The Worldview Shift in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

“What happened in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was that what for many had been the minimal theology of the Old World became the maximal of the New. … They found it in the world of Nature.”  John  V. Fleming (a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, university professor at Princeton University, and medievalist).

The “minimal theology of the Old World/maximal theology of the New World” is that the obvious order, mathematical nature,  and logic of the natural world all strongly imply the existence of an intelligence, a Creator.  Everything works as it must for us to exist at all.  If anything at all; gravitation, body pH, the amount of radiation in the atmosphere, the attractive and repellant forces between subatomic particles, etc.,  is  varied by even minute amounts, we will all die.  The extreme order and complexity of the physical world led to what is called the Argument from Design.  Design implies a Designer.

The shift  in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries denied the importance and sometimes even the existence of the Designer.  At best this is Deism (God exists but that is all that can be said), at worst, it is Atheism (God does not exist).

This shift in worldview led ultimately to the philosophy known as scientific materialism or naturalism.  This is the idea that the only things which can be known are those things which can be empirically measured.  A few steps more led to overt militant atheism.  A few steps more led to the idea that nothing can be known absolutely; that there is no Absolute Truth of any sort.  From this, people feel that they can, with a straight face, declare , “That is your truth, my truth may be different.”  Essentially, they are saying that there can be no universal standards of any sort, no declaration that anything is always wrong or right, and, ultimately, that “there can be no criticism of ME.”  This is the ultimate meaning of sin, the elevation of self above everything and everyone else.  Man making himself into God.

This is the Bible’s response to Deism and Atheism: “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:” Romans 1:20