He Who Sits in the Heavens Laughs
Philomena Cunk represents the kind of humour at which the Brits are best. She interviews intellectuals and plays the part of a hapless ignoramus. She asks her questions and makes her points with a poker face. Much of the fun is in watching the awkward reaction of her interviewees. But sometimes, perhaps unwittingly, she makes a profound point.
In one memorable clip, she’s interviewing theoretical physicist Dr. Jim Al-Khalili, professor of quantum physics at the University of Surrey in the UK. At one point, she asks, “What’s the point of atoms? Do we really need them?” The professor responds, “We do really need them because we are made of atoms. Everything in the world is made of atoms, so without them we wouldn’t be here.” That eventually leads Philomena to ask, “Are thoughts made of atoms?” “Well, no…” “Well, there you go then…”
This reminded me of a debate between Greg Bahnsen and Gordon Stein which took place in 1985 – 40 years ago. In his first cross-examination of Stein, Bahnsen asked him about laws of logic. Stein agreed that they exist and that they are immaterial. When Stein cross-examined Bahnsen, he asked for an example of something other than God what is immaterial. Bahnsen immediately responded, “Laws of logic.” That drew a good laugh from the crowd. Bahnsen later came back to this, arguing that, in Stein’s worldview, he had no way to adequately account for immaterial laws of logic. If he were to insist on using the laws of logic with his worldview, he was effectively conceding the debate to Bahnsen.
Stein’s worldview, like that of many, is materialism. Materialism says that the physical world is all there is. There is nothing spiritual, nothing immaterial. As Roxy Music put it way back when, “More than this, there is nothing.”
But, as Bahnsen pointed out, that kind of worldview fails to account for reality. In reality, there are not only laws of logic, there is also love. There are not only scientific laws, there is also beauty. There are universal and absolute moral imperatives. All of these are immaterial and therefore inexplicable from a materialist perspective.
In the Christian worldview, there are both material and immaterial aspects to reality. Take human beings, for example. We are material bodies and immaterial souls in one being. There is more to me than what you can see and touch. There are physical creatures (like us, like dogs…) and then there are creatures without physical bodies (angels). But more broadly, there is a physical realm in which we currently dwell and a spiritual realm in which we will someday dwell. All of this is reflective of God and his creation. God is spirit (John 4:24) – in his divine essence he is immaterial. This God created a material world (which includes immaterial elements). Reality is the way it is because of the real God.
You might think this is all rather cerebral. However, death has a way of making it all quite practical. Materialism says death is a dead-end. It’s hopeless. Like the old Roman epitaph said, “I was not, I was, I am not, who cares?” Perhaps it is some consolation for the unbeliever to think there is nothing beyond that last breath. Yet it hardly compares to the true consolation a Christian has and will have through Jesus Christ – that death has no victory, has no sting, and is but an entrance into a heavenly way of existing. Worldviews matter.
