Theology Professor Michael Horton: “Blind Faith in Naturalism Is Running the Show”

The Bible tells us about the God who stepped into real history. El Greco: Christ carrying His cross (1580). Image courtesy of Wikipedia.





Joel Kontinen

What is blind faith? It might have to do with relying on an explanation without examining whether the model actually describes reality correctly. One might choose to have blind faith because it could feel more comfortable than faith based on facts.

Professor Michael Horton discusses Christianity and naturalism in the December issue of Christianity Today.

“We live in a world that assumes reason is unbiased, when in fact our reason itself is enslaved to naturalism: a denial of the world's dependence on God for its creation and preservation, much less redemption,” he writes.

Echoing the words of Harvard biology professor Richard Lewontin, he goes on to say:

“Any valid argument or evidence ... must have a naturalistic explanation, even if that explanation is the least reasonable…

Left to ourselves, we use reason so irrationally that we determine that God cannot enter history, even before we examine whether he has done so. Again, it's not ‘neutral reason’ running the show here, but a blind faith in naturalism.”

In 1997 professor Lewontin wrote in The New York Review of Books that scientists often choose to make up “unsubstantiated just-so stories” because they “have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism… Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

There is a name for this approach. It is called blind faith.

Sources:

Horton, Michael. 2011. Why We Need Jesus. Christianity Today (2 December).

Lewontin, Richard. 1997. Billions and billions of demons. The New York Review of Books, p. 31 (9 January).

“Evolution is both theory and fact”?

The "fact of human evolution" according to T. H. Huxley. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen


Richard Dawkins said that evolution made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. No wonder, then, that many latter day atheists are aghast at any criticism of Darwinian evolution.

For instance Austin Cline of About.com recently showed his displeasure at people who would dare doubt Darwinism. He claimed that evolution “is both theory and fact”. In the same context he said, “Everything in science is supposed to proceed by tentative theories rather than dogmatic pronouncements.”

Obviously, seen from an atheistic perspective, “evolution is fact” is not a dogmatic pronouncement. Yet many Darwinists have a prior commitment to a certain dogma. Richard Lewinton confessed that scientists often choose to make up “unsubstantiated just-so stories ” because they “have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism… Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

In other words, if a tentative theory points to a designer, it is excluded – on philosophical grounds. It is no wonder Dr. Henry Morris called his last book Some Call It Science.

The problem with Darwinian evolution is that it only allows naturalistic explanations. It is not a search for truth or even for knowledge.


Sources:

Cline, Austin. 2009. Evolution and the Law: Textbook Disclaimers. About. com: atheism. (23 June).
http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/evo/blevo_law_disclaimers.htm?nl=1

Lewinton, Richard. 1997. Billions and billions of demons. The New York Review of Books, p. 31, (9 January 1997).

Morris, Henry M. 2006. Some Call It Science. The Religion of Evolution. El Cayon, CA: Institute for Creation Research.

Harvard biologist admits: We know nothing about brain evolution

Joel Kontinen


Science journals have featured countless stories about the evolution of the human brain. Scientists are puzzled since humans have much bigger brains than any other species. Their suggested explanations have often been mutually exclusive. For instance, the old text book explanation relied on eating meat but a few years ago an article in New Scientist, a popular science magazine, suggested that eating starch was the secret of brain growth.

But both explanations fail to answer why other meat or starch eating species do not have big brains.


At the recent AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) annual meeting in Boston, Richard Lewontin, a distinguished biology professor at Harvard University, acknowledged that stories about human brain evolution have not been based on facts. Reporting on the meeting for the journal Science, Michael Balter quoted Lewontin as saying, “We are missing the fossil record of human cognition, so we make up stories."

The title of Balter’s article seems to be an admission of sorts: “How Human Intelligence Evolved--Is It Science or ‘Paleofantasy’?”

According to professor Lewontin, it is fantasy. Lewontin suggests that there is much cause for pessimism in the study of human origins.

Science reporter James Randerson of Britain’s Guardian newspaper was even more brunt, saying, “We know nothing about brain evolution.” Randerson went on to summarise Lewontin’s reasons for pessimism. “The handful of hominid fossils stretching back 4m years or so” cannot tell us whether any of them were our ancestors. We “do not have the have the faintest idea what the cranial capacity [of a fossil hominid] means”. Moreover, we do not even know which hominids walked upright and which did not.

Lewontin is well-known for his outspokenness. In 1997 he wrote in The New York Review of Books that scientists often choose to make up “unsubstantiated just-so stories” because they “have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism… Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

Obviously, the scientific community cannot ignore Lewinton’s recent conclusions. If the ruling paradigm (naturalism or the view that nature is all there is) leads us into a blind alley, might there be something wrong with it?

Sources:

Balter M. 2008. How human intelligence evolved -- Is it science or 'paleofantasy'? Science 319:1028.

Lewinton, Richard. 1997. Billions and billions of demons. The New York Review of Books, p. 31, (9 January 1997).

Randerson, James. 2008. We know nothing about brain evolution. Guardian February http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/02/the_distinguished_biologist_pr.html



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