“Do cultural Christians view Christian faith as important enough to make it a priority when teaching their children what they believe and why they believe it?  Or do they place greater emphasis on their children getting a good education than on learning about the things of God?  Would they be embarrassed if their children did not possess the former while basically being indifferent about the latter?  If their children have any understanding of Christian faith at all, they probably have acquired it on their own.  If the children view themselves as Christians, it is probably not because they have studied the facts and come to a point of intellectual conviction but because their family is Christian, so they believe they must be Christians also.

The problem with this way of thinking is that authentic faith cannot be inherited.  When Christianity is viewed in this way, intelligent and energetic young men and women will undoubtedly reach a point where they question the truth of Christianity and, when challenged, will abandon this “inherited” faith that they cannot defend.  They might begin to associate with peers who are unbelievers.  In this company, they will find themselves unable to intelligently respond to objections to Christianity with which they are confronted.  Had they really known what they believe and why they believe it, these kinds of encounters would not shake their faith one bit.”

William Wilberforce, Real Christianity

“I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man.  I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason.  A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government.  The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true…I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself.  I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation…The real reason for democracy is…Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows.  Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves.  I do not contradict him.  But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.”

C.S. Lewis

When philosophy is displaced with science, the man in the lab coat has assumed a rather peculiar seat of authority. While often holding the minority viewpoint of the atheist, he has managed to become the most trustworthy source, not just of science, but of the facts. This is most evident in the modern sting of a claim that something is “unscientific.” Having confined verifiable knowledge to that which can be tried in the laboratory, verifiable knowledge springs only from the mind of the scientist.

The Theory of Evolution is illustrative. Ask about humanity and the naturalist will point you to the ape. Ask about the ape, and he will point to some lesser quadruped. Ask about the quadruped, and he points to the fish. On and on he leads you, past increasingly lifeless creatures until at last, there is nothing to which he can point. It is here where he reminds us that there is still so much work to do. Of course, ask why any of this magnificent system should have existed in the first place, and you will kindly be advised that you shouldn’t ask such unscientific questions.

But it is science that plays handmaiden to logic, not the other way around.  And it is logic, aided by good science, by which we stumble upon our dilemma. Humble science tells us that naturally, matter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed. Logic steps in and dictates that, if this is true, matter and energy must have had a supernatural beginning or else no beginning at all. Logic and humble science have foisted this decision upon us, but hubristic science has dictated the answer – a supernatural beginning would, of course, be unscientific.

And so on his birthday, it is worth noting that Darwin’s Origin of Species concerns development post-bios. It leads us back to a certain beginning, but there we are left staring into a vast darkness. It is interestingly titled, as we still have some backtracking to do.

But the dogmatic atheist with his hubristic science has taken the Origin of Species, capitalized on general public ignorance, and published a copy of the Origin of Everything. He has reverse engineered the Model T and declared Henry Ford a phantom.

“Liberalism has been degraded into liberality. Men have tried to turn ‘revolutionise’ from a transitive to an intransitive verb. The Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would rebel against, but (what was more important) the system he would not rebel against, the system he would trust.

But the new rebel is a Skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it.

Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts.

In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.”

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy