Uploaded June 2019 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This episode of the ThinkingWest Podcast (formerly Coffee Break Philosophy) explores the philosophical camps of materialism, skepticism, and the possibility of an objective or absolutist morality through each with the help of G.K. Chesterton. Christian talks about Christianity's inherent obvious morality and how it defends against the dangers of rampant moral relativism.
VISIT US
thinkingwest.com
CHECK OUT "Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton:
amazon.com/Orthodoxy-G-K-Chesterton/dp/1515241394/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=orthodoxy&qid=1559994708&s=gateway&sr=8-1
MUSIC CREDIT
A-GROUP: Verve
"Welcome to Coffee Break Philosophy. I'm Christian and today we're talking about materialism, skepticism, and morality. We're gonna get a little help from G. K. Chesterton through his work Orthodoxy, again. We first introduced Chesterton in the last video of this series so be sure to check it out as well. So grab some brew and let's talk about materialism, skepticism, and morality. So Chesterton famously wrote that "there is a thought which stops all thoughts", and I like to pull from another part of Chesterton saying that there is also an act which stops all acts and that act is suicide. So in a suicide and in the mind of the suicidal man, it isn't that he's not worthy of living; it's that there's nothing worth living for. This is the ultimate insult to the entirety of the world. Likewise, Chesterton's quote might imply that there's a thought which claims that there's nothing worth thinking about. Again, an insult to all thought. Our intellect is capable, according to Chesterton, of destroying itself, and here he's speaking in relation to skepticism particularly but also partially to materialism, which we'll get into in just a - one moment. Now, skepticism and materialism are two essentially opposing philosophical camps. They're not directly opposing each other, but in a sense - and you'll see what I mean there's - they tend to be opposites Now, the materialists - which is one philosophical camp - these materialists formulate the world as purely guided by the clockwork of the natural law as I like to think of it. So what we understand of physics and mathematics makes up the totality of the world, and there's nothing more no spirituality, no god, nothing supernatural; what you see is what you get with the materialist. Now I thought this implies two interesting things for morality and materialists can be moral people. Atheists can be more people. Materialists by - essentially by definition have to be atheists. Now they must assume that morality is either 1) an objective reality that is built into the natural world. This means that - this would suggest that we must use scientific tools or whatever tools we have to observe the nature around us to gather those - that morality and find out what the objective morality is. So it's either objective or the second option number 2) for the materialist with regard to morality, is that there is no objective morality. And, of course, this would devolve into morality is a mere human construction and leads to moral relativism. So, skepticism is the other philosophical camp that Chesterton spoke about and in my opinion it is the more dangerous of the two. Skepticists doubt that reality is true or even real or that we can't accurately know reality or experience it because of our own subjectivity. So skepticists doubt objective; therefore they automatically default to moral relativism. Even if they admit there could be a - an objective or absolute morality, we cannot know it because of our own subjective experience. Thus, we'd have to default to moral relativism: the ultimate in societal decline. Furthermore, besides morality there's also no point to reason because there are no objective facts which we can base our worldview off of. So reason itself is dead in the world of the skeptic, and Chesterton spoke very harshly of the skeptics in his book Orthodox for good reason - for these very reasons. His contemporaries generally fell into one of these two camps, materialists or skeptics, and he tore in my opinion more into the skeptic than the materialist Skepticism applied to morality is just moral relativism run rampant. We can see this in for example promiscuous behavior, which has ruined families and marriages for a long time but especially in such high numbers in the past 50 or so years, and it's not no small matter that we're playing with here." ... Watch the full video to find out more!
#chesterton #morality #christianity
This episode of the ThinkingWest Podcast (formerly Coffee Break Philosophy) explores the philosophical camps of materialism, skepticism, and the possibility of an objective or absolutist morality through each with the help of G.K. Chesterton. Christian talks about Christianity's inherent obvious morality and how it defends against the dangers of rampant moral relativism.
VISIT US
thinkingwest.com
CHECK OUT "Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton:
amazon.com/Orthodoxy-G-K-Chesterton/dp/1515241394/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=orthodoxy&qid=1559994708&s=gateway&sr=8-1
MUSIC CREDIT
A-GROUP: Verve
"Welcome to Coffee Break Philosophy. I'm Christian and today we're talking about materialism, skepticism, and morality. We're gonna get a little help from G. K. Chesterton through his work Orthodoxy, again. We first introduced Chesterton in the last video of this series so be sure to check it out as well. So grab some brew and let's talk about materialism, skepticism, and morality. So Chesterton famously wrote that "there is a thought which stops all thoughts", and I like to pull from another part of Chesterton saying that there is also an act which stops all acts and that act is suicide. So in a suicide and in the mind of the suicidal man, it isn't that he's not worthy of living; it's that there's nothing worth living for. This is the ultimate insult to the entirety of the world. Likewise, Chesterton's quote might imply that there's a thought which claims that there's nothing worth thinking about. Again, an insult to all thought. Our intellect is capable, according to Chesterton, of destroying itself, and here he's speaking in relation to skepticism particularly but also partially to materialism, which we'll get into in just a - one moment. Now, skepticism and materialism are two essentially opposing philosophical camps. They're not directly opposing each other, but in a sense - and you'll see what I mean there's - they tend to be opposites Now, the materialists - which is one philosophical camp - these materialists formulate the world as purely guided by the clockwork of the natural law as I like to think of it. So what we understand of physics and mathematics makes up the totality of the world, and there's nothing more no spirituality, no god, nothing supernatural; what you see is what you get with the materialist. Now I thought this implies two interesting things for morality and materialists can be moral people. Atheists can be more people. Materialists by - essentially by definition have to be atheists. Now they must assume that morality is either 1) an objective reality that is built into the natural world. This means that - this would suggest that we must use scientific tools or whatever tools we have to observe the nature around us to gather those - that morality and find out what the objective morality is. So it's either objective or the second option number 2) for the materialist with regard to morality, is that there is no objective morality. And, of course, this would devolve into morality is a mere human construction and leads to moral relativism. So, skepticism is the other philosophical camp that Chesterton spoke about and in my opinion it is the more dangerous of the two. Skepticists doubt that reality is true or even real or that we can't accurately know reality or experience it because of our own subjectivity. So skepticists doubt objective; therefore they automatically default to moral relativism. Even if they admit there could be a - an objective or absolute morality, we cannot know it because of our own subjective experience. Thus, we'd have to default to moral relativism: the ultimate in societal decline. Furthermore, besides morality there's also no point to reason because there are no objective facts which we can base our worldview off of. So reason itself is dead in the world of the skeptic, and Chesterton spoke very harshly of the skeptics in his book Orthodox for good reason - for these very reasons. His contemporaries generally fell into one of these two camps, materialists or skeptics, and he tore in my opinion more into the skeptic than the materialist Skepticism applied to morality is just moral relativism run rampant. We can see this in for example promiscuous behavior, which has ruined families and marriages for a long time but especially in such high numbers in the past 50 or so years, and it's not no small matter that we're playing with here." ... Watch the full video to find out more!
#chesterton #morality #christianity
