“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes....” Romans 1:16
Alice C. Linsley
It is difficult for materialists to approach the study of the Bible, religion, or the question of faith with anything resembling objectivity. The material world is all there and miracles are, in the words of David Hume, "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent." An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (Section 10) This is not the biblical view of miracles, but that hardly matters when one relegates the Bible, religion and faith to the realm of fantasy. In fact, most materialists regard these as the invention of deluded minds.To their way of thinking those who believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God are naive, brain-washed or stand to profit from their connection to the religious establishment. Their confidence rests on the assumption that this Gospel concerned Jesus Christ is invented.
No wonder they prefer to ignore scientific research that verifies biblical claims. For example, materialists are generally not interested in biblical archaeology or biblical anthropology because both draw on science to verify as historical events and persons of the Bible.
St. Anthony the Great articulated the biblical worldview when he wrote: "God’s providence controls the universe. It is present everywhere. Providence is the sovereign Logos of God, imprinting form on the unformed materiality of the world, making and fashioning all things. Matter could not have acquired an articulated structure were it not for the directing power of the Logos, who is the Image, Intellect, Wisdom and Providence of God.”
In the biblical view, miracles are patterns in a singular universe that reflects a divine plan. They are not discerned by those who insist on randomness.
The materialist is shaken by the reality of which St. Anthony speaks. He is so thoroughly shaken that he must escape into fantasies about a universe governed by randomness, about the human being as just another creature, and about there being nothing beyond what we can experience. He invents creatures to fit his theory of human origins but has no physical evidence for such creatures, since they never existed. He attributes Christianity to the Jews and then illogically insists that the Jews corrupted Jesus' true religion. He often lifts up the Gnostics as having the right end of the stick and then pokes fun at the idea of secret knowledge for a chosen few.
Most materialists should be delighted with my discovery that Abraham and his ancestors looked forward to the appearance of the Son of God in human form and believed that He would be born from their blood line. They might argue that because the promise of the Son existed before Abraham's time, Christianity is so terribly old that it should be relegated to the realm of extinct entities. But it is also possible that their confidence would be shaken by the fact that the Jews didn't invent Christianity; that instead, this belief in the promised Son of God developed organically from a time before Abraham; that Abraham himself received from his ancestors belief in a God-man who would destroy evil and restore Paradise. They can't explain how this belief in the Incarnate Son of God could be preserved from ancient times to this day. Just as none are able to explain how the 318 bishops who came to the Council of Nicea from around the world and had not formerly communicated with each other should hold a consistent view of Jesus Christ. Such preservation of Truth can't be explained by material mechanisms.
The materialist worldview is riddled with holes and a thoughtful materialist recognizes this. This is why many materialists are nihilists deep down. Randomness can't express the patterns that comprise the fundamental geometry of the universe. In randomness there are no patterns by which we can deduce meaning. Without patterns we must conclude that there is no meaning to the universe. Ultimately, we slip in nihilism. That's one of the ironies of Philosophy - that the materialist worldview must deny itself and conclude that there is nothing.
Here is a little philosophical fodder for your consideration. Your article smacks of the kind of dualism that represents the center of gravity that the world mindset finds itself chained to.
ReplyDeleteJoseph Campbell:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell
Four Functions of Mythology.
Joseph put down a framework for the 4 functions of mythology. He derived these functions from a comparison of world religious traditions. It is not hard to find the horrible human tragedies that accompany familiar religious movements in history like the witch burning or the crusades. He, as I, started on his path from a sort of anti-religious point of view. However he eventually came around to the view that embedded in all the world religions was a common thread of common wisdom, in the form of stories, to aid in the process of human development .
Simply speaking the the four functions were:
Psychological - ego development
Sociological - Cultural development
Cosmological - Material Science
Mystical - Opening the mind to the great mysteries of the universe
Your article points to the current battle in the cultural mind between the latter two.
If you talk to a quantum physicist, a biophysicist, or an astrophysicist in private, In general I would bet that you would find a materialist point of view integrated quite nicely with a great appreciation for the mystery. Whereas if you step back away from the frontiers of science you will find a more absolutist view of materialism.
Your comments seem to make an attempt to grab at the historically retractable evidence within the Canonical biblical texts that support some of the materialist suppositions as proof of the mystical references.
First off the objective of the mystical references can be looked at as literally or fundamentally, or they can be looked at from a sort of dispensational way where the objective of the story was to impart upon the reader a sense of awe.
This sort of materialistic or fundamentalist point of view when applied to the operation of opening the mind of the individual beyond the "known" sort of short circuits the process.
Today or cosmology or science provides a sense of wonder that is potentially as effective as the ancient stories of virgin births or resurrections were in the context of the center of gravity of the cosmological understanding of the people in those times.
For me the sociological messages embedded in some of the text of the bible that reinforce the most humane universal concept attributed to ancient people of:
Do No Harm
Are the most helpful.
Thanks for your consideration
Ric
Thanks, Ric. Very intersting, and you are correct that my reflection on the difference between the biblical worldview and that of the average materialist touches only on the cosmological and "mystical" (not sure that Campbell's term is helpful). I'm taking a anthropological and philosophical approach here and the first two are of less concern.
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