When exactly did truth become a question of one person's worldview vs. another's? Why did we allow feelings to fill the void left by its demise? And what can we possibly do to restore it to its rightful place?
These are important questions. If we remain disinterested in truth, we will remain alienated from our Creator. And that undoubtedly means not only a dismal future for our nation in this life, but perhaps for a majority of our citizens through all eternity.
I began pondering these questions early on in my search for ultimate truth, particularly as I tried to share my most stunning discoveries with a skeptical girlfriend named Anne. Several of these forays are outlined in my memoir Heaven Without Her. Here, for instance, is what I reported after I'd unloaded some heavy-duty scientific artillery on her during a round of golf, apparently missing all my targets that day:
What I’d shared with Anne was just the tip of the iceberg in the case against evolution theory’s chance-plus-time idea–and therefore in the case for an Intelligent Designer.
I doubt that I’d convinced her of anything that day. Still, someone had obviously been planting seeds of belief in her heart, and maybe I’d watered them a little. And maybe they would one day germinate and grow into a faith that would crush her doubts just as surely as it had mine.
Reflecting on our conversation later that night, sitting at my kitchen table while Dave and the dogs snoozed in the living room, I longed for a day when Anne would be sitting firmly on the fence on this issue, needing only a good shove to fall onto the side of what I now knew was the Truth.
I flipped through my Bible and pulled out a page of quotes that I’d typed up in anticipation of such a day. They just might do the job.
My favorite was from evolutionist Rich Lewontin, who wrote in the January 9, 1997, issue of The New York Review:
Running a close second in my heart was this quote from Aldous Huxley of Brave New World fame, whose grandfather Thomas Huxley had been one of the earliest and most ardent promoters of Darwin’s theories:
Anne wouldn’t consider these quotes evidence, I knew. Nor did I, not really. I just found it incredibly interesting, not to mention heartbreaking, that these prominent opinion leaders shut God out for reasons other than the pursuit of truth–and then participated in foisting these teachings on entire generations of children.
--From Heaven Without Her, pages 121-122
These are important questions. If we remain disinterested in truth, we will remain alienated from our Creator. And that undoubtedly means not only a dismal future for our nation in this life, but perhaps for a majority of our citizens through all eternity.
I began pondering these questions early on in my search for ultimate truth, particularly as I tried to share my most stunning discoveries with a skeptical girlfriend named Anne. Several of these forays are outlined in my memoir Heaven Without Her. Here, for instance, is what I reported after I'd unloaded some heavy-duty scientific artillery on her during a round of golf, apparently missing all my targets that day:
What I’d shared with Anne was just the tip of the iceberg in the case against evolution theory’s chance-plus-time idea–and therefore in the case for an Intelligent Designer.
I doubt that I’d convinced her of anything that day. Still, someone had obviously been planting seeds of belief in her heart, and maybe I’d watered them a little. And maybe they would one day germinate and grow into a faith that would crush her doubts just as surely as it had mine.
Reflecting on our conversation later that night, sitting at my kitchen table while Dave and the dogs snoozed in the living room, I longed for a day when Anne would be sitting firmly on the fence on this issue, needing only a good shove to fall onto the side of what I now knew was the Truth.
I flipped through my Bible and pulled out a page of quotes that I’d typed up in anticipation of such a day. They just might do the job.
My favorite was from evolutionist Rich Lewontin, who wrote in the January 9, 1997, issue of The New York Review:
- We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to … produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive … Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. (Richard Lewontin, “Billions and billions of demons,” The New York Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997)
Running a close second in my heart was this quote from Aldous Huxley of Brave New World fame, whose grandfather Thomas Huxley had been one of the earliest and most ardent promoters of Darwin’s theories:
- I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption . . . The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics; he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do ... For myself . . . the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation . . . We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom . . . (Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means, London: Chatto & Windus, 1938, 270, 272-273)
Anne wouldn’t consider these quotes evidence, I knew. Nor did I, not really. I just found it incredibly interesting, not to mention heartbreaking, that these prominent opinion leaders shut God out for reasons other than the pursuit of truth–and then participated in foisting these teachings on entire generations of children.
--From Heaven Without Her, pages 121-122
RSS Feed