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CPC Sunday School | Secular Naturalism (8-20-2023 Mark Evans)
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Today's agenda is to cover secular naturalism. It is a belief that the universe exists solely due to natural causes. Secular naturalism rejects the idea of supernatural or mythological causes for phenomena like lightning. The term "secular" implies that the world is self-contained and governed by natural laws, without any external spiritual influence. While secularism is not a formal cult, it has cult-like aspects as it calls for strong commitment and is deeply ingrained in society. Secularism has been the dominant worldview in the West since the Enlightenment. It is important to be aware that most people have been influenced by secularism to some degree. Secularism is often associated with neutrality, but it is a misconception that it is truly neutral. It has spread its influence in various fields such as science, politics, law, media, and art. So agenda for today we're covering secular naturalism. All right, and here's here's the roadmap. What is it? Why are we even looking at it a? Little bit of its origins. Definitely. We're not going to be able to do the full compass of its origins if secularism is true What follows secularism is true? What are the consequences of? Secularism that you might see and that's probably hopefully I don't know 45 minutes worth and then the last 15 minutes Would be okay, what counters secularism if secularism is not true, which it's not but if it's a lie What what then counters? secularism, all right So what is secular naturalism? I I like to start just as simple as possible So not a textbook definition not a formal or intellectual definition, but just the man on the street You bump into the man on the street. What is secularism you ask him? What is secularism? Maybe he's never even thought about it, but he might muster up an answer like this He might just say yeah, just things are are just what they are Things just are things just happen I've actually got an intellectual on my side who said pretty much the same thing. This is Bertrand Russell very accomplished mathematician logician philosopher Here's a great way to express what secularism is In particular secular naturalism the universe is just there and that's all The universe is just there and that's all and we'll flush out a little bit more of what that means Here's a little bit more of a complicated definition phenomena are to be explained and here's kind of the key word exclusively solely in terms of natural causes that is the explanation for Natural for the causes that we observe you could further break that down phenomenon We just mean reality as we know it reality as we experience it as we observe it Is to be explained by natural causes you say as opposed to what? as opposed to I'm going backwards hold on as opposed to a Spiritual cause Transcendental cause a mythological cause so for instance if someone went up to the secular naturalist and said it's lightning today because Zeus is throwing lightning bolts Psychonatural say no, that's that's we don't we don't think that way. That's not the way that reality works That's a mythological cause that you've invented We know why lightning works and we can explain it by natural causes Okay, what makes it secular why the word secular Secular just comes from the Latin word cyclone the Latin word cyclone just means world and so what secular naturalism is is implying is that the world whatever you mean by the word world is Self-contained it's sealed off. It's self-operating. It's autonomous. All right, it's sealed off There is no Zeus up above the world, right? We're kind of drawing a circle around the universe the multiverse, whatever it is that you mean by the word world So The world is naturally again as opposed to supernaturally governed This is a probably the simplest way we could think of secular naturalism All right, but that breaks the question. Why are we even looking at secular naturalism? It is not a cult right? This class is on cults. Why are we looking at it? And I think I'd say Strictly speaking that is true, right? There's no temple of secular naturalism There's no Bible of secular naturalism or high priest or worship service so on and so forth but the word cult Just means worship homage also comes from a Latin word It's something you pay homage to and so some of the burden in this class is to show that secular naturalism Why not formally a cult is cultish very much is cultish in the sense that It is an ideology of religious proportion It calls for commitment mental commitment the commitment of your soul and it does that by invoking very prominent disciplines including but not limited to neurology evolutionary biology psychology philosophy You could go on and on They'd give it a lot of credence that give it a lot of power to the modern to the modern man to the modern mind Additionally I would say Secular naturalism has been a in some sense the the dominant worldview in the West by far the dominant worldview in the West Since the Enlightenment which is important qualification, so I put it this way. We've got this class on cults you're certainly going to come across a Muslim a Jehovah's Witness a Buddhist maybe even The way I would frame it secularism. However is it's the very air that we breathe It would be like asking the fish. How's the water and the fish says, you know, what are you talking about? What water? It's it's so we're so inculcated and indoctrinated into secularism It is all around us. And so that's much of the burden of this class. I've got Great scholar on my side. His name is Charles Taylor. He wrote this book in 2007 an absolute tome of a book This is first of all anyone know Charles Taylor or heard of Charles Taylor not the singer The scholar yeah, okay John has Charles Taylor in my mind probably are one of the greatest living scholars and sociologists of our time Wrote this 900 page book is absolutely if you ever want to know more about secularity by all means read this book very dense very thick, but he sets forth this argument of Secularism and I'll just go through the front. This is in the front pages of the book Taylor puts it this way if you went back a few centuries in our civilization God was present in public life Keyword in public life and a whole host of social practices and at all levels of society Right. This is if you rewind the clock a few centuries They're good old days, but Taylor pivots and Taylor says however The change I want to define is one which takes us from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God a few centuries ago So now this towards one in which faith For even the most committed believer is just one possibility Among others and that in many ways is the genius of secularism is that it is that it situates faith in God as its one Idea in the marketplace of many other equally valid ideas These are all equally valid approaches to being to being a human equally plausible to believe in God as it is to not believe in God and Taylor has his terms Social imagination that man's current social imagination. That's how he thinks of what it is to believe in God or not to believe in God So the reason I wanted to address it in this class is just we should be aware when you bump into someone when you bump Into a friend when you bump into the man on the street when you bump into a co-worker Very likely they have imbibed secularism to some degree I mean unless it's the most like ardent Amish person or the most extreme Muslim like the most highly indoctrinated Muslim Anyone in the squishy middle for sure has imbibed secularism to some degree and so that's why I think it's a worthwhile Topic for our our Sunday school as far as cults go Remember what culture is. This is a famous quote culture is just a religion Externalized what you see out in the culture is whatever man has internally imbibed as his religion coming to fruition And so that's why you could say secularism is our current religion This is this is a Western religion of sorts To an unknown God or to man being in the driver's seat a man is autonomous man All right Terminology disclaimer, I'm using the word secularism and secular naturalism as an umbrella term very broadly So I'm using it in a sense in a way that would include or imply all these things These are not interchangeable terms. So secularism is not atheism. Those are not interchangeable Secularism is not Materialism, but these these things tend to go together So just know for the purposes of this class and simplicity. I'm using secularism as this overarching broad term that at least implies These things and probably some more things Okay To again keep it simple and put it in one word In my mind the genius of secularism The success of secularism what makes it so potent and so powerful is that it is able to purport neutrality And we'll talk more of what that means But in some sense the greatest modern lie ever ever told that man is neutral. We can be neutral. There is neutrality And we'll explore a little more of what that works, but let me give you just one example of how this fleshes itself out All right, here's Dawkins you probably familiar with Richard Dawkins, this is a classic statement of neutrality modern society keyword modern Requires and deserves a truly and there's our word secular state Now notice this this is very good on his part by which I don't mean state atheism. So he's not saying we need to start Indoctrinating that everyone deny God but rather state neutrality in all matters Pertaining to religion The recognition that faith is another very key word personal and it's not the concern of the state Notice Dawkins by or at least I would say by the word personal notice He means what he really means is private, you know Internal if you want to go into your closet and do your Jesus thing fine But that's got to stay out of the public realm. We've got to keep the state public realm as a realm of neutrality So by personal he really just means privatized So secularism again, it's success It's genius is that it's able to propagate neutrality and spread tentacles really really unlimited really anywhere I mean, these are just a few fields that you see it show up in whether it's science politics law Media art you see neutrality fleshed out in all these areas So we just we just saw a great example of it in the realm of politics, right? The state is to be a neutral state keep your personal faith matters out of the state But we're Presbyterians. All right, this is all credit to Jeremy. No, this is funny. Who's seen Terminator? Who remembers terminate this? Credit Jeremy Neal. This is that scene from Terminator. He's calling. She's a Presbyterian. Yes Yes, what's the chief end of man a personal relationship with Jesus your foster parents are dead No, Presbyterian would ever say that is the point of that joke if you haven't seen Terminator Classic kids, maybe someday. I don't know All right, so there's a word on on secularism any questions on just the term how we're defining it its use So in a word, we're just saying right everything is explained by natural causation and the success the genius of secularism is Neutrality we can be neutral All right, so next next phase is how do we get here, right Taylor just said you go back centuries this is not the case Man social imagination in called the medieval era. You're not walking around with atheism as a plausible theory Whereas now it very much is so a plausible theory. So how did we get here? This is a semester-long answer. So I'm what I've decided to do Again, Taylor wrote a 900 page book explaining this so can't do that here I'm just going to pick one thinker. You could pick many thinkers I'm just going to pick one because he's kind of fun. His examples kind of good. He was very influential. So we're going to look at Scottish philosopher David Hume who has heard of David Hume. Oh some humans. All right Kids he died. When did he die? It's not your question it's right in front of you when did he die Kids kids when did he die? What happened in 1776 Checkmate watch it right into that. I'll walk right into that. Oh, man All right moving on Yes, yes, thank you, thank you, thank you Okay, so Hume as Philosophers will do Hume said I want to examine. How do we see the world? How does man see the world? This is what philosophers love to think about. Okay, so this is what Hume sets out to do. How do we see the world? Now I would just say before you go any further you should pause and recognize that alone That is not a neutral question right scripture gives an answer as to how we see the world We know that sin affects our eyesight right sin affects us in terms of how we know things right sin has this drag Effect upon how we know things so before you go any further. You should just notice Hume's not asking a neutral question Nonetheless Hume proceeds and here's Hume's claim. All right follow us. This is this is kind of fun And this is really how Hume argued, okay? You're playing pool. All right, you have two two pool balls, okay? One pool ball hits the other pool ball the first pool ball hits the second pool ball and the second ball moves Everyone following this not it's not a trick question, okay? So easy enough right we see that we see the first ball hit the second ball second ball moves, okay? So far so good, okay Right now. Here's what Hume said however, and here's the big point we infer But you don't actually see that the first ball caused the second ball to move Okay So you see it, but what you you can see the first ball hitting the second ball, but what you don't see is You don't see the cause Very important point all right like Hume's point is this it's not like there's a little sign that appears look. I'm a cause Right look here look here cause Hume just said no you you you're inferring that you don't see it. You're just intuiting that right Now you might be saying Well, I'm sure you're saying so what right? But Hume's conclusion was therefore we don't know causes You don't have a way of knowing causes at best you rely on your custom or the constant Conjunction or habit was another word he used right it just becomes habit to me that yeah I've seen the first ball hit the second ball. I've seen that happen a thousand times So on the thousand and first time I'm going to assume the first ball is going to make the second ball move But what I don't see is I don't see cause I don't see causation okay Now again, you still might be saying okay big deal But the implications of that is it started to radically alter the way we think of reality and Here's here's here's another point Hume actually makes as he said It's just as logical for the Sun not to rise tomorrow morning as it is for it to rise Right again. This is the pool first first ball hitting the second ball, right? There's no logical reason for you to assume that the Sun is going to rise tomorrow You only assume the Sun is going to rise tomorrow because You've seen it rise a thousand times prior But you have no no Warranted belief for thinking that the Sun's going to rise tomorrow You're just used to it following night and day night and day night and day and now you're assuming Days gonna come after night, but in terms of your logic You don't have any logical reason to believe that you have no rational reason to believe that you don't see the cause That makes the Sun rise you're inferring it you're just inferring it So you can see where we're going. This is this is this is big what this started to open the door for Was the uncertainty? You could even say the implicit denial of unobservable causes Namely a supernatural cause God God's causation, right? So if you turn to the very famous watchmaker argument, if you don't know this argument you're walking along the beach you find a watch You pick up the watch. You notice. It's got design. It's got complexity. It's got gears It works very in a very ordered way. You see that watch and you start to reason. Oh if there's a watch there must be a watchmaker Hume said no no no you can't like that's a huge leap You just made a leap that you you cannot make you can't reason you can't go from design To to a designer and he said even if you could that definitely doesn't prove in any way a God who is omniscient a God who is omnipotent or omnipresent or eternal? You know him saying you're just you're just loading up a bunch of attributes that you have no rational basis for for loading up Going from creation to creator or from design to designer The other huge consequence of Hume was that Religion was no longer going to be a basis for morality a Hume very famously said you can't go from ought to is Here's an example right say you decide that you shouldn't punch someone because punching people causes harm well that assumes It's wrong to harm people and Hume said no you can't you can't go from experience to ethical Morality that's that's too far of a leap Right you can't go from what from our experience world from what we experienced to what ought to be That's a leap that you cannot make Now Hume very famously weighed in on miracles and Here's how Hume what Hume said of miracles a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature Which is already a problematic way to put miracles and notice how he roots miracles unalterable experience has established these laws of nature and That's proof against a miracle and one of the things you should notice or you would notice as you get more into Hume is He doesn't so much say miracles are impossible. He's just saying you can't believe them. They're they're not believable They're not coherent, and here's another famous way Hume put it Testimony no testimony sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony Be of such a kind that it's falsehood is more More miraculous than the thing it's trying to establish so in other words Hume's just saying what's more likely Jewish carpenter rose from the dead is that more likely or 12 guys got together and lied What what's more right and he said a wise man proportions his belief to the evidence So what's more likely we all know people who lie we all know people who make conspiracies We all know people who dream up things who want to believe things that aren't true Is that more likely or is it more likely a Jewish carpenter rose from the dead? Which of the two is more likely and so Hume stacks the deck in a way to say now the wise man proportions his belief to the evidence and therefore you couldn't believe Not that you couldn't believe miracles, but practically speaking you could never believe miracles In what sense Well, he's not saying there's no cause so much as he's saying we can't see it we infer it yeah, so he's not necessarily denying cause Is he not on miracles directly Like going against his own way of thinking because he says that things happen But we can't assume that there was a cause and then it gets to miracles, and he says you can't believe in miracles But wouldn't it be on his own reasoning just as likely for a miracle to happen as to not happen like you have no reason to believe that miracles Won't happen either. I mean it seems like he's directly going against his own way of thinking Well, I think his point is he so he loads up things on saying what The only way we can operate Experientially is by the things we've formed by mental habit and so my mental habit is that the Sun will rise tomorrow That's what I should believe. I should proportion my belief to the evidence, and I've seen the Sun rise 10,000 times so I have every reason to think it's going to rise tomorrow What I don't see experientially is dead men rising So I don't have a I don't have a rational basis for believing that dead men rise What I do see happening is people lying and can in conspiring for a greater purpose And so he would just say it doesn't come out and this is the genius of secularism. It's not an outright denial, right? That's that is like what's so seductive about secularism. It's just the what's the more likely. What is the evidence favor? What does experience teach me? That's what I'm going to go off of as far as proportioning my belief Well It would be yeah, because it's a violation of the laws of nature, yeah And here's this very famous quote. This is Hume saying if we take in our hand any volume of divinity We would say theology or metaphysics, which is very important the study of essences that the things have essences Does it contain and notice how he qualifies this does it have any abstract reasoning anything on quantity or number? No, it doesn't. How about anything for experimental reasoning concerning matter factor or existence? No, then commit it to the flames. It contains nothing but sophistry and illusion. So you pick up a Theology textbook. Is there any of these things in their reasoning quantity number experiential experimental reasoning? Well committed into the flames because it contains nothing worth worthwhile So that's why Taylor and Taylor's worth a secular age This is one of his famous terms is that we now live in a disenchanted world modern man thinks of the world in a disenchanted way meaning The cosmos is now stripped of all things supernatural of miracles of meaning of purpose You've got this world that's been stripped of all those all those things Because of what Hume did and then very again, this is very much the genius of secularism Hume said in terms of Your belief in God again, that's fine You can and maybe you don't and here's the important part either way, though. It's practically irrelevant We can get along fine without it. We can construct morality without it We can construct reasoning without it or rationality without it So huge huge consequences in terms of the way Hume Stacked that deck another huge consequence I mentioned earlier was the essence of things that things have an essence is now questionable why why would that be why is that questionable because You can't Yeah, you can't you can't see essences, right? You cannot see essences I can't look at Brian and see image of God is Hume's claim. We can't observe essences or natures And So what happened is so Hume had a huge influence I mean you could go on to influence on Immanuel Kant all the empiricists like Locke and Barclay and we can go on and on and on down and down and there's just not time But what you start to see is that theory starts to replace as an essences so theory the Greek word Sararia just means to see and Theory as it comes to be developed allows for that human eye a human idea that we don't see causes But we do infer them. That's why theory is by definition. Not absolutely true, right? It's never phrased as being absolutely true all right, so again, you might say so what who cares if you deny the Essences well It comes very important when you think of for instance, what is the essence of man man has a soul? Aristotle had this famous example you cut a rock in half. What do you get? Two rocks you cut a human in half. What do you get? You don't get two humans Right, you don't get two humans Because we have an essence right man has an essence man has a soul, right? Okay, and so you can see the way current-day secularism has won the day in in this sense I Mean say I come to you. I'm like, I've got this pill you need to try. I've got this diet. You need to try I've got this cream you need to try and I need to give it a lot of I need to give you a lot of Confidence I would load it up with phrases like these. Don't worry. It's scientifically proven It was proven in the laboratory Or by idea by contrast don't worry. It's mathematically impossible These are the things that give modern man comfort right modern man. Here's that he's like, yes, okay I know I know I can count on this. It was proved in a laboratory By contrast so flip it around right by contrast if I came to you and I said don't worry It's philosophically proven. It's metaphysically proven Right theologically proven or at least of all don't worry. It's proven by Scripture, right? Scripture is absolutely has proven that male and female he created him the humans have an essence Humans can be created as male humans can create be created as female. Don't worry. It's scripturally proven Ted is saying yeah that that has the genus of secularism is that has lost its teeth right to modern man Okay Just to fast-forward to show you where this goes Hume had a lot of influence that you see a movement arise in the 20th century called logical positivism They came up with this verification principle only statements that can be verified through direct observation or logical proof are meaningful statements So just let's take a basic example very classic syllogism all bachelors are male. John is a bachelor therefore. John is male Right very tight very tight logic. There's no way to refute that very basic syllogism and logical positives Is this counts for knowledge that is true knowledge? by contrast to speak of God they said It's quite literally nonsense as in it's it's not knowledge. It's not cognitive knowledge. It's not directly observable It's not rationally proven That's how far the logical positive Movement went now that movement died a hard death because they said How do you verify the verification principle and they had no answer so it died it died a quick quick death and Then our modern day you see the neutrality of secularism This is just my interpretation with a little bit of Taylor becoming not so neutral right now that you see in our day That antithesis is starting to be ramped up and the volume getting louder and louder to where you really do have to choose Are going to be logical are you going to have faith you're going to be rational or are you going to have faith? Here is a perfect quote on that Rudolf Bultmann who is a theologian who does not deserve the name theologian by any stretch is a very famous quote by him and Notice the way this is pitched you can't use in the modern-day electric lights radios Take an antibiotic if you have an illness and at the same time Believe in the spirit and wonder of the New Testament Disenchanted world disenchanted world. This is Rudolf Bultmann very famous theologian you see the intent antithesis pushed by What's sometimes called the four horsemen of the Apocalypse? They had a lot of influence in late 2000. I don't know seven. I guess you could say is where it started and ramped up of of Atheism, but I think you could even rewind and say these are the original four horsemen of the Apocalypse Karl Marx Nietzsche Freud father of modern psychology and Jean-Paul Sartre existentialists Okay, so that's a little bit as to the origins of secular Now any any questions on the origins how we got here again? That is that is a very superficial treatment If you want more read Taylor's book, and he'll let you know how we got here But you can see the way Hume constructed it and the huge influence that he had on thinkers after him Came this sort of implicit Uncertainty of Causation namely supernatural causation all right, so yeah Just the skepticism Yes, kind of the underlying thing and then going back to that you got to really say yeah, Satan's right no right Yeah, very good perfect. Yeah, I mean again even Hume's question How do we see you go back to the garden right and and Eve saw? That the fruit was desirous to eat right sin affects the way we see things right it permeates all all of us Okay, so And mark it seemed like Hume also paved the way for Darwin It seemed seemed kind of like you know if you have to say that there is no God Well, then you have to find another way. Yeah, how things were developed. Yeah, I'd be interesting to trace that lineage of Hume to Darwin and That might be through Herbert Spencer who had some influence on on Darwin My question is how do you? How do you go back in history and scientifically prove? You know what happened at you know the Battle of Waterloo for example with Napoleon? How do you how do you know things from history? How would you say that you know things from okay? So it's funny someone wrote a response to Hume and they this response that said yeah There was this guy named Napoleon, and it just so happens all the history We have from him was written by his soldiers who won Who seemed to want to hold Napoleon up in a very high light and seem to want to hold themselves in their victory up? In a very high light seems like we should deny the testimony and deny that Napoleon ever existed, so that's great Hume is dead so Hume couldn't respond, but yeah, yeah, it was very much a great a very witty response to you, okay, so If secularism is true, which obviously it's not but if it's true what follows so some things and this is again This is a this is like shotgun spread very broad pattern But what tends to what you tend to see is a kind of then to use your skepticism But a kind of despair a kind of purposelessness a kind of malaise You see it in and my mind the movies like these could only be made in our time Matrix Inception so many other movies that the theme is are we in reality or are we not in reality? Are we in a dream or not in a dream philosophers start talking about maybe we're just brain a brain in a vat, right? What if you're just a brain in the vat, and you don't know it Can you really prove you're not a brain in the vat? And there really is no way they would say to prove it and then certainly the writings of Hemingway Another good example all right Certainly it serves in terms of human responsibility and morality Dostoevsky famous He said without God everything is permissible and then Camus who? Came after Sartre who was on that slide with the four four gentlemen. I think this is from the stranger I don't remember, but he very famously said only one serious question remains the question of suicide Given given the premises of what we've discussed so far Yeah Okay, another huge one is that so remember Hume part of his success was morality is uncoupled from religion We don't need religion to Make morality coherent so what you started to see develop out of that is we can derive it from Biology here's a great example EO Wilson very accomplished American biologist he writes this book in 1975 and His his point of the book is I want to do a systematic study of the biological basis of all Social behavior, okay, and in that book He applies the evolutionary biology and particularly psychology of bees and chimps to humans now Just think about that to our ears to modern men Duh yeah, I mean, that's of course you do. Why wouldn't you apply? Evolution why wouldn't you make an analogy between? Chimp to man at the time very controversial This was this is a very questionable move by EO Wilson just notice in my mind now That's commonplace right man on the street says Yeah, we have a selfish gene That's why we have babies and that's so our species can you know continue on and it's it's now seeped into our social imagination But Remember why remember the premise here's the important part right if everything is material or just matter The qualities that you might we would normally attribute to our mind our psyche our spirit. They're just Epiphenomena of our brains right it's just our brains in motion. That's that's really all it is. It's reduced reality is reduced to being neurologically defined Okay a bit of a long quote, but I think this is good, and this is Christopher Dawson, and he wrote Here's an example of how secularism spreads to education Education goes the deepest because it's directly concerned with the human mind and forming the character It's a continually expanding force, and that's I think one of the great consequences of secularism. It is limitless. It really knows no no no bounds Once the state takes on education of the youth of the nation Once the state takes on education of the youth of the nation Therefore can expand its control further and further into new fields, and you see this happening in our day Physical welfare of the kids they're feeding their medical care their amusements use their spare time and finally and I mean This is the big one their moral welfare and their psychological guidance And you see that in in the secular state in terms of education today It can also lead to and this is kind of ironic to hedonism or just the idea of So John Stuart Mill said the most pleasure whatever is the most pleasurable That's right Whatever amounts to the most amount of pleasure and the way you get there is you can we can if we can measure our brain? States right if we could hook our brains up to a neurological quantifiable Measurement then we could start to say this is best because it gives us the best brain state Anyone remember Terry Shivo yeah, that was a that was a big deal in the early 2000s. We remember Shivo was Essentially comatose and their wages this debate shouldn't we in their life because her brain state is not active That is very much a secular a secular Truth coming to light if the brain states not active therefore what what uses life Another Consequence is it certainly leads to zero-sum thinking or an ideology of scarcity which makes sense right if the world is self-contained then We are we are scarce by definition Brian did some of this last week, but Paul Ehrlich. This is in the late 60s at A Stanford writes this book the population bomb in which he says Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death And he actually goes on to say and there is nothing we can do about it. You cannot do anything about it But again remember the premise. Why would that be here's what here's what Ehrlich said? People like us consume too much, and then there's others who don't get to consume enough So you see the the zero-sum mentality if I have a lot I cause you to not have a lot if you have a lot It's because you took it from me right. We've got one pie whoever takes a bigger piece of the pie De facto people have less pieces of the pie at the end of that So secularism leads to zero-sum thinking In some sense a quest for omniscience. This is a movie that came out not even that long ago called the theory of everything on Stephen Hawking appropriately titled as far as wanting to have a Theory of everything Jeff can explain more as to what that know what that means should we need to? But one thing I wanted to point out that is not new so Pythagoras. We learned the Pythagorean theorem in school Pythagoras held the universe is mathematically constructed all things are composed of number And he believed you if you could mathematically crack that code you could know all things and Then lastly I think most ironic is that secular naturalism leads to a kind of spiritualism or a kind of paganism You see this at the popular level anyone familiar with Joe Rogan Joe Rogan so Joe Rogan's got I mean This is probably probably the most famous podcast. I think I think over 10 million people Listen to his podcast so he's very much in the air. We breathe Here's just a kind of a typical quote from him. You take things too. Seriously. Just remember We're talking monkeys on an organic space spaceship flying through the universe So very much a kind of a secular naturalist at just the pop level But what's interesting is? He and and others like him You see they've got this still wanting to hold on to an experience of transcendence right man cannot stop being man man is a worshiper And we'll always be a worshiper and what's interesting you see the rise of Now psychedelics as a way to connect with transcendence, and I think we should at least be aware The use of psychedelics is now becoming mainstream even touted by no less than universities like John Hopkins and Stanford University for a whole variety of reasons Okay, so that's word on consequences of secular naturalism any questions on that Those are just things to keep your eye on as far as how far the tentacles can spread All right, so with the last the last oh, yeah Christians life Specifically the prayer life. How is it that secular naturalism may creep in you know to? In our lives, you know unknowingly. Yeah. Yeah, I'm thinking in regards to our prayer life, right? Yeah, I mean, I think you know like the confession is so great on this like we we don't we you know We have secondary causation and then God's causation. We don't ever deny secondary causation So if I'm praying for you to be healed for instance totally appropriate to pray you know give the doctor's wisdom You know may the meds do their work may your immune system be in to be intact and at the same time God would you? Also, just immediately heal Paul. You know we're good Saying both of those to be to be true and having a confidence that God will work can work immediately or immediately Okay, so I wanted to spend the last the last who it is that that was kind of here's the here's the garbage, right? So here's the garbage of secular naturalism what it is where it came from a little bit of its consequences But wanted to spend the the last few minutes on what's what's the counter now? There are many counters like you could take any number of angles to counter secularism I'm just for the sake of simplicity choosing one and so I wanted to pick the doctrine of Providence the doctrine our doctrine of Providence What is Providence? Catechism answer his most holy wise and powerful preserving and governing all creatures and all their actions So you see this is already. This is already a punch to secularism Okay, God is preserving and governing all creatures and all their actions. I love the Heidelberg on this God's Providence is his almighty his ever-present power with his hand he upholds heaven earth all creatures This part's always just I love this part even leaf and blade rain and drought the good years the bad years food and drink health and sickness and Then really important point these things come to us not by chance Right not by chance, but by God's fatherly hand So one sense you would say to Hume Hume can we know causes the Christian would say yes, we can know causes we can actually know ultimate causation For instance scripture says the voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth. Why does the deer give birth again? We would not deny secondary causation right mommy deer and a daddy deer kids ask your parents You know we don't deny that we don't deny that that's going on But the ultimate causation we know the voice of the Lord is what makes the deer give birth Right is in that regard. It is an enchant as enchanted as the world as it is It's a supernatural world as it is God makes these things happen Another great as the psalmist says and just look at these verbs right when God Gives when God opens his hand when God hides his face when God takes away breath Evenness you see just how brutally supernatural scripture is when God sends forth his spirit. They are created Right nature is not out there. Just independent of God doing its thing God renews the face of the ground So in this way we can know causes we do live in an enchanted world to quote Taylor's term When we look at the heavens the work your fingers and what you have set in their place were to know this is God who? Is set those there with his fingers? Certainly in terms of our human responsibility our agency our moral responsibility we affirm the both hand man plans and God establishes man makes his plan God establishes And Then a great verse that just shows how personal the world is upheld. This is of course speaking of Christ He's a radiance of the glory of God It's the exact inference he upholds and just you know this this word is not it's not the word universe Because you might say well, you know the universe multiverse so on and so forth the the Greek word There's this top honda which means all things Christ upholds all things by the word of his power That is how things are sustained governed ruled by Christ I Won't read this whole thing, but what benefit did we get from Providence? And just as it pertains to secularism all creatures are so completely in his hand There without his will we cannot so much as move you just can't you cannot even move no Adam can move and the molecule Can move I can't move you can't move a pool ball hitting another pool ball cannot move apart from God's hand Neutrality we want to recognize the world is not neutral and ask the question How do we know what we know is not a neutral question we know that reality creation Declares it's positively saying something the heavens are declaring the glory of God The sky is not neutral the heavens proclaim his handiwork, and there's many other verses we can go to that show Neutrality is not an option God has not made the world a neutral world And so one of the implications of Providence to flip it on its head as we'd want to recognize When the science goes into a lab scientist goes into a laboratory politician goes to make his laws a Moralist starts to think of morals when an educator teaches a subject history math biology so on and so forth they are Not in neutral territory right they are not in neutral territory Every square inch Christ says is mine, right? So Providence would answer or respond to humor respond to secularism in one sense saying firstly if Reason if human understanding if our senses are nothing more than the product of chance Then why would we listen to him? I mean right they are themselves Meaningless if at bottom everything is just chance What's interesting is that Hume admitted despite his influence he admitted he had to live as if What are you saying? I know there's Hume said I slept. I mean I got a function in life. I can't go around Consistently walking out my philosophy. I had to go hang out with my friends He famous said I got to go pay back admin like I got to have a good time I can't actually live out the philosophy that I've set before you No escaping of God's world And Contrary to Hume the Christian could say no we actually do have we do have reason rational reason Logical reason to believe the Sun will rise tomorrow. We absolutely do have that reason We know from Scripture. God has covenanted with with creation. We know from Scripture. God has made very clear He upholds all things he causes the Sun to rise he causes the Sun to set We do have every rational reason save Jesus's return that the Sun will rise tomorrow And there's of course profound implications that would come from that truth Providence of course in the word Providence is the word provide Obviously, but wanted to highlight how Providence mitigates or overrules zero-sum thinking right zero-sum thinking denies I Think not so much God, but God's generosity right just you see how much God gives God crowns the year with his bounty I love this image God's wagon tracks overflowing with abundance The pastors of the wilderness are overflowing God blesses it with its grows. He waters it right all those things Are would overrule or combat zero-sum thinking and then last it would be that Providence is is Personal right nothing we encounter is impersonal Christ himself Upholds all things so contrary to Hume. There's no there's nothing we can stumble upon That's this Abstract fact apart from the triune God right everything we come across testifies Reveals the triune God there's no there's nothing impersonal that we're ever going to handle taste touch so on and so forth Alright, then last one. This would just be the parting words So one thing to consider and maybe this is a little bit to your question Paul something that I think we should be aware of personally It's to not live by the lies of secularism I've tried to show right the success of secularism is very real I mean just modern man is a secular man And I said, you know if you bump into someone they've probably imbibed secularism The the truth is you and I have probably imbibed secularism somewhere along the line of the way we have probably bought into Neutrality some kind of lie the secularism has succeeded in in teaching us So it falls to us to one put that off and then to put on for those who are disenchanted I Think in a sense Providence has the answers that that modern man is looking for I think the scary thing about secularism is I do think it started in it might be starting to wane I mean time will tell but you see a Lot less neutrality and a lot more aggression as far as as far as certain agendas go So it seems like secularism is starting to wane and it was one thing I can't remember who it was says, you know secularism when secularism rides out paganism is it what comes in, right? There's never just an empty vacuum nature abhors a vacuum So if secularism rides out it's going to be filled with something so I think for us as Christians We do live in a unique time of saying hey here. Here is the truth of Scripture. Here's the meaning. Here's the purpose Here's why you have the malaise that you have Here's how important Providence is in every realm of life And that's something that we I think as Christians have have a unique opportunity as we see a secular age You know perhaps waning and being filled with you know, seven more demons that could be far worse All right, any questions? Three minutes any questions Thinking through how We it may slip into our thinking for what is true about God We have to sit there and then and then what is the consequence of that and and one in a way that the tentacles Can can shift our thinking is what do we want to be true about God? Like what do we how do we want to see God? And then from that, you know, we are switching as you said last week the Creator Creature distinction. Yeah, then we create our God based on what we want God to be. This is there's a there's a really good exchange between Lennox and And Dawkins on that the debate is Does science bury God that's the name of the debate and in there you have Dawkins talking about a garden and These magical fairies floating around now in critiquing Lennox's God and I think that you know Really a great response. He says that we don't believe in those magical fairies either You know, right we we don't believe in a creative God And so unless we start with the God of the Bible, right, right then the consequence, you know What do we do? You know, we're basically following Dawkins and secularists lead in creating a God right and then you know The critique of that God is fair because it's not the God of the Bible Yeah, not the God of the universe, right? And so we in fact want to bury that God, right? Right? Yeah. Amen. Yeah well said Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I Was just gonna add that The great irony of people that are saying trust the science don't believe in the scientific process at all In a lot of ways they've made, you know science at God in in so many ways you know, for example, these pharmaceutical companies have recently come out and said that They've known for years that it's not a chemical imbalance that causes depression We don't even have a way to you know, you talk about you know, looking at people's brain activity A way of measuring, you know, whether there is a chemical imbalance or you know What what their medications actually do to correct that chemical imbalance? It's just yeah. Yeah, I think we'd want to affirm I mean, I guess I'd make this distinction of you've got science and then I guess what I would call scientism You know, you know the Latin word science Scantia just means knowledge, right? Can we have knowledge of the natural world as Christians? Absolutely, like we we are thoroughly pro-science God has created us in some ways There's great treaties on Adam being the first scientist, right? He's categorizing animals he's doing things that we would think of a scientist as doing versus scientism a much more dogmatic Stance that comes there's ultimately rooted in unbelief. Yeah Just to put a evangelical kind of bent toward this when you're talking and engaging with somebody who would believe this and they mean Again would not recognize himself being part of a cultic Belief system because it is the water that they swim in. I Think you hit on this at the end Nobody actually lives this way, right? Although they would fully say like well, yeah, everything is just what it is nobody lives waking up in the morning and striving for their family and Trying to support themselves seeking the American dream the betterment of their lives to to prevent violence to stand in and be offended by injustice if it just is what it is, then there's nothing wrong with any of that and the fundamental denial that there is nothing wrong with the world right now is absolutely Necessitated by by this world. Yeah, and when you're engaging with somebody to say, you know, well they say well, there's no God There's no moral ox like you you can say that but you deny it with every breath that you take right, right Yeah, there was a great exchange someone asked, you know a secular who was purporting these things It's like when you go home and kiss your wife and you tell your wife I love you. Do you also follow it up with saying really though? I'm just expressing a neurological brain state to you and nothing more than that You know, yeah, you're right. You're right. Yep. Great point Okay, all right, let's let's let's pray How many father we do praise you for you are the truth of living that God indeed all things come to pass By our sovereign decrees and that your beloved son Upholds all things by the word of his power Indeed, we praise you that we can put all of our trust our hopes our faith in you My God who makes known the end from the beginning The God who has exalted the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord over all Even as we plan simple mundane things, we know that you are the God who establishes our steps As we do pray that you would make us aware of what are some of the deceits and the lies that we have imbibed Even unknowingly and help us by the Spirit to be renewed to have truth in our inner man To believe you as you have revealed yourself in the truths of Scripture and to walk in a way that is pleasing to you In Jesus name. Amen
