Walking Off the Map

In Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning, Nancy Pearcey argues that one question we need to ask of any worldview is “Does it fit the real world? That is, can it be applied and lived out consistently without doing violence to human nature?”

Because human are created in God’s image and live in God’s world, at some point every nonbiblical worldview will fail the practical test. Adherents will not be able to apply it consistently in practice—because it does not fit who they really are.

Pearcey calls this inability to live according to one’s worldview “walking off the map.” People who do this go into “terrain that their map does not account for.”

Atheist and naturalistic philosopher Richard Dawkins is an example of someone who cannot live in a way consistent with his worldview. Dawkins

argues that from a naturalistic perspective, we should not hold individuals responsible for what they do. After all, he says, the human brain is merely an advanced computer. And when a mechanism malfunctions, we don’t punish it, we fix it.

During question period, at an event when Dawkins was promoting his book, a young man in the audience asked Dawkins, “If humans are machines, and it is inappropriate to blame or praise them for their actions, then should we be giving you credit for the book you are promoting?”

Dawkins quickly backtracked. “I can’t bring myself to do that,” he responded. “I actually do respond in an emotional way and I blame people, I give people credit.” We might say that in real life, Dawkins keeps walking off his own map. He acts in ways that his worldview does not account for.

The young man presses the point further: “But don’t you see that as an inconsistency in your views?”

Dawkins replied, “I sort of do, yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with—otherwise life would be intolerable.” It was an astonishing admission that in practice no one can live by the naturalistic worldview he himself promotes—that its consequences would be “intolerable.”

If you have to walk off your map in order to live, something is wrong with your map.

Comments

[Kim in ON]

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