Did man evolve accidentally, or is his existence the result of a creative act?
Is there life after death? Am I given a purpose?
Where do we look for answers to such questions, assuming we care?
In Christianity alone, statisticians tell us there are over thirty thousand denominations. Which of these offers authentic truth? It is no small inquiry. I venture to say there is no man, woman, or child who will not contemplate the questions of how they came to exist, the purpose behind it, whether they will continue to exist and in what way. Furthermore, the central question of the existence of a higher power and its consequences for us has vexed and divided mankind since he first aspired to ask it.
In the seventeenth century, when Galileo described the earth as rotating the sun, science began to assert itself as the arbiter of the yet unknown. With the Age of Reason, the authority of the scientific method of inquiry began its rise to occupying the place of rational authority. Religion experienced a relatively humbling categorization as quaint mystery. Most unsolved material questions that were matters of competing views have fallen to the credit of the scientist. We now know why volcanoes erupt, in other words.
But the scientist has overextended himself. He rose from the high seat to mount the high horse; explaining all things by reducing them to their smallest elements. His accounting for cosmogenesis, arrival of life, evolution, and the nonexistence of God is an accounting he cannot make without assumptions. So he assumes for us all.
This creates a troublesome dilemma for modern man. Is he required to reject his faith, or in practicing faith in God, is he required to reject the rationality of science?
In The Next Awakening, a solution is offered to the wrangling debate of the atheistic scientist with the fundamentalist Christian.
