Misconceptions

Scientific American is taking Ken Ham severely to task today for "blaming science for the Virginia killings." I have to admit there is something in Ken Ham's post that seems out of place to me. This is a time for pastoral answers for the actuality of evil, not for abstract explanations or for apologetic arguments. But Scientific American misread him, too. He didn't blame science. He mentions science classes that have "all but banned God," but that's not the same as blaming science. Or, if anyone thinks it is (even if it's Ken Ham), they have a lot of re-thinking to do. Properly understood, this is again not a case of religion vs. science. It's a case of naturalism vs. purpose.

This part of what Ken Ham wrote seems to be on the right track:

In these classrooms, students are taught that the whole universe, including plants and animals—and humans—arose by natural processes. Naturalism (in essence, atheism) has become the religion of the day and has become the foundation of the education system (and Western culture as a whole). The more such a philosophy permeates the culture, the more we would expect to see a sense of purposelessness and hopelessness that pervades people’s thinking. In fact, the more a culture allows the killing of the unborn, the more we will see people treating life in general as “cheap.”

Ideas have consequences, and the idea that humans are not qualitatively unique has consequences. The degrading of human life is one of those. I do not mean to say that every philosophical naturalist views human life as cheap. It would certainly be the tendency of such a philosophy, though, to come toward that conclusion over time. Thus it's true, "the more we would expect to see a sense of purposelessness and hopelessness that pervades people’s thinking."

I don't know what role Ken Ham thinks "science" plays in this. I'm stating my own position: "science," properly understood, is good. It is a reliable means of gaining new knowledge about the world. The naturalist philosophy to which Ham refers is by no means a necessary scientific conclusion. It has, unfortunately, been hijacked into science by some as a supposedly necessary operating assumption. It's not. Methodologically, science works best by confining its study to natural regularities; that is a kind of naturalism, but not the kind that leads to purposelessness and hopelessness. It's just an operating principle that defines what science is good at doing; just as musicians have an operating principle that says they're better with musical compositions than chemical compositions.

The naturalism that harms the human spirit is a philosophy that involves much more than science. It's a symptom of humanity's running away from God. It explicitly says there is no purpose ultimately behind life, so of course it drains us of hope and direction. Thank God that he has so much more, and so much better, for us than that!

Posted: Wed - April 18, 2007 at 04:00 PM |

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Misconceptions

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson