To some, God is only God when it is convenient. When someone dies or we are ill and concerned, God is important; otherwise, we have little connection to Him.
C. S. Lewis called the age the "Post-Christian Era," a time where man feels he has evolved enough that he has no need for God. He, in fact, comes to view God as the figment of man's imagination. God was created by man, man was not created by God.
The doctrine of Humanism flourishes in this era because man has become so enamored of himself that he has decided that all the good in the world came from him. Rather than acknowledging God's sending the rain on the just and the unjust, man sees himself as the progenitor of all life's blessings.
There is a needless conflict between those who believe in God and the scientific community . In his recent book, Reason In The Balance, Philip Johnson observes, "The most influential intellectuals in America and around the world are naturalists, who assume that God exists only as an idea in the minds of religious believers. In our great universities, naturalism -- the doctrine that nature is 'all there is' -- is the virtually unquestioned assumption that underlies not only natural science, but intellectual work of all kinds." He further observes that "Reliance on the guidance of an imaginary supernatural being is called 'superstition.'"
That is not to say that every one who believes in God is anti-science, nor does it intend to say that, everyone who believes in science is anti-God, but it does intend to say that, for the most part, those who take the naturalist views see those of us who have faith in God as being intellectually inferior. We are viewed as those who have not yet reached the intellectual plain where we see God as a myth, something invented to get us to the present age where intelligence is the thing, not faith. The naturalist sees "faith" as opposed to "reason."
To the naturalist faith is an irrational belief, something unprovable, something without basis in fact. On the other hand, he views reason as what he calls "physical reality," that which is observable by scientific means. "A biologist may believe in God on Sundays, but he or she had better not bring that belief to the laboratory on Monday with the idea that it has any bearing on the nature of origin of living organisms," says Johnson. What the naturalist does not choose to see is that faith is a natural ('scuse the pun) way of seeing the unseen, a process whereby we can imagine what we have not seen with full assurance that it exists. We never saw George Washington, but there is no doubt in our minds that he was a historical character. There is as much evidence that Jesus Christ lived, taught, died, was buried, and was resurrected as there is that George Washington was the first president of the United States.
Naturalism is connected to another popular teaching in our "Post-Christian" age, Secular Humanism. Secular Humanism, the notion that humans are free to do as they please, that morality is purely subjective, that religion is what man wants it to be, is accepted even among religious people today. Subjectivism runs rampant in our age. Berland E. Meland, of the University of Chicago, has defined secular humanism as a movement away from something --"an historical order of life that presupposes religious sanctions," and a movement toward something -- " a new community of mind emerging, centering around new disciplines and forms of inquiry that were to challenge and eventually supersede the prevailing Christians consensus" (Secular Humanism, p. 11).
The new intellectuals, the humanist, the naturalists need to step up and deal honestly with the Bible. Let the Atheist, the Agnostic, the Naturalist explain the Bible. The burden of proof is on him. I once heard Don Basset say, "I believe the Bible because I have been reading it."
Let the Scientist study the Bible as he has studied Darwin and then let him make his charges. Let the Scientist show, in fact, not in theory, how his conclusions are verifiable through experimentation. As Jack Holt has rightly observed, "If there is a Big Bang where is the Big Banger?" Let him peruse the Bible and see how its principles and statements have always agreed with true science (notice, I said true science) and let him explain why.
Let him see the prophecies of the Bible and their fulfillment as opposed to scientific prognostications which have long since been disproved. Let him see how the Bible exists in a world of confusion without contradiction and with the same boldness it has always had; then let him observe how modern-day science is filled with confusion, convoluted and distorted affirmations, ill-defined proportions, and unanswerable questions; and then let him explain the difference.
~In Gospel Power, Anderson, Alabama, 8/10/97.