{"id":491,"date":"2023-09-03T18:57:07","date_gmt":"2023-09-03T22:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/?p=491"},"modified":"2023-12-31T15:42:42","modified_gmt":"2023-12-31T20:42:42","slug":"the-enlightenment-is-dead-chapter-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/09\/03\/the-enlightenment-is-dead-chapter-3\/","title":{"rendered":"The Enlightenment is Dead: Chapter 3\u00a0\u00a0–\u00a0 Darwin, Dewey, and Relativism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Darwin\u2019s Positivist Epistemology<\/em><\/p>\n

Despite the failed attempts of Enlightenment\u00a0epistemology to account for science, an atheistic view of science came to dominate the scientific establishment and other academic disciplines in the latter half of the nineteenth century.\u00a0 This triumph came through a scientist rather than a philosopher, but his attraction was his application of a philosophical idea to the science of biology.\u00a0 Darwin\u00a0is credited by most intellectual secularists nowadays with having destroyed the design argument for God by discovering a natural mechanism known as \u201cnatural selection\u201d or \u201csurvival of the fittest\u201d that explains away all need to see intelligent design in nature.\u00a0 What is not generally known is that Darwin\u2019s devotees in the latter part of the nineteenth century generally did not accept natural selection.\u00a0 They believed in Darwin\u2019s claim of naturalistic transmutation of species, but they looked for their own mechanisms.\u00a0 Darwin didn\u2019t know about genes since they had not been discovered yet.\u00a0 Not until the neo-Darwinian synthesis of genetic theory with natural selection in the 1930\u2019s and 40\u2019s did natural selection become widely accepted by evolutionists.[1]<\/sup><\/a> <\/p>\n

During the hundred years before Darwin, there were Enlightenment philosophers whose commitment to a naturalistic account of science led them to propose that all life arose from a simple aquatic organism that gradually evolved into all the diversity of organisms over millions of years, such as Denis Diderot and Darwin\u2019s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin.[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Similarly, Darwin\u2019s evolutionary\u00a0theory, rather than being based on the empirical discovery of a mechanism for the transmutation of species, was the unavoidable product of his pre-commitment to an anti-supernatural, empiricist epistemology.\u00a0 That epistemology, which required immediate dismissal of any appeal to God as a scientific dead-end, was the source of his initial popularity in the late-nineteenth century scientific community, which already had largely rejected Christian ways of viewing the world in their profession.\u00a0 Darwin eliminated design from science by defining science to exclude it, saying that \u201cit is not a scientific explanation.\u201d[3]<\/a>\u00a0 Science historian Neil Gillespie\u00a0writes,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Darwin . . . found scientists becoming more and more positivistic, and made them aware of the implications of this for biology.\u00a0 He made them evolutionists; but, ironically, he could not make them selectionists.\u00a0 As Chauncy Wright noted, \u201cIt would seem, at first sight, that Mr. Darwin has won a victory, not for himself but for Lamarck.\u201d\u00a0 It is sometimes said that Darwin converted the scientific world to evolution by showing them the process by which it has occurred.\u00a0 Yet the uneasy reservations about natural selection among Darwin\u2019s contemporaries and the widespread rejection of it from the 1890s to the 1930s suggest that this is too simple a view of the matter.\u00a0 It was more Darwin\u2019s insistence on totally natural explanations than on natural selection that won their adherence.[4]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Even Christian theologians of that time were willing to accept the anti-theistic methodology of positivism\u00a0in the area of science, allowing the connection between God and nature to gradually vanish like the smile of the Cheshire cat.<\/p>\n

Darwin followed the empiricist epistemology of David Hume as well as Auguste Comte\u2019s version of it, known as \u201cpositivism.\u201d[5]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 In 1838, thirty years before the Origins of Species<\/em> was published, Darwin appealed to Hume\u2019s view in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding<\/em> that both human and animal thought arises from a combination of sense experience and instinct.\u00a0 Darwin wrote: \u201cI suspect the endless round of doubts & scepticisms might be solved by considering the origin of reason, gradually developed, see Hume on Sceptical Philosophy.\u201d[6]<\/a> Positivism views naturalistic, empiricist science as the only real, reliable knowledge.\u00a0 Comte\u2019s Positivism accepts Hume\u2019s thesis that all knowledge comes through experience, but it ignores the philosophical problems that Hume discovered in naturalistic empiricism while making the triumphalist claim that it is the highest stage of intellectual development.<\/p>\n

As a naturalistic empiricist, Darwin\u00a0defined \u201cscience\u201d as relating facts to laws of nature, and thus a supernatural explanation for the origin of species was ruled out a priori<\/em>.\u00a0 \u201cWhen Darwin began to consider the problem of species extinction, succession and divergence, he did so as an evolutionist because he had first become a positivist, and only later did he find the theory to validate his conviction.\u201d[7]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Alfred Russel Wallace\u00a0was the co-discoverer of evolution with Darwin, yet he is not lauded as widely as Darwin because Russell said that such things as the human brain and organs of speech cannot be explained apart from an intelligent designer.\u00a0 Darwin was outraged that Wallace did not toe the naturalistic line, writing to him that it amounted to murdering their theory of evolution: \u00a0\u201cI hope you have not murdered too completely your own & my child.\u201d[8]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 And then a couple of weeks later, Darwin wrote to Wallace:\u00a0 \u201cI differ grievously from you. . . . I can see no necessity for calling in an additional & proximate cause in regard to Man.\u201d[9]<\/a><\/p>\n

With any supernatural intervention ruled out by Darwin\u2019s definition of science, the transmutation of species by natural laws was about the only explanation available for the history of life on earth.\u00a0 Naturalistic transmutation could be gradual, or it could include miraculous-looking jumps from one species to another; but Darwin\u2019s application to biology of Charles Lyell\u2019s principle of uniformitarian geology, that only present processes at present energy levels can be used explain geological formations,[10]<\/sup><\/a> left Darwin with gradualistic evolution as the only option.\u00a0 This was a philosophical deduction, before any evidence in the field was gathered.<\/p>\n

Life and the Universe show spontaneity:
\nDown with ridiculous notions of Deity!
\nChurches and creeds are all lost in the mists;
\nTruth must be sought with the Positivists.<\/p>\n

Wise are their teachers beyond all comparison,
\nComte, Huxley, Tyndall, Mill, Morley, and Harrison;
\nWho will adventure to enter the lists
\nWith such a squadron of Positivists?<\/p>\n

There was an ape in the days that were earlier;
\nCenturies passed, and his hair became curlier;
\nCenturies more gave a thumb to his wrist\u2014
\nThen he was Man, and a Positivist.<\/p>\n

Mortimer Collins (1872)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While it was not the acceptance of natural selection that initially did it, Charles Darwin\u2019s theory of evolution was seen as demolishing the design argument for God\u2019s existence.\u00a0 Prior to Darwin\u2019s publication of the Origin of Species<\/em> in 1859, Enlightenment philosophy had influenced the intellectual class to be skeptical of miracles and the inspiration of the Bible; but the design argument was still widely persuasive as proving that a god was necessary, even if it was a finite god, to at least give some direction to the origin and development of life.\u00a0 This describes Darwin\u2019s own attitude as a young, rich, cultured English gentleman in the early 1800\u2019s.\u00a0 Stephen Jay Gould\u00a0calls Paley\u00a0the \u201cintellectual hero of Darwin\u2019s youth.\u201d[11]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 But some time prior to embarking on the H.M.S. Beagle to the Galapagos Islands, Darwin became persuaded of the positivist\u00a0view of knowledge, which, with Lyell\u2019s gradualism and some questionable ideas about the nature of God, led him irresistibly to evolutionary theory.[12]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Hume\u00a0had famously argued against the design argument a hundred years before Darwin\u00a0based on what could logically be extrapolated from sense experience.\u00a0 Based on limited<\/em> experience, he said, we cannot affirm a universal<\/em> Creator.\u00a0 We have seen that Hume\u2019s empiricist theory of knowledge undermines all knowledge, not just knowledge of God.\u00a0 But it seemed to many that at least Hume\u2019s argument against design might allow for a finite god, and there seemed to be no other explanation for the complexity of living creatures than an intelligent designer. [13]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0 Then Darwin\u2019s theory appeared on the scene and undermined the need for even such a limited god.\u00a0 As Richard Dawkins\u00a0has said put it, \u201cDarwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.\u201d[14]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

At the same time that Darwin\u2019s book was topping the best sellers list and making God-denying positivism the standard of all knowledge in academia, Christianity was retreating into a pietistic shell, one that excluded concern for God\u2019s creation in favor of just being concerned about worship meetings and getting souls to heaven.[15]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 The religious escapists implicitly made a deal to hand over earthly life to the secularist powers.\u00a0 The escapists thought that they had secured a safe-haven for themselves, but the secularist claim that the cosmos is all there is, was, or ever will be meant that secularists would not stop until they annihilated God.\u00a0 With atheism emboldened and Christianity cheerfully retreating, the outcome was inevitable:\u00a0 the assumption of the truth of atheism in every major area of power and influence in the twentieth century.<\/p>\n

Darwinism fit in perfectly with the spirit of the age.\u00a0 While theistic faith waned, progress through technology and exploration kept going.\u00a0 Darwin\u2019s idea of naturalistic evolution completed the picture of secular progress for the whole biological world.\u00a0 Of course, in the twentieth century, progress through science and the waning of Christian faith accelerated further, and so did acceptance of Darwinism.<\/p>\n

Evaluating Darwin\u2019s\u00a0scientific case would be too lengthy to be dealt with here.[16]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 But even if the appearance of design in living organisms can be explained away by an empirically verified mechanism of purely natural laws, it does not explain the possibility of empirical knowledge and the existence of laws of nature, which as I will argue, still requires the existence of God, a universal Creator.\u00a0 John Lennox\u00a0points out that the discovery of a mechanism does not exclude an agent as the designer of the mechanism:<\/p>\n

The basic issue here is that those of a scientistic turn of mind like Atkins and Dawkins\u00a0fail to distinguish between mechanism and agency. \u00a0In philosophical terms they make a very elementary category mistake when they argue that, because we understand a mechanism that accounts for a particular phenomenon, there is no agent that designed the mechanism. \u00a0When Sir Isaac Newton\u00a0discovered the universal law of gravitation he did not say, \u2018I have discovered a mechanism that accounts for planetary motion, therefore there is no agent God who designed it.\u2019 Quite the opposite: precisely because he understood how it worked, he was moved to increased admiration for the God who had designed it that way.[17]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Even though Darwin\u00a0ruled God out of science with his philosophically-influenced hypothesis of species transmutation, his scientific theory did nothing to resolve the problem of knowledge that naturalistic philosophers had been unsuccessfully wrestling with.\u00a0 Darwin simply assumed a bankrupt positivist\u00a0epistemology and developed a theory of biological development that fit it.<\/p>\n

In fact, Darwin\u2019s theory of evolution creates an additional epistemological problem for naturalism (assuming for the sake of the argument, contrary to the thesis of this book, that rationality is not impossible in terms of the naturalistic worldview) that Darwin recognized:\u00a0 \u201cBut then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?\u201d[18]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Philosopher Alvin Plantinga\u00a0has presented this as the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism:\u00a0 Because naturalistic evolution favors behavior that is advantageous for survival and not true beliefs, natural selection has no way to favor true, non-adaptive beliefs over false but adaptive beliefs.\u00a0 Therefore, the probability that our minds deliver true beliefs given naturalistic evolution is low or inscrutable.[19]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Some other prominent atheist philosophers have recognized the same thing. \u00a0Thomas Nagel\u00a0writes that \u201cEvolutionary naturalism provides an account of our capacities that undermine their reliability, and in doing so undermines itself.\u201d[20]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Steven Pinker\u00a0likewise says, \u201cOur brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth.\u00a0 Sometimes truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not.\u201d[21]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 And Richard Rorty\u00a0comments, \u201cThe idea that one species of organism is, unlike all the others, oriented not just toward its own increased prosperity but toward Truth, is as un-Darwinian as the idea that every human being has a built-in moral compass.\u201d[22]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Darwinists often dismiss belief in God as an evolutionary adaptation from humanity\u2019s past, but if an idea being a product of evolution undermines its truthfulness, then all human ideas are unreliable, including the idea of evolution.\u00a0 Theodore Dalrymple\u00a0observes, \u201cWe find ourselves facing a version of the paradox of the Cretan liar:\u00a0 all beliefs, including this one, are the product of evolution, and all beliefs that are the product of evolution cannot be known to be true.\u201d [23]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Darwin, Dewey, Einstein, and the False Claim that \u201cEverything is Relative\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey\u00a0was inspired by Darwin\u2019s theory to make the hasty generalization that, because one particular object of study is not fixed (species), therefore nothing is fixed at all about the world.\u00a0 In his essay, \u201cThe Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy\u201d (1910), Dewey writes that, by overturning the belief in fixity of species, Darwin\u00a0overturned the whole idea of fixity in nature that came down to us from Greek philosophy through its view of the eidos<\/em>, the \u201ctype\u201d in living things and nature, which was later adopted by Christian thinkers.\u00a0 Dewey argued that rejecting fixity in nature should lead to an epistemology that defines \u201ctruth\u201d as nothing more than experimental verification.\u00a0 But verification is time-conditioned; whereas \u201ctrue\u201d is not, not in ordinary language at least.\u00a0 Dewey\u2019s view means, as Greg Bahnsen\u00a0points out, that the assertion that \u201cthere were 17 billion ants in the world in 459 B.C.\u201d cannot be said to be true because it has not been experimentally verified, even if there really were 17 billion ants in the world in 459 B.C.[24]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Dewey\u2019s definition of truth makes the concept completely human-centric and cannot account for an objective world independent of human observation.\u00a0 But Dewey still wanted to acknowledge an objective world for scientists to study, saying that \u201cthe cognitive never is<\/em> all-inclusive.\u201d[25]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 As Bahnsen\u00a0describes Dewey\u2019s dilemma:<\/p>\n

Dewey was hopelessly caught in a dialectic tension<\/em>:\u00a0 objects of knowledge are created<\/em> by rational inquiry (the real is rational), and yet the intended objects of experience exist independently<\/em> of cognitive control and reconstruction (the cognitive is never all-inclusive).\u00a0 This reflects the rational-irrational antimony of all secular thought.[26]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Modern secularists have made the same claim about Einstein\u2019s\u00a0theory of relativity as Dewey\u00a0made about Darwin.\u00a0 They say that his theory of relativity overturned absolute laws in nature, morality, art and politics.\u00a0 Einstein, however, repudiated the idea that his theory should be applied to human society:\u00a0 \u201cI believe that the present fashion of applying the axioms of physical science to human life is not only a mistake but has something reprehensible to it.\u201d[27]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 With respect to the scientific theory itself, Einstein\u2019s theory made predictions in physics more mathematically precise, and he did not discard all constants.\u00a0 He posited that time and space were relative, but he replaced those constants with the constant of the speed of light in a vacuum.[28]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 A second absolute in Einstein\u2019s special theory of relativity is the spacetime interval. \u00a0The contribution of space and time will differ between two observers with different velocities, but the spacetime interval will be the same for both.[29]<\/a>\u00a0 Einstein rejected the implication that his scientific theory undermined the concept of order in nature.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Einstein was so awe-struck by the ability of mathematics to describe and predict natural phenomena that he insisted that \u201cGod does not play dice with the universe\u201d in his rejection of quantum indeterminism, and he endorsed Spinoza\u2019s\u00a0philosophy of timeless, unchanging \u201csubstance\u201d as the source of all reality.<\/p>\n

Even quantum indeterminism is not as indeterminate as some atheist popularizers have made it out to be.\u00a0 Similar to Lennox\u2019s\u00a0observation about Darwinism\u2019s reliance on laws of nature, quantum physics\u00a0assumes the existence of natural laws while doing nothing to explain their origin.\u00a0 The atheist popularizers appeal to relativistic quantum mechanics to claim that the universe could have popped into existence out of nothing.\u00a0 But theoretical physicist and philosopher David Albert\u00a0points out that physicists assume that quantum fields are the \u201ceternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world.\u201d\u00a0 The laws of quantum theory \u201ctake the form of rules concerning which arrangements of those fields are physically possible, . . .\u00a0 [but] they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or why there should have been a world in the first place.\u00a0 Period.\u00a0 Case closed. End of story.\u201d[30]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Quantum indeterminism does not overturn the first law of thermodynamics, that energy\/matter cannot be created or destroyed.\u00a0 Energy can become matter or vice versa in accordance with Einstein\u2019s famous equation, E=mc2<\/sup>.\u00a0 When the atheist popularizers say that matter can pop into existence from nothing, they really just mean that matter can form from energy, which is always there.\u00a0 To quote David Albert\u00a0again, that \u201cis not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out of existence, over time, as my fingers rearrange themselves.\u201d [31]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Nancy R. Pearcey, \u201c\u2019You Guys Lost\u2019:\u00a0 Is Design a Closed Issue?,\u201d\u00a0 in Mere Creation:\u00a0 Science, Faith, and Intelligent Design<\/em>, ed. William Dembski (Downers Grove, IL:\u00a0 Intervarsity Press, 1998).<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a>\u00a0 For Diderot and other French philosophes, see Vartanian, Diderot and Descartes,<\/em> pp. 107-124, 203ff.\u00a0 For Erasmus Darwin, see his book Zoonomia<\/em>.\u00a0 More generally, see Conway Zirkle, “Natural Selection before the ‘Origin of Species,'” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, <\/em>(25 April 1941) 84 (1): 71\u2013123; and essays by Arthur O. Lovejoy:\u00a0 “Some Eighteenth Century Evolutionists. I.” The Popular Science Monthly<\/em> 65 (1904): 238-251; “The Argument for Organic Evolution before The Origin of Species. I” The Popular Science Monthly<\/em> 75 (1909): 499-514.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a>\u00a0 Charles R. Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection<\/em>, 4th ed. (London: John Murray, 1866), p. 513.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a>\u00a0 Neal C. Gillespie, Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation<\/em> (Chicago:\u00a0 University of Chicago Press, 1979), pp. 146-47.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a>\u00a0 On Comte, Ibid., pp. 53-54, 140.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> \u00a0Charles Darwin, Notebook\u00a0 N<\/em>, p. 101.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a>\u00a0 Gillespie, Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation<\/em>, p. 46.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a>\u00a0 Letter to Wallace, 27 March 1869, responding to Wallace\u2019s letter to him on 24 March 1869.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> \u00a0Letter to Wallace, 14 April 1869.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a>\u00a0 Lyell said that geologist should follow the rule that \u201cno causes whatever have from the earliest time to which we can look back, to the present, ever acted but those now acting, and that they never acted with different degrees of energy from that which they now exert.\u201d (Letter from Lyell to Roderick Murchison, 1829).\u00a0 Lyell, however, rejected the transmutation of species.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a>\u00a0 Stephen Jay Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory<\/em> (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 230, cf. p. 116.\u00a0 See Nora Barlow ed., The autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809\u20131882: with original omissions restored<\/em> (New York: W.W. Norton, 1969), p. 87.\u00a0 Also see, John Lennox, God’s Undertaker<\/em>, p. 81.\u00a0 Although, Benjamin Wiker argues that Darwin was dishonest when writing about the extent of his earlier religiosity:\u00a0 The Darwin Myth:\u00a0 The Life and Lies of Charles Darwin<\/em> (Washington, D.C.:\u00a0 Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2009), pp. 147-50.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a>\u00a0 For Darwin\u2019s theological arguments for evolution, see below, pp. 101, 128ff.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a>\u00a0 See, for example, John Stuart Mill, \u201cTheism,\u201d Three Essays on Religion<\/em> (London:\u00a0 Longmans, Green, Reader, And Dyer, 1874) p. 172.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a>\u00a0 Marxism, or some modified socialist view, has also significantly contributed to the intellectual fulfilment of most modern atheists.\u00a0\u00a0 While Darwin is seen as eliminating the need for God in nature, Marx provides the intellectual class with a vision of equality in human society without God.\u00a0 Together, they allow atheists to be intellectually fulfilled engineers of a better world. Even though the two views share a view of progress through natural forces, they are incompatible in other ways, as Richard Dawkins, who holds to both, has pointed out \u2013 see the companion section on ethics.\u00a0\u00a0 Evolution apologist Douglas Futuyma\u00a0writes: \u201cBy coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous. Together with Marx\u2019s materialistic theory of history and society and Freud\u2019s attribution of human behaviour to influences over which we have little control, Darwin\u2019s theory of evolution was a crucial plank in the platform of mechanism and materialism \u2013 of much of science, in short \u2013 that has been the stage of most Western thought.\u201d\u00a0 Evolutionary Biology<\/em>, 2nd ed. (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 1986), p. 3; quoted in John Lennox, God’s Undertaker,<\/em> p. 87.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a>\u00a0 Even though H. Richard Niebuhr\u00a0characterized Calvinist\u00a0theology as \u201ctransformational\u201d of culture in his famous book, Christ and Culture <\/em>(1951), and this has a great deal of warrant, leading American Calvinist theologians in the nineteenth century, like Charles Hodge\u00a0in the North and James Henley Thornwell\u00a0in the South, advocated the doctrine of the \u201cspirituality of the church.\u201d\u00a0 By this they meant that the church should only be concerned with worship services and getting souls to heaven.\u00a0 (Although Hodge published a critique of Darwinism and concluded that Darwin\u2019s rejection of teleology amounted to atheism: What is Darwinism?<\/em>, 1874.)\u00a0 As Niebuhr explains in his book, other Christian theologies have a hands-off view of the material world already built into them (e.g. Lutheran\u00a0two-kingdom theology).<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a>\u00a0 See Appendix A:\u00a0 \u201cMajor Empirical Problems for Evolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a>\u00a0 John Lennox, God’s Undertaker:\u00a0 Has Science Buried God? <\/em>\u00a0(Oxford, England:\u00a0 Lion Hudson, Kindle Edition, 2011), Kindle Locations 932-940, p. 45.<\/p>\n

[18]<\/a>\u00a0 Letter to William Graham (July 3, 1881).<\/p>\n

[19]<\/a>\u00a0 Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).<\/p>\n

[20]<\/a>\u00a0 Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos:\u00a0 Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 27.<\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works<\/em> (New York: Norton, 1997), p. 305, quoted in Peter S. Williams, A Faithful Guide to Philosophy:\u00a0 A Christian Introduction to the Love of Wisdom<\/em>\u00a0 (Milton Keynes, UK:\u00a0 Paternoster, 2013), p. 201.<\/p>\n

[22]<\/a>\u00a0 Richard Rorty, \u201cUntruth and Consequences,\u201d The New Republic<\/em> (July 31, 1995), p. 36.<\/p>\n

[23]<\/a>\u00a0 \u201cWhat the New Atheists Don\u2019t See:\u00a0 To regret religion is to regret Western civilization,\u201d City Journal (Autumn 2007), http:\/\/www.city-journal.org\/html\/17_4_oh_to_be.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[24]<\/a>\u00a0 Bahnsen, \u201cPragmatism, Prejudice, and Presuppositionalism,\u201d\u00a0p. 251.<\/p>\n

[25]<\/a>\u00a0 John Dewey, Experience and Nature<\/em> (Chicago: Open Court, 1929), p. 24; quoted in Bahnsen, \u201cPragmatism, Prejudice, and Presuppositionalism,\u201d\u00a0p. 253.<\/p>\n

[26]<\/a>\u00a0 Bahnsen, \u201cPragmatism, Prejudice, and Presuppositionalism,\u201d\u00a0p. 254.<\/p>\n

[27]<\/a>\u00a0 Quoted in Peter Novick, That Noble Dream:\u00a0 The \u2018Objectivity Question\u2019 and the American Historical Profession<\/em> (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 139.<\/p>\n

[28]<\/a>\u00a0 Nancy Pearcey\u00a0and Charles B. Thaxton, The Soul of Science:\u00a0 Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy<\/em> (Wheaton, IL:\u00a0 Crossway Books, 1994), chapter 8, \u201cIs Everything Relative?:\u00a0 The Revolution in Physics.\u201d<\/p>\n

[29]<\/a> s\u00b2 = x\u00b2 + y\u00b2 + z\u00b2 – c\u00b2t\u00b2.\u00a0 Jason Lisle, The Physics of Einstein: Black Holes, Time Travel, Distant Starlight, E=mc^2<\/em> (Aledo, TX:\u00a0 Biblical Science Institute. Kindle Edition: 2017), pp. 90-91.<\/p>\n

[30]<\/a>\u00a0 David Albert, \u201cOn the Origin of Everything: \u2018A Universe from Nothing\u2019 by Lawrence M. Krause,\u201d The New York Times<\/em> (March 23, 2012), http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/03\/25\/books\/review\/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html?_r=0<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[31]<\/a>\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Darwin\u2019s Positivist Epistemology Despite the failed attempts of Enlightenment\u00a0epistemology to account for science, an atheistic view of science came to dominate the scientific establishment and other academic disciplines in the latter half of the nineteenth century.\u00a0 This triumph came through … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":493,"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions\/493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}