Continuing with James Barham’s The Best Schools interview with design theorist Bill Dembski – who founded this blog – on why “good,” not “evil” is a usual problem for materialists [Put another way: Materialists are much more likely to explain away why people are kind to strangers than why they are not]:
WD: As for the “problem of good,” it poses an obvious and devastating refutation of the materialist position the moment one reflects on it. Whence the indignation of the New Atheists against the injustices and evils in the world, if the world is without value, if it is, as Dawkins puts it, a place of “pitiless indifference”? What is pitting these New Atheists so passionately against the objects of their outrage? Good? The Good? The Platonic form of Good? The goodness of God? The irony gets compounded when they need to explain holocaust rescuers or a Mother Teresa.
I purposely ended my formal remarks in the debate with Christopher Hitchens by citing Mother Teresa. I knew this would be like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Hitchens had done a documentary and then written a book claiming she was a fraud. True to form, Hitchens went on a rant against her once I brought her up, which did not help him in the debate. Hitchens is not the only atheist who needed to explain away Mother Teresa’s acts of charity. E. O. Wilson has done the same.
In a world so filled with evil, why go after Mother Teresa? Because, despite her faults, if her goodness is left unchallenged, it challenges a materialistic worldview that at bottom has no substantive values. It’s fine, on such a view, for values to be explained as culturally or evolutionarily conditioned. But real goodness that transcends such relativism is unacceptable.
TBS: With respect to the “problem of good,” we understand why you raise this as a problem for atheists who are physicalists, reductionists, Darwinists, and others who deny the existence of either purpose or value in any objective sense. Let us call such people “metaphysical naturalists”—they look to the natural sciences, rather than our everyday experience, to tell us what exists. However, all nontheists are not metaphysical naturalists. What would you say to someone—like Aristotle, G.E. Moore, Max Scheler, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hans Jonas, or Thomas Nagel—who is not a traditional theist, but nevertheless believes, on the basis of common sense and introspection, that purpose and value are inherent properties of our universe?
WD: I would say, “We’re on the same page when it comes to purpose and value being objective. Now let’s examine their ultimate source.” It seems to me that Christian theism gives a better account of these, and I would argue as such. I would bring in intelligent design and I would bring in historical evidence for the truth of Christianity. Not surprisingly, I feel much more commonality with Aristotle et al. than with the metaphysical naturalists.
Next: How do you explain bad design?
See also:
Bill Dembski on young vs. old Earth creationists, and where he stands
Bill Dembski on the Evolutionary Informatics Lab – the one a Baylor dean tried to
shut down
Why Bill Dembski took aim against the Darwin frauds and their enablers #1
Why Bill Dembski took aim against the Darwin frauds and their enablers Part 2
Bill Dembski: The big religious conspiracy revealed #3
Bill Dembski: Evolution “played no role whatever” in his conversion to Christianity #4
So how DID Bill Dembski get interested in intelligent design? #5b – bad influences, it seems
So how DID Bill Dembski get interested in intelligent design? #5a
So how DID Bill Dembski get interested in intelligent design? #5b – bad influences, it seems
Bill Dembski: Trouble happens when they find out you mean business
What is Bill Dembski planning to do now?
What difference did Ben Stein’s Expelled film make? Dembski’s surprisingly mixed review
Bill Dembski on the future of intelligent design in science