“These are exciting times. When I finished the Epilogue to Darwin on Trial in 1993, I compared evolutionary naturalism to a great battleship afloat on the Ocean of Reality. The ship's sides are heavily armored with philosophical and legal barriers to criticism, and its decks are stacked with 16-inch rhetorical guns to intimidate would-be attackers. In appearance, it is as impregnable as the Soviet Union seemed a few years ago. But the ship has sprung a metaphysical leak, and that leak widens as more and more people understand it and draw attention to the conflict between empirical science and materialist philosophy. The more perceptive of the ship's officers know that the ship is doomed if the leak cannot be plugged. The struggle to save the ship will go on for a while, and meanwhile there will even be academic wine-and-cheese parties on the deck. In the end, the ship's great firepower and ponderous armor will only help drag it to the bottom. Reality will win.” –Phillip E. Johnson in an article, “How to Sink a Battleship: A call to separate materialist philosophy from empirical science.”
I could never accept the curious suggestion by modern philosophers that the meaning of life breaks down to my own personal preference. That's never how life has been. Reality has never transformed to my preferences. In fact life is quite particular, it doesn't listen to me, about what I want from it, instead it is quite absolute in it's constants. It's quite unchanging, despite my random emotions and thoughts. So I knew instinctively from the very outset that the meaning of life would have to be in relation to an absolute, or set of absolutes.
Post-modernism asserted that there was no truth, no objectivity, and no meaning in life. Deconstruction was central to post-modernism, pulling apart ideologies and belief systems to address presuppositions. Deconstructionism led to a movement in architecture to build building with intentional fragmentation, distortions, and random flaws. Of course in the construction of those buildings, do you think they could scramble the foundation? No. Otherwise the building would collapse. Much is the same with post-modernism. In ripping apart everything and declaring it's meaninglessness it destroyed itself.
You see, when one asserts that there is no truth, all one need do is reply, "Really? Is that true?" (Road-runner tactic) You see, they've destroyed their own foundation and contradicted themselves. Should we take their word for it? Is everything meaningless except for their writing on the subject? You see, this worldview is systemically contradictory. It goes nowhere. It makes no sense. Whenever the post-modernist writes on a topic, they temporarily elevate themselves above their own philosophy of meaninglessness to describe truth statements about a truthless worldview. Contradictory in the extreme.
I knew instinctively that absolutes were necessary. But not just necessary, but that absolutes existed everywhere, they existed in math, in science, in the natural world, in society, in the solar system, in my backyard, they existed everywhere! So how could I believe pop relativism?
Eventually that led me to the idea of the existence of God. It led me to look at the vast complexity of the universe, space, time, and the Earth. I found myself quite amazed by the harmonious complexity. This search for God eventually led me to the cross, to Christianity. Because again if absolutes exist, standards, systems, complexity, then there must be a supreme designer of those systems.
“The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is “something behind it all” is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists.” –Paul Davies, internationally known British astrophysicist and author
As a noted commentator Os Guinness has stated, or was it Gary Habermas? Anyway, one of them said that "History is absolute, archaeology is absolute, math is absolute, your bank account is absolute, scientific laws are absolute, why then would philosophy and religion suddenly have to be relative?" Of course this should've occurred to any school child instantly. Unfortunately in the west we seem to have educated ourselves into imbecility. But I've begun to wonder if there is not a psychological issue at hand with post-modernism and relativism. Perhaps it is really quite simple: "If there is no God and no moral accountability then I can sleep with whomever I want to. I can do whatever I want to do. I can screw over anyone I want to. I can make life all about me. I don't want God to exist, therefore he does not exist." Could it really be so simple? Perhaps it could. The anger and vitriol toward a God atheists say doesn't exist explains it all to me quite clearly.
“Religion used to be the opium of the people. To those suffering humiliation, pain, illness, and serfdom, religion promised the reward of an after life. But now, we are witnessing a transformation, a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.” –Czeslaw Milosz, "Discreet Charm of Nihilism" (The New York Review of Books, November 19, 1998)
The mental instability in our society is quite perplexing. There is this growing movement to redefine all things. There is this growing effort to mandate government hostility toward religion. And on the television and in Hollywood Christianity is openly mocked. Bill Nye is free to speak, on public dollars to children everyday on PBS, indoctrinating them into naturalism. But Ken Ham is harassed and smeared for his organization's views on creationism. Hateful commentator Dan Savage, a man who once went after a Christian congressional campaign, infiltrating their headquarters trying to get everyone their sick with the flu, has his own show on ABC. Millions watch shows like the Young Turks bash Christianity and religious folks. Others watch Bill Maher on HBO trash Christianity regularly. In academia religion departments are shut down and post-modernism and Darwinism reign supreme. It's really amazing how our society has turned against Christianity. In other words, the foundation is being subverted. And the results are terrible.
Even basics like marriage and gender are now thrown into question. A child knows that a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl. In fact every cell in the body of a male is distinctively male, and every cell in the body of a female is distinctively female. But after public school, gender studies courses, crossed with political correctness and emotional bullying, well, you get gender identity, the organized normalization of mental instability. Sometimes the truth is difficult to swallow, but it remains the truth.
"Nothing, absolutely nothing, has a more direct bearing on the moral choices made by individuals or the purposes pursued by society than belief or disbelief in God." –Ravi Zacharias, The Real Face of Atheism, p. 21.
Reality does not conform to my desires. I wish it did sometimes. Though as humans we are often our own worst enemies, don't you think? Why do women stay with physically abusive husbands? Why do men stay with girls who cheat on them? It's because we're a confused, and troubled race. We're fallen, as Christianity asserts. But that truth is violently resisted. In fact most tend to think people are basically good. I suppose all the wars, genocides, corruption, and poverty don't register on an emotional level when considering self species appraisal. But Christianity tells us a hard truth when it asserts that humanist is corrupted and in need of a savior. Or as noted British journalist Malcom Muggeridge said, "The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable fact, while at the same time being the most intellectually resisted."
Given these raw facts, the contradictions, and the general move away from these views, it is reasonable to conclude: Relativism is dead. Post-modernism is dead. They have been exposed and debunked as the empty philosophies of those set on subverting Christian civilization. They are the required entailments of naturalist philosophy, garbed in half-baked Darwinian scientism. And they've been found not only wanting, but unlivable, and illogical. They are contrary to everything we observe in life, philosophy, and reality.
Is it better to believe something that is false? Just to escape the God question? Is it better to believe contradictions than in Jesus? Those are the big questions. We cannot escape the God question, it surrounds us. It speaks to us day and night as much as we try to avoid it. The ultimate question of the meaning of life and of our shared purpose as humans must be addressed. We then embrace moral accountability and the radically different way of Jesus Christ, as revealed in the gospels and in the word of God. It means leaving behind my old way of life, and embracing a difficult one. Maybe that's why it's easier to just say "nothing matters, everything is relative, now let's party."
"Looking at the doctrine of Darwinism, which undergirded my atheism for so many years, it didn’t take me long to conclude that it was simply too far-fetched to be credible. I realized that if I were to embrace Darwinism and its underlying premise of naturalism, I would have to believe that: 1. Nothing produces everything 2. Non-life produces life 3. Randomness produces fine-tuning 4. Chaos produces information 5. Unconsciousness produces consciousness 6. Non-reason produces reason....The central pillars of evolutionary theory quickly rotted away when exposed to scrutiny." –Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator, 277.
