Philosophy of Christian Education in Christian Schools

Science Practice

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Education

Lesson: Science Practice

Genre: Speech

Track: H16

Dictation Name: RR148H16

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s – 1970’s

{?} with a question with regard to socialized medicine, and I would like to continue for a moment or two with that subject and give you my own experience with socialized medicine. When I was on the Indian reservation, of course, the medicine there was socialized medicine. The federal government provided the hospital, and it provided the doctor who was a civil service employee, similarly, the nurses. The hospital was a very superior one, beautiful. Everyone who came in admired it. After all, the federal government had funds that most communities didn’t have and could put up a very beautiful hospital. But, the realities of medical practice in the Indian service were anything but beautiful. There was no competition. A doctor, once he was in the civil service, could only, with the greatest difficulty, be discharged. To remove any civil service employee in any area of the civil service is next to impossible. It requires a costly procedure that sometimes takes years. As a result, everyone knows they have a security.

Then second, promotion comes not by achievement but by lack of it. Now, this applied not only to medical practice but to any kind of practice. If, in the civil service, you are doing a good job, a very competent piece of work, and in your annual rating by your superior you are given that kind of rating that you deserve, you are immediately promoted to a higher jurisdiction. Now, if you are a supervisor, you will automatically try to keep the best men there. You will give them a low rating and you will promote the incompetence upward and onward. Thus, the more incompetent the doctor, the more likely he is to get promoted, and the same is true of the nurse, or of clerks in the agency building, and any and all engineers.

Let me give you examples of this. Ours was a rather superior agency in its standing and therefore, we got those who had promotions. We had one doctor who came there who was an alcoholic. Only about one week in a month was he able to function to even a limited degree. The rest of the time, he was under the influence, barely able to stagger around in his home provided by the government, and a very beautiful stone mansion. Toward the end of two or three weeks, he would be so weak from malnutrition, having done nothing but drink, the nurses would make their way into the doctor’s home, and put him to bed, and feed him, and then he would recover sufficiently to go back to work for a few days and then start in all over again. Of course, he got an excellent rating and was quickly promoted to an even higher jurisdiction. This should tell you something about the men who reach the top in the civil service.

Another doctor we had who was capable, but callous and cold, was a man who put terror into the hearts of anyone who went to them, he was so cold and callous a person. On one occasions, a rancher 50 miles out to the west of the reservation, brought in his wife and child. An oil stove had exploded and burning oil had hit them from the waist up, and his child in the head. The skin had just fallen off like a sheet, and they were in screaming agony, and the doctor refused to treat them. He said, “My practice is limited to Indians, I’m not required by law to treat anyone else.” He not only shut the door on them, but told the nurses they would, he would {?} charges against them if he caught any of them sneaking out to give any kind of medication. That man had to drive his wife and child one hundred miles to the nearest town for treatment. He later said it was a strong temptation on his part to shoot that doctor.

Now, I could go on and cite one horror story after another, and they’d all be all too true and would not be extreme examples, but routine things. It was a beautiful hospital, all kinds of money, but even the Indians who had the right to use it were usually fearful. Now that’s socialized medicine, socialized medicine with a hundred year history. It isn’t quite that bad in some of the European countries like Sweden and Britain, but it’s getting there. So, I know something about socialized medicine and I regard it as an enemy of everything we, as Christians, must believe it.

Then there was a question that I think is important, but you relate this to the beginning, what we’ve been dealing with of teaching science in the primary grades, what should the areas of theory and experimentation should have in the primary and intermediate grades. Well, of course, when we approach this matter not from the stand point of humanistic science, we can deal a great deal with theory and experimentation from a biblical point of view, because all valid science simply demonstrates the word of God is true, and we can call the attention of the children to the fact that each after its kind is demonstrated to be true, that God has created a fundamental order in the science and in the animals, and a fundamental order for our lives, which He sets down in His word, so I think it’s an opportunity for some very excellent elementary teaching.

Now to continue with our analysis of science from a Christian perspective and how we are to approach it, the modern science has an image with the public of a prim and proper technician, working earnestly and objectively in the laboratory from a totally neutral point of view. In reality, we have today in the sciences, a radically humanistic perspective that is working earnestly indeed, but from an anti-Christian perspective. We must, in fact, say that the modern, philosophical, and scientific perspective have fathered in our lifetime, the beatniks, the hippies, the revolutionaries, and the drug culture people. Why? I’d like to turn again to Dr. Van Til and his “Essays on Christian Education” wherein he says and I quote, “In particular, the goal of modern culture is the cultivation of self-sufficient free human personality. It is assumed by those who hold this ideal that the world of space and time is controlled by impersonal laws, and that human freedom must be attained by setting it negatively over against the impersonal laws of space and time. The world of space and time is not thought of as embodying the laws of the creator. Therefore, the idea of freedom is freedom that is set over against mechanism, not freedom that is found in obedience to God. So the goal of freedom is one of pure negation, or if it is one of affirmation, then it is that of an ideal cast up into the limitless sky of the unknown. Hereto it is the first duty of Christians to call men to repentance, lest they and their culture lose all meaning and then remain under the wrath of God.” This is from his “Essays on Christian Education.”

Now, what Van Til calls attention to there is a fundamental aspect of modern philosophy and science, namely its dialectical premise. It is a dialect of nature versus freedom. Now dialecticism is not Christian. Dialectical theology is militantly humanist, but in modern dialectical thought, which undergirds science, nature is the realm of necessity, of determinism. Freedom, therefore, is the area of the human mind or personality, and even that is challenged and the validity of it in contemporary thinking. You have thus, what Karl Marx tried to deal with, on one hand, the kingdom of necessity and on the other hand, the kingdom of man, or freedom. Because nature equals necessity, blind necessity, blind determinism, what freedom is left for man because man is a product of nature in terms of humanism, in terms of evolution. Everything in man belongs to the kingdom of necessity, is governed by a blind, automic, determinism. The only area that remains free for him is his mind or imagination.

What then, is his mind capable of? In terms of this philosophy, the natural world being the realm of the deterministic, of necessity, all that the mind can do is to negate, so that the realm of human freedom is simply pure negation. Remember Andre Rama{?} whom I quoted? I love to displease. The beatniks, the hippies, the revolutionaries, the drug culture people. Drop out, or negate, or destroy, assert your freedom. For the drug culture people, freedom was in a world of imagination, cut off from physical reality by the use of drugs.

One of the leading figures in the world of art who dominated the scene in France between 1885 and 1914 was Apollinaire. Apollinaire said that, and he was a father of modern art, the gratuitous act is the only way we can express our freedom. The gratuitous act is the unmotivated act, the senseless act, the meaningless, act. Moreover, in order for the gratuitous act to be an expression of freedom, it had to be not only anti-God, but anti-nature, and therefore, it had to be pure evil, unmotivated evil. As a result, freedom in the modern world means lawlessness. Of course, for us, freedom means obedience to God. We do not believe that nature is meaningless, nor that it is purposeless. It is the handiwork of God, and it serves God.

I mentioned yesterday that it is a great mistake for us to treat scripture as poetry. We need to take it seriously. For example, in the book of Nahum 1:2-8. “The Lord God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth; the Lord revengeth, and is furious; the Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies. The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked: the Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers: Bashan languisheth, and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon languisheth. The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence, yea, the world, and all that dwell therein. Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? his fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him. The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him. But with an overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof, and darkness shall pursue his enemies.” Now what Nahum there declares is that God is active in nature to bless and to judge. Nature is not a realm of blind, senseless necessity, but an area which manifests the will of the personal and almighty God. Nature serves His purposes.

Now only such a faith can preserve science and man. Naturalism makes nature a blind and meaningless determinism and freedom negation. Naturalism is, as we saw in the last hour, reductionism, reality is reduced to matter.

Now in terms of the modern perspective on science, to live is to be physical, because reality is physical. If we don not teach science from a biblical perspective, all science, because it will deal with this impersonal realm of nature, will convey to the children that the world around us and our lives are essentially to be governed by the physical. They will, therefore, see as important in their lives, their physical appetites and urges, and will feel that these must govern rather than the world of God. In terms of the modern perspective, as a result, youth today sees life as sex, and if they are denied their right to sex in terms of their thinking, then they’re denied the right to live, and as a result, they look on scripture as though it’s an anti-life book, that’s what I was told by a college student, an anti-life book, because to live is to experience the physical. This attitude saturates our world around us. I’m regularly told by people, “Well, you really haven’t lived if you haven’t gone to Europe, or here or there.” You see the implication there? To live is to experience the physical, and travel has that religious dimension for modern man, humanistic man, just as sex does. Life becomes experiencing things, physical things.

As early as the 1920’s, one researcher, not a Christian, made a study of a large number of American wives and adultery, and he found that the reason for their adultery was not that it pleased them, not that they were really in love with anybody, it was they felt that if they didn’t experience it, they would be missing out on life. It was the worship of the experience that led them into the sin, and this attitude is cultivated on all sides, and it is the product of this scientific perspective that reality is physical, and therefore, to live is to experience this and that physical experience.

As a consequence, we have, today, the continual quest for more and more experience. Why do people go to see Jaws, or Rosemary’s Baby, and that sort of thing, and to terrify themselves? They come out about what an experience it was, they were so terrified, “Well, I dug marks into Bob’s wrist with my fingernails, I was so scared. It was a tremendous experience.” Indeed it was. They were in quest of a religious experience in terms of modern humanism, and they were exalting in that experience, and this is why there comes continually the demand for something further and further out, so that their experience can be more intensified. It is a religious thing.

It is not Christ who is the life for them, it is experience of the physical that is life, and this is why I’ve stressed and read Nahum. You must present the natural world to your children through the eyes of scripture. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and all things therein.” “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork.” Make them recognize that, at every turn, they are face to face with God’s handiwork, that God witnesses to them in all of creation. They must never see it as an impersonal, purely physical realm of existence. The living God witnesses and speaks to us through all things. He tells us so. “Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.” All factuality, therefore, because it is the handiwork of a personal God, is a realm where we do not experience life apart from God, but we know God and glorify Him as the Lord and as the creator.

The basic reality, you see, is not the atom. The basic reality is that it is the creation of God. But modern science would have us believe that science is the source of truth, and the truth is physical reality. George Sarton has written and I quote, “Science is the whole body of systematized and objective knowledge. It is very incomplete and very imperfect, but it is indefinitely perfectible.” It is the whole body of knowledge, he goes on to say, as a scientific method ascertained. What has he done? He has identified truth with the scientific method, and therefore, revelation is not the truth. Truth, for us, comes from the word of God. Truth, is also the person, Jesus Christ, whose word, the enscriptured word is therefore truth is personal, and before we can have any truth in any other realm, we presuppose the truth of God and His word. We begin with our faith in the triune God, but when we exclude revelation as the modern concept of a scientific method does, science therefore equals knowledge. W.F.G. Swan has written, “Scientists must avoid all theological doctrine as a study point.” And of course, a hundred such statements could be cited from any library, but are scientists avoiding a theological premise. They begin with a theology of humanism. Man as god, and they presuppose a different faith.

Dr. Van Til, who has done more perhaps in this field than almost any other scholar in analyzing the presuppositions of the modern perspective from a biblical faith, has said, “In paradise, Satan had won the heart of man away from God to himself. He had done so by the cleverist of stratagems. He had done so by making Eve and Adam believe that, while eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they were engaging in the first, really scientific enterprise. It was an experiment, far more significant in its consequences for human culture than the first trip made recently to the moon. There were two mutually opposing hypotheses with respect to the possible consequences of eating of the fruit of that tree. There was the theory of the one party who called himself God, and who therefore, in dogmatic fashion, asserted that death would be the only possible consequence of eating the forbidden fruit.

“Then there was the theory of the second party. This party was not dogmatic at all. He only claimed that scientific experimentation requires an open mind, especially was this true in the case of the first scientific experiment ever to be made. There were no records of what had happened in the past, and to speak of this tree in distinction from all other trees as a forbidden tree was to assume that that party alone owned all the world. In his genuine freedom of choice, man must therefore decide between these two available hypotheses, according to the tempter.”

I think the point is clear. The scientific method has a religious premise. As we need it today, it says there are open options in every direction. “Ye hath God said, this far and no further.” Its premise is that man is the judge, that there are to be no boundaries on what he does. Dr. Graff earlier asked the question about experimentation with human beings. Now that is a Christian question. Recently, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, there was a serious debate and discussion when a similar question was raised. One man in the sciences there raised the question with regard to the validity of certain experimentations which he felt could endanger the life of a man and the community, which could produce new variations of diseases which could spread from the laboratory and destroy countless lives. Many citizens and official bodies in the community protested bitterly and extensively and declared there should be guidelines, and the issue was debated in the scientific press, and in some journals like “Atlantic Monthly,” and “Harpers,” but by and large, most of the scientists thought even to raise the question was inadmissible. To posit that there could be any boundaries in scientific activities was to be retrogressive. Now, of course, they do not like the fact, when they are reminded of it, that this is precisely what some of Hitler’s doctors said with respect to their experimentation. They pleaded with the Nuremburg court, to be allowed to go back and complete their work. It was important to science. They were concerned with scientific truth. They were, in effect, saying there is no other truth except through us. We are the way, the truth, and the life, and of course, the entire program was precisely this. Let man establish himself as the agency of truth. Let man be the judge, not God. Let it not be God’s word, “Thou shalt not,” but man’s “I shall do that which I please.”

The results of the scientific research which are valid, are such in spite of the scientific methodology and faith. They presuppose, as I pointed out before, an orderly world, a world of meaning and of purpose. I cited earlier, in one of my previous lectures, what has been taking place in mathematics and the doubts of the mathematicians involved in the moon shot, and the validity of their mathematics. Let me cite now the statement of Dr. Salvadore, a mathematician at Columbia University. He holds that, “Mathematics is a game in which the players set up their own rules and play with no other purpose than to play according to the rules. Any player may, at any time, change any rules, provided this change does not lead to contradictory rules. Since moreover, mathematics may be played by a single individual, the player doesn’t even need the consent of one of more partners in order to change a rule. This definition of mathematics will come as a shock to all but the mathematical expert.”

Now, in other words, what he is saying, mathematics is pure invention, logic of the human mind, has no relation to reality, and therefore, if you are assuming that there is some kind of order or meaning in the universe which is God-given, you are a fool, but if we read a little further, Salvadore adds, which too few of these men will, “That mathematics is the purest of games should not obscure the fact that most of its rules have roots in reality, and were originally suggested by practical situations.” He’s negated everything he’s previously said. This kind of game is regularly played by these men.

Or we can go further and find that, as biologist Hogland tells us, Hudson Hogland, that there are, “Only two answers to the question of how life began. It must either have arisen spontaneously from non-living material or have been created by supernatural means. If one accepts the second answer, science has nothing to contribute, since the question cannot be resolved by the operational approach of scientists.” Two answers, and if you accept God the you’ve ruled out science. Why? Only because it is presupposed that the scientist is ultimate, that man is ultimate, and that if there is any truth, his {?} operational approaches will discover it. By definition, there can be no truth from revelation. IN other words, there is no science if man is not God, and therefore man is determined to play god. Dr. Mayor Maskin{?} has said that man may be, “On his way toward creating a new human species.”

In terms of this, we must recognize emphatically that a non-Christian textbook in the sciences is dangerous, because implicit to it is a presumption with regard to man and with regard to the sciences, that militate against everything that the Christian schools stand for. This is why it is important for Christian textbooks to be written. I was delighted, by the way, to see some of the elementary textbooks in the science put out by {?} publication. They begin by a theological premise. You either begin with that or you teach a humanistic one, whether you intended to be such or not.

For us, the Bible is the basic book of knowledge. It is the one source of infallible truth. It is the book in terms of which all other books must be written. It provides the orientation for all teaching. Without it, we fall into superstition. We believe in things like spontaneous generation, evolution, and the like. Our teaching, therefore, must be unabashedly Christian. We cannot believe in objectivity in teaching. It is a myth. The so-called objective textbooks are really hiding their presuppositions, which are humanistic usually. So, we do begin with a science, that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” We do have in mind that at God’s appointed time, all creation will terminate in the second advent. We do teach that God created all things in terms of a purpose, in terms of meaning and patterns, and that we can understand things in terms of that pattern. If we teach our children that, we give them an advantage in the sciences.

At the table the other day, I mentioned to those present the fact that a very distinguished geneticist, now retired, won, during his years as a research scientist, eleven {?} in genetics. He made it clear that it was very easy for him to outdistance his competitors, and to reach results before others working on a similar project reached them. He did it because, as a strong Christian who believed strictly in six-day creation, he knew evolution was not truth. He knew that he could not produce anything by violating the species and the kinds, more literally as scripture teaches it. So that he did not try in the laboratory to accomplish what the Bible told him he could not do. In other words, he did not try to produce a mule that was fertile, and as a result, he always had a shortcut. Other men, without his faith, were barking up the wrong tree, pursuing blind alleys, because they lacked his faith. I believe that, as we teach a rigorously biblical approach to the sciences, we are going to simulate, in the not-to-distant future, more research than the humanists are able to do. We will have the basic premises that make research possible.

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] The question is, does a person have a right to die with dignity? That’s a loaded question. The way it was asked in California, it was really a way of saying “Do you believe in euthanasia?” A bill was passed, which is a most dangerous one. It gave people ostensibly a right to die with dignity, which meant that if they signed a paper saying that medication was not to be given to them, or their life was not to be prolonged, the doctor was not to abide by it. However, there were very serious aspects of that which tied the hand of the doctor, and which required him to do nothing at times when he may well have believed that the life of the patient could have been saved.

Moreover, it presupposed something that I think is the exception rather than the rule. It presupposed that, in the majority of cases, life is unnecessarily prolonged when the person is no more than a vegetable. Now such cases are by and large few and far between. Just as these cases where you have surgery and the bill runs into the umpteen thousands, are the exception, not the rule. We have people trying to scare people to death into feeling that medical practice represents a menace, and these horror stories are trotted out.

Anyone has the right to die with dignity as a Christian if they are a Christian, and they can so die, it’s very easy. No one compels you to go to the hospital if you are ill, and I’ve known men who’ve had serious heart attacks and they knew it was the end and they said, “I think I’ll be gone within an hour or two. Just let me die here at home,” and they had. If their doctor has been a Christian doctor, he’s made them comfortable and done what’s possible for them, or told them if he felt that more could be done and they could be saved. That kind of thing happens every day. That all efforts are means of controlling medical practice in saying to the medical practitioner, “You’re not competent. A group of politicians have more confidence than you have,” and I object to that strenuously. I’ll take my chances with a doctor before I take my chances with a politician, especially when I’m on the table. Yes?

[Audience] Do you believe in such a thing as Christian psychiatry?

[Rushdoony] The question is do I believe in such a thing as Christian psychiatry. I think it’s possible but I don’t know that I’ve seen it. However, let me report to you what, his name escapes me at the moment, perhaps some of you can recall it. G. Campbell Morgan’s successor, the British doctor.

[Audience] Martin Lloyd Jones.

[Rushdoony] Martin Lloyd Jones, yes. How many of you have ever heard Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones? Yes, some of you have. Well, some years ago, Martin Lloyd Jones was in San Francisco and he spoke to a medical group. Dr. Cornelius Van Til and I were the only two non-doctors who were present. Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones was, before he went into the pastorate, a heart specialist in Britain and a surgeon, I believe, to one of the recent kings. I’m not sure if it was George the VIth or George the Vth, but he gave a very interesting talk there on a Christian perspective with regard to medicine, and I’m going to try very inadequately to reproduce what he had to say.

He said that when he began medical practice, it was customary for the doctors in his medical school to ridicule anyone who believed that mental attitude could cause ulcers. Any student who had picked up that new theory and mentioned it got into trouble, and he said, of course, now a days, every doctor and every medical school recognizes the mind in ulcers, but he said at that time, the doctors would ridicule any student who made such a statement or asked a question in that direction and go to the blackboard and point out chemically what was behind ulcers, and they were right, but they were reducing, you see, man to his chemistry. They had the chemistry correctly, but they didn’t have the man in the chemistry, and he said, “Now we have psychosomatic medicine coming to the fore, and we are recognizing the role of the mind in medicine,” but he said, “I’m not satisfied,” and he said, “I don’t believe the doctor should leave the role of the mind to the psychiatrist, or that the psychiatrist, in dealing with it, has the whole story.” He said, “We still are not dealing with the whole man,” and he said, “The whole man is the man of scripture, the man God created in His image, and when we develop the right doctrine of medicine, it will be scripturally-based, and we will be treating the whole man, and our doctors will be Christian.” And he said, “A few years ago, a man was referred to me who had had a series of operations,” and he said, “They’d taken about everything out of him that could be taken, and now his heart was acting up.” So he said, “He was referred to me, and,” he said, “I talked with the man, I thought it was strange that a man in the prime of life, in a very powerful position, a key man in his field in Great Britain, should find himself in such bad shape physically.” So, he said, “I began to probe. I believe that man’s spiritual state is related to his physical condition.” And he said, “The man was indignant and he got up and threatened to report me to the medical association for quackery because I was asking questions about his conscience. What was he guilty of? What did he need to confess to the Lord?” And he said, “Finally, the man broke down and confessed how, on his way up years before, he had destroyed a man, and it had lead to the death of the man, in his ambitious surge to get ahead. It had troubled him exceedingly. He had, anonymously, tried to make restitution to the widow and the family, but the guilt was eating out his heart, destroying his life.” Well, of course immediately, Martin Lloyd Jones spoke to him as a Christian doctor who was also a pastor, and told him that surgery could never cut out his guilt, but that Jesus Christ could make him a new creation and give him forgiveness of sin. Dr. Jones, Martin Lloyd Jones said that the man no longer had any problems. So, he said, “I believe that what we need to word towards is a Christian medical practice, which developed the implications of the faith for the whole life of the man.”

Solomon said, “A merry heart doeth good like medicine. We need to believe that when a man is at peace with God, he is at peace within himself and therefore, it has its effect on his wellbeing. Now, I wish Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones had the time sometime to write up what he there propounded and develop it further, because I do feel that it is extremely important. This is the kind of thinking we need to develop, not only in medicine, but in other areas as well. Dr. Graff, could you like to comment on that? I think you could tell us a great deal more than I’ve reported so inadequately from Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones? You want to come up here and do it so that everyone can hear you more clearly?

[Graff] I’ll start with a concession. When I was a young man at the University of Wisconsin, I was fascinated with psychology. I thought that was the handle to power, so to speak, as I was going into the medical profession, so I took a lot of work under Carlo and his crowd up there that worked with monkeys. I didn’t catch the truth when this good ole assistant dean in medical school looked at my transcript and he said, “I see you spent a lot of time in a pseudo-science.” These were terms they were using at that time. I didn’t pay much attention to him. I later tried to stay somewhat in this field, and actually studied a little under a teaching analyst at the Mayo Clinic who was considered to be one of the leaders in the world at that time. But, I have since found out that these avenues led to nowhere, and when someone brought up the term is there such a thing as a Christian psychiatrist I got a big grin on my face because I don’t think there is. I think that two terms oppose each other; psychology basically is what we’re talking about. I think a psychiatrist as being a physician and then delving into the discipline of psychology, abnormal psychology. Now, educational psychologists should never go around trying to counsel people in the area of abnormal psychology in psychiatry. I’ve had problems with people trying to do that, and you may question me on that.

But what I’m rapidly trying to get to without taking much time is that I just haven’t found a Christian psychologist yet, and the more I think about it, the more I feel that too much as Christians the only one who can minister to our needs is the Holy Spirit. There is no human that can take his place, and that’s what I’ll stop with.

[Rushdoony] Thank you. Yes?

[Audience] I’d like to {?} experience. Do you think of the modern charismatic movement as {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. I don’t’ want to get into various religious differences of opinion, but I do know that as I’ve seen it in Southern California, you have a tremendous number of people who drift from one thing to another, and they go into the charismatic movement for awhile, and they go in for grope group therapy and so on. They’re into everything, including charismatics, is what I’m saying, as a quest for experience. So, the charismatic movement does lend itself to this search. I’m not saying that’s all it is, although I have my very definite differences with it. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Dr. Cornelius Van Til, I’ve cited several times today. In particular, his Essays on Christian Education, which I do commend to you. You’ll find them very good reading. Some of it is difficult, but some of it is crystal clear. Dr. Cornelius Van Til is the leading man in the world today, and in this century I believe, in the philosophy of religion and in systematics. He taught, he is now retired and in his eighties, at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. He is a thinker who has developed more than any other, the teaching that our presuppositions must be totally scriptural, that we cannot begin with man’s reason, nor with science. We begin in every area with the word of God, with the God of scripture. Now, for this reason, some people, of course, who are say in the tradition of Fuller Seminary, or Wheaton, are most hostile to him, and men like Geisler and Sproul{?} and others, Carnell{?}, and Carl Henry and others of the Christianity Today group have been most critical of him, but it is significant that Carl Barth regarded as the one man he feared most, Dr. Cornelius Van Til. I think you’ll find his Essays on Christian Education a good place to begin. It’s in paperback. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] The destructiveness of sensitivity training. Sensitivity training, of course, is in the line of what I’ve just been discussing; the emphasis on experience above all. What sensitivity training does is to insist on an openness really to that which is forbidden. Whenever there is any, especially with adult groups, group that stresses sensitivity training, it tells you that things that normally were beyond the law, beyond the possible for you, you must now be open to without prejudice. It makes you sensitive to the sinful and insensitive to that which is righteous and holy. So, it is insensitivity training, in my point of view, to godliness. Yes?

[Audience] Dr. Rushdoony? Were there dinosaurs?

[Rushdoony] The question is were there dinosaurs? Yes. In his various writings, Henry G. Morris deals with them. In fact, he feels there’s a reference to them in the book of Job, and perhaps I can locate that. Only if I can do it quickly because I don’t want to take too much time with it. Yes. In Job 40:15 following, Henry Morris believes this is a reference to the brontosaurus, and he has lectured on his grounds for doing it, and I believe in one of his recent books, he goes into the reason why. He also believes that the conditions of life before the flood, plus the longer life span made possible for some animals to grow to enormous sizes, so not all those prehistoric animals are missing today. We have them now in very reduced form. Now, I am simply reporting in very inadequate fashion what he has said. I have no confidence in the area. Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience]

[Rushdoony] Yes, there have been many, many articles and several books of late about men at the point of death, supposedly briefly looking into the world beyond. This sort of thing is not new. Most of what we are getting, if not all, comes from people who have close connections with occultism. What they tell us about the life to come is that there is no heaven nor hell, and it’s all one beautiful world. Thus, they are emphatically proclaiming another gospel. We need to view all such works with suspicion. Unfortunately, it has received a great deal of publicity in the press and also, I believe, Reader’s Digest carried a condensation of one such report not too long ago, but they do not tell us that occultism is very much in the background and the foreground of the thinking of these people. Incidentally, the other day, one student told me that occultism is very definitely present in what is this very popular movie now? Star Wars, is that the title? Star Wars? Something like that. That the good guys in Star Wars are occultists. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] To be what?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I’m not competent to answer that question. Yes?

[Audience] What happened {?} divided?

[Rushdoony] The question is what happened when we are told the earth was divided in the days of Noah. It’s difficult to answer that question. There are some very competent who have theorized about it. There is a NASA scientist on the West Coast who says that the continents divided at that time, and the oceans were formed. His name is also Morse, but nor Morris. M-O-R-S-E, and his publications are purely technical, but he feels that the oceans were created at one time. It would be something of value if a group like Dr. Morris’s group would bring together a symposium on the subject. There are some very interesting ideas about that, but again, I don’t know the answer. An interesting fact, by the way, there is a book, The Maps of the Ancient Sea King, which points out that some of the most ancient maps we have, we would say they go back to the days just after the flood, and in terms of the dating they give, it would take us back to that time. Maps that have been discovered in various parts of the world, and China, and elsewhere, that indicate men, in those early days, had explored the world after the flood and knew the existence of Antarctica and North and South America, and knew both longitude and latitude, so that we had, apparently, a decline in the generations after the flood. Now, how valid that argument is, I don’t know, but there are some interesting books in that direction. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Maps of the Ancient Sea King, beyond that, I don’t remember the name of the author. He was a man who was associated, for a time, with Einstein. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. I’m familiar with that and I view it with skepticism. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Did you get a copy the first or second day of our report? Yes. If you’re interested in being on our mailing list, just drop us a note and we’ll put you on our mailing list. Ready to put anyone on without charge, although we do welcome donations because that’s the only way we survive, by the gifts of those who read it. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I’m not competent to comment on it. Ask Dr. Graff about that sometime. Yes?

[Audience] What is your view on the gap theory?

[Rushdoony] My view on the gap theory? Well, I don’t’ like to get into questions that involve theological difference. I’ll simply say that I don’t believe it. I think a good book about it was just written by Weston Fields, Unformed and Unfilled. Weston Fields is a graduate student in the sciences who is working with Dr. Witcomb, one of the co-authors of The Genesis Flood, and incidentally, a name to remember, because Weston Fields, in conjunction with Dr. Witcomb, is going to bring out a series of studies in the sciences that will deal with the origin on things from a biblical perspective. The first title, which I read at their request in manuscript, will be on the origin of the moon, and then they will go ahead to provide some basic books dealing with origins from a thoroughly biblical perspective. Yes?

[Audience] How much time do you think {?}

[Rushdoony] How much time should we spend on experiments? Well, I hope this won’t upset some of you, but I don’t think we need to spend any time. [audience laughter] You see, first of all, the students are not working experiments. An experiment is something that has not been done before. All you have is a demonstration of an experiment. Then, these demonstrations are very costly and expensive, and a Christian school can better use its money elsewhere. Then further, if a demonstration is needed, one demonstration can be made by the teacher, and teach more and save time. The students who do not have lab work in high school actually will learn more science, and be better prepared if they are going into the sciences at the university, than those who spend endless time in lab work. I think it’s sad that a great many Christian schools feel that they have not really arrived unless they bought a lot of expensive lab equipment. I just don’t see the need for it, and I have talked with some men who are in the field of the sciences, and they agree. I’m not saying everyone does, but I’ve talked with a couple who really didn’t see the need for it, and felt there could be more teaching by the teacher if you eliminated all but the demonstration by the teacher. I hope that doesn’t upset some of you too much. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] How can you teach those skills? Well, if they’re going to go into the sciences, they can learn that when they become upper division students at the university. Those are easily learned, but it’s an expensive thing and the Christian school has to husband its sons to teach them that in the high school. It’s a sizable part of the school budget. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] In the State of Washington, lab sciences are required. Well, in that case, you have two choices; either to submit or to fight. [laughter] Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] A recent interest in what?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh, the possibilities of Noah’s ark and the expedition there. Well, I think it’s there, but I don’t know anymore than you do, except that being Armenian, I come from a background where it was always assumed it was there, and supposedly people in various generations who go up there saw it, but it’s only on rare occasions that the snowpack melts sufficiently so that it is both visible and approachable. Now there’s a problem in working there, the most difficult of all mountains to get into. First, there are continual rock slide and snow slides. Well, one of the big difficulties is getting to it. The Turks create all kinds of problems. The Kurds are notorious thieves and murderers, so your chances of getting by them are not the best. Then third, there are the wild dogs in the area which can kill you and will raid camps in the dark. Then, as you try to climb, there are the snow slides and the rock slides. It’s a fearful area for those. So, the problems are really tremendous. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I have no competence in the area. Any other questions. We have time for perhaps one more. Well, if not, you’ll get an extra long break then.

End of tape.