Rushdoony's Critique of Scientism and impact on creationism

Ivanhoe · #1 (**permalink**) 12-06-2007, 07:25 PM

Great article by Selbrede.
The Chalcedon Foundation - Faith for All of Life

Quote:

Mark Rushdoony was motivated to write an explanatory new foreword when the time came to reprint Dr. Rushdoony’s 1967 volume The Mythology of Science, in large part because most people equate the latest research with scientific relevance. Because science gives us a word of flux, relevance in science is keyed to the date of publication of one’s sources or research. For example, the most common criticism raised against creationists is that their source citations are perennially out of date. Science continues to move the goalposts, so even if creationists cited up-to-the-minute current research in their favor, that research will quickly drift out of date because creationism’s critics assume that scientific progress always favors the evolutionary paradigm.

Quote:

Scientific objectivity and impartiality? On the contrary, this is a passionate dedication by the new magicians to the myths of their own making … This then is the new mythology of man, the mythology of science. It expresses the basic presuppositions of the humanism of the day, so that its absurdities, contradictions, and pretensions have the ring of infallible truth rather than irrational myth.6

Quote:

[E]very experiment, to be valid, requires total control of all factors. Hence, the scientific society must be fully totalitarian, otherwise it will not work, nor will it be scientific.7

Quote:

For Van Til ultimacy belongs, not to the created order, but to God, to the ontological trinity. Van Til, in commenting on modern dialecticism, observes, “All non-biblical thought is dialectical. Dialectical thought expresses itself in the form of a religious dualism” … When men depart from the eternal one and many, they drift into dialectical thought.17

Quote:

Science, like every other aspect of man’s existence, gains illicit ground by claiming a mythical neutrality to which it has no legitimate right. The myth of neutrality, one of Rushdoony’s central indictments of modern thought, permeates scientism more so than virtually any other human enterprise. Science ejects God from His creation as a precondition for explaining it, and then labels the resulting explanations as being neutral rather than being explicitly anti-God.

Daniel Ritchie · #2 (**permalink**) 12-06-2007, 08:09 PM

Quote:

Science continues to move the goalposts, so even if creationists cited up-to-the-minute current research in their favor, that research will quickly drift out of date because creationism’s critics assume that scientific progress always favors the evolutionary paradigm.

The reason men reject creationism is not because of "science" it is because they are sinners who want to "be as God".

armourbearer · #3 (**permalink**) 12-06-2007, 08:26 PM

I've thought for some time that Greek mythology provides a more plausible explanation for the origins of the universe than materialistic evolution. I think that is because the Greeks understood there is a personal element to life, and modern science completely obscures it. As society becomes increasingly dependent on the materialist worldview it also grows more mechanical and impersonally deterministic. This is one Rushdoony book I haven't read, and will look forward to obtaining.

Daniel Ritchie · #4 (**permalink**) 12-06-2007, 08:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by armourbearer

I've thought for some time that Greek mythology provides a more plausible explanation for the origins of the universe than materialistic evolution. I think that is because the Greeks understood there is a personal element to life, and modern science completely obscures it. As society becomes increasingly dependent on the materialist worldview it also grows more mechanical and impersonally deterministic. This is one Rushdoony book I haven't read, and will look forward to obtaining.

If you are wanting to order R.J. Rushdoony books note that the Chalcedon Store is now running a posting option which lets them post books overseas very cheaply. I can order any number of books from them and it only costs me $10 postage, whereas in the past it usually cost me $30.

armourbearer · #5 (**permalink**) 12-06-2007, 08:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daniel Ritchie

If you are wanting to order R.J. Rushdoony books note that the Chalcedon Store is now running a posting option which lets them post books overseas very cheaply. I can order any number of books from them and it only costs me $10 postage, whereas in the past it usually cost me $30.

Excellent, thanks for the tip.

Daniel Ritchie · #6 (**permalink**) 12-06-2007, 08:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by armourbearer

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daniel Ritchie

If you are wanting to order R.J. Rushdoony books note that the Chalcedon Store is now running a posting option which lets them post books overseas very cheaply. I can order any number of books from them and it only costs me $10 postage, whereas in the past it usually cost me $30.

Excellent, thanks for the tip.

Happy to oblige; considering how hard it is to get Rush's books in the UK (except for James Dickson, but he only has a limited number) the $10/£6 postage is a real boon.

3John2 · #7 (**permalink**) 12-07-2007, 10:41 AM

Does anyone know if any of Rushdoony's books are available in Spanish? HOw bout Indonesian?

Daniel Ritchie · #8 (**permalink**) 12-07-2007, 11:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 3John2

Does anyone know if any of Rushdoony's books are available in Spanish? HOw bout Indonesian?

You are probably best off contacting the Chalcedon Foundation.

Ivanhoe · #9 (**permalink**) 12-07-2007, 05:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 3John2

Does anyone know if any of Rushdoony's books are available in Spanish? HOw bout Indonesian?

see for yourself
The Chalcedon Foundation - Faith for All of Life

a few books and some articles.

Cheshire Cat · #10 (**permalink**) 12-07-2007, 05:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by armourbearer

I've thought for some time that Greek mythology provides a more plausible explanation for the origins of the universe than materialistic evolution. I think that is because the Greeks understood there is a personal element to life, and modern science completely obscures it. As society becomes increasingly dependent on the materialist worldview it also grows more mechanical and impersonally deterministic. This is one Rushdoony book I haven't read, and will look forward to obtaining.

Evolutionary theory can be traced back to Anaxamander, one of the earliest Greek philosophers.

Thomas2007 · #11 (**permalink**) 12-07-2007, 07:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by armourbearer

I've thought for some time that Greek mythology provides a more plausible explanation for the origins of the universe than materialistic evolution. I think that is because the Greeks understood there is a personal element to life, and modern science completely obscures it. As society becomes increasingly dependent on the materialist worldview it also grows more mechanical and impersonally deterministic. This is one Rushdoony book I haven't read, and will look forward to obtaining.

His analysis that evolutionary thought is the basis of racism is quite illuminating:

"When man is regarded as a produce of his environment rather than a creature responsible to God, he ceases to be of much importance, either as a person or in his own thinking. Darwin himself doubted the validity of many aspects of his evolutionary model. For example, while denying all revelation, he believed that it seemed reasonable to conclude, "that the Universe is not the result of chance," even though his theory did so much to entrhone chance. He added,

"But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the conviction of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"

Darwin thus professed little respect for his own intellect. It is not surprising then that he had little respect for some races. He believed that some would be eliminated, and wrote, "Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world." In other words, Darwin felt that evolution would eliminate "lower races." This is one possible approach to
the "problem" from the evolutionary perspective: weed them out. The other approach is equally deadly: since environment changes men, provide these "lower races" with a new environment, new education, and a new set of controls, and you will quickly evolve them to the same level as that of what Darwin termed "the higher civilized races." Both of these evolutionary approaches reveal a fundamental contempt for man and a readiness to use him experimentally. More importantly, they shift the problem from faith and character to planning and control, from responsibility to conditioning and experimentation."

This really illuminates the problem of modern American society today and the hostile racism implicit within the quest of the State to equalize the social conditions of men in order to harness the evolutionary process. Which is consistent with Greek and Roman antiquity resting upon the foundation of man existing in chain of being whereby a political religion is developed for attainment of divinity and the divination of the State.

Another Rushdoony work that I very highly recommend is "The Atheism of the Early Church." I have had great success in combating evolutionary atheists utilizing the teachings of both of these books by demonstrating the impotence of their atheism and the religiousness of it as the confessional statement of a political religion. If they held consistently to the principle of atheism, it is necessary to become a Christian in order to be an "atheist" whereby one can look a self proclaimed god in the face and deny his divinity, as the early Christians did toward Caesar and Rome. How hard is it to not belief in a God you cannot see, anyway? Yet they present themselves in a pompous puffed up attitude that they are representing the high intellectual ground, slaying that pompous attitude is quite fun, too!

Cordially,

Thomas