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RPM Volume 19, Number 17, April 23 to April 29, 2017
Nature as God – Naturalism
Psalm 24:1-5
By Reverend Brad Mercer
Let's pray before we begin. Lord God, we do thank You and praise You for the
privilege and the opportunity. We also recognize the fact that we are needy. We
are not self-sufficient. We need You. We need Your Holy Spirit. We pray that You
would come, by Your Spirit, illumine our hearts and minds, shine a spotlight on
your Word, and as we wrestle, think about, consider alternative world views that
challenge–directly challenge–what we know as the truth, You would give us
insight, boldness, courage and perseverance as we seek to live our lives to the
glory of Jesus Christ. And we pray these things in His name. Amen.
Psalm 24, beginning at verse one:
The earth is the Lord's, and all it contains, the world, and those who dwell
in it. For He has founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the
rivers. Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who may stand in
His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not
lifted up his soul to falsehood, and has not sworn deceitfully. He shall
receive a blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his
salvation.
God bless to us His Word.
Alternative worldviews Unfortunately, there are alternative views to the view we just heard. And those
alternative views are everywhere, one of which is this: “In the beginning was
mechanistic matter. And the matter was formless and void, and the darkness was
over the surface of the deep, and there was light. The heavens were gathered
into one place, and dry land appeared, and we call the dry land Earth, and the
gathering of the waters, seas. The waters teemed with swarms of living material
entities, some with fins, others with wings. And the Earth was full of large and
small organic machines, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and
every winged, material entity after its kind. And they were fruitful and multiplied.
Then chemically complex bipeds emerged, and they asserted dominion over the
other material entities, and they multiplied. We see the world, and behold, the
mindless, non-rational system of events called Nature goes on and on of its own
accord.” That is Naturalism.
Several weeks ago we introduced the concept of worldview. We said that a
worldview is a set of presuppositions or assumptions we hold about the basic
make-up of the world, and everyone has a worldview, and it radically affects how
we interpret our world. One person thinks he sees a ghost; another person thinks
he sees a reflection of light. His worldview drives him to interpret what he sees,
what he experiences, what he reads, what he knows, what he perceives, what he
reflects upon in one way or another.
G. K. Chesterton once said, “If you marry the spirit of the times, you will soon be
a widow.” The spirit of the times changes, and this is particularly true of
naturalism. Naturalism in many ways, in a very real sense, has given way to
Pantheism: God is the cosmos. Or, Animism: the cosmos is full of spiritual
beings. But Naturalism, unlike Deism, has had certain staying power. In Deism,
where God is limited or reduced, in Naturalism He loses His very existence. This
is a worldview that champions a bottom-to-top inductive method. Facts and
figures proceed upward, and they proceed into abstract conceptions. Just as a
doctor would evaluate empirical data, or a jury gathers evidence, we start from
the top down with what we see and experience and observe, and we rule out the
supernatural. And in the process, science itself is deified. We idolize science.
The idolatry and ultimate authority of science. Empirical observation reigns.
Paul Kurtz wrote a series of documents called The Humanist Manifesto, and says
this: “To introduce a supernatural or transcendental cause within science is to
depart from the naturalistic explanation. On this ground, to invoke an intelligent
designer or creator is inadmissible. Surely the …”...now, hear this!... “...surely the
Darwinian revolution of the nineteenth century was so impressive because it
sought naturalistic explanations for a biological phenomenon. This is what we
look to for our worldview...”, he is advocating.
I. Naturalism
So what is naturalism? First, as we said a moment ago: matter. Nothing comes
from nothing. Either God always existed, or matter always existed. There are no
supernatural beings, and matter has always existed. Nature is the sum-total of
what can be observed and what can be evaluated through the natural sciences.
You remember, we quoted from Carl Sagan. Some of you remember him, with
his “billions and billions of years ago”. “The cosmos is all that is, ever was, or
ever will be” sums it up. The cosmos is all that is, was, or ever will be.
Unfortunately, not only scientists will advocate this view, but we have the wellknown, very popular heretic who you can find everywhere. His books are
everywhere. John Shelby Spong, who's now the retired Bishop of New Jersey,
and also, interestingly, a lecturer at Harvard. And whenever I hear that, I always
remember that the original motto of Harvard was Veritas pro Christo et Ecclesia,
“Truth, Christ, and the Church.” And now this man is calling for a new
reformation, and he puts forward twelve theses–I’ll just give you a couple of
them…. He says this: “The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from
which human beings fell into sin is a pre-Darwinian mythology and a postDarwinian nonsense.” Another thesis: “The Virgin Birth, understood as literal
biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.” “The
miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a postNewtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.” A
couple more: “The view of the cross as the sacrifice for sin of the world is a
barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God, and must be dismissed.” This
does not at all resemble the other Reformation.
One more: “The story of the ascension assumed a three-tiered universe, and is
therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of this postCopernican space age.”
I'm not sure what he's advocating, but I know what he's against. This is a man
who wears the cloth says that, and advocates that we should look to Darwinism,
and that matter is eternal. In other words, “In the beginning, matter.”
II. The universe exists as cause and effect in a closed system.
In other words, it's all in a box! And there is nothing outside that box. There's no
transcendent being that created the box, there's no transcendent god who
superintends, who works, who providentially guides the box, and there are no
human beings that make real choices. It's all cause and effect. Here's what one
writer says: “The beautiful regularity of the seasons is not the effect of a divine
plan, but the result of gravitation.” There again you see the perspective. Jesus
Christ Himself is a product of the same evolutionary cause-and-effect processes
as the rest of us. There is nothing divine about Him. He's inside the box. He
didn't come from outside the box.
III. Human beings are simply complex machines.
Complex, yes, but organic machines. The universe at its most basic level is
mechanistic. The basic substances of the physical world are pieces of matter. If
we want to know truth, we've got to know physics. We've got to pursue physics.
The laws applying to matter apply also to human beings. When rocks fall from
mountainsides, they don't avoid people if people are standing there. They fall on
them. A human eye is structured mechanistically over time to evolve to the point
that enables us to see. Human brains–a human brain–is mechanistically
structured in such a way that it eventually, over time, produces rational thought.
But it's again at the most basic level, the ground floor of reality is
purposelessness, chance, mechanistic.
One writer says–again, an excellent example–“The brain secretes…”... and this
is sad… “The brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. Hopes, dreams,
thoughts, beliefs, love are ultimately brought about by the movement of matter.”
And that's it. “In the beginning, matter.” Yes, human beings are complex; yes,
they amaze us; yes, we haven't figured it all out yet, but again, at the most basic
level the universe is mechanistic.
IV. Death is the extinction of personality and individuality.
In other words, the logical consequence of all of this is, when you die, you’re
gone. You’re dust, literally. The Humanist Manifesto says this: “As far as we
know, the total personality is a function of the biological organism transacting in a
social and cultural context. There is no credible evidence that life survives the
death of the body.” Bertrand Russell, famous atheist, says this: “No fire, no
heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual's life
beyond the grave.” When you die, you die. You cease to exist in any kind of form
whatsoever. Back to dust.
V. There's no purpose to history.
There's no goal. There's not a goal of Christ's returning, or any other kind of goal.
When human beings appear and they evolve to the point of consciousness, they
can look back in time and reflect upon what's happened in the past and give it a
certain meaning, but history has no meaning, ultimately. History is what we
interpret it to be, what we want it to be, what we make it to be. An example: our
national poet–a man who's usually considered to be our national poet, wrote this
in the mid-twentieth century. Robert Frost–and by the way, a ‘heal-all’, a heal-all
is a flower. Listen to this. This poem is entitled “Design.”
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
on the white heal-all, holding up a moth
like a white piece of rigid satin cloth.
Assorted characters of death and blight,
mixed ready to begin the morning rite.
Like ingredients of a witch's broth,
a snow-drop spider, flower like a froth,
and dead wings carried like a paper kite
What had the flower to do with being white?
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height, then steer the white moth thither
in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall, if design governed anything so small.”
He's looking at the details of nature and saying ‘there's no design here. These
are characters of death and blight. As I look at a spider carrying a moth, killing a
moth, destroying a moth, eating a moth standing on a flower, there's no design.
Look at it! “Assorted characters of death and blight.” There is no purpose. There
is no design to history, to time.
VI. Ethics is only related to human beings.
Morality is not revealed or discovered, it is made. Morality is not revealed or
discovered, it is made. Early naturalists, living on borrowed capital, still talk in
many senses a Christian ethic. And that later fell away. But values…values are
man-made. Whatever makes most people happy. Whatever helps most people to
co-operate. Whatever brings us world peace. So, why not same-sex marriage?
Why not abortion? Stem-cell research? Why not advocate evolution, some form
of humanism that is secular? Why not euthanasia…if it seems to benefit the most
people? We’re making the rules as we go along. There is no standard outside of
the box we live in, the mechanistic box we live in.
VII. Now obviously, there are problems, and I want to particularly
emphasize three.
In answer to a materialist, why should a human being consider himself or herself
unique? Spotted owls are unique. Gorillas are unique. Parrots are unique. We
have all kinds of endangered species that are unique. Why should we consider
man as an entity, a material entity, that has dignity and value? You remember
last week we quoted from C. S. Lewis's wonderful little poem, Evolutionary
Hymn. And just a snippet: “…wrong or justice in the present,/ joy or sorrow, what
are they? / Well, there's always jam tomorrow/ while we tread our onward way. /
Never knowing where we're going, /we can never go astray.” There is no
purpose, design, there is nothing unique. There is nothing unique about a human
being. So, how can we say…how can a naturalist argue…issues of the problem
of evil, pain and suffering, a sense of right and wrong? Why is it that human
beings long for something “out there?” Why do we have a desire for something
“out there” and apart from us, and transcendent from us? We would argue,
because we're made in the image of God, and he reveals Himself through His
creation to us. Where does conscience come from? Human beings have no
value from a naturalist worldview perspective, and we need to point that out.
They have no unique value.
Can we trust the validity of our own thinking? Now, I have a hard enough time
trusting the validity of my own thinking, being a Christian! But how can a
naturalist trust the validity of his or her own thinking if…if…mindless, nonrational, physical forces are sort of the foundation for everything, how can we
even trust the conclusions we come to? If I am part of a machine, how can I step
out of that machine and reflect upon it and evaluate it, if I am part of the machine
itself? How do mindless, irrational impersonal forces give rise to thinking, and
reasoning and moral principles? One writer says, “If my mental processes…”
now, hear this… “…If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions
of the atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true,
and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain is composed of atoms.” A
consistent naturalist cannot even trust his own reasoning processes, because of
their “origin.” Because of their accidental, chance “origin.”
Finally, what about moral consciousness, a sense of guilt? A sense of right and
wrong, a sense of sin…what do naturalists do with “should” and “ought”? What
can a consistent naturalist do with a “should” and an “ought.” Again, Paul Kurtz
says this: “If there is no evidence for a divine plan of the universe at large, then
humans are responsible for their own destinies, individually and socially.”
Naturalistic humanists maintain that it is possible to reconstruct our ethical values
in the light of rational, scientific inquiry. But remember again the foundation, the
bottom line, the starting point is the movement of matter. How do you get ethics,
morality, conscience, right and wrong, from the movement of matter? Now,
people can be moral without believing in God. They can have healthy marriages,
they can have well-adjusted children, integrity, honesty–they can be hardworking. That's not the issue.
The issue is the foundation for being moral. How do they justify being good? How
do they justify making right choices? The issue is why a person should or ought
to live in one way rather than in another, and not base all of what they do simply
on their personal preferences…or will. When a naturalist feels that Nazi's
shouldn't commit atrocities, or mass murderers should be arrested, or terrorists
hunted down, or my neighbor not stealing my car, upon what does he base that?
What is the foundation for that view? How do mindless, non-rational, materialistic
forces give rise to legitimate moral principles? They don't! God reveals His truth
to us through His Word and through His world.
As G. K. Chesterton again says,
“This is a theory that everything…” ... and hear this… “...this is a theory that
everything has always perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic
optimism based on the everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a
miracle.” “Based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a
miracle.”
Who knows the truth? Who is most irrational? Obviously, Romans one. I’ll close
with this: “For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal
power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what
has been made. So they are without excuse, for even though they knew God,
they did not honor God or give thanks, but they became futile in their
speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” Praise God, praise God, that
He has revealed Himself to us; that He sent His Son to live and to die and to
conquer death, and to ascend and intercede for us, and to send the Holy Spirit,
that we don't have to live in a world standing up and declaring ‘in the beginning
matter…that's all that is, was, or ever will be.’ Jesus Christ is the Alpha and the
Omega, the Beginning and the End, our only hope and Savior. Let's pray.
Lord God, as we have faced a worldview that is not uplifting–sad and dark, lost
and hopeless–we pray that more than anything we would be motivated as others
have been, upon whose shoulders we stand, to go out and not run away…but to
go out in our own particular vocations and callings and live for You. Live faithfully
for You. Whatever You are calling us to do, wherever You are calling us to go,
we pray that we would be wise, discerning, regarding the ways of the world. Not
so that we might win arguments and score points, but so that we might show
people the way, the truth, and the life: our Lord Jesus Christ. In whose name we
pray, Amen.
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©2013 First Presbyterian Church.
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