Naturalism, ID, and Presuppositions

So, I'm going to accept the fact that most people aren't going to take the time to read my weblog because it's just too long (though Dr. Schreiner found the time to read my Resurrection post, and I'd personally suggest that you should too), and continue as usual. So to you all who don't read my posts just because they're too long, I guess just read the stuff that sounds interesting to you.

Clarence Page, a writer for the Louisville Courier Journal (or as some call it the Curious Journal), wrote an article titled: Debating Darwin, Yet Again. Page believes that knowing the truth about our orgin is not important. What does Page consider more important? He is far more concerned that we are losing jobs to India, Ireland, and other nations. According to Mr. Page, "some Americans would rather fuss and fret about whether man evolved from the apes," since this is a far less important issue, and apparently should be given the back-burner.

Why is Page upset? Because last week in Topeka, Kansas, the "Kansas state school board opened hearings... to hear new challenges to the teaching of Darwin." The topic on the menu: Intelligent Design--the insistence that there was an intelligent creator of the universe, rather than that the universe was created by random chance through mere evolutionary processes.

What is the big uproar? Shouldn't a logical, balanced approach to teaching be administered in America's schools? According to Page, when ID proponents say they want to remove the bias against religion that is currently in schools, what they really mean is, "they want to impose their religious values on schools and everybody else."

But isn't that what evolutionists are doing? Do they really think that they are dealing merely with objectively scientific facts? If they do, they have deceived themselves quite nicely.

Now, Page does note that "the scientific community does not reject religion. In fact, many scientists are quite religious." Well, actually, all the scientists are religious. As Dr. Ronald Nash explains, "Religion is an inescapable given in life. All humans have something that concerns them ultimately, and whatever it is, that object of ultimate concern is that person's God [or rather, god]." (Life's Ultimate Questions, 19). In other words, all of these scientists have faith in something and they are all working to some ultimate end--otherwise, they are not human. As Nash further explains, "Whatever a person's ultimate concern may be, it will have an enormous influence on everything else the person does or believes; that is one of the things ultimate conerns are like." (ibid.)

All humans, even scientists, have presuppositions: "All human beliefs rest upon other beliefs that we presuppose or accept without support from arguments or evidence." (ibid. 19-20). These presuppositions affect how these scientists perceive and analyze that which they observe (I had a friend during my ungrad who was a graduate student and grader in Geological Sciences. While others observed things occurring and concluded evolutions, he observed them and concluded creation--and with good reason). Yet Page, writing for a very biased publication, states that though many scientists are religious (understatment), "Unfortunately, the theories and evidences put forth by the ID theorists have not held up under the rigor of peer review, publication in scientific journals and other standards by which the scientific establishment operates."

That's a very convenient and elusive statement he makes. Nowhere is there a mention as to what these scientists' religious beliefs/convictions are. How do we know that they aren't all liberal "Christians," or Buddhists, or that they worship themselves? If their presuppositions are off, everything they perceive will be skewed. It would be like a person with 20/20 vision looking through bi-focals--everything will be misperceived. Or it would be like looking through the top of the car windshield (the darkended part that is made to stop the glare from the sun) and concluding that a storm is coming because you seem some clouds in the sky.

Yet I think Page does give us a clue as to what the scientists' whom he notes religions are like: "When I was growing up back in the 1950s, my teachers never seemed to have much trouble reconciling science with our personal religious views. Both science and religion were ways for us to understand the universe, they said. The questions that rational science could not explain, we answered with our faith." So, according to Page, faith is not rational, for one. And for two, the people whom he is speaking about are not those who hold to a holistic Christian worldview, but rather those who have rejected portions of Biblical Christianity in order to hold to twentieth century scientific dogma. They only use religion to fill in the blanks because they don't want to accept the full-throttle naturalistic worldview because it leads to meaningless existence and the rejection of all ethical standards.

Why should ID be included in school curricula? Because, for one, post-modernity (going Mohler on you all) and its god (its own scientific observations) cannot answer some of the most basic questions. In fact, they need to act as though such questions do not exist, lest they have to reject their whole system because it does not stand up to logical scruitiny.

One problem is that, where did all of this come from? To accept that the universe has always just existed leads necessarily to an infinite-regress, and plenty of philosophers and mathematicians through history could tell you that real infinite regressions are impossible. So if the universe has a beginning, it has to have someone/something to create it--unless you want to take the absurd leap of faith and accept that something came from nothing.

Then there is the problem of where did life come from? Even if you could get past the dilemma of the universe, science has yet to actually answer how life started. We know that electricity will not bring things that have never been alive to life--neither will chemical reactions.

A third problem, and perhaps the most devastating of all, is that raised by Richard Taylor. You'll have to read Nash's book (54-57) to get a complete rundown of the argument, but I'll give you the summation.

While it could be perceived that, by a chance accident, though implausible, the natural order was brought about,

"It would be irrational for one to say both that his sensory and cognitive faculties had a natural, nonpurposeful orgin and also that they reveal some truth with respect to something other than themselves, something that is not merely inferred form them. If their orgin can be entirely accounted for in terms of chance variations, natural selection, and so on, without supposing that they somehow embody and express the purposes of some creative being, then the most we can say of them is that they exist, that they are complex and wondrous in their construction, and are perhaps in other respects interesting and remarkable. We cannot say that they are, entirely by themselves, reliable guides to any truth whatever, save only what can be inferred from their own structure and arrangement. If, on the other hand, we do assume that they are guides to some truths having nothing to do with themselves, then it is difficult to see how we can, consistently with that supposition, believe them to have arisen by accident, or by the ordinary workings of purposeless forces, even over ages of time."

"Natrualists seem caught in a trap. If they are consistent with their naturalistic presuppositions, they must assume that our human cognitive faculties are a product of chance, purposeless forces. But if this is so, naturalists appear inconsistent when they place so much trust in those faculties. But... they assume that their cognitive faculties are trustworthy and do provide accurate information about the world, they seem compelled to abandon one of the cardinal presuppositions of metaphysical naturalism and conclude that their cognitive faculties were formed as a result of the activity of some purposeful, intelligent agent." (Nash, 56-57).

Thus, naturalism must conclude that Science, the very thing it is dependent upon, cannot be perceived by man's rational capabilities--since those capabilities are mere chance.

So, who is lacking evidence? Sure, perceived scientific discovery by human rationale which is jaded by presuppositions seems to leave Intelligent Design and Creationism with some holes (one's that people in both camps have shown do not stand up to scruitiny), but evolutionists don't even have a leg to stand upon.

So why do people continue to hold to these views? It is because they know that if they accept that there is a creator, if they keep on searching for a coherent worldview, they will end up at Christianity. If they end up at Christianity, they must submit to Christ as Lord, they must admit their own sinfulness and their complete reliance upon God's grace, and they must give up the sins which they so passionately embrace. May God have mercy upon them--pray for them, my brothers and sisters in Christ.