New Hebrides idol.
How did people come to worship the earth, make sexually promiscuous acts into religious obligations, sacrifice infants for advantage, assign kings divine rights, impose irrational taboos, bow to idols, and so forth? According to dominant social theory, these things were the normal response of primitive peoples to a world they did not understand. As knowledge increased, primitive religions became more rational, evolving into higher religions, and becoming monotheist in their highest forms.
According to the Bible, just the opposite happened. Mankind abandoned an original, pure knowledge of God and adopted vile and destructive religious caricatures in its place. In the Bible view, primitive religions are actually decadent religions.
Which view does the evidence support?
This year’s growing hype over Earth Day festivities, verging at times on Earth-worship, are but one piece of evidence suggesting that the Judeo-Christian consensus which dominated the western world for centuries is fast eroding. Not only is the Earth being elevated to goddess status in the popular imagination, but there has been a growing veneration and protection of pornographic expression and a tendency to vilify anyone who does not embrace sexual promiscuity as a socio-religious obligation. To sacrifice the infant in the womb for convenience is treated as the epitome of civility. Civil rights gained at great cost in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by religious dissenters such as Quakers and Baptists, are coming under constriction by modern governments.
In short, as Western knowledge of God has declined, a replay of the scenario described by the Bible is unfolding. Our culture is fast embracing nature worship, government as god, and other beliefs common to decadent religions.
Those who believe in following the evidence (the scientific approach), rather than a-priorism can hardly help admitting that the unfolding tendencies support the Christian view. Religious understanding in the west is not evolving but devolving.
Tags: religious theory
