How Not To Do Scholarship

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Gary responds to an article written by a Vanderbilt professor that uses outdated information to make her argument.

Secularists, humanists, and materialists give the impression that life is a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, and once they find all the necessary pieces, a coherent worldview will come together spontaneously. But there’s a catch. Finite creatures can never gather all the facts. And even if they could, what pattern would they follow to put all the pieces in the right places? What are the right places? Religious skeptics tell us that they do not interpret the facts; they only discover them and make them known. The facts, we are told, speak for themselves and that there is no distinguishable predetermined “pattern” to the facts that can be known.

A pattern-less worldview is like expecting that after an hour of shaking a box of jigsaw puzzle pieces, the puzzle will somehow come together into a coherent and discernable whole. But, of course, it can never happen. Someone must show how the pieces fit. That’s why a picture is put on the front of the box. An already-established design must be followed in order to make sense of the individual pieces. Those who deny the Christian worldview refuse to believe that there is a prior design to everything that gives the pieces meaning. For example, atheistic evolutionist Richard Dawkins admits that “The world looks as though it had been designed by a master craftsman.” In spite of what is obvious even to him, he rejects the assertion that the universe was designed: “We don’t need to postulate a designer in order to understand life or anything else in the universe.”9 If Dawkins admits that the universe was designed in any way, he would have to make major adjustments to his worldview that acknowledges a designer.10 And yet, Dawkins most certainly would expect that those who read his book understand that the thoughts behind the words on the pages were designed by a designer (Dawkins). The book that carries the words of the thoughts of the designer was also designed.

Thinking Straight in a Crooked World

The nursery rhyme “There Was a Crooked Man” is an appropriate description of how sin affects us and our world. We live in a crooked world of ideas evaluated by crooked people. Left to our crooked nature, we can never fully understand what God has planned for us and His world. God has not left us without a corrective solution. He has given us a reliable reference point in the Bible so we can identify the crookedness and straighten it.

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Gary responds to an article written by a Vanderbilt professor that uses outdated information to make her argument. The professor quotes from Dr. Bruce Waltke in a 1968 Christianity Today article about abortion (Dr. Waltke has since changed his view) to dismiss Christians opposed to climate change. If it sounds ridiculous and confusing, it’s because it is. But it’s the state of modern “scholarship.”

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American Vision’s mission is to Restore America to its Biblical Foundation—from Genesis to Revelation. American Vision (AV) has been at the heart of worldview study since 1978, providing resources to exhort Christian families and individuals to live by a Biblically based worldview. Visit www.AmericanVision.org for more information, content and resources