As I’ve argued in these posts, secularism as the fundamental worldview (religion) of Western cultural elites is as weak as the Berlin Wall proved to be. For the time being it appears as durable as the Wall circa 1970s, but as I contend, it’s every bit the paper tiger the Wall turned out to be. In my last post I pointed out that, “The philosophical foundation of secularism is naturalism, or materialism, the view of existence that the material is all there is.” This foundation upon which secularism rests is what makes it so weak, and gives it zero explanatory power. What exactly does this phrase mean?
Simply put, what best explains X, Y, or Z. For example, is a Creator or chance a better explanation for the bumble bee? In science it often comes down to probability, or what the likelihood is of one thing being the case versus another. In logic this is known as “Abduction or, as it is also often called, Inference to the Best Explanation, a type of inference that assigns special status to explanatory considerations.” We can find this type of reasoning used in many different sciences, as well as in courts of law where evidence is presented, and the better explanation will often determine innocence or guilt.
This concept is one of the best tools in our apologetics toolbox for keeping us, and our kids, Christian. I highlighted some examples in the previous post, like morality and death, and that naturalism/materialism has no explanation for why these things exist other than, they just do. The philosophical phrase for this idea is “brute facts”; they simply are, that’s it. No explanation required. To look for any ultimate meaning in these things or why they exist is a fruitless exercise, according to the naturalist/secularist, because we all know the material is all that exists. This is called begging the question (which does not mean “raising the question”), or assuming what you intend to prove. And even though most Americans (97% or so) are not atheists and thus materialists, they live their lives as if the material is all there is. They are “practical naturalists.” Most people don’t have the time or inclination to grappled with any of this, but the cultural air they breath (naturalism) determines their worldview, and thus how they live.
So it’s likely that most of the people you associate with on a daily basis never ask what are to me such obvious questions like, why is there death and what does it mean, or why is their good and evil, etc. But these people are not our primary concern; our kids are, and we should continually encourage them to ask questions of ultimate significance. If you do this long enough you will forever inoculate them against a secularist (agnostic) view of reality. Why? In case it’s not obvious by now, because Christianity has better explanations for everything! C.S. Lewis put it best, per usual, in a talk given on, “Is Theology Poetry?” With poetic simplicity he said:
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.
In other words, Christianity has expansive, amazing, extraordinary, incredibly plausible explanatory power. Can we explain everything? Of course not! We’re finite, in case you needed reminding. But God has given us enough, more than enough, to trust that Christianity is the ultimate Truth about the nature of reality.
This brings me back to where I started, that there is no need for Christian parents to feel insecure about the faith of their children in the face of a hostile secular culture. But this means we can’t take our kid’s faith for granted, that if we just take them to church, and read the Bible and pray with them, that they’ll have a lifelong faith. We have to parent, as I argue in the book, differently in the age we live in; we have to parent apologetically. That takes time and effort, it takes learning, which means reading and listening and watching, a lot. And the more we do that, the more confident we’ll become about the explanatory power of this faith our Lord and Savior bequeathed to us, a confidence our children will catch and embrace, and a faith that will endure.
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