Science the New Source of Truth
Lecture
#2Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject:
Genre: Speech
Track: 03
Dictation Name: RR325B3
Location/Venue: ________
Year: _______
Now it’s teaching science. This is a subject of considerable importance because science has replaced religion for many as the source of authority and truth. The appeal in one field after another today is to the authority of science. This is true in the area of politics, scientific socialism for example. It is true in the area of religion, modernism. It is true in the area of education, progressive education appeals to science as its authority. In one field after another science has replaced religion as the source of authority and truth. Now, we as Christians must teach science properly or we will feed this false faith which is so dominant among us.
For the Christian the path of instruction is made simpler by the fact that the Biblical word for instruction tells us so much. The word torah. The word torah means both law and instruction, so that we see what the heart of instruction, of education, is in terms of the Word of God. It is in the law of God, in the Word of God. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” For us therefore in teaching science Gods law is fundamental.
Instructions is in its implication with regards to the material world. Moreover modern science is a product of a Biblical worldview. Now for the teacher of science in a Christian school the ultimacy of God must be basic; God is ultimate, God alone is Lord, God is sovereign. For the Humanist who teaches science the ultimacy of this world is basic. The physical universe, nature, is for the Humanistic scientist ultimate and basic.
The scientific consequences of either position are enormous. Just for the idea of causality along the implications are far reaching. The Bible tells us that there is God who in the beginning was uncreated being and created all things that are. So that there is the uncreated being of God and the created beings of the universe and there could be no mixing of the two. Now causes therefore from a Biblical perspective are ultimate or secondary. God is the ultimate and the primary cause of all things. Secondary causes are within the world of creation. Where the Creator-creature distinction is destroyed then you destroy this concept of causality and you have a unitary view of causality. You have only one causality, and you become (pantheistic?). Within the realm of scientific thought today mans responsibility, man’s secondary causality, is only an illusion because all things now are reduced to one causality in the natural world.
Man is a part of that natural world so that causality belongs to the whole of nature and man’s belief in his responsibility is simply an allusion. As a result for all naturalistic thinkers - with one exception, one type of exception - man’s responsibility is an illusion. Hence, many of them will not even speak of the mind of man or of the consciousness of man because they regard that as epiphenomena and illusory.
The only way a naturalistic thinker can escape from the pantheistic trap is to call this an anarchistic universe. A world of total brute factuality in which every constituent element is an ultimate cause. So in terms of naturalism you denied the possibility of an ultimate and primary cause on the one hand and secondary cause on the other. You denied the possibility of an ultimate and primary cause on the one hand, and secondary causes on the other. You have, because everything is in the natural realm, either a pantheistic view or a naturalistic (anarchistic) view.
As a result the very ordinary fact of experience, that each of us are responsible creatures, accountable creatures, is denied unless we hold to the ultimacy of God as uncreated being and totally separate from all created being. From time to time men have arisen from the folds of the church who have felt that as hyper Calvinists that they will dress the sovereignty to God and deny causality to man, deny the secondary level of causality. They have all destroyed Calvinism and Christianity, and they remain astonished - if they live long enough - why they have led their particular segment of the church into modernism, into naturalism. They’ve done it because they’ve denied the distinction between God as ultimate cause and man as a secondary cause.
This distinction is real because creation is real. If you deny creation you have the problem of modern science today. Only one level of causality, and all else reduced to illusion. This was the thing which destroyed all far Eastern thought; far Eastern philosophy began on a far more advanced level than the Western world. When the Western world was still on a very low basis far Eastern philosophy and science was advancing...but, when they became openly naturalistic they destroyed totally the possibility of any accountability, of any responsibility of causality, and everything became illusion on the human level. Because the only casualty was the totality; nature, the universe; (brahma?), achmed...whatever you want to call it.
Thus, only from a Biblical perspective can you have, not only a valid view of man as the responsible creature but also a valid science, but also a valid science because we do not fall then into pantheism in which all meaning is blurred because all is one. Or anarchism - in which every man is of ultimate cause. You can see why, therefore, it has only been within the stream of Biblical faith with it’s belief in the creator creature distinction, and the ultimate cause God, and the secondary causes on the human and on level of the universe...of creation, that science has been at all possible.
Modern science was thus born out of Christianity, and let me add, especially Puritanism. Most of the great men of science in the 16th and 17th centuries were Calvinists, and the influence of Calvinism in men like Maxwell and others persisted almost into the 20th century. Moreover we must add another fact. The early scientists, because of this Calvinistic background, had a tremendous interest in eschatology. This was true of all of them because of the background of Calvinism and its emphasis. The background of their interest was postmillennial, moreover, even those who grope with Calvinism reclaim this interest. You’ll find even in a man like Isaac Newton, who was Arian in his Christology (but apart from that generally Orthodox and heavily influenced by Puritanism) spent as much time writing on the book of Revelations as he did on mathematics and science. Now this seems strange to many scholars, and they record this fact about the early scientist as a matter of curiosity, but it was not an unrelated correlation. It was integral!
They had a faith that told them man must exercise dominion and subdue the earth and bring every area of life into captivity for Jesus Christ. As a result they were out to exercise dominion in the area of science. Thus, there was an eschatological foundation to the development of science. I may have pointed out some time ago that all the early explorers, beginning with Columbus, began their work - with a single exception, (Tsoro?) - with an eschatological belief. A postmillennial belief.
Now to proceed to another aspect in teaching science. The Christian and the non christian approaches are very very different in every area of science. For the Humanist, because this world, the natural universe is everything and there is nothing beyond nature his definition is very simple. Thus the chemist will define life, and the physiologist will, and others will and they’ll tell you what life is chemically or physiologically. If they will admit that they don’t have the entire answer they’ll declare that in time, with research, science will determine fully the nature of life and will define it precisely and exactly. Just as today, they tell us we can define the constituent elements of the blood. We can put the blood under a microscope, we can classify it as a type and so on.
But the Bible tells us the life is in the blood. But not from the blood! A tremendous distinction! And we must make note of that distinction; where is life from? Genesis tells us that God took the red earth, molded it, breathed into it, and man became a living soul. Life is something that comes from God. The whole of creation is the product of the fiat word of God. As a result you can never define anything in Creation in terms of itself, in terms of this world; everything has to be defined in terms of God.
As a result, the naturalist has a very simple problem with definition. Given enough time he can define everything. This is why, however, I’m always insistent with Christians - stay away from the trap of definitions! The idea that you can define things and comprehend them is a naturalistic presupposition. Because this world is everything, and therefore things are definable in terms of themselves - in terms of what we see and what we know.
But for us as Christians nothing is definable in terms of this world. Everything is to be defined and understood in terms of God. In terms of eternity. And therefore, definition after a very limited tentative exploratory grasp escapes us. It alludes us. We can say life is in the blood but it is not from the blood, it is from God, it is created by God... But beyond that we cannot go. In one area after another, therefore, it is imperative for us to realize that definition is the approach of naturalism. Because it bleeds, everything is comprehended within the natural sphere, and it is only a question of time before man’s study and research and experimentation will comprehend and define all things.
And we must object to that idea strongly. It is an atheistic concept. For us, science is not definitive. It is descriptive and theological. Descriptive and theological. We can analyse and describe a leaf, we can talk about its functions, we can describe its relationship to the type of tree it is, we can describe it all along the line... But we cannot define it, because there is nothing in this world that can explain a tree and a leaf and comprehend it. Thus definition is a naturalistic delusion; a trap and an enemy of the Christian position.
Now the theological nature of science means that we must have a realistic view of scientific goals. Because God is God, this means simply that with God all things are possible, as scripture declares. With God all things are possible. Now wherever you locate God in your system of thought, wherever your principle of ultimacy is, there you have infinite potentiality. Potentiality and power are basically the same word. In God, potentiality and actuality are one and the same, and total.
But if we are naturalists, then we are going to say infinite potentiality resides within the natural universe, not God. Then we are going to affirm that with the natural universe all things are possible, given enough time. As a result, when you look at evolutionary theory it is a mass of contradiction. Thus, to illustrate. Spontaneous generation is basic to evolutionary thought, but science tells us that spontaneous generation is basic to evolutionary thought; but science tells us that spontaneous generation is impossible. No laboratory experiment can ever produce it.
But given enough time and a belief in the infinite potentiality of nature with Nature - because Nature is the God, the ultimacy, the principle of the ultimate - all things are possible! And therefore, given billions of years spontaneous generation is a part of that infinite potentiality that becomes possible. There is infinite potentiality from the naturalist in Nature. Therefore anything is possible in Nature. As a result, these men are ready to experiment with things they know are impossible.
To illustrate. It is well known that when you transplant organs there is a rejection pattern. Just as your body rejects a splinter, it becomes a cause of infection and your body does everything to expel it, so that, after a while that splinter will be pushed out by your body. So any alien organ transplanted into your body faces the same rejection factor. And yet, the papers the past week or so have been telling us about surgeon Christian Barnard of South Africa, who does not deserve that first name, who implanted a baboon's heart in a young Italian woman. It failed. Now, he announces that the trouble was that the heart was too small! The next time he will try it with a chimpanzee heart.
Everything in the human body works to reject that alien implant. Why does he persist? Because believing in the infinite potentiality of nature he believes that sooner or later they will overcome that. I have heard men of science, teachers of science say that they believe that someday even a mule will not be sterile but be fertile. Hence, they proceed with hybridization. Hybridization produces sterile progeny... but they’re going to overcome it! Why? They’re attempting to do what is impossible in terms of all scientific experimentation. But they believe in the infinite potentiality of the physical universe. It is their God! Therefore, sooner or later it is going to accomplish what they want, because they are working with infinite potentiality.
This is what most of our current genetic research is about. As a result, what modern scientists are trying to do is always to disregard the lines of {?} that God has created between the various kinds. The line of (fixed?), for example, between a human being and a baboon and a chimpanzee. The line between organic and inorganic matter. They do everything possible to deny it. Moreover because eternity is an attribute to ultimacy, henceforth an attribute of God, together with infinite power and potentiality--which is ever also at one and the same time actuality.
There is a hatred for clocked time. I touched on this in The Mythology of Science on page 76 and 77. The hostility towards time is because they want to eliminate time, and time therefore in the modern sciences is always a problem. Some day or another the modern scientist comes face to face with time, and he tries to eliminate it, tries somehow to alter it...because eternity has to be an attribute of ultimacy for him. Because these men have this faith - that ultimacy, potentiality, and eternity belong to the world of nature - everything is possible for them. And they can read this into their experiments.
One of the most amazing documents of late was a report in the science digest for June, 1977. There will be such an article in the July number. Before these disappear from the newsstands this week, try to pick up a copy and get the next number as well. What this article tells us is that a very large percentage - perhaps fifty, perhaps ninety percent - of all the experiments being conducted today are fraudulent in their report. So that, scientists are publishing material that is fraudulent! What they want to achieve in an experiment they report as though it were actually achieved! This is not new.
One of the classic examples of it in the last century was by Ernest Haeckel, who drew a series of drawings supposedly showing the development of the human embryo through a number of animal stages. Resembling a fish, resembling this kind of animal, resembling that kind of animal. His drawings were exposed as fraud. NOT based upon actual human embryo. Those drawings are still used in embryology... They still appear in college and university textbooks, and the same old lie is repeated. Although it has been demonstrated to be false. Why?
If you believe that infinite potentiality is the reality of the natural world, if it is your God, then you’re going to believe even as we believe with God all things are possible: these naturalistic scientists are going to believe that with a world of nature all things are possible. They can therefore report fraudulent experiments, because they believe that if it isn’t true now it soon will be. That’s their attitude. There is no area in the world today in which there is more fraud than in the area of scientific experimentation.
We are always being told that we are on the brink of the creation of life. On the brink of this, on the brink of that...but what you’re being given is the snow child, it is fraud. Thus the Christian, you see, must be aware of the principle of ultimacy and its implications for science teachings. [audio cuts]