Willie Whitepebble, Wayne’s boy, graduated from university with a degree—not one of those ‘so what?’ degrees to which you say, ‘Sorry for not having a PhD in the hogwash your PhD is in’—No, he graduated with a real degree in a bona fide discipline: philosophy. Thereupon, he started dissing faith.

‘Since science shows humans are but the tiniest speck on a planet of the most insignificant star, and not the very center of the universe, so much for man-centric-religion,’ he said.

Straw man argument, anyone? There may be churchy types that carry on as though the central theme of the universe is our personal salvation, but that’s on them. It is nothing the Bible advances.

The Bible has man at the center of the universe, does it? How did this one escape his attention:

“When I see your heavens, the works of your fingers, The moon and the stars that you have prepared, What is mortal man that you keep him in mind, And a son of man that you take care of him?”

No boasting about human importance there. ‘Dust on the scales,’ the psalmist calls them: “The sons of men are a mere breath, The sons of mankind are a delusion.  When laid together on the scales, they are lighter than a mere breath.” (Psalm 62:9)

So if science disproves faith, it certainly does not do so on the basis that it gave people of faith a rude awakening, as though they imagined themself the center of everything and now they can no longer do so.

Willie came up with another straw man: Science shows how chaotic are the subatomic building blocks of life, therefore belief in God is nonsense—as though men of faith have always figured Lego blocks were the starting point.

Why doesn’t he just go with Job 26:14?

“Look! These are just the fringes of his ways; Only a faint whisper has been heard of him!”

No expectation of simplicity there, is there?

If Willie disses faith, as appears his Mission now, he must do it with arguments that apply, not with straw man arguments that don’t.

He must not confuse church with Bible. Often they are different. And he must not confuse church with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Often they too are different. Does church put humans at the very center? Often they do. Witnesses don’t.

And if the early ‘science’ of Aristotle that came to be favored by the early Church—drawn to it because it was knowledge by decree, rather that observation, that doesn’t mean the Bible favored that ‘science.’ There is Aristotle, pasting on the heavenly bodies on the canopy surrounding central earth. He may do it. The Bible does not do so.

“He stretches out the northern sky over empty space, suspending the earth upon nothing,” says Job 26:7

I used to attempt to hang my pen upon nothing, to illustrate how unlikely it was for ‘primitive’ man to envision Job’s words on his own. Very carefully I would hang it there, before letting go. Always it would fall. But that was when I carried a pen. Nowadays all is digital and so I am stymied.

All this is not to say that Willie’s college may not serve him well. It well might, at least in the short term. His stint at the optician’s office was cut abruptly short when he proved himself not too observant about sign placement.

(Photo: anonymous on social media. If it’s yours, claim it)

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