2013
Westminster Conference on Science and Faith
General
Theme – Origins of The Universe and
Life
Friday
(4/5/2013) Afternoon General Session
Speaker: Vern Poythress – “Why the Beginning is Important and Why
People Fight About It”
Summary:
The speaker spoke about the beginnings of the universe, life, humanity,
morality, law, science, religion. Each subject was broken down into a left side
for “how“ it began, and right side for “why”. The conclusion was that the
Christian world view is more logical than the neo-Darwinian view. There are
significant social consequences for the Darwinian world view.
Highlights:
Analyzing Origin: Kinds of Origin
Left Side Right
Side
“How”
(Material Cause) “Why”
(Purpose)
Christian view is
that God is sovereign over the “how” and “why”.
The opposing “human
autonomy” view is that the right side is irrelevant, subjective and
meaningless.
Human Autonomy
(Left Side only is relevant) features reductionism (Scientism), which tries to reduce
the right side to the left side. Some think
human autonomy view is objective and God’s sovereignty
view is subjective.
Human autonomy doesn’t think there is an answer to the “why”; therefore, each
human being is a
law unto himself. Material world is all there is.
When people
think this way, they make a mistake, a non-sequitur (non sequitur is a
statement in which the final part is totally unrelated to the first part).
Example: A-Science is good, B-material world is good, therefore C-material
world is all there is. However, human reason is an illusion if it is just
mechanics of neurons, and therefore, there is no answer to why human beings
have good reasoning power.
Materialism
view has a problem. Why is there any law at all, if the universe is just matter
in motion? That does not allow for laws of the universe.
Questions
about Humanity
How? Why?
Scientism God
created man
Man: complex
organization of atoms
Believing in
the “How” but not the “Why” leads to the danger of totalitarianism.
Questions
about Morality
Left Side: Right
Side:
Man is an
organization of hormones. Absolute
moral standards from God.
The speaker gave examples of how we naturally
follow moral standards in our behavior, whether or not we acknowledge God’s
existence.
Even Thomas
Nagle, a famous non-Christian modern philosopher, who wrote “Mind and Cosmos”,
argues against a reductionist view, and specifically the neo-Darwinian
view, of the emergence of consciousness.
Romans 1:18
- …who suppress the truth….
Modern
idolatry: Nowadays we make idea images as substitutes for God, rather than
physical idols.
There
are long-range social consequences of a God-less world view.
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