I don’t want to survive. I want to live! – Captain McCrea
Over the past several months, I’ve taken a new position at Truett McConnell University (TMU) as an Associate Professor of Microbiology. 1 I was attracted by what makes it different here. Virginia was a good season, but I sought to focus on closely mentoring students. TMU is unique because of its stances are uncommon in academia for the right reasons and from an Anabaptist heritage.
No more non-overlapping magisteria
During the 16th century, the state told everyone what to believe. The idea of separation of church and state is supposed to always let (y)our conscience be (y)our guide. Letting your conscience guide you began largely in the 16 th century with the Anabaptists. While Anabaptist seems obscure, some more commonly known names are Baptists, Mennonites, Brethren movement, and the Amish. 2 Anabaptists rejected state-enforced religion. While the state religion was the Holy Roman Empire, today’s state religion is secular humanism. The irony to atheists today attempting to push away religion are blind to the very religion that they’re promoting. Claiming religion doesn’t exist today is an extremely religious statement. If the state shouldn’t promote religion, then that unequivocally promotes atheism (aka non-overlapping magesteria, NOMA). NOMA has hypocritically ordained a modern priesthood of materialistic naturalists. Hello pot, this is kettle: you’re black!
Public Universities: Secular Seminaries Training a New State-Run Priesthood
University is based on unity in diversity; however, universities now reject tolerance in favor of intolerance. Academic bullying isn’t only in science, but across all disciplines. Darwin’s epistemology permeates the academy… with a twist. No one’s a Darwinist today; everyone’s a neo-Darwinist. In music: neo-romantic. In political science: neo-con or neo-liberal. Even the watered-down religion classes: neo-orthodoxy (presupposing neo-Darwinism). No one’s post-modern—we’re neo-modern.
The sport of losing with dignity
Post-modern governments replaced theism with atheism. Today, few are atheists and most are deists (god the cosmic killjoy). Since neo-Darwinism crosses every academic discipline, Anabaptists would reject state-funded atheism/deism and promote thinking for ourselves—risking degrees, jobs, and livelihood. A major change must redefine the fundamental definition of science (e.g., intelligent design) to foster intellectual curiosity and free exchange of ideas. At TMU, science operates differently from the current public/secular university/seminary. I’m not claiming to be an Anabaptist scholar. What I know about them, though, is the point of this blog.
The Anabaptists did not call themselves by this name. It was a name originally given to deride them. They were called this because they practiced believer’s baptism instead of infant baptism. Anabaptists topple the secular ivory tower even in athletics, caring about both the process and the outcome. Darwinian athletics only care about self-advancement and winning. We primarily follow sporting rules because it’s more challenging and rewarding to win playing fair. We aren’t perfect, but we also aren’t defined by material success: there’s more to life.
Truth is immaterial and can be seen using an open mind that voluntarily follows evidence regardless.
Just a note re infant baptism: Many Christian traditions practise it on the theory that the parents pledge to raise the child as a Christian.
There was a controversy in Toronto, Canada, in 1975, in which an Anglican (Episcopal) priest refused to baptise a child because her mother was an agnostic who claimed that she only wanted the child baptized to prevent her from going to hell – and that she did not otherwise intend to go to church or try to be a good Christian.
Unusually for the Anglican church, the bishop of the day backed his priest, pointing out that baptism is not ecclesiastical fire insurance and is irrelevant to the risk of going to hell.
It is granted to Christian parents in good faith, but that was not the case here.
As to
Since atheistic materialists insist that materialism is true and yet truth is obviously immaterial, then that necessarily precludes materialism from ever being true.
The fact that truth is immaterial and yet methodological naturalism is artificially imposed, by materialists, onto science prior to the pursuit of ‘the truth’ by science, prevents ‘the truth’ from ever being reached through science by atheists.
Materialistic Atheists searching for ‘the truth’ under the confines of methodological naturalism is a bit like the old joke of the drunk looking for his car keys under a street lamp because the light is better there even though he knows that cannot possibly be where he lost his keys.
That ‘the truth’ is not reducible to materialistic explanation is revealed by the fact that mathematics, which is considered by many to be the highest form of truth about how the universe operates, is itself not reducible to material explanation.
Both Einstein and Wigner are on record as to regarding it as an epistemological miracle that we can comprehend the world through mathematics:
And although mathematics is certainly very friendly to Theistic concerns,,,
And although mathematics is certainly very friendly to the Theistic concerns of Christians, and very antagonistic to the materialistic concerns of atheists, many mathematicians falsely believe that the ultimate truth will, some day, be reached solely by mathematical reasoning. That mathematics, in and of itself, cannot ever reach the ultimate truth is revealed by the fact that mathematics itself is found to be ‘incomplete’.
Even Hawking himself, in his quest to find the mathematical ‘theory of everything’, admitted as much about the ‘incompleteness’ of mathematics:
Since mathematics is now shown to be incomplete, might I be so bold as to suggest instead of looking for mathematics, all by itself, to lead us to ‘the truth’ that we instead look beyond mathematics for exactly what it is that “breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe.”?
And when one rightly allows God to “breathe fire into the equations” then an empirically backed reconciliation between quantum mechanics and general relativity, i.e. the quote unquote ‘theory of everything’, is reached by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from death: