In 1966 Time Magazine published this cover for all the world to see. The boldness of the lettering set against a black background remarkably parallels the intent of the author of those three little words, Friedrich Nietzsche. I want to explain what he meant by that infamous statement and, more importantly, explain how pluralism has proven him to be correct.

His statement is very easy to understand in broad strokes, so please don’t be turned back from this post because you think Nietzsche to be too smart or inscrutable for you to comprehend. I assure you, in this post, the most arduous task set before either you, as the reader, or myself, as the writer, will be for me to spell his name correctly (or at least consistently). Knowing this man and his philosophy will give you a deeper understanding of the world around you.

So let’s start by getting to know Nietzsche.

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If you are like me then I assume you want to click over to another of your favorite Christian blogs simply to avoid the rather frightening sesquipedalianism plastered across the title of this post. It is a big, unfamiliar word, but it need not scare you. Much like the overlong word used in the first sentence (which is ironically defined as long word), epistemology is easy to understand.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge. It is a branch of philosophy which attempts to make sense of how humans know things. I beg you not to tune me out because I am discussing philosophy; I assure you that this post will be both understandable and pertinent to your life as a Christian. Trust me.

So, how do we know things? This may seem like a silly and pointless question on the surface, but it has massive implications. Most notably, the American university has allowed this question to shape the way in which they teach the students who come to them for a higher education. To quote Ravi Zacharias, “The modern student goes away to college in order to learn. They come back from the same school knowing that there is no way to know anything.” I would also add that that we leave knowing one other thing – that college is freaking expensive. Sorry for the digression. My point is that the simple, silly question asked at the outset of this paragraph has brought many people and institutions into some strange places.

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Does our study of the universe point to a creator? The Cosmological argument answers that modern astronomy, which posits the Big Bang Theory as the explanation of the beginning of the universe, does indeed point to a creator. Astrophysics at the highest level has long since accepted that the universe is expanding, and this expansion points to an initial time at which the universe began. The cosmological argument takes this information and applies it to classical philosophical arguments dating back to Plato. The history of this argument and the ways it has changed throughout the history of philosophy will aid in understanding its importance today.

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Of the four classical arguments for the existence of God, the ontological argument is the most questioned and least understood. Ontology is the study of the nature of being, or existence. According to definition, the ontological argument is an argument for God’s existence based upon the nature of his existence. Within the bounds of the ontological argument, in order to understand the nature of God’s existence, you must simply define your concept of God.

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With the close of the 18^th Century, we began to see a new form of philosophy begin to shape.  Scientific questions were then a form of the current metaphysical branch of philosophy, known as natural philosophy, which sought answers through empirical knowledge (epistemology).  With the development of modern science and the birth of the scientific method, natural philosophy simply became an empirical and experimental activity, unlike the rest of philosophy.  The birth of the scientific method therefore separated metaphysics from natural philosophy, and metaphysics became a sole philosophical enquiry into the non-empirical and non-experimental questions of life and the nature of existence.  As the scientific method has evolved, it has become the popular belief that metaphysics and the scientific method can no longer co-exist together to be reliable.  Herbert Fiegl contended in the 1954 Journal of Philosophical Studies that there are “no philosophical postulates of science.”  He continues to say that the “scientific method can be explicated and justified without metaphysical presuppositions about the order or structure of nature.”[1]   

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