Finding Truth

5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

Nancy Pearcey

• Publisher: David C Cook
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780781413282
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Théologie chrétienne

Don't Think, Just Believe?
That's the mantra in many circles today—whether the church, the classroom, the campus, or the voting booth. Time for a Reality Check
Nancy Pearcey, bestselling and critically acclaimed author, offers fresh tools to break free from presumed certainties and test them against reality. In Finding Truth, she explains five powerful principles that penetrate to the core of any worldview—secular or religious—to uncover its deepest motivations and weigh its claims. A former agnostic, Pearcey demonstrates that a robust Christian worldview matches reality—that it is not only true but attractive, granting higher dignity to the human person than any alternative. Finding Truth displays Pearcey's well-earned reputation for clear and cogent writing. She brings themes to life with personal stories and real-world examples. And the study guide in Finding Truth was shaped by questions from readers like you, from teens to college professors, and is ideal for individual or group study.

PART ONE

• • • • •

“I Lost My Faith at an Evangelical College”

I was once invited to give a presentation on Capitol Hill on the application of Christian worldview principles in the public arena. During the question period, the audience hushed in surprise as a congressional chief of staff stood up and announced, “I lost my faith at an evangelical college.”

Not at a secular university, not in political battles on Capitol Hill—but at a respected evangelical college.

How did it happen? Afterward, I sought out the chief of staff to hear his story. Bill Wichterman explained that the professors at his college had taught the prevailing theories in their discipline—most of which were secular and sometimes explicitly anti-Christian. Yet they did little to offer a biblical perspective on the subject.

Bill met with several of his professors outside of class, always asking the same question: “How do you relate your faith to your academic discipline—to what you teach in the classroom?” Tragically, not one could give him an answer.

Eventually Bill concluded that Christianity did not have any answers, and he decided to abandon it. “I was sorry to give up my Christian faith,” he told me. “But it seemed to have no intellectual foundation.”

Bill’s story reflects an all-too-common pattern today. When young people leave home, they often leave behind their religious upbringing as well. In the past, many returned to Christianity after they married and had children. But today, a growing number are staying away for good. 1

Is there hope? Can a biblical worldview equip us with the resources to meet the challenge, reverse the pattern, and confidently set forth our case in the public arena?

The answer is a resounding yes. Finding Truth offers a fresh and original strategy to answer the questions raised by young people—and seekers of all ages. It unpacks five powerful principles from Scripture that cut to the heart of any competing worldview or religion. It highlights the life-giving truths that everyone wants but only Christianity can give.

Study Your Way Back to God

How does Bill’s story end? After graduating from college, he discovered there is a field called apologetics that supports Christian claims with logic and reasons. He read books by C. S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, and many others. Eventually he was persuaded that Christianity has the intellectual resources to respond successfully to competing worldviews after all.

He told me, “I studied my way back to God.”

My personal history is similar to Bill’s. Though raised in a Lutheran family, I could not get answers to the questions that bubbled up in my mind as a teenager. Midway through high school, I abandoned my religious upbringing altogether. Years later, in a ministry called L’Abri hidden away in a tiny village in the Swiss Alps, I finally met people who could answer my questions. (I tell my story in Principle #5.)

My own years of searching and struggling as an agnostic left me with an intense conviction that Christians need to take questions seriously. They need to be prepared to help people “study their way back to God.”

The task can seem daunting. At every turn—from the classroom to the workplace to the Internet—ideas contrary to Christianity are clamoring for our allegiance. Learning how to respond thoughtfully to every competing worldview would take a lifetime of study. And what happens when we encounter a new idea? Do we have to come up with a new argument every time?

Or is it possible to find a single line of inquiry that we can apply universally to all ideas?

That was a question I wrestled with for years after I became a Christian. What I have discovered is that the Bible itself offers a powerful strategy for critical thinking—five principles that cut to the heart of any worldview. By mastering these principles, you will be equipped to answer any challenge—while making a compelling and attractive case for Christianity.

Give Me Evidence

The key passage is the first chapter of Romans. Because the apostle Paul was writing to a congregation that had not heard him speak before, he presents the Christian message in a comprehensive way suitable for an audience hearing it for the first time. In fact, we can think of Romans 1 as Paul’s apologetics training manual. It provides effective tools for making sense of worldviews from ancient times to our own day. (If you are not familiar with Romans 1, you may want to flip forward to the appendix and read it first.)

Where does Paul begin his training manual? His first major point is that all people—everywhere and at all times—have access to evidence for God’s existence. How? Through the created order: “the things that have been made.” This is called general revelation because it is evidence for God that is accessible to anyone, including those who do not have the written Scripture (which is called special revelation). As the psalmist writes, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge” (Ps. 19:1–2). Let’s begin with the verses where Paul explains the concept of general revelation:

We all have access to evidence for God through creation.

Romans 1:19—What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

Romans 1:20—His invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.

Paul’s claim is that both physical nature and human nature give evidence for the Creator. “The whole creation of God preaches,” as Jonathan Edwards put it. 2 How does physical nature give evidence for God? Because the existence of the universe cannot be explained as a product of natural causes alone. This is as true for us as it was for Paul’s first-century readers. Let’s run through a quick survey of some of the most relevant areas of scientific research: the origin of the universe and the origin of life.

The origin of the universe has given rise to a puzzle known as the fine-tuning problem. The fundamental physical constants of the universe are exquisitely balanced, as though on a knife’s edge, to sustain life. Things like the force of gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, the ratio of the mass of the proton and the electron, and many other factors have just the right value needed to make life possible. If any of these critical numbers were changed even slightly, the universe could not sustain any form of life. For example, if the strength of gravity were smaller or larger than its current value by only one part in 1060 (1 followed by 60 zeros), the universe would be uninhabitable. 3

Cosmologists call this the Goldilocks dilemma: Why are these numerical values so precisely calibrated that they are not too high, not too low, but just right to support life? A New York Times article says, “These mysterious numbers … are like the knobs on God’s control console, and they seem almost miraculously tuned to allow life.” 4

What makes the fine-tuning problem so puzzling is that there is no physical cause to explain it. “Nothing in all of physics explains why its fundamental principles should conform themselves so precisely to life’s requirement,” says astronomer George Greenstein. Indeed, they interact in an intricately coordinated way to fulfill a goal or purpose—which is the hallmark of design. As physicist Paul Davies says, “It’s almost as if a Grand Designer had it all figured out.” 5

Evidence from Life

The origin of life is equally difficult to explain by any naturalistic scenario. Every cell in our bodies contains a complex coded message. Today the origin of life has been reframed as the origin of biological information.

The central role of information explains why scientists have failed “to cook up life in the chemistry lab,” says Davies. “Chemistry is about substances and how they react, whereas biology appeals to concepts such as information”—which is clearly not chemical. Genetic information can be described only by using terminology borrowed from the mental world of language and communication: DNA is “a genetic ‘database,’ containing ‘instructions’ on how to build an organism. The genetic ‘code’ has to be ‘transcribed’ and ‘translated’ before it can act.”

Biologists’ favorite analogy for DNA is a computer: The molecule itself (the physical chain of chemicals) is the hardware. The DNA (the encoded information) is the software. In origin-of-life research, the focus is on building the hardware. “Attempts at chemical synthesis focus exclusively on the hardware—the chemical substrate of life,” Davies writes; they “ignore the software—the informational aspect.” 6 Yet any twelve-year-old kid with a laptop knows that building an electronic device out of copper, plastic, and silicone has nothing to do with writing code to create a software program.

The surprising implication is that even if scientists succeeded in coaxing all the right chemicals to link up and form a DNA molecule in a test tube, that would do nothing to explain where the encoded genetic information came from.

In all of human experience (and science is supposed to be based on experience), the source of encoded information is an intelligent agent. Therefore, it is reasonable to infer that an intelligent agent was necessary at the origin of life. ...