Syncretism is the mixing of (often contradictory) beliefs together. A little bit of this and that usually ends up with a mess of internal contradictions. When Christians try it, the outcome is always bad.
In the past couple of decades we have seen a determined effort by Christians to reconcile (or mix together) evolutionism and the Christian faith. The driver has been the same which provoked Immanuel Kant--the attempt both to save reason and make room for faith.
The human faculty of reason is a curious beast. Like all human attributes it can either be servant or master. When it becomes, or is made, master it is just another idolatry. When it is kept a mere servant of true faith it is a wonderful faculty. When it is made master, we call the resulting idolatry "rationalism"--the ultimacy of reason. A close, kissing cousin is "scientism" which asserts the ultimacy of the scientific method. The scientific method is a particular application of reason to the study of the material aspects of the creation.
Rationalism has asserted that all things that exist came into being by chance--by random changes and mutations. It has then constructed a cluster of scientific disciplines in an attempt to prove that this is the case. If rationalist science proves it to be true, then it must be so, since reason alone is the ground of all truth, non?.
But this idolatry has a dagger dicing up its vital organs. It is a variant of the Cretan paradox. If reason shows that all which exists came to pass via random changes then reason itself cannot be the ground of truth. Reason is an illusion with no ultimate truth value at all. The utterly and completely contradictory can exist because things like that happen in stochastically determined existence.
If reason and science "prove" that existence is irrational, irrationality cannot be the case. If irrationality is the case, it could never be proven rationally. Thus, the more evolutionists labour to prove by rational inquiry that mankind evolved via random genetic mutation, the more they thereby contradict the notion. In debates with evolutionists an apt question is to inquire what would disprove the notion. The more astute can trot out various scientific "conditions" which would allegedly disprove evolution, leading to a rejection of the hypothesis. But when you ask them, If reality is ultimately stochastic or random, why would "x" constitute a disproof of evolution? they are left with no reply. Either that, or they don't understand what stochasticity is.
Upon this sinking sand of irrational-rationalism modern Western Unbelief has built its Tower of Babel. The edifice is impressive. It controls the Academy, the media, the arts, the law courts. Some Christians have reasoned that, in order to gain respect and a hearing, the Christian faith must accommodate itself to evolution. It must make room for it in the house of God if people are to make room for God.
So, various theories of theistic evolution have been proposed. God created the world by means of evolutionary processes--that is, in the case of the creation of life, by means of random genetic mutations. But let's be clear what is happening here: such Christians are endeavouring to make the teachings of Scripture conform to, or agree with, the dictates of rationalism. But if the teachings of the Bible are to be subject to a higher authority of human reason, then one does not need the Bible at all, or God for that matter. If one would only believe in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus if it could be proved to one's own satisfaction, then why would one bother to become a Christian? A Christ whose work is subject to verification by man and his rationalising is not worth worshipping as the Lord of all. In fact, it would be entirely untruthful and wrong to do so.
Thus, in all forms of theories of theistic evolution, the God of the Bible "disappears", as one writer describes:
According to many new theistic evolutionists, God chose to "create" the world by setting up an indirected process over which he had no specific control and about which he did not even have foreknowledge of its particular outcomes. In a very real sense, God created a world that creates itself. In the words of Anglican theistic evolutionist John Polkinghorne: "an evolutionary universe is theologically undestood as a creation allowed to make itself."
This view is hard to reconcile with traditional conceptions of God's foreknowledge and sovereignty, which becomes apparent when one reads the writings of leading theistic evolutionists.Former Vatican astronomer George Coyne claims that "not even God could know . . . with certainty" that "human life would come to be." Biologist Kenneth Miller of Brown University, author of the popular book, Finding Darwin's God (used in many Christian colleges), flatly denies that God guided the evolutionary process to achieve any particular result--including the development of human beings. Insisting that "[e]volution is a natural process, and natural processes are indirected," Miller asserts that "mankind's appearance on this planet was not preordained, that we are here . . . as an afterthought, a minor detail, a happenstance in a history that might just as well have left us out." John, G. West, "Nothing New Under the Sun", God and Evolution, ed. Jay Richards, p.41.
In all forms of theistic evolution the clear revelation and teachings of Scripture are set aside and replaced with human ratiocinations. It is the Bible which is adapted and conformed and made subject to man. The Bible, quite simply, ceases to be God's revelation. God, as revealed in Holy Scripture no longer exists. Adopting rationalism in some spheres (e.g. the origins of mankind) does not make room for faith; on the contrary, it destroys true faith.
Both rationalism and the Christian faith are universal acids. They cannot be contained, but eat everything else away. But rationalism does not just eat everything else away--it consumes itself as well. Rationalism can only be built upon irrational ceaseless tossing seas. When chance is ultimate and randomness "governs" the world, no rationality remains.
When Christians vainly attempt to reconcile evolution and the Christian faith, they neither save reason nor make room for faith. The very opposite is the case. They destroy both true faith and its servant, reason.
1 comment:
This is not what you were getting at in the post, but may I add that the theory of evolution presupposes increased information content from randomness/ chance. This is contrary to experience. Thus the Rationalists here are actually being irrational.
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