Am I No More Than A Turtle-Head?

By Antipelagian

Dec. 19, 2008

From time to time I am known to enter the irrational world of atheism. It amazes me how often atheists concoct new arguments that refute previous assertions that they’ve already made…this should not be surprising, men suppress the truth of the Triune God and will embrace lies and out-right bondage so as to avoid the easy yoke of Christ.

The most militant form of atheism is also the most easily refuted: Atheistic Materialism.

From this worldview, reality is composed of matter in motion. So absurd is this worldview that I’ve come across men who insist that if you cannot “describe” something, it is not a coherent or “positive” ontology.

What is meant by “describe” and “positive”? I’m glad you asked! It means that you must be able to describe something in terms of physical reality. If it is not defined in terms of a physicalist worldview, it is not “positive”. What is so sad about this strategy is that it should be painfully clear to all involved in this sort of a discussion that this is riddled with fallacies.  I’ll give you two (what I find to be the most devastating), though there are many other ways of dismantling this “argument”.

• It relies on a fallaciously circular argument.

Simply put, when we are discussing ontology, we in the arena of metaphysics. The atheist that is demanding we define God in terms of a physicalist (i.e. materialist) worldview is merely assuming the thing he’s supposed to be arguing. Necessarily, when we discuss something such as God’s ontology, we are discussing existence, which is to say, metaphysics. The only way the atheist’s standard carries water is if he is first correct about his assumption…but seeing the assumption hasn’t been argued and is the very thing we are supposed to be discussing, he’s done no more than restate his prejudice that he doesn’t believe in the existence of anything spiritually based.

• Secondly, the standard is completely absurd

In asking the Christian to define God in terms of the physical world he is also saying any ontology must be defined through the physical world.

If this is to be true, how are we to meaningfully define the ontology of humanity? Primarily, we are physical (according to the materialist). That’s it! We’re physical. Once the materialist begins classifying (ie differentiating) material objects, he is not able to maintain his materialist standard.

For atheistic materialists, men are not primarily moral or rational. We are physical. Ontologically speaking, we are no different than a rock, a spider, gum stuck to a shoe, or feces. The absurd outcome of atheistic materialism is ontological monism. This means “all is one”, which makes differentiation and classification essentially meaningless. It also destroys value judgements which include morality. Without getting into too many details, I’ll give you an example:

If an atheistic materialist grants that he is an ontological monist (and logically, we’ve already demonstrated this), then how can he say things like pedophilia, necrophilia, or beastiality are wrong? Appealing to morality as if it has some inherent authority over matter in motion contradicts the assumed physicalist worldview.

A rejection of the Triune God always, absolutely always, results in a destruction of unity or plurality. Christians understand that God is essentially One in Essence, and Three in Person. He is not primarily one, and secondarily three…He is ultimately both. A rejection of the Christian God will result in monism or a pluralism whereby unity can never be achieved. Test me on this as you go about your day, especially if you’re in school. Science classes will teach you ontological monism, sociology and psychology will teach you a pluralism where unity is never achieved…you see this especially in the emphasis of man’s sense of “alienation” in literature, absurdism, psychology, philosophy, and Marxist political ideologies.

Here is an audio clip I made on this topic. It’s a refutation of a fairly prominent atheist on You Tube: