“Nearly all that we call human history … [is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“Because a human is a someone and not a something, the source of human life must also be a Someone - not the blind, automatic forces of nature, as philosophies like naturalism and materialism tell us.”
Nancy Pearcey
Before Richard Dawkins announced he was a “cultural christian” there was a full scale attack on Christianity as being “anti-science”. Today the attack on Christianity is much less aggressive from many atheistic scientists… possibly influenced by Dawkins recent softening of his criticisms against Christianity. Perhaps Dawkins saw that ridding North America of Christian influence would leave the door open for repressive alternatives and an onslaught of lawlessness. While that outcome is evident, todays attack on Christianity is much more subtle… these attacks come in the form of naturalism.
What is naturalism?
Oxford Dictionary defines Naturalism as: “the philosophical belief that everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted.”
I recently finished three books that really drove home the level of rot within the North American Church in terms of Naturalist thinking. The first was Megan Bashams Best Selling Expose entitled “Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda”. The second book was Nancy Pearcey’s book entitled “Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity”. The third book is written by Wayne D. Rossiter entitled “Shadow of Oz: Theistic Evolution and the Absent God”.
I want to be upfront here that while these three books have helped me focus my thoughts on this area recently, I have done a significant amount of research reading both for and against the topic of theistic evolution… which is founded on naturalism. This means that while I am quoting from these books here, I’ve arrived at my understanding through a year of study and dozens of books and teaching videos.
As an added preface… debating young earth or old earth is not a focus of todays post! While we can debate whether the number of days as literal or not… what we cannot debate are the Genesis texts that are reaffirmed and referenced elsewhere in scripture. I want us to keep our eyes on the ball on this topic!
When we adopt a biblical worldview we believe in a supernatural God who is bigger than time and space - such a God is certainly “big enough” to create the world in any length of time. What I am discussing today is about maintaining a properly weighted view of the Bible and science so we can avoid a naturalistic interpretation of the scriptures. Let’s agree that if a being is so powerful as to be able to create with a word… they would be capable of producing the entire universe through a “big bang” in seconds, hours or millions of years.
A 2013 poll conducted by Biologos, an organization that supports theistic evolution showed that 45% of pastors in North America lean to or strongly support theistic evolution to explain the creation story. That may seem like a shocking statistic however I believe it is much higher today as we see culture having a greater influence on the Church than Church is having on culture.
Where does Naturalism come from in our modern society?
Wikipedia notes that Naturalism is largely a western phenomenon but that its roots go back centuries further to the eastern religions. Two out of six orthodox schools laid Naturalism as foundational tenants as well as one Hetrodox school of Hinduism. Samkhya, one of the oldest schools of Indian philosophy places nature as the primary cause of the universe without assuming the existence of a personal God.
Our modern western concept of naturalism has its roots in Ancient Greek philosophy. Many Ancient Greek naturalist scholars were referred to as “the physikoi“, from the Greek word φυσικός or physikos, meaning "natural philosopher"
With the rise of Christianity there is little evidence of naturalism post Roman Empire until around 1750 when David Hume and others began to promote naturalism and materialism as a worldview. This was well before Darwin wrote his famous theory. David strove to promote a naturalistic science of man and his behaviour. He is still often quoted by many atheists.
It was not until Darwin wrote his book “The Origin of Species” in 1859 that naturalism had a mechanism to gain roots. Darwin, through his theory of common descent, created a context that made naturalism – with its emphasis on theories of heredity and environment – a convincing way to explain the nature of reality for the late nineteenth century.
Of course, Darwin could not have known at the time of his book the incredible complexity that we continue to find in the created world, fine tuning, DNA coding, complex organisms he could not see with the most powerful microscopes of his time… all of which make his theory increasingly implausible today.
But then where does the modern push for a naturalistic world view come from with regards to the evangelical Church?
Having read some of the articles and books by todays Big Evangelical leaders on the subject of theistic evolution… the push is clearly coming from within the Church! Wayne D Rosseter affirms this in his book:
“The Christian student sitting in a high school or college classroom is told not to be uncomfortable with what Darwin has to say. Our educators point to names like Francis Collins or the late Theodosius Dobzhansky, and say, “See. These scientists are Christians, and yet they accept Darwin.” So the theist is being asked to fully ascribe to Darwinian evolution.”
I’ve found a great deal of gaslighting, manipulation and theologically indefensible positions in the materials put out by men like Francis Collins, Denis Lamoureax, Dr. John Watson, and even William Lane Craig on this subject. To put it bluntly, when William Lane Craig says that Genesis 1-11 are not historical but “Mytho-History”… what he is saying is that when interpreting modern scientific theory versus scripture… scripture takes second place. Worse yet he says “50% of evangelical pastors think that the world is less than 10,000 years old. … that is just hugely embarrassing”. This is clear gaslighting of highly intelligent and educated men and women who have studied the evidence and have found the support for Darwinian Evolution and old earth challenging from both a science and biblical standpoint.
The logic for the Christian who supports Darwinian common decent works something like this:
God = Creator of Nature
Darwin = Explanation of Nature
Therefore if the Bible contradicts Darwin’s explanation then God must be reconciled with Darwin. See how that works? Naturalism doesn’t need God, or at least it would not need God if it had a foundation of truth instead of assumptions and presuppositional bias!
Some of you may have skimmed over what I said earlier about William Lane Craig’s view on the first 11 chapters of Genesis. Let’s steer back there and talk about that.
It would be one thing if some extremely progressive teacher espoused that belief… but this is one of Evangelicalisms most proficient apologists! Many in the Church would accept his words only because it is William Lane Craig saying it. Let’s consider the implications of this view since relegating the first 11 chapters of Genesis to poetry or allegorical writings creates a domino effect in the reliability of scripture on multiple levels:
It removes a perfected creation at the beginning.
If creation was never perfect to begin with what did Adam fall from? There is no need for a redemptive story without a foundation of perfection we fell from.
It removes Adam and Eve
The New Testament refers to Adam 4 times and Eve twice.
If Adam and Eve were not real people then there was no original sin.
If Adam and Eve were not real then we need to ask - was Paul deceived? Was Paul not inspired by God?
Even more concerning, Jesus referred to the beginning when God created male and female. If there was no beginning of the human race as clearly defined by Christ in Matthew and Mark.
If Adam and Eve were not created in the beginning as specified in both of these gospels and rather were chosen by God to bear his spirit after millions of years from the Big Bang, was Jesus lying? Was the apostle writing the gospel story lying? Was Jesus wrong? Or maybe the writer was wrong?
If we remove the first 11 chapters… and still focusing on Adam and Eve, we have Exodus 28 reiterating the same creation narrative of a beginning with two people created by God.
What do we do with this passage? Do we continue to cut and paste? These passages are all interconnected.
I haven’t even dealt with the flood story… which both evolutionists and naturalist “Christian’s” hate equally. Even as evidence of cataclysmic tectonic disasters are manifest everywhere on earth with immense geological worldwide upheaval on every continent… the naturalist Christian cannot admit there could have been a world wide flood. The Biblical story is relabeled a smaller local flood or simply poetry and instead the they will believe in something much more far fetched… common ancestry.
A pastor I spoke to several months ago told me that he believed that about 200,000 years ago about 200 apelike hominoids appeared on the scene. These were early humans. I asked him how that works with the Genesis account and he told me that it was poetic. Of Adam and Eve… perhaps they were a king and queen of a tribe.
This is naturalism… removing God or any sense of the supernatural from our belief system. If our naturalist worldview and the Bible collide, we adjust the Bible instead of our belief. Never mind that only a few hundred years ago they thought that ships would sail off the edge of the world… no our wisdom is supreme. We know better.
Nancy Pearcey, who is well known for her clarity on naturalism and its effects on the modern Church says this of the naturalist view of creation:
“Beginning with sin instead of creation is like trying to read a book by opening it in the middle: You don’t know the characters and can’t make sense of the plot.”
Put simply, the naturalist assumes that creation is in the process of being perfected… while the mind set on Christ knows that perfection was created and that since then we have been in a fallen state. The mind set on Christ understands that perfection will be restored one day!
These views are diametrically opposed. Does this mean then that Christian’s are anti-science? I can say with absolute assurance that is not the case, we approach science with a different worldview… but it is no less valid, and we think it is more valid than the current common consensus. Further to this, naturalism is in and of itself a religious world view. Naturalism offers no more evidence than biblical creationism… yes I said it! Both naturalism and intelligent design or a biblical world view require assumptions that cannot be proven or confirmed from an evidential standpoint.
The Christian who holds the Bible (contextually) as their standard is unburdened by limitations of naturalism, which must find a way to prove we don’t need a supernatural God when the science of the day does not appear to line up with the Bible.
Theistic evolutionists and atheist evolutionists often refer to the five times in the gospels Jesus referred to the mustard seed as being the smallest of seeds. They claim that since there are a number of smaller seeds we now know of, that Jesus was wrong and the Bible cannot be taken literally.
In a previous post I covered how we should properly read our Bible. This is called hermeneutics, understanding the Bible as the hearers would have understood it. What the theistic evolutionists are doing with this however is “hermeneutics gone wild”. They claim that because Jesus at the time got it wrong or that Jesus lied the Bible cannot always be taken literally. They are extrapolating a truth, as there are some clear allegories or symbols in the Bible and stretching it to ridiculous proportions to undermine even Jesus own words. It severely complicates the scriptures so they become unreliable.
A couple of points on this:
Claiming that because we know today there are smaller seeds than a mustard seed and Jesus said the mustard seed is the smallest is making the assumption of uniformitarianism. When Jesus was speaking to the crowds the mustard seed may well have been the smallest mustard seed. To say now that it wasn’t actually undermines the evolutionary theory of micro-evolutionism… which in fact is a known reality that we observe today. Bananas for instance look different today than they did when several hundred years ago. We know that 2000 years is a long time for speciation to occur… meaning that the seeds we have today may look different than the seeds we had during Jesus time. See study here
Secondly, this exercise again proves my earlier point that if the Bible and a naturalistic world view collide… the Bible is assumed wrong immediately instead of considering that our world view has incorrect assumptions as its foundation.
Thirdly, even if there were seeds that Jesus knew about as the creator of all things… as a perfected being he would have known what the listeners knew about and what they did not. As such, it if the hearers knew only of the mustard seed as the smallest seed… he could not throw them into confusion to make his point in clear parable teaching by stating something that would cause them to doubt his words. To tell them that the Orchid seed was the smallest of seeds… if it was not known at the time, could potentially have derailed his teaching.
When I hear “if we don’t accept the scientific consensus we will lose a generation” I think… what are we losing them to? If it is a materialistic, naturalistic culturally soaked, weak faith that is devoid of any form of a supernatural God, I would suggest that faith is not required. Further to this… why, at a time when Darwinism is increasingly floundering and even atheist biologists are questioning the Darwinian theory… why are Christian Big Eva teachers throwing in a white flag?
I get the sense that big part of the reason is because Christians are blindly accepting the ”word” of their Pastor or evangelical leader which is likely influenced by organizations such as Biologos or other progressively apostate groups without questioning their assumptions through the lens of 2000 years of biblical study and the scriptures themselves. These Pastors have embraced a naturalistic, parasitic world view that is eating away at the foundations of their faith.
It is time for the one who claims to follow Christ to prove all things and hold onto only what is true. The scriptures have consistently warned us of vain philosophies, fine sounding arguments and of teachings founded on worldly thinking. As Nancy Pearcey says in the book ”Total Truth”:
“If Christians do not develop their own tools of analysis , then when issues come up that they want to understand, they'll reach over and borrow someone else's tools- whatever concepts are generally accepted in their general field or in the culture at large.
But when they do that, Os Guiness writes, they don't realize that "They are borrowing not an isolated tool, but a whole philosophical toolbox laden with tools which have their own particular bias to every problem." They may even end up absorbing an entire set of alien principles without even realizing it.
In other words, not only do we fail to be salt and light to a lost culture, but we ourselves may end up being shaped by our culture.”
I think this is a great passage to cap this one off with:
“Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.”
1 Corinthians 2:12-16 ESV
Want to know more about this topic?
Here are some excellent video links. Listen with an open mind but test it throughly! I pray the truth will set you free!
“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.” Colossians 2:8
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