John M. Frame - We Are All Philosophers: A Christian Introduction to Seven Fundamental Questions

WE ARE ALL PHILOSOPHERS

A CHRISTIAN

INTRODUCTION

TO SEVEN

FUNDAMENTAL

QUESTIONS

JOHN M. FRAME

We Are All Philosophers: A Christian Introduction to Seven Fundamental Questions

Copyright 2019 John M. Frame

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To Colin

CONTENTS

After I wrote History of Western Philosophy and Theology, it occurred to me that perhaps I could write another book on philosophy that would be a bit less burdensome to the average reader. That book would be organized topically, rather than historically, and it would be a lot shorter and simpler. It would be more suitable for beginning philosophy students (college and seminary level, even some high school), and it would help them to see more clearly the practicality of the questions philosophers ask. Really, what we call philosophical questions are questions that we all ask, in one way or another. This book would help readers from all backgrounds to think through those questions with some clarity and depth.

In previous booksBut I think the books argument will show that repressing the truth about God leads to intellectual chaos.

So my desired audience in this book is everybody. Philosophical questions are questions that we all ask, and hence the title: we are all philosophers.

I am dedicating the book to a brilliant young man named Colin, who from childhood has asked philosophical questions. When his homeschooling family moved to Orlando, Colins father told him that he could meet a professor at Reformed Theological Seminary named Dr. Frame who could address his questions. The first question Colin asked me was, What is the basic composition of the universe? I tried to answer him, but badly fumbled the ball. In this book, the first chapter attempts a better answer to his question, though probably not one that he could have understood as a child. The other chapters attempt answers to questions Colin might have asked me if I had handled his first question more helpfully.

One of the first things we want to know about our world is its ingredients. We are curious about what goes into a chocolate cake, what materials are used to build our houses, what chips animate our smartphones. At one level, we answer these questions by personal experience, and we expand that experience by asking questions of other people and consulting other sources. When we ask the question more technicallyHow many milligrams of sodium are in this cookie?we turn to scientists for more expertise. Their perspective takes us to further dimensions of reality: everything is made of the elements of the periodic table, and those in turn are collections of subatomic particles of various kinds. A recent theory says that everything is ultimately made of vibrating strings. But in my unscientific way, I ask what the strings are made of, a question that Ive never seen an answer to.

As we ask the question more and more abstractly, at some point it becomes philosophical. Many of the questions we today consider scientific, such as those about astronomy and biology, were once considered philosophical: the philosopher Aristotle did not consider it beyond his proper arena to write books about the heavenly bodies and the parts of animals. But today, the term philosophy is reserved for the most abstract questions there are. Although the range of the term philosophy today is different from its use in the ancient world, questions of a highly abstract level have been with us since the beginning of the discipline.

THALES METAPHYSICAL WATER

The first Greek philosopher, Thales, is famous for saying all is water. The Greeks, who did not have our modern periodic table, acknowledged four elements out of which they thought everything was made: earth, air, fire, and water. That simplified somewhat the question of what the world is made of: there were only four possibilities. We dont know the reasons for Thales choice, but we can imagine him arguing with his colleagues and students that there is a huge amount of water in the oceans, lakes, and rivers, and that it even comes down from the sky. Thales probably didnt know how large was the percentage of water in the human body, but he may have made an observation about that, and about how difficult it is for us to survive without water.

But another philosopher, Anaximenes, thought that all was made of air; and he may well have replied to Thales that we can survive without water longer than we can survive without air. And look at the huge amount of air in the expanse around us.

But someone might have asked each of these men, How do you know that everything conforms to your thesis? Thales didnt have any way of judging how much water there was on the moon, planets, or stars. (We still debate that question.) And even if we could show that the earth and the heavenly bodies are all made of water, how can we be sure that that is the end of our quest? How can we be sure that water is truly an element, that it is not in turn made up of other ingredients?

Anaximander, another Greek philosopher of roughly the same generation, was more modest than Thales (its all water) and Anaximenes (its all air). He argued that we really dont know what the whole universe is made of. He thought it best to say that the basic ingredient was apeiron the indefinite. We dont know what it is, but everything else somehow comes out of it.