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Despite this auspicious heritage, many of our contemporaries find solace in what Francis Schaeffer describes as an “escape from reason.” They accept polite society’s dumbed-down redefinition of faith as something totally privatized—that is, a commitment so private and so personal that evaluation and evidence are irrelevant.
Materialists thereby deny the reality of mind (while they use their minds to advance materialism), determinists deny the reality of human choice (while they choose determinism), and relativists deny the fact of right and wrong (while they judge you if you disagree).
Likewise, cultures in the grip of inadequate worldviews begin to actualize societies that are less than humane.
Ideologues may advance their idols under politically correct banners of tolerance, diversity, and fairness, but the actual impact is regress, not progress, fragmentation, not wholeness. People are crushed. The human being necessarily revolts against gods that fail.
The existence of personal beings constitutes evidence that they were created by a personal God, not by any non-personal cause.
Water does not rise above its source.
The branch of philosophy that focuses on the nature of knowledge is called epistemology. We have an epistemic duty to acknowledge what we know and conform our lives to it. When we fail in that duty, we commit an “epistemological sin.” These examples clarify what Paul says in Romans 1. At the heart of the human condition, we might say, is an epistemological sin—the refusal to acknowledge what can be known about God and then to respond appropriately: “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Rom. 1:21). They engage in willful blindness.
