Explore Creation
In a recent interview by Jubilee magazine, Chuck Colsen said, “The chief competing system to Christianity is naturalism.” This system of thought says there is a naturalistic explanation for all things, including the existence of human beings. Billions of years ago, light rays happened to refract at a certain angle, a couple of molecules spun off amino acids, they were both left-handed, they joined to form one protein cell, and, presto, eight billion years later through all these chance mutations, here we sit.
The chief competing system to Christianity is naturalism.
But that is an utterly preposterous proposition, because it is self-defeating. If I am an ardent believer in a naturalistic explanation for everything, then I have to say the brains that give me the capacity to make that claim are the result of a chance collision of atoms. How can I trust the brains that have caused me to say naturalism is true? I have no way of depending on my own conclusions. It is known as materialistic nihilism. As Francis Schaeffer put it, the modern man who believes this has both feet planted firmly in midair.
JUBILEE: What then are the consequences of this worldview?
COLSON: Ultimately, people who believe in naturalism say that the universe is all that is or all that ever will be. You end up worshiping the universe, which is exactly what the New Age movement does. And you end up reducing human beings to something no greater than the value of that tree outside. All human dignity is lost. Take any naturalistic presupposition to its logical conclusion and it results in something you can’t live with. And that’s the trouble with naturalism-it destroys itself.
JUBILEE: What then are the consequences of this worldview?
COLSON: Ultimately, people who believe in naturalism say that the universe is all that is or all that ever will be. You end up worshiping the universe, which is exactly what the New Age movement does. And you end up reducing human beings to something no greater than the value of that tree outside. All human dignity is lost. Take any naturalistic presupposition to its logical conclusion and it results in something you can’t live with. And that’s the trouble with naturalism-it destroys itself.
Christians have to know enough about these issues to be able to stick a pin in that balloon. But Christians don’t think enough about it to deflate that argument when it comes up with their secular friends.
JUBILEE: If the principal opposing worldview to Christianity is naturalism, what about other supernaturalist worldviews, such as Islam, that can be hostile to Christianity?
COLSON: On the question of naturalism versus supernaturalism, Muslims share the conviction with us that existence can’t be explained naturalistically. Of course their revelation and their understanding of salvation are very different from ours. The Christian worldview alone offers the explanation of the human dilemma. Alone. I emphasize that.
Nothing else provides the way out of the human dilemma other than the Christian Gospel.
There’s one thing I hope readers get out of this book: If you compare worldviews (Marxism, evolutionary biology, postmodernism, existentialism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity), you’ll find that only Christianity provides a sustainable, rational view of life. It provides the only explanation of reality that conforms to the way things are, that provides human dignity, that provides an explanation of where we’re going and the purpose we have in life.
Peter says be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is within you but always with gentleness and reverence. I hope this is a point we make in the book well enough: We must always proclaim the truth with love. We never lord it over others. We are saddened for the world when the world can’t see the truth. We use a lot of stories in this book that make it clear that Christians ought not to be triumphalistic about what they believe. They ought to be patient, gentle toward those who don’t have eyes to see or ears to hear.
JUBILEE: I think people are going to be astounded to see how much of the book is devoted to science. What does the Big Bang theory, the structure of the atom, DNA, have to do with the Christian worldview?
COLSON: Scientists, even secular scientists, are seeing evidence of intelligent design. People are realizing that the evidence does not support evolution, random chance, a universe that just blew itself into existence. It shows that creation is the result of an intelligent design, a mind.
Take the basic structure of the cell. We have discovered, and Michael Behe in his book Darwin’s Black Box makes this case powerfully, that the cell could not have arisen by evolution, because it is a self-sustained unit. Everything that makes up the cell has to be in place at once in order to operate.
The more we discover about the universe, the more we realize that this planet is uniquely hospitable to human life. If gravity were just a touch greater, we would implode. If gravity were just a touch less, we would all fly off into space. It is precisely calculated for human life.
No other identified planet has shown any of the same qualities of this planet. This planet uniquely sustains life. And why is that?
In so many areas we are seeing the fingerprints of God. You have to have a lot of faith to say there’s no evidence of design in this universe. If Lewis is right, that it’s naturalism versus supernaturalism, and if there is evidence for intelligent design in creation, then a naturalistic explanation for creation is devastated.
That validates the case for Christianity.
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