We pause in examining the Mahler vs. Rosebrough debate to consider a 12 minute video that Jon Harris put out. Harris is a somewhat popular Christian podcaster and author that has joined the recent wave of Natural Law chaps to tut tut against the concept of worldview. In this video that I am responding (it’s on TwitteX) Harris explains why he no longer uses the term “Worldview” and in explaining that he is at the same time advocating to others that they perhaps should also give up on the reality of Worldview thinking.

Now, I am a convinced believer in the reality of Worldview. I was first exposed to the idea when I was a Freshman in Undergrad and I have pursued it and studied it and employed it ever since. I’ve read a great percentage of the material written on it as coming from the various Worldview schools and naturally enough I think Harris is dreadfully wrong here. Also, naturally enough, I have an interest in repudiating the dreadfully bad arguments that are now routinely raised against it. I am convinced that Worldview thinking is an inescapable reality. That is to say that I believe that this is the way that all people think.

I would submit the following few volumes that demonstrates convincingly that Worldview thinking is inescapable;

Thomas Kuhn — “Structures in Scientific Revolutions”
Vern Poythress — “Science and Hermeneutics”
Peter Novick — “That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession”

First, Harris complains about the teaching in Worldview thinking that there is no such thing as a bare naked fact so that all facts are interpreted facts. Jon just doesn’t think that is true. The classic examples that suggests Jon is in error here is the discovery of a fossil as made by a two man team comprised of a Darwinian Evolutionist (DE) and a Christian Creationist (CC). The DE looks at this fossil they both discovered and concludes that this fossil is 100s of millions of years old and is a classic proof substantiating Darwinian Evolution. The CC, on the other hand, looks at the very same fossil and concludes that this fossil demonstrates that the earth is young and that God created in 6 days all good.

Now, the fossil is the fossil. It has not changed. What the difference between this duo of paleontologists is not the fact of the fossil they have before them. The difference is the different Worldview that each man adheres to before they were introduced to the fossil. The fossil is a fact to be sure but it is a different fact depending on the Worldview of the person examining the fact. Thus, we see that Jon is wrong and that all facts though they are facts in and of themselves can only be be facts as they are indeed interpreted as facts in keeping with the Worldview grid that appraises them.

Now, we are faced with the problem of “common notions,” that Jon brings up. Jon seems to think that both believers and unbelievers can have common notions. It is surprising to me given the cultural atmosphere that we live in that Jon would want to argue for common notions because if ever a time existed to prove that the idea of common notions should not be over-much banked upon, these are those times. Take for example, the once common notion that it was not possible for a woman to be born into a man’s body. Fifty years ago we could have rightly said, “now there’s a common notion if ever there was one,” and yet we all know today that in the West we are awash in people denying this common notion and insisting that, “yes men can be born into the body of women.” What about the notion that seemingly should be common that surgeons lopping off teen girl’s breast and prescribing testosterone to women because they are really men caught in the woman’s body? At one time the great common notion medical motto was “Do No Harm,” and yet we are living in a time where that common notion is no longer universally common and so is disputed. What about the common notion that was once more widely accepted that “women carrying babies in their wombs should understand that what they are carrying are indeed yet to be birthed babies?” As you know, this is no longer a common notion but instead what women are carrying are no longer un-born babies but instead are fetuses. We could give Jon a dozen more once common notions that are no longer common. How about the once common notion that it is boys can’t marry boys and girls can’t marry girls? How about the once common notion that we don’t provide litter boxes for furries (humans insisting that they are animals) in Government schools?

The reason that these notions are no longer common is because of the Worldview shift in the West. These once common notions were once common because the culture in the West was one where those who were not Christian in the West were still influenced by Christian categories and so had, with felicitous inconsistency, adopted Christian capital (assumptions / givens) into their thinking so as to assimilate in their thinking in line with a Christian Worldview. However, as the West has departed from its once Christian basis more and more people have become consistent in their anti-Christian Worldview and in doing so have deleted a good share of the Christian capital they once embraced with the result that common notions are getting less and less common, thus disproving Jon’s insistence that Worldview thinking is not true.

Jon also suggests that there are some bare essential truths (common notions) that come through to all people. Here we say that Jon is correct but only in a very constrained way. It is true that some bare essential truths come through but notice how the Confession phrases this when it writes about the Inadequacy of the Light of Nature;

There is, to be sure, a certain light of nature remaining in all people after the fall, by virtue of which they retain some notions about God, natural things, and the difference between what is moral and immoral, and demonstrate a certain eagerness for virtue and for good outward behavior. But this light of nature is far from enabling humans to come to a saving knowledge of God and conversion to him—so far, in fact, that they do not use it rightly even in matters of nature and society. Instead, in various ways they completely distort this light, whatever its precise character, and suppress it in unrighteousness. In doing so all people render themselves without excuse before God.

Similarly, Jon has against his notion of common notions Zacharias Ursinus in the commentary Ursinus wrote on the Heidelberg Catechism he wrote;

 

Rosebrough and Mahler next go back and forth on whether or not German Fascism was a form of Marxism. Here I score a point for Rosebrough because German Fascism was a form of Marxism. Now, certainly it was a different form of Marxism as expressed among the Communists but they both embrace shards of Marxist thought. Even Hitler admitted this;

“National Socialism derives from each of the two camps the pure idea that characterizes it, national resolution from bourgeois tradition; vital, creative socialism from the teaching of Marxism.”

Adolf Hitler
Interview with Hanns Johst in Frankforter Volksblatt
January 27, 1934

People need to realize that there have been countless variants of Marxism and that the various Marxists disagreed with one another hammer and tong over the decades.

In terms of Marxist variants I offer these just off the top of my head. More could be adduced;

1.) Syndicalists
2.) Mensheviks
3.) Bolsheviks
4.) Nihilists
5.) Max Stirner’s Libertarian Marxists
6.) Anarchists
7.) Cultural Marxists (Originating with Italian Antonio Gramsci)
8.) Trotskyites
9.) National Socialism
10.) Bundism
11.) Maoism
12.) Leninism
13.) Stalinism

Marxist thought has spawned countless movements much like larva spawn flies and if one has studied Marxism at all one realizes that they all hated one another like water hates oil, and yet, once one expression had reached an ascendency often people from the other elements would join that expression which had become hegemonic. This explains, why so many rank and file German communists eventually joined the National Socialist movement. It just wasn’t a stretch for them to enter into this slightly different expression of Marxism. Hitler hinted at this;

It is not Germany that will turn Bolshevist, but Bolshevism that will become a sort of National Socialism. Besides, there is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separate us from it… The petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communist always will.

Rosebrough grilled Mahler regarding Mahler’s insistence that there is no such thing as the individual. Instinct rises here to agree with Rosebrough but when Mahler makes clear what his definition of “the individual” is one has to agree that Mahler is correct. Mahler is not saying individuals do not exist and all that exists is a hive. Mahler is saying that no individual can claim that he or she are what they are independent of any other considerations. All of us, as individuals, are what we are because of descent as well as the multitude of interrelationships that we develop over the course of our lives. Mahler is merely saying that no man can claim to be sui generis in his individuality.

Mahler, given his definition of individualism (which is admittedly incredibly atomistic) is correct that individualism doesn’t exist.

Now, there are implications though here that need to be examined. Is Mahler saying that because there is no such thing as the individual, given his definition of the individual, that therefore Government arrangement that only emphasize the collective are therefore the best. Corey Mahler did say that he believed in property rights and if that is the case it does strike me that Mahler allows for the existence of what most people would call “the individual” in this political theory. Having said that, Fascism as a political system, which Mahler seems to prefer, has had as a weakness the loss of the individual as that is commonly understood in Western political history. The loss of the individual in a political ecosystem would be a severe loss. To be honest this is one of my concerns about any collectivist political system, but this concern has to be set against the fact that our system of so called individual freedom has, for whatever reason, failed and because of the collectivist agencies in our culture (public schools, churches, media) the rugged American individual largely no longer exists. Our population is as characterized by mindless bots (cogs in a machine) as any collectivist political system you’d like to name. Because of that, Fascism becomes less scary though one could still like to daydream about a system, influenced by the Christian categories of the temporal “One and the Many,” based as it would be on the eternal one and the many could still predominate so that a genuine individualism could exist alongside a healthy collective impulse.

Because, we as a people are no longer Christian, and as such have surrendered how belief in the Trinitarian God permeates a social order, we have surrendered the Trinitarian idea of God’s plurality as expressing itself in our social order/culture in favor of a Unitarian conception of God as located in our State organs. Having given up the God of the Bible in His One and Many expression, we have embrace a Oneism in our social institutions that is no longer complimented by a genuine plurality of authority in our various other institutions. As such we are a collectivist people who believe that in the State we live and move and have our being. This is not a whit different than what one can find in collectivist social orders. The idea that Americans, speaking generally, know anything about true biblical individualism is a joke. This is because all our cultural mediating institutions that once existed in order to drive a true individualism because they were not beholden to a Statist arrangement have been co-opted by the state.

There is no use in Rosebrough arguing for a Democracy where the individual can exist because those days are long gone with the advent of the government schools as combined with the constant conditioning that comes from pulpits and media outlets. All of these work in harmony to collectivize the American mind so that no individual really does exist today. Rosebrough himself, in this debate, reveals over and over again that he is just another collectivist clergy bot reinforcing the collectivist narrative.

Give Rosebrough 1/2 a point for valuing the individual. Take 1/2 point away from Rosebrough for not realizing that the individual no longer exists. Give Mahler a point for being able to read the tea leaves on this subject. Take 1/2 point away from Mahler for not valuing the individual enough.

Final analysis … Mahler + 1/2 point.

Total so far … Rosebrough 1/2 point …. Mahler 1.5 points.

Recently there was a debate between two Lutherans here on the subject of political governance. Rosebrough was taking the “Democracy is good” side while Mahler was taking the “Democracy needs to be replaced with Fascism” side.

Overall, I think I was able to be an objective observant because I want nothing to do with either Democracy or Fascism. However, to be fair, I hate Democracy as it is and I can envision a Fascism that would be superior to the Democracy we currently have, though I can also easily envision a Fascism that would be worse than the current Democracy we have.

A few observations;

1.) I am not usually able to sit through these long podcast interviews/debates because they can get so tedious and tendentious. However this one I made through the whole 2 hours 40 minutes. I guess I was captivated by both Rosebrough’s density and Mahler’s unflappability.

2.) Since these chaps were both Lutherans there were times when I, as a Biblical Christian, did not agree with either one. At those points I was completely left agog.

3.) My comments follow the order of the debate. So, if my comments seem disconnected to you you will have to go to the point of the conversation between Rosebrough and Mahler to see what I am getting at.

Turning to my comments on the debate;

1.) Rev. Chris Roseborough faults Corey Mahler for opposing Democracy and yet our founding Fathers viciously opposed Democracy. Idiot points for Roseborough.

Here are Founding Father on Democracy;

“Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to Say that Democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than Aristocracy or Monarchy.”   -John Adams

“Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.” ~ James Madison

“It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.” ~ Alexander Hamilton

To put pure and simply, “Democracy sucks.” Americans were never given a Democracy but rather were bequeathed a Representative Republic wherein the franchise (vote) was, generally speaking, (exceptions existed in the states) limited to free white men who owned property. Further the US, when it voted to instil the 17th amendment went even further in its embrace of wicked Democracy.

Indeed, all wise men now oppose this Democratic form of Government the US currently has because it is not anywhere near consistent with what we find in the US Constitution. Corey Mahler is correct in opposing Democracy.

Score this point for Mahler.

“Worldview” is a reactionary word. Evangelicals found themselves embattled with innumerable, well-accepted ideas in complex fields requiring specialization that seem to oppose conservative Christianity. The average person lacks the expertise in these fields to challenge them on their own terms and by their own methodology. Yet they need to be challenged, because modern life strongly imposes them on everyone. “Worldview” was introduced to neutralize these ideas for the average person, not by analyzing data, refuting propositions, showing invalidity, criticizing methodology, knowing the actual facts on the ground, etc. but by blaming them on “presuppositions.”

BLMc replies,

Of course Wolfe is wrong here as Orr notes above;

“The thing in itself(Worldview)  is as old as the dawn of reflection and is found in cruder or more advanced form in every religion and philosophy with any pretension to a historical character.”

Worldview did not jump out of Zeus’ head in the 20th century as Wolfe errantly writes. As such, it is clearly not a “reactionary word” or concept. Here Wolfe just makes assertions without any proof.

In point of fact, an argument can be made that it was not the Christians who first developed an epistemologically self-conscious muscular worldview but rather that it was the Darwinians. If one considers the writings of Herbert Spencer in “Worldviewizing” the Darwinian conclusions in biology one can easily see that it was the pagans who were going all reactionary against the already established Christian Worldview.

For the evidence that a pagan worldview had long been established we read;

 (This essay) shows that his (Spencer’s) evolutionism was originally stimulated by his association with the Derby philosophical community, for it was through this group—of which his father, who also appears to have espoused a deistic evolutionary theory, was a member—that he was first exposed to progressive Enlightenment social and educational philosophies and to the evolutionary worldview of Erasmus Darwin, the first president of the Derby Philosophical Society. Darwin’s scheme was the first to incorporate biological evolution, associationist psychology, evolutionary geology, and cosmological developmentalism. Spencer’s own implicit denials of the link with Darwin are shown to be implausible in the face of Darwin’s continuing influence on the Derby savants…

Paul Elliott
Erasmus Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and the Origins of the Evolutionary Worldview in British Provincial Scientific Culture, 1770–1850

What the above quote demonstrates is that

1.) Worldview thinking was already in high gear as practiced by the heathens long before the timeframe that Wolfe errantly proclaims in his observation above.

2.) Worldview thinking was decidedly not introduced by Christians for the reasons that Dr. Wolfe asserts.

3.) Worldview as a philosophical concept long predated the 20th century as Wolfe errantly asserts.

4.) As such worldview as a philosophical concept was never a “reactionary word” as Dr. Wolfe errantly insists.

5.) Dr. Wolfe doesn’t know what he is talking about when he writes,

“Worldview” was introduced to neutralize these ideas for the average person, not by analyzing data, refuting propositions, showing invalidity, criticizing methodology, knowing the actual facts on the ground, etc. but by blaming them on “presuppositions.”

Worldview decidedly was NOT introduced for the reason that Wolfe elucidates. As the opening Orr quote indicates Worldview was not introduced in the 20th century by Christians quaking in their boots at the onslaught of modernity but rather is a truth that, as Orr wrote,

“itself is as old as the dawn of reflection and is found in cruder or more advanced form in every religion and philosophy with any pretension to a historical character.”

All of the above demonstrates that Dr. Wolfe just doesn’t know what he is talking about when he writes about the history of Worldview thinking. In brief what Wolfe says above is embarrassingly stupid and could only be written by someone whose worldview had an a-priori interest in claiming that worldview thinking is not true.

Dr. Stephen Wolfe continued his diatribe;

And “worldview” explained social phenomena with exclusively Christian explanations.

BLMc continues,

Here Wolfe contradicts the Reformed theology of the antithesis which claims the antithesis is a theological principle that is meant to describe the difference between believers and unbelievers and the way they think. There are many ways that we could describe that difference, but we must at the very least describe that difference as limning out the fact that because believers and heathens have different ultimate faith commitments those different ultimate faith commitments color the way each view the totality of life.

As such it is inevitable that Christians, because of the Reformed doctrine of the antithesis would explain matters with exclusively Christian explanations.

In previous explanations Dr. Wolfe has demonstrated that he does not understand the idea of total depravity. Here we see that Dr. Wolfe does not understand the Reformed theological idea of “the antithesis.” Dr. Wolfe has previously admitted that he is not a theologian. We wish he would remember that when he gets into these theological forrays. 

Dr. Stephen Wolfe wrote,

These explanations are typically simplistic and don’t explain much. Further, in effect no evangelical sees the need to know anything about these fields. They only need to know a universal method of “worldview analysis.” It’s a general skill for everything.

BLMc responds,

Let me get this straight … owning a uniquely Christian epistemology (we know what we know by way of revelation vs. naked reasoning or some kind of mystic experience or by human tradition) is “simplistic and doesn’t explain much?”

Owning a uniquely Christian ontology (things did not happen by chance or circumstance but by the supernatural intent of a divine creator) is “simplistic and doesn’t explain much?”

Owning a uniquely Christian axiology (the highest value is the Glory of God, the Kingdom of God and the work of Christ as opposed to a axiology that claims that the highest value is the glory of man, the kingdom of man, and the Utopian work of man) is “simplistic and doesn’t explain much?”

Owning a uniquely Christian teleology (the ultimate end/ destination of man is to be homo adorans — man the worshiper who worships the God of the Bible, not owning a teleology wherein man worships himself in either his individualistic or corporate capacity) is “simplistic and doesn’t explain much?”

Dr. Stephen Wolfe writes,

No specialization required.

BLMc  responds,

This is what is called the red herring fallacy. No Christian who embraces worldview thinking in an epistemologically self conscious way suggest that “no specialization is required” is a host of different fields. Wolfe is just poisoning the well here in order to advance his idiotic Thomistic thinking. It’s all very insulting.

Dr. Stephen Wolfe writes,

This is why, I think, some evangelicals convert out of Protestantism. They find that their conservative professors, who actually know the field of study well, are often Roman Catholics (or maybe Anglicans), and they find among them an intellectual ecosystem that favors inquiry and critical thought without importing these “worldview” lenses to explains things away. (I’d also add that evangelical academics tend to be political squishes and center-left, at least in disposition). There is nothing about Protestantism or Roman Catholicism in themselves that explains this. Protestant intellectuals dominated intellectual thought in Europe for centuries. It’s entirely to due to historical dynamics, reaction, and the democratization of apologetics. We would become much smarter if we dropped “worldview” entirely.

BLMc responds,

1.) Nobody denies that a Roman Catholic or Anglican can be inconsistent in their worldview, holding to false doctrines touching soteriology but still managing to be correct on some matters in their field of expertise. Nobody denies that Thomistic mathematicians, for example, can count. The question is always, “can they account for their ability to count given their Thomistic worldview that teaches the autonomy of fallen man’s thinking.

2.) Worldview lenses, contrary to Wolfe’s naked assertion, do not merely “explain things away.” That is another red herring and poisoning the well. Is Wolfe really suggesting that those who embrace Worldview thinking who happen to be in any number of fields have not done the heavy lifting of diving into their field of study but instead merely, (presumably with a flippant wave of the hand) “explained things away?”

What is amusing here is that Wolfe himself is merely “explaining worldview thinking away” with a mere wave of the hand as accompanied by a few mindless and untrue assertions on his part.

3.) In this take down of Wolfe I have not used “worldview lenses” to explain things away. I have taken the time to explain and demonstrate where and how Wolfe is wrong in his various assertion. In point of fact it is Wolfe who has used his worldview lens of autonomous Thomistic thinking to explain things away with a mere wave of his hand followed by insulting comments.

4.) I’ve known plenty of Thomists who have been hard left in their specific fields. When Wolfe talks about Evangelicals (presumably with their Worldview thinking in tow) being squishy leftists this is another shot at Worldview thinking that doesn’t taken into account the many “Christians” in various fields who were Thomistic in their thinking and gave up the flag of Biblical Christianity to the Left. (R2K anybody?)

5.) Of course, I’m convinced that “we would become much smarter if we just dropped Dr. Stephen Wolfe entirely. He is poisoning the whole Christian thinking movement.

Now, I’ve been pretty direct here. Part of the reason for that is the gross inaccuracy on Wolfe’s part. Part of it is because how insulting Wolfe has been. The largest part of it is because there is a great deal of stake here. If we as Christians go the direction that Wolfe and the R2K chaps want to take us on Worldview thinking it will be a matter of once again returning to the chaos and dark night of intellectual advance.

This is important.