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The Advancement

In: Religion Topics

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Book Critique on The Advancement

By

Brandon Killings

APOL 500

Christians live in a world that seems to have changed overnight. The meaning of marriage is being redefined by allowing same sex marriages and the meaning of the absolute truth has just disappeared. So Bush is trying to figure out where did this new approach of life originate and why did things change so sudden from one generation to the next. The text states that this drastic change didn’t just happen overnight, but it started during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Bush tends to answer this question in his book, entitled, “The Advancement.” L. Russ Bush, is a dean and a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The Advancement is an apologetic approach to the philosophy of naturalism. Bush used the term “advancement,” to explain the modern worldview based on a naturalistic philosophy. Bush felt that the term, “modern” is outdated and old fashioned because this term tends to provoke a mindset of staleness, rather than revolving and advancing. Bush organizes his book into eight chapters. In the book, Bush explains the ideas of postmodern evolutionary thought and offers a response from a Christian perspective. Bush’s main goal for writing this book was to expose the discrepancies of the modern naturalist philosophy, compared to the truths of Christianity. The first chapter, which is entitled “The Worldview of the Advancement,” which basically talks about the worldview that is most dominant in our day, comparing it with the elements of the older Christian worldview. The text states that the earlier view consists of a natural stability in both history and nature (pg 15). Also, progress or decline are the products of a person’s relationship or lack of a relationship with God, and neither is inevitable historically (pg 15). The second chapter, which is entitled, “The Rise of Advancement Science,” Bush focuses on the rise of the science of advancement with its dependence on the thought of uniformitarian and evolution. When key scientists, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, gave up their belief in God and began to interpret the scientific data on naturalistic or materialistic assumptions, they found that it was possible to construct a fairly comprehensive interpretation of the data in that way (pg 22). Also, scientific explanations that didn’t remind people of God or thrust moral implications upon the hearer were more likely to be accepted by the increasingly secular general public than those more teleological scientific interpretations which did relate all things to God’s Will and purpose (pg 22). In chapter 3, which is entitled, “The Advancement and the Theory of Knowledge,” Bush explains the effects on science if God didn’t exist. Naturalistic biological evolution explains the variety of living things as being a set of natural variations of organic matter (pg 38). Everything is a variation of one thing, and that is the matrix of space, time, matter, and energy (pg 38). The fourth chapter, which is entitled, “The Modern Theistic Alternative,” Bush presents the leading theological adaptation of Process Theology and Open Theism. According to the modern process philosophy, the human mind would be a level of reality produced by the process, in keeping with theories of biological evolution, but the mind is so sophisticated that it has actually begun to mirror the process in some ways (pg 56). Open theism claims that Scripture supports the idea that God does not know all things and often changes his mind when confronted with unexpected circumstances (pg 62). The fifth chapter, which is entitled, “What is Naturalistic Evolution,” Bush focuses on exposing the theory behind the theory. Naturalism is the dominant worldview that guides modern scientific thinking and controls scientific methodology (pg 65). The sixth chapter, which is entitled, “Why Not Naturalistic Evolution,” explains why the theory on naturalistic evolution is a failing theory. Some assume that people must make their own meaning by limiting their thinking to the pleasures of material gain or sensuality (pg 78). In the seventh chapter, which is entitled, “Why Not Advancement,” Bush points out that this philosophy of Advancement as a whole not only a failure intellectually, but that it is a mere illusion. Advancement is a metaphor that applies to time or to the increase in the quantity of knowledge or to the rise in technological sophistication (pg 91) Nevertheless, in those essential qualities of humanness, mankind has not advanced (pg 91). The final chapter, which is entitled, “What Then Are We To Believe,” Bush states that our freedom is based on God’s freedom. Without God as a control center, everything floats on a sea of relativity (pg 103). Bush’s lack of clarity is very evident throughout this book. He keeps going back and forth between many worldviews and theories, with little thought of how he plans on relating them to one another. In Chapters 5 and 6 are made up of a list of assumptions, axioms, and beliefs that represent the foundations of many worldviews but Bush fails to cite his reasoning for calling upon these specific elements of each worldview. This can cause the readers to question the authenticity of the claims.
In conclusion, “The Advancement,” consists of eight chapters and it is the apologetic approach to the philosophy of naturalism. The term advancement, was used by Bush in order to explain the modern worldview based on the philosophy of naturalism. Bush’s main focus for writing this book was to expose the discrepancies of the modern naturalist philosophy, compared to the truths of Christianity.

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