The guru explains politics

When our Christian apologetics group covered the New Age movement, we, of course, had to read comments by media personality and New Age guru Deepak Chopra , who comes up with great examples of abstract nonsense. I just found out his musings are not restricted to religious matters. He can also spout strangely amusing craziness in political matters, according to The Wall Street Journal, which recently highlighted Chopra's views as set forth in a San Francisco Chronicle column.

Chopra analyzes liberals and conservatives with four major points (you're gonna love this). Here goes--

1. Liberals are freethinkers who wisely question their own assumptions. "One of the virtues of being on the liberal side of politics is that total obedience isn't required. There are no hidden agendas. Ideology doesn't lead to unreason. . . . Liberal politics is based on a non-regimented, all-inclusive approach to democracy. Freedom of thought is paramount."

2. Conservatives, by contrast, are sheep who blindly adhere to crazy dogmas. "It feels as if the inmates are running the asylum--as in the current Republican threat to default on America's debt. . . . If you suppose that the average citizen remembers that the right wing are the very ones who got us into this forlorn tangle of wars abroad, financial collapse, out-of-control spending, and massive bonuses for the rich, you have not felt the power that fear exerts."

3. It is crucial to keep Obama in office, or the crazy, stupid conservatives might take over. "The prevailing sanity of President Obama is something that others and I have taken for granted. . . . It was such a relief to return to humane, non-ideological governance when President Obama won in 2008."

4. Therefore, liberals should stop questioning him and give him their blind support. "All of us who have taken advantage of our liberal heritage to question and criticize President Obama need to step back and consider the radical nature of the opposition. . . . If ever there was a time to stand behind the captain, this is it."

To sum it up even more concisely: Liberals are smart. Conservatives are stupid. We can't let the stupid side win. So we need to be stupid too! How's that for logic? Yeah, his religious views are similarly confusing. If you have a chance, go to Youtube and see how masterfully Greg Koukl knocked down Chopra's so-called arguments in an episode of Faith Under Fire, hosted by Lee Strobel.

Another way to judge between religions and worldviews

For the last couple of blogs, I have been discussing several ways we can judge between various religions, contrary to what relativists believe. Last time I completed the first way to judge -- the factual evidence. This time I'd like us to consider a second way to compare religions, which is to see how logically consistent each one is.

Let's start with deism, so popular back in the 1700s (think Jefferson) but still around today. This is the idea that God created everything, but he left us on our own. Its motto could be taken from Alexander Pope: "Whatever is, is right." Things are determined, no miracles happen. But let's consider some of the logical problems here. This belief system says we have no free will. The simple common sense tells us that cannot be the case--we know we make choices each day. Secondly, this system says we know certain things about God, but how is this possible if there is no revelation?

Now let's consider naturalism, the idea that there is no God, nature is everything. This system of belief makes us nothing but thinking machines. Here's the problem -- If we are only thinking machines, how can we trust our thoughts enough to believe that naturalism is true? Secondly, much like deism, this system says we have no free will. Here's another problem -- how do we get morality in such a system? In other words, how do ethics ("ought") come from "is"? Do molecules generate morality? I don't think so.

Then there's nihilism. If all is useless, why do nihilists believe their thinking and philosophy have substance and value? After all, everything is pointless except what these people tell us -- you see the contradiction there? Also, consider modern art, which often has nihilism at its core. But the artists must think this art has value and meaning, which contradicts nihilism.

What about Eastern religions? They also suffer from contradictory ideas. For example, if all is one as they teach, why do we have individual souls that get reincarnated? Practitioners refuse to follow logical rules, claiming these are just Western ideas. But logic has no cultural boundaries. Another set of problems concerns karma. Who or what works out our karma since there is no personal God overseeing everything? If we are paying off our karma, why don't we remember our past lives? It seems like we are doomed to repeat our failures under this system.

New Age beliefs share much with their Eastern counterparts, so some of the same logical concerns will be repeated. But there are other concerns too. For example, if the self is both universe and the universe-maker as New Agers claim, how can there be an occult that they get in touch with through channeling? Doesn't that suggest another world beyond their reach? If we are divine as they say, why is there human evil? How is it that an impersonal force created personal beings? If we all create our own reality, why do we all share the same reality?

Another popular belief system today falls under the general term postmodernism. Again, it has logical problems. If we make up our own reality as postmodernists claim, why did they write books? After all, nobody would understand what they were trying to communicate if their system is true. If all utterances are a power play as claimed, then that utterance is a power play and we can ignore it. If we are only the product of the blind forces of nature and society, then so is our view that we are only the product of the blind forces of nature and society, so we can ignore it. Postmodernists says we cannot trust human reason, but they prove this theory using human reason.

Let's consider Christian Science. If sickness is an illusion, why do practitioners try to heal Christian Scientists? If "man is incapable of sin, sickness, and death" (as Christian Scientists claim), why do people die? If our physical senses do not tell us the truth about the material world, how can we trust them when we read Mary Baker Eddy's book?

Let's end with a brief look at two other religions today regarding logical consistency. Mormonism gives us what they claim is an objective way to determine truth: a subjective burning in the bosom. Mormons seem to think we will all get the same result because their faith is true, but obviously this is not the case. Jehovah's Witnesses have had to deal with changes in their doctrinal positions over the years. One way they have done that is to claim that the change came from new light given to them by God. But how can new light come from God if it can change?

Of course, this was a quick tour through various religions. If you take the time to examine their key beliefs, you will see many more examples of logical inconsistencies.

But what about Christianity? Charges have been made that it too is logically inconsistent for the doctrine of the Trinity. But notice that Christians do not say we believe in three gods and one god. Instead, we say God is one being who expresses himself in three persons. This doctrine goes beyond reason but not against reason. It certainly is a mystery of the Christian faith, but it is the logical conclusion of two biblical truths -- there is one God, and there are three distinct persons who are God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Again, this is a subject that requires further examination, but look into it for yourself--you'll see that the Trinity solves problems rather than creates problems.

There is obviously much more that could be said here, so I hope you check it out for yourself. You can examine various worldviews and religions for inconsistencies in their beliefs. When you do, I hope you see the superiority of the Christian perspective.

Total truth--three key elements

I'm working my way for the seond time through Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey because it is so useful to Christians today. In our western world it is not considered polite to mix public and private (secular and sacred) areas. This division keeps Christianity from having as big an impact as it could have since the truth of Christianity is assumed to be useful only for the private portion of our lives, having nothing to say about our public selves. This is the third blog on the book with more to come because we all need to be reminded of the total truth that Christianity represents--its value for both parts of our lives and for all of society.

Pearcey says the tragedy of the two-story split is that the things that matter most in life (dignity, freedom, personal identity, ultimate purpose) have been cast into the upper story with no grounding in accepted definitions of knowledge. The bottom story is reserved for reason, scientific knowledge, facts, rationality. But no one can live in that lower story because it takes all the joy and beauty out of life.

Pearcey wants all aspects of life to be injected with a Christian worldview perspective. To do this, she says we must ask three sets of questions:

Creation: How was this aspect of the world originally created? What was its original nature and purpose?

Fall: How has it been twisted and distorted by the fall? How has it been corrupted by false worldviews?

Redemption: How can we bring this aspect of the world under the lordship of Christ, restoring it to its original, created purpose?

One example she uses appeals to me since that's where I work everyday as a teacher -- education. Creation says that children are created in the image of God. Education should seek to address all aspects of the human person. Yet the biblical view of human nature is realistic enough because of the fall to remind us that children are prone to sin and in need of moral and intellectual direction. Children are not naturally innocent and shouldn't be allowed to come up with their own morality. Finally, redemption means that education should help equip students to take up vocations to bring about a better world.

Pearcey says we can use the same three-part format to compare worldviews. Creation refers to ultimate origins (where did all come from? how did we get here?). Every worldview will also offer a counterpart to the fall, an explanation of the source of evil and suffering (what has gone wrong with the world? why is there warfare and conflict?). Finally, every worldview has to instill hope by offering a vision of redemption -- a way to reverse the fall and set the world right again.

As an example, she turns to Marxism. Regarding creation, Marxists believe matter itself is the creative power. The fall, according to Marx, was the creation of private property, bringing about all the evils of exploitation and of class struggle. Redemption, for Marxists, involves destroying private ownership of property. This explains why Marxism has such widespread influence today even though it never produces the classless society it claims. It taps into a deep religious hunger for redemption.

The second example comes from New Age thought. The origin of all things is a universal, spiritual essence. The source of evil and suffering is our sense of individuality, and we solve the problem by being reunited with this essence.

This is the first part of Total Truth. Pearcey has shed light on the secular/sacred dichotomy that restricts Christianity to the realm of religious truth, creating double minds and fragmented lives. She tries to overcome this by training Christians to come up with a biblically based worldview using the structural elements of creation, fall, and redemption.
In the next couple of blogs I'll look at Part Two of her book, which zeroes in on creation with a focus on Darwinian evolution. In the meantime, I hope we all think about how we can live whole lives, bringing Christianity into both the public and the private aspects of our society.