The
exclusion of one God opens the door for the inclusion of another God. There is
no such thing as religious neutrality. In the end, there will be a sovereign.
That sovereign could show itself in the One State or the many individuals. The
philosophy of Georg F. W. Hegel (1770-1831), followed by Marxists, Fascists,
Nazis, and unbeknownst to many liberals, expresses the argument with chilling
consistency: “The Universal is to be found in the State…. The State is the
Divine Idea as it exists on earth…. We must therefore worship the State as the
manifestation of the Divine on earth…. [T]he State is the march of God through
the world.”
After
compiling these statements from Hegel’s works, Karl Popper comments that
Hegel’s views mandate the “absolute moral authority of the state, which
overrules all personal morality, all conscience.”1
In an
article I wrote some time ago titled “Don’t Let Critics Make the Rules,” I stated
the following:
Let’s suppose that 3,000 years
from now, after digging through tons of rubble, archeologists find a copy of
the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. One group called the
Americanites points to these finds as valid historical evidence that there was
a nation called the United States of America. Another group calling themselves
the Englishites insists that there was no independent American nation but only
an English colony named America. When the Americanites point to these recently
discovered copies of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution as
evidence of an independent American nation, they are immediately told that the
documents are not evidence because they support what must first be proved.
I use
this analogy to show that a historical document can’t be dismissed just because
it supports what must first be proved. Critics of the Bible dismiss the Bible
as evidence because the Bible supports what’s in the Bible. How could it be
otherwise? Should we dismiss the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin because
Benjamin Franklin wrote it? Should we only trust a biography of Franklin
written by a critic? This would be highly prejudicial, and it’s not the way
historical research is done.
Some
critics of the Bible dismiss it as reliable history because it presupposes the
existence of God (Gen. 1:1) and includes
references to supernatural events. Such a view is the basis of “philosophical
naturalism” that “restricts all of reality and everything that exists to
explanations that are ultimately reducible to material properties.”2 Philosophical naturalism leads directly
to methodological naturalism whereby science confines “all scientific
methodologies and empirical explanations within the scope of random and
undirected natural processes.”3 When the evidential playing field is
cropped this close, the game is over before it begins.
If
philosophical and methodological naturalism are applied in other academic
fields we are left with some rather embarrassing problems. Below is a response
I received critical of my analogy by someone who seems to be unaware of the
religious language of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution (this
says nothing of other historical documents that reference God and Jesus
Christ). I’m expecting to receive an email from him claiming that the use of
God, Providence, Judge, and Creator in the Declaration are references to Deism
and therefore don’t count.
This is
a red herring. A belief in any type of God for an atheist would be a superstition
not worthy of a scientifically reliable mind. While Deists might find the above
references to a deity acceptable, so would orthodox Christians. Providence is
fundamental to biblical Christianity. The Westminster Confession of Faith
(1646) includes an entire chapter on the doctrine (Chapter V: On Providence). The
use of “God,” “Creator,” and “Judge” (Gen. 18:25) are not foreign to the Bible but
are to Deism.
Typical apples to oranges
comparison here. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution do not
contain absurd and unbelievable fictional tales that would lend doubt to their
veracity. In fact, in the Constitution, there is NO mention of God or any other
magical beings so the future people finding it would know it was probably
written by sane thinking people in light of the other nonsense they might have
found, like Bibles for instance!
I chose
the Declaration specifically because I anticipated the above response from the
above critic (he writes me very, very often). Since “God” is a “magical being”
only believed in by superstitious people of a pre-scientific era, America’s two
founding documents lack “veracity.” The Declaration of Independence mentions
“the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” who is the “Creator” and “the
Supreme Judge of the world.”
This
language was common in the 17 and 18th centuries.
It was used by John Locke (1632–1704): “Human laws are measures in respect of
men whose actions they must direct, howbeit such measures they are as have also
their higher rules to be measured by, which rules are two, the law of God, and
the law of nature; so that laws human must be made according to the general
laws of nature, and without contradiction to any positive law of scripture,
otherwise they are ill made.4
Get Sir William Blackstone and the Common Law from the
American Vision store
William
Blackstone (1723–1780), author of Commentaries on the Laws of
England (1765–1769), writes in a similar way (Book I, part I, sec. ii): “Man, considered as
a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is
entirely a dependent being. . . . And consequently, as man depends absolutely
upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should, in all points,
conform to his Maker’s will. This will of his Maker is called the law of
nature. . . . This law of nature, being coeval [existing at the same time] with
mankind, and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to
any other. It is binding over all the globe in all countries, and at all times:
no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are
valid derive all their force and all their authority, mediately or immediately,
from this original. . . . The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or
divine law, and they are to be found only in the holy scriptures. These
precepts, when revealed, are found upon comparison to be really a part of the
original law of nature, as they tend in all their consequences to man’s
felicity. . . . Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of
revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be
suffered to contradict these.”
Those
who signed the Declaration relied “on the protection of Divine Providence.”
This means, following the critic’s logic, the Declaration could not be put into
evidence in support of America’s founding since it includes references to a
“magical being” and the absurd notion of creation. How could such a document be
trusted on other points when it contains these obvious “myths”?
The
above skeptic argues that “there is NO mention of God” in the Constitution.
While the Declaration mentions God in general, the Constitution is much more
explicit: “Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the states present
the seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one
thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven and of the independence of the United
States of America the twelfth.”
The use
of “our Lord” is a reference to Jesus Christ. How could such a document be
accepted into evidence, given atheistic assumptions, when those who wrote the
Constitution believed in a person who never existed?
If the
Bible can’t be used as evidence because it mentions God, then neither can the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution be used to defend the
proposition that they proclaim a political break from Great Britain since they
also mention the “fiction” of God and the “superstition” of creation.
1.
Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies: The
High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the Aftermath, 2 vols. 5th rev. ed.
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, [1966] 1971), 2:31. [↩]
2.
Eddie N. Colanter, “Philosophical Implications of Neo-Darwinism
and Intelligent Design: Theism, Personhood, and Bioethics,” Intelligent
Design 101: Leading Experts Explain the Key Issue, ed. H. Wayne House
(Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2008), 163. [↩]
3.
Colanter, “Philosophical Implications of Neo-Darwinism and
Intelligent Design, 162. [↩]
4.
Locke, Two Treatises on Government, Bk II, sec. 135,
quoting Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, 1.iii, § 9. [↩]
