The Impossiblity of Neutrality

"A field studied as it "ought" to be studied is with Godly and consistent presuppositions. A field as it should not be studied is in ideologically-attempted neutrality. There is no such thing as religious neutrality, especially in academic fields. Religious ideas exist everywhere; they exist in the mathematics and physics department just as much as the sociology or theology department. When scholars attempt to study under the false premise of religious neutrality, error is bound to occur.

Religious neutrality is impossible for two reasons.

• First, there are no facts that exist without reference to other facts.
• Second, even the scientist depends on non-material, untestable laws to arrive at scientific (daresay, "objective") conclusions.

No field of knowledge or science is capable of demonstrating coherence outside a framework of basic assumptions (worldview), let alone accounting for its own conclusions. Therefore, no field of study will produce objective claims without operating within the worldview that the Creator upholds - the same Creator which created those fields of science to begin with. If God is who He says He is, knowledge itself only exists because he has decreed that it would exist. Jesus is actually Lord over everything, including all fields of academics and science and the realm of knowledge itself. Our knowledge is derivative of God's primary and ultimate exhaustive knowledge. It thus follows that a person studying any academic discipline who claims to "know" something inevitably has to do one of three things:

1. Admit that no knowledge (justified, true belief) is possible (relativism),
2. Admit that knowledge is possible, but only on the basis of undefined, unverified, and unobservable and therefore religious assumptions,
3. Or inconsistently hold that knowledge is mysteriously possible and there's no reason, justification, or purpose for it.

So, supposedly "religiously neutral" or "unbiased" scholars who do successfully gain facts and knowledge (justified, true belief) of the observable world only do so because they unintentionally - but do by necessity - borrow the epistemological machinery necessary to obtain that knowledge in the first place. It is fascinating then, to observe the atheist try and argue against Christianity, for argument itself supposes an ideological framework (like Christianity) that makes arguments even possible."

~ from Light Up the Darkness

by Jamin Hubner

* * *

Persevero,