We are dealing this morning with the matter of Epistemology. We have been here before but as repetition bears memory we are not shy about being here again.
Epistemology answers one of the larger questions for Christian. It answers the question of how do we know what we know, or, if you prefer, what is our starting point for knowledge and knowing.
We have three options presented to us.
We know either by
Unaided and autonomous Reason
Intuition
Revelation
Knowing by reason is the idea of the Rationalist who allegedly dismisses all ideas of faith and merely by the power of unaided reason starting from themselves as their own source knows truth either by empirical evidence or by innate ideas.
Eve in the garden is the classic example of the Rationalist. Eve decided that she could know by ignoring God’s revelation and starting from herself she could, on the basis of the empirical evidence
see that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom, she took the fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, and he ate it.
You see, Eve had a decision to make in terms of Epistemology … in terms of knowing. She could either operate by way of God’s Word Revelation and obey God’s Word Revelation and not eat the fruit of the tree or she could do what she did and employ an Epistemology that insisted that she could know what she knew as depending upon her autonomous reason as a ground for truth and eat the fruit.
The second way of knowing is by intuition and it is the idea of the Mystic who insists that on the basis of some kind of Intuition they can arrive at truth.
Example – Saul and Witch of Endor. Instead of trusting God’s Word that mediums should not be consulted He looked to occultist intuition as a means of knowing… as his Epistemology.
The Christian insists that we know what we know not by unaided autonomous reason reading Natural Law, nor by some mystical intuitive instinct (hello Pentecostalism) but rather the Christian insists that we know what we know by way of divine revelation found in Holy Scripture.
As the Scripture teaches,
Isaiah 8:20 To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.
I Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,
Psalm 18:30 – As for God, His way is perfect;
The word of the Lord is proven;
He is a shield to all who trust in Him.
Proverbs 30:5 Every word of God is tested;
He is a shield to those who put their trust in Him.
The classic example of this is Genesis 1:1
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Note that the writer of Genesis does not offer any proofs of God’s creation but merely states it is an axiom … a presupposition that God created.
For the Christian God’s revelation is truth and so the way we arrive at truth. We take God at His Word and seek to base all our knowing upon God’s Word. So, God’s Word becomes our axiom and we can only prove that axiom as true as by understanding all reality in light of that axiom. We reason from God to God.
So either we reason and know as starting and ending with God’s World or else we start with some form of De Cartes “cogito ergo sum.” (I think therefore I am), thus declaring that man does not need God in order to reason or to know.
Now, keep in mind that the Scripture as some things to say about the fallen mind in its pursuit of truth and knowing. Scripture teaches that the fallen man’s mind
is “futile” and “darkened,” (Rom. 1) “depraved,” “enslaved to the flesh,” “death,” “hostile to God,” “unwilling” and “unable” to submit to him (Rom. 8), and “foolish” and “unspiritual” (1 Cor. 1). None of these characterizations are my own.
Ephesians 4:18 They are darkened in their understanding and alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their hearts. 19Having lost all sense of shame, they have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity, with a craving for more.…
This is how the Bible characterizes the fallen human mind. The problem is not so much that people don’t believe in God; it is that they won’t believe in God. It is a mistake to believe that human reasoning capacities are generally amenable to arguments that point in God’s direction.”
We might say that those outside Christ, the more they are consistent with their anti-Christ means of knowing the more the likely they are to become mad Scientists.
Mad Scientists… you do remember of course that etymologically the word Science means ”what is known, knowledge of something.” So there is a snug relationship from where we started “Epistemology” (How do we know what we know”) and Science (“what is known, knowledge of something.”)
So, here we have these people who often have this incredible native intelligence apart from Christ and we can only say that this native IQ employed apart from Christ accounts for the mad Scientists among us. Here they have this native IQ but they are employing it in opposition and defiance of Christ. On the one hand
Scripture teaches
3in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
But the mad Scientists among us want to have wisdom and knowledge apart from Christ and so they become mad Scientists. They are seeking to know apart from Christ and it drives them to madness. They want to have an Epistemology that is based on their ability to know absent of the axiom and presuppositions of Scripture and it drives them mad.
Dr. E. Michael Jones is driving at this when he wrote,
“Imprudent decisions by public officials have unleashed crisis in places like Michigan whose attorney general, just happens to be a lesbian. Lesbians do not make effective leaders because their vice blocks their access to Logos, darkens their minds and renders their decisions either ineffective or or unnecessarily draconian because of the lack of prudence behind them.”
Dr. E Michael Jones
Jones premise here is that the further one removes themselves from from Christ in whom is hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge or as Jones puts it “from the logos” structure of the universe due to their aberrant behavior — which ends up working to suppress the truth in unrighteousness — the more they will pursue an anti-logos reality. So, when the electorate (largely due to their own anti-logos thinking) elects anti-logos politicians the consequence is the persecution of logos reality and the corresponding pursuit by the anti-logos politicians of anti-reality.
Thus, people like Michigan’s Lesbian Attorney General by the force of the necessity of her anti-logos disposition will persecute those who are operating as connected to logos in hopes of creation an anti-logos social reality. We have already seen this in Michigan with the Attorney General’s war on Christian adoption agencies in Michigan.
You see here this is a matter of Epistemology. The mad scientists among us insist they can know apart from Christ and His revelation in Scripture and in “knowing” apart from Christ and His revelation they come to truth and truths that are upside down and inside out.
So… what have we learned so far.
We’ve learned the incredible importance of Epistemology. It answers the question “how do we know what we know.” “What is our basis for truth.” We have said that historically our options on this matter reduce to three.
1.) Autonomous reason
2.) Intuition
3.) Revelation
We have seen that for the Biblical Christian we have no choice but to start with God’s Revelation to provide a solid foundation for knowing.
We have seen that if we will not have God’s Revelation as the means of knowing that the only other option left will be putting ourselves in the hands of mad scientists.
We have seen that the idea of science and epistemology are two bed bugs who are as snug as a bug in a rug.
From this we can now say that Science is only as good as the Epistemological basis upon which it is based upon.
This is absolutely important for us to understand because we live in an age which has made Science King.
In the climate we our living in right now how often do we hear about the importance about following the science?
But what we are learning is that if Science is not based upon the proper Epistemology than what we are left with is Mad Scientists. In order to Science to be genuinely Scientific we need to ask which God is Science serving? Is Science serving the God of autonomous reason? Is Science serving the God of intuition? Or is Science in service of the God of the Bible and His revelation?
If we genuflect before a Science that isn’t particularly Scientific precisely because its Epistemology is ruinously errant then we are apt to come to all kinds of silly conclusions and make policy from those conclusions.
We might come to silly scientific conclusions about cosmology and origins. We might come to silly scientific conclusions about punctuated equilibrium. We might come to silly scientific conclusions about the ability to go to the graveyard and stitch body parts together and create life. We might come to silly scientific conclusions based on silly scientific models that claim that 2-4 million Americans will die because of a severe strain of the Wuhan flu. We might come to silly scientific conclusions like abniogensis – something that was long held as being true. We might come to silly scientific conclusions that gender is a social construct. There are all kinds of silly scientific conclusions we might come to if we do not have an Epistemology that is based on God and His revealed Word.
I hope that you see here that you should not be hornswaggled by the claims of Science for it is simply the case that Science is only as good as the Epistemology and Theology that is driving the train. The problem with Science is that often it is not particularly scientific.
Science is like models that predict death totals from the Wuhan virus. Science is only as good as the assumptions you feed it. Feed it lousy Epistemological assumptions and you are going to get loopy belly laugh Science, just as if you feed your Wuhan virus model loopy assumptions it is going to spit out a gazillion deaths.
Let’s take just one concrete example of a Mad Scientist.
Meet Trofim Lysenko.
Lysenko was illiterate until he was 13 and because of that bare bones upbringing became known in the USSR as the barefoot scientist. Lysenko rejected Mendelian Genetics in favor of a theory that allowed him to contend he could change winter wheat into spring wheat.
Lysenko promoted the Marxist idea that the environment alone shapes plants and animals even going so far at one point to deny genetic impact completely. Lysenko believed that if your put plant and animals (and human were just animals) in the proper setting and expose them to the right stimuli, and you can remake them to an almost infinite degree.
Of course this line of thinking was following the Darwinian evolutionary idea which is contrary to Scripture’s creation account. Lysenko became a classical mad Scientist in opposition to God’s truth.
Eventually Lysenko gained the approval of Stalin and as a result Soviet scientists who refused to renounce true science in the field of genetics were dismissed from their posts and left destitute. Hundreds if not thousands of others were imprisoned. Several were sentenced to death as enemies of the state, Scientific dissent from Lysenko’s theories of environmentally acquired inheritance was formally outlawed in the Soviet Union in 1948.
Science was outlawed in the USSR in the name of Science so called. The Science of kind after kind which is found in Scripture
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind , and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind : and God saw that it was good. Gen. 1:25
was set aside for false science all in the name of Science and the results were catastrophic.
Wheat, rye, potatoes, beets—most everything grown according to Lysenko’s methods died or rotted, records the book “Hungry Ghosts.” The famines resulting from this mad Scientist science killed at least 7 million people. Still Lysenko’s practices prolonged and exacerbated the food shortages. The Soviet Union’s allies suffered under Lysenkoism, too. Communist China adopted his methods in the late 1950s and endured even bigger famines. Peasants were reduced to eating tree bark and bird droppings and the occasional family member. At least 30 million died in this Scientific starvation.
So … all this to say that Science can be based on the premises of Scripture … the uniformity of nature … the idea of kind after kind … the idea that men and women really are different or Science can serve other Gods and so become Mad Science.
