SOMEONE WITH JUST A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE HOLDS SWAY OVER SOMEONE WHO HAS NONE
Two weeks ago, we looked at three reasons to believe that God exists:
- The existence of the universe
- The design of the universe
- The uniqueness of humanity
Last week we said that if God exists, we have to decide which God. We saw that the gods of animistic and eastern religions don’t have credible evidence to commend them as philosophically verifiable creator gods. Then we saw that if Jesus rose from the dead, then He is a credible God who can explain the existence of the universe. Finally we saw that when we look at the evidence for the resurrection, without an anti-supernatural presupposition, we conclude that Jesus is who He said He is, and the God of the Bible is the true creator-God.
It is historically surprising that that position has to be defended, because it was the agreed-upon position for all of Western civilization for two thousand years.
However,
when Darwin proposed his theory of evolution, it gave skeptics a worldview that allowed them to jettison God, which the majority of scientists and educators have done. They have done so, however, not because the evidence is compelling, but because it fit their presuppositions. Then, with safety in numbers, they have locked arms to oppose any other option, especially biblical creation.
Just because they are in agreement, however doesn’t make them right.
Do you know the story of classic novel,
The Lord of the Flies? A British plane goes down on a remote island in the Pacific and the only survivors are a group of preadolescent boys. Without adults around to establish a moral code and enforce behavior, the boys descend into savagery. At the end, all the boys are chasing one boy, Ralph, through the jungle, intent on killing him. Ralph is a seemingly good boy who is no longer accepted because he is good. It is a harrowing chase with adult emotions, until Ralph breaks out of the jungle onto the beach and miraculously falls at the feet of a British naval officer who has just come ashore with a landing party to investigate a fire they saw on the island as they were sailing past. The rest of the boys… the savage tribe chasing Ralph to kill him... break out of the jungle onto the beach and see the naval party. They are stunned and humiliated. Immediately, the spell is broken, the savagery vanishes, and they revert to the culture of proper British boys.
Without a supervising authority, a majority of the boys agree with one another and go against Ralph, the only sane kid left in the bunch, and assume, because they agree, that they are right. But when the naval officer arrives… a higher authority… the boys in majority all abandon their position and promptly submit to the behavior of proper British boys.
I don’t want to make too much out of the actual story… but it is an illustration of the fact that,
without proper authority to guide them, people can fall into error, and just because the majority agree with the error, does not make them right.
That is the way it is with the existence of God. Just because a majority of scientists, educators and politicians may agree that the world is a result of purely natural events and forces, it does not make them right. And Christians need not be intellectually intimidated. The weight of logic and evidence is on our side. Our problem is that we too-often do not have a well-thought-through worldview. As a result,
we can be intimidated into silence and submission when, armed with just a little knowledge, we could stand our own.
So, we muster truth, we present it effectively as truth, and we do so with respect for the other person, and love for them, in an attempt to win them to the truth.
The goal, of course, is not to win an argument, but to win a person.
Not that you would win every argument. Unbelief never has enough proof. But you could make a credible case for creationism on philosophical grounds, using the outlines in the last two blogs, without possessing vast scientific knowledge. And you might help create questions in some minds that would lead them to eventually consider the truth.
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