Evangelical Materialism and the Functional Denial of Scriptural Authority

I have often talked about the Materialist assumption at work in our culture. It is just assumed that everything that exists has some kind of scientific or physiological explanation. I heard a BBC reporter talking about the Scopes Trial and the 'teaching' of evolution. He corrected himself with the 'science of evolution' - implying that science is factual and based on actual things that can be verified while teaching is just theoretical or philosophical and thus subjective in a way 'science' is not. The poor lost man doesn't understand that science - especially as it's being understood in a Materialist framework is just as philosophically rooted and dependent as any other religious system.

Realms of Enchantment and Mystery

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/living-wonder/

I rather enjoyed reading this review though I have not decided whether I will pick up Dreher's book. The work in question is Rod Dreher's 'Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age'. I found myself disagreeing with both Dreher and Darville the reviewer, but there's a great deal of food for thought.

Chimeric Experimentation and the Bioethics of the Pro-Life Movement (I)

https://evangelicalfocus.com/science/15001/christian-doctors-see-no-ethical-problem-in-genetically-modified-pig-heart-transplant-to-human

The current Evangelical world is rife with scepticism regarding modern medicine and yet some will remember a time in which the attitude that long dominated the movement was very much pro-medicine and pro-technological development. Whether right, wrong, or indifferent, the shift is interesting and more should be done in examining the reasons behind it.

Dangerous Roads in the Realm of Natural Theology

https://evangelicalfocus.com/science/10764/john-polkinghorne-saw-the-doctrine-of-the-trinity-as-consonant-with-the-entangled-world-of-quantum-theory

Superpositioned unity of distinct states, entanglement, dual identity and other concepts associated with the quanta remain more than a little intriguing. And indeed I have often thought of this realm of science as a case of science breaking down, even of a hint of the metaphysical imposing itself on empiricist assumptions. It has a real value in terms of apologetics – not in what it can say, but in what it can destroy. It casts doubt on the certainty and epistemological assumptions of Scientism. It declares not only that there's something more and something beyond but that these questions end in mystery and incoherence. It painfully reveals the limitations of human epistemology.

A Study in Fools: Veneers and Big Questions

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/16/618217795/teaching-children-to-ask-the-big-questions-without-religion

This NPR story caught my attention the other day and I had to dig up the link and transcript and have another look. It's about parents that want to wrestle with the 'big questions'... apart from religion.

They want to discuss love and compassion and yet not restrict these ideas to a religious framework or one that approaches such questions with a degree of certainty.

The Rise of the New Religion

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/29/the-long-slow-death-of-religion/

It is not uncommon to encounter these types of articles and essays but as usual the author misses something. While he celebrates the demise of religion in the face of secular reason, it has completely escaped him that rather than religion being replaced by secularism, a religion is being replaced by... a new religion.

Evangelicalism and Homosexuality, Compromise and Conflict

http://www.npr.org/2016/05/10/476651373/as-u-s-attitudes-change-some-evangelicals-dig-in-others-adapt

http://www.npr.org/2016/05/10/476651599/acceptance-grows-slowly-but-steadily-for-gay-evangelicals

These stories ran in conjunction on NPR. While no great surprise, the trend is disturbing and it needs to be watched. The spirit of compromise is in the air and the level of defection and capitulation on this point is disturbing.

Materialism, Nihilism and the Subjective

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCVRrybYWNE

This 4 minute video while both humorous and repugnant reveals more than it intends. Like it or not this is the social trajectory and it is a path of self destruction. Both dominant secular models that of the Scientific Materialist relying on sceptical inductive empiricism and that of the Subjective Individualist resting in existentialism have led the culture to epistemological chaos and can offer no remedy.

The Reality of the Demonic

All Christians committed to the veracity of Scripture acknowledge the reality of the demonic and yet there's a wide spectrum in how this is understood and applied.

Biblicism, Transgenderism and Epistemological Chaos

While many conservative and Christian cultural commentators will speak of the dominance of postmodernism I would argue that particular category and the relativism that goes with it is really limited to sociological questions, hermeneutics and ethics. When it comes to most interpretations of reality, Scientific Realism and Modernism still reign. The postmodern thinker will most certainly subjectivise the interpretation of that reality but the scepticism rooted in postmodernism is largely shared with Scientific Realism (Materialism) and its commitment to inductive epistemology.