Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
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Charles Magne cites Rushdoony approvingly in The Negro and the World Crisis<br />
(undated), in which he demonstrates that the Bible teaches that blacks were created<br />
separately, as animals (servants and beasts of burden <strong>for</strong> the Adamic white race), and<br />
have no souls. (Rushdoony, on the other hand, accuses evolutionists of claiming separate<br />
origins <strong>for</strong> the races, and insists that the Bible teaches the unity of all mankind.) Magne’s<br />
argument, expounded in many similar books and pamphlets, is a central doctrine of the<br />
“Christian Identity” movement, which is espoused by many neo-Nazi groups. In<br />
“Christian Identity” belief, blacks are a pre-Adamic creation, literally the “beasts” of<br />
Genesis (there being both four- and two-footed kinds). Eve was impregnated both by<br />
Adam, whose descendants are the white race, and by Satan the Serpent, from whose line<br />
Jews descend. “Christian Identity” doctrine is endorsed by many neo-Nazi groups.<br />
THE COSMONOMIC MOVEMENT<br />
Christian Reconstructionism has interesting ties with the Cosmonomic movement,<br />
which began in Holland around the turn of the century. Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch<br />
Prime Minister (1901-1905), was a conservative Calvinist theologian who campaigned<br />
against liberalism. Rushdoony attributes to Kuyper the development of the concept of<br />
“sphere laws.” It was Kuyper who first advanced the notion that all thought must<br />
proceed on presuppositional faith (the presuppositional apologetics developed later in this<br />
country by Van Til), recognizing God’s sovereignty in each “sphere,” rather than relying<br />
on reasoning solely from evidence.<br />
Herman Dooyeweerd, a Calvinist philosopher and law professor at the Free<br />
University of Amsterdam (founded by Kuyper in 1880 as a bastion against liberalism),<br />
expanded on the concept of “sphere law” and presuppositional apologetics in his massive<br />
three-volume treatise A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (1953-1957; originally<br />
published in 1935-1936 in Dutch; published in this country by Presbyterian and<br />
Re<strong>for</strong>med).<br />
The great turning point in my thought was marked by the discovery of the religious root of thought itself,<br />
whereby a new light was shed on the failure of all attempts, including my own, to bring about an inner<br />
synthesis between the Christian faith and a philosophy which is rooted in faith in the self-sufficiency of<br />
human reason.<br />
I came to understand the central significance of the “heart,” repeatedly proclaimed by Holy Scripture to<br />
be the religious root of human existence. On the basis of this central Christian point of view I saw the need<br />
of a revolution in philosophical thought of a very radical character. Confronted with the religious root of<br />
the creation, nothing less is in question than a relating of the whole temporal cosmos, in both its so-called<br />
“natural” and “spiritual” aspects, to this point of reference. In contrast to this basic Biblical conception, of<br />
what significance is a so-called ‘Copernican’ revolution which merely makes the ‘natural-aspects’ of<br />
temporal reality relative to a theoretical abstraction such as Kant’s ‘transcendental subject’?<br />
From a Christian point of view, the whole attitude of philosophical thought which proclaims the selfsufficiency<br />
of the latter, turns out to be unacceptable, because it withdraws human thought from the divine<br />
revelation in Christ Jesus.<br />
If temporal reality itself cannot be neutral with respect to its religious root, if in other words the whole<br />
notion of a static temporal cosmos ‘an sich,’ independent of the religious root of mankind, rests on a<br />
fundamental misconception, how can one any longer seriously believe in the religious neutrality of<br />
theoretical thought?<br />
One of the fundamental principles of this new philosophy is the cosmological basic principle of sphere<br />
sovereignty. Its development was suggested by (the famous Dutch thinker and statesman) Abraham