While Ph.D.'s in philosophy may not succumb to the temptation of dabbling in the supernatural as a means of climbing up the scale of universal being, the average person who hears such speculation
and takes it seriously, especially when it comes from some mystical guru or charismatic leader, will have no intellectual help him to resist.
The steps to personal transcendence - the promised "leap of being" - are only too often little more than intellectualized magic.
The quest for metaphysical transcendence rather than ethical transformation and repentance is a major source of the impetus to occultism. Occult exercises are too often the means of the promised self-transcendence.While Ph.D.'s in philosophy may not succumb to the temptation of dabbling in the supernatural as a means of climbing up the scale of universal being, the average person who hears such speculation and takes it seriously, especially when it comes from some mystical guru or charismatic leader, will have no intellectual foundation to help him to resist.
There steps to personal transcendence - "leap of being" - are only too often little more than intellectualized magic. The quest for metaphysical transcendence rather than ethical transformation and repentance is a major source of the impetus to occultism.
Occult exercises are too often the means of the promised self-transcendence.
Witchcraft (sorcery)-Ex. 22:18
Necromancy-Spiritualism- Lev. 19:31; 20:6; Deut. 18:11
Astrology-Isa. 47:13
False prophecy
inaccurate-Deut. 18:20-22; cf. I John 4:1
idolatrous-Deut.13:1-3
Divination - Deut. 18:10
arrows-Ezk.21:21
livers-Ezk. 21:21
images-Ezk. 21:21
Fire walking-Deut. 18:10
Omens-]er. 10:2
Wizardry (secret knowledge?) - Deut. 18:11
Charms (snakes)-Jer. 8:17
Enchantment (spells)- Isa. 47:9-12
Times (lucky days?)-Lev. 19:26
The Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament in the
second century, B.C., substituted pharmakeia for the Hebrew word for
sorceress in Exodus 22:18, from which we derive our word "pharmacy."
Moloch worship was thus stateworship. The state was the true and ultimate order, and religion was
a department of the state. The state claimed total jurisdiction over
man; it was therefore entitled to total sacrifice."l4:
The Hypnotic Lure of Mathematics .
The seventeenth century produced a new world view based on
Cartesian rationalism and Newtonian science. Rene Descartes [dayCART]
was a rationalist and probably heretical, but as a Frenchman,
he feared the Roman Catholic Church, so he kept his theological
views to himself. Isaac Newton, on the contrary, was an outspoken
providentialist.
systems rested on the foundation of applied
mathematics. The previous century had brought the startling conclusions
of Copernicus and Kepler concerning the heliocentric nature of
the solar system. They had helped to created interest in mathematics
as a tool of comprehension, in opposition to the assertion of orthodox
Aristotelian philosophy that mathematics is not central. In a very real
sense, Copernicus and Kepler had returned to Plato, Pythagoras,
and the Neo-Platonists, who also saw mathematics as important. 2o
18. Stanley L. Jaki, The Road ofScience and the Ways to God (University of Chicago
Press, 1978), chaps. 2-6; Jaki, Science and Creation: From eternal cycles to an oscillating universe
(Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1974).
19. Gary North, Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion (Tyler,
Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1985), Introduction.
20. E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (Garden
City, New York: Anchor, [1926] 19§4), pp. 52-56.
The neo-pagan mysticism and sun worship of Kepler, however, did
not accompany the spread of his mathematical world view.
The success of Descartes, who had experienced an ecstatic illumination
in 1619 which had informed him that mathematics is the sole
key for unlocking the secrets of nature, and then the even greater
success of Newton at the end of the century, had elevated mathematical
logic to a position of pre-eminence. 21
capacity of mathematics to describe the regularities of certain natural and physical processes
convinced many philosophers, most notably Hobbes, that mathematics
is a universal tool which could be used to create a science of man
and society.
Blinded by the dazzling success of Newton in physics and astronomy,
a success which was vastly greater than the crude measuring
devices of his era could record, men hesitated to inquire into the apparent
absurdity of Newtonian science.
Why should mathematicalreasoning, an abstract mental skill and even art, be found to correspond
to the mechanical processes of the observed world?
Why should such a mind-matter link exist? As the Nobel-prize winning
physicist Eugene Wigner has put it, such a finding is utterly unreasonable.
22 But the correlation exists.
The Christian knows why the correlation exists. It exists because
man is made in the image of God. Man has been assigned the task of
exercising dominion over the earth as God's lawful subordinate
(Genesis 1:27-28). Because God exhaustively and perfectly understands
His creation, men are able analogously (though not perfectly
and exhaustively) to understand the creation.
The creation is not lawless, for it was created by an orderly Creator who sustains it by
His providential sovereignty. In short, ours is a personal universe. We
are persons made in God's image, so we can understand our world.
The world was not a product of random events, nor are our minds
the product of random evolution. The world was created by God.
Mathematics, too, is God-given, and can be understood and defended
only as a product of a Creator God.23 Thus, there can be and
is a correspondence between the logic of mathematics and the operations
of the external world.
21. Ibid., p. 105.
22. Eugene Wigner, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural
Sciences," Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, XIII (1960), pp. 1-14.
23. Vern S. Poythress, "A Biblical View of Mathematics," in Gary North (ed.),
Foundations of Christian Scholarship: Essays in the Van Til Perspective (Vallecito, California:
Ross House, 1976). true men worship the idol of their hands to much or imagination or any external ego apart Christ in the God head.
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