All of academia (or so it would seem) has given itself over to the mania of criticism. It doesn't matter what course you take, what you get is the same; a critique of traditional, Christian society by so called political correctness. One might think this is the only subject being taught. PC is a new religion invented by professors, and it's used to radically critique all things. If x violates these standards, it's condemned; if it conforms it's accepted.
- and so students are taught to run before they can walk; the ignorant critique the learned, and wisdom is replaced by political opportunism.
- appreciation is lost, and a petulant mania for criticising all things takes its place. Students are taught to be unthankful, ungrateful... to look for things to complain about. Those that adopt such a way of looking at things quickly lose the ability to appreciate the world. (e.g. how good things are, how tough it is to produce goodness and order... or how rare these things are.) They have no ability to give credit or accolades. They are encouraged to tear things down.
- unfortunately the Christian church (as a whole) has followed the same course. It's sad, but not surprising, to see college educated Christians espouse the very same beliefs as those who despise the Faith. (Is there no humanist fad they haven't adopted?) But I don't suppose we can expect anything different. If a Christian gets a humanist education what can one expect... but a humanist.
- the basis of all this confusion in the church is the idea of common ground. Christians somehow imagine they can have a common ground with those who despise Christ. With the physical world this is at least theoretically possible, but with the human world it's utterly impossible. There can't be a common ground when you come to values. (i.e. as opposed to physical data.)
- what's all this got to do with creation you ask? (We are supposed to be thinking about creation here.) I think it's got a lot to do with creation, and I'll try to give some reasons for saying so.
a. Worship;
- what we have here is a belief in a world created by God vs. a world that just happened by accident... in some kind of naturalistic process. In other words, if the world was created we have someone to thank and praise; if it wasn't we have no one to thank and praise.
b. Accountability;
- if the world happened by accident we aren't responsible to anyone; we don't owe anyone anything (let alone obedience) and we aren't subordinate to anyone. If the world was created (and us with it) then we are (or may well be) responsible to Someone. We may well have duties and obligations... and we are subordinate.
c. Reality;
- The humanist mania for criticism that we are suffering under is based on the idea reality is a human construct. Reality isn't seen as objective (existing apart from humankind) but as a subjective creation, a social invention. Reality is then something that can be constructed in any way the elite want. The idea is then that the old 'reality' must be torn down to pave the way for some utopian vision. The way to do this is criticism, and so the populace is subjected to the most radical, pervasive, and ruthless program of criticism the world has ever seen. (From what I've seen I would say that nothing has been spared. No group of people has ever suffered such a social and psychological assault. I suppose the closest parallel would be the communist attacks under Mao and similar leaders.)
- the Christian view is that there is an objective reality. (Only biblical creation can provide a basis for reality.) Reality is then not a thing that can be invented, a thing to be manipulated by the elite... not a toy for the political elite to play with. (I'm speaking in terms of pretty wide generalizations; mankind has always attempted to manipulate reality to some degree.) If reality is given man should appreciate the world not critique it as if it were some badly produced play. If reality is objective one should live in terms of it; to do so one seeks to find out what that reality is. A Christian believes he or she finds that knowledge in the Bible.
d. Under Materialism man gives no credit to anyone for anything; all things were invented by human beings. God is given credit for nothing. (This is true even of things m's can't account for, like the origin of life, the origin of intelligence, the origin of language, and so on.) Because all these things supposedly just emerged out of the void by some cosmic accident there is no basis for appreciation. It means that the world an all in it aren't valued correctly; that they end up being grossly misvalued. (And some things are correspondingly over valued.) Awe is replaced by complacency and apathy.
- if 'life' is as ubiquitous as the Sagans of the world claim it becomes hard to appreciate it as being the wondrous and indeed miraculous 'thing' the Bible claims that it is. Materialism leads to under appreciation, to a lack of sensitivity to our real situation. (And I would argue that this leads to a callousness with regard to the world and to our uniqueness.)
e. Reverence;
- If we and our world are mere cosmic accidents we need have no reverence for anything we find on the planet. (This or any other one.) If all is an accident nothing is worth preserving. We see here the basis of the mania some have for genetic engineering. If nothing was created all is up for grabs. If nothing was created all can be replaced. Some would say that materialism results in nothing being held sacred; that nothing on earth is sacred if all was an accident. The Christian I think has to see things differently. For him the creation isn't sacred (not exactly) and only God is holy. But man can be seen as having a 'sacred' duty to his Creator to take care of the creation. Man was given the earth as a home; he was made a steward over it. I see this as a duty to return to god (as best he can) the world he was given; that he should not 'tamper' with the creation in terms of genetic re-engineering. (I realize some disagree; maybe more than some.) I can't help but think it should make a difference whether one sees this world and its myriad creatures as the creation of God or the result of Accidentalism.
f. Psychology:
- If reality is a human construct all suffering must be blamed on human agents. One wonders what the effect of this on human psychology will be. What kind of person is the perpetual critic? What does it do to a person to never find anything praiseworthy or even acceptable? what does it do to a person to be endlessly criticized over everything he says, thinks or does? How does this affect politics? how does this affect the arts? (So much of the arts has become merely a whining and an attack on others. We seem drowning in the negative, the ugly, the gross.) What does this do to marriage and family? (Does it mean no one can ever now be content?)
g. Standards;
- under Materialism there are no objective standards, only subjective ones. This means criticism has an unlimited field of expression. Anything goes; nothing is exempt. There is literally no criticism that can't be made. (And they have.) Extremism is given a free rein. The only standard are the feelings that happen to percolate in the human breast. The worst human emotions become the basis of social critique. (e.g. envy, hatred, jealousy, cowardice, perverseness, vengeance, cruelty, etc.) Christianity is restrained by the moral standard of god's law. There is thus (or should be) a plethora of things outside criticism. (e.g. marriage, family, honesty, worship, prayer, charity, property, etc.) So much of the social criticism we see in our society is (in terms of C.) a critique of what is good; an attempt to destroy what is good.
h. Ingratitude;
- what does it say about man (about human nature) that he has been given a wonderful world like earth as a home but he despises it? What does it say about him that he so despises his gift he claims he has received no gift at all? (I think evolution theory is more a matter of psychology, than it it's a matter of science. Who is man? He's a creature who will thank a clerk for doing their job, but who won't give thanks to the Creator for the gift of a world.) Materialism encourages man in this hardness of heart.
i. Creation vs. a man-made world
- if there is no creator god, man is the ultimate intelligence on earth. This notion (deluded though I think it is) leads the idea the man-made object is superior to the 'natural' (created) product. A further problem is that because people think the living forms all happened by accident they don't have anywhere near the full appreciation they should have of the complexity of these organisms. Materialists have been making this same mistake (lost in this same fog) since at least the days of Haeckel. (When he imagined the 'cell' was little more than a dab of mud.) They have consistently undervalued the complexity of living things, and continue to do so. If creation were the product of an infinitely wise Being then we could expect to find an expression of this vast intelligence in what He created. Creation might not only be more complex than we can now imagine, it (and the codes that inform it) might be more complex than we can ever comprehend. (For this reason I'm opposed to genetic tampering, to genetic engineering.)
Notes;
1. If what I've said is true, why doesn't it seem to make a difference in people's lives whether they adopt creation as their model of origins? I'll try to answer that in my next post. (I don't think I have much to offer on the subject however.)
- is it because while many claim to believe in creation (or in some creation model) they don't really believe it at all? Maybe we can't. Maybe a true belief in creation is as much a gift of grace as salvation, as regeneration.
2. Who is man? He's a creature who will blame god for earthquakes, but not give him credit for the world that quakes. (As an aside I believe ancient man deliberately built structures that were earthquake proof. As an example of this, some of the large structures made of interfitted stone slabs of huge size.)
3. 'Thus, the German evolutionary biologist Ernst Haeckel would refer to the cell as a simple "homogeneous globule of plasm." To Haeckel a living cell seemed no more complex than a blob of jello.' - Steven Meyers (I've lost the reference.)
4. I don't know, but I expect most Christians are not opposed to genetic engineering.
5. Political Correctness is a new religion that is almost the opposite of biblical Christianity.
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