Albert the Pious’ daily radio broadcast from Monday, January 25, is well worth your time; not because it is especially smart, but because it illustrates how utterly debased the devout Christian mind actually is. But first a few quibbles.
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Every single worldview has to start by answering the most basic question of all. Why is there something rather than nothing? Nothing would need no explanation; the existence of something does.
This is an unbearably tedious old chestnut; it puzzles me, frankly, that theologians don’t recognize how meaningless the question actually is. For starters, define ‘nothing.’ And then explain why ‘nothing’ should be the assumed default state of the universe.
And, by the way, modern physics has shown that energy and mass are the opposed end-points of a single continuum, and the discovery of the Higgs Boson provides a mechanism for the conversion between mass and energy. In other words, physics has answered the ex nihilo complaint without resort to magic. (Without energy there is no Big Daddy doing magic tricks, either.)
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The Christian worldview, like every other worldview, has to move from why is there something rather than nothing, which Christianity answers with the doctrine of creation, to what’s gone wrong with the world, which is where the Christian worldview answers with the doctrine of the fall and the doctrine of sin.
The next question is, can anything be done to rescue? And that is where the Christian doctrine of redemption, the doctrine of atonement through the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ to the whole doctrine of salvation, plays such a central role. And then every worldview has to answer the question, where is all of this going?
What basis does Mohler have for saying that something has ‘gone wrong’ with the world? Besides, I mean, the Inerrant Bible says so? And what basis does Mohler have for saying that rescue is needed?
Is there any objective reason to think that something has ‘gone wrong?’ Not a scintilla.
There are no good grounds for thinking anything has ‘gone wrong.’ Physics does know where this is going, by the way; the sun is going to burn out, and earth is going to become a cold dead rock transiting eternal darkness. I don’t suppose that’s so charming a prospect as lolling around for eternity in the land of milk and honey and nubile cuties, but there you go.
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Mohler confuses secularism with unbelief throughout today’s broadcast, though they are not the same thing. Secularism is merely government neutrality toward religion; unbelief is rejection of god(s). It is entirely possible to be a believer in some god or another while believing that government governs best which is indifferent to religion (What do they teach about American history at Southern Seminary, anyhow?)
It gets worse:
We can either believe that the world is as the Scripture reveals, made by God, by a sovereign act, by his Word in order to display his glory and in order to present the theater for the drama of redemption, or we can understand that the world is merely an accident that somehow matter and time and energy intersected in such a way that through a “Big Bang,” as it is called, or by some other means, nothing simply became something.
Read that passage carefully, and notice the implications:
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“… in order to display his glory and in order to present the theater for the drama of redemption …” Really? The world exists as a display of His vanity? And some people will burn for eternity because He failed utterly to make a plausible case for His very existence?
Perhaps Mohler will be moved to explain some day why he thinks such a self-absorbed and amoral Being deserves to be worshipped.
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And, No to the claim that belief is a choice. If you are intellectually honest, you do not have a choice. Facts are facts, and if you are intellectually honest you go with the facts. You do not ‘choose’ to believe in an Invisible Friend who does really cool magic tricks because the alternative is metaphysically scary. And you don’t believe garish nonsense because it offers a complete soup-to-nuts narrative that defies the established facts.
Keep this in mind, too: Mohler runs a seminary for America’s largest Protestant denomination; he graduates several hundred yahoos every year, and the overwhelming majority of them believe all this witless gunk.