Christianity’s growth miraculous

Opinion

December 20, 2012

Christianity’s growth miraculous

By Wyatt Emmerich, Syndicated columnist The Picayune Item Picayune Item Thu Dec 20, 2012, 08:00 AM CST

PICAYUNE — The growth of Christianity as the dominant religion in the world is nothing short of miraculous (there’s a reason for that). From its humble beginnings in a barn 2,000 years ago, there are two billion Christians out of a global population of seven billion.

The growth continues, particularly in China, where there are 100 million Christians. In the near future, there will be more Christians in China than the United States.

One in five Americans now say they have “no religion in particular.” Secular humanism is now the greatest impediment to the continued growth of Christianity in America.

Wikipedia defines secular humanism as a philosophy that “embraces human reason, ethics, social justice and philosophical naturalism, whilst specifically rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, pseudoscience or superstition as the basis of morality and decision making.

“It posits that human beings are capable of being ethical and moral without religion or a god. It does not, however, assume that humans are either inherently evil or innately good, nor does it present humans as being superior to nature. Rather, the humanist life stance emphasizes the unique responsibility facing humanity and the ethical consequences of human decisions.”

I know a lot about secular humanism. For much of my life, it was the foundation of my belief system. It’s about man creating God instead of God creating man. Secular humanism poses not just a threat to Christianity, but to humankind.

At the turn of the last century, secular humanism took economic and political form as communism. Intellectuals designed an entirely new economy and society based on equality. The idea was that capitalism had corrupted man. Destroy capitalism and replace it with communism and man’s inherent goodness would flourish.

It didn’t turn out well. Sixty-five million people died during China’s cultural revolution. Twenty million died in the Soviet Union. In all, communism killed 100 million people.

Nazism was another attempt by man to replace God. That didn’t turn out well either. Twenty-five million dead and a world war.

Man has a very lousy record of inventing God. Christianity foresaw the abysmal failure of such grand human endeavors 2,000 years ago: Original sin. The depravity of man.

Secular humanists think evangelical Christians like myself are superstitious mental lightweights who believe in all kinds of silly things like walking on water, the immaculate conception and the resurrection of the body. The secular humanist uses science and rationalism as their tool to debunk Christian myths.

There’s only one problem with such logic: It flows from the human brain — a mechanism completely limited by its purpose, which is to survive and procreate. Using the human brain to understand God is malpractice. It wasn’t designed for that. It is utterly incapable of comprehending God other than through faith.

Our brain is limited by our senses: sight, touch, smell, taste and sound. Just because our brain is limited by its design, doesn’t mean reality is.

Take just sight, for example. Light visible to the human eye is 300 to 650 nanometers. The electro magnetic spectrum runs from 10 megameters to 1 picometer. So humans only see 3.5 x 10 to the negative 26th power of what’s out there. That’s such a small percentage, I’d need a fraction with 26 zeros.

At the highest level of physics and math, science has discovered reality consists of dozens of dimensions. Yet humans can only comprehend four: height, width, length and time (and we have trouble with the time part).

My point is this: Attempting to use science to discredit Christian myths is far more absurd than blind faith. We are, in fact, almost completely blind. It’s just that some people are too egotistical to acknowledge it.

William Ockham was a great 13th century French philosopher. “Ockham’s Razor” is a simple yet powerful piece of reasoning: Given competing theories, the one requiring the fewest assumptions will be correct.

So let’s play the feeble logic game and apply Ockham’s Razor to explain how a poor carpenter living 2,000 years ago led to two billion people believing he is God.

If you assume the Bible is true and he was the son of God, performed innumerable miracles and rose from the dead, all of which was witnessed by thousands of people, that is the only assumption you need.

Throw out the miracles and the divinity, and you have a much more difficult effort to explain Christianity’s great success — and many, many more assumptions.

A secular humanist might ask how God could allow a terrible event like the massacre of innocent school children. If there is no God, then such tragedies are meaningless, random events. Such questions presuppose God. Without God, there is no moral horror, only random molecular propagation.

Everything good in secular humanism is already there in the Gospels, with a great historical tradition to boot. If people are choosing secular humanism over Christianity, we Christians have to think long and hard about getting the message to others. We must become evangelists, with humor, salt and light. In everyday life. Not just in church.

Imagine two doors: Behind one door is the idea that our consciousness is a fluke of nature. Our brains evolved from random mutations of complex chemicals. There is no right and wrong. Just a cruel cold world of survival of the fittest. Everything is meaningless.

Behind the other door is a kind and loving God. A personal God who knows and loves each of us intimately and desires more than anything to walk with us on this path of life until we are with Him and our loved ones forever in heaven.

I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna choose door number two. Now that’s a great reason to celebrate Christmas!

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