Christianity is under attack, and it has been so for several centuries. It is not a war between religion and science, as it has often been portrayed, but a head-on conflict between religion and religion, between Christianity and Secularism. The confusion of Secularism with science is understandable because Secularism so often poses as science incarnate, as reason finally come to earth to deliver humanity from darkness. But the fundamentally religious nature of Secularism is revealed both in its messianic pretensions and in the way it stumbles upon its own confusions.

Let us illustrate, using the latest assault on Christianity, what New York Times columnist David Brooks aptly calls Neural Buddhism. For a very long time—one would have to trace the lineage back at least to the English materialist, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)—secularists have been bent on reducing the mind to the brain, and the brain to the crude or elaborate interactions of its material-chemical constituents. The goal has always been quite simple: to reduce the mind to matter so that the bothersome notion of the spiritual soul could be buried once and for all (and with it, Christianity).

The lesson is simple as well. We didn’t discover in the late 20th century that the brain could be reduced to a complex of chemical firings and misfirings. The late 20th century obsession (e.g., Steven Pinker) with flattening the mind to the material brain was merely the playing out of the original secular passion initiated almost four centuries ago. Secularism was the goal that defined in advance what science was supposed to verify—the death of the soul.  Science was a tool for a particular ideology.

The good news is that reality becomes irritated with ideology, and pushes itself through the cracks in pre-conceived theoretical constructs. As Brooks points out, “Over the past several years, the momentum [in neuroscience] has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer.” Indeed, “Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states,” even showing that “transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain….The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.”

Perhaps you can already guess how scientists have cast out one demon, only to have their barely-swept house become inhabited by seven more worse than the first. It has stumbled upon the truth that, contra the materialist dream, even the material aspects of the mind are not reducible to the material aspects of the mind. That is earth-shattering news only to those whose view of reality was bound to earth by secular-materialist assumptions.

But this discovery—which is a stumbling upon the truth, not a grasp of its full contours and immensity—is set to cause more mischief than enlightenment because of the way that it is already being interpreted. It is taken to be a scientific vindication of a kind of Buddhist approach to reality, one that focuses on creating particular, interior states as the source and sum of religion. In such euphoric states, the self melts away into the indefinite infinite, and (states Brooks) “science and mysticism are [thereby] joining hands and reinforcing each other.”

Sound nice? Nicer than materialism? Think again. It is a personal attack; that is, an attack on the human person and a personal God which, while reminiscent of Buddhism, is really just yet another manifestation of Secular Religion.

Therefore, in calling it a Buddhist approach to reality we are being both accurate and misleading, for while it bears some resemblance to Buddhism, the “enlightenment” it promises is merely a rehash of the secularizing spirit of the West’s Enlightenment era, what Christian Smith insightfully called “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”

That’s the seven-fold stronger demon—spiritualized materialism—the same old stuff in a brand-new package, and seven times more toxic to Christianity. It has its roots in two aspects of Deism of the late 17th century. The first was the Deist desire to have an impersonal deity rather than a personal one, a deity that in splendid aloofness did not interfere with our plans for earthly self-fulfillment. The second, from more radical materialist Deism, was the desire to rid the world of the pestiferous notion of an immaterial soul. Jettisoning the soul meant we were merely material beings, that is, not persons but elaborate machines. Both aspects aimed at the ruination of Christianity. Deism accordingly lowered the aim of human life to earthly satisfaction and redefined morality accordingly as that which helps us all achieve the satisfaction of our desires.  Hence Moral Therapeutic Deism.

Back to the “latest” in neuroscience. The important thing to understand is that if the discovery of “self-transcendence” in the brain is slightly more scientific than crude soul-crushing materialism, it is far more potent an enemy to true religion. Brooks understands this with admirable but not entire clarity. The lovely hand-holding of mysticism and science is “bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day.”

We add, they are going to have to defend the particular reality of the person, as something more than the capacity for a “self-transcendence,” precisely because (as with Buddhism) the person is being swallowed up in the generalized capacity. When that happens, the entire goal of religion becomes the worship of the feeling of self-transcendence itself—an impersonal therapeutic deity fuzzily projected upon the cosmos—rather than a real creature’s worship of the real Creator.

Why Narnia Hits While Golden Compass Flops

Can God make one movie franchise a hit and another a flop? That was the question hovering over the first film adaptations of two best-selling fantasy series for children, C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. Lewis' series of seven books, published in the 1950s, was widely seen as a Christian allegory, presided over by the God-lion Aslan, who dies and rises again. Pullman's trilogy, written in the 1990s, described a battle between a dictatorial deity and the rebel angels determined to defeat him. As the author told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2003, "My books are about killing God."

Not quite yet, the Almighty seemed to say when the initial movies based on these franchises were released. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe premiered in late 2005 and earned a burly $291.7 million at the domestic box office, plus $453.1 million abroad, briefly becoming Walt Disney Co.'s all-time top-grossing live-action film. The first sequel, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, has just arrived, with blockbuster expectations. And the next chapter, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, has already reserved the first May weekend of 2010 to open in movie theaters around the world.

The Golden Compass, the first of the Pullman trilogy, reached the screen last December. It cost the same as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ($180 million) but grossed only $70 million at the domestic box office. The very respectable $301 million the movie earned in foreign markets wasn't enough to mask the disappointment of its producing studio, New Line. No sequels were green-lighted, and in February New Line was folded into its parent company, Warner Bros. They of Little Faith

TIME magazine

http://www.emanuellevy.com/article.php?articleID=7968

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism--the New American Religion

When Christian Smith and his fellow researchers with the National Study of Youth and Religion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill took a close look at the religious beliefs held by American teenagers, they found that the faith held and described by most adolescents came down to something the researchers identified as "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism."

As described by Smith and his team, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism consists of beliefs like these: 1. "A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth." 2. "God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions." 3. "The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself." 4. "God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem." 5. "Good people go to heaven when they die."

That, in sum, is the creed to which much adolescent faith can be reduced. After conducting more than 3,000 interviews with American adolescents, the researchers reported that, when it came to the most crucial questions of faith and beliefs, many adolescents responded with a shrug and "whatever."

Albert Mohler

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20050418/6266_Moralistic_Therapeutic_Deism--the_New_American_Religion.htm

2007 Documentary: Soul-Searching: A Movie About Teenagers and God, is based on a seven year study of the religious views of American teens.

http://www.amazon.com/Soul-Searching-Christian-Smith/dp/B0010XZUXI

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