Materialism is a Metanarrative, not Science

Richard Lewontin, a Harvard evolutionist, in “Billions and Billions of Demons,” a review of Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, New York Review of Books (January 9, 1997) wrote the following. Do you get the significance to what he admits?

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck8 used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen."

Collision: Is Religion Absurd or Good for the World?

An article in the Huffington Post came out in October to coincide with the release of Collision. It is a documentary that follows the touring debate of Christopher Hitchens and Pastor Douglas Wilson. The article, which is written by the both of them is below. Two interesting perspectives on the issue. The article follows:

Last fall, we went on tour debating the topic "Is Religion Good For The World?" Our arguments were captured on film for a new documentary, Collison. Are our morals dictated to us by a supreme entity or do discoveries made by science and reason, make Atheism a natural conclusion? You decide.

Religion Is Absurd by Christopher Hitchens
Religion will always retain a certain tattered prestige because it was our first attempt as a species to make sense of the cosmos and of our own nature, and because it continues to ask "why". Its incurable disability, however, lies in its insistence that the answer to that question can be determined with certainty on the basis of revelation and faith. We do not know, though we may assume, that our pre-homo sapiens ancestors (the erectus, the Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthals, with whom we have a traceable kinship as we do with other surviving primates) had deities that they sought to propitiate. Alas, no religion of which we are now aware has ever taken their existence into account, or indeed made any allowance for the tens and probably hundreds of thousands of years of the human story. Instead, we are asked to believe that the essential problem was solved about two-to-three thousand years ago, by various serial appearances of divine intervention and guidance in remote and primitive parts of what is now (at least to Westerners) the Middle East. This absurd belief would not even deserve to be called quixotic if it had not inspired masterpieces of art and music and architecture as well as the most appalling atrocities and depredations. The great cultural question before us is therefore this: can we manage to preserve what is numinous and transcendent and ecstatic without giving any more room to the superstitious and the supernatural. (For example, can one treasure and appreciate the Parthenon, say, while recognizing that the religious cult that gave rise to it is dead, and was in many ways sinister and cruel?) A related question is: can we be moral and ethical in our thoughts and actions without the servile idea that our morals are dictated to us by a supreme entity? I believe that the answer to both of these questions is in the affirmative. Tremendous and beautiful things have been achieved by science and reason, from the Hubble telescope to the sequencing of the DNA of obscure viruses. All of these attainments have tended to remind us, however, that we are an animal species inhabiting a rather remote and tiny suburb of an unimaginably large universe. However, this sobering finding -- and it is a finding -- is no reason to assume that we do not have duties to one another, to other species, and to the biosphere. It may even be easier to draw these moral conclusions once we are free of the egotistic notion that we are somehow the centre of the process, or objects of a creation or a "design". Dostoevsky said that without belief in god men would be capable of anything: surely we know by now that the belief in a divine order, and in divine orders, is an even greater license to act as if normal restraints were non-existent? If Moses and Jesus and Mohammed had never existed -- let alone Joseph Smith or Mary Baker Eddy or Kim Jong Il or any of the other man-made prophets or idols -- we would still be faced with precisely the same questions about how to explain ourselves and our lives, how to think about the just city, and how to comport ourselves with our fellow-creatures. The small progress we have made so far, from the basic realization that diseases are not punishments to the noble idea that as humans we may even have "rights", is due to the exercise of skepticism and doubt, and to the objective scrutiny of hard evidence, and not at all to faith or certainty. The real "transcendence", then, is the one that allows us to shake off the notion of a never-dying tyrannical father-figure, with its unconsoling illusion of redemption by human sacrifice, and assume our proper proportion as people condemned to be free, and able to outgrow the fearful tutelage of a supreme supervisor who does not forgive us the errors he has programmed us to make.
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Atheists Suck at Being Atheists by Pastor Douglas Wilson
From the perspective of a Christian, the refusal of an atheist to be a Christian is dismaying, but it is at least intelligible. But what is really disconcerting is the failure of atheists to be atheists. That is the thing that cries out for further exploration. We can understand a cook who sets out to prepare a reduction sauce, having it simmer on the stove for three days. But what we shouldn't get is the announcement afterwards that he has prepared us a soufflé. The atheistic worldview is nothing if not inherently reductionistic, whether this is admitted or not. Everything that happens is a chance-driven rattle-jattle jumble in the great concourse of atoms that we call time. Time and chance acting on matter have brought about, in equally aimless fashion, the 1927 New York Yankees, yesterday's foam on a New Jersey beach, Princess Di, the arrangement of pebbles on the back side of the moon, the music of John Cage, the Fourth Crusade, and the current gaggle representing us all in Congress. If the universe actually is what the materialistic atheist claims it is, then certain things follow from that presupposition. The argument is simple to follow, and is frequently accepted by the sophomore presidents of atheist/agnostic clubs at a university near you, but it is rare for a well-published atheistic leader to acknowledge the force of the argument. To acknowledge openly the corrosive relativism that atheism necessarily entails would do nothing but get the chimps jumping in the red states. To swallow the reduction would present serious public relations problems, and drive Fox News ratings up even further. Who needs that? So if the universe is what the atheist maintains it is, then this determines what sort of account we must give for the nature of everything -- and this includes the atheist's thought processes, ethical convictions, and aesthetic appreciations. If you were to shake up two bottles of pop and place them on a table to fizz over, you could not fill up an auditorium with people who came to watch them debate. This is because they are not debating; they are just fizzing. If you were to shake up one bottle of pop, and show it film footage of some genocidal atrocity, the reaction you would get is not moral outrage, but rather more fizzing. And if you were to shake it really hard by means of art school, and place it in front of Michelangelo's David, or the Rose Window of Chartres Cathedral, the results would not really be aesthetic appreciation, but more fizzing still. If the atheist is right, then I am not a Christian because I have mistaken beliefs, but am rather a Christian because that is what these chemicals would always do in this arrangement and at this temperature. The problem is that this atheistic assumption does the very same thing to the atheist's case for atheism. The atheist gives us an account of all things which makes it impossible for us to believe that any account of all things could possibly be true. But no account of things can be tenable unless it provides us with the preconditions that make it possible for our "accounting" to represent genuine insight. Atheism fails to do this, and the failure is a spectacular one. Nor does atheism allow us to have any fixed ethical standard, or the possibility of beauty. It does no good to appeal to the discoveries made by science and reason, for one of the things that reason has apparently brought us is atheism. Right? And not content to let sleeping dogs lie, reason also brings us the inexorable consequences of atheism, which includes the unpalatable but necessary conclusion that random neuron firings do not amount to any "truth" that corresponds to anything outside our heads. This, ironically enough, includes atheism, and so we find ourselves falling out of the tree, saw in one hand and branch in the other. Contrast this with the Christian gospel -- God the Father is the Maker of heaven and earth. He sent His Son to be born one of us; this Son died on gibbet for our sins, as the ultimate and final human sacrifice, and He rose from the dead on the third day following. Having ascended into Heaven and taken His place at the right hand of His Father, He sent His Holy Spirit into the world in order to transform it, a process that is still ongoing. Now obviously, this is a message that can be believed or disbelieved. But the reason for mentioning it here includes the important point that such a set of convictions makes it possible for us to believe that reason can be trusted, that goodness does not change with the evolutionary times, and that beauty is grounded in the very heart of God. Someone who believes these things doesn't believe that we are just fizzing. You can deny that this God exists, of course, and you can throw the whole cosmos into that pan of reduction sauce. And you can keep the heat on by publishing one atheist missive after another. But what you should not be allowed to do is cook the whole thing bone dry and call the crust on the bottom an example of the numinous or transcendent. Calling it that provides us with no reason to believe it -- and numerous reasons not to.

The Prodigal God

I just finished reading Tim Keller's A Prodigal God. It is a short book - at most a three hour read. Some thoughts after reading this book. Wow. Profound. Incredible. Poignant. Exciting. Liberating. Revealing.

Rarely do books capture poignancy with simplicity. This book is an exception. I cannot over-endorse this book to you, regardless of your faith position. Buy it, borrow it (don't steal it), and read it.

Getting the Emphasis (W)right

I was listening to D.A. Carson lecture on the New Perspective of Paul. I found this following statement in the middle of the lecture to a major criticism of the New Perspective, but also for much of our own bible readings if we are not careful. Since he spoke it and I tried to write it the quote is meant to catch the spirit of his statement, not every word.

“[The issue of justification in Galatians is ] Not just a nationalistic issue. It is a fundamental issue of how you are accepted before God, how you are justified. What makes you acceptable before God? It is the whole flow of the argument. And to think you can simplify the issue to just being “one people before God” so as to eliminate boundary markers and have a unified church is not completely wrong, but it is putting the focus in the wrong place. It’s not listening close enough to the text. It’s not putting the emphasis where Paul puts the emphasis, which brings me to another exegetical observation. Are you familiar with Gordon Fee’s quite magnificent book God’s Empowering Spirit? It’s a major treatment of the Holy Spirit in Paul. What he does is work through all the Pauline passages on the Holy Spirit and then puts them all together. Last week I was in Australia speaking in at a conference. The subject of the conference was the Holy Spirit in Acts. I worked through the big passages in Acts, and all the small ones so that I worked through every place in Acts where the Holy Spirit is mentioned. After I preached through it I said to myself, “I think what I’ve done, in one sense, is accurate, but in another sense, without meaning to is that I just distorted the whole book of Acts.” Because I don’t think Luke sat down and said “I’m going to write about the Holy Spirit.” That’s not Luke’s theme as he is writing Acts. It is merely a supporting theme. It is interwoven throughout the book to support the primary theme. So you may preach on the Holy Spirit in Acts in every situation and be absolutely correct in what you say about the Holy Spirit, but miss the point of Acts. You get a distorted picture of Acts. So I spent the last two talks to deconstruct my sermons to show how they were supportive of the heartbeat of Acts, which is the extension of the gospel. To speak of the Holy Spirit of Acts is a way to quietly distort the book of Acts if you are not careful….you are foregrounding that which is in the background, and backgrounding that which is the foreground.”

You can listen to the lectures at http://thegospelcoalition.org/resources/category/courses/a/series/the_new_perspective_on_paul/

Today's Devotional

Part of my daily walk with God is to do a quick devotional outside of my biblical text I am currently studying. Currently my quick devotional is taking me through Romans. Though meant to be personal I wanted to share today's for those who might benefit.

Romans 4:6-8 Likewise, David also speaks of the blessing of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:

How happy those whose lawless acts are forgiven and whose sins are covered! How
happy the man whom the Lord will never charge with sin!

Of interest is the way this text is translated. ESV makes verse seven past tense, but verse eight future tense. NASB, HCSB, NIV, NET all make verse seven present and eight future. The Greek is actually aorist in both verses. However, the future sense in verse eight reveals how it should be translated. The forgiveness happens in the past but has ongoing effects even into the future. And the there is a wonderful promise here in verse eight. The Lord will never charge those who have faith credited to their account with sin. The Greek has the double emphatic negative ensuring us that in “no way, no how” is this going to happen.

And here we are confronted with another truth of Scripture. Those who are children of God are happy. We may not be happy every second of every day, but the overarching theme is a great theme of joy and happiness. It should be of great concern if, as Christians, we walk around sulky or depressed. So not only do we have places in Scripture that demand our happiness (i.e. Delight yourselves in the Lord – Psalm 37:4) but we also have places in Scripture that promise our happiness. Here is a gut check. Do we get the immense forgiveness that has been given to us? Do we understand that by justification we are declared innocent? Do we recognize that we are indeed the great inheritors of the most prized possession ever offered to humanity? Here we hold in our possession the greatest of all treasures – a righted relationship with our Lord and Savior – the Almighty, Invisible God and Creator of the Universe.

Praise be to the glory of His Name
May His People praise His Acclaim
High above His creation is His throne
His creatures he does not leave alone
For mankind’s inheritance is shame
Preserving righteousness God’s aim
God credited faith to call our own
By Jesus’ death for our sins to atone
Declared innocent our hearts aflame
Praise be to the glory of His Name

Free Audio Download of Desiring God by John Piper

A great book and now a free audio version, but for this month (November) only.

Download - christianaudio.com

John Piper and his 30 years of ministry

Justin Taylor's blog yesterday is worth reading. I was pointed there by another elder at Hanley Road Church. The address is: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/.

Approaching 30 years in one pastorate is God exulting. Of course, so is an itinerant ministry such as Paul's missionary journeys. It is all about being God led and God satisfied. A few personal thoughts on John Piper and God's use of him in my life.

There is no person alive today who has more influence upon my journey, whom I have not personally known, than John Piper. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the biggest (at least as I understand them now) follow:

1. God's glory from beginning to the end of Scripture is highlighted in a fluid way in John Piper's sermons, thoughts and writings. Impressively, this high view of God's glory is balanced both in detail exegetical work, as well as broader summaries of biblical texts. In this respect, JPiper has shown balance and, in my estimation, harmony with Scripture on a whole as to God's ultimate and penultimate purposes.

2. Learning how to ask the hard questions of Scripture. This truly is a skill that is all too often lacking in our personal lives. As a pastor to other pastors I would say that this is one of the skills that is imperative for us to refine. Part of the issue is we don't even know that we are not asking the hard questions. God has given us a grace-drenched example to learn from. However, learning how to ask the hard questions is actually an outcropping of another skill. This skill is learning to have in-depth conversation with God concerning his word through memorization, marinating, meditation, praying and returning again and again to the text prior to preaching/teaching it. I have found that when there are not other believers to talk things out with that pen and paper (journaling the verses) works tremendously. He shows us how to be people serious about God's Holy Word.

3. As a pastor, recognizing that your flock will most likely go only as deep as you go in searching Scripture and that your flock will only commit as much as you have committed. The military mantra "Lead by Example" is true here and Piper exemplifies it. It starts with (2) in that as a pastor I must always address what God is saying to me from Scripture. This happens with the journaling. When confronted with the Great I AM - I must ask the hard, guiding question "Am I?" Am I being humble? Am I fighting for my faith? Am I self-righteous? Am I seeking salvation through works of the law? Am I desiring to be a teacher of the law although I don't understand what it is saying? Am I bankrupt in heart? Am I turning to God as my refuge? Am I giving God praise and exultation? Am I? Am I? Am I? JPiper's life exemplifies this. This is why I praise God for this man's example.

4. Arcing - while not his originally he has brought it into a more prominent view. What a wonderful interpretive tool as we labor of God's Word. It is hard, but we mine for gold. We say to God that he is our teacher and we are very interested in what he has to teach us - all of it. It is hard - it is labor intensive, it is hard to understand at points - but we want to know because it is God who tells us. We don't want to be people who tell God that even though he thinks it important for us to know that we just aren't interested or that it just is not worth the struggle. But how to do it? Arcing is a tool that helps in our pursuit of coming to terms with what God has revealed to us.

So, Praise be to God for how he works in people as exemplified in John Piper's life.