March Issue of The Worldview Bulletin-Pt. 1

Responding to Objections to the Image of God | How to Develop Creativity

Greetings, and welcome to this month’s issue of The Worldview Bulletin. Below, Paul Copan continues his series on the image of God and human rights, defending the former against objections raised by the atheist philosopher Erik Wielenberg. One lesson that emerges is that squeezing naturalistic metaphysical rocks won’t yield axiological water. Having argued in last month’s issue that there is little hope for autonomous creative machines, Paul Gould suggests four ways that we can develop creativity and better flourish as sub-creators made in God’s image. Recognizing the great need for intellectual discipleship in the church, Melissa Cain Travis recommends five practical ways that even churches with limited resources can help members develop a Christian mind. David Baggett continues his in-depth examination of Bart Campolo’s deconstruction and traces his steps in becoming a “secular chaplain” at the University of Southern California. We conclude by pointing you to interesting resources and great deals on books.

We are grateful for your support of The Worldview Bulletin. We couldn’t do it without you!

Christopher Reese

Founder and Editor-in-Chief

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Contents

Part One

1. The Imago Dei and Human Rights III:

   Erik Wielenberg, Secular Dignity, and the Image of God

   by Paul Copan

2. On Becoming Creative

   By Paul M. Gould

Please see the second email for Part Two of the newsletter.

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The Image of God and Human Rights III:

Erik Wielenberg, Secular Dignity, and the Image of God

By Paul Copan

Optimism: Warranted and Unwarranted

By disposition, I am an optimist. If certain individuals present their concerns or problems to me, of course, I want to listen—and perhaps that is all that the occasion requires. But if I sense that more is needed, I’m keen to offer possible solutions that come to mind in order to assist them in their troubles—perhaps a resourceful person to connect with, a job opportunity that comes to mind, a recommendation to write, or a helpful book to read.

This is a realistic optimism that seeks out genuine possibilities in the actual world in an effort to see them come about. This is quite different from the optimism of atheist philosopher Erik Wielenberg, whose metaphysic of valuelessness is hard-pressed to yield objective moral values, such as human dignity. He writes: “From valuelessness, value sometimes may come.”[1] Wielenberg is squeezing a metaphysical rock so that it will yield at least a few drops of axiological water.  When I declare my pessimism about valuelessness producing value, Wielenberg declares that this is “terribly question-begging.”[2]

However, if this isn’t an example of metaphysical prejudice, I’m not sure what is. Wielenberg himself is the one doing the question-begging; his is the ill-founded metaphysical optimism. By contrast, theism, which begins with a supremely valuable being, has the metaphysic for yielding intrinsic human dignity. This starting point of value produces a very natural, unsurprising, organically connected outcome. From value, value comes. Alvin Plantinga comments on this in the context of the universe’s exquisite fine-tuning for life:

The basic idea is that such fine-tuning is not at all surprising or improbable on theism: God presumably would want there to be life, and indeed intelligent life with which (whom) to communicate and share love; given atheism it is [surprising]; therefore theism is to be preferred to atheism.[3]

In last month’s issue of the Worldview Bulletin, I presented Wielenberg’s atheistic perspective on human dignity, which he has written about in the coedited volume The Inherence of Human Dignity. In that same volume, I give my response to his presentation. In my ongoing series on the image of God and human rights, I offer a critique of Wielenberg’s view. I’ll do this in additional two parts.

In the remainder of this essay, I’ll respond to his criticism of the image of God as an allegedly confused and contradictory notion. Next month I’ll address another portion of Wielenberg’s argument—namely, his claim that if the theist can just accept God as a “brute fact,” the atheist can accept the bruteness of objective moral facts. (Wielenberg would perhaps say to the theist, Et tu, Brute?).