Hidden Worldviews: Eight Cultural Stories That Shape Our Lives by Steve Wilkens;Mark L. Sanford

Author:Steve Wilkens;Mark L. Sanford
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2009-11-04T09:59:00+00:00

CONCLUSION

An anecdote that has made its way through Christian circles provides a good point of departure to summarize the shortcomings of naturalism. It tells of a group of scientists who go to God, asserting that he is no longer necessary since they have harnessed the powers of science sufficiently to create human life. Intrigued by this, God asks for a demonstration. One scientist reaches down and grabs a handful of dirt to begin the process. At this point, God stops him and says, "Get your own dirt."

This little story highlights a critical distinction that we often fail to make-the distinction between fabrication and creation. Fabrication, taking raw materials and reshaping them into different forms, is a realm where some amazing things have been accomplished by means of scientific methods. It is conceivable that somewhere in the future, human life will be fabricated out of the components present in dirt. After all, that is essentially what we return to after we check out biologically. Such a technological feat would involve significant quantities of knowledge, but the knowledge required to fabricate a human being from dust still leaves a basic question unanswered. It doesn't tell us how the dirt came to be there in the first place, how it was created. In fact, naturalism sidesteps the question of the dirt's ultimate origin completely by claiming that matter exists eternally.

Christianity holds an alternative view to naturalism's idea that matter, or whatever stands behind matter, is eternal. It speaks, not of fabrication only, but also of creation, a process by which God brought dirt and other forms of matter into being out of nothing. This is admittedly a faith position. I doubt that the statement "God created the multiple somethings of the universe out of an empty nothing" can be proved, and I know it can't be demonstrated to be a factual statement by naturalism's criteria. However, naturalism also cannot demonstrate that "matter exists eternally" is a factual statement by its own criteria. Naturalism's ideas of the nature of matter, the uniformity of nature's laws and the sovereignty of reason may allow us to claim that matter is eternal, but no combination of these concepts supplies proof that this assertion is a fact. The statement "matter is eternal" is no less a faith claim than "God created matter."

Our conclusion that naturalism is a faith system is not simply built on its premise that matter is eternal, but is another way of restating the critiques above. When we argue that naturalism's assertions about morality, human uniqueness and superiority, rationality and purpose cannot be justified as factual statements by the very standards it has established, we are saying that each of these positions requires a significant element of faith. Moreover, we would say that these are misdirected faith statements.

What separates a good faith statement from one that should be discarded is a complicated matter, but at least one measure should be internal consistency, and naturalism fails on this count. Its worldview starts from the premises that everything is comprised of eternally existing matter operating under unchangeable laws of nature.

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