Transcript Reading: Finishing Marx and Weber, On to Darwin

We’re continuing our survey of the most influential figures in the 19th century. Some of these figures, like Hegel and Marx, were philosophers, while others, such as Darwin and Freud, were scientists. These are the big names of the 19th century, and last time we began our discussion of Karl Marx. We had just gotten to the point where we looked at Marx’s solution to the great inequalities in human society, specifically addressing why there are extreme disparities between the wealthy at the top and those at the bottom who are barely subsisting.

Marx saw this situation as a gross injustice, and I think he was right in identifying that. So, what was his solution? What did Marx propose? His communist solution revolves around an ideal: a society where no one owns private property. In this ideal society, the government owns everything, distributes resources according to people’s needs, and takes from each according to their talents, labor, or work to contribute to the communist society. Communism is not just an ideal; it’s the goal of what Marx believed would naturally happen. According to Marx, after some time of living under a government that owns everything and ensures everyone is working and receiving support, the desire for private property will fade away. Marx didn’t believe this desire was innate to humans but rather a result of conditioning by non-communist societies. After a few generations, Marx predicted, people wouldn’t even think about owning private property. At that point, Marx believed that the need for government would disappear.

This would be the true communist society, where everyone lives in harmony and peace, without crime or conflict. Marx even claimed that all crime would disappear, assuming crime was purely about property, though we know that crimes such as rape, assault, and road rage are not about property. Still, in Marx’s view, the eradication of private property would lead to the end of crime. It's a utopian vision, a prescription for creating heaven on earth, according to Marx.

The first step toward achieving this communist society? Get rid of the wealthy class and seize their wealth. Marx believed this could only be achieved through violent revolution, as the wealthy would never willingly give up their wealth. He argued that the wealthy pass laws to protect their riches, making them wealthier while the poor get poorer. The only way to stop this, according to Marx, was to overthrow the wealthy class by force.

In many ways, this is a very insightful analysis of Western European society, particularly in terms of its stark divisions between the rich and the poor. When Marx wrote, this divide was extreme, and to some extent, it still is. But, of course, I don’t agree with Marx’s solution. Most people who object to communism aren’t against the idea of reducing inequality or helping the poor; they’re objecting to the totalitarian nature of a government that would control everything. Many are skeptical, and I’m one of them, that a government with total control over all resources would fairly distribute support to all its citizens.

Toward the end of the 20th century and into the 21st, we saw communism establish itself not only as an economic and political system but also as part of a global crusade. Communists sought to turn every nation into a communist state, believing that this was necessary for ending worldwide poverty. This effort was aggressive, often using military force to take over countries and impose communist governments, whether the people wanted them or not. However, that program stalled in the latter part of the 20th century, particularly with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some like to say that this represents the defeat of communism by capitalism, but I don’t think that’s accurate. While communism’s global ambitions may have stalled, Marx’s analysis of economic inequality is still too relevant to ignore. Communism may return, though it might not be as militarized or aggressive.

However, I don’t believe Marx’s solution is the answer to solving economic inequality. Instead, I find Abraham Kuyper’s idea of sphere sovereignty to be a more promising solution. We covered this earlier, but briefly, Kuyper’s concept suggests that there are different spheres of human life—such as the family, business, church, education, and government—and each sphere has its own authority. The government’s role is to be even-handed and fair to all citizens, without favoring one group over another.

Though sphere sovereignty comes from Christian thinkers, it’s a principle that applies to everyone. The government should treat all citizens equally and not privilege any group. I believe this model has great potential to create a more just society. I hope to see it implemented in Western democracies because it fits well within that framework. Like capitalism, sphere sovereignty isn’t tied to any one form of government; it can exist under various systems, including democracy. I also agree with Winston Churchill, who famously said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others." In my view, democracy is still the best hope for a more just society.

With that, we’ll leave Marx for now and transition to the next influential figure of this period: Charles Darwin and his theory of biological evolution.

Now, it might be informative for you to know that Darwin’s theory effectively replaced and did away with Aristotle's biology, which had been dominant for over two millennia. Imagine that: Aristotle, who died around 300 BC, still had his biological ideas as the main ones studied in universities until Darwin’s time. That’s quite amazing. Darwin, in his examination of life, species, and speciation, came to the conclusion that species develop naturally and gradually over time, and that this gradual development might explain the origin of all species.

In his famous book, The Origin of Species, Darwin discusses his views on how Christianity relates to his discoveries. He suggests that the laws imposed on matter by the Creator could mean that God created species through secondary means—essentially, through the development of species from earlier forms. Darwin compares this to how God creates individual human beings through the secondary agency of their parents. So, he thought, why couldn’t species originate that way too? That was Darwin’s view at that time. While many people assume Darwin was an atheist, he never made that claim. Later in life, however, he did become agnostic, but not because of his theory of evolution.

Darwin’s doubt about God stemmed from a personal tragedy: the death of his young daughter. The problem of evil—the question of why there is so much suffering in the world if God is in charge—became an insurmountable issue for him. This dilemma, addressed in the Book of Job in the Bible, is one of the oldest theological challenges: why do the good often suffer while the wicked seem to prosper? This deeply troubled Darwin.

It’s tempting to delve into the problem of evil here, but that would require an extensive discussion, and that’s not the main focus today. Suffice it to say, the existence of evil and suffering in the world remains one of the mysteries of how God created the universe. The Book of Job concludes that, while the good sometimes suffer and the evil appear to prosper, things will be made right in heaven and at the Last Judgment. However, it’s hard to see this play out in our everyday lives, and we don’t know why God allows the world to be this way. Similarly, we don’t fully understand why God would want to rescue humanity and offer us eternal life in His kingdom. Both the existence of evil and the offer of salvation are mysteries—using the theological sense of the word, not as puzzles that can be solved, but as truths beyond our comprehension. If you want an explanation beyond “This is God’s will,” you won’t find one, because there isn’t one. That’s simply the way God made the world.

Philosopher Bertrand Russell, a famous atheist, once noted that while we wrestle with the problem of evil, we rarely ask why there is so much good in the world. He suggested that people implicitly assume they deserve the good things but not the suffering. This observation speaks to the complexity of both good and evil in the world.

Returning to Darwin: despite his struggles with the problem of evil, his work focused on developing a biological theory that explained the origin of species, including humans. He believed that God could have created humans through natural processes, just as He did with other species. Over the 20th and 21st centuries, more and more evidence has accumulated in favor of Darwin’s theory of evolution. It seems like a well-supported theory, and I see no reason to reject it. After all, God can create in whatever way He chooses, and if that method involved the gradual development of the human race, so be it.

A lot of opposition to evolution, particularly from fundamentalists, may stem from a misunderstanding of Genesis 2:7, which says, "And God created man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul." Many Christians read this as a miraculous, literal account of how God created humans—forming a man from mud, breathing on him, and bringing him to life, much like Pinocchio becoming a real boy. However, the Hebrew text doesn't actually describe the act of creation in that way.

I’ve consulted with Hebrew experts to clarify this. The phrase "dust of the ground" doesn’t just refer to literal dirt; it’s a phrase that also signifies mortality. It means that God created humans with a mortal body—a body destined to die. The "breath of life" here is not referring to creating a soul from nothing; the Hebrew term used is neshama, which throughout the Old Testament refers to God putting His spirit into a prophet. In this light, Genesis 2:7 is not a creation story but the beginning of the story of redemption. God breathes His spirit into Adam, setting up a redemptive relationship between Adam and Himself, with the potential for Adam to achieve eternal life if he fulfills God’s commands. Of course, we know that Adam failed, and it was Christ who ultimately accomplished what Adam could not, redeeming the entire human race.

It’s important to recognize that Genesis 2:7 is about redemption, not the mechanics of creation. The story that follows in Genesis is also about living in accordance with God’s will—or failing to do so. But that’s a topic for another time.

As we continue our exploration of influential figures from the 19th century, it's clear that the scientists—Darwin and Freud, in particular—play a crucial role. What happens in this period is that science begins to capture the public’s imagination and respect. Philosophers continue to argue over whether we can know there’s a world outside our minds, which seems like a bizarre and unnecessary debate. Yet they’re trapped by the assumption of the empiricists that the mind is like a box, with the senses serving as little holes through which light from the outside world comes in. This metaphor, originally from Locke, leads to the idea that what gets imprinted on the mind are things like colors, sounds, and smells. Kant pushes back against this by saying the mind isn’t a blank slate; it actively organizes what comes in through the senses, imposing space, time, and categories of understanding on what we experience. As a result, what we consciously experience is a combination of external sensory data and the mind’s organizing work.

Now, that’s an awful lot of unconscious "reading in," isn't it? And every one of them is a hypothesis. How does Kant know that the mind imposes on sensations things like time, space, causality, quantity, and logic? How does he know that? If Kant is right about how we know what's in our minds, how could he possibly know the "floor plan" of the mind that he presents to us? That's one of the very things we couldn’t know. It’s not a sensation upon which we’ve imposed space, time, and categories. If his model of the mind is right, we couldn’t know the floor plan of the mind. This is a paradox, one of the inconsistencies in Kant’s system that undermines his position.

So while philosophy sinks in public opinion, the sciences keep rising—mainly because of the many technological spin-offs that come from them. By the 19th century, we've already seen the steam engine and railroad travel. We've seen mechanical reapers that have dramatically increased the amount of grain farmers can harvest, making food cheaper and more widely distributed. There are so many practical benefits, and these keep raising the profile of science in the eyes of the public.

In the 19th century, we also laid the groundwork for innovations like the automobile, the airplane, and air conditioning—all of which became realities in the early 20th century. You might not know this, but the first air-conditioned building was a printing plant in Brooklyn, New York, air-conditioned by Willis Carrier in 1915. So it's clear that much of what we benefit from in the 20th century had its roots in the scientific advances of the 19th century.

As science kept delivering these tangible benefits, philosophers—except for Marx—were still arguing over abstract questions like whether there’s a real world. It makes it sound like philosophers were losing touch with reality, doesn't it?

But Darwin wasn’t. He was dealing with the real world, focusing on biological processes. His real competition wasn't another modern thinker; it was Aristotle. Aristotle’s biological theory, which had persisted for centuries, posited that all species were eternal. According to Aristotle, every species of plant and animal had existed from all eternity and would continue to exist for all eternity. They were unchangeable.

Darwin, on the other hand, said, "Open your eyes! Go out and do some investigation. Instead of sitting in your study and imagining how the world must be according to your theory, go out and see what’s actually there!" What Darwin found was evidence of gradual change in species.

Darwin assumed that life on Earth started with a single original life form, which is something we still talk about today. How did that first life form emerge? How did we go from no life at all to something alive? But, really, why assume there was only one original life form? Couldn’t there have been multiple types of life forms that appeared simultaneously, in different places, under the right conditions? It’s not an unreasonable hypothesis, but Darwin’s main focus was on the natural processes that governed this gradual development, which he saw as a reflection of the laws God imposed on matter.

The final major figure I’ll mention is Sigmund Freud. Before Freud, psychology was mostly laboratory-based—focused on experiments about how nerves transmitted impulses and other physical processes, studied by figures like Helmholtz and Wundt. Freud, however, took these basic principles and expanded them, developing theories that could be applied to human suffering and mental illness. He’s the one who turned psychology into a practical science, one that could treat psychosis and other mental health issues, making it part of the field of medicine.

This was another major advancement in the 19th century, and it brought real benefits to humanity.

I’m just checking my notes here to make sure I don’t forget anything.

Certainly, it’s true that we can take a Christian view of psychology. Many Christian psychologists have done so. We can also take a Christian view of evolution. In fact, we can take a Christian view of nearly anything, according to the philosophical framework I’ve presented. But this doesn’t just mean slapping "God" or "Jesus" onto the end of a theory, like pinning a tail on the donkey at a birthday party. It means recognizing that Christ holds all things together. He’s not just something we tack onto the creation as an afterthought—He’s integral to everything. I’ve been through this point before, so I won’t belabor it now, but it’s crucial to the Christian worldview.

In light of all this, what do we say to someone who asks, “What’s your basis for believing God is real?” It’s not as though you’re claiming you can invite God over for tea or to watch a football game with you. You believe in a being with immense power—one who created the universe and all its laws. You believe that this God came down from heaven, took human form, lived among us, and died to take the punishment for our sins. What could possibly convince you that this story is true?

We’ve already seen that there’s a long tradition of constructing proofs for God’s existence. We discussed Anselm’s famous ontological argument, where the existence of God is inferred from His definition. We also looked at Thomas Aquinas’ cosmological arguments, which point to features of the world around us that suggest the existence of a necessarily existing being. Thomas had five such arguments. Then there’s the argument from design, famously articulated by William Paley around 1802.

Paley’s design argument doesn’t just focus on individual features of the world—it looks at the whole of creation. The human body, animal bodies, plant life—everything, no matter what part of creation we examine, appears to be the product of intelligent design. Paley likens it to finding a watch: if you found a watch and looked at its inner workings, you wouldn’t assume it was a random accident of nature. You’d recognize that it was designed and made with purpose.

Of course, David Hume objected to this argument—and to all proofs for God’s existence. Hume claimed that the only reason the design argument seems convincing is because we’re already familiar with watches and know they’re designed. He suggested we try comparing the world to something we’re less sure about—like a clam or a carrot.

If we compare the world to something like a carrot, does that convince anyone that it had to be designed? The problem with arguments from design is that they often surreptitiously load the dice. You start by comparing the world to something you know is designed, like a watch, and then say, "Well, if it's like a watch, then it must be designed." Of course, that sounds convincing because you're already comparing it to something you know has been designed.

One of the objections I find compelling comes from John Venn, the logician who developed the Venn diagrams. He argued that no matter how improbable it seems that something wasn’t designed, that doesn’t prove it was designed unless the ratio of designed to undesigned things in the world is favorable. If there are 10 billion undesigned things for every one designed thing, and the chances of something being an accident of nature are one in 10 million, it's still more likely that it wasn’t designed. And here's the kicker: you can’t know the ratio of designed to undesigned things unless you already know whether God exists. If God exists, then everything is designed. If He doesn’t, nothing is. That’s why the argument from design ultimately doesn’t work—it presupposes the conclusion it’s trying to prove.

So, what can I offer in response to the question: "What are the grounds for believing in God?" I want to make one thing absolutely clear: it’s not any argument or hypothesis. It’s not a theory or a guess made to explain things. The foundation of belief in God is religious experience. People who believe in God do so because they experience God. It’s not a guess or a hypothesis that needs proof. It’s something self-evident.

When we experience something directly and find it self-evident, we don’t need proof. Self-evident truths don’t rely on deductions from other information; they are immediately apparent. For example, I don’t need a chain of reasoning to see that 1 + 1 = 2. It’s true on the face of it. Similarly, the rule that every natural number is an increase over the preceding number by the amount of the first number is self-evident. That’s why arithmetic works as it does.

The capacity for recognizing self-evident truths isn’t infallible, of course. We can make mistakes, but those mistakes are often corrected by more accurate perception or better thinking. Still, self-evident knowledge is indispensable. For example, it’s self-evident that something can’t be both true and false in the same sense at the same time. This isn’t something we deduce—it just looks prima facie true.

What does this have to do with religious experience? Well, I’m suggesting that, just like sense perception can be self-evident, so can religious experience. We don’t need to deduce the existence of God through a long chain of reasoning; for many people, their experience of God is direct and self-evident, just as seeing rain through a window is self-evident. You don’t conclude it’s raining by going through a series of premises. You simply look out the window and see that it’s raining. It’s evident to you.

So why isn't religious experience traditionally included in discussions of self-evidence? That’s where we get into some historical baggage. Aristotle, one of the towering figures in philosophy, gave us the idea that there must be self-evident truths because you can’t have an infinite regress of reasoning. At some point, knowledge must rest on self-evident truths. But Aristotle also placed certain restrictions on what could count as self-evident, and religious experience didn’t make the cut. That decision has influenced philosophical thought ever since.

But the basic idea still holds: not everything needs proof. Some things are self-evident, and for many people, religious experience falls into that category. It’s an encounter with something real, something foundational, and it doesn’t require argument or evidence any more than seeing rain or understanding that 1 + 1 = 2.

Aristotle recognized the importance of self-evidence for grounding knowledge. He knew that you can’t justify everything through endless chains of reasoning. At some point, the chain has to stop with something that’s immediately and undeniably true. But he imposed three restrictions on what could count as self-evident, and that's where the debate about religious experience comes into play.

Aristotle placed three specific conditions on what could count as self-evident truth, beyond just being prima facie true and not deduced from anything else. These three additional requirements are crucial in determining whether a proposition is truly self-evident. Here's what they are:

Universality: The proposition has to be evident to everyone, particularly all the experts in the relevant field. If it's a mathematical principle, all mathematicians must recognize it. If it's a biological truth, all biologists should see it. In other words, it’s not enough for you to recognize it as self-evident; everyone in the field must recognize it as such. If not, it doesn't count as self-evident.

Necessity: The proposition must be necessarily true, meaning it expresses a law or rule that cannot be otherwise. This is why Aristotle wouldn’t count ordinary sense perceptions as self-evident truths. For example, saying "there is a bookshelf behind me" is not self-evident because it isn’t a necessary truth—it could be otherwise. The bookshelf could be empty or there might not be a bookshelf at all. So, self-evident truths must reflect something that must always be true.

Infallibility: If a proposition is self-evident, it must yield infallible truth. In other words, if you meet the first two conditions (universality and necessity), the resulting truth must be impossible to be wrong about. Infallibility here means that there's a capacity within us to grasp something in such a way that we cannot make a mistake about it. It's not just certainty—it's an impossibility of error.

Now, the notion of infallibility is key. It's a higher standard than mere certainty. Certainty is when you feel sure about something, but infallibility means there is no possibility that you could be wrong. There's something in the nature of self-evident truths, according to Aristotle, that ensures they are absolutely beyond mistake.

In our next session, we’ll dive deeper into these restrictions and explore how they relate to religious experience, particularly experiences of God. This will be the focus of our final discussion.