Friday, December 31, 2010

Giving Credit where Credit is Due

My wife just got out of the hospital, having received several stents, opening up some blocked coronary arteries. While there, we were privileged to view the actual process of injecting the dye into the heart and the obvious blocked areas of several blood vessels. The technology is quite astonishing, and the existence of such techniques got me to thinking.

The modern scientific establishment is downright dismissive of Biblical Christianity. The scientist-priests' scornful attitudes drip with sarcasm and contempt when they compare the modern technology and its wonderful results with the simplicity of faith. It is as if the modern world - especially with reference to the technical achievements of modern civilization - are the product of Atheism marching forward unopposed.

Now I know that the Atheist view is totally incorrect, unfounded and not historically true. Atheism cannot produce anything positive, and if it claims anything as its own, it is a claim based on intellectual theft. The modern scientific establishment would not exist at all unless it were not built on thought and investigation based on a Biblical Judeo-Christian worldview.

The father of the scientific method, Sir Isaac Newton, said "The most beautiful system of the Sun, Planets and Comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent being. All variety of created objects which represent order and Life in the Universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, whom I call the Lord God."

The practical system of investigation of the world around us and the use of careful observation and experiment, expecting logical results to proceed from logical inquiry, is one of his greatest foundations of the modern scientific world. And what drove Newton was his view of the Universe as an expression of God. He understood that the World of God and the Word of God are both established on the foundation of the Character of God Himself.

The "scientific" establishment of today is historically grounded on a Christian-Biblical worldview. But where God is not honored, blindness and futility set in. No one explores to find anything if everything is just "brute factuality." Without the assumption of an orderly universe, created by a purposeful, orderly God, then there is little point in spending money or effort to "discover" something that everyone knows cannot be there. It is far easier looking for something that is part of a pattern you know already exists. The whole process of discovery rests on an assumption that by following a logical sequence of steps, you know you are going to arrive at a logical conclusion.

If there is no God, there is no reason to believe that the universe is orderly or logical , or purposeful – even in our own lives or existence, no matter what we imagine; we are just the product of randomness – hence, no order. So why expect to find any order when you already know that there is no sense or order to be found? To believe in order is to believe in a giver of order. That is heresy to an Atheist.

Wrong views of God result in blight and blindness in an individual or a culture or an entire civilization.

Atheistic cultures steal the positive results of a culture built on a Christian worldview (tools, hospitals, technology, etc.) and claim it as their own creation, but as I have point out, they cannot possibly be the impetus for it. They really don't have the insight for it: they don't “think right” about the world and thus are blind - willfully blind – to the logical outworking of thought based on a Theo-centric worldview.

The modern scientific culture would never have come about as an outgrowth of Atheistic thought.

Political correctness is the fruit of Atheism – the deliberate rejection of the real world for the hoped-for world without God. Truly He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. There is no wisdom, nor counsel nor understanding against the Lord. In the end, He blinds those who refuse to see.

So we are able to give credit where credit is due - to the Lord God, who is the pillar and ground of the truth, and to His Grace, which granted to men who obey Him insight into His world, so they may "subdue it" and make it bountiful, within the confines of the Fall.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

The Frigate of Americanism

Thomas Jefferson, before becoming President, was usually in the party of those who favored a freeman-farmer type of government, where independence and minimal government reigned supreme. Jefferson was our third president, after Washington and John Adams. Adams was a Federalist, favoring a strong central government as opposed to Jefferson's ideal.

This Jeffersonian Propensity - a very worthy ideal - found a most excellent summation in this quote:

“Still one thing more, fellow-citizens--a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned” – Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801.

This tension is to be observed in the very early American government between the Jefferson types who favored very limited government, and the Federalist types who favored a strong central government., showing up in the debate over the building and manning of the US Navy for the defense of our trade. “Six Frigates”, by Ian Toll, traces the back and forth of US Policy that consecutively enabled and then starved the infant navy built to defend American national interests. Jefferson (typically) sponsored the idea of building gunboats in each port that would be manned by volunteers. It was a cheap and simple solution tailored to the early American ideal. It was also a complete flop when tested in actual defense of the harbors and towns. Later, President Jefferson sent the same frigates he had formerly opposed to the Mediterranean to deal with Islamic terrorists and marauders. They were eminently successful.

His “volunteer” force concept was proven to be wrong in the area of defending American interests in the dangerous arena of Maritime policy and national defense, yet in many other areas, his notions of freemen taking care of their own business has become the hallmark of what we used to mean when we said “Americanism.”

The first quarter of the nineteenth century, as witnessed by Alexis Tocqueville in his landmark book "Democracy in America" was marked by American volunteerism in the daily lives of the citizens. It could be fairly said that Jefferson and those who thought like him, expressed something essential about our people and how they viewed government and freedom. Government was not even on the horizon in most people's lives, rather it was Christianity and local community. Quite a contrast with today's in your face political correctness and swarms of inspectors and taxes and regulations harassing and eating out the substance of the ordinary person.

Some degree of government is necessary, and it is the duty and calling of every generation of freemen to attempt to keep the balance. In the last two or three generations I fear we have been so busy living “the good life” that we have sorely neglected that balance. We are perilously close to a point of no return in so many areas of the preservation of our Liberties.

We need a major course correction, or our “frigate” of Americanism will end up on the rocks.