Karl Marx believed in no such thing as the nature of man, in fact he described a person at birth as being a blank sheet of paper on which culture writes its text (Fromm, 1961, Chapter 4). Naturalism, like Marx, seems to say that man is indeed a product of his environment (Keathley, 2007, letter C), factor in evolution, man is just a highly evolved animal where thoughts are considered chemical processes that respond to an external stimuli (Keathley, 2007, bullet point C1).
This line of thought then takes away man’s free will where blame for wrongdoing is then cast upon personal circumstance rather than conscience (Keathley, 2007, bullet point C1). Simply put, naturalism reduces man to a ...view middle of the document...
7).
God is intelligent, which makes us intelligent and logical thought out of the orderliness of God’s mind flows through our being making us uniquely intellectual in that we possess a mind and method of both thinking and learning (Staub, 2013, para. 8). Scripture reveals that God is relational and as such man is relational, “Let us make mankind in our image” Genesis 1:26 (New International Version) reveals that truth and the very nature of God that is within all of us, certainly it is not good for man to be alone (Staub, 2013, para. 9). Lastly, we are morally responsible because God is morally responsible (Staub, 2013, para. 9). Natural laws govern the universe; God’s moral laws govern human behavior and are written on the hearts of us all (Staub, 2013, para. 10). I attempted to be brief in my definition of how we are created in God’s image. It was too difficult, there is much more to “us” than what naturalists would lead us to believe. I ask myself what concrete basis does naturalism or any “ism” for that matter have that can fully discredit the timeless truths of Christianity? Regardless, let’s explore further how naturalism tries to undermine the truths of Christianity and the view of what a human being truly is.
One disturbing belief of naturalism is that human beings are made up of matter and that with death comes the extinction of personality and individuality (Sire, 2009, p. 74), that person simply disappears. There is no heaven or hell, just nothingness; we are reduced to a once functional biological organism that transacted in a social and biological...