WHAT IS FALSELY CALLED SCIENCE

“O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called.” (1 Timothy 6:20)

Before publishing this edition of Time4Truth Magazine, I had the misfortune to read an outlandish article in the New York Times. Granted, the New York Times is a hotbed of outlandish articles, but this one I found exceptionally outlandish, since it was written by a couple of supposed brothers in Christ. The article, entitled “The Evangelical Rejection of Reason,” accuses evangelical Christians of a “stubborn antiintellectualism.” The authors, Karl W. Giberson, a former professor, and Randall J. Stephens, an associate professor at Eastern Nazarene College, accuse Bible believing Christians—I know of no other kind of Christian—of an “unyielding ignorance,” which results “in discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas.”

The article goes on to quote another so-called brother in Christ, Mark A. Noll, the author of a 1994 book entitled The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. According to Noll, the “rejection of knowledge” by Bible believing Christians constitutes an “intellectual disaster.” Noll proceeds to bemoan the fact that “the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”

Let’s see if I got this straight; since I believe in my infallible God’s infallible Word, which has never been disproved or discredited, rather than the fallible theories of fallible scientists, which have often been disproved and discredited, I’m an anti-intellectual peabrain. I’m guilty of an unyielding ignorance, not to mention the fact that I also harbor dangerous ideas. Well, what exactly are these dangerous ideas harbored by Bible believing Christians like me?

According to Giberson and Stephens, they are things like dismissing evolution as an unproven theory, doubting that climate change is real and caused by humans, and opposing gay marriage rather than promoting social justice. To balk at such dogmas of modern-day science as evolution, climate change and sexual orientation, is, in the minds of Giberson and Stephens, a justifiable reason to denounce people as dummies and to condemn them for threatening our pluralistic society with the elevation of biblical truth over human reason.

That a Christian could even think something like Giberson and Stephens think was once unthinkable; and though it is still quite inexplicable, it has unfortunately become commonplace. More and more “Christians” are eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—living by man’s reason—while spurning the tree of life—living by divine revelation. As a consequence, we are not only seeing sinners outside of the church elevating man’s words over God’s Word and man’s thinking over biblical truths, but we are also seeing so-called saints within the church following suit, as well as renouncing all other churchgoers who fail to join them in scarfing down the forbidden fruit.

In what may be the most outlandish contention in Giberson and Stephens’ outlandish piece is their attributing of the “simplistic theology, cultural isolationism and stubborn anti-intellectualism” of today’s evangelical Christians to our fear of change. According to these two “wise spiritual sages,” we’ve simply overreacted to little things like the expulsion of prayer from our schools, the profaning of our culture, the legitimizing of abortion and homosexuality, the prevalence of pornography and drug abuse, and the new public perceived equivalency of false religions and atheism with our Christian faith. Why, if we’d just loosen up a little bit, we’d quit clinging with our dragging knuckles to that old archaic text known as the Bible and forsake our fundamentalism for the free-thinking church of “What’s Happening Now.”

I don’t know what rock these two Nazarene professors have been living under, but what’s happening now is neither pretty nor promising; in fact, it’s most foreboding. Ever since this country took off down the primrose path Giberson and Stephens are recommending, the path of living by our wits rather than God’s Word, we’ve been in a downward spiral. To continue to follow such outlandish advice can only accelerate America’s tailspin, resulting in a much sooner crackup. But what do I know? After all, I’m just one of those crazy, anti-intellectual, reason-rejecting, Bible believing, evangelical, knuckle dragging neanderthals.