Truth is Falling Everywhere, Except

I have finally returned to blogging after having completed my MA in Science and Religion through Biola University

Part 1 of 3.  My footnotes are accessible in this same essay at my website www.christianityontheoffense.com

               Young-earth creationists (YEC) and philosophical materialists (PM) ironically share one common posture with respect to scientific knowledge; they both employ it selectively insofar as it advances the agenda behind their respective isms.  To give just one initial example here, even though PMs commonly boast of their rigorous commitment to scientific facts and reason, their silence in the current disputation over transgenderism-shower arrangements implies their tacit approval of the redefinition of sexual identity according to the candidate’s subjective “self-awareness,” in violation of the objective scientific data of both genetics and genitalia.  At the same time, although YECs eagerly embrace scientific data on the condition that it is perceived to support their interpretation of Genesis 1, they dismiss out-of-hand other data which indicates that the cosmos is much older than 6,000 years.  Each party then, despite the disparate motives which drive them, effectively demotes the authority of scientific knowledge to that of a pragmatic tool that may or may not be useful in a given instance for advancing their disparate agendas.  The consequence of this ploy is that they each uniquely further the disintegration of the authority of objective truth in our day; the former by their denial of truth as a legitimate binding category of thought; while the latter by the revision of the very meaning of the term.  Yet for Christians especially, this ploy is self-defeating.  What both parties (PM and YEC) fail to understand is that the Bible forbids such wariness toward scientific facts.  The Apostle Paul notes in Romans 1:18-20 that, in terms of the convicting aspect of the law (Rom. 3:19-20), the testimony manifested by “the things that have been made” must not be suppressed for the reason that they constitute a standard by which unbelievers will be judged to be “without excuse” for reason of their rejecting the Creator.  Consistent with this point, St. Paul states that God additionally employs the facts of nature for the purpose of witnessing to the entire world of His own existence and power (Psalm 19:1f.).  Consequently, to the extent that this evidence is suppressed or marginalized, the case for God’s existence is weakened. 

     

                Whenever personal beings, irrespective of their status, make assertions about phenomena and events which can in principle be investigated, the only possible means by which such claims can be substantiated is to measure them against the pertinent empirical facts of the case.  Not even the God of Holy Scripture exempts Himself from this necessity. For this reason it is futile for Christians to seek, as they frequently do, to shield the Bible from the scrutiny of the knowable facts of science and history, especially since it addresses both of these aspects of reality.  Of course it isn’t Christians who are glee-fully announcing that truth as a category of thought which demands our moral submission, is now dead, but instead secularists of every stripe.  In actuality PM by definition has no conceptual room for truth as a metaphysical entity that elicits obligation.  As surprising as it may seem, the concept of truth as a standard that is to be obeyed has its foundation not in science (even though science depends on the commitment of scientists to that criterion), but instead in religious convictions of a theistic kind.  In spite of this, however, Christians in their peculiar fashion commonly fail to embrace truth according to this full-bodied definition as it follows logically from biblical theology.  Indeed, insofar as YECs insist on submitting both scientifically and historically-attestable facts to the “final” authority of the Bible so long as the latter appears not to be able to accommodate the former, they are violating a first principle of logic identified as “the law of non-contradiction,” by their employing a strategy which entails commit-ting an intellectual transgression that Scripture itself never practices.