I don’t get into online conversations with unbelievers very often because for some reason people online aren’t in a mood to listen. But recently I did have an exchange with a scoffing atheist — a gentleman who was sure there was no God and he had everything figured out. I like to press Materialists like this (people who believe the physical, measurable world is all there is) into discussing what my old friend Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) called “the Greatness and Wretchedness of man.” Pascal said,
“The greatness and the wretchedness of man are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach us both that there is in man some great source of greatness, and a great source of wretchedness. It must then give us a reason for these astonishing contradictions.”
Pascal’s challenge was world changing for me when I was exploring Christianity. He was so right. What exactly does explain man’s vast superiority to the rest of creation, and why is man so wicked? The Bible is the only place I have ever found the answer to that question. We are wonderful because we are made in God’s image. We are wretched and wicked because man fell. It’s all in the first three chapters of the Bible. Materialism cannot explain either of these two things in a satisfactory way, and certainly cannot explain them together.
I was curious if I could lead my Materialist acquaintance to an awareness of his own status as a sinner (wretched). He had made much of all the unnecessary suffering in the world and he used this as a typical atheist argument against God. I asked him if the universe had no meaning, why does all the suffering in the world bother him? He answered: “Fortunately, I was born with the ability to empathize.” I said, “That’s great! Does your capacity for empathy ever falter? Or are you ever disappointed that you are not more empathetic or do feel you are perfectly empathetic in all situations?”
Q: “Do you think humans are increasing in honor, truth-telling, and self-sacrifice?
A: “I have no idea. I think it’s tied to environment and genetics.”
I assumed he would say, “Yes. Of course I fail to be empathetic sometimes.” I was wrong. “No,” he answered, “I feel what I feel. I never look at another creature suffering and think, boy I should really feel bad for that but I don’t.”
Oh, my! What he claims to feel is consistent with his worldview. Nothing really has meaning in itself, so empathy is not required. It is not a standard to measure oneself, it just appears sometimes. I decided to broaden my inquiry to mankind in general. He had also said mankind, overall, has tended to more cooperation due to basic needs being met. So I asked: “Do you think humans are increasing in honor,
truth-telling, and self-sacrifice? Are humans now less inclined to cheat or take advantage of others, more faithful to their vows, honest in business, hard-working, good listeners, and wise?”
He rejected the question: “I have no idea. I think it’s tied to environment and genetics.” You see, his worldview, his Materialism, cannot find a place for the things we regard as the most sublime and beautiful — the greatness of man. Virtue. The Good. For him, the best things which have entered the human mind and heart all come down to genetics and environment.
Never be afraid of these Atheist-Materialists. They live in a very small, drab world. They believe the world is much less than the greatness of man reveals it to be. Yes, God’s handiwork is seen clearly in the moral vision God gave to man. And man’s folly is clearly seen in his wretched choice to misuse the great gifts God gave him, or deny that God gave those gifts at all.
Here is something else Pascal said almost 400 years ago:
“It is in vain, O men, that you seek within yourselves the remedy for your ills. All your light can only reach the knowledge that not in yourselves will you find truth or good. The philosophers have promised you that, and have been unable to do it. They neither know what is your true good, nor what is your true state. How could they have given remedies for your ills, when they did not even know them? Your chief maladies are pride, which takes you away from God, and lust, which binds you to earth; and they have done nothing else but cherish one or other of these diseases.”
These words are just as true today as when he wrote them.
Yours in Christ,
Originally printed in The AFBC Pony Express. Vol. XV, No. 8, August 2022.