8. Narrator vs. Philosophy 111

At 9:30 each Tuesday and Thursday morning first semester, I hiked to the far side of campus for philosophy. When I signed up, I assumed the course might be interesting – which would have been a bonus, really, since it would be covering two requirements for me. Unfortunately, I soon learned that PHL 111.H should have been listed as “We Can’t Know Anything about Anything, Ever.” Although it would fulfill requirements, it was not going to be very enlightening or exciting.

Since it was an honors section, there were few more than 20 students in the class. Smaller than a typical college class, this gave the benefit of allowing real discussion. I wish I could tell you what we were supposed to learn in the first portion of the course, about knowledge of the world. All I remember is days and days of ‘learning’ how we can’t be sure we won’t suddenly fall in a pit of spikes. We covered part of Rene Descartes’ Meditations, but stopped after the second one.

Descartes’ first two meditations were written to leave readers in a nice deep hole of doubt, and for some reason the lesson plan didn’t call for Meditation Three: Concerning God, that He exists. It didn’t take long to realize I’d gotten myself into something not fun – by the second day I found there was only one person in the room who shared my faith. It looked as though two days a week, 9:30 to 10:45, it would be us vs. the world. The professor did not seem to hold particularly warm feelings towards God or anyone silly enough to believe in him... nor did the TA... nor did many of the students. Leaving class after the first discussion/argument, I introduced myself to my only ally. Dan and I quickly became friends.

Philosophy may have driven me crazy without someone to share the aggravation. For the first time in my life, I found myself in a place where the majority disagreed with nearly everything I said. My core beliefs had never really been challenged before. Often, what I had always considered common sense was considered completely ridiculous in light of PHL 111.

The purpose of the course was to question what we could know, be it knowledge about people and things around us, religion, or basic right and wrong. We received a frustratingly radical introduction to the field of study, and many of our conversations were comically pointless. Since we ‘decided’ we should doubt everything from our own existence to whether our next step might leave us in a spiky pit, many of the questions emphasized were by definition impossible to answer. How much does that teach or prove?

In a remotely Jesus-friendly atmosphere, Dan and I would have been the voices of reason. We came up with some solid, simple answers that on more than one occasion should have satisfied the questions our professor asked. Instead, we were disregarded and sometimes mocked. Because we were ‘the Christians’ in the class, any verbal misstep or inability to answer on our parts meant Christianity had no sensible answers.

I’m not the sort of argumentative jerk who always has to win, but when your input is worthwhile it’s not cool being ignored. In sane doses, discussion to gain a perspective on radical doubt is thoughtful education... but being pushed towards doubt as the only truth in the world is a waste. Allegedly the vision for the class was open conversation and consideration of ideas, but in-class talks and homework grades proved this was not the case.

Long before the final lecture when our professor announced his position as a “militant atheist,” it was clear where he stood. Although he seemed like a pretty nice guy, his stubbornness and bias were annoying. Automatically, I was less intelligent than the other students because I blindly clung to my old-fashioned religion. This was no small detail since an entire third of the course was devoted to proving whether God exists. A theistic hypothesis was defined, and one by one we picked at the assertions of a human definition of the Supernatural.

Dan and I tried to question the sense in such an approach. Why should God have to fit with our flawed understanding? Why should we disregard everything that won’t fit into our bottle, that the human mind can’t understand? But for the purposes of PHL 111.H, it was into the bottle with God or out with him altogether. Philosophy was about knowing everything, so it was absurd to suggest maybe we couldn’t know everything. Any answer along those lines was “a cheap way out” and merely “begged the question.”

The professor liked answers with between little and no logical backing. One of the students explained his beliefs, a mixture of several Eastern religions. He couldn’t find one that fit him, so he made up his own. It seemed complicated and much less sensible than boring old Christianity…and the professor thought it was very creative. He did not agree with the student’s beliefs, but seemed happy that at least some of his students weren’t silly sheep like Dan and I. He also approved of the strange answers of a couple students who announced that they practiced Catholicism, but believed their faith was “not the only right way.”

The conclusion of the weeks we spent on divinity was that the theistic hypothesis is false. “It makes no sense, it’s full of contradictions, and it’s just flat wrong,” our professor told the class. He explained that he thought religion was fine so long as it made you a better person , whatever that means. Unless you needed fooled into being good, God was a useless invention any intelligent student should reject.

At the 2/3 semester mark I was glad we wouldn’t be ripping on God non-stop anymore. The final part of the course concerned knowledge of morality, and – brace yourself – we learned that there is no absolute truth. This section resulted in the groundbreaking discovery that moral relativism is the only answer; we can’t actually know right from wrong.

According to moral relativists, the only things that define right and wrong are the ideas of the surrounding culture. We should not assume that traditional American values or anything else are the right way, because that is arrogant. If some guy halfway around the world wants to beat his wife and force his daughter’s marriage, good for him. Literally.

It became ever more clear this was the overall theme of the course: any search for truth is a misguided and childish effort. We can’t be sure of anything…any beliefs that we choose should be cooked up on our terms…true right and wrong don’t exist. Do your own thing, get what you can without breaking too many rules, and everything’s fine if you can justify it somehow. And we all know how easy justification becomes with practice. So, good news – nothing matters!

As much as I hate to admit it, Philosophy 111.H was a worthwhile experience. A different professor might have made for a stronger course, but one who disagreed with me was good in a different way. Although it wasn’t fun, being forced to defend myself was helpful. Thanks in part to my irritating philosophy class, I’ve found a powerful new reason to learn all I can about God. Once in awhile I thought philosophy might kill me, but what it actually did was make me a stronger Christian with an interest in apologetics.