Shortly after the British colonies in North America had their revolution, the French had a revolution based not on the principles laid out in the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence but rather on the principles of the Enlightenment. After killing the elites of the French monarchy, the revolutionaries killed their own leaders for they, in turn, had become elites. France was disabled for some time after their revolution. But the Enlightenment gained adherents in spite of the experience of the French, especially in Europe. Philosophers proceeded with great enthusiasm to offer an agenda that would bring all nature, including human nature, under control. This agenda promised that by what could be known through reason and the senses, mankind could build a utopian world. Below is a listing of the ideals of the radical enlightenment in the nineteenth century (Rex Ambler 1966:143).
(1) The self is identical with consciousness and is directly knowable through individual introspection.
(2) The world, as essentially matter, can be identified with everything that is given through the senses, so that it can be thoroughly known, in principle at least, by the combined use of sensuous experience and rational mediation. The mind is a mirror of nature.
(3) The ultimate truth of the world, and of ourselves, can be known by us: the ultimate truth is the sum total of all the true things we can say about the world on the basis of sense and reason.
(4) In the world, things change according to single, one-way causation, on the model of a machine.
(5) Given (1) and (4), it follows that in principle we know how to control the world, and if necessary how to change it completely. All we need is the technical power to move the material levers of causation.
(6) Finally, given an introspective knowledge of what we free individuals want, it is possible to transform the world so that it answers completely to our desires (alternatively, our sense of rightness).
Both man’s physical and social problems would be solved by this liberated reason. After Darwin, the Enlightenment gained a cosmology that purported to explain the obvious design in living things, eliminating the need for an intelligent creator. Humans were also considered the product of this mechanism. Enlightenment, with this new cosmological basis, had its influence on both Marxist and fascist thought. The events of the early twentieth century dampened some of the optimism for what the Enlightenment agenda could accomplish.
The effects of this thought system did not make inroads as quickly in the United States, where conservative Christianity was still influential. Enlightened reason first gained ground in our academic institutions. Increasingly, mainline Christianity bought into this evolution cosmology, although its adherents offered a compromise with it by holding that God created and revealed himself through evolutionary processes. The utopian view expressed in the agenda of the enlightened, now held by liberals or progressives, has continued to motivate political action in our own nation. As evidence of these inroads, consider the teaching of origins in our public schools. At the start of the twentieth century, only creation was taught. Near the middle of the century, neither cosmology was taught as a compromise with those who believed in evolution. Now creation is no longer allowed and evolution is increasingly found in the curriculum. Even the religious nature concerns of our founders are overlooked. Of course, it is not immediately obvious to us that the grand scheme of evolution is cosmology in the same sense that the word has been used throughout this book. It is taught as knowledge gained by science. But then, by definition, a society’s cosmology is believed.
Science was not always as useful as it has become to political and academic elites. As explained above, men with an egalitarian perspective pioneered this method of gaining knowledge. When they made discoveries, they were careful to submit them to others along with the procedures they used to get their results. The information thus acquired could be verified, and new circumstances under which the discoveries might be applied broadened the base of knowledge. In this way a hypothesis would be found useful or discarded. Science itself was an egalitarian process. But there was always an amount of uncertainty about the understanding that was based on new discoveries.
Today’s scientists still insist on this uncertainty in the method of science. But when the Louisiana state law requiring balanced treatment of evolution and creation was challenged in 1987 in the Supreme Court, Edwards v. Aguillard, the attorneys arguing against the law were successful in marginalizing creation by labeling it religious rather than scientific. In other words, what had been competing viewpoints—God is responsible for our existence vs. purposeless material causes brought us into existence—compete no longer. The one is scientific by definition; the other has been marginalized as religious. Science is no longer a quest for truth. It is the quest for the best answer assuming material causes. The evolutionary cosmology has become the unassailable cosmology of the elites of the society.
Actually, many in our society have not kept up with this aspect of science since evolution became an all-embracing cosmology. When Darwin advanced his hypothesis, it was generally believed by the enlightened that the material world was itself eternal. It is no longer believed that the material world—or material itself—is eternal. It is now believed that material had its origin in the Big Bang—or perhaps more accurately, events started with the Big Bang brought material into being. If this is not considered a blow to the philosophy of materialism, it should be. Further, astrophysicists have found that the universe as we know it depends on the precise relationship of several constants. These constants appear to be fine tuned in order for the universe to accommodate the complexity needed for our existence. The name that the physicists have given this fortuitous situation is anthropic—that is to say that these constants must be precisely as they are for man to exist. In the creation cosmology, both these discoveries would be comfortably accommodated without new vocabulary. In fact, they would be taken as firm evidence for a creation cosmology.
Shortly after Darwin published his book, Pasteur demonstrated that life comes from life. Among other things, this principle has led to canning industries since one can be confident that if no bacteria survives the canning process and the container prevents any more from entering, the canned goods will not spoil. This is well established. Yet if evolution is to be preferred over a creation model, it must account for the origin of even the simplest form of life. Considerable research has been done with the purpose of offering a pathway for the highly unlikely event that lifeless material would organize itself into something alive and capable of reproducing itself. After the efforts of 150 years, the results have not been promising. May we suggest a creator?
Darwin admitted that the fossil record as then known did not support his hypothesis. But he believed that with future finds from paleontology, the fossils he predicted would be found. But now it is admitted that the fossil record has not supported Darwin’s hypothesis any better than it did in his day. Other scientists are working with DNA, the code that transmits the genetic material within the cell. It has been increasingly difficult to understand the DNA code in any way but the information needed for the cells to form and organize. Information requires intelligence; it does not happen by chance. Darwin offered that present forms of life could be traced back to a common ancestor, but that statement has not been better supported than his illustration with pigeons in his Origin of the Species, published in 1859. It is obvious that breeders of domesticated plants and animals are able to produce new varieties. What is not obvious is that these varieties would over time become new species. Neither the fossil record nor DNA studies have yielded conclusive evidence to support the proposition that all life can be traced back to a common ancestor. Yet this proposition continues to be taught (and believed) as truth.
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