{"id":10200,"date":"2016-11-10T08:09:37","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T16:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=10200"},"modified":"2016-11-10T08:09:37","modified_gmt":"2016-11-10T16:09:37","slug":"in-evolution-we-trust-the-culture-of-deaths-mantra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/in-evolution-we-trust-the-culture-of-deaths-mantra\/","title":{"rendered":"In Evolution We Trust: The Culture of Death’s Mantra"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SA-gods-hand2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari is a brilliant writer.\u00a0 His book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind<\/em> flows seamlessly from section to section describing man\u2019s evolution from the cousins of chimpanzees to the highly intellectual being that roams the earth today.\u00a0 Compared to Darwin\u2019s On the Origin of the Species, <\/em>Harari\u2019s is easy to understand and digest.<\/p>\n

While Harari weaves an intelligent argument together, he leaves no room for God.\u00a0 He states:<\/p>\n

\u201cFor close to 4 billion years, every single organism on the planet evolved subject to natural selection.\u00a0 Not even one was designed by an intelligent creator\u2026.For billions of years, intelligent design was not even an option, because there was no intelligence which could design things (p. 397).\u201d<\/p>\n

He goes on to explain that humans are evolving to a point where they are becoming the designers.\u00a0 In other words, we are becoming gods. Look what he says:<\/p>\n

\u201cBut as the twenty-first century unfolds, this is no longer true: Homo sapiens are transcending those limits.\u00a0 It is now beginning to break the laws of the natural selection, replacing them with the laws of intelligent design (p. 397).\u201d<\/p>\n

For all of Harari\u2019s education and brilliance, he is an ignorant fool according to my worldview.\u00a0 The Psalmist writes, \u201cThe fool says in his heart, \u201cThere is no God.\u201d They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good (Psalm 14:1, ESV)?\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Paul goes much further in his confrontation with the wisdom of this age when he says:<\/p>\n

“18\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>For the word of the cross is\u00a0folly to\u00a0those who are perishing, but to us\u00a0who are being saved it is\u00a0the power of God.\u00a019\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>For it is written ,\u201cI will destroy the wisdom of the wise, \u00a0and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.\u201d20\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?\u00a0Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?21\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach[a<\/a>]<\/sup>\u00a0to save those who believe.\u00a022\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>For\u00a0Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom,23\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>but we preach Christ\u00a0crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,\u00a024\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ\u00a0the power of God and\u00a0the wisdom of God.\u00a025\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.26\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>For consider your calling, brothers:\u00a0not many of you were wise according to worldly standards,[b<\/a>]<\/sup>\u00a0not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.\u00a027\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>But\u00a0God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise;\u00a0God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;\u00a028\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>God chose what is low and despised in the world, even\u00a0things that are not, to\u00a0bring to nothing things that are,\u00a029\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>so\u00a0that no human being[c<\/a>]<\/sup>\u00a0might boast in the presence of God.\u00a030\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>And because of him[d<\/a>]<\/sup>\u00a0you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us\u00a0wisdom from God,\u00a0righteousness and\u00a0sanctification and\u00a0redemption,\u00a031\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>so that, as it is written,\u00a0\u201cLet the one who boasts, boast in the Lord (I Corinthians 1:18-31).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>While I could continue to quote scripture after scripture, two will be sufficient for my argument.<\/p>\n

REFLECTION<\/p>\n

Even though I am a \u201cyoung-earth\u201d creationists, it is an open-handed issue for me. In other words, I can understand Christians who believe in an older view.\u00a0 However, this is not Harari.\u00a0 For me, Harari\u2019s views are dangerous and are becoming more and more typical in Western societies which poses a challenge for the 21st<\/sup> Century Christian. \u00a0The views listed in this book removes the dignity in which man was created.\u00a0 Harari sees man\u2019s uniqueness as a product of his environment, but while he attempts to explain the why the evolution occurs, he does an inadequate job in my opinion.<\/p>\n

The challenge we have as Christians is to point to the dignity of man in a culture that believes it is the designer. \u00a0When man is seen as nothing but a complex animal that is a product of natural selection, then it can lead to all kinds of evil: wholesale abortion, euthanasia, infanticide, racism, slavery and many more insidious ideals.\u00a0 After all, the weakest could be removed from society because it is just the evolutionary process.<\/p>\n

While this may seem hyperbolic, we must consider some issues that are coming to the forefront.\u00a0 Death with dignity campaigns, artificial intelligence, gender reassignment, and many more issues needs to refocus our efforts as a church to exclaim to people that they are \u201cfearfully and wonderfully made.\u201d \u00a0In Dignity and Destiny: Humanity in the Image of God, <\/em>John F. Kilner states:<\/p>\n

“Recognizing humanity\u2019s creation in God\u2019s image has played a significant role historically in freeing people from the ravages of need and oppression.\u00a0 The outlook of Clement of Rome charted this course in the earliest centuries of the church:<\/p>\n

‘You should do good to and pay honor and reverence to man, who is made in the image of God: \u2026 minister food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, hospitality to the stranger, and the necessary things to the prisoner; and that is what will be regarded as truly bestowed upon God.’<\/em><\/p>\n

Both this perspective of needy people as created in God\u2019s image and that of Christian service as conforming to the image of Christ became powerful motivators for helping people in poverty.\u00a0 In contrast, people outside the church during its earliest years exhibited relatively little concern to poor individuals (Kilner, p. 8).”<\/p>\n

CONCLUSION<\/p>\n

At first blush, I was angry and frustrated with reading Harari\u2019s book.\u00a0 Quite frankly, I had no idea why we were being exposed to such nonsense.\u00a0 My perspective changed as I realized the soul of man is at stake.\u00a0 If we as a church want to combat the spirit of this age, then it is good for us to know the battlefield in which we fight.\u00a0 We are not combating specific issues such as abortion, euthanasia and the like.\u00a0 No, those are merely symptoms of two competing worldviews: the dignity of man from a Christian perspective or the reducing of man to something common and unremarkable.\u00a0 One belief brings life and the other creates a culture of death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yuval Noah Harari is a brilliant writer.\u00a0 His book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind flows seamlessly from section to section describing man\u2019s evolution from the cousins of chimpanzees to the highly intellectual being that roams the earth today.\u00a0 Compared to Darwin\u2019s On the Origin of the Species, Harari\u2019s is easy to understand and digest. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[759,760],"class_list":["post-10200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture-of-death","tag-harari","cohort-lgp6"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}