“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.
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