During my first semester at university, I unexpectedly took a 200-level philosophy class focused on A.J. Ayer, then a prominent British philosopher. Without any background or exposure to philosophy, I struggled to grasp his complex arguments. I did notice this: brilliant thinkers’ conclusions depend heavily on their foundational assumptions. Though I wasn’t yet a Christian, I noted that Ayer and others assumed there was no God, then claimed to have proven it.
Years later, I recognized the irony in Ayer’s logical positivism, summarized by his claim that “any statement that cannot be empirically verified is false.” This statement itself is unverifiable and, according to its own criteria, false. My initial confusion over his writing now feels justified. Why bother with such flawed reasoning? Ayer’s influence faded fast.
Today, we must deal with several similar ideas based on such impenetrable reasoning.
1. The first is a category of thinking that a particular group of people are not human beings with fundamental dignity or natural rights. I’ll just state it briefly and bluntly. Over the centuries, black Africans have been declared to be non-persons. They were seen as property. Over the centuries, the Jews have been treated as non-persons. They were seen as enemies of Christ a thousand years ago, as a disease a hundred years ago, and as illegitimate oppressors now.
In the last century, the unborn child in the womb has been declared to be a non-person, nothing more than a part of a woman’s body. Abortion is not seen as a rare response to a deeply troubled pregnancy that miscarriage somehow missed, but as a fundamental human right.
Even if we regard our predecessors as primitives, how can we grasp that elite cultural leaders insist on two of those claims today? The unborn child and the Jew remain dehumanized by false and convoluted arguments based on invisible assumptions, as with Ayer.
2. What about the assertion that a person’s sexuality defines their highest identity? Until the secular ascendance, the soul was seen as our highest aspect and deserved the freedom of religious expression. Now that society sees individuals as merely physical beings, sexuality, not spirituality, is the highest expression. Therefore, they say, gender is entitled to the same freedom as religious beliefs. We could focus on either chromosomes or gender identity, but the fundamental issue is how individuality, rights, expression, and privacy now take precedence over reality through simple assertion rather than reasoned argument.
We are left to wonder how the impact on children, young teens, and women’s sports came to be so severe. If Enes Kanter Freedom claims female status and tries out for the WNBA, how can there be a coherent discussion or workable solution when there hasn’t been a coherent foundation? We could add to the confusion by asking whether people need to accept birth-assigned places of birth, birth-assigned birthdays, or birth-assigned parents?
3. The final cornerstone idea is that political realities are the true realities of life. Even having nominal Christianity as a civil religion is no longer possible. It has fallen from what Watkin calls our list of ‘plausibility structures’. Why? Because Christianity is ideologically viewed as being deeply biased, immoral, and the seat of our oppression, racism, and most recently toxic nationalism. Can we no longer distinguish between American, Zionist, and Nazi nations? We cannot because of loyalties to invisible ideological assumptions.
Two less visible aspects of having a dominant political reality are the assumed virtue of politicians as a minor theme, and as a major theme that we should have a global society and global governance with institutions like the UN and gatherings like Davos lead in ways that will, they say, be better than any nation. This will end wars, poverty, oppression, and put the good, the wise, and the true people in charge, they say.
I have deep concerns about dehumanizing the unborn, the prisoner, the black, the Jew, the trans, or the gay. I have deep concerns about the viability of our postmodern, and certainly post-Christian, assumptions. I’m concerned about the social perfectibility of humans and the reliability of political ideology as a globally viable framework in practice for actual people, as if utopia is just around the corner.
These assumptions have appeared largely as top-down assertions that have failed to prove their worth; I doubt such proof is possible. The issue, including when Christians fail, usually has pride and power at its root, as suggested by the biblical record and teachings. I do not use scripture here because these issues self-implode. The light of scripture, with its furious heat of truth and reality, might obscure that self-implosion and produce only fog.
When such power has resided in the church, Christ and Christian values have evaporated, and the outcomes have been horrifying. Now the West has simply shifted from sacred to secular assumptions. Christians do not need to abandon our Christian worldview of human agency, responsibility, and a better life and future in Christ.
The postmodern gospel is one of activism to fight the original sin of racism to avoid the hell of a crisp earth if we fail to address climate change in response to the prophet Greta. Where’s the good news in that?
I finish with the second lesson I learned about A. J. Ayer, almost 20 years after I studied his philosophy. Ayer, in his eighties, had a near-death experience. When he awoke, he said he had seen a God-like being and that he would have to revisit and revise his ideas. For Ayer, it was not too late. How about for us?