RDK
Posts: 229
Joined: Aug. 2009
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From Grandma E. Mullings of The Kick-a-baby Initiative, Manual on How To Be A Young Fundamentalist Blowhard for Jesus:
| Quote | 3.4 Evolutionary Materialism
The intellectual powerhouse that energises secularism is Evolutionary Materialism.19
Consequently, we must take its measure, and understand then respond to its claims, strengths and
limitations, if we are to be effective as educated Christian thinkers and leaders in our region.
Now, except in intellectual circles, Evolutionism is not yet an openly dominant influence in our
region, due to the lingering hold of the Bible on the popular mindset. As time goes on, however,
the secularist trend is clearly gathering momentum, and so it is imperative for us to respond to it
without further delay.
The core issue, of course, is that the biological Theory of [Macro-] Evolution is often held to
"prove" the philosophy of Materialism, thus discrediting the Bible and the Christian Faith. This
leads to four critical questions:
(1) Is biological macro-evolution a proven fact?
(2) Do the various evolutionary philosophies and theories in various fields of study
necessarily follow from biological macro-evolution?
(3) Can these philosophies and theories stand up as proven facts?
(4) Does Evolution therefore disprove the existence of God?
The critical issue is the linkage between observable data, the inferred theory of macro-evolution,
and the claimed implication, materialism. If the inference is good and the implication holds, then
God is dead, full stop. So would be Man.
19 Often called “Naturalism.” Evolutionary Materialism is used here because it is a more descriptive phrase.
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First, a clarification. It is macro-evolution which is at stake, not the minor population variations
commonly called micro-evolution. We are not discussing well known small scale changes, such
as Darwin’s Finches or Industrial Melanism, but rather the grand theory that seeks to explain the
origin and diversification of life into the many forms in the fossil record and those existing
today.
All such macro-theories face three major difficulties: explaining the origin of life; explaining the mechanism that allows, say, a fish to evolve into a man in several hundred million years; explaining the all-too-characteristic "sudden appearances and disappearances" of life-forms in the "almost unmanageably rich" fossil record, which is the major evidence.
For, as many competent commentators have repeatedly pointed out,20 the leap from amino acids
formed in spark-in-gas experiments to a complete and functioning life-form is vast. Colour
changes in moths are one thing, "amoeba to man" quite another. A fossil record of gaps and
postulated but still all-too-missing links is more of an embarrassment than a proof (and has
always been so).21 In short, it is hardly proper to conclude, after more than a century, that
macro-evolution is proven fact.
Of course, to many, macro-evolution "must" be true — the alternative, creation and/or intelligent
design, "is incredible." Their basic reason, of course, is that they are philosophical materialists —
they begin by assuming that there is no God, rather than with an open-minded assessment of the
evidence. Plainly, this is a circular argument — one obvious alternative is that God/the
Intelligent Designer used evolution as his means of creation! Another, given the problems with
the evidence, is that macro-evolution simply did not happen. (This may be intellectually
unfashionable, but it is definitely not ruled out by the available evidence.)
In short, while macro-evolution may well fit into an atheistic view of the world, it is itself open
to significant challenge and simply cannot prove materialism to be true.
Philosophical materialism, however, has deeper problems. It argues that the cosmos is the
product of chance interactions of matter and energy, within the constraint of the laws of nature.
Therefore, all phenomena in the universe, without residue, are determined by the working of
purposeless laws acting on material objects, under the direct or indirect control of chance.
But human thought, clearly a phenomenon in the universe, must now fit into this picture. Thus,
what we subjectively experience as "thoughts" and "conclusions" can only be understood
materialistically as unintended by-products of the natural forces which cause and control the
electro-chemical events going on in neural networks in our brains. (These forces are viewed as
ultimately physical, but are taken to be partly mediated through a complex pattern of genetic
inheritance and psycho-social conditioning, within the framework of human culture.)
Therefore, if materialism is true, the "thoughts" we have and the "conclusions" we reach, without
residue, are produced and controlled by forces that are irrelevant to purpose, truth, or validity.
20 See the references at the end of this module.
21 In Darwin’s day, it was confidently expected that the “gaps” would be filled in, hence the search for “missing links.”
The persistence of the gaps in the fossil record — though often denied in debate — is sufficiently serious that the late Steven Jay
Gould (of Harvard), Niles Eldredge et al proposed an alternative to Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory: Punctuated Equilibrium.
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Of course, the conclusions of such arguments may still happen to be true, by lucky coincidence
— but we have no rational grounds for relying on the “reasoning” that has led us to feel that we
have “proved” them. And, if our materialist friends then say: “But, we can always apply
scientific tests, through observation, experiment and measurement,” then we must note that to
demonstrate that such tests provide empirical support to their theories requires the use of the very
process of reasoning which they have discredited!
Thus, evolutionary materialism reduces reason itself to the status of illusion. But, immediately,
that includes “Materialism.” For instance, Marxists commonly deride opponents for their
“bourgeois class conditioning” — but what of the effect of their own class origins? Freudians
frequently dismiss qualms about their loosening of moral restraints by alluding to the impact of
strict potty training on their “up-tight” critics — but doesn’t this cut both ways? And, should we
not simply ask a Behaviourist whether s/he is simply another operantly conditioned rat trapped in
the cosmic maze?
In the end, materialism is based on self-defeating logic, and only survives because people often
fail (or, sometimes, refuse) to think through just what their beliefs really mean.
As a further consequence, materialism can have no basis, other than arbitrary or whimsical
choice and balances of power in the community, for determining what is to be accepted as True
or False, Good or Evil. So, Morality, Truth, Meaning, and, at length, Man, are dead.
As Francis Schaeffer and others have so ably pointed out, this inner contradiction explains
modern man's dilemma and confusion. For, his soul — created by God, our real Maker — tells
such a man that he is significant, but what he thinks he knows tells him that he is nothing but a
random bit of rubbish cast up by an ultimately chaotic and purposeless universe. He therefore
knows not which to believe, and so lives under a cloud of hopeless despair, "a double-minded
man, unstable in all his ways.”
It is consequently no surprise to detect the consistent theme that all of reality is ultimately
meaningless in modern and post-modern Literature, in contemporary Philosophy, and in the Arts
generally. Equally unsurprisingly, when materialistic evolutionary frameworks are applied to
academic/professional disciplines such as Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Linguistics,
Economics, Management, or Media and Communication, it is the implications of materialism
that invariably are the root of anti-Christian bias.
In Law, Government, and Public Policy, the same bitter seed has shot up the idea that "Right"
and "Wrong" are simply arbitrary social conventions. This has often led to the adoption of
hypocritical, inconsistent, futile and self-destructive public policies.
"Truth is dead," so Education has become a power struggle; the victors have the right to
propagandise the next generation as they please. Media power games simply extend this cynical
manipulation from the school and the campus to the street, the office, the factory, the church and
the home.
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Further, since family structures and rules of sexual morality are "simply accidents of history,"
one is free to force society to redefine family values and principles of sexual morality to suit
one's preferences.
Finally, life itself is meaningless and valueless, so the weak, sick, defenceless and undesirable —
for whatever reason — can simply be slaughtered, whether in the womb, in the hospital, or in the
death camp.
In short, ideas sprout roots, shoot up into all aspects of life, and have consequences in the real
world. Paul therefore aptly summarises the bitter fruit of dismissing God from our thoughts:
since they did not think it worth while to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over
to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every
kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife,
deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and
boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless,
faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who
do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also
approve those who practice them. [Rom. 1:28 - 32; cf. 18 - 27, which shows the
significance of widespread sexual perversions in a culture.]
However, since evolutionary materialism has become the orthodoxy of the academic community
and that of many policy-makers and opinion leaders, it is often simply embedded in the
foundation of contemporary academic discourse, public discussion of issues, and the policymaking
and implementing process.
Therefore, educated Christians must learn how to unearth these hidden assumptions, and then to expose the resulting contradictions, foolish policy recommendations and their likely bitter fruit.22
Once that is done, we can then set about separating the wheat of sound insight from the chaff of
anti-Christian bias, then work towards a sounder, more sustainable future for our region. |
Atheist materialists are bitter fruits? Strange. That's the exact mental picture I get when I think of Grammy Mullings: a bitter fruit.
Edit: If I had (cover your eyes, FL) millions and millions of years available to me, I'd go through and try and break actual paragraphs into that gem of a GEM passage, but alas, I'm going to go ahead and actually study something useful instead of babysitting giant walls of text written by anti-materialist Jamaican preacher-terrorists.
Edit edit: just weeks ago, didn't GEM make fun of some woman who filed for a sexual abuse suit because she was a skimpy dresser or some other misogynist shit? In the above picture Gordon is clearly asking for it. Somebody should throw him into a bathroom stall and pull a Chris Brown on him, and when he goes to file a law suit tell him to stop actin' a ho.
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