REALITY AND THE SCIENCES IN CHRISTIAN BELIEF

Part Three

Our culture seems to think that its sciences actually see behind the stage-set that most of us think of as reality. They can see behind it, what props it up and what makes it seem to be something it's not. Even God himself is seen as part of this facade of reality. The sciences have gone backstage and know what's real. This is just plain nonsense.

Nonsense or not though, that's where we are. And such depreciating of the human scale and the human frame-of-reference has taken its toll on Biblical thought in our culture. Obviously, Biblical Christianity doesn't come about by looking at the subatomic scale of things. Nor does it originate from considering large scale motions in the universe either. So it stands to reason that unless our Biblical thought is actually revealed to us by God (which is patently absurd to our culture, and therefore not a real option at all), then it must have been dreamed-up at the human scale——the naive scale of things. And, in fact, and Christian religion is widely regarded as the outcome of efforts by human imagination to cope with reality rather than to actually understand and articulate it.

Religious belief is assumed, thereby, to have no more grounding in reality than does our imagination. Our religious belief is reduced to mere personal and social conventions——categories imposed upon reality——rather than being intelligently engaged articulation of reality like science is supposed to be. Again, you just aren't required to know anything specific about reality to have a religious belief. Christian belief, religious, or isn't thought to be anchored in reality but in second-hand, remote impressions of reality.

To understand reality, we're expected to turn to our culture's sciences rather than to the Bible. Because human consciousness is at arm's length from what is real, it will be impossible to live out our lives in an engaged, intellectually responsible way if we rely on Biblical belief. So we're told, anyway. And this attitude has a profound effect on what is considered acceptable as far as Genesis 1 goes. Obviously, we can't understand it in a straightforward manner. That's so unrealistic!

Genesis One: (John MacArthur has done a great service on teaching on Genesis One: (more on a later post, or thread.

We Christians should know better than to buy into this cultural deception. But I wonder sometimes. Hence this digression from Genesis 1. Reality is not at the limit of atomistic reduction of things. We don't find reality by smashing things into pieces until, at last, the pieces won't break anymore and then call that "reality". Nor do we find reality by flying off into space to see what we look like from way out there.

It ought to be plain enough from reading Genesis that "reality" is what was made to be viewed and experienced on the human scale and from within the human frame-of-reference.

• God did not place our consciousness at the wrong scale or within the wrong perspective. What we know as "reality" is the venue God created for his own glory.

That's not just some sort of biblical spin that we put on an otherwise inert, non-religious object called the universe. The universe is actually a thing to display the glory of God. And because this is so we'll never find the bedrock of reality——that which is irreducibly real——by scientific inquiry. There isn't a more accurate scale on which we can perceive reality than the human one. Nor is there a more accurate temporal or spatial frame-of-reference that what we find ourselves in. For centerstage in the theater of reality is our Lord Jesus Christ.

• This certainly does not mean that science says nothing about the universe. But a scientist does not, by his work, get as close to reality as he would if he understood Scripture and faithfully responded to God.

The more he moves away from the human scale and the human frame-of-reference, the more he moves into incomprehensibility. Over the years some amazingly ridiculous claims about reality have been made based on the apparent behavior of subatomic particles. Again, the assumption being that this subatomic thing gets us to the real-ness behind the impressions of our scale of experience (our "reality"). But, in fact, our culture isn't understanding reality better.

Reality is becoming more and more incomprehensible. And as the absurdities multiply, so does our confidence that we understand more and more about the universe and the nature of reality!

It's awfully easy to lose sight of the centrality of Christ and the fit-ness of Scripture to substantively articulate reality. Our culture seems to have so much knowledge. And the way that such knowledge is presented to us doesn't help any, either.

• For instance: from millions of miles out in space, a camera was turned so that we could see what we look like from way out there. The earth looks like a bluish dot in a sea of darkness and stellar light. And we were given expert commentary on what we were seeing. What we saw is powerful evidence of our insignificance in the grand scheme of things. Just see for yourself. All of which trivializes man and the events that have taken place on earth.

Drafted by Charles E. Whisnant Didn't we like our Science teachers.