CAN ONE CHURCH PEW HOLD TWO MORAL UNIVERSES?

BENJAMIN D. WIKER
Benjamin D. Wiker is a tutor at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California.

The Christian & The Epicurean

Those who hope to negotiate civil compromises to our society's major moral disagreements search in vain for middle ground or common ground on which we can all gather. In the middle, there often seems to be no ground at all, but thin air, an abyss. Because our moral disagreements break out into political battles, and because politics is the art of compromise, political truces of various sorts are worked out from time to time. But these constructions are wobbly at best, for across the moral gap politics can throw only a rope-bridge that is likely to give way when real weight is placed on it. The moral divide is wide and deep, and across it two cosmologies - two incompatible visions of the universe, of nature and human nature - confront each other. One is the Epicurean, the other is the Christian, and between them the differences go all the way down.

Hopeful consensus-builders may not see that the two are distinct and antagonistic. Even some Christians and Epicureans may not be clear about it For during the centuries-long contention between the two cosmologies, a large group on the Christian side has incorporated Epicureanism into itself and has mutated - though still calling itself Christian - into its own enemy. Such must occur of necessity: Since Grace builds on Nature, a Christian who adopts a view of Nature completely at odds with Christian Revelation thereby blinds himself to some of that Revelation. This impaired Christianity is, to be blunt, Liberal Christianity. With one eye looking toward Epicurus and one eye looking toward Jesus, it stumbles about, unable to see where it is going or where it has come from.

Where, in fact, have we come from? And how does the struggle between Epicureanism and Christianity stand today? The story of how these two came to divide between them the contemporary moral debate is fascinating. The sketch below describes, first, Epicureanism and its antithetical relation to Christianity; then how, historically, Epicureanism came to form the modem outlook and even to influence Christianity itself; and finally, the contours of the moral debate between the Christian and the Epicurean today.

Epicurus ( B.C.) was first and foremost a moral philosopher, not a natural philosopher. His goal was the achievement of tranquility; the means to this goal was materialism. "Do not believe there is any other goal to be achieved by the knowledge of meteorological phenomena," Epicurus admonishes his readers, "than freedom from disturbance." Epicureanism is, then, a way of life seeking a universe to support it. Epicurus employs the atomistic materialism of Democritus, not because he has empirical evidence that it is true but because it fits his ethical goal of freedom from disturbance. If we were already tranquil, he says, "we would have no need of natural science." We may begin to grasp this relationship of ethics to physics by examining Epicurus's famous four-part cure.

Don't fear god;
Don't worry about death;
What is good is easy to get;
What is terrible is easy to endure.

Take the second part first. Epicurus is right that the fear of death is a great cause of anxiety. Not only do we fear extinction, but we also dread divine punishment or we hope for eternal reward. All this anxiety could be cured, however, if the universe were such that these concerns are groundless. The "cure" is materialism: Eliminate the soul, and such worries may disappear with it. Epicurus adopts Democritean atomism for just this purpose. Following Democritus, Epicurus claims that the universe is constituted by only two thing: atoms and void.

It may sound odd, here in the Atomic Age, to fault either Democritus or Epicurus for asserting that there are "atoms." After all, almost every philosopher before or since has claimed that there are elements of the physical universe far smaller than the naked eye can detect. But the essence of Democritean atomism is its materialistic reductionism. Democritus is not merely saying that there are atoms; he is saying that there are only atoms, that everything in the universe can be reduced to the motion of matter. All the rich and complex variety in nature - humans, animals, plants, sound, color, taste, fear, hope, love, hatred, thought, belief, life, and death - all this is ultimately unreal because, at bottom, everything is the motion and position of lifeless, purposeless atomic points.

Since everything is made of atoms, then even the "soul," Epicurus tells us, "is a body," consisting of "fine parts." Therefore, the soul, like the body, disintegrates after death. Since our soul "scatters" at death, then "death is nothing to us." All our dread and worry about death and the afterlife lose their foundation.

So much for the afterlife. But Epicurus had to face another pressing question: Even if there is no afterlife in which the gods can punish and reward us, can they not affect us in this life? We modems are used to thinking that materialism means atheism. Epicurus, however, is adamant that the gods exist. Indeed, they are the paradigm of tranquility because they live without any worry about themselves. (Even though they, too, are made of atoms, somehow they aren't subject to bodily dissipation.) More importantly, they do not Epicurus insists, care about us. They neither reward us nor punish us, but dwell in sublime indifference to human affairs. Why indifference? If they weren't indifferent, they would lose their divine tranquility.

Furthermore, nature is independent of them. They could not manipulate it even if they cared to. Thus, the constant interventions by Zeus and the rest of the gods reported by Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey can only be myths. Thunder and lightning, for instance, are not signs from Zeus. All things in nature can be explained by atomistic materialism. "Thunderbolts can be produced in several different ways," Epicurus claims. "Just be sure that myths are kept out of it!"

Because nature is self-contained, it has no need of a creator, for the atoms themselves are eternal, and their eternal motions "create," by their random activity, all that we see in nature. Hence there are no signs of the gods in the workings of nature. We have nothing, then, to hope for or to dread from the gods, nor do we owe them reverential gratitude. Thus, part one of the cure is established: "Don't fear god."

And what of our other vexations? What about pain? Tranquility is disturbed by pain and by the fear of pain, Epicurus knew. There are, he said, two sources of such disturbance: unavoidable pain and avoidable pain. The unavoidable sort is caused by diseases and other maladies. The good news is that such pains are either long-lasting but not severe, or severe but of short duration. We can endure the less severe ones; the more severe ones kill us, so
we won't have to endure them for long (and death, as a worry, has been dismissed). Therefore, "what is terrible is easy to endure."

Most pains, however, are avoidable, because they are self-inflicted. We suffer because we overindulge and overdo. What we need by nature to satisfy the body is very little. We could be perfectly happy, Epicurus admonishes us, on "barley cakes and water." Epicurean asceticism eliminates the pain brought about through intemperance by severely curtailing the desires for bodily goods. Therefore, according to Epicurus, we needn't be troubled because "what is good is easy to get."

It is important to get clear that the asceticism of Epicurus is consequentialist. He doesn't advocate abstemiousness or continence because indulgence is intrinsically wrong, but because the effects may disturb our tranquility. Pleasure as pleasure is not evil; indeed, "every pleasure is a good thing," Furthermore, every pain is evil, though one may choose to endure some lesser pain today so as to keep from suffering a greater pain tomorrow.

Good and evil, therefore, are defined in terms of pleasure and pain. Paradoxically, Epicurus insists that the greatest pleasure is the absence of pain. Beyond that, all "positive" pleasures are merely equal; none is better than another. But this identification of good with pleasure and evil with pain, and this declaration of the equality of all pleasures, ensured that the original asceticism of Epicurus would easily slide into non-ascetic hedonism. Who, after A, really prefers barley cakes and water? It is not surprising to find that soon after Epicurus's death two factions emerged: ascetic Epicureans and hedonistic Epicureans (often known today as Epicures). Indeed, they remain with us today, especially the latter type.

Even this brief outline makes clear that Epicureanism is diametrically opposed to Judeo-Christianity. The Bible states that there is one God, and that He is the Creator of all things. Nature is not made' by the random, self-contained activity of matter. Nature is created, divinely crafted, and it is the theater of human salvation. The God of Christianity is sublime and independent, but unlike the divinities of Epicurus, God is passionately concerned about our every move, so concerned that He sent His only begotten Son to be crucified for our sake. According to Christianity, both we and nature are completely dependent on God, and He continually reveals Himself to those whom He chooses, and intervenes in nature with miracles for the sake of giving signs of His power and will.

Since cosmology is different for Christians, morality is different as well. Because nature, including human nature, is divinely made, its order is divinely ordained, and violations of that order are moral violations. Actions are good or bad, not insofar as they cause pleasure or pain, but insofar as they fulfill or violate the order of creation. Some pleasures, then, are intrinsically evil even if no discernible evil physical effects attend them. And, of course, Christians believe in the incorporeality and immortality of the soul. So actions are judged not by their contribution to tranquility in this life but by how they direct the soul toward Heaven or Hell. Death, rather than being "nothing to us," is everything to us, for death seals our eternal reward or punishment.

Now that we have an outline of the two views and can see their manifest incompatibility, we must see how, historically, they were brought into the same moral arena. Epicureanism flourished between 300 B.C. and A.D. 200, its greatest proponent being the Roman, Lucretius, whose De Rerum Natura ("On the Nature of Things") (c. 50 B.C.) is an account of Epicurean principles more systematic than Epicurus's own. But Epicureanism was defeated by its two chief historical rivals, pagan Stoicism and Christianity. Both Stoicism and Christianity held that the universe was divinely ordered (though the Stoics knew not the God of the Hebrews) and that nature, being divinely designed, was purposeful (teleological) rather than purposeless (non-teleological). Furthermore, both considered Epicureanism to be morally repugnant and both heaped insult and opprobrium on it until they thought it was smothered. Christianity then vanquished Stoicism, and held the field alone. Europe became Christendom.

Epicureanism, and its attendant materialist atomism, lay dormant for almost a millennium and a half. In the meantime, the Church accepted Aristotle's teleological account of nature as the natural philosophy most consonant with everyday experience and with the revealed account of creation. But the 15th century saw the rediscovery of Epicureanism. Ambrogio Traversari published a Latin translation of Diogenes Laertius's Greek Lives of Democritus and Epicurus in the early 1400s. Then, while looking for ancient manuscripts, Poggio Bracciollini happened upon a complete copy of Lucretius's De Rerum Natura (it had theretofore been known only in fragments and scattered quotations). After publication in Italy in 1473 it was disseminated throughout Europe. Because the Renaissance received its atomism complete with Epicureanism, wherever atomism caught on Epicureanism was sure to follow, and wherever Epicureanism inspired newfound devotion, a keen interest in atomism would soon flower. Atomism spread rapidly, and by the end of the 16th century it was considered a viable cosmological rival to the reigning Christian Aristotelianism.

The battle of these cosmologies since then has been constant, a Four Hundred Years War in which various phases can be discerned: the era of compromise, the subordination of Christianity to Epicureanism, the time of open conflict, the apparent victory of Epicurean atomism, and now the most curious phase yet - the overthrow of Epicurean atomism not by Christianity but by modem physical science.

The era of compromise runs, roughly, from the latter part of the 15th century to the early part of the 17th. Lorenzo Valla - more famous for proving that the document called the Donation of Constantine was a fake - wrote a treatise entitled On Pleasure in which he tried to reconcile Epicureanism with Christianity. In the early 16th century Erasmus tried his hand at fashioning a Christian Epicureanism, and St Thomas More's famous Utopia (1516) contains a mixture of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Epicurean elements. At the other end of this era, Pierre Gassendi (), Catholic priest and apologist for atomism, offered a much more influential version. In it, he tried to jury-rig a Christian atomism by asserting that the atoms were not eternal, but created by God. It seemed a way to wedge the Christian God into atomism. The wedge would not hold.

In the next phase, rather than Epicureanism being modified to fit Christianity, Christianity was subordinated to Epicureanism. Thomas Hobbes wrote his great ethical-political treatise Leviathan (1651), which was based on the principles of atomic motion he had learned from Galileo. In it he cleverly transformed Christianity, making it a tool of this-worldly order and subordinating it to the state. Hobbes was immediately branded an Epicurean and an atheist. But Hobbes was enormously influential. At the end of the 17th century another atomist, John Locke, presented all the basics of Hobbes's argument anew but in a gentler manner, smoothing the rough edges and playing up the religion - while avoiding any direct disclosure of how radically he had revised Christianity. Locke was a major influence on the 18th century and he, more than any other thinker, laid the foundation for Deism, the religion of the philosophes.

It is worth noting that Hobbes and Locke also altered classical Epicureanism, or, to be more exact, they chose the more popular branch of it, favoring Epicurean hedonism over Epicurean asceticism. For in their view of human nature, desire is fundamental. Locke proposed to release desire from the restrictions of Epicurean asceticism (and, obviously, from the restrictions of orthodox Christianity as well) and to direct desire to the production of wealth and the conquest of nature. Tranquility, which Epicurus proposed to buy by denial of the passions, is by Locke purchased with the coin of widespread material prosperity engendered by technological mastery of nature. The passions are for Locke the very fuel of progress. According to this modem form of Epicureanism, pleasure is maximized by prosperity and pain is minimized by technology.

But what of the disturbance to our tranquility caused by the Divine - how do we minimize that? The answer was what we call Deism. Most history textbooks identify Deism as a new, rational religion invented by the Enlightenment Deism was not new, however; it was a revived Epicurean theology wearing a thin Christian disguise, and Deism soon declared itself to be a religion independent of Christianity, rather than just a modification of it The scientific success of Isaac Newton seemed to prompt this heady declaration, for Newton's Principia (1687), published at about the same time as Locke's works, was presumed to vindicate the entire cosmological argument of Epicurus and Lucretius. No more was it a battle of words: Science had given the victory to Epicurus.

As a consequence, the Epicureanism of the 18th century was in no mood to compromise with Christianity; the philosophes now waged open war. Diderot saluted Voltaire, the leader of the attack as the "sublime, honorable, and dear Anti-Christ." He meant this to be strictly descriptive: Both Diderot and Voltaire saw Christianity as a morbid, otherworldly cult of superstition which inhibits this-worldly tranquility and progress. The Deist tirades against Christianity were lifted almost verbatim from Lucretius's ancient tirades against the religions of pagan Rome: Human beings are "crushed to the earth under the dead weight of superstition" which is itself "the mother of sinful and impious deeds."

Under the cloak of Deism, the body of thought is really Epicurean. Note the following familiar Epicurean pattern. The god of Deism is sublimely independent of the world, absolutely tranquil, and self-sufficient. In a new mechanical metaphor unavailable to Epicurus, God is a watchmaker who has built a watch that runs on its own, not a God upon Whom the very continuing existence of the universe immediately depends, nor a God Who passionately attaches Himself to one people in a covenant. The Deist god does not worry about us, and we need not worry about interference from him. This god cannot interfere with nature, for nature is independent and self-sufficient.

The result of this hypothesis was devastating for Christianity. First since nature is independent of the Deist god, and the atoms move by their own iron laws, there could be no miracles. This is, of course, a direct return to the prohibition of miracles by Epicurus. There is an ironic twist however, to the modem form. The Epicurean gods could not break the laws of atomic motion because they themselves were likewise made of atoms. They did not exist independently of nature in the same way that the Creator God of the Bible does. But the modem Epicureans, precisely because they were transforming Christianity, took some of the old mixed with some of the new. Their Deist god was the creator of nature but - and one can hardly convey the full strangeness of the irony - this god could not break any of the laws of nature he created.

But Deism dealt its most insidious blow to Christianity, not by direct attack but by co-opting it by redacting its sacred texts into Deist-compatible scripture. Deism rewrote the Old and New Testaments, excising any interference by God. (Thomas Jefferson actually made his own gospel, with scissors and paste.) Miracles were declared to be impossible, including those of the Church's sacraments. Christ the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity became Jesus the moral teacher. The Christ of Christianity had to go, for not only did He perform miracles, but in His In
carnation and Resurrection, He was Himself a miracle. Christ was declared to be only human, and was reduced to teaching merely a human moral code which deals with getting along in the world - that is, with freedom from disturbance. The blueprint for such Epicurean scriptural exegesis was provided early on by Hobbes in his Leviathan and by Spinoza in his Tradatus Theologico-Politicus (c. 1670). But the most influential application of it came in the 19th century.

The 19th century seemed ready to write the epitaph of orthodox Christianity. Every indication was that Newton had spoken the last word in science. This meant that nature was essentially as Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius had described it. And Epicureanism had become yet more self-confident and aggressive. Since the Deist god was the only possible god, and since such a god was dearly impotent and unnecessary, Epicurean hedonism became atheistic Epicurean hedonism, an even harsher enemy of Christianity. Over on the Christian side the Liberals - ever alert to the march of progress - met the attacks of Deists and atheists by leaping over to the side of their declared enemies, helping them to destroy the remnants of orthodoxy, and then declaring victory. But the only victory was that of Epicureanism, because in Liberal Christianity there was nothing left of Christianity but the name.

It is essential to understand that the principal reason Liberal Christianity threw itself into the arms of the enemy was that Newton's atomistic materialism seemed to be beyond scientific question. Grace builds on nature, and if our understanding of nature undergoes a radical change, then Grace must either be transformed accordingly or must be abandoned. That is why some well-intentioned persons embraced the exegetical principles of Hobbes and Spinoza and used them to "de-mythologize" the Bible. From one end of the 19th century to the other, and from D.F. Strauss to Rudolf Bultmann and beyond, we can hear Epicurus in the background of biblical studies shouting, "Just be sure the myths are kept out of it! "

Then the unexpected happened. At the end of the 19th century the bottom dropped out of Newton's tidy universe. That is, the theoretical support in science for Epicureanism disappeared, atomized (pun intended) out of existence by the new physics. But mental habits are hard to break. Even though developments in physics in the past one
hundred years have undermined Epicurean cosmology, Epicureanism stiff forms the intellects of the vast majority of us, including possibly a majority of Christians.

Hence, our current impasse. On the one side, Epicurean materialism. On the other, orthodox Christianity. In the middle, Liberal Christianity, which speaks the language of the Christian but believes in the cosmos of the Epicurean. The antagonism of the two sides - and the muddle of the Liberals - is nowhere more clear than in the area of morality, as I suggested at the start of this article.

The sharp distinction between the moral worlds of the Christian and the Epicurean is often blurred by superficial similarities. Both, for example, might speak out in behalf of the poor, and it would seem that there could be some kind of united moral effort in this regard. But apparent general agreements give way almost immediately to concrete disagreements. Take a familiar example: A desperately poor country is descended upon by orthodox Catholic missionaries and by some Epicurean-type aid organization (such as the United Nations). Both agree that feeding all the hungry mouths is a priority, but almost immediately the Epicureans are handing out condoms, giving birth-control shots, and setting up sex "education" programs, while the Christians are trying to teach chastity and Natural Family Planning.

It is beyond the scope of this article to map the entire realm of moral disagreement, but I will end by focusing on some intractable moral issues, matters of life and death, beginning with the issue just mentioned, sex. Epicurus did not call specific sexual acts intrinsically good or evil. He merely pointed out that sex often leads to loss of tranquility because it either arouses desires that cannot be fulfilled or brings about painful effects. The tendency of an Epicurean, then, is to judge the acts according to whether they bring about pain or pleasure. The logical goal becomes the maximization of sexual pleasure and the minimization of attendant pains. The Epicurean might judge premarital sex to be inadvisable if it should decrease income, impair self-esteem, or spread disease. But if social service programs, psychologists, condoms, or doctors can eliminate the painful or unwanted effects, all that is left is the pleasure of the sex - and that can't be wrong. Consequently, Epicureans will be public, political advocates of the technical and medicinal elimination of conception, the medical amelioration and cure of sexual diseases, and the removal of customs and laws that inhibit or prohibit sex outside of marriage.

Christianity, on the other hand, focuses on the acts themselves in light of the order of nature as established by God, and not on the painful effects of sexual actions already deemed to be evil. Such effects, therefore, are taken to be, at most, a sign of the evil nature of the act. Because Christians see sexual desire as ordered to the union of male and female in matrimony for the sake of procreation, then even if all the painful effects were obviated and the sexual partners were brimming with self-esteem, sex outside of marriage would still be intrinsically evil.

So, while both the Christian and the Epicurean might agree that society must address the problems that sexuality entails, their worlds are diametrically opposed and an agreed-upon public policy is impossible. For Christians, the "cure" offered by the Epicureans for society's sexual problems is worse than the sexual ills; in many ways, the proposed cures are causes of the ills. What the Epicurean calls "sex education" is, to the Christian, a formalized destruction of the entire moral order of sexuality (and hence of society).

Or how about abortion? An Epicurean is a materialist; therefore, there is no real and ultimate distinction between the living and nonliving, for everything is made up of lifeless atoms in random patterns. The question of when the fetus is a living human being is nonsensical for the Epicurean. Furthermore, since the moral issue for an Epicurean is whether an action causes disturbance to our tranquility, the abortion debate becomes very easy to settle. I have seen it settled with no more argument than will fit on a bumper sticker: "If you don't like abortion, don't get one." That is, if getting an abortion disturbs you, don't get one; if it doesn't disturb you, then it isn't immoral; but no one has a right to disturb anyone else about it. Moreover, abortion is a necessary "cure" for a side-effect (unwanted pregnancy) that disturbs the pursuit of sexual pleasure. Finally, there is no anxiety for an Epicurean about the immortality of the soul, in regard to the baby, or the mother or father, or the doctor or nurse. The abortee isn't deprived of anything, and the aborters have no divine retribution to fear. "Death is nothing" to them.

Christianity has strictly forbidden abortion from the beginning (one of the earliest non-New Testament documents, the Didache, attests to this). The prohibition is based on the doctrine that every human being is made in the image of God, and that God creates an immortal soul for each human being. Abortion, therefore, is a kind of homicide. Because abortion is treated as murder, the disturbance caused by an unwanted pregnancy can never justify taking the life of the baby in the womb, any more than hardship after birth could justify infanticide (another practice of the ancient world that Christianity forbade). Finally, the eternal penalty for unrepentant abortion far outweighs any possible suffering in this life, while the reward for following God's moral law outweighs any sort of pleasure.

Once again, there is some surface agreement. Both the Christian and the Epicurean agree that the rule "Don't murder" means "Don't kill an innocent human being." But they don't agree on what a human being is. What one views as murder the other views as ending an unwanted pregnancy, because the creature in the womb is understood by the Christian to be a living human with an immortal soul and by the Epicurean to be "matter" which is dependent on the woman's overall bodily functioning, just like any other internal organ. The irreconcilable implications run all the way from the curriculum of a medical education (Shall training in abortion be mandated or forbidden?) to protracted battles about abortion in courts and legislatures.

Another eruption in our civic life of this cosmological dispute is in the matter of suicide and assisted suicide. Epicurus himself seems to have discouraged suicide. The reason is not clear; but the following is a reasonable conjecture. If suicide were allowed, it would be because what is terrible is not easy to endure. Therefore Epicurus would have to admit that pain in the body and soul can occur with such severity that the fear of it is justified, and the presence of it is unendurable. It soon became clear to Epicurus's followers that he was simply wrong about the duration and severity of pain. And if the gods care nothing for us, and if death extinguishes both body and soul, then suicide seems a reasonable and even comforting option. Within a century after Epicurus's death, his followers had turned his opposition to suicide into an advocation. of it. What is terrible is easy to endure, but only because we can
always end our own lives. Since there is no immortal soul, then suicide is really the final exit.

Christianity, on the other hand, prohibited suicide right from the beginning. The question arose whether it is permissible to commit suicide to avoid being forced to commit a mortal sin. St. Augustine settled the matter: If one is forced to commit a sin, then one isn't committing it; therefore, the prohibition against suicide was absolute. But this prohibition makes sense only because Christianity considers this-worldly suffering, however severe, to be redemptive, and because the damned soul receives pains unimaginably greater than anyone could suffer in this life, while the blessed soul receives joys that eclipse all previous pains and pleasures.

Again, there is a kind of surface agreement. Both the Christian and the Epicurean believe that animals may be "put to sleep" because it is cruel to let animals suffer. The Epicurean, since he does not see any ultimate distinction between a human being and an animal, asserts that human beings ought to be treated with the very same "compassion." But the Christian distinguishes between a human being and an animal, and that which distinguishes the two, the immortal soul of the human, is precisely what Epicureanism denies. Therefore, while both the Christian and the Epicurean may speak of compassion for the suffering of the sick and the elderly, what they mean by compassion will be different to the point of irreconcilability.

But the lines of demarcation are blurred by those numerous nominal Christians who are really Epicureans in the Lamb's clothing. Liberal Christians use the language of love and compassion to advance the sexual license of the Epicurean. Or they use Christ's words against judging others to advance the cause of abortion. Or they draw from Christ's suffering the Epicurean lesson that suffering is not redemptive but simply evil, and is to, be avoided by suicide and euthanasia. Furthermore, by making God so merciful that we needn't fear His justice, and by consigning Hell to the realm of myth, they duplicate the effect of Epicurus's position. These are the Liberal Christians, and though the Christian and the Epicurean inhabit different universes, they may be sitting side by side Sunday morning in the same pew.

What can the Christian do to convert Epicureans into Christians? First, we can acknowledge the deep differences between Christian and Epicurean and no longer be confused by superficial similarities. Second, we can grasp that our system of education is still forming Epicurean minds, lagging as it does behind the new science that has exploded Epicurean assumptions about the nature of things. Third, we can work toward a complete re-evangelization of both sorts of Epicureans, those outside the Christian fold and those within it.

Christians should understand that science in the past one hundred years has discovered a universe so intricately ordered that it cannot have happened by accident, that it can only have been made by design. Practicing scientists are demonstrating in wonderful detail that our knowledge of the physical world does not support the materialist cosmological reductionism promoted by the Carl Sagan types. (Recommended reading includes Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe and Nature's Destiny. How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe by Michael Denton.) A thoroughly substantiated cosmology that exposes the fatal flaws of Epicurean materialism may ultimately help to convince the honest Epicurean that the universe has a Master, and that He has in mind a different "cure" for our troubles from that proposed by Epicurus. His cure is, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest" (Mt. 11:28).

The more cognizant we Christians become of the solid grounding of our cosmology, the better laborers we will be in God's vineyard. Every bit of nature that we reclaim from materialism can become another patch of fertile ground in which to sow the seeds of Christ's Gospel. The incredible power locked within tiny particles is a fact of the physical universe confirmed only a few decades ago by experimental science, but a similar power in the spiritual realm was announced by Jesus two millennia ago: "If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed ... nothing will be impossible to you" (Mt. 17:20). The presumptuous sterility of the materialist cosmology should be clear to orthodox Christians, and we should tell the world about it.

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