Scriptorium Daily
Christianity is an attractive explanation for reality shared by hundreds of millions of people. These numbers include intellectuals, scientists, and scholars in every field. Many (though not all) of these people (lay and intellectual) have doubts about Darwin, even after reading the arguments, and see evidence for design in nature. It is just too implausible to assume that these people are all crack-pots or liars. They may not be right, but they have thought about it. You can be sure that highly trained philosophers like J.P. Moreland and Al Plantinga have thought about the evidence. To be simple about it: if major intellectual figures such as Al Plantinga, in his area of expertise, can have his doubts about the full blown Darwinism/naturalist story than surely we are justified to share them.
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The time has come for some fresh thinking. Philosophical rigor and plain old intellectual curiosity demands it. It has never been sensible to think that one could derive information from non-information without an intelligent agent in the first place. The naturalistic scientist used to claim that the appearance of design in a structure like the eye was imposed on the eye by the religious observer. The design was not there, it just appeared to be there since the religious were looking for it. This will no longer do, however. DNA, for example, does not just “appear” designed it contains information. This information is precise and essential to the existence of life. The information does not just consist of the sum of the natural component parts. It exists apart from what makes up the living thing.
As Phillip Johnson points out, one cannot understand Hamlet by doing chemical experiments on the paper and ink of the play book. Information cannot be reduced to the medium that contains it. This booklet can be place on paper, in electronic form on the internet, or memorized and stored in my mind. In each place, it exists in a different medium. The information, however, stays the same. How did this information come to be? Merely studying the medium cannot explain information, because any given medium is not necessary for it to exist.
Whether one is a Christian or a non-Christian one can argue that information may be not be reducible to the medium. It may exist apart from it (as Plato suggested) and come from somewhere or someone. Encoding may require an ultimate Encoder.
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Lofty words or even powerful arguments are not enough to move the world. It is not enough even to be right. The Declaration of Independence recites many facts related to the world of the eighteenth century. This data does not cause the Declaration to endure. When that same Declaration moved Eastern Europeans to overthrow communist tyranny, it was not because of the “facts” it contained. The Declaration captured an idea, a story of liberty, and it was that vision that moved men both in 1776 and 1989.
Christians, of all people, should be the first to recognize the importance of the story. We do not have a Bible that consists of a simple listing of theological or metaphysical truths. God decided to convey His message in the story of His peoples, the Jews and the Church. Orthodox Christians believe that God’s Word is true. This truth is most often told in stories of real men and women, in parables, or in letters written to fellow believers. The Bible contains a worldview, an entire way of looking at the world, related through the lives of the people of God.
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The stories that have captured the world of the twentieth century are based on naturalism, the belief that the world can be fully explained by natural causes. Most thinkers agree that the three people who most shaped the modern mind were Darwin, Freud, and Marx. Darwin made the triumph of naturalism possible by providing a means of explaining the origin and history of life that left no active role for God. Freud and later secular psychologists provided for psychological redemption without the need for the cross. Marx gave humanity an eschatological vision of a final conflict that would produce a secular paradise. Taken together these ideas formed a complete naturalistic religion. (more)
