Fiddling With Creation
“Keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called” (1 Timothy 6:20). That was the advice given by one of the most educated men of the time in Asia Minor to a young student of metaphysics during the first century a.d.
Sound advice indeed.
That advice applies even more so today in an age when science is being misused to steer man away from basic cause and effect to false ideas as to the source of life, the reality of the human mind with its incredible true potential, and the reason why humans behave the way they do.
There has been a plethora of articles in the popular press on the subject of seeking to explain the human condition through what Jim Manzi, ceo of Applied Predictive Technologies and a frequent science contributor to National Review, described as “this biology-explains-all ideology” (National Review, June 2, 2008).
The fusion of the Darwinian theory of evolution with the political and economic theory of Karl Marx, in tandem with outgrowths of the Freudian theory of human psychology together with the 21st-century science of genetics, is drawing humankind along a highly dangerous path. It is a path leading to the total breakdown of all that was once foundational to our understanding of basic human behavior and the fundamental moral principles that are necessary to maintain an orderly and decent society.
The result is a sea change in the approach of science to the study of human behavior, of why we are the way we are.
For generations it has been considered a given in scientific circles that human beings turn out the way they do as a result of a combination of heredity and environment. It seemed innate to our understanding of human behavior that environmental factors such as prevailing societal culture, family circumstances, nutrition, education, training and development opportunities mold a person into the type of character and personality that makes them who they are. Now we are increasingly being told that it’s genes that are the dominant influence on why we become what we are. Everything from happiness to homosexuality is being attributed to an individual’s dominant genes.
Science is increasingly at odds with millennia of human experience in this respect.
As Jim Manzi observes, life scientists’ conviction that we can explain human behavior by increasing our understanding of the human genome is producing a media-driven, even government-sanctioned, mindset that reduces mind-body interactions to scientifically explained physical phenomena.
Failure of Science
It’s an old failure of science that too often it observes correlations between various phenomena to draw a conclusion, to explain the effect, rather than seeking to isolate and prove the cause. This avoidance of studying and proving the true and ultimate cause is the foundation of shifting sand upon which the science of genetics is shakily founded.
Evolutionary science, the science of the psychologist, and the science of the biologist all draw conclusions based on observation. They cannot work beyond the observable, physical realm. They all have to start with something that is observably extant, yet they refuse to seek out the cause of how that something came into being. They are hence reduced to wild guesswork and pure fiction when attempting to explain the ultimate cause of all things. They refuse to admit to any provable cause that cannot be perceived by the senses. They therefore rule out from contention in their studies the most basic cause of all … GOD!
When the Apostle Paul gave that sage advice to the young evangelist Timothy, it was based on his deep knowledge of the chief cause of all that is observable and all that is not. The great awe which that knowledge embedded deep in his psyche inspired Paul to live one of the greatest of lives of self-sacrifice to the benefit of his fellow man. It is reflected in his words, “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever” (1 Timothy 1:17).
Paul was very much aware that those who sought to discount the Creator from their studies had taken a conscious decision to ignore the greatest reality underpinning true science, that “the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). That was the basis of the science that gave depth of understanding to four young Israelite princes brought before the king of ancient Babylon in the seventh century b.c. to teach Nebuchadnezzar’s court the basics of true knowledge for which ancient Israel was world famous (Daniel 1:3-4).
The beginning point of true science is to recognize, “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible … all things were created by him, and for him” (Colossians 1:16).
The problem is that by recognizing a supreme Creator, it naturally follows that man is subject to the authority of a higher power than himself. This raises a conflict for those who wish to follow their own will rather than that of their Maker.
You see, it takes an act of faith to believe in and to believe God, the type of faith that was exercised by Moses, that historic figure of the 15th century b.c., who “by faith … forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:27).
It is faith in God that, since the 17th century, has motivated the most heroic of feats emanating from our Western society which today allows science the freedom to practice, unrestricted by tyrannical regimes. Conversely, absence of such faith, to the point of sheer denial of the Creator’s existence, has perpetrated the greatest of tyrannies in our time. It was under Nazi tyranny that the pseudo-science of eugenics, precursor to today’s studies of the human genome, was developed and practiced on enslaved peoples! These facts alone ought to silence the peddlers of “science” falsely so-called.
Moral Corruption
The shame of the geneticist’s attempt to explain away human behaviors by attributing every action and thought to our genetic makeup is that it removes the responsibility of the individual for his or her actions from the scene. Taken to its ultimate limit, this would do away with any concept of right and wrong, any need to penalize criminal behavior. How could any judge argue that a person was fully accountable to society and morally responsible for his or her actions if those actions were simply dictated by a unique combination of inherited genes? This insidious theory implies that we have no control whatsoever over our basic drives. Thus the concept of self-control flies out of the window and with it goes any notion of personal responsibility for one’s actions.
Anticipating the impact of such a theory on traditional moral codes of human behavior, both Time magazine and the New York Times have run articles on how morality evolves in parallel with human “advancement” in knowledge. This is based on outright denial of any higher moral authority! It’s even beyond the moral relativity that generated the breakdown of social standards in the ’60s and ’70s. It ultimately does away with any foundation for moral standards. That’s the route to the total breakdown of society!
Such a crazy notion produces the present ridiculous scenario where the killing of animals is seen as “murder,” on the same level as the killing of human beings. It permits aberrant and perverse behavior to be regarded as normal to the extent that cohabitation and the social benefits that prevail in marriage—which by derivation and definition can only really exist between man and woman—can be transferred to two people of the same sex.
This “advancement” in knowledge of science, falsely so-called, teaching that morality is part of the evolutionary process, is designed to do away with the classic definitions of modes of behavior. How can violent or perverted behavior be classified as such if that behavior is considered part of an individual’s genetic makeup? That which once was classified criminal is neutered by the natural genetic makeup of man.
Perhaps nowhere is this effect more apparent than in the fields of arts and fashion, where the mood, emotions, morality and inclinations of society are expressed by a limited number of individuals who influence the taste of the masses. Extremes in the art world have been a common theme as moral standards have devolved. Yet the publicity given to an alleged art project by a female Yale student crossed all bounds of human decency, morality and feeling for her fellow human beings: “When an exhibition of art projects by Yale University seniors opened on Tuesday, one was missing: that of Aliza Shvarts, whose performance-art project reportedly involved artificially inseminating herself repeatedly and then self-aborting” (New York Times,April 25, 2008).
Shvarts later indicated that the project was a fiction. Then she later denied her denial. But the point is that a student has had her mind so warped through the “evolution of morality” that she did not even consider the pain that publicity given to her project, be it real or fiction, would bring to the many mothers who had suffered miscarriages in the genuine attempt to produce a human life. The concept of the very sanctity of human life is thus completely trashed.
Yet Shvarts treads the tradition of an increasingly developing descent in morality within academia. “Lee M. Silver, a professor of molecular biology and public affairs at Princeton University, recalled an undergraduate student in evolutionary biology who after hearing lectures about the closeness of the species, proposed that she inseminate herself with sperm from a chimpanzee” (ibid). Science has even gone beyond perverted art projects to successfully lobby government in Britain to legislate the confusion of mixing animal and human genes in the interests of “advancing” the progress of medicine.
Spiritual Blindness
The missing dimension to which science is blinded is the invisible dimension of the spirit realm. Knowledge of the spirit realm—the third dimension beyond the physical and intellectual—is only available by revelation from the Creator of man. It cannot be deduced by scientific method, for “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).
Thus the knowledge of the true cause of human behavior is denied to these geneticists who seek to explain mental and social phenomena as having a genetic basis. The cause is spiritual. It involves a spirit in man (the human intellect) under influence by other spirit-based forces.
The fact is that far from the society of man evolving to a higher order of life possessing a capability to ascribe human behaviors to genetic factors, it has actually devolved! Society both intellectually and morally has tended to always descend from a state of alliance with its Maker, in general submission to His laws that govern moral behavior, to a state of degeneration and immorality.
Man was originally in tune with his Maker in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 1:27, 31) only to fall from God’s grace. He was retuned to his Maker after the Flood (Genesis 9:1) only to fall into the confusion of Babylon within less that two centuries of the waters abating (Genesis 11:6). Israel, as a nation, came under the law of God when its kings were righteous, only to fail repeatedly under bad leadership. Throughout history, every empire of man has ultimately descended into moral corruption and the collapse of the prevailing society.
That is the very mode the Anglo-Saxon nations are in right now, the most powerful nation of all being technically broke and deeply in debt to its historic enemies, its society at sea in an increasing moral vacuum, its government lacking the will to use its power, the whole nation unable to admit to its own self-induced demise.
Yet still we play God, fiddling with the basic building blocks of creation, unheeding the whirlwind that is about to engulf and enslave us.
If this article is plain foolishness to you, you simply fall into the category of those whom the Apostle Paul, one of the most learned men of his age, described as becoming “vain in their imaginations,” with their “foolish hearts” darkened. If it rings true, then you are accountable to do something about it.
A great start would be to come to an understanding of just what it is that influences men to be as they are. Request a copy of The Incredible Human Potential. It explains the cause of all human behaviors, lifts the blind on the cause of human failure, and shows the way to incredible human success!