Nancy Pearcey Philosophy Quotations

The whole point of building theoretical systems is to explain what humans know by pre-theoretical experience. That is the starting point for any philosophy. That is the data it seeks to explain. If it fails to explain the data of experience, then it has failed the test. It has been falsified.

An idol is not necessarily something concrete, like a golden calf. It can also be something abstract, like matter. Is matter part of the created order? Sure it is. So the philosophy of materialism qualifies as an idol in the biblical sense.

Can reason be an idol? Certainly. The philosophy of rationalism puts human reason in the place of God as the source and standard of all truth.

A worldview is not the same things a formal philosophy, otherwise it would only be for philosophers. Even ordinary people have a set of convictions about how reality functions and how they should live. Some convictions are conscious while others are unconscious but together they form a consistent picture of reality.

Because a human is a someone and not a something, the source of human life must also be a Someone - not the blind, automatic forces of nature, as philosophies like naturalism and materialism tell us.