--Ecclesiastes 3.9-11

The sense of beauty

Denis Dutton is not happy about the present state of relativism in the arts. In his book, The Art Instinct Mr. Dutton objects to postmodern art critics, who insist that the only meaning in art is that which the observer or the critic imposes, and to cultural anthropologists, who want to level the playing field in the arts and say that every culture is equally beautiful, when regarded from its own unique perspective.

Mr. Dutton believes that there is such a thing as “beauty.” He seems to think that the idea of beauty exists in a kind of absolute way, so that, even though different people may hold to different criteria of what counts as beautiful to them, still, they share an idea about beauty that informs their thinking and guides their tastes in the arts.

This notion may seem self-evident to most of us: Doesn’t everybody have some idea of “beauty” to guide his taste in culture, people, experiences, and the like? Indeed, they do. The interesting facet of Mr. Dutton’s essay is that he wants to explain that idea of beauty genetically, as the result of evolution and natural selection. Human beings have a kind of genetic predisposition to art and things beautiful, an inclination which began somehow as a survival mechanism and that, having once kicked in, quite by accident, now seems to serve us well in preserving and advancing the species.

The faith of evolution

We should expect an evolutionist like Mr. Dutton to argue this way. The nature of evolutionary thinking is expansionist in the extreme. As a substitute for the Christian worldview, evolution eliminates the need for God and absolute truth and thus must fill up the space left vacant by the banishing of these players with its own explanations of all things. This is what you would expect of any worldview. After all, one of the criteria of a reliable worldview is that it must be comprehensive, capable of explaining everything that is according to its own most basic presuppositions. When it comes to the idea of beauty and, consequently, the arts, Mr. Dutton sees these uniquely human attributes as having evolved into our gene pool from some original random mutation that somehow improved our ability to survive and reproduce.

But while Mr. Dutton may argue this point eloquently, he would be hard pressed to prove it by means of scientific experimentation. And in the evolutionary worldview, that only can be regarded as true in any sense which is demonstrable by the scientific method. Mr. Dutton’s attempt to explain the human impulse and attraction to things beautiful thus falls into the category of a theory, an idea that must be accepted by faith before it can be subjected to scientific validation. The evolutionary view of beauty and arts, in other words, requires a faith commitment, a belief in unseen realities that cannot be proven but that must be, or have been, in order to make one’s theory make sense.

It will be extremely difficult, I think, to prove in a science lab that my great appreciation for Andrew Wyeth, Johan Sebastian Bach, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Phil Keaggy is bound up in a certain one of my genes. And why, if there is a “beauty gene” inherited by all the species, should we have such widely differing tastes and views of what constitutes beauty? And why do some people seem to have almost no appreciation for artistic beauty?

It takes a lot of faith to believe that Mr. Dutton’s evolutionary explanation of the idea of beauty and our propensity toward art is the best explanation available. Some, however, will choose to embrace it, because failure to do so represents a crack in the evolutionary foundations. Even if it does sound a little far-fetched, and cannot be proven scientifically, still, if one is inclined to think in evolutionary terms, Mr. Dutton’s view of the reason for beauty and the arts will do.

A Biblical explanation of beauty

Personally, I think the Biblical explanation is more convincing. It, too, begins in an act of faith; however, unlike the evolutionary view of beauty and the arts, the Biblical view has deeper roots, and features a long history of those who, believing that men are made in the image of God, have set about the work of art to bring that image to expression and honor God with beautiful works in all kinds of genre. There was nothing of a survival motive for any of these great artists; rather, they were simply pursuing their inward sense of beauty as they understood that from their relationship with God. The fact that, thus motivated, they produced most of what are still today considered the greatest works of art in the history of mankind, says, I think, a good deal about the compelling power of their own sense of the nature of beauty and the source of the arts.

Evolutionary thinkers will, of course, disagree with me, and that’s their prerogative. Each of us must decide what’s beautiful and which works of art will satisfy our own aesthetic needs. But as we are engaging this conversation and considering these important matters, let us not assume that evolutionists have uttered the last word on this or any other subject. Their worldview is always open to challenge, even though they may suggest that “everyone knows” that evolution is true and that’s that.

Well, everyone doesn’t know it, and, in fact, those who look carefully to understand the Biblical and Christian perspective on the origins and nature of such things as beauty and the arts often discover in the Christian worldview a much more compelling, much more reasonable, and much more elegant explanation than the tooth-and-claw/time-plus-chance mantra of the evolutionary worldview.

For more insight to this subject, get the book, State of the Arts, by Gene Edward Veith, Jr., from our online store. Or read the article, “A Profound Whimsy,” by T. M. Moore.

A worldview is the framework of basic beliefs that we hold, whether we realize it or not, that shapes our view of and for the world. Everyone has a worldview. The question is not whether one has a worldview, but which worldview one has.

There has been a recent proliferation of camps, conferences, books, and organizations promoting the idea of Biblical worldview. Whereas the word “worldview” would have in times past elicited a blank stare, many Christians today have at least some familiarity with the concept.

But familiarity can breed contempt. “Biblical worldview” is often thrown around today in a haphazard fashion, and it may no longer be clear what it actually means. Also, Biblical worldview may be in danger of dying the death of the “been there, tried that, and we’ve moved on” mentality that is prevalent in so many contemporary program-driven churches and denominations.

This would be tragic for two reasons. First, a Biblical worldview is not a means, like a curriculum or a program. It’s an end. Seeing God, others, the world, and ourselves as God sees them is a telos of the Christian life. Second, despite all the rhetoric of Biblical worldview, it is not necessarily a reality. According to recent studies produced by the Barna Group, only 20% of those claiming to be born again and less than 1% of young adults in America can answer a basic set of theological questions according to the biblical worldview.

President Obama is our first postmodern president, and his first year in office has been a test case for several key tenets of his politicized brand of postmodernism.

Postmodernism

The primary tenet of postmodernism is that people cannot know truth objectively. Rather, what we think of as truth is a social construct, that is, it is determined by what society thinks is reality. Truth is also subjective: what is “true” for us may not be true for anyone else. Language also has no connection to objective reality, but plays a critical role in shaping how we think about the world. The implication of these assumptions is that if you want to change society—and thus change “reality”—you must control language. For example, if we stop people from using racial epithets, we change what they can think about race and thus change racial attitudes.

A second tenet of President Obama’s politicized postmodernism is that society is built around disparities of power, and therefore the only useful way of understanding culture is through politics: who has power and who doesn’t. Power is a zero sum game. Those with power can only get it through taking it from others, dividing society between the oppressors and the oppressed. And in another zero sum game, the oppressors are corrupt (postmodernists don’t use the word “evil”), and thus the oppressed are virtuous. Since everything is ultimately political, the only solution to social problems is the state, which oddly enough is not seen as intrinsically corrupt despite its monopoly on power; the state is corrupt only when it is in the hands of “special interests,” that is, those who do not agree with the postmodernist agenda.

A third tenet of politicized postmodernism builds on the second. Western civilization has been the dominant force on the planet militarily, economically and culturally; since power is a zero sum game, the West could only have achieved this position by oppressing other countries, and thus Western society is corrupt and non-Western cultures virtuous. Similarly capitalism is also corrupt: in another zero sum game, the rich must get wealthy on the backs of the poor. Non-capitalist systems are therefore virtuous.

Reckoning with the blinders of secularism

Hebrews 11:1

Wary of things not seen

Has our secular, postmodern age become wary of things spiritual? Are the people we encounter each day no longer interested in matters related to unseen realities?

I'm reading Charles Taylor's new book (it's a really big book), entitled, A Secular Age. Taylor’s burden is to trace the development of secularism from around the 16^th century to the present. Everyone agrees we live in a very different world from what people in those days knew. That’s not his point. He wants to identify the process whereby secularism came to be the dominant worldview in our time.

Taylor argues that five principal changes have come to pass in the Western world. The first of these is what he calls, “disenchantment.”

By “disenchantment” Taylor means a number of things. Essentially, however, what he has in mind is that, in the secular age we no longer believe in realities from beyond the world of our senses. In a disenchanted world “the only locus of thoughts, feelings, spiritual élan is what we call minds; the only minds in the cosmos are those of humans; and minds are bounded, so that these thoughts, feelings, etc., are situated ‘within’ them” (p. 30).

Life “under the sun”

People today, by and large, have become persuaded that here just is nothing outside the world of what we can see, feel, hear, taste, or touch. There is no “enchanted” realm of spirits or unseen realities of any sort, at least, not such as cannot be accounted for by material explanations. Solomon would have describe such people as living solely “under the sun” rather than “under the heavens.”

This doesn’t mean that people don’t still believe in God in a disenchanted age. Taylor notes, “the existence of God or other spirits is not negated by the modern world-understanding; but this understanding situates belief in a realm where it is open to doubt, argument, mediating explanations, and the like” (p. 31).

Most importantly, Taylor notes, “in the enchanted world, the meaning is already there in the object/agent, it is there quite independently of us; it would be there even if we didn’t exist. And this means that the object/agent can communicate this meaning to us, impose it on us…by bringing us as it were into its field of force” (p. 33).

But not in a disenchanted world. There is no meaning, except that which our minds invent, and that meaning is radically and constantly susceptible to change. This is because there is nothing beyond our minds, nothing superior to our minds to make any sense out of the reality we encounter all around us, and human minds, in a highly relativistic and personal age, are nothing if not changeable.

The important thing to get here is that the people around us who do not share our faith in Jesus Christ consider themselves right generous to be putting up with our silly religious convictions. They don’t mind doing so as long as we don’t take those beliefs seriously – that is, as long as we don’t try to impose on their everyday experience meanings derived from our religious convictions. If we want to go to church, pray, read our Bibles, and spend lots of time in Bible study groups, they’re fine with that. At worst, they’ll only talk about us with their other unsaved friends; mostly, they’re tolerant of us – if we live out our faith on their terms.

Defensive against spiritual truths

But the minute we come along suggesting that the world is not a disenchanted place, that, in fact, there are spiritual realities with which we have to do, and that we have to do with them in every area of our lives – when we come talking that smack, that’s when the trouble begins. That’s when the hackles go up and cries of “religion is a personal matter”, “separation of church and state”, “cramming God down my throat”, and even “theocracy” come gurgling up from the deep recesses of their souls in a kind of spiritual anti-missile defense system which they keep on hair trigger for just such occasions.

What are we supposed to do? We should live our enchanted world more consistently, that’s what. Don’t back down in the face of such hysteria. Indeed, take each such response as an indication that we need to be a little more consistent, day-in and day-out, in living the enchanted world that is so real and dear to us. We need more of that singing and making melody in our hearts to God, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and offering thanks and praise openly to God which are the hallmarks of a life filled with the Spirit, filled with the Great Enchanter Himself. We don’t intend to be obnoxious or provocative, merely consistent.

Total, or not at all

Look, the world of God the Father, Christ on His throne, the indwelling Spirit, eternal truth, precious and magnificent promises, the Kingdom of Heaven, angels and demons, and the coming judgment is either real and total, or it is nothing at all. We are disloyal to God – and unloving to our neighbors – when we allow them to live in the blinders of secularism without consistently reminding them that, hey, there’s a larger world out there, and it’s filled with wonder and beautiful things. They may not like it, but they’ll get used to it – just like we, alas, have gotten used to their disenchanted view of life.

Our unbelieving neighbors and friends think nothing of carrying on their lives quite apart from any sense of or obligation to unseen realities. They have lost the sense of enchantment that pervaded the lives of people in previous ages. Think of all they’re missing! The peace that passes understanding, hope unassailable, power to become more than what we’ve ever dared to ask or think, love for even the unlovely and unlovable from a Source beyond this world. Worst of all is the fact that they don’t even know that such possibilities exist.

Trying to “re-enchant” our neighbors by words alone is not likely to persuade them that there is another, an unseen, realm which can bring new meaning, purpose, and joy to their lives. They’re basic mantra concerning life in this world is “seeing is believing.” We must begin to let them see in us realities of demeanor, conversation, relating to others, and doing our work which shine like a light from beyond this world. The hope of glory which is the driving force for the Christian life can radiate through every aspect of our being, in all our words and deeds.

But that doesn’t “just happen.” We must give more thought – in study, prayer, and conversation with other believers – to the very practical, day-to-day ways that faith and new life in Jesus make a difference in our lives. Then we must make bold, in a disenchanted world, to clothe ourselves with the garments of newness that we receive each day from our heavenly Clothier. The more we are able to live the hope of glory, drawn from the vast resources of the unseen realm, the greater will be the likelihood that our disenchanted neighbors will observe that hope, and will begin to be curious about why we stand out like warm, glowing lights in an age of earthy hopeless, doubt, and disappointment (1 Pet. 3:15).

Make it your mission to re-enchant the world, at least that part of it that you occupy week-in and week-out. You may be surprised to find that your enchanted lifestyle has begun to enchant some of your disenchanted neighbors and friends.

For more insight to this topic, get the book, Scaling the Secular City, by J. P. Moreland, from our online store. Or read the article, “Three Meanings of Secular,” by Douglas Farrow.

In 1993, well-known apologist William Lane Craig debated professional atheist Frank Zindler concerning the existence of the Christian God. The debate was published as a video by Zondervan in 1996 and is readily available at YouTube. The consensus among theists and atheists is that Craig won the debate. Still, Zindler presented there a challenge worth revisiting:

The most devastating thing, though, that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people, the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve, there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin, there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation, there is no need of a savior. And I submit that puts Jesus, historical or otherwise, into the ranks of the unemployed. I think that evolution is absolutely the death knell of Christianity.

Zindler’s objection to Original Sin and the Fall is the subject of my just-published book The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World (see www.godornot.com, which includes a $5,000 video contest connected with the book). What interests me here, however, is the logic that is supposed to take one from evolution to the death of Christianity—and presumably to the death of God generally.

By evolution Zindler means a Darwinian, materialistic form of it, one that gives no evidence of God and thus is compatible with atheism (this is, in fact, what is meant by evolution and how I’ll use the term in the sequel). But Zindler is not arguing for the mere compatibility of evolution with atheism; he is also claiming that evolution implies, as in rationally compels, atheism. This implication is widely touted by atheists. Richard Dawkins pushes it. Cornell historian of biology and atheist Will Provine will even call evolution “the greatest engine for atheism” ever devised.

Does evolution imply atheism?

To claim that evolution implies atheism is, however, logically unsound (even though sociological data supports the loss of faith as a result of teaching evolution). Theistic evolutionists such as Francis Collins, Denis Alexander, and Kenneth Miller provide a clear counterexample, showing that at least some well-established biologists think it’s possible for the two to be compatible. Moreover, there’s no evident contradiction between an evolutionary process bringing about the complexity and diversity of life and a god of some sort (deistic, Stoic, etc.?) providing the physical backdrop for evolution to operate.

The reverse implication, however, does seem to hold: atheism implies evolution (a gradualist, materialist form of evolution, the prime example being Darwinian). Indeed, the atheist has no other rational options in explaining the diversity and complexity of life. The atheist may, in the face of reason, invoke pure chance to explain the emergence of life. Thus the atheist might want to say that organisms simply materialized as the result of vastly improbable thermodynamic accidents. But such appeals to chance are no better than empty appeals to divine action. “Chance did it” and “God did it” without further elaboration are equally empty. “Getting lucky” is not a scientific hypothesis.

If atheism is to offer a comprehensive worldview, it must supply a creation story, and the only such story that has any hope of being rationally compelling is a gradualist, materialist one. This may rightly be called Darwinian evolution (the adjective “Darwinian” here looks to Darwin’s original inspiration but also factors in how his ideas have been extended since). Accordingly, atheism implies Darwinian evolution. This (reverse) implication explains why intelligent design (ID) is so vehemently opposed by atheists. ID claims to find scientific evidence of intelligent agency in the emergence of biological systems. By thus challenging Darwinian evolution, ID challenges atheism.

The rationale here is a simple application of the logical rules modus ponens (If A, then B; A; therefore B) and modus tollens (If A, then B; not B; therefore not A). Thus,

Premise 2: But if ID is true, then Darwinian evolution is false.

Premise 3: ID is true (the controversial premise).

Conclus 1: Therefore Darwinian evolution is false (modus ponens applied to Premises 2 and 3)

Conclus 2: Therefore atheism is false (modus tollens applied to Premise 1 and Conclus 1)

The ID challenge

Evolution is the mainstay of an atheistic worldview—is it any coincidence that the day-job of the world’s leading atheist (Richard Dawkins) is evolutionary biology? ID, by challenging this mainstay, fundamentally undermines an atheistic worldview. It’s therefore ironic that theistic evolutionists are not just hardening their support of evolution but even actively turning against ID, arguing that Darwinian evolution is more compatible with Christian theism than ID.

When I got into this business 20 years ago, I thought that any Christian (and indeed any theist), given solid evidence against Darwinian evolution (as ID is now increasingly providing—see my book The Design of Life and Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell) would be happy to trash it and move to some form of intelligent design (whether discrete creations or gradual guidance or information front-loading or whatever). But that has not happened. Theistic evolutionists have now baptized Darwinism. Thus, in the 2001 PBS evolution series, Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller referred to himself as an orthodox Catholic and an orthodox Darwinian. Francis Collins and his associates at www.biologos.org follow Miller here in trying to convince religious believers that Darwinian evolution provides the best fit with their faith.

Ironically, theistic evolutionists now make common cause with atheistic evolutionists—specifically against ID. ID has become public enemy number one for both atheistic and theistic evolutionists (the recent spate of books by both sides confirms this point—atheist Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True as well as theist Kenneth Miller’s Only a Theory). Consequently, not just the mainstream academy but the mainstream Christian academy (Wheaton College, Calvin College, Seattle Pacific University, etc. — most schools in the CCCU) have now closed their doors to ID and to hiring faculty that explicitly support it

Shocked alumni are welcome to prove me wrong. Christians in general need to consider this: The only thing theistic evolutionists have to say to a Richard Dawkins who uses evolution as a club to beat believers is that he’s making a category mistake, trying to get science to do the work of theology (to which Dawkins would respond “so much the worse for theology”). By contrast, ID takes the club out of Dawkins’ hands and breaks it, showing that the theory of evolution on which he relies is all washed up.

As my colleague Noel Rude has rightly pointed out, “New knowledge is always destabilizing, and the instinct for stability and the preservation of prestige and power always preclude the quest for truth.” The Christian academy is as guilty here as the non-Christian. Thus, we find theistic evolutionist not just criticizing ID but denying it any legitimacy whatsoever. How convenient, since adopting the party line grants theistic evolutionists acceptance in the secular culture denied to ID proponents. Notwithstanding, being public enemy number one among the intelligentsia (atheist, and now increasingly theist) has this advantage: we can pursue the quest for truth without a conflict of interest.

“We are delighted to bestow our highest honor on such a venerable humanitarian and humble servant as Chuck Colson,” said NRB President & CEO Dr. Frank Wright. “Since his public conversion, he has devoted himself—and his resources—to ministering to the incarcerated in the name of Christ. Chuck’s example, in ministry and in life, continues to inspire us all.”

Chuck Colson is a popular and widely known author, speaker, and radio commentator. A former presidential aide to Richard Nixon and founder of the international ministry Prison Fellowship, he has written several books, including Born Again, Loving God, How Now Shall We Live?, The Good Life, and The Faith—that have shaped Christian thinking on a variety of subjects.

Colson's radio broadcast BreakPoint airs daily to two million listeners. In 1993, Colson was awarded the prestigious Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion; the one million dollar prize—along with all speaking fees and book royalties—are donated to Prison Fellowship. In 2008, President Bush conferred on him the second highest civilian award of the U.S. government, the Presidential Citizen Medal for his humanitarian work with Prison Fellowship. He is a graduate of Brown University and George Washington Law School, receiving his juris doctor with honors. He served in the United States Marine Corps, attaining the rank of Captain.

The National Religious Broadcasters Hall of Fame stands as a witness for current communicators, a showcase of warriors for Christ who live exemplary lives of valor and compassion, blazing trails and leaving paths for succeeding generations to follow. NRB's most prestigious award is presented to an individual NRB member for invaluable contribution to the field of Christian communications, exhibition of the highest standards and evidence of faithfulness in Christ.

About The NRB Convention
The annual Convention & Exposition is the largest nationally and internationally recognized event dedicated solely to assist those in the field of Christian communications. The dynamic Exposition consists of nearly 300 companies and is an active marketplace for those seeking tools and services to expand their ministries. NRB 2010 is being held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville, TN, February 27 – March 2, 2010. For registration and other Convention information go to: www.nrbconvention.org