p. 9 | Scientific Idolatry by L. A. Reed

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Mar 10, 1904

Scientific Idolatry

By L. A. Reed

L. A. REED

THERE is that in man which tends to carry him away from God. Forever there is a downward pull that, without conscious effort on his part, will carry him into the deeps of woe. There is a mighty tide that flows darkly to the shoreless sea of despair. The carnal mind is not subject to God, neither indeed can be. Rom. 8:7.

Ever since the time when man hid from God amid the trees of the garden, he has sought to avoid the searching eye of the Sinless One. And though God comes seeking him, and, with a voice of pity and compassion, asks, “Where art thou?” man still seeks in vain to hide his life from the scrutiny of God.

Ever since evil came into the world, there have been substitutes for God. In every age there has been a strong tendency for man to exalt something into the place that belongs alone to the Creator. Ages ago it was all the fashion for humanity to worship some visible form instead of the invisible God. When the children of Israel had reached the foot of Mount Sinai, so strong was this tendency with them that God wrote on imperishable stone: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.”

And when God spoke these words while “the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven,” he intentionally did not appear in visible shape to their eyes. Moses, reminding them of the occasion, says, “Ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice. . . . Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for

ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire: lest ye corrupt yourselves and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female.”

By this we see that God designedly allowed them to see nothing of himself, lest they should make this appearance the foundation of a new form of idolatry; “lest,” as the Scripture says, “ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure.” It would be gross idolatry for them to use for religious purposes a likeness even of God. And so the Lord avoids presenting to them any likeness, similitude, or tangible manifestation of himself.

But the principle goes even further. God avoided giving them any visible token of himself, not alone to keep them from making images, likenesses, or similitudes; but it was also to prevent them from using, for religious purposes, the things that were already made, even though these had been created by God himself. They were to take heed to themselves and make and worship no images; but they were also to take heed to themselves lest they worship those very things of creation which are the manifestations of God. “And,” says Moses, “lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath imparted unto all nations under the whole heaven.”

Those days are past, but something of the fashions of those times still lingers. There may be those who are still worshiping the sun, or the moon, or the stars. In so doing they are violating this very same principle. Idolatry assumes many forms. It is as insidious as is its author. It is as varied in its forms as are the temperaments and environments of men.

As we have seen, it is idolatry to have gods that have been fashioned by the hand of man. But the Scripture also shows that it is idolatry to have, as gods, the sun, moon, or stars, in fact, anything that in the mind of man takes precedence of God.

Some men may pride themselves on the fact that they do not as the heathen did. They may boast that they are wise above the worshiping of wood or stone or the shining hosts of heaven. And yet these same men, even more persistently than the heathen, seek to conduct God, so to speak, to the borders of creation, and bow him out of his own dominions.

Ages ago an idolatrous city built an altar to the Unknown God. And in these later days Herbert Spencer has written volumes, attempting to show that God is unknown and unknowable. And in these same books of his we find countless things which to him are fully sufficient for the work of creation. Without hesitation we are frank to say he has worshiped and served the creature (created things) more than the Creator.

La Place invented the nebular hypothesis in order to account for the creation of the universe without the necessity of God. He told Napoleon that he had no use for the hypothesis of a god. And yet this was the very thing that he did need; for, after a hundred years, scientists, many of them undevout, find that his hypothesis is utterly incapable of explaining the origin of the universe. Says Asa Gray, himself a scientist of no mean reputation: “An excellent judge, a gifted adept in physical science and exact reasoning, the late Clerk-Maxwell is reported to have said, not long before he left the world, that he had scrutinized all the agnostic hypotheses he knew of, and found that they, one and all, needed a God to make them workable.”

Some men deal with the things of nature, realizing nothing of God, explaining the various phenomena of nature by such terms as force, law, affinities, attractions, repulsions, media, fortuitous concourses, physical bases, and the like. And one who is thought to be a scientific guide has sought to account for the origin of things as being “a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, through continuous differentiations and integrations.” It is difficult to put this into plain English; for actually it amounts to very little.

Said Cecil Rhodes, the late magnate of South Africa: “I believe in Force Almighty, the ruler of the universe, working scientifically through natural selection to bring about the survival of the fittest and the elimination of the unfit.”

The ostrich seeks to hide from its enemy by shoving its head in the sand; and so men seek to avoid the real Cause of things by hiding behind mental conceptions and impossible things. After all, it is but a species of idolatry; for it places nature and force and law and other things in the place of God.

Nature still speaks of her Creator; but men are dull of hearing. It is said that there is a marble tablet in the wall of the observatory at Williams College upon which are chiseled the words from Isaiah: “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things; that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.” This is a call from God which man will do well to consider. A noted scientist once said, “The undevout astronomer is mad.” And it is indeed strange that one can study the machinery of the heavens and be unimpressed.

Says David, “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest him?” While sailing down the Mediterranean beneath the glories of the evening skies, some of Napoleon’s officers engaged in dispute, and denied the existence of a Creator. Finally the great general, wearied with their babble, pointed upward to the numberless stars above them, and said, “All very well, gentlemen, but who made all these?” They looked and were silent. When the French infidel said to the Vendean peasant, “We will pull down your churches, destroy your pictures, and demolish everything that reminds you of God,” the peasant replied, “But you will leave us the stars!”

Now, as of old, “the heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. . . . There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.”

“In reason’s ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice, Forever singing as they shine, ‘The hand that made us is divine.’”