Scientific Materialism and Woke Ideology

KEVIN HARRIS: William Dembski received an email from the National Association of Scholars (NAS) promoting their event with guest speaker Lawrence Krauss. Dembski writes about it on his website.^[1] He says the NAS is fighting against woke ideology. Most of our listeners know what it means to be “woke,” but we’ll define it further in a moment. Dembski, who is prominent among intelligent design theorists, writes,

The NAS here is attempting to stand against the subversion of the academy, and science in particular, from the assaults on freedom of thought and expression by woke ideology. Increasingly, I’m seeing people like Krauss (and Pinker and Dawkins) assume the role as champions of traditional academic values (reason, merit, free discourse) against the barbarian hordes.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. Before we go on to talk about Dembski's editorial, I think it's important that our listeners have some knowledge of what this National Association of Scholars is lest it be confused, for example, with the National Academy of Sciences or something. This NAS is, in fact, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization which is a politically conservative education advocacy group. It advocates and lobbies against multiculturalism, diversity politics, and against courses focused on race and gender issues. I think it's very unfortunate this group should associate itself with people like Lawrence Krauss. Krauss, as you may remember, was accused of sexual harassment of female graduate students and therefore was stripped of his Humanist of the Year award by the Humanist Society. He was banned from Arizona State University campus. There were universities in Canada that cancelled speaking engagements by him. So I think it's really unfortunate that this politically conservative advocacy group would be affiliating or associating itself with figures like Krauss.

KEVIN HARRIS: When I look around online, “woke” is broadly defined as “one’s being alert to social injustice with an emphasis on race while being multiculturally sensitive, inclusive, and politically correct.” Anything you would add to that definition?

DR. CRAIG: I think we have to add to it concerns about LGBT, climate change, pro-choice advocacy. This all gets put together in an odd alliance. These are not natural bedfellows. I mean, what does climate change have to do with pro-choice activity with regard to abortion? And, yet, the woke progressive movement champions all of these leftist causes as part of its ideology.

KEVIN HARRIS: Dembski says it is ironic that these particular scientists are complaining because their philosophy of science is what paved the way for woke ideology. He writes,

And yet, couldn’t it be said that precisely because of the materialist ideology that they have been promoting in the name of science all these years, they have helped bring about the state of affairs in the academy that they are now lamenting—in which woke ideology subverts all that they deem precious in the academy and science?

Scientific materialism, he says, is

the view that science functions to advance materialism and that Darwin is this atheistic ideology’s principal prophet.

Would you like to comment on scientific materialism?

DR. CRAIG: For those who aren't familiar with the term, scientific materialism basically holds that all that exists is spacetime and its contents. So it is basically a physicalist or materialist view of reality. It denies the reality not only of supernatural entities but even of immaterial minds and wants to treat the mind as simply physical in nature. It tends to have an epistemology that rules out anything that is not an extension of the natural sciences. Insofar as metaphysics is tolerated, it will be only those metaphysics that are required by, and consistent with, the deliverances of the natural sciences, principally physics.

KEVIN HARRIS: Continuing the article, Dembski writes,

Is scientific materialism [an offense], and if so, what is it [an offense] against? In fact, scientific materialism is [an offense] against reason in general and against science as reason’s most compelling expression. Scientific materialism is self-referentially incoherent. It’s a snake that eats its own tail and in the end consumes itself. This claim is not new and not just from people like me who oppose scientific materialism. Darwin made the point himself when he raised the following doubt in an 1881 letter to William Graham:

With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?

C. S. Lewis and Alvin Plantinga have extended Darwin’s point. In his book Miracles, Lewis argued that on materialist principles, the mind is the operation of a physical system according to natural laws and thus will proceed with no necessary connection to knowledge or truth.

Plantinga took Lewis’s argument further with his evolutionary argument against naturalism.

Followers of Reasonable Faith know we’ve talked about Plantinga’s argument many times. Remind us what it is all about.

DR. CRAIG: What Dembski calls “scientific materialism,” Alvin Plantinga calls “naturalism.” So he is giving an evolutionary argument against the rationality of believing in naturalism (or, in Dembski’s term, scientific materialism). The argument has basically four steps. It goes like this.

1. Given naturalism and evolution, the probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable is low.

This was Darwin's horrid doubt.^[2] Since our beliefs are selected not on the basis of their content or truth but simply their survival value, there's no reason to think that given naturalism and evolution our cognitive faculties are reliable.

2. If someone believes in naturalism and evolution and sees that therefore the probability of his cognitive faculties being reliable is low then he has a defeater for the belief that his cognitive faculties are reliable.

Someone who believes in naturalism and evolution and sees the truth of premise (1) thereby has a refutation – an objection – that undercuts his belief that his cognitive faculties are reliable.

3. If someone has a defeater for the belief that his cognitive faculties are reliable then he has a defeater for any belief produced by his cognitive faculties, including his belief in naturalism.

So if you have a defeater that your cognitive faculties are reliable, you have a defeater for any belief formed via those cognitive faculties, including your belief in naturalism or scientific materialism.

4. Therefore, someone who believes in naturalism and evolution and sees that therefore the probability of his cognitive faculties being reliable is low has a defeater for the reliability of his belief in naturalism.

Therefore, scientific materialism cannot be rationally affirmed. It could still be true, but it could never be rational to be a scientific materialist.

KEVIN HARRIS: When I look at that argument, I'm thinking: that is airtight!

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. Plantinga worked on it for years honing it. The version I shared was his most recent version of it. I think it is a very powerful argument.

KEVIN HARRIS: Dembski continues,

Plantinga noted that evolution, in its conventional materialist sense, by putting a premium on survival and reproduction, did not—and indeed could not—put a premium on knowing truth. And so any beliefs whatsoever that are compatible with survival and reproduction are, from an evolutionary vantage, as good as any other.

In fact, “goodness” has nothing to do with it. Our minds, as evolved brains adapted to changing environments, simply are what they are. It is irrelevant, for instance, to argue that humans spent the majority of our evolutionary history as hunter gatherers and thus we should respect what worked for our hunter-gatherer ancestors. The conditions of our existence have changed and we are, on evolutionary grounds, entitled to change with them.

Several things about that. I might chase a little bit of a rabbit because I've been thinking about the point that he's developing. I'm concerned that, for example, with all the good the Internet and social media can provide, that there are serious drawbacks that we are discovering. Living online is causing depression, lethargy, loneliness. And some experts wonder whether human beings are designed to handle this much information all the time and this much knowledge of violence and evil that we see that we're privy to – all at the same time. But Dembski says on naturalism this is just the next step in our evolution, so why fight it? Any thoughts? Do you see where I'm going with that?

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I think that's right. As Dembski says, goodness has nothing to do with it. It's just whatever promotes the survival of the species. But here it seems to me that this philosophy seems to imply moral nihilism, not wokeism. There may be my disagreement with Dembski. Wokeism, if you think about it, is a moral realism. It affirms the objectivity of certain moral values, the rightness and wrongness of things like social justice, racial discrimination, sexual discrimination, or inclusion. So I don't think that wokeism represents moral nihilism. Rather, it represents what William Watkins has called “the New Absolutism.”^[3] It's a different kind of moral absolutism than we are used to traditionally, but it is nonetheless a kind of absolutism. But it's one that doesn't have any philosophical foundation in reality. It's just arbitrary.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next, Dembski writes,

It really makes no sense, on evolutionary grounds, therefore to remonstrate with woke ideologues for denigrating reason, dismissing merit, or censoring speech. Math, we are now told, is discriminatory because only the privileged are put in an educational setting where they can learn and excel at conventional math. And so, rather than try to raise the math skills of the un/under-privileged, we are enjoined to treat math as a free play in which all answers are as good as any others (thus we now see taken seriously that 2 plus 2 need not equal 4).

It sounds like a bad joke, but I’ve read reports that there are professors at major universities teaching that conventional math is part of systemic racism.

DR. CRAIG: I have seen the same thing, and I must say I find it bewildering. I do not understand how anyone could seriously entertain such a suggestion. I think we had better hope that the engineers who build our bridges and highways and airplanes don't take seriously this sort of postmodern relativism about mathematics.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next, Dembski writes,

My point is that woke ideology did not arise in a vacuum but is the logical outworking of a materialistic worldview in which humans are meat puppets evolved through a process that has no foresight or purpose and thus that gives life no greater meaning or destiny. . . .

But in fact, woke ideology seems to be prospering quite nicely in the academy and culture as a whole. This is why the National Association of Scholars is getting behind the newly formed University of Austin, which it describes as “a new university dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth.” Steven Pinker has been a supporter of this new educational initiative.

The organizers of the University of Austin are bypassing the academy and culture as they’ve known it, seeking to restore what they regard as having been lost. The formation of the University of Austin sounds hopeful and inspiring to those who have been the butt of woke ideology until one remembers that it’s because woke ideology has so thoroughly infiltrated the mainstream academy that groups like the NAS are jumping ship from it and needing to found new schools where traditional educational values can reign.

Isn’t that interesting? And in a liberal place like Austin, Texas. Dembski says it reminds him of the formation of Christians colleges and Bible schools in the early 1900s founded in response to the liberal theology controlling the mainstream academy.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. Now that is a disturbing note because it was that pullback from the secular academies that isolated fundamentalism and Christianity in the United States and made it irrelevant in the mainstream culture. By founding their own Bible schools and seminaries and withdrawing from the academy, the Christians left the academy prey to all of the forces of secularism. And it's only been now, after many decades, that we are clawing our way back into the mainstream academy where Christian philosophers and physicists and others are now speaking out in the professional societies, publishing with the top academic presses, and getting jobs at these secular universities. So this is tough. I can understand the motivation here, but I sure hope that they don't simply repeat the mistake that Christians did in withdrawing from the wider academy into a kind of isolationist mode.

KEVIN HARRIS: I think you just answered a question that I had that was churning around in my mind. Dembski says in this article that he wishes the University of Austin well but he thinks it will be marginalized just like Christian colleges have been mostly marginalized, and mainstream culture will just keep steamrolling along and ignore them just like you said. So is it preferable for Christians to stay in the mainstream and fight rather than go isolate somewhere? I mean, you've made it a point to speak and debate and interact mostly in the mainstream academy.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. When you look at the University of Austin, it doesn't really deserve to be called a university at all. This is like a little college. The name “university” is being applied to all sorts of little colleges that are not genuine universities in having a wide array of disciplines represented with significant faculty and research going on at them. So probably the impact of this school will be marginal, I think. I think it is important for Christians to be involved in the mainstream academy. Now, as soon as I say that, I need to add that I am a tremendous supporter of Christian education. I, myself, am the product of Christian education such as Wheaton College. The liberal arts education that I got at Wheaton that included the integration of my learning and my faith laid a foundation that has been just invaluable for me in later life. But I did pursue my terminal degrees (my PhD and DTheol degrees) at the best secular universities – University of Birmingham in England, University of Munich in Germany. And then, as you say, I've tried to, to the best of my ability, participate in the academic life of my profession in the mainstream academy.

KEVIN HARRIS: Dembski concludes the article,

The world of scientific materialism is a world with no design ultimately behind it. In such a world, things are not as they are because they were intended to be that way, and things don’t flourish because they are fulfilling their inherent end. In a world without design, it’s not quite fair to say that anything goes—physical laws will limit what can go. But in a world without design, there’s no reason to take seriously any constraints on what can go.

Thus, higher education will with a straight face now allow that two plus two equals five, that freedom of speech is an outdated relic, that reason is a tool of oppression, and that merit is a conceit of the privileged. To their credit, the NAS opposes this nonsense. But this nonsense is the legitimate offspring of scientific materialism, not some bastard child, not some subverting of an otherwise pure philosophy.

Woke ideology is not a betrayal of scientific materialism but its logical conclusion once people realize that on materialistic grounds we are here for no reason and have no destiny beyond this brief life, so that the only meaning our life can have is the meaning we give it, the meaning we construct for it. And if conventional educational values like freedom of thought and expression get in the way of that meaning that we are constructing for ourselves, so much the worse for those values.

Your concluding thoughts?

DR. CRAIG: Again, it seems to me that if someone believes that on materialistic grounds we are here for no reason, we have no destiny beyond this brief life, that all that exists is the physical world and its contents, I don't think that leads to wokeism, at least not logically. What that leads to is just nihilism. So you wouldn't care about social justice. You wouldn't care about racial discrimination. You wouldn't care about transgender rights or things of that sort. The woke ideology is not a form of nihilism or relativism. It is, as I say, the New Absolutism. And what it is doing is replacing traditional values (such as those that Bill Dembski mentioned) with a new set of values. But those new values, it seems to me, are ungrounded by the underlying philosophy of scientific materialism.

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