Naturalism and its Claim that People of Faith are Biased

People of faith are often accused of “bias.” We are told:

• You have a religious agenda. Your mind is already made up. You are not open to the facts and therefore cannot do science in a responsible way.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, the Director of the Hayden Planetarium, represents the latest example of this thinking:

• Go think whatever you want. Go ahead. Think that there is one god, two gods, ten gods, or no gods. That is what it means to live in a free country. The problem arises, is if you have a religious philosophy, that is not based in objective realities, that you then want to put in the science classroom. Then I’m going to stand there and say “No, I’m not going to allow you into the science classroom.” I’m not telling you what to think, I’m just telling you the science classroom—you’re not doing science, this is not science, keep it out. That’s when I stand up. 

There are numerous problems with the statement. Having a “religious philosophy” shouldn’t be grounds to exclude anyone from the “science classroom.” For one thing, “religious philosophies” are not the same. One’s philosophy of life might be a help and not a hindrance to doing science. For example, the biblical philosophy enables scientific discovery in a number of ways. It posits that:

1.     God wants to be understood.

2.     Loving God through understanding Him is a necessity.

3.     It is legitimate to understand God through His creation.

4.     His creation is worthy of examination. It is “good,” and not something to merely transcend.

5.     Those created in His image have been given the mandate to tend to His creation. This requires that we understand it.

6.     He rules by the laws He has put in place.

It is therefore not surprising that devout Christians had led the way in re-discovering science. In contrast, some philosophies posit that our thinking is all chemically determined and that we lack the freedom of thought to truly pursue scientific questions. Others posit that this world is illusory. Therefore, it would not be worth our effect to pursue these questions. Even others suggest that our purpose here is to transcend this meaningless, purposeless world – a sure science-stopper.

Tyson also has his own “religious philosophy.” It’s called “naturalism.” It requires that all explanations – all research – are natural, unintelligent, and unpurposeful. For the most part, this works. However, it is also needlessly limited. It’s as if you hired a detective to solve a crime, but he informs you at the start, “I only consider men over six feet tall.” This needlessly narrows the field. The perpetrator might be less than six feet, and so he would be entirely overlooked.

This is one problem with Tyson’s “religious philosophy.” It might arbitrarily narrow the field of causal candidates. Consequently, it assumes that matter, energy, time, life, consciousness, freewill, the fine-tuning of the universe, and the laws of science all have a natural causal explanation. This assumption is not only religious, it is also ludicrous. After all, how can the “natural” laws cause the “natural” laws! Nevertheless, the naturalist is hopeful that science will eventually come up with an explanation. However, such a religious faith blinds itself to the fact that it is a logically impossibility that science will ever have a scientific explanation for science. (Scientifically, the cause must precede the effect. Hence, the scientific explanation/cause for science must precede science itself – a scientific impossibility!)

None of us can do science with a blank slate – total neutrality. We all approach this discipline with our biased languages, paradigms, and philosophies. When Tyson attempts to discredit and reject those with a “religious philosophy,” he pretends that he is neutral and unbiased. If he refuses to recognize his own “religious philosophy,” he is perhaps more biased than the rest of us.

The Discrimination of Non-Discrimination and Christian Compromise

Vanderbilt University was founded by Methodists in the 1870s. However, things have changed. According to Albert Mohler,

• In more recent months, Vanderbilt’s administration decided to push secularism to the extreme — launching a virtual vendetta against religious organizations on campus. Officials of the university informed religious groups that had been recognized student organizations that they would have to comply with an absolute non-discrimination policy. This means that religious organizations (primarily Christian) must now allow any Vanderbilt student to be a candidate for a leadership office, regardless of religious beliefs or sexual orientation. In other words, a Christian student group would be forced to allow the candidacy of an atheist. A group of Christians who believe in the Bible’s standard of sexual morality would be required to allow the candidacy of a homosexual member. There can be absolutely no discrimination, the university insists, even if that means that Christian organizations are no longer actually Christian.

Ironically, Vanderbilt’s non-discrimination policy is all about discrimination. I haven’t heard how this policy is impacting other campus groups. Is the woman’s support group now required to open their doors to men? Must the Democratic student club now open membership and leadership to Republicans? If Vanderbilt is applying their policy across-the-board, it is strange that none of the non-Christian groups are protesting it. The controversy seems to have started when:

• School administrators started reviewing the constitutions of all student groups after members of Christian fraternity Beta Upsilon Chi removed one of their leaders over his views on homosexuality. (World Magazine, 5/5/12, 53)

Perhaps the campus non-Christian groups have avoided this controversy simply because their constitution didn’t specify requirements for membership or leadership. Or perhaps they had few scruples about discriminating, despite the fact that they are now “required to sign a document affirming the nondiscrimination policy.”

The fact that two of the largest Protestant groups – Reformed University Fellowship (RUF of the PCA) and the Baptist Collegiate Ministry (BCM) – has agreed to sign has deprived the Christian opposition of much muscle. Carol Swain, a Vanderbilt law professor, lamented that RUF and BCM:

• Made a decision that was very self-interested and that does not advance the cause of Christ.

In defense, RUF’s chaplain, Stacey Croft, maintains that the Vanderbilt ruling doesn’t actually restrict religious freedom:

• “I just don’t think [Vanderbilt] is there yet. I don’t think we have to fear that. Let that come when it does…Let’s continue as we are and take that to the university. If we need to leave, we will.” (54)

• RUF does not feel as threatened by the nondiscrimination policy because it doesn’t interpret leadership the way some other groups do, Mays [an RUF coordinator] said. Each RUF chapter is led by an ordained PCA minister…That job does not fall on the students, like it does at some ministries.

Perhaps by having an ordained minister leading their meetings has given RUF some breathing room. Nevertheless, they still regard Vanderbilt’s policy as a violation of religious liberty and are willing to sign the university’s non-discrimination statement, although they insist that they will not compromise the Gospel.

Two issues come to mind. Shouldn’t RUF be standing in solidarity with those Christian groups who do have more to loose? Also, by signing the Vanderbilt policy statement, isn’t RUF playing fast-and-loose with the truth? On the one hand, RUF signs that they will not discriminate. However, they acknowledge that their Christian faith requires that they discriminate!

However, it must be granted that there are occasions when the truth must be bent for the sake of protecting life. There were the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, who had lied to their Egyptian masters to save Israelite babies (Exodus 1). There was also Rahab the harlot who lied to protect the Israelite spies. However, these examples seem to be rare exceptions - hardly precedents to which RUF could appeal.

Truth doesn’t belong to us. It is not a commodity like clay and bricks, which we can mold to suit ourselves. Truth is not something to manipulate and twist for our own benefit. We do not create it; it is something to which we must conform. It is a sacred endowment, entrusted to us by the Author of all truth.

I pray that RUF and BCM will reconsider. We have a responsibility to expose the works of evil (Eph. 5:11), especially when they threaten something so important.

Andrew Breitbart and His Battle to Expose the Media

The Mainstream Media has been granted many protections under the First Amendment because of the role it was to play in holding politicians accountable. And this they have performed very well when it comes to politicians which they find distasteful.

This imbalance raises in important question – Who will hold the Media accountable? One small, yet significant, but now silenced voice had been that of Andrew Breitbart. On May 7, 2010 LifeSiteNews.com wrote:

• The bias of the liberal media is so deeply ingrained that it is an essential part of its structure - one that conservatives must fight hard to challenge effectively, according to conservative new media guru Andrew Brietbart. "The left, to me, in essence, is the media," said Breitbart an interview with CBN's Matt Brody.

About liberals like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Breitbart observed,

• "Their ability to get what they need to get done is because they're carrying the water of the media. The media is a left-of-center ecosystem, it's a left-of-center organism. So the media can change the dynamics of what we're talking about."

Although he wasn’t “strongly religious,” Breitbart stated that the media’s incessant attack on Christians "angers me to no end." However, he did take issue with turn-the-other cheek Christians. He was also disturbed by Mainstream Media’s attempts to undermine the traditional values upon which this country rested: "It's a distinctly Judeo-Christian one and I think that it works":

• “I aim everything at attacking the media for its biases and holding them accountable for their biases, and the things that they report incorrectly, or the things they fail to report,”

• “By aiming everything at the media I’ve pretty much done the one thing they ask you not to do. ‘Please accept the premise that we’re fair, and let’s move on.’ No. I’m not going to accept that premise.

• “For these people to tell me with a straight face that they don’t come to the media and their jobs from a political perspective, from a left-of-center perspective, is just a bald-faced lie.”

• “I want to break down this politically correct paradigm. These are rules that tell conservatives: you're not allowed to say this, you're not allowed to think that. This type of Orwellian thought crime crap is what I'm fighting against."

The Mainstream Media has become far too powerful and influential, but who is left to sound the alarm? The Media clearly won’t do it. Andrew, you will be missed!

(Please see one of his last interviews:  http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/the-need-for-the-right-voice/1445859698001
 

Speaking against Injustice and Hypocrisy: It isn’t an Option

Many Christians have accused me of erroneously portraying Christians as persecuted, marginalized and stigmatized victims.  Well, I don’t want to erroneously portray anything or anybody. However, I am deeply concerned about the dimming of the light of the church and of Christians. I think that some of the problem arises from the secularized media and schools that consistently portray Christians in a negative light and use this as an excuse to act in prejudicial ways towards the church and what it stands for.

There are so many examples of this hypocritical intolerance of the church. Here is just the latest:

• Officials at Dixon High School in Dixon, Mo., took down posters advertising the "Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity," claiming that they were offensive to some at the school.

How long will it be that the Bible or the Christian faith is deemed “offensive?” Meanwhile, secularism ignores the fact that they too are offensive, and by their own standards, they should be silenced:

• "Time and again students find themselves being censored … when speaking from a pro-life perspective," said [Matt] Sharp [of the Alliance Defense Fund]. "They have rights that should be protected, nourished." Sharp found it interesting that although the school took down the pro-life posters, posters not taken down include ones showcasing students as "bloody zombies" and the school's Gay-Straight Alliance's "Day of Silence." "Of all the posters, [the pro-life posters] are the only ones we know of that have been torn down," said Sharp, who considered the selective censorship to be a "dangerous thing." 

There are many parents and students who find the Gay-Straight Alliance and much of what passes muster in the schools as offensive. If everything that was deemed “offensive” was censored, we could no longer even conceive of a public domain. There couldn’t be such a domain at all.

However, our secular masters will not follow through with their logic. They would rather make false distinctions – secular vs. religious – so that they can discriminate against religion, erroneously appealing to the separation of church and state. In order to pull off this false dichotomy, they insist that they are not a religion. By doing this, they can then claim that their own values are not subject to censorship while “pro-life” is!

This means that a school can promote abortion and same-sex rights, while the anti-abortion or anti-Gay-Straight Alliance reasoning is prohibited. Oddly, the secularists even appeal to the 1^st Amendment to support their hypocrisy.

A small minority of Christians will say, “If that’s their game, let them play it. We have more important things to do.” However, I can’t go along with this reasoning, even if there are more important things than this “game.” Here’s why:

1. We have a responsibility to uphold society.
2. We have a responsibility to defend the religious and free speech rights for everyone.
3. We have a responsibility on behalf of these beleaguered Christians to speak up on their behalf, like the churches that now are being banished from the NYC schools or the Christian institutions, now being compelled to finance insurance that violates their faith.
4. We have a responsibility to our youth to provide a more realistic portrait of the church. Many are leaving or wanting to change the church because they have been indoctrinated by society to think that the church has utterly failed.
5. We also have a responsibility to he church and before God to be prophetic – to speak against the dangers of sin in all its forms.

Being prophetic in these matters isn’t an option:

• Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins. (James 4:17)

My Wish List

We live in a convoluted world where “nondiscrimination” has become a clandestine way to discriminate:

• The InterVarsity Christian Fellowship chapter at the State University of New York at Buffalo [SUNY] has three weeks to come into compliance with the school's nondiscrimination policy or risk losing its status as an official campus group.

According to the university:

• InterVarsity's constitution, which includes a clause requiring leaders to agree with a statement of faith, violates school policy.

Discrimination dressed up as “non-discrimination!” I don’t know much about SUNY Buffalo, but I would imagine that they are not yelling “discrimination” at their woman’s group, which requires female leadership or their Young Democrats, while only allows a Democrat to head the group. I would also be surprised if SUNY was going after the Muslim group, which of course insists on Muslim leadership. In fact, I can’t think of a group that wouldn’t discriminate in some way in their selection of leadership.

If I’m wrong about this, I wish that someone would correct me. However, I’ve seen too many instances of this kind of anti-Christian bias in our institutions of “higher learning” to think that SUNY is acting even-handedly out of an impartial concern for justice. Also, SUNY isn’t alone in this matter:

• The University at Buffalo is the second college in the last two weeks to tell an InterVarsity chapter to revise its constitution or lose the right to operate on campus. Last week, Vanderbilt University Chancellor Nicholas Zeppos reiterated his intention to enforce the school's revised nondiscrimination policy, which no longer grants religious groups the right to require elected leaders to share their beliefs. Four campus Christian organizations, including InterVarsity's Graduate Christian Fellowship, have until mid April to submit new constitutions that comply with Vanderbilt's policy.

From my understanding of the law, private institutions, like Vanderbilt, have a right to exercise their biases. However, I just wish that they would lay aside their hypocrisy - that they are merely pursuing a policy of “nondiscrimination.” At least, they should admit that they have a bias, and that they are discriminating according to their bias. Let them put their deceptive cards on the table!

I also wish that New York City would reconsider their hypocritical ruling that churches can no longer rent space in their NYC schools on Sundays. Although they base their ruling on the “separation of church and state,” their high principles don’t prevent them from renting space from churches when their own schools require the additional space. I wish they would come-clean and fess-up that they are using a double-standard.

I also wish that if the law is going to allow Vanderbilt and many other institutions to practice stealth discrimination, they would also allow church organizations to discriminate according to their faith and conscience. However, many recent rulings have denied them this constitutionally guaranteed prerogative – the free exercise of religion.

Why this hypocrisy? My final wish is that our underlying motives will be exposed for the world to see them – the very thing that our Lord has promised to do!