THE FOOL
THE FOOL
“The fool says in his heart, ‘there is no God’” (Ps. 14:1)
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia lists eight different Hebrew words all translated as “fool”in the Bible. The word in our text is “nabal” which means to be “shamelessly immoral”. Nabal, you recall, was the husband of Abagail and was well named. The Psalmist made it quite clear that one reason people are shamelessly immoral is that they believe in their heart that there is no God. As Dostoevsky said: “If God does not exist everything is permitted”.
Atheist Richard Dawkins has boldly declared, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. . . . DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.” Obviously there is no fear of God in the heart of a man who does not believe in God.
Atheist Thomas Nagel is less strident in his “unbelief”. In his book “The Last Word” (pp 130 - 131) he wrote: “I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about human life, including everything about the human mind …. This is a somewhat ridiculous situation …. It is just as irrational to be influenced in one’s beliefs by the hope that God does not exist as by the hope that God does exist.”
While Nagel remains an atheist and does not “believe” in “Intelligent Design” he none the less has some honest doubts about evolution. In his 2012 book “Mind and Cosmos” he dares to add the sub title: (Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False) One reservation, as the title of his book suggests, involves the mind. Since the “mind” is non material he feels that “common sense” questions that it can be produced by the physical.
Plato, in his Republic likened life to men being chained in a cave facing a blank wall. When they managed to break free and escape the cave they were exposed to a world they were incapable of understanding. One question haunting the philosophers involves the mind. Is man merely a bag of chemicals dancing to his DNA, or does he have a mind separate and apart from the atoms and molecules in his brain? 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes grappled with this problem and concluded: “I think, therefore I am”. He considered his mind not to be physical and therefore separate from his body. Nagel apparently shares this view and thus concluded that Neo-Darwinism does not explain this dimension of reality.
Paul wrote to the Colossians about this and reduced the problem to a simple dichotomy- philosophy or Christ. “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity live in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ . . .” (Col. 2:8 - 10). Remember! Jesus spoke with authority and not like the scribes (Matt. 7;29). Unfortunately, philosophers find themselves on a shoreless sea with no star by which to steer. As someone quipped: “If you are not confused by philosophy then you are not thinking clearly”. Christ, by contrast, minces no words. He speaks with authority: “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn. 14:6).
DON’T BE A “FOOL” - CHOOSE CHRIST!