Summary so far - In order to be accepted by a culture, a creation story 
must explain both the physical universe and our spiritual condition, and it 
must do so in an intuitive manner.  Creationism is seen by many as 
unscientific, while others object that evolution, as a science, cannot 
address spiritual issues.  It may be that creationism contains its own 
contradiction.   

Part 5 - The Culture Changers

If creationists prove that the universe can't produce life without 
divine intervention, then our very existence proves God's existence.  In 
creationist logic, which dates back to ancient Greece and Rome 
(specifically, to Plato), the idea of a provable God isn't a problem.  
If God was the source of all order and logic, He ought to be the most 
provable entity in the universe.  Only our sin-induced blindness 
prevented us from reaching such a proof.

Over the centuries, we have developed a science which has tremendous 
power in the physical world, but which cannot (and is not meant to) 
address spiritual matters. In this view, a provable God would be a God 
subject to the human intellect, and possibly even human manipulation.  
This is a far cry from the ancient Greek logic.  What drove some of our 
ideas to move so far from where they started back in ancient times?

A particularly dramatic example of cultural change occurred when the 
Arab empire receded after the Dark Ages.  Medieval Italy was then 
ideally situated to exploit the Mediterranean trade routes.  They did so 
well that medieval banking practices proved inadequate.  For ideas, they 
turned to ancient Roman texts, and these pointed further back to the 
Greeks.  The newly invented printing press helped spread Greek thought 
throughout the land.  Such ideas as democracy and the importance of the 
individual had a devastating impact on the influence of the church.  
When the church authorities realized this, it was already too late; the 
publishing industry was permanently established.

The church's world view was based on Aristotle's science.  Greek 
technology based on this science was rediscovered, and expanded.  The 
Renaissance people turned this technology to the service of art, and 
their masterpieces are unrivaled to this day.  This expanding technology 
revealed something disturbing.  The world didn't work the way Aristotle 
said it did.  Merchants needed the newly developed telescope to spot 
their ships coming in.  When the church forbade Galileo to point his 
telescope at the moons circling Jupiter (not the earth??!), thousands of 
those telescopes surreptitiously went vertical.

Aristotle's world view was a package deal.  If one part failed, it all 
failed.  Eventually, the church's adherence to the Aristotelian scheme 
proved costly.  They couldn't explain people's place in the world if 
their explanation of the world didn't make sense.  The break, when it 
came, took the form of the Protestant Reformation.

Today we need not rediscover ideas from ancient texts.  Science produces 
novel concepts at an astonishing rate.  Our technology does not serve 
art, instead, we apply it to yet more technology, with results both 
marvelous and frightening.  Where there was once the printing press, 
there are now computer networks.  The "telescope" no longer points at 
the moons of Jupiter.  Instead, it probes our neurons and our genes.

Plato's scheme, like Aristotle's, is a package deal, and parts of it are 
failing.  Sociologists now know the Plato's ideal city, the Kallipolis, 
would not last long.  The Communists applied many of Plato's ideas, with 
embarrassing results.  Conservative Christianity's relationship to 
Platonic philosophy might well make them (especially the creationists) 
rather uneasy.  They are now under the same pressure that was brought to 
bear on the Catholic church during the Renaissance.

The possible outcomes of this are impossible to predict.  The final few 
posts in this series will be limited to the effects this may have on the 
popular view of how the world got here.  For those who have stuck with 
me through all this background, I thank you for your patience.  The fun 
starts with...
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