THE CULTURE GAP

adapted from an article by

Peter Grace

M.A, Dip. Ed.

Used with the kind permission of the Creation Science Movement, 50 Brecon Avenue, Cosham, Portsmouth, England, P06 2AW.

It's TV time. We switch on an oldie from the thirties or forties. Boy meets girl, they are attracted to each other, he takes her home and then, incredibly, instead of diving into bed with her, he bids her goodnight, without even a kiss, then goes home. At the end of the film, they get married to live happily ever after, without having had - and this really does strain the credibility - pre-marital sexual intercourse. But these two wonders are surpassed by a third: at the time the film was made, such conduct, far from being the aberrations of failed sex lives, was standard! And there's the culture gap.

Similarly, the way in which the role of wife and mother is viewed has changed considerably over the past few decades. The raising of children used to be regarded as the supreme responsibility of a woman, taking priority over other career considerations. Nowadays, citing this view elicits a flurry of protests about the slavery imposed by chauvinistic males on a down-trodden female population. All I can say is that in the working-class district of inner London, where I was born, it was nothing like that at all.

Accompanying these cultural changes, and surely related to them, we see young lives destroyed in the test-tube for experimental purposes, terminated in the womb for the sake of a lifestyle choice, traumatized by the wrecking of family life, and terrorized by physical abuse.

What are the principles that have been abandoned? The principles are broadly those of the Christian ethic. Divorce was unusual and frowned upon because marriage vows were taken as a solemn commitment, made before God, to life-long fidelity. This commitment was the basis of family life. The institution of the family was of central importance to nearly everyone, and the house wife was central to that institution. It was she who was chiefly responsible for making a home and rearing children. Hence, despite her legal disadvantages, she enjoyed a dignity that many modern women would envy. Every member of the family was expected to fear God, to obey authority, to strive for honourable ends by their own efforts, and to look for a reward from their Heavenly Father in an eternel afterlife. It was a world permeated by spiritual ideals and absolute standards grounded in the conviction that the God of the Bible is real and salvation had been brought by the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.

What I have said is not the afterglow of “the good old days,” fondly remembered. Life had plenty of trials and troubles. But the constant love and care provided by the family - a clan which included uncles and aunts and cousins and grandparents - constituted a support system for individual members. Bermondsey, where we lived, was renowned for its prize-fighters and notorious for its thieves. Yet even here there was a code of conduct - things that were deemed dishonourable. One did not attack old people and children, for instance. So my mother, who was a deeply caring parent, had no hesitation about sending my sister to the shops after dark. Nowadays, we hesitate to allow a boy to have a paper route in a small town.

The Two Cultures

The culture gap yawns between those who believe in God and those who, in practice, do not. Between these polar positions there are those whose belief in God, with its implications for day-to-day living, is suppressed by the sheer weight of the predominate science culture.

The Londoners of my early years were living on the remnants of once-dominant theistic thought. Theism as a widely held worldview, forming the basis for civil order in Western society, has been steadily eroded by the torrent of materialistic determinism released by the philosophical principle of systematic doubt introduced by Descartes in the seventeenth century. (Descartes himself would have been horrified at the idea of subverting belief in God.) Diderot's dynamic matter, organized by d'Holbach into a universal system of primal matter moving according to immutable laws, Comte's substitution of science for religion, Feuerbach's man-made God formulation, Freud's grounding of religious consciousness in the Oedipus complex, Darwin's hypothesis of evolutionary origins, and Marx's interpretation of social development as the concatenation of necessary historical events ultimately resolving themselves into a classless paradise - these were all tributaries feeding the swelling river of materialist thought.

The materialist thesis represents a full revolution of the philosophical wheel since Heraclitus, Democritus, and Lucretius variously proposed dialectical materialism as a way of explaining change-with-continuity. But this idea was never accepted by Greek or Roman society as a practical basis for everyday living. The Acts of the Apostles records the presence of an altar “to the unknown God” in first-century Athens, and the great intellectual debates over the ensuing four or five centuries were not about whether or not God existed, but about the sort of God that existed and had revealed Himself to mankind.

Diderot's metaphysics renders meaningless the concepts of right and wrong: there are only rights and wrongs. Rights are those things that the organism requires for the dialectic process of development in competition with other organisms; wrongs are merely those things that militate against competitive success.

These concepts stand in a constant state of tension with the law of the land, which insists on exacting retribution for “wrongdoing.” In the United Kingdom during the 1960s, legislation was enacted that permitted abortion, legalized homosexuality, and made divorce much easier. Wherever the law has adopted materialistic premises, the results from the viewpoint of Christian ethical standards have been horrendous. The nation was shocked by the death of 116 children in the school at Aberfan in 1966 by an avalanche of slurry from a coal tip. That was an accident. The loss of life each day in the U.K. due to abortion - a deliberate act - is four to five times that of the Aberfan tragedy! The campaign of destruction waged against the infant in the womb is now running at the rate of 180,000 a year, or nearly 500 day. No sadder comment could be made on the deterioration of moral perceptions in this country than to say that a large proportion of the population sees no wrong in this. This is situation ethics at its ugliest.

Hopeful Signs

But all is not doom and gloom. The steady advance in the scientific knowledge of how nature works, combined with an understanding of probability and information theory, is breathing new life into the telelogical interpretation of the universe. Advances in molecular biology, in particular, have shown the staggering structural complexity and operational precision in even the smallest units of life.

On a number of fronts, the influence of mechanistic determinism is waning. The academic establishment is becoming increasingly dissatisfied with Darwinian evolution, which some regard as the greatest con of all time. Materialism as a philosophical foundation for society is being abandoned wherever Marxism has held sway. The experience of materialistic philosophy has failed to live up to the promises of the theory. In the school system, too many children are being inadequately educated. Concerning social roles, science is refuting matter-in-motion theories. Research has established, for example, that boy's given dolls still want trains, and girls given trains still want dolls. It has also been found that although men have a greater spatial sense than women, women have greater linguistic ability than men.

Scientific observation and everyday experience tell us that things fall into disorder when left to themselves, deprived of intelligent manipulation. It is obvious the arrangement of matter and energy and the integration of arrangements to produce a sophisticated effect require the direction of an organizing mind. Nevertheless, many people assume there is a built-in dynamic for evolutionary change governed by immutable laws that are determined entirely by chance, because the alternative involves accepting that there is a supremely intelligent Imposer of natural order. Yet, it is becoming ever more clear to those willing to see it that there must be an Intelligence behind the universe. Even the information in the genes of life must, according to information theory, be the work of a super Intelligence.

Evolution Theory and Morality

How could a system of thought dominate the culture of the Western world when its postulates run counter to science and the common experience of mankind? I submit that Darwinian evolution has been largely responsible. The variation observed within plant and animal kinds, often mistakenly termed micro-evolution, was assumed to add up to the macro-evolutionary changes that produced new kinds of plants and animals. (The biblical term “kinds” is akin to the modern concept of species, but is not its equivalent.)

The basis of Western morality is the Ten Commandments, which were given by God. Initially set out in Exodus 20, they are repeated and expanded upon throughout Scripture. The first four commandments are concerned with our relationship with God, and evolution undermines each one of them: (1) “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Evolution theory attempts to explain the origins of the universe, life, and mankind without giving glory to the Creator. Today, because there is widespread belief in the ability of nature to create new life (and even punish man's environmental “crimes”), “Mother Earth,” or “Nature,” has been endowed with god-like attributes. (2) “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.... Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.” As we approach the end of the century, the images of trees and whales are taking on the forbidden status spoken of in the second commandment. (3) “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” If God does not exist, or is aloof from His creation, what is the problem with using His name as an expletive? And (4) “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” The pressure to ignore the Sabbath stems from widespread disbelieve in the reason for the Sabbath: the revealed fact that the Creation took six days and the seventh day God rested.

The fifth commandment, to honor one's father and mother, and the seventh, proscribing adultery, spring from the created order. Eve was made from the side of Adam. Being one flesh, our first parents were told to be fruitful and multiply. When Christ was asked about divorce, He pointed out that Scripture declares a husband and wife to be “one flesh,” adding, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matthew 19:5-6). As belief in the historicity of Adam and Eve was undermined by the theory of evolution, divorce became more and more permissible for those experiencing marital problems. But divorce is a devastating break with the family pattern created in the beginning. With divorce now commonplace, we find ourselves in a social and economic climate where children are pawns in divorce proceedings. To combat this problem, children are beginning to be accorded independent status within the family. Unfortunately, the assertive attitudes encouraged by this status help ensure that anarchy will be the order of the day in many classrooms and homes.

The sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” springs from the revealed fact that man is made in the image of God; humans are not merely animals, as the evolutionists say. Today, animal rights seem to be more emotive than the taking of human life. Indeed, there is talk that the elderly and the incurably sick might just as well be humanely disposed of - euthanized. Just as Britain came off the gold standard in financial affairs in 1931, so morally she came off the “creation standard” in the 1960s. Since 1967, more than 750,000 unborn humans, all made in the image of God and possessing eternal souls, have been aborted. A nurse today is not allowed to work in gynaecology if she is not prepared to flout the sixth commandment.

Commandments eight and nine are concerned with honesty: no stealing and no lying. The New Testament expands on the eighth to say that those who steal should steal no more. Rather, they should work to support themselves and have something to give to others. Work is the prescribed way to acquire goods. That is why Adam was set to work in the Garden. But it was also in the Garden that Satan, the father of lies, first lied to Eve. Evolution is his big lie, and millions have been deceived.

The last commandment, “Thou shalt not covet,” has been turned on its head by our credit-based, consumer-driven society. Living beyond our means has become a way of life for most individuals, organizations, and government.

In his letter to Timothy (II Timothy 3), Paul said that especially in the last days the commandments will be set aside. Men will be lovers of self, rather than lovers of God (flouting the 1st & 2nd commandments), blasphemers (3rd), disobedient to parents (5th), fierce (6th), without natural affection (7th), false accusers (9th), and covetous (10th).

If evolution theory was just a matter of mistaken science, it would be important that scientists attack the theory, but it would not be a matter of particular concern for Christians per se. The godless philosophy underlying the theory of evolution, however, should be of great concern to Christians. It is the spiritual basis of the theory that has such a powerful, corrupting influence on society. Evolutionism has become the cornerstone of our education system, so that men are “ever learning, and [yet] never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (Timothy 3:7). Having left the “gold standard” of creation, the moral life of the West has been bankrupted.