The Materialistic Parameters that Limit Conventional Life-Scripts Part 1 of 2
Atheists who fully subscribe to the worldview philosophy of naturalistic materialism…insist that everything in the universe must be reduced down to concrete physical things we can see and touch…in order to set the proper context to be able…with consistent confidence…to define the parameters of objective reality.
Anything outside of this proper context as determined by materialism…is considered to be subjective…and therefore unreliably imprecise in terms of measurement, quantification, and clear categorization…being susceptible to the undefined variables of opinion, impression, and artistic taste…and therefore suspect as to solid truth-value.
Atheists can and do take reductionism a step farther…by also subscribing to the philosophy of scientism…which asserts that real truth can only be found through the methodology of the hard sciences…through only what can be repeatedly tested in a laboratory.
These lines of thinking create a worldview reality that has finite borders…that reduces the range of possible knowledge to a narrower set of facts that can eventually max-out at an end-point number…that has fixed boundary-lines around a set quantity of factual knowledge…beyond which we cannot go.
Over the past roughly 160 years…beginning with Charles Darwin’s classic book The Origin of Species published in 1859…these four lines of thought…materialism, scientism, atheism, and what can be called hard agnosticism…have coalesced into a single narrative that has universally worked its way into popular culture…which can be broadly called secularism.
The contention of this essay is that secularism negatively limits human lifestyle options…to the narrow ranges as defined by worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…in direct competition with the biblical narrative…in the sea of multiple competing worldviews.
Restated another way…has the godless worldview of naturalistic materialism…by its insistence on excluding any input of a Creator God who could broaden the scope of possible human life-scripts…successfully imposed upon modern cultures a narrowly restrictive choice of options for human life…confined to the realm of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking alone?
Has the secular worldview of a godless materialism permeated so thoroughly into our popular culture…that the profoundest irony has immerged in that modern science is now telling us that our universe cannot be godless…that the vast amounts of coordinated information in the natural world must have an intelligent source…to explain its existence.
The theme of this book is that the biblical narrative stories of faith exactly reveal the necessary input of a brilliantly imaginative God…composing life-scripts that reach far above and outside of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…to the peak and pinnacle of purpose, meaning, value, and worth in human life.
The main theme of this book is that this assertion regarding the beneficial participation of the God of the Bible in the lives of people…as we might logically expect the Creator God of this universe to do…naturally parallels and intersects with the modern scientific discovery of complex, specified, and coherently integrated systems of information…that likewise have an origin far above and outside of any plausible materialistic explanation…a materialistic explanation that by definition requires the complete absence of this same brilliantly imaginative God.
Borrowing again from the Socrates in the City interview of John Lennox by Eric Metaxas in Labastide, France…parts 1 and 2…in January 2018 …Eric Metaxas makes the point that the atheistic worldview of naturalistic materialism creates a false zero-sum game in science…where each new discovery made by science adds to the increasing database of valid human knowledge on one side of the ledger sheet…and creates an equal and opposite subtraction of human ignorance on the other side of the ledger sheet…beneficially decreasing the number of explanations of the phenomenon in nature based upon old-wives tales, superstition, black magic, witchcraft, and the unfathomable whims of the ancient gods.
Human scientific investigation is the one and only research methodology that can move the innumerable mysteries regarding the phenomenon in the natural world…from the ignorance column over to the knowledge column.
But for atheists…in a closed-system worldview consisting only of material things…the more we know about the workings of the natural world discovered through the reliability of the hard sciences…the less we need to ascribe the things we do not yet understand…to the serendipity of unknown causes…or worse yet to the creative capacity of a super-natural god we cannot materially see or touch.
This artificial, zero-sum dynamic from ignorance to knowledge…has created for the atheist the useful concept of a god-of-the-gaps explanation…of a god that does nothing else…but exists to perform the role of a temporary placeholder for ignorance…to fill-in as a “nothing burger” until scientific investigation can uncover the real, empirical truths underlying the phenomenon in nature.
Until we scientifically understood the physics of lightning…for example…in ignorance mankind historically ascribed the mystery of lightning…to be an act of god.
During the past four to five centuries of the Scientific Revolution…in the finite, closed philosophical system of naturalistic materialism…the god-of-the-gaps explanations for what we do not understand have been steadily decreasing in number…as scientific investigation solves the mysteries of the natural world…one-by-one…through the forward progression of empirical knowledge.
But in these two episodes of Socrates in the City…Lennox and Metaxas arrive at the brilliant observation that the God of the Bible is entirely unique amongst other gods…is not a material entity…is not like the gods of the ancient world descended from the primeval “stuff” of the universe…but instead is an eternal Spirit.
The problem with a zero-sum approach to judging the advancing achievements in science…is that it requires a materialistic universe having a finite total number of available, objectively knowable facts…that can be moved from the ignorance side of the ledger sheet to the knowledge side of the ledger sheet.
But a universe having a transcendent Creator God…an eternal Mind…being a living Spirit…radically differs in that this theistic worldview infinitely broadens the possible diversity of the architectural body-plans and lifestyle habits of the tens of millions of living species on earth…and broadens beyond human imagination the possible scope and diversity of the life-scripts that can be composed and orchestrated for human beings…one of the outstanding features the biblical narrative stories of faith exhibit.
Anything outside of this proper context as determined by materialism…is considered to be subjective…and therefore unreliably imprecise in terms of measurement, quantification, and clear categorization…being susceptible to the undefined variables of opinion, impression, and artistic taste…and therefore suspect as to solid truth-value.
Atheists can and do take reductionism a step farther…by also subscribing to the philosophy of scientism…which asserts that real truth can only be found through the methodology of the hard sciences…through only what can be repeatedly tested in a laboratory.
These lines of thinking create a worldview reality that has finite borders…that reduces the range of possible knowledge to a narrower set of facts that can eventually max-out at an end-point number…that has fixed boundary-lines around a set quantity of factual knowledge…beyond which we cannot go.
Over the past roughly 160 years…beginning with Charles Darwin’s classic book The Origin of Species published in 1859…these four lines of thought…materialism, scientism, atheism, and what can be called hard agnosticism…have coalesced into a single narrative that has universally worked its way into popular culture…which can be broadly called secularism.
The contention of this essay is that secularism negatively limits human lifestyle options…to the narrow ranges as defined by worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…in direct competition with the biblical narrative…in the sea of multiple competing worldviews.
Restated another way…has the godless worldview of naturalistic materialism…by its insistence on excluding any input of a Creator God who could broaden the scope of possible human life-scripts…successfully imposed upon modern cultures a narrowly restrictive choice of options for human life…confined to the realm of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking alone?
Has the secular worldview of a godless materialism permeated so thoroughly into our popular culture…that the profoundest irony has immerged in that modern science is now telling us that our universe cannot be godless…that the vast amounts of coordinated information in the natural world must have an intelligent source…to explain its existence.
The theme of this book is that the biblical narrative stories of faith exactly reveal the necessary input of a brilliantly imaginative God…composing life-scripts that reach far above and outside of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…to the peak and pinnacle of purpose, meaning, value, and worth in human life.
The main theme of this book is that this assertion regarding the beneficial participation of the God of the Bible in the lives of people…as we might logically expect the Creator God of this universe to do…naturally parallels and intersects with the modern scientific discovery of complex, specified, and coherently integrated systems of information…that likewise have an origin far above and outside of any plausible materialistic explanation…a materialistic explanation that by definition requires the complete absence of this same brilliantly imaginative God.
Borrowing again from the Socrates in the City interview of John Lennox by Eric Metaxas in Labastide, France…parts 1 and 2…in January 2018 …Eric Metaxas makes the point that the atheistic worldview of naturalistic materialism creates a false zero-sum game in science…where each new discovery made by science adds to the increasing database of valid human knowledge on one side of the ledger sheet…and creates an equal and opposite subtraction of human ignorance on the other side of the ledger sheet…beneficially decreasing the number of explanations of the phenomenon in nature based upon old-wives tales, superstition, black magic, witchcraft, and the unfathomable whims of the ancient gods.
Human scientific investigation is the one and only research methodology that can move the innumerable mysteries regarding the phenomenon in the natural world…from the ignorance column over to the knowledge column.
But for atheists…in a closed-system worldview consisting only of material things…the more we know about the workings of the natural world discovered through the reliability of the hard sciences…the less we need to ascribe the things we do not yet understand…to the serendipity of unknown causes…or worse yet to the creative capacity of a super-natural god we cannot materially see or touch.
This artificial, zero-sum dynamic from ignorance to knowledge…has created for the atheist the useful concept of a god-of-the-gaps explanation…of a god that does nothing else…but exists to perform the role of a temporary placeholder for ignorance…to fill-in as a “nothing burger” until scientific investigation can uncover the real, empirical truths underlying the phenomenon in nature.
Until we scientifically understood the physics of lightning…for example…in ignorance mankind historically ascribed the mystery of lightning…to be an act of god.
During the past four to five centuries of the Scientific Revolution…in the finite, closed philosophical system of naturalistic materialism…the god-of-the-gaps explanations for what we do not understand have been steadily decreasing in number…as scientific investigation solves the mysteries of the natural world…one-by-one…through the forward progression of empirical knowledge.
But in these two episodes of Socrates in the City…Lennox and Metaxas arrive at the brilliant observation that the God of the Bible is entirely unique amongst other gods…is not a material entity…is not like the gods of the ancient world descended from the primeval “stuff” of the universe…but instead is an eternal Spirit.
The problem with a zero-sum approach to judging the advancing achievements in science…is that it requires a materialistic universe having a finite total number of available, objectively knowable facts…that can be moved from the ignorance side of the ledger sheet to the knowledge side of the ledger sheet.
But a universe having a transcendent Creator God…an eternal Mind…being a living Spirit…radically differs in that this theistic worldview infinitely broadens the possible diversity of the architectural body-plans and lifestyle habits of the tens of millions of living species on earth…and broadens beyond human imagination the possible scope and diversity of the life-scripts that can be composed and orchestrated for human beings…one of the outstanding features the biblical narrative stories of faith exhibit.
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