Professor Stans and the Arguement that Couldn't

Professor Stans rubbed his sweaty hands together and wiped them on his slacks. He was admittedly nervous but his excitement was the more dominant of his emotions. Finally he would have his opportunity to share his findings with the university and then hopefully the world. He walked out to the lectern on the stage already prepared for his presentation. Taking his place he looked out at a packed auditorium full of anxious students, faculty, alumni and some of the more prestigious of the local community. His nervousness no longer present he allowed his excitement to move him now as he began, "Ladies and gentlemen, friends and colleagues it is my humble opinion that I have here tonight the task of revealing that scientific method is no longer a method to be seen as reliable. It is more our culture's over confidence and blind reliance on past tradition that continues to provide strength and sustenance to this invention of long ago." The confident professor then begins to attempt to prove to his hearers the frailty and unreliability of the scientific method in the data he has acquired from his experiments over the past few years. Stans ends with a very eloquent closing statement and expecting a roar of applause receives nothing but silence cascading from disappointed and annoyed faces.

It is no mystery why Stans fails to captivate his audience. His entire argument is a contradiction for he attempts to prove that scientific method is an unreliable means of coming to truth by using scientific method!

There are many who would say that they believe there can be no God because there is so much injustice and evil in the world. How is it that we understand what injustice and evil are and look like? Where do we learn and gain our standards in regard to right and wrong and good and evil? We are Westerners and are greatly influenced by the Biblical definitions and standards. Most of us, as Timothy Keller points out in his book, “The Reason for God”, reject the “Christian” God when we say there is no God.

Like professor Stans and his critique of scientific method, we take for granted the Christian worldview we stand on and use it to say that Christianity is false. If Christianity is false then so is our standard of justice and good for they belong to Christianity. If we abandon our standards and definitions we also abandon the foundation upon which our skepticism stands.

Christianity is not only the worldview from which we know what justice is, it is also the worldview that offers hope in injustice, the promise that humanity can overcome it. Jesus suffered at the hands of injustice and has called his people to suffer as well. This suffering, ironically, is to result in the end of injustice.

Without Christianity we have no standard for justice nor do we have any hope or means to endure and eradicate injustice.