Tuesday, February 14, 2006
The Interface: Science, Faith, and Society
When you couple that with the fact that I am currently reading Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey (I know, I'm a little behind the curve - so sue me), my mind is a a bit of a seething cauldron on the topic. How did we get here? The sloppy thinking, the charge without basis, the majoring in the minors as Mark Daniels put it, on all sides of this discussion is so pervasive and so complete that it has become a Gordian Knot from which I fear there is no escape.
Just some thoughts in no order
- Anybody that thinks about the problem for more than a minute or two realizes it is not a battle of science and religion, it is a battle of naturalism and supernaturalism. Why can't we stop making it what it is not? There is enough to debate without complicating matters.
- The battle between naturalism and supernaturalism is almost as old as mankind. It isn't new. The rise of the scientific method and its success have given naturalism more ammunition that it had previously in history, but it is the same old fight.
- Holding supernaturalism does not make one a Christian. Islamic extremists are supernatrualists too. I'd be hard pressed to decide who I want to fight, the naturalist or the Islamic extremist.
- Those who fight for naturalism from the scientific community have the oldest problem to plague mankind - the problem of sin. They think they have it all figured out, putting themselves in God's place, having the power of God at their fingertips, as it were.
That last comment is to my way of thinking the meat of the matter. For Christians the "battle" here is not a battle of ideas, nor is it a battle of laws and governments. It is the struggle that God has fought with us, and on our behalf, since not long after he created us, it's the spiritual war - The war for our souls and the souls of all that we love.
That war is fought on many fronts - apologetics and public policy included - but in the end winning the war is all that matters. If I lose the apologetics battle but win the war, so be it. If I lose the public policy battle but win the war, all the better. I think all Christians need to bear that in mind. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our individual battle that forget the war. We do so at out peril. When we lose that perspective,we make our particular battle an idol, and then we have lost the war for our own souls.
Related Tags: Christianity, spiritual war, apolgetics, public policy, global warming, evolution
