I'm sure that every writer of fiction, whoever
picks up a pen, dreams of writing the Great American Novel. The bad news, however, is ladies and gentlemen,
it's too late. It's already been done. The Great American Novel was written by Herman
Melville. In my opinion, the greatest work of fiction
ever produced in the United States was his masterpiece by the simple title, Moby Dick. I think we're all basically familiar with
that story. It focuses on the work and activity of a mad
man, Captain Ahab, named after the wicked king of Israel in the Old Testament, who in
this story suffers from a particular form of dementia that we call "monomania," that
is, he had a monomaniacal obsession with one aspect of his life. He wanted to capture and to kill the great
white whale, Moby Dick. But we know from the correspondence that survived
the death of Herman Melville that this story was far more than an adventure story or a
sea story. What makes it so great is its richness in
symbolism, for at its depth dimension Moby Dick is an intensely theological work. The white whale, the albino whale that is
the focal point of this obsession of Captain Ahab represents God. And you know throughout the story that Ahab
dropped everything, all other concerns, the commercial venture of the Pequod, he abandoned
that when he came upon a ship in distress searching for those who had been lost overboard
the Rachel. He refused to lend a hand because he had one
thing in his mind and that was to kill that cursed whale. Well, he charted the movements of the whale. He chased him over the seven seas, but he
wasn't able to find him. And so to spur his crew on to greater intensity
and concentration, there's one episode in the book you may recall, he ordered that a
gold doubloon be nailed to the main mast in the center of the ship, and he posted this
doubloon and announced a reward for the first man who sighted Moby Dick would receive this
small fortune. And then what follows in the story is Melville
examines each of the crew members' responses and reaction to the promised reward. He gets inside their minds. The first mate comes and looks at it and he
dreams of what he can buy with that gold doubloon. He thinks of cigars. He thinks of other creature comforts that
he can purchase. The harpooners look and see, "Oh, if I just
could win this prize, I can have the largest, best, most well-balanced and sharpest harpoon
in the world," and so on. Each person, ladies and gentlemen, had a completely
different view of what that coin could mean to their lives until finally the little cabin
boy whose name was Pip, he was crazy, he came and he danced around in front of the gold
doubloon and he said, "I see, you see, we all see." And the point Melville was making through
the mouth of Pip was the idea that each individual, each personal subject, had a different view
of the matter. Now, no two of us view the world in which
we live from exactly the same perspective. We have our antennae. We have the grid. We have the patterns. We have our own personal history, all of which
contribute to the way we interpret reality as we encounter it. Now, from a philosophical perspective, we
call that a worldview, a way of examining the world in which we live and the meaning
of our own individual lives. Now, everybody has a worldview. For the philosopher or the theologian, perhaps
the structure of that worldview has been carefully thought out. It's been criticized. It's been analyzed. It's been evaluated. Certain elements have been discarded, others
have been added. Most of us go through our lives with our own
individual way of seeing the world around us without ever giving a moment's consideration
to it. This is what Socrates called the unexamined
life where we just sort of respond to what's there, but a Christian, I'm convinced, is
called to seek the mind of Christ, to seek an understanding of his or her world from
the viewpoint of the eternal, to see things as best as we possibly can the way God would
have us view them so that the things that we affirm are the things that God affirms
and the things that we deny would be the things that God denies. And so, what we're going to do in this series
of lectures is to look by way of introduction at the most basic foundational elements that
together make up the grid or the structure of a personal worldview. And so in this first session we're going to
speak on the theme of "epistemology," and that's a word that we use every day. It's on our grocery list and so on. I will define it in a moment, but before I
do I want to take a moment to introduce a guest that I have invited to be a part of
this series to help us as we struggle through an evaluation of the elements that make up
worldview. Now this guest is very famous and you will
recognize him instantly the moment I introduce him. However, he's not able to speak. He can't speak, but he's by no means dumb. He's over here, and I'm sure you recognize
him. He has been brought into the world by a Frenchman
by the name of Rodin. And how many of you here know his name? You all know. This is probably one of the most recognizable
pieces of sculpture in all of Western civilization. Rodin's what? The Thinker. Now, we're glad to have The Thinker with us
because he's going to help us as we seek to establish the structures of a worldview. Now, the first thing I observe about this
gentleman, who's our guest, is his name. He is called "The Thinker." I think that had he been sculpted in the last
fifteen or twenty years, perhaps he would be known by a different name or a different
title. If a modern sculptor created this piece of
art, then I think that they would probably call him "The Feeler," because in our modern
world we don't think anymore. We feel. I have my red pen going constantly on my students'
exams in theology class when they say, "I feel that we should do this or that." I say, "Wait a minute. I'm interested in your thoughts, not your
emotions at this point, not your feelings." But it's not by accident that language in
our day has changed in this way because we live in a world where preferences have supplanted
objective truth. Truth is now no longer considered to be a
matter of cogent thoughtful understanding so much as it is a matter of personal feeling. A test was made internationally in terms of
performances in the skills of mathematics among high school students. Six nations were involved. The students of the United States who were
tested finished dead last in this international competition of mathematical proficiency. However, there were two parts to the examination. One part of the examination measured how the
student felt about his or her performance on the examination. The students from America finished first. The students from Japan finished first in
actual proficiency and sixth in their personal sense of how well that they did. So we've been very effective in training people
to feel good about their poor performance, and so truth now becomes a matter of feeling
rather than thinking. Now, the other thing I want us to observe
about our guest here tonight who is called "The Thinker" is the pose. Now, I don't think that Rodin meant to suggest
that in order for a person to become involved in any depth dimension of analysis or thinking
that one had to shed his or her clothing and be in the nude, and I'm a little embarrassed
that our guest has come this way, but we notice that in the stance or the posture of "The
Thinker" that you see that Rodin has not represented the thinker in a posture of casual relaxation. He doesn't have him looking like a couch potato
with his feet crossed and he's lounging just sort of half ready to fall asleep. One of the principles of those involved in
art, particularly in painting and in sculpture, is what the Germans call the principle of
the fruchtbare Augenblick, "the fruitful moment." Rembrandt, for example, before he would paint
one of his classic portraits of a biblical character would go through the process of
rendering over a hundred various sketches of the person he was going to capture on canvas,
but he realized that in the final portrait he could only depict the person in one frozen
scene. That's the difference between this kind of
art and the art we find in drama or in the motion picture industry where we can capture
live action and movement. But so, the artists like Rembrandt, Rodin,
and the others, they would think of, "Now, how can I best express and capture and crystallize
the essence of what this person represents in one still frame?" Michelangelo did the same thing. He wants to do a statue of David. What moment in all of the life of David will
he capture that will express the man? And he chose the moment of the reaching for
the stones and preparing to hurl the stone against the giant, and then our imagination
fills in the rest. Well, Rodin postured the thinker in a pose
of intense labor. His muscles are taut because deep thinking
involves a kind of effort that is not only strenuous mentally, but it is actually a physical
enterprise as well. He doesn't tell us what he's thinking about. Maybe he's thinking about thinking. Maybe he's thinking about thought. Maybe he's wondering if he can know anything
for sure. Recently, I caught part of a television special
that was called "The Elvis File," and this particular special featured Bill Bixby, who
was the host, and he was presenting the evidence to the audience, the studio audience, as well
as the watching audience on broadcast television. The evidence that would indicate that Elvis
Presley is still alive and that his death was a carefully conceived hoax in an effort
to shelter Elvis from criminal elements in this world as part of the government protection
service for those who were involved in undercover work to serve the nation, and Elvis has been
sent into hiding, and he's had these appearances that have been sighted here and there across
the world where people think that they've seen Elvis Presley. And in this discussion, the testimony of two
court-certified handwriting analysts was set forth, and both of these handwriting analysts
maintained that writing that has clearly been written since the alleged death of Elvis Presley
at Graceland mansion in Memphis, that this handwriting matches exactly the handwriting
of Elvis Presley even on his own death certificate. And other anomalies were brought forth, such
as the fact that the coroner's report on the death certificate listed the weight of the
dead body that was taken from Graceland mansion as a hundred and seventy pounds, and anybody
that saw Elvis Presley in his last performance a week or so before his death knows that he
was weighing at that time between two hundred and forty and two hundred and fifty pounds. And so the case was set forth, and then at
the end of this discussion, in typical American fashion, the studio audience was polled and
also phone lines were given to the national audience to...they could call in and say "Yay"
or "Nay," whether they believed that Elvis was still alive. And throughout the course of the program,
they would flash the numbers of how the percentage of the people were responding. And at the end, seventy-nine percent of the
viewers of this program indicated that they believed that Elvis Presley is still alive. One of those who was involved in the program
said that soon Elvis Presley was going to reappear, but he was coming back not as an
entertainer but as a spiritual leader. And I listened to this, and what I found most
astonishing was not the hypothesis. What amazed me was the facility by which seventy-nine
percent of the people who listened to this program came to the conclusion that Elvis
Presley was still alive. Now, I'm taking a big risk saying that because
it will be six months before this program is edited and then sent out to the churches
and people will use it in study groups and so on, and all I need to hear six months from
now is to have Elvis Presley show up. It'll make me look utterly silly, but let
me just protect myself from that. If Elvis does come back, it doesn't change
my level of astonishment at the credulity of the masses who listened to that program,
because even if he is still alive, the evidence for it that was presented in that program
was incredibly flimsy. And as I watched it, I thought, "On what basis
are these people evaluating the data, analyzing the argument, coming to their conclusions?" That's what epistemology is about. Epistemology is a science that deals with
the question, "How do we know what we know." What are the means human beings use to contact
reality and to discern between truth and falsehood? Now, several methods of learning and of knowing
have been examined and evaluated in the history of Western thought. Certainly, the two most famous forms of epistemology
that you've all heard of are those that in the broadest generic sense may be called "rationalism"
and "empiricism." Basically, rationalism says that the way to
truth, the way to knowledge, is principally, if not exclusively, through the mind, through
the processes of thought itself. And of course, one of the most important keys
to rational investigation is the science of logic because the real is deemed to be logical,
and among hyper-rationalists, the logical is deemed to be real. But we'll let that for another time. On the other side of the spectrum, the "empiricist"
is so called because the empiricist says, "Unless I can see it, taste it, touch it,
smell it," you know," or feel it, it's not real. I don't believe it." That is, the empiricist says the way to truth
is through the senses, through sense perception. It's basically more physical than mental. And for centuries the battle was waged between
these two schools and variations of these two schools until the two arrived at a very
important synthesis in the thinking of Immanuel Kant and the synthesis that was already coming
together in a certain sense in what is called the scientific method. And we're to be involved in a dialogue in
the not too distant future about the question of psychology. Is psychology a science or is it a pseudoscience? You have the same discussion about theology. Is theology a science or a pseudoscience? Well, to answer that question, the first thing
you have to do is determine what makes up science. Well, if we look at the scientific method
historically, the scientific method says that we are creatures who have minds and we also
have bodies, and both the mind and the body is active in the whole process of learning. You watch a little child and see how the little
child begins to learn how to speak. How do you teach your children or your grandchildren
the language? I remember when our grandson who lives in
our house was just beginning to form words. The first few sounds that came from his lips
didn't have any recognizable tone to them, were words like "'mama," "papa," things like
that, not at all precocious or unusual in that regard. But I tried to help him increase his vocabulary,
and we did it with little books that pictured different animals, and I would show him a
turkey and I would point at that turkey and I'd say, "Turkey," and he'd say, "Turkey,"
and I'd say, "The turkey says, "[gobbling sound]" and then I come in and say, "Michael,
what does the turkey say?" And Michael would say, "[gobbling sound]." And I'd say, "And what does the cat say?" "Meow." "And what does the cow say?" "Moo, moo, moo." And I would point at the picture of the cow. He'd say, "Cow." This is how we learn; we see, we hear, we
think. I mean, any epistemology that is going to
be effective must include both the rational and the sensory. If we lock ourselves strictly into the mind
and say only the mind can give truth then we have no access to the external world. The only way I can encounter the external
world is through my body. I have to see it, I have to hear it, or I
have to touch it or smell it or taste it. But the problem gets vexing when we say, "But
how do I know what I see is really there? Can't my senses be distorted? How do I know whether what I think I'm seeing
is real or an hallucination?" And the fascinating pages of American history
took place in the sixties in the drug revolution when the high priest of the new drug culture,
Timothy Leary, was working at Harvard University and experimenting with synthetic drugs. And one such drug, LSD, was labeled "psychedelic." People were going under the influence of this
drug and they were having extraordinary sensory experiences. Artists would go take a trip on LSD and they
would see hues and intensities and tones of color that they never imagined possible under
normal acts of perception. Musicians turned to drugs to hear harmonic
patterns and tones that they couldn't discern apart from the drug. People were involved sexually with the use
of LSD and they testified in Time magazine in the sixties about having orgasms in their
elbow, so heightened were the nerve endings of their bodies under the use of this drug. Now, when Leary was put on trial for using
hallucinogenic drugs illicitly, if you recall, his defense was that this drug was not an
hallucinogen but it was psychedelic, that is, it's mind expanding. His case was simply this, that under the use
of LSD, people were not getting a distorted view of reality, but rather what? A more accurate, heightened, intensified view
of reality. Now, how do you know who's right? We know dogs can hear sounds that are at levels
that we can't hear, that other animals' olfactory senses are far more developed than our own. And this has been an age-long problem with
anybody who relies simply on the basis of what they see or hear or taste or touch. We know that our senses are limited and subject
to distortion, but we can't get away without them. That's why the New Testament witnesses of
Christ insist time after time, "We are not writing here carefully devised fables or myths. We're not playing Alice in Wonderland. We're not speculating philosophically, but
we are writing to you what we have seen with our eyes and what we have heard with our ears." They appealed to empirical testimony. And yet at the same time, all of the data
and sensations that we have in a given day would be meaningless if we didn't have a mind
to organize them, to make sense out of them, and that's where the rational comes in. Quickly, logic has no content. Logic gives no information. All that logic does, as the thinker understands,
is acts as a governor to prevent us from deriving false inferences from the things we experience. How do you learn? How do you study? Do you give any stock to logic? Do you believe, for example, the truth can
be illogical? My seminary students, almost every one of
them, comes in there their first year. I say, "Do you believe that the truth of God
can be contradictory?" A vast majority of them say, "Yes, of course." They don't realize that they're blaspheming
God. They've made God a liar. But they come that way because they haven't
learned the role of rationality in the pursuit of truth. Christianity is not rationalism, but it is
by all means rational. And so, the Bible assumes both the importance
of the mind and the importance of the senses as both are engaged in the enterprise. That's the introduction. That's all I'm going to say about epistemology
at this point only to say I want you to think about thinking. I want you to think about how you know what
you think you know, to ask yourselves the question, "Am I sure about this?" Take out a piece of paper and write down on
it ten things that you know for sure, ten things that you would die for that you know
for sure. If we did that in this room tonight, we would
find people convinced of one thing that's a direct opposite of another person is of
the top ten things that they're both convinced of. Somebody is wrong. But we are supposed to be people who are committed
to the discovery of truth, but we can't even begin the enterprise until we answer the question,
"How do we know what we know?"
