God and the Culture of Materialism
In many parts of the world God is a real, present reality. In these places people depend upon God for most aspects of their lives. If they get sick, they turn to God, not medicine because there are no doctors. Or they turn to the local witch doctor, or the occult, which is saying the same thing. Either way, the supernatural is a vital part of everyday life. If you tell these hundreds of millions of people that there is no reality apart from the natural, physical world (materialism) they would look at you with incredulity. For them God is very real.
In other parts of the world, the philosophies of naturalism, scientism, materialism, and humanism are prevalent. These philosophies are all rooted in the idea that there is no reality apart from the natural, material world. And if this is the case, naturally mankind is at the center of all this action. They claim that there is no supernatural reality, therefore God, the Holy Spirit, Satan and his demons, life after death, and miracles, signs, and wonders cannot exist. For many Christians in these parts of the world, their faith is more tenuous as the Church is attacked from all sides by atheistic materialism.
The ‘battle’, if I can call it that, is not so much between science and faith (these are complementary, in my opinion), but between faith and all of the -isms I mentioned above, which I can lump together and call materialism. I am writing this post for those of us living in materialistic cultures who feel that our faith is under attack in new ways every day by the proponents (partly, but not exclusively, scientists) of materialism.
What follows is the post I wrote about God and science in response, in part, to a recently published book titled ‘The Big Picture’.
For much of human history mankind believed that the world around them, including all life, natural phenomenon like rain, lightning and thunder, earthquakes, and floods; and inanimate nature like rivers, mountains, and the sea, as well as the heavens were created by Beings greater than themselves.
My guess is that this belief in a Deity or Deities speaks to a deep need in the hearts of human beings, to connect to ‘Something Greater’ than themselves — the God-given need to worship, to experience the transcendent. We moderns have deconstructed the need to worship by describing it as the need for humans to explain and understand the world around them; to connect themselves to this world in a way that provides a context, a rationalization for their own existence. Or something like that. However you see it, humans are driven by a Force — a ‘need to know’, to be connected to ‘Something Greater’ — that defines what it means to be human, gives us value, and drives humanity to greater and greater levels of accomplishment.
We see this Force at work in the ancient Middle Eastern text called Genesis — “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth“, where for humans in the Judeo-Christian tradition this transcendent Force was God, aka Jehovah or Yahweh. We also see this Force at work in 21st Century culture 1000s of years later, where the ‘something greater’ or god is intellectual knowledge. One difference between then and now is not the impetus to know – that hasn’t changed – it is the way humans seek or strive to know. Since the 17th Century – some would argue beginning with Galileo and Isaac Newton – mankind has benefited (mostly) from radical, revolutionary, life-changing, even awe-inspiring advancements in knowledge and understanding due to the application of analytical methods of observation and data collection in the material, natural world. This method is called science.
Something else has evolved – the object of our quest for knowledge. In the time of Moses and for 1000s of years after him, but less so today in my culture, we sought to know more about God, His character, and our place, purpose, and role in His creation. Today in much of the world, the striving for knowledge is more about us – how we can use knowledge of the natural world to advance our personal and corporate lives, commonly driven by money. For most scientists, God has no place in their modern holy grails – the cure for cancer, Martian exploration, discovering the smallest particle, the great unifying theory of physics, and quantum computing for example (except that scientific break-throughs are often ‘accidental’. Which I call the ‘hand of God’).
The scale of the impact of science across all dimensions of human existence has been so dramatic and generally successful – bringing a quality of life unthought of a few hundred years ago—that is it not too difficult for some to believe that every aspect of human existence will ultimately come under the influence and control of science, even to the point that science will ‘prove’ that God or some other supernatural ‘power’ does not exist. Some believe that everything can and will be explained when scientists develop a comprehensive understanding of the natural, material world. This ‘triumphant scientific idea’ can be traced, in part, to the work of B. F. Skinner who popularized the notion that if something cannot be directly observed it must not exist — the ideology of materialism. Today, more than ever before, this ideology is cloaked in the authority of science.
This perspective is reflected in the words of author Sean Carroll in his new book “The Big Picture”. Here are some quotes from Sean in a recent interview he gave to an editor of Scientific American:
“It is time to face reality . . . there is no such thing as God, or ghosts, or human souls that reside outside of the body. Everything in existence belongs to the natural world and is accessible to science . . . I think we can bring ideas like meaning and morality into our discussions of the natural world . . . The ways that we talk about the universe are what make it meaningful”.
“I would make the argument that if there were a supernatural element that played a role in our everyday life in some noticeable way, it’s very, very likely that we would have noticed it. It just seems weird that this kind of thing would be so crucial and yet so difficult to notice in any controlled scientific way. I would make the case that it is sufficiently unlikely in a fair Bayesian accounting that we don’t need to spend any time thinking about it anymore. Five hundred years ago it would have been a possibility. I think these days we’re ready to move on”.
Carroll claims, boldly I think, that science has decided, based on an absence of evidence – that there is no God, no heaven, no life apart from the material world. He says “everything in existence belongs to the natural world”. This is not a scientific statement – it is an opinion rooted in the ideology of materialism. His conclusions about God and the spiritual life, based on this ideology, naturally lead him to make the claim that science will even be able to speak to morality and the meaning and purpose of a human being’s life. In other words, there is no limit or boundary to science and the knowledge that science will ultimately reveal because once science reaches the limit of natural knowledge, there will be nothing more to know.
I haven’t read the book yet, but he claims that if the supernatural, for example God, the Holy Spirit, or Jesus, played a role in everyday life ‘we’ would have noticed it – in a controlled scientific way. But science, by definition, deals with the natural, material world. Science limits itself to this domain – its analytical tools are mainly designed to function in this reality. For the most part, mainstream science has no evidence of the supernatural because to science and the methods of science the supernatural realm is outside the permissible boundaries of this methodology. In a sense, the supernatural realm is ‘invisible’ to science and the methods science uses to gain knowledge. But —
The evidence for the supernatural, for God, the Holy Spirit, and signs, wonders, and miracles is overwhelming in the human community both today and through history. Based on my travels around the world, books I have read, stories I have heard, and my own experiences I believe that most Christians have either directly experienced — or know of someone close to them who has — spiritual, emotional, or physical healing that medicine was unable to explain – for example, they had 4 months to live and through prayer they are alive 10 years later. Or similar stories. In other words, miracles.
Modern Christians who regularly prayed for supernatural healing and observed healing as a direct result of prayer and the intervention of God include, among others: John G. Lake, Smith Wigglesworth, Agnes Sanford, Francis McNutt, Randolph Vickers, John Wimber, Randy Clark, Bill Johnson, and Mike Endicott. They have written books recounting their healing experiences. Those healed by prayer would certainly testify to the significant role that God played in their lives, in contrast to the claims of Sean Carroll. Is it possible that all of these Christians who heal and who write about healing are liars? I doubt it. There are generally many witnesses to these healing events.
Futhermore, I believe that most Christians have had direct, and for many, daily encounters with God through His Spirit. The cynic will discount these encounters as ‘wishful thinking’, but it is exactly that arrogance that causes them to say “God is not real”. My life was profoundly changed by a dream in which God clearly spoke to me. I have friends who heard God’s voice commanding them to perform some action or speak some words with amazing results. Stories of God’s work, His voice, answered prayers, healing, freedom from addictions, shame and guilt after calling on Jesus, ‘coincidences’ that are just too bizarre to be chance are part-and-parcel of everyday life for many Christians. How can ‘science’ measure, describe, and capture these events? Not easily. And not at all if the ‘going-in’ assumption is that they cannot exist.
And there is the witness of Scripture. Is the conversion of Saul to Paul a myth? There is evidence that before his trip to Damascus he was the chief persecutor of Christians. Suddenly he became the chief proponent of the faith. What caused this radical 180-degree change in his life? Luke documents the event in the Book of Acts – a supernatural encounter with Jesus. Can science accept this encounter as factual, real evidence of God and His Spirit? Of course not, nor should it. It does not rise to the level of accepted scientific documentation. But did it actually happen? The transformation from Saul to Paul, happening within minutes (or maybe seconds) suggests that some powerful, miraculous event occurred in his life. Not documentable by science, but believable by millions of Christians over 1000s of years and supported by Paul’s written documents preserved today.
Is the resurrection of Jesus a myth also? What about the miraculous spiritual, emotional, and physical healings performed by Jesus, the disciples, and the apostles? Are they made up by later generations to give credibility and power to a movement founded by a dead, itinerant prophet? Could so many people be fooled? Were thousands willing to die then, and even today, for their faith if Jesus was not who He said He was — the Messiah? Scripture is not making claims that ‘science’ can verify with measurements, statistically meaningful studies, and other scientific procedures. But the eye-witness accounts to the resurrection and healings are significant. Are millions of Christians over millennia deluded, liars, or simpletons? Or, is there a life, a reality, a dimension that science is ill-equipped to ‘prove’ exists?
The eminent early 20th century Harvard psychologist, William James, studied spiritual experiences from the perspective of science. As a result of this work, James reached some extraordinary conclusions including these presented to Britain’s most important scientists in a series of lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 1901:
“Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different . . . No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded (the words of William James quoted in the book ‘Fingerprints of God’ by Barbara Bradley Hagerty, pg. 26).
James went on to say to his esteemed colleagues: “Why, he asked, could scientists not envision the world as consisting of many interpenetrating spheres of reality, which can have both scientific and spiritual explanations . . the first thing to bear in mind is that nothing can be more stupid than to bar out phenomena from our notice, merely because we are incapable of taking part in anything like them ourselves” (from the ‘Fingerprints of God’ by Barbara Bradley Haggerty, pg. 24).
James gave these lectures over 115 years ago, so it is probable that scientists dealing with issues of consciousness today would discount his ideas. I might too, except what he describes is exactly what I have experienced myself and what many others have described in accounts of their encounters with a transcendent ‘Spiritual Being’.
Paul has anticipated this clash between materialism and faith in 1 Corinthians 2: 12 – 16:
“We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man makes judgements about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgement. “For who knows the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ” (NIV).
How does someone come to know and believe in God? In part, through Scripture. Do you want to know who God is, His plan for Creation, and your part in that plan? Read the Bible. It is, after all, the best-selling book in history for a reason. But there is something more, something less concrete, but still tangible. I believe that every faithful follower of Jesus has had one or more deeply personal, supernatural, vivid, undeniable encounters with the Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – at some point in their lives. You have met Him. He has performed signs and wonders in your life. You have experienced the Power of God. Certainly you do not believe in Him because of ‘scientific proof”. You know God apart from intellectual reasoning. He has spoken to you personally and through Scripture. You have seen Him in the life of someone who loved you when you were unlovable. He has set you free from addictions, shame, and guilt. He has healed you. You cried out to Jesus for yourself or others — He showed up, and you or they have never been the same.
How will the atheists and materialists around us come to know God? Well, first through your love for them. And your prayers. But, in the final analysis God will have to reach deeply into their hearts and call them to Himself – “beloved, put down your weapons. You are mine and I am yours”. Just like He did for each of us. Really, the Big Picture is bigger than any of us can imagine or know. Let us not live our lives limited by science. Celebrate it for what it is, a gift from God; but let us see beyond the limits of science, to a reality of love, peace, beauty, freedom, power, and grace that human beings could never have made up or imagined on their own. That is the Biggest Picture.
Crying out to God for more grace, repentance, and belief,
John