inimitable manner:
"Yes, there are those who embrace simple-minded responses to the quandary [i.e., the mind-matter paradox]. In recent years, the "new atheists", as they are misleadingly called, such as Richard Dawkins, say that we human beings are nothing but "survival machines" and that what we call thought is nothing more than the product of neurosynapses in the pound of meat that is the brain. But, by their own account, they are programmed to talk that way, and, apart from our sympathy for their self-chosen plight, we need pay no mind to what they insist on describing as their mindlessness. Of course they protest that they are making an argument that has a claim upon our intellectual attention, but, try as we might, we cannot agree without denying the existence of the intellect that is the agent of our agreement" (p. 67-68).
My very first posting on this blog dealt with this sort of thing, and I don't want to repeat myself. Let me just say that for argument of any kind, scientific, ethical, theological, philosophical, whatever, to make sense, there must be a transcendent truth independent of human biology that we can access by means of our reason. This is possible because our minds are images of the Mind of the Maker, the source of all Truth. (And if we ever encounter extra-terrestrial intelligence, differences in biological makeup and evolutionary history will not be an insuperable impediment to our common pursuit of truth. Star Trek opens this Friday, so I had to throw that in!) Neuhaus expresses this idea beautifully: "The Catholic Augustinians ... were of the school of the logos , where it is understood that reason participates in the Mind of the Maker, and all that is truly real is love in response to the love by which all that is exists" (p. 72).
I love the way the man writes! I'll conclude this posting with one more quote that reinforces what was said earlier in a particularly compelling way:
"It is a striking oddity of our time that people who ground morality in choice are frequently the same people who claim that we have no choice. That is to say, they subscribe to the dismal idea that our lives and what we call our thoughts, purposes, and choices are all determined by matter in motion -- which is, finally, all that we are. At the same time, they subscribe to the idea of progress as the conquest of nature to, as Francis Bacon said, "relieve the estate of man."
"In short, we are completely captive to the nature we are determined to conquer. We are free to think and to choose, but our thinking and choosing is an illusion, since in reality they are no more than the transmission of impulses between the neurons of the "pound of meat" that is the brain. As the befuddled philosopher is supposed to have said, "As to the question of whether we have free will, we have no choice but to answer yes." This is self-referential contradiction and intellectual incoherence of a high order. It is at the core of the position that asserts with adamant certitude that there is no truth and that's the truth" (p. 77-78).
More on this in my next posting. (Oh, yeah, and the answer to the last "guess the author" is John Henry Newman. The passage is from one of his Parochial and Plain Sermons.)
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"It is at the core of the position that asserts with adamant certitude that there is no truth and that's the truth." This is the basis of secularism, relativism, and all -isms which omit God. In the absence of God, who is "the Truth", any claim of authority or "correctness" internally conflicts. A similar incoherence is present in the notions of inclusivity and equality. For example, those that proport to include often exclude those who support exclusion, all in the name of inclusion. The result is not that both get their wish. Rather, neither does. The exclusionists are ousted for that which they believe ought to be grounds for inclusion while the inclusionists do the ousting as they view the exclusionists as "wrong".
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