Westminster
Conference on Science and Faith – 4/6/2013 - Breakout Session 2
Speaker: Peter
Lillback – The Mystery of Man: Who are We?
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Are we accidents? Can order come from chaos?
Creation or evolution? People or primates?
Theism:
Human identity is deeply theological
Does man
really have a soul?
The rise of
atheism in the West.
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The commanding heights of culture are now
controlled by atheists.
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Christians are exiles
Rene Descartes made man the center
with his famous, “I am” statement.
Immanuel Kant said God is unknowable
which led to scientific study strictly from a humanistic stdpt.
Bertrand Russell said mankind has no
future destiny.
John Dewey said that in the future
there will be no religious notions.
Sigmund Freud said that God, sin and
guilt are obsolete.
Nietzsche, Camus and Sartre all
thought life was meaningless.
B.F. Skinner characterized life as
reacting to stimuli (behaviorism).
Jacques Derrida said religion is
subjective truth, mere opinion. Postmodern relativism began here.
Allen Bloom said that the modern
university student believes there is no absolute truth and that the supreme
insight is not to think you are right at all.
G.K. Chesterton said, “If there were
no God, there’d be no atheists.”
There’s a limitation to what we can
see. Revelation is necessary for a complete understanding. Empiricism alone
cannot uncover the past. Divine revelation makes possible the truth and meaning
of history. Without God, we lose the divine significance of everything.
The speaker showed a picture of the
Great Wall with mountains in the background. He remarked that the order of
nature becomes explicit in human design. Gravity, density, balance are all at
work both in the mountains and the Great Wall, showing the contradiction of
design in an allegedly un-designed world.
The speaker spoke of the significance
of creation for dignity and freedom.
Ideas have consequences à radiates, motivates,
impacts.
Example was that Marx felt
influenced/justified by Darwin.
Ben Franklin, after completing the
constitution with the other early founders in Philadelphia, was asked by a
woman what kind of government he had formed. He replied, “A republic, ma’am, if
you can keep it.”
A republic requires a constitution. A
constitution requires a moral people. A moral people requires an engine that
trains people in religion and morality. These are indispensable
supports for our system.
Darwin had a principle that all life
exists by natural selection, evolutionary processes (dog-eat-dog).
On a cathedral in Milan, are the
words, “non-licit-esse-Christiano” (“not legal to be Christian”) as a permanent
reminder that there was a time when this was true.
The zeitgeist (dominant thought of the
culture) is moving toward anti-Christian
position.
Speaker envisions a day within his
lifetime when Christians will be arrested for preaching against homosexual
practice, which will be treated as a “hate crime”.
Creation matters for human
significance.
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