What Fools Say in Their Hearts

In our secular age, it's common to encounter ideologies that masquerade as enlightenment. What's fascinating is that the enlightened of every age announce to the world their elect status in the same way.  They have been given the gnostic secret that it's all a sham: there is no God.  It's time for all to escape the sham in which we live by trusting the newfound wisdom of the new elect.

One wonders what they would do if they discovered as well that the psalmist took the measure of such enlightened folk three millenia ago: “Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God” (Ps 14:1/53:1). Evidently the new discovery that there is no God is not so new after all.  Indeed, the agnosticism of today is but a pale imitation of that which Paul encountered at the Areopagus in Athens.  Fortunately, he helped the intelligentsia of his day name the god they did not know:

 “For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you” (Acts 17:23 NRSV).

Not much has changed. In our era,  Christians stand daily in the worldwide Areopagus to name the God who remains unnamed in "the dogmatism of the village atheist."  As we discern our way ethically, it is not a bad thing when the intelligentsia are blessed with the gift of "an agnosticism about agnosticism itself."  Surely such gift-giving is the work of the kingdom:

In place of Genesis we now have scientism—the idea that science alone can speak truth about man and his world. 

 In contrast to the majority of scientists whose wondrous discoveries seem to inspire humility, today's advocates of scientism can be every bit as dogmatic as the William Jennings Bryans of yesteryear. We saw an example a week ago, when the New York Times reported that many scientists view "outspoken religious commitment as a sign of mild dementia." 

 The reporter was Gardiner Harris, and the object of his snark was Francis Collins—the new director of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Collins is perhaps best noted for his leadership on the Human Genome Project, an effort to map the genetic makeup of man. But he is also well known for his unapologetic talk about his Christian faith and how he came to it. 

Mr. Harris's aside about dementia, of course, is less a proposition open to debate than the kind of putdown you tell at a private cocktail party where you know everyone in the room shares your orthodoxies. In this room, there are those who hold that God cannot be reconciled with what science has discovered about the human body, the origin of the species, and the beginnings of the universe. The more honest ones do not flinch before the implications of their materialist principles on our understanding of human dignity and human rights and human freedom—as well as on religion.

.... while we talk about the clash between God and science, in practice it often comes down to disagreements about man and morals. The boundaries are not always neat. Many Americans who are indifferent to faith will confess they find themselves challenged as they try to raise good and decent children without the religious confidence their parents had. The result may not be a return to religion but a healthy agnosticism about agnosticism itself.

via online.wsj.com