Thursday, February 22, 2018

All other ground is sinking sand

"But Billy," I protested, "you can't do that. You don't dare stop thinking. Do it and you begin to die. It's intellectual suicide."


At the time he said it, Charles Templeton was in the prime of life. But in old age, he suffered from senile dementia. 

What happens to you when you put your faith in your intellect, but your once proud intellect begins to slip away? For an atheist, there's nothing to fall back on. Once your mind is gone, it's gone. 

On YouTube there's an long interview with W. V. Quine. He was the great secular philosopher of his generation. Went from mathematician to mathematical logician to philosopher. The biggest name in postwar Anglo-American philosophy.

But by the time of the interview, he was in his mid-80s, and the great mind was disintegrating. You watch him struggle to answer questions. He speaks in broken sentences. Loses his train of thought. Forgets what he was saying halfway through a sentence.

An atheist, valued for his intellect, losing his mind. What's left? 

Many Christians also suffer from degenerative illnesses. Yet at the resurrection of the just, they will be restored, better than ever. 

The damned will be resurrected, too, but to be punished in the body.  Put your faith in anything other than God, and watch it crumble under the relentless barrage of time. 

3 comments:

  1. The real issue is not whether we stop thinking or not. The real issue is whether or not we let our thinking be disciplined by the Word of God.

    In the section that the link goes to, Templeton equates letting our thinking be disciplined by God's word with 'stopping thinking'. Graham's words, that he was responding to, don't mean "I am going to stop thinking". Templeton's response was a non sequitor. What they said was "my thinking will stay within the boundaries of revealed truth".

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  2. Steve, this is so true, and so forgotten today. Thanks for the reminder.

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  3. Very sobering piece. Good one Steve

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