Viewpoint of Mark Cadwallader, Creation Moments Board Chairman
When I get up in the morning, I often look out at our landscape through windows that are obscured by condensation and fog. But then as the day moves on, the windows clear and the fog lifts, and I can see through those windows with clarity to the grass and the trees, the flowering plants, the colored leaves and the bright colors in the sky. Windows to the real world outside are a great thing, and houses without windows would be miserable.
Some things in life – like windows – need to be “seen through”. Other things are the reality beyond the windows where the “seeing through” stops. We could, in scientific truth, “see through” the various objects on the other side of the window to consider their chemical compositions, and beyond that to their essence of vibrational energy which is at the heart of their subatomic composition.
We could in this fashion essentially debunk their outward appearance. We could, I suppose, feel pretty puffed up about how we’ve “seen through” the outward façade of the natural physical objects, both living and non-living. We could then stop there, declaring that material and energy are the fundamental reality, and that we are the smart beings who see through this stuff.
We could also take the “seeing through” approach, cloaked with a scientific feel, and extend it to ideas, values and beliefs. For example, we could ridicule the “façade” of traditional beliefs about male and female, about marriage and family, as indeed we have done in modern society, ending up declaring non-marriage to be marriage and males to be females or vice versa, simply because we want to say it is so.
But if we keep “seeing through” everything with humanistic arrogance, eventually nothing means what it appears to mean. This is the road to complete meaninglessness, the road of existential philosophy where “life is absurd”. At some point the “seeing through” has to stop for there to be any real meaning in life. And indeed there are fundamental realities and principles which are at the core of existence – far beyond the power of human beings to see through and redefine.
C.S. Lewis wrote about this problem 75 years ago in his essay on education, The Abolition of Man. He warned about the consequences of debunking First Principles of value and natural law. If First Principles of truth are rejected, then all value is ultimately rejected. If, for example, my duty to my parents is a superstition, then so is my duty to my children. The human mind has “no more power of inventing a new first principle of truth than of imagining a new primary color, or of creating a new sun and sky for it to move in.”
And we have previously written in these letters about how, as we look through the window of the physical material world, we come to an immaterial world of energy, vibration, light and sound. We come to the edge of a spiritual reality – where the living God connects with us! And that God is the ultimate reality – a reality which the Bible says we know to be there in our heart of hearts. He may be obscured from view, like the condensation and fog that clouds the window. But He is “the God who is there”, as Francis Schaeffer put it.
The Lord is always near, and we can always reach out in faith and repentance and thanksgiving to commune with Him. Indeed, in Psalm 119:151 we read, “Thou art near O Lord, and all Thy commandments are truth.” The word for truth here is the Hebrew word emeth, and it emphasizes the idea of permanence, of being firm. This is truth that does not give, does not change, that is forever faithful. God is and the Word of God is the firm, sure final reality at which all “seeing through” must stop because you can’t “see” without ending up in foolishness/absurdity.
The truth of God and His Word is obscured by many things and ultimately by the lies of Satan. Here at Creation Moments we focus on the lie of evolution which denies the truth of His word. And in this grand lie we see all kinds of false narratives, just-so-stories, and logical fallacies with a major incorrect assumption of atheism. We see in evolution the intimidation of humanistic arrogance (e.g., “all true scientists believe in evolution” coupled with the logical fallacy of circular reasoning “unless you believe in evolution, you are not a true scientist”). We see here also the logical fallacy of get on the bandwagon, “all true scientists and scientific associations accept evolution as true”; in other words, “everybody who’s anybody is on board, so you should get on too!” These sentiments are the spirit of the world in the hands of the devil.
Pseudo-science can be thought of as commitment to an agenda instead of commitment to the truth. Pseudo-science is essentially trying to “see through” facts and truth that cannot be seen through – like the First Principles that cannot be debunked, or like trying through surgery and hormones to become a female when you are a male.
In fact, the Bible warns us, saying “…avoid profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of ‘science falsely so-called’” (1 Timothy 6:20b). The literal Greek is ‘pseudo (falsely)-named knowledge’. This is so-called knowledge that is actual absurdity. And it can be applied to the grand hypothesis of evolution.
November is a special month in America because we designate in it the national holiday of Thanksgiving! Failure to give thanks to God is actually an indictment against our Maker. The Bible says so as it lumps failure to thank our Creator with denying Him through vain philosophy and debunking. “…when they knew God they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise they became fools…” (Romans 1:21-22).
You cannot “see through” God and His word. The Lord is not another window. Rather, He is the incredibly beautiful ultimate living Being we can gaze at through the window. This Thanksgiving, let us thank Him for giving us the greatest gift of all – the spotless Lamb who died upon the cross so that we might have life everlasting!
