Science and Scientism

We live in an amazingly advanced age. While most of us do not work in fields of scientific exploration, we all live in the wealth of it. Ever since someone first learned to harness the power of fire into machinery not too long ago the world has entirely changed, and in many ways for the better. I know I wouldn’t miss what I never had, but I for one feel grateful to be alive today.

But with the beauty of the scientific age has come the new religion of scientism. An approach to God and to truth that beguiles its devotees from truth like an unscrupulous lawyer’s tricks dupe not only juries but their own lying hearts also by repeatedly marginalizing the truth. Scientism robs its adherents of Jesus by religious dogmas posing as scientific deduction. This false religion then, just like any other, has to be cast down by apologetics. For the Christian, our standard of truth against it is still Scripture.

Truth is still in Christ and is still entered into by the Gospel.

My main passage here is where God said, “Where is the wise person? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than mankind, and the weakness of God is stronger than mankind.” 1 Corinthians 1:20-25. God hasn’t left truth up to acumen. Some things indeed may be, but not the truth.

My premise is simple: can a ruler measure sound volume? No. It’s not a matter of application, it’s a matter of possibility. Rulers can’t measure volume, thermometers can’t measure land speed, voltmeters can’t measure temperature, you get the point. Similarly reader, science can’t measure truth. It’s not its lane. The assumed beliefs of scientism whisper and hiss otherwise, however…and often indirectly. The religion of scientism purports to explain away Jesus entirely (usually by not dealing with him at all as he is) and has become for many today as dogmatic a faith as any other religion ever was.

This new religion enthrones its deities by outright denying that any knowable deity exists. Thus it indirectly robs its devotees on spiritual levels only the Christian can detect.

But God in his wisdom has not left truth to mathematics or medicine (sciences). It can neither be proven nor disproven by any of them. It is supported by them, but not based on them or discernible by them.

Truth is in Christ alone. The Christian alone then can truly learn how to measure it. It brings wisdom, but only to those with an open and humble hand. Theology (the Bible) is a science too insofar as its study is concerned so it must be handled with care, but its wisdom is a gift from God to both the wise and the simple. Like nuclear physics people have laid waste to nations only by misapplying it.

Nevertheless, the foundation still sits un-moved and immovable. It has never been shaken. Scripture’s 66 books are the measure of truth, the rock of wisdom and the guide to holiness under God’s amazing epistemology. It’s more powerful in your life than harnessing fire. It’d be as foolish to measure soil alkaline levels by lying a Bible in the dirt as it would be to try to ascertain if there’s a God by cosmological theory, but the foundation still sits and so we pastors still preach a crucified and Resurrected Jesus.

Sciences are not bad.
Scientism is.

Learn about Jesus. God the Son. Learn both of and from Jesus of Nazareth himself in the Bible. In him is hidden all wisdom and truth. He alone can teach any of us how to test and measure truth. He can and he does all across his world.