A few weeks ago, I introduced IFI readers to Science Uprising, a project of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture that aims to (among other things) help people living in a secular culture learn to separate out legitimate claims of science from philosophical claims made under the guise of science. For a quick recap, philosophical materialism is the belief that matter and energy is all that exists. Best captured in Carl Sagan’s famous pronouncement that “The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be,” it is a belief about the nature of reality.

But materialism is not a scientific belief. It is a philosophical presupposition that many people associate with the practice of science. In some circles it’s actually called scientific materialism, as if the two are inextricably connected. But there is nothing that says they necessarily go together (except perhaps for certain atheist-materialists who insist that they do).

To be sure, there are some very smart practical materialists who work in the natural sciences, but we are under no obligation to submit to their materialistic impositions on our thinking about the natural world. You don’t have to have a Ph.D. to spot materialistic claims being put forth in the guise of science, and here’s an example of how you can start to train your children in worldview thinking and inoculate them against such philosophical sleights of hand.

You Are Stardust is a whimsical children’s book that encourages children to feel good about themselves because they and we are all part of nature. The title refers to the scientific belief that the atoms that make up our bodies were forged in the stars. Now, it is true that most scientists believe the elements that comprise the earth and our bodies were, indeed, originally forged in stars, so I wouldn’t take issue with that. The point I would draw out of You Are Stardust is that author Elin Kelsey has nothing more to offer us as grounds for feeling good about ourselves.

Nature is a wonder, yes, and the fact that we are a part of it is a marvel as well. But is that it? Is that all we have to latch onto as a reason to feel good about ourselves? Well, if materialism is true, then yes, it is.

Here’s what I would recommend. Get a copy of You Are Stardust and also get a copy of You Are Special, by Max Lucado. Both of these books are written for children ages four and up. Get You Are Stardust from your library if you don’t want to buy it, but I would suggest buying You Are Special. It’s worth reading over and over again, and in fact is not just for children but has a powerful message for adults as well.

In a nutshell, You Are Special is the story of Punchinello, a misfit wooden person who feels like an outsider and a loser until he learns he can find his worth by going to visit Eli every day. Eli is the maker of all the wooden people who lives up on the hill overlooking the village. Before Punchinello leaves Eli’s workshop after his first visit, Eli lifts him up so they’re looking eye to eye and says, “What I think [about you] is more important than what [the other wooden people] think. … you are special because I made you. And I don’t make mistakes.”

How’s that for a reason to feel special?

Read both of these books to your child, preferably in one sitting (if you don’t have children at home, read them for yourself), and let the contrast of worldviews serve as a backdrop for follow-up conversations. Of course, you know your children and how best to engage them, but here are some questions to spark your thinking:

• Who is Eli?

• Why is Punchinello sad?

• What makes Punchinello special?

• If you and I are stardust, what makes the stars special?

• Nature is beautiful, but does nature love us? Does it know us? Can we have a relationship with it? Does it love us?

The main point I hope you’ll take from this is that we can engage with the works of materialists head on. Rather than avoid them, we can learn to spot materialist assumptions lying behind their claims about the world, draw them out, and interrogate them. From there, we can engage in a kind of compare and contrast analysis between a picture of the world from the perspective of philosophical materialism, on the one hand, and one from the perspective of Judeo-Christian theism, on the other. Which one is more satisfying? Which one resonates with certain things we know to be true about the world? Which one better “fits” reality as we know it and live it? Hopefully, questions like these will spark ongoing, meaningful conversations with your children about the ideas that are already competing for their allegiance in the culture.

Being stardust may be cool but being stardust and being known and loved by your maker is profound. Even a four-year-old can grasp the difference between being just “a part of nature” and being known and loved by the maker of nature and the stars.

Early Bird Special Expires Soon!
We are looking forward to welcoming Rev. Franklin Graham to our annual fall banquet on November 1st to share his faith, concerns about the secular culture and his vision for our country. Don’t delay in getting your tickets, as our early bird special expires on Sept. 2nd!

Learn more HERE.

Science Uprising Pulls back the Curtain on Pseudo-Scientific Posturing

In the 1980s, Madonna captured the image of one girl’s shallow, self-absorbed life with her pop song, “Material Girl”:

You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl.

The era’s personal materialism of “I like stuff” or “Stuff is all that matters” was also captured in TV teen Alex Keaton of the sitcom Family Ties. Individuals may not be so enamored today of material things, but there’s another kind of collective materialism that holds undue sway in our culture. I’m talking about “materialism” as a philosophy.

Materialism as a philosophy is simply the idea that the material world is all there is. Put differently, materialism is the belief that matter and energy, interacting according to the laws of chemistry and physics, constitute the sum total of reality. Philosophical materialism, then, is a belief about the nature of reality.

Sometimes, we hear it stated overtly, such as when celebrity scientist Carl Sagan intoned, “The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.” Most often, though, it’s subtle. It is assumed but not stated. This is especially true in the realms of the natural sciences. Consider, for example, the children’s book You Are Stardust, which encourages young children to feel good about themselves because the atoms that make up their bodies were forged in the stars. Author Elin Kelsey doesn’t come right out and say, “There is no God” or “The universe is all that exists.” She has simply assumed that materialism is the truth about reality, and then written a whimsical children’s book from that philosophical perspective.

Today, philosophical materialism is almost universally conflated with science. You Are Stardust is categorized as a (what else?) science-based picture book for children. We can also discern this conflation behind statements like, “I don’t believe in God; I believe in science,” as if theistic belief and science are inherently incompatible. But they’re not incompatible, and despite what celebrity scientists like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Bill Nye the Science Guy might say, there’s nothing that says materialism and science necessarily go together.

So, the question thinking people should be asking is, Why should materialism enjoy such a privileged, unquestioned position in our culture? And the answer is, it shouldn’t.

Enter Science Uprising, a project of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. Science Uprising burst onto the scene this past summer with a series of short, edgy videos challenging this materialistic metanarrative on the ground it’s been squatting on for far too long: the natural sciences. The first episode sets things up by explaining what materialism is, demonstrating how its pretensions have become deeply embedded in our culture, and showing how it actually runs counter to many aspects of life we all believe to be true and value. Subsequent episodes look at neuroscience and the reality of the mind, DNA and the reality of coded information in the cell, evolutionary biology and the failure of the neo-Darwinian hypothesis, and more. The upshot of it all is that philosophical materialism fails to adequately explain reality as we know it and live it. Moreover, it fails when put to empirical tests.

How do such concepts as love, compassion, justice and the human soul fit into a narrative that says only matter and energy are real? They don’t. And this should be our first tipoff that maybe materialism isn’t the whole truth about reality. No one–not even materialists themselves–actually lives as if materialism is true.

You don’t have to be a working scientist to think for yourself about science. Research shows that a big reason young people are abandoning Christianity in droves is because they’ve been told it’s incompatible with science, when the truth is, it’s materialism that is incompatible with both Christianity and science. We are instructed in Scripture to “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5), and if ever there were a lofty pretension lifting itself up against theistic belief, then materialism should be crowned as king of the whoppers.

Thankfully, the consumeristic materialism of the 1980s has less appeal to youth today. The task for today is to pull back the curtain on this whopper of a lie about reality, an idol of the mind that is even more destructive to the soul. So, check out Science Uprising here, and let the demolishing begin.

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