Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes (42 page)
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Authors: Nancy Pearcey
Tags: #Atheism, #Defending Christianity, #Faith Defense, #False Gods, #Finding God, #Losing faith, #Materialism, #Non-Fiction, #Religion, #Richard Pearcey, #Romans 1, #Saving Leonardo, #Secularism, #Soul of Science, #Total Truth
reductionism, as source of,
48
-
49
,
183
,
185
-
88
Skinner and,
186
tacit exemption for own views,
116
,
188
,
190
,
191
-
92
,
197
,
202
,
257
Sellars, Wilfrid,
237
senses, idol of,
72
-
74
Shamanism,
67
Siddhartha,
65
Situation Ethics
(Fletcher),
94
skeptical crisis,
77
Slingerland, Edward,
150
-
51
,
162
Smilansky, Saul,
156
sophism,
100
special grace,
30
special revelation,
24
spirit of the age (Zeitgeist),
118
,
122
,
123
Star Trek
(television series),
73
-
74
,
260
sunyata
(Buddhist mystical state),
264
“suppress the truth” (Romans
1
:
18
),
32
suppressing the evidence for God from general revelation,
32
-
33
,
38
-
39
,
48
,
53
,
103
-
5
,
111
,
128
-
29
,
134
,
137
,
139
,
149
-
50
,
152
,
157
,
161
,
173
,
209
,
222
,
224
,
256
studies: why people reject Christianity,
58
,
247
-
48
suffering, as context for apologetics,
252
Symons, Arthur,
38
T
tacit exception, as strategy for avoiding self-referential absurdity,
116
,
188
,
190
,
191
-
92
,
197
,
202
,
257
Tallis, Raymond,
232
-
34
Taoism,
64
Taylor, Mark C.,
202
Thales,
68
theological liberalism,
266
-
69
Thompson, W. R.,
238
To Kill a Mockingbird
(Lee),
250
Tocqueville, Alexis de,
225
Total Truth,
152
-
53
,
270
-
71
,
272
,
273
-
74
transcendental ego, Kant,
82
,
112
trigger warnings,
122
truth
divided concept of,
104
-
5
,
113
,
151
-
65
,
168
-
73
Enlightenment view of,
78
-
81
,
119
,
120
,
126
,
133
,
207
,
210
,
268
postmodern view of,
119
,
121
,
123
-
24
,
168
,
169
unified concept of,
139
,
152
-
53
,
155
,
166
-
67
,
170
-
72
,
181
,
216
,
271
Twain, Mark,
18
Tyson, Neil deGrasse,
71
Tysonism,
71
U
Unashamed movement,
275
unity of truth,
139
,
152
-
53
,
155
,
166
-
67
,
170
-
72
,
181
,
216
,
271
universe, origin of,
25
-
26
“The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences” (Wigner),
198
V
visual arts
abstract art,
263
-
64
cubism,
262
-
63
impressionism,
260
-
62
postmodernism
264
-
65
W
Watson, James,
174
Wegner, Daniel,
107
What Is Thought?
(Baum),
160
What Science Offers the Humanities
(Slingerland),
150
Wicca,
67
-
68
Wichterman, Bill,
21
-
22
Wieseltier, Leon,
194
Wigner, Eugene,
198
Willard, Dallas,
71
,
122
,
168
,
270
willful blindness,
33
-
35
Wilson, E. O.,
70
“without excuse” (Romans
1
:
20
,
2
:
1
),
53
,
172
Greek meaning of,
163
Wolters, Albert,
58
Wordsworth, William,
84
“wrath of God” (Romans
1
:
18
),
137
“written on their hearts” (Romans
2
:
15
),
221
-
22
X
Xenophanes,
65
-
66
Y
Yeats, William Butler,
84
You Lost Me
(Kinnaman),
58
Z
Zizek, Slavoj,
211
FINDING TRUTH
Published by David C Cook
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David C Cook Distribution Canada
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Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy
Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a
publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights
reserved. Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James
Version of the Bible. (Public Domain); NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New
International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by
permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com;
and NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©
1996, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale
House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
The author has added italics to Scripture quotations for emphasis.
LCCN 2014957657
ISBN 978-0-7814-1308-4
eISBN 978-0-7814-1328-2
© 2015 Nancy Pearcey
The Team: Tim Peterson, Carly Razo, Amy Konyndyk, Jack Campbell, Helen Macdonald, Karen Athen
Cover Design: Nick Lee
Cover Images:
Poppy Field
© Corbis; Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, New York Public Library (map)
First Edition 2015
What people are saying about …
“Nancy Pearcey has done it again. She’s written yet another important resource examining the importance of worldview presuppositions. I wish I’d had Nancy as part of my investigative team as a detective. She gets it; she understands how important our foundational beliefs are to any investigation. Principle #5, for example, describes my life as an atheist perfectly. If I’d read this book as a young man, I think I would have been challenged to re-examine my views much earlier. Nancy’s work has been important to my growth as a Christian, and her latest book will help seekers understand the importance of worldview, even as it helps believers grow in their confidence.”
J. Warner Wallace,
author of
Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels
“Nancy Pearcey intellectually dismantles humanism, atheism, reductionism, and every other ism that sets itself up against the knowledge of our Lord. The most glaring flaw of all the isms that Nancy addresses is that they offer no hope. Her arguments combined with the gospel of Jesus leave all other worldviews outside of Christianity without a leg to stand on.”
Phil Robertson,
Duck Dynasty
“Nancy Pearcey at her very best—totally profound, persuasive, and yet practical. Read it with your highlighter handy!”
Lee Strobel,
New York Times
bestselling author
“Wonderful book … Secular worldviews have become the intellectual fast food of our day—nice taste, no nourishment. Nancy Pearcey shines a bright light on worldviews that compete with Christianity, and she tells us what is wrong with them—almost everything. They create false idols. They lead to despair, despotism, and absurdity. They rub out God and reduce man to a sack of proteins. They don’t fit our experience of what it means to be a human being. Pearcey’s book ought to be in the survival kit of every student heading to college. I wish I’d had it in 1962.”
John R. Erickson,
rancher, author of the Hank the Cowdog series
“This book is fantastic! We live in a culture beset by the twin dragons of modernism and postmodernism. Under the inspiration of Romans 1, Nancy Pearcey draws a sword and cuts their heads off. I found the apologetics work top-notch, yet totally readable for everyman.”
Doug TenNapel,
author of
Tommysaurus Rex,
creator of
Earthworm Jim
“Truly a great book.… For several decades, Nancy Pearcey has been to the church what Francis Schaeffer was to the believers of his day: a cultural intellectual who provides careful, thoughtful, well-researched critiques of and interactions with the various worldview ideologies competing with Christianity.
Finding Truth
may well be Pearcey’s best offering to date. It is very clearly written and wide in its coverage. Aiming to aid Christians to think critically about the specific theories they encounter in Western culture, Pearcey surfaces five principles from Romans 1 that she uses to analyze various extant worldviews. My favorite principle was ‘Identify the Idol’s Reductionism.’ Anyone who knows about contemporary worldviews will acknowledge that reductionism is at the very heart of Christianity’s rivals. I highly recommend this delightful book and wish it widespread circulation.”
J. P. Moreland,
distinguished professor of philosophy at Biola University
“Nancy Pearcey has produced another winner. Here again we find what we have come to expect from her: readability, clear thought, a nose for remarkable quotations, a high regard for biblical authority, and a passion for Christian cultural engagement.”
Albert M. Wolters,
author of
Creation Regained
“Pearcey has done it again. When a third of young people are leaving church because of intellectual doubts, Pearcey shows how biblical truth is more
convincing
than competing worldviews, and also more
appealing.
The gospel is the highest love for human beings. The gospel is the key that fits the lock of the universe.”
Kelly Monroe Kullberg,
author of
Finding God Beyond Harvard,
founder of The Veritas Forum, founder and president of The America Conservancy
“Nancy Pearcey shows us that apologetics can be profound
and
practical. She demonstrates that resistance to Christ traces to a single source, a cognitive idolatry that divinizes creation and absolutizes the works of the human mind. The result is a variety of reductionist schemes that falsify the facts, contradict themselves, and promote doublethink. Pearcey offers not only diagnosis but a cure: a fair, respectful, and
universally applicable
strategy to help unbelievers see the advantages of a biblical worldview. Everyone concerned about effective apologetics and evangelism should read this book.”
Angus Menuge,
PhD,
president of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, professor of philosophy at Concordia University Wisconsin
“Nancy Pearcey is a wonderful philosophical guide for our students, so they can bring the Biblical message into the world rather than being captivated by the mental idols of the world. As she notes so well, our neighbors live on the basis of truths they learn from God’s general revelation even if they totally deny God. Because of their conflict with God, people are incurably religious, even if they make a God-substitute from some dimension of God’s good creation. This internal conflict of the unbelieving heart and mind provides the starting point for both a serious critique of non-Christian worldviews an open door for presenting the compelling power of Christian truth claims.”
Thomas K. Johnson,
senior advisor at the Theological Commission of the World Evangelical Alliance
“Professor Pearcey astutely applies the philosophical wisdom of Romans 1 in order to refute a variety of non-Christian philosophies and religions. For those seeking rational grounding for their Christian worldview, this book is a godsend.”
Douglas Groothuis,
professor of philosophy at Denver Seminary, author of
Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith
“This wonderfully insightful book helps readers avoid becoming ‘intoxicated’ with idols and false ideas. Readers of this work will be ‘lion-tamers’ of many ideas and
reductionism
is one of them. If hastiness and superficiality were chief maladies of the twentieth century, as Solzhenitsyn said, then perhaps
reductionism
is a chief one in the twenty-first. In this volume, people are duly warned about the devastatingly reductionistic consequences of idolatry. Intellectual teetotalers need not apply.”
David K. Naugle,
distinguished professor at Dallas Baptist University, author of
Worldview: The History of a Concept
“Pearcey’s book is a valuable tool in exposing the many idols that masquerade as truth. She gives readers the eyes to see non-Christian worldviews from within, demonstrating that their strongest defenders cannot live with the implications of the ideas they put forward—at least not without denying life as it is lived. Pearcey’s vast intellect and her clear and cogent writing style make this book an invaluable decoder for the times in which we live.”
Bill Wichterman,
special assistant to the president under George W. Bush
“A fine book … Nancy Pearcey’s book reminds us that worldviews are, at root, heart commitments; thus, false worldviews or philosophies of life are exercises in idolatry. Pearcey deftly exposes both the inconsistencies and the failures of a host of modern idols, and she astutely points us to the light and truth of Jesus Christ, ‘in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.’”
Paul Copan,
professor and Pledger Family Chair of philosophy and ethics at Palm Beach Atlantic University
“Wonderful … Nancy Pearcey has the unique ability of getting to the heart of things in the cultural conversation. Pearcey’s penetrating critique of the worldview ‘idols’ of our age is chock-full of gems. Better, it equips us with an easy-to-follow game plan for assessing any worldview. This is one of those books that not only challenges the critics; it also gives a huge dose of confidence to the Christian who will catch himself walking away from its pages saying, ‘Gosh, this stuff really
is
true.’”
Gregory Koukl,
president of Stand to Reason, author of
Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions
, and
Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air
“Fantastic! … Pearcey has done it again.
Finding Truth
is one of the most insightful apologetics books I have read in a while. It provides a sharp critique of secular culture and a helpful guide for correcting it.”
Sean McDowell,
author, speaker, and assistant professor of Christian apologetics at Biola University