Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes [Kindle Edition]

Nancy Pearcey

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Book Description

Don't Think, Just Believe?

That's the mantra in many circles today--whether the church, the classroom, the campus, or the voting booth.

Time for a Reality Check

Nancy Pearcey, bestselling and critically acclaimed author, offers fresh tools to break free from presumed certainties and test them against reality. In Finding Truth, she explains five powerful principles that penetrate to the core of any worldview--secular or religious--to uncover its deepest motivations and weigh its claims. 

A former agnostic, Pearcey demonstrates that a robust Christian worldview matches reality--that it is not only true but attractive, granting higher dignity to the human person than any alternative.  

Finding Truth displays Pearcey's well-earned reputation for clear and cogent writing. She brings themes to life with personal stories and real-world examples. The book includes a study guide shaped by questions from readers, from teens to college professors. It is ideal for individual or group study.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Nancy Pearcey at her best--totally profound, persuasive, and yet practical.  Read it with your highlighter handy!"
      --Lee Strobel, New York Times Best-selling Author
 
"Describes my life as an atheist perfectly ... If I'd read this book as a young man, I think I would have been challenged to re-examine my views much earlier."
      --J. Warner Wallace, Author, Cold-Case Christianity
 
"Dismantles humanism, atheism, reductionism, and every other ism ... Pearcey's arguments combined with the Gospel of Jesus leave all other worldviews outside of Christianity without a leg to stand on."
      --Phil Robertson, Duck Dynasty
 
"A great book ... Nancy Pearcey has been to the church what Francis Schaeffer was to believers of his day: a cultural intellectual who provides careful, thoughtful, and well-researched critiques ... I highly recommend this delightful book."
      --J.P. Moreland, Professor of Philosophy, Biola University
 
"Deftly exposes the inconsistencies and the failures of a host of modern idols."
      --Paul Copan, Professor of Philosophy, Palm Beach Atlantic University
 
"We live in a culture beset by the twin dragons of modernism and postmodernism. Nancy Pearcey draws a sword and cuts their heads off ... Totally readable."
      --Doug TenNapel, Creator, Earthworm Jim
 
"Secular worldviews have become the intellectual fast-food of our day--nice taste, no nourishment ... This book ought to be in the survival kit of every student heading off to college."
      --John R. Erickson, Author, Hank the Cowdog

"Chock full of gems ... Pearcey has the unique ability of getting to the heart of things."
      --Gregory Koukl, President, Stand to Reason

From the Author

"Don't Think, Just Believe"?
That's the mantra in many circles today--whether the church, the classroom, the boardroom, or the voting booth.
 
Nancy Pearcey, bestselling and critically acclaimed author, provides a reality check. In Finding Truth (March 1, 2015, David C Cook), she offers five powerful principles that penetrate to the core of any worldview to uncover its deepest motivations and weigh its claims.
 
A former agnostic, Pearcey unmasks the presumed certainties of atheism, secularism, and other God substitutes. She demonstrates that a robust Christian worldview matches reality--that it is not only true but attractive, granting higher dignity to the human person than any alternative.
 
Pearcey's bestselling Total Truth made the case for Christianity as a comprehensive worldview. Now Finding Truth shows that Christianity provides a unique strategy for testing truth claims, responding critically yet respectfully to competing worldviews.
 
What Do You Mean, Atheism Is a "God Substitute"?
Atheist websites like to claim, "Atheism is not a belief. Atheism is merely the lack of a belief in God or gods." But no one can think without some starting point.  Most atheists propose matter or nature as the ultimate reality, the cause and source of everything else. That is what functions as their God substitute.
 
Finding Truth demonstrates that every secular philosophy makes an idol out of some part of the created order, turning it into a false absolute. But false gods are too small to give dignity and value to human life. They lead inevitably to inhumanity and violence. History is replete with the broken lives and shattered communities that result from following counterfeit gods, whether Nazism, Communism, materialism, or postmodernism.
 
Insight into the dynamics of idolatry gives readers the skills to identify and critique the idols at the heart of the isms competing for allegiance in today's pluralistic, multicultural world.
 
How Can I Be Sure? A Real-World Training Manual
Drawing on her own experience as an agnostic, Nancy Pearcey is a sure guide to answering the questions that trouble many young people today. Studies confirm that the age when people are most likely to reject Christianity is in the late high school and early college years. And the reason they give most frequently is that they could not get answers to their doubts and questions.
 
Finding Truth demonstrates that a Christian worldview gives answers that are both true and testable. The bedrock truths that everyone wants and needs--from atheists like Richard Dawkins to hip hop artists like Lecrae--are uniquely found in historic Christianity.
 
With her trademark clarity, Pearcey bring themes to life with personal stories and real-world examples.  Finding Truth has a built-in study guide, making it an ideal training manual for schools, colleges, seminaries, homeschools, and church groups.
 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• File Size: 2725 KB
• Print Length: 388 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0781413087
• Publisher: David C. Cook (March 1, 2015)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00QN345NG
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray:
  Not Enabled
• Word Wise: Not Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #27,939 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #4 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality > Christian Books & Bibles > Ministry & Evangelism > Evangelism
  • #7 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies & Reference > Comparative Religion
  • #8 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality > Christian Books & Bibles > Churches & Church Leadership > Pastoral Resources

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent approach to examining and refuting worldviews. March 2, 2015

By Daniel Wynne

Format:Kindle Edition

Nancy Pearcey is the director of the Christian Worldview Center at Houston Baptist University. She is the author or coauthor of six other books, including Total Truth, Saving Leonardo, and How Now Shall We Live (with Chuck Colson.)
Many Christian philosophers and apologists have written effective critiques of worldviews that compete with Christianity in the marketplace of ideas. In that sense there is nothing new in Pearcey’s book. The beauty of Finding Truth is in how Pearcey offers a systematic way to evaluate these worldviews in a way that exposes their weaknesses, and shows Christianity to be a viable alternative.
Working from the text of chapters 1 and 2 of Paul’s letter to the Romans, Pearcey outlines a five-step process for evaluating worldviews that compete with Christianity. She notes that every worldview has an ultimate concern, or something that has the status of divinity, hence the first step is to identify what this is for the worldview. What stands in for the God the worldview denies?
Every God-substitute turns out to be something within the created order, and therefore smaller than the God who is. Pearcey shows how all competing worldviews entail some form of reductionism. She then helps the reader identify it. If you think of a worldview as a box, only Christianity has one big enough to contain reality. All others are too small, and therefore they must deny, dismiss, or ignore aspects of reality that do not fit in the box.
Having noted the aspects of reality that must be denied, the third step is to compare the view with how one experiences the world. How well does the worldview make sense of the world as we find it?
In the next step, we examine the worldview to see if it passes its own test. Ultimately, worldviews contrary to Christianity are self-refuting. For example, materialism denies the existence of free will. However, some form of free will is necessary for rationality to be possible. If rationality is not possible, the materialist cannot affirm or defend materialism. In the final step, the case is made for the Christian worldview, noting how the competing worldview is already borrowing from Christianity while denying it at the same time. Pearcey closes by arguing for an integrated faith that applies critical thinking, rather than shuns it.
Finding Truth is a must read for parents of high school students contemplating college, college students, youth pastors, and anyone else who wants to think carefully about faith and be able to share their faith more effectively. Read more ›

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Read March 7, 2015

By Tim Challies TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Kindle Edition

Nancy Pearcey’s bestselling and award-winning book "Total Truth" made quite a mark on my life. It was, to my memory, the first book I had ever read on worldview, and its explanation of the way our world divides the sacred and the secular has not only stuck with me, but has helped me better understand and explain the culture around me. Though Pearcey has written another book between then and now, I consider her new work, "Finding Truth," the true sequel to "Total Truth."

In "Finding Truth," Pearcey offers 5 principles meant to unmask our culture’s endless worldview alternatives to Christianity—secularism, atheism, and the like. There are all kinds of books that make a similar promise, but this one has a noteworthy difference: Pearcey looks to Romans 1 to find a kind of apologetics training manual for identifying and challenging any other worldview.

At the start of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, he claims that all humanity has access to evidence for God’s existence, and then describes what happens when people refuse to acknowledge him. As people turn away from God, they suppress the truth that God makes known to them through creation and through human nature. People hide from God by creating idols, God substitutes. These are not merely idols of wood and stone, but also ideas, any idea that provides an alternate explanation for the meaning and purpose of life. Idols have consequences, and God gives up those who worship them to a debased mind, so that they become futile in their thinking and dishonorable in their behavior. While most explanations of this text dwell on behavior, Pearcey focuses on the mind, showing the ways in which the unbelieving mind is affected by sin so that an entire worldview becomes completely opposed to God.

In Romans 1 she finds five strategic principles that “provide a basic game plan for making sense of any worldview across the board—even the cutting edge ideas of our day—and then to craft a compelling positive case for Christianity.” Here is a brief explanation of each.

Principle 1. Identify the Idol. Every non-biblical worldview begins with some kind of a God substitute—an idol. If human beings will not worship the God who created them, they will still worship something—something that provides an alternate explanation of the world’s origins or that provides an understanding of the meaning of life.

Principle 2. Identify the Idol’s Reductionism. Once we identify the idol, we need to look for its reductionism, the way in which it leads to a low view of human life. When one part of the creation is deified or idolized, every other part will necessarily be denigrated. Why? Because one part is always far too small to explain the whole thing. Reductionism is always dehumanizing.

Principle 3. Test the Worldview: Does It Contradict What We Know About the World? The third step is to test the worldview against the facts of experience, which is to say, the truths of general revelation. Though people will continue to suppress the evidence of God’s existence, what God has created continues to challenge them, because physical nature and human nature constantly provide evidence of a Creator. Therefore every idolatrous worldview will fail to fit the evidence and will, instead, contradict the facts of general revelation.

Principle 4. Test the Idol: Does it Contradict Itself? Every reductionistic worldview is, on some level, self-defeating. It commits suicide by reducing reason to something less than what is reasonable. We need to look for the way in which it contradicts itself and collapses internally. (An example is the relativistic claim that there is no universal truth even though this statement is, itself, meant to be a universal truth.)

Principle 5. Replace the Idol: Make the Case for Christianity. By focusing on the points where reductionistic worldviews fail, we can offer a better and more compelling alternative. We can do this by finding those inevitable places where other worldviews borrow from the Christian worldview and expose themselves to critique.

"Finding Truth" has many commendable strengths. For one, Pearcey shows again and again just how far people will go to suppress the knowledge of God. They will go to any length to deny what is right in front of their noses and—even closer—right within their own hearts and minds. She shows this in a broad range of alternative religions and philosophies, pointing always to the consistency of the Christian faith.

While she shows that all other worldviews are insufficient and illogical, she does not discard them altogether. Instead, she shows how they do contain some genuine insights, and then shows how their best insights are inevitably and illogically stolen from the Christian worldview.

She also provides a compelling intellectual argument for the Christian faith. I appreciate what Gregory Koukl says in his endorsement: “This is one of those books that not only challenges the critics; it also gives a huge dose of confidence to the Christian who will catch himself walking away from its pages saying, ‘Gosh, this stuff really is true.’”

Pearcey promises that the principles she lays out will “provide you with the tools to recognize what’s right and wrong with any worldview—and then to craft a biblically informed perspective that is both true and humane.” She makes the promise and she delivers on it. "Finding Truth" is, all-in-all, a worthy successor to "Total Truth." Read more ›

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars An important addition to understanding beliefs, and where Biblical teachings excel. March 13, 2015

By Critical thought

Format:Kindle Edition

By presenting her system for recognizing and refuting false religions, Nancy Pearcey has made an important contribution towards making people ready to give an answer to the hope that is within them 1 Peter 3:15.

Like any human authored book, there are minor, side-issue mistakes in it that I noticed. With other books, I have seen how enemies latch onto minor, side-issue mistakes and even typos to try to disparage the whole book, but that attempt is in itself a logical fallacy. The central theme of her book is valid.

Nancy’s core message is that she developed a five step method to recognize and refute the teachings used to attack a young Christian’s trust in Jesus. It is based on Romans 1:18–2:16. These are not only for personal use, but also to teach others what to look for. Those five steps are:
1) recognize what is a person’s true religion, his true beliefs, what is most important in a person’s life, which Nancy calls “identify the idol.” Even Christians can take something as most important in their lives, more important than God, in other words to take on idols 1 John 5:21 while still thinking they are Christians. An “idol” is anything that is taken as most important in one’s life, whether an object or a belief.
2) “identify the reductionism” where non-Christians suppress truths of their existence to fit their beliefs. When something other than God is most important in one’s life, the value of everything else is reduced to fit that belief.
3) compare the non-Christian’s core religion, his beliefs, with reality, showing where his religion falls short. In other words, where the religion, following reductionist false idols, fails to account for the life that we live. Nancy quoted people who admitted that they could not live according to what they believe.
4) show where the non-Christian faith “commits suicide”, i.e. is not true to itself. In other words, they have internal contradictions that invalidate the religions.
5) present the Gospel.
It is this five step method that is Nancy’s contribution.

Nancy touches on one of my pet peeves, namely the failure of Churches, pastors and youth leaders to prepare their young people for the battle against false religions. Time and again I’ve mentioned truths the same as those in this book to young people, and their response is one of appreciation and surprise—why haven’t they heard these things before, from youth leaders and pastors? Why aren’t they present on church web sites? We have total truth, why do pastors and churches resist teaching it? Our young people are dying spiritually, why not give them life? I don’t understand this failure. Is it because most pastors themselves don’t understand the fullness of the Gospel for all of life? Have they bought into the worldly concepts of a split reality, one secular and the other of faith? Or are they themselves ignorant?

One weakness of the book is that I don’t think Nancy fully appreciates by how much Christian thinking differs from that of the world. “…Jews ask for a sign and Greeks (western philosophers) look for wisdom (philosophical system). But we announce Christ and his crucification, an offense to the Jew, but foolishness to the Greek (western philosopher).” 1 Corinthians 1:22–3. She hints at the differences in her steps 3 and 4, where it is recognized that truth needs to be lived, not just modeled in intellectual systems. I make the differences explicit in my review of another book sold by Amazon called “Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek” by Thorleif Boman: [[http://www.amazon.com/Hebrew-Thought-Compared-Greek-Thorleif/dp/0393005348/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1426257858&sr=1-1&keywords=hebrew+thought+compared+with+greek]].

Another weakness is that Nancy doesn’t seem to distinguish between Christians who are Christians in deed, and those who are Christians in name only, in other words, wolves in sheep’s clothing. Yes, the world calls them all “Christian” because the world doesn’t know any better, nor is it able to make the distinction, but we should know and distinguish.

A strength of the book is that Nancy is familiar with many of the philosophers and thinkers of the world, so she can give examples of their failings in her book.

This book is aimed at the young people, teaching them how to evaluate the challenges they face, and how to overcome them. As such, it can be a real help in their understanding and growth as Christians, instead of losing their faith. This should be complimentary to, not instead of, reading God’s Word the Bible, and reading it daily.

The relatively easy to use and easy to teach five step system is the genius that Nancy presents in this book. Read more ›