Modern Gnosticism
We have noted that the Gnosticism derives from the Greek word for knowledge. We need now to remind ourselves what the Latin word for knowledge is – scientia – from which, of course, the word 'science' is derived.
Just as one of the early enemies of Christianity was Gnosticism, offering a salvation through secret knowledge, we can see how 'knowledge through science' is now increasingly seeing its agenda as removing 'the God delusion'.
I have regularly read the New Scientist. Many of the articles are very helpful, one on Climate Change particularly so, and I recall feeling very helped by others on the subject of health and computers.
But (and you knew there was a 'but' coming) many of the articles are openly theological. Belief in God is put in the same category as belief in ghosts. Morality is explained away in purely evolutionary terms. Evil people merely lack empathy, we have been told. And the chief idea attacked – apart from belief in God – is the concept of the soul.
The creed of the New Scientist and other similar publications is that human beings are simply sophisticated animals, or – to use a slightly different metaphor – very complex machines. At death we die, and that is the end of us. Those of us who understand the core methodology of science will spot straight away that science cannot examine this area. It cannot collect evidence, it cannot test hypotheses, about what happens to us after our bodies die. So why this interest in an allegedly scientific journal? Why so much theology?
The answer is that the Scientism of this and other journals is very theological. Its creed is that what science cannot investigate simply does not exist. While one body of literature distinguishes between the 'seen' and the 'unseen', Scientism proclaims: 'there is only the seen.'
So those of us who experience the 'unseen', knowing we cannot bring scientific evidence precisely because it is unseen, are condemned as suffering from a delusion. We have the wrong sort of knowledge!
Christians are usually, in this sort of literature, labeled 'creationists', and are presumed to deny evolution totally. Well I delight in the description Christian, and also accept that there is a lot of indisputable evidence for evolution; whether through accident or by what farmers call 'breeding', we all know that the physiology of animals and plants can change and be changed.
But whether the physical, observable, measurable, cosmos is 'all there is', is a philosophical and ultimately a theological question, a matter a faith and belief. I no longer feel impressed by a sentence which begins 'scientists believe ...'. There are many such sentences in the New Scientist. Pure theology most of them. The modern enemy of Christianity is this updated definition of where knowledge comes from, that excludes the spiritual dimension completely. This is modern gnosticism. Since it rejects any reference to the spiritual realities many of us actually experience, we need to look at a more inclusive view of reality.