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When data is deified

There are only two religions in the world, though they may wear a thousand faces – the one which flows with crystal purity from the true and living God, and that which gurgles from the heart of fallen man. The lines of distinction are often blurred between the two, and it’s sometimes hard to recognize the variations, but they are there. The one relies on God, the Triune God, the God who took on human form, lived a perfect life, bore the wrath that we deserved, in death upon the tree, rose again, and ever lives to make intercession for us now before His Father, and Who sent His Spirit to be with us and in us until that day He brings us home again. There’s THAT God, and then all the other counterfeits. The imposters are different in each age and manifest themselves in many forms. And while every culture has its counterfeit, the advent of the internet is coalescing the deity de jour. Here in the West, but spreading ’round the globe, the three-headed monster of Knowledge, Pleasure, and Power is the current form of its appearing, an unholy and heartless trinity, demanding complete submission. Allow me to present my case.

Humans are made in the image of God, and as such are made to worship Him. But entering the world with the guilty stain of Adam, we run from the true and living God, and sniff about for another. But His likeness, etched upon our souls, bends our noses towards a particular kind of scent. Having a mind capable of reason, we crave a god of knowledge, who understands far more than we do. Desiring delight, we hunger for a source of endless pleasure. And feeling our weaknesses, we long for a power that can meet our every need. Made in His likeness, we all possess a triune yearning. Normally I write of things around us, which daily declare our Maker, with the simple goal of helping you recognize our Creator’s constant revelation. But for the next three posts I want to take the opposite approach and draw your thoughts to a contrary communication, the competing counterpart to the One who has no equal. My hope is still the same, though; I aim to help you better see the truth, by meditating for a moment on the lie.

The sovereign of these three distorted deities is Knowledge, for though he stands as separate and distinct from the others, his ruling voice defines their veneration too. His clergy are the “experts” in each field, who establish what is orthodox for all. Science is the predominant vestment Knowledge wears these days, and here his language reaches far above the common man. Like Roman Priests, reciting Latin while the worshippers look on, these scientists bandy their scholarly jargon before the wondering masses, who are confounded by their educated speech. We are assured their pronouncements are the gospel, and only heretics would dare deny their stance. There can be no debate once their revelations have been made. Data-driven and peer-reviewed, no questions yet remain. Ours is but to fall in line and bring the necessary oblations.

The faithless scientist has been gripped by the “edges of His ways” (Job 26:14). He has stumbled upon something he knows is far beyond his intellect, but inquisitiveness and arrogance drive him onward in his quest for answers. But right answers are hard to come by when the questions aren’t correct. Sensing something bigger than himself, he tragically stops short of finding the true and living God. He labors hard to hone his craft of searching out the mysteries of the world. Then he bows before the works that he has made and worships and obeys their ever-shifting edicts (Isa. 44:17). Always the pragmatists, we overlook the mighty works of God and settle for the mighty things that work. And far too often the things our hands have fashioned come to rule us.

But science isn’t really the enemy of the truth. It’s the mind that presupposes there’s no God. So instead of the gracious Father of Creation, we have Mother Nature, evolved and bountiful, but who’d rather have her children gone. Instead of a loving Sovereign who “opens His hands and satisfies the desire of every living thing” (Psa. 145:16), we are made the saviors of a world that’s gone awry and berated by the experts for our environmental sins. “Science tells us….” we are told, but its authoritative pronouncements sound strikingly similar to the worldview of the researcher presenting them to us all, biased and myopic, and usually dismissed by further data. We are not offered the holistic wisdom of the ages, just the produce found from plowing in the field of God, and neatly assembled with a meaning given by the one who dug it up. When data is deified it is a ruthless ruler. It is heartless for the simple reason that it has no heart. It is a cobbled god, stitched together, like the soulless monster Dr. Frankenstein constructed. And when it speaks like this, it can only crush the soul.

This is the first god of the heartless trinity that so many worship in our world today. In my next post, we’ll consider the second of this triune farce, Pleasure.