There was no school this last week so I had more time to read and write. And after writing my last blog about flatulence, I thought something a little more philosophical might be appropriate.
I love going for walks at night and turning of my light to look up at the stars. The overwhelming feeling of my smallness as I look up at the galactic vastness, is strangely comforting to me. This was the feeling that I was contemplating tonight while I looked up at the cosmos, in the dark of the night, from the other side of the world.
C.S. Lewis described this feeling as being drawn to an understanding that there must be something more to life than eventual and inevitable death. In the book The Question of God: it is explained that Lewis credited this drawing and longing for purpose as being the spark that changed him from an atheist to a Christian.
The philosophy of science has gone through some radical changes in the last two centuries. Inspiration of knowledge has transformed from Issac Newton's, “Oh God! I think thy thoughts after thee” To Steven Hawkins, “The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburbs of one among hundreds of billions of galaxies.”1 In either view one can't help but feel small, ironically “Steven Hawking now occupies the same chair at Cambridge that Sir Issac Newton did” 2
In,The Meaning of Life, Steven J Gould explains:
"We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures. Because comets struck the earth and wiped out dinosaurs thereby giving mammals a chance not otherwise available, so thank your lucky stars in a literal sense. Because the earth never froze completely during an ice age. Because a small and tenuous species arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago has managed so far to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a higher answer but none exists. This explanation though superficially troubling,if not terrifying,is ultimately liberating and exciting."3
Evolution like Christianity is a philosophy. For me there are only two choices. Either there is no “higher answer” and God does not exist. Or what the bible says is true, there is One God who is the creator and redeemer of the world. Two choices, chance or design. Interestingly either view can be construed as dogmatic.
In this age of postmodern relativism any absolute is politically incorrect. What bothers me is that Christianity seems to be the targeted philosophy. Evolution is recognized as science and fact, but it is philosophical and calling it science turns it into a tautology (something that is true by definition). By definition alone evolution becomes “true”, natural explanations are found because they are the only explanations that can be given because the supernatural is not even allowed into the equation. There either is a higher answer, or as Gould dogmatically asserts, there is not. Both views are philosophical but when it comes to the question of origins they absolutely cannot be united. Doing so is like trying to make a “squircle”4 (making a square circle) its impossible.
Longing for a higher answer is not proof that there is one, but it does offer some evidence. If all we are “is just chemical scum” then why are we appalled at rape, murder, and child abuse. Why are we good at all? Maybe its because humanity isn't “chemical scum” and in our hearts is written a desire for a higher morality (Heb 10:16).Perhaps this desire acts as a moral compass, directing us North, upward to the place where the Almighty dwells (Job 37:22).
Like the psalmist David, when I consider the heavens I can't help but think to God, “What is man that you are mindful of him” (Ps 8:4). Secular cosmologists give a good explanation of this verse with something called the “Anthropic principle”5 that is, it appears the universe had man in mind. As was Lewis, I am drawn to God by a seemingly implanted desire for purpose, and when I look at the Cosmo's its as if I become filled to the brim with it.
Evangelist David Assherick in a lecture called Does God Exist and Does it Matter says:
In the last 50 years the incredible discoveries that are being made about the universe are demonstrating convincingly to many astrophysicists and cosmologists that God is in the mix somewhere. There is no less than 15 major, preeminent figures in the world of cosmology that have converted to Christianity in the last 20 years. Not based on some evangelistic series, but based on their study of the cosmos.6
Many people without actually reading the bible believe what they are told, that it is nothing more than fables. The higher critics pick and choose what parts are conceivable and what parts must, by way of implausibility, be false. But maybe, “Truth is stranger than fiction”7, and the “Good Book” is still good, because it is still true. “We all need to believe in something. Some choose evolution, some choose Jesus. The biggest myth, however, is to think you can choose both.”8
I am not attempting to answer questions in this blog, but I am encouraging all who may be reading to think and to seek answers. Historian Will Durant says, “If you make people think they are thinking they will love you. But if you make people think, they will hate you.”9 Jesus had a tendency to make people think, and he was definitely hated. In Jn 14:6 Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth and the life, no one comes to the father except through me.” Not exactly a politically correct statement! However what he said is either absolutely true or absolutely false. There are only two choices, on this point the bible, and famous American poet Robert Frost, agree:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
1.Quoted in Clifford Goldstein, God, Godel, and Grace (Review and Herald, 2003) pp.25,26
2.Clifford Goldstein, God, Godel, and Grace (Review and Herald, 2003) p.25
3.Quoted in David Asscherick lecture, Evolution and the Emperors New Clothes (www.audioverse.com, 2004)
4.Quoted in David Asscherick lecture, Pascal's Wager (www.audioverse.com, 2004)
5.Quoted in David Asscherick lecture, Does God Exist and Does it Matter (www.audioverse.com, 2004)
6.Quoted in David Asscherick lecture, Does God Exist and Does it Matter (www.audioverse.com, 2004)
7.Murray McGill, Dead Birds Don't Sing but Witching Rods Talk (Remnant Publications, coming soon 2010) Ch 32
8.Clifford Goldstein The Myth of Progressive Faith (Signs of the Times, September, 2001)
9.Quoted in David Asscherick, Evolution and the Emperors New Clothes (www.audioverse.com, 2004)
No comments:
Post a Comment