Search This Blog

Tuesday 19 July 2011

Intelligent Design are Not The New Boys on the Block

The mortal Threat of ID
ID scientists believe that there are aspects of the world that simply cannot be explained by naturalistic processes and that the best explanation for these features is that an intelligence is responsible.

You will notice that I didn't start the word with a capital 'I'. That's because IDers, ruthlessly persecuted by the scientific establishment, are reluctant to come out and call that intelligence God. If they do they'll lose their job - perhaps more. Inquisitions do not belong only to the past.

But why is ID such a threat to (a certain definition of) western science? Because it is an all-out assault on the very foundation of a narrow view of science that says  "the universe is entirely naturalistic and can admit nothing beyond energy, matter or natural law". Stuff - that's all there is in the Universe. This is a purely atheistic and hypothetical definition of science, but it has managed to become establishment dogma, and entered the popular mind through the secular media.

Because IDers say there is more to the universe than 'stuff' they are hated.

Of course, you and I who know our Bible realise that the narrow definition of science is a deliberate philosophical - no theological - no heart - move. At very root, they want God out of their lives (and out of their universe is a rather good first move), and so they define the universe as a closed system which is about nothing other than stuff. Nothing to do with science, everything to do with the suppression of truth in unrighteousness. We know that, right?

Onward Christian Soldiers
The time has come for an unashamed and unapologetic campaign to reclaim science as a Christian enterprise, not a pagan one. And there are two ways to do it.

First, to demonstrate historically that the founders of modern science (Newton, Faraday, Maxwell....)  were all  IDers - they believed in a God (or at least Supernatural Being) who created the universe. This was not a side issue for them - it was precisely what motivated their research and why science moved ahead with such speed. We need to show that science will die out (or become boring or spend it's time pursuing fruitless cul-de-sacs) unless it is re-motivated by a passionate desire to discover the mind of it's Maker and glorify his Name.

(I have just read a book on the cell, which spends so much time trying to fathom how it came to be that I put the book down plain and simply bored. Tail-chasing gets a trifle wearing after a while.)

The second way to reclaim science is to show that all the findings of modern science demonstrate a Designer who is there and is not silent.

Cosmology shows the remarkable fine-tuning of the universe; the mind shows the presence of 'other', and the molecular biology of DNA can only be explained as dazzling layers of information - and here is the point - the only known entity in the universe capable of information generation is intelligence.

Darwin is pre-science
Let's face it, Darwin is bunk. Every science has its defining moments and 1953 is biology's - the discovery of the structure of DNA which led to the revolutionary understanding of DNA as information and the cell as a factory of unimaginable and still unfathomable complexity.

Before 1953, biology was butterfly collecting, to borrow a phrase from Professor Steve Fuller of Warwick University. After 1953 it is information technology - and everyone in IT knows that the only known source of information is intelligence.

Time for revolution
It really is time for the truth to come out and for the public to be made aware of the amazing complexity of biology post 1953 and for the ID community to stop hiding its light under a bushel and demonstrating to a world, tired of boring Darwinian thought that there is a lively alternative that opens up research and above all points to a God who is the Creator of the Universe.

Its the Darwinian atheists who are the new boys on the block, IDers are the old boys.

It's time for IDers to go on the offensive. If the public, for example, can be taught cell biology 101 no cunning philosopher will be able to follow it with all that chance and time stuff. The public won't be fooled by all this "appearance of design" stuff.

Monday 11 July 2011

The love and truth "balance"?

The right metaphor / illustration / analogy?
It is sometimes argued that truth and love lie at the opposite ends of a spectrum and that churches are either loving (but not truthful) or truthful (but not loving).

The problem with this "spectrum" analogy is that it does not allow both ends to be represented fully - the best you can get is 50% loving and 50% truthful!

So let's ditch the metaphor because it just ain't Biblical. 

Jesus - full of both grace and truth
About the nearest we get to both love and truth appearing in one verse is John 1, first  verse 14, referring to the Word, "who came from the Father, full of grace and truth" and then verse 17, which reads "For the Law came through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."

Jesus Christ, in other words, was filled with both grace (undeserved loved) and truth. It was not either /or, but both.

The double-barrelled gun
So a better analogy, perhaps is a double-barreled gun; and the question becomes "Are you/ is your church filled with both love and truth?"

A church which has love but no truth turns into a sentimental community - easily swayed by error of all kinds. A church which has truth but no love dies.

Love the priority?
If there was a priority of virtues, or to put it another way, if you had the choice between which came first, it would certainly be love. Jesus says that love is the badge of NT discipleship (John 3:34-35) - he never says this about truth. Paul argues that of Hope Faith and Love (notice truth doesn't appear in his top three), love is the greatest (1 Corinthians 13).

Love is the platform across which the truth - which is sometimes painful - travels. Jesus went around doing good as well as preaching  (Acts 10:38).

Why did people listen to Jesus? Not only because of the winsomeness of his words, they also listened because they were loved.