Genesis and Paganism

I am pretty sure those of us with children have been asked all kinds of question. However, I don't think many of you have been asked this particular question (please let me know if this is not the case): "What is paganism?" It came from the backseat of our car, from our 6-year-old daughter.

My smart wife, as usual, quickly deflected the question to me. "Papa, why don't you answer this?" After a brief thought, I said that different people define it differently but from the perspective of the Scripture it just means that all other worship that is not directed toward God the Father.

It has been a couple of weeks since and after doing a little research on the Net, I found this definition of pagan from Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

1: heathen 1 ; especially : a follower of a polytheistic religion (as in ancient Rome)

2: one who has little or no religion and who delights in sensual pleasures and material goods : an irreligious or hedonistic person

3: neo-pagan (a person who practices a contemporary form of paganism (as Wicca))

According to Bruce Waltke in his book, An Old Testament Theology, the creation narrative in Genesis was written to:

Israel in the Wilderness, who was on their way from Egypt to Canaan, both places saturated with pagan mythology. In their annual rites, the practitioner re-enact their pagan creation myths, hopeful to have the land and womb fertile and fruitful for coming year. The human actually have the tools and means to manipulate the divine sphere. Moses presented a revolutionary message, one that went against the dominating messages of the cultures. One that presented a personal God, uncreated, creating order out of chaos. Human was created under the Sovereign dominion of God.

Israel in Babylonian Exile, the creation narrative, though part of the original Mosaic core of material, likely reached its final form during Israel's exile in Babylon. Deities with names like: Marduk (the creator and chief deity), Adal (the storm god), Ishtar (the fertility god), Tiamat (the ancient goddess Tiamat who was destroyed by Marduk and her carcass was made into heaven and earth).

The Genesis 1 creation narrative is directed toward the harmful (toward biblical faith) ancient and modern pagan ideas. Waltke then quoted H. Conrad Hyer who said that each day of creation dismisses an additional cluster of deities (the gods of light and darkness, gods of sky and sea, gods of earth and vegetation, gods of sun, moon, and star), takes away associations with divinity from the animal kingdom, empties human being of any intrinsic divinity.

Modern paganism has six faces:

1. Materialism, since the Enlightenment, is the common view. It is the philosophical theory that regards matter and its motions as constituting the entire universe; all phenomena, including those of the mind, are regarded as due to material causes.

2. Since everything is material, then this leads to empiricism, insists that all knowledge is based on observation, experimentation, and verification, this has led to belief in a self-sufficient universe that can be understood on its own terms, without any need of the transcendent or God.

3. Materialism and empiricism led to determinism, and understanding of reality as mechanical and valueless. The origin of life and the nature of our humanity are determined by natural causation.

4. Secularism, is a system of political or social philosophy that embraces materialism, empiricism, and natural causation and rejects all forms of religious faith and worship in the public sphere.

5. Secular humanism, any system or mode of thought or action in which human interests, values, and dignity predominate. It does not acknowledge God and God's ownership of the created order.

6. Post-modernism or New Ageism is a return to old-fashioned paganism with a modern twist. Eastern religions (Taoism, Buddhism, and to a degree Hinduism) was appropriated and their terms were distorted with Western concepts. Personal "spirituality" replaces the personal God.

Genesis 1 comes with two clear messages: (1) God, the uncreated, almighty sovereign Creator has created the universe and the living beings, creating order out of chaos, over against the Egyptians who thought that anything outside of Egypt was in chaos, (2) the humans are created to worship the Sovereign Creator.

 

~oOo~

Charles Darwin is so yesterday ...

When I was driving home from work today, I saw a run down Ford truck in front of me with a "University of Michigan - The Wolverines" bumper sticker on one side and with the logo of a fish with legs and the word "Darwin" inside (see below). I can only see the young lady who drove the car from the back when she turned away.

 

First, the sign above is a satirical twist to the early Christian symbol, the fish, also known as Ichthys (Greek for fish) that was formed from the initial letters of the phrase: Iesous Christos Theou Huios Sotere (Jesus Christ God's Son Saves). The fact that various fish symbols have been used for pagan gods before Jesus is not important at this point because if Jesus can sanctify me (and He has), He can sanctify anything else.

That Darwinian fish logo also stands for the acknowledgment of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

I have news for you, Darwinism is out of date!

Please consider this:

Darwinists hold the view that all species evolve from one form into the next strictly through natural mechanism-- inheritable variation operated on by natural selection.

He has got to go back further. So far, he has only dealt with life's transformation once it existed.

Darwin addressed the origin of life in 1871, more than a decade after he published The Origin of Life in late 1850s. He advanced the idea that life could have emerged on Earth through chemical processes involving ammonia, phosphates, and other inorganic materials.

A new field of biochemistry emerged at the end of 19th century. The subsequent discovery of the complex chemical system in a cell with all the enzymes and various forms of protein changed our understanding of the cell. The idea of the birth of life from non-life was abandoned. Instead, many scientists began to accept the view that life, life matter, as eternal. Like Darwinian evolution or abiogenesis (life from non-life), this new approach  called panspermia does not need a creator.

In the early 20th century, scientists accepted the idea that the universe has a beginning. Panspermia was abandoned. Case in point, two days ago the largest particle collider (the Large Hadron Collider-LHC) was turned on for the first time in France to discover the "God's particle" that account for the mass of all the atoms in the universe. This is a worldwide collaboration of scientists trying to understand what happened at the "Big Bang." Apparently, those scientists at LHC hold the view that the universe has a beginning.

Furthermore, with all the ultraviolet radiation in the outer space, no bacteria could have survived the journey to seed life on earth. All scientific efforts so far have led to dead ends more often than to further pathway for exploration. Yet, we have come full circle, abiogenesis (in the new name of neo-Darwinism) was tried again, then panspermia (in the new name of neopanspermia).

Russian biochemist Alexander I. Oparin and British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane tried to bring back abiogenesis, culminating with the experiment by Stanley Miller, who performed the famous spark-discharge experiment. His experiments produced amino acids (building blocks of life) and other organics by passing an electrical discharge (simulating lightning) through a gas mixture without oxygen. This model of the atmospheric condition of the early earth was based on the theories of his doctoral advisor.

Science magazine in 1995 said that experts now dismiss Miller's experiment because 'the early atmosphere looked nothing like the Miller-Urey simulation.'" This and other rebuttal (including the Kalam cosmological argument, Cambrian explosion, DNA, irreducible complexity, etc.) are presented in the book The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel. Check it out. Highly recommended.

One can be amazed at the people who are trying their best to take God out of the creation business. They are willing to hold on to their naturalistic mechanism to explain the origin of life in spite of the mounting evidences and new knowledge that go against their currently held view.

So far, all scientific evidences and progresses point to:

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. "

(Genesis 1:1)

Your next move, Darwin ...