What Motivates Christians

"There's alot of evidence for the claims of the Bible."

American Christians today like to say things like “the Bible is a very reliable book, historically.” I have heard that the Bible is “the most accurate book.” When I was a teenager I was obsessed with the idea, and I wasn’t alone, that “science could prove the existence of God and confirm the Genesis account; There is evidence for the big miracles like the flood.” “Science proves the Bible is true.”– I know many Christians, some very nuanced thinkers, who spend their time thinking about disproving “materialistic explanations” for life—and to these I’m more sympathetic, insofar as we can know what motivates us and it isn’t “our bones and sinews” or “the economy.”

Everyone who says things like

·         “it’s not about justice; it’s about the economy” or

·         “no one truly follows ideals” or

·         “politics is about self-interest and not morality”

thinks of justice/morality as “selflessness” and “the economy” (or whatever else they put in there—realpolitick, libido dominandi, glory, etc—) as “selfishness.” If you point out that “economics” “politics” “sex” “procreation” “glory” and so on are also “concerned with justice” they get upset because they think you’re tricking them back into the selfless-framework they believed they’ve escaped with their assertion that “motive-x” is really moving the world. I digress.

Christians should live according to faith and hope—the will of God, being known as well as we can know it, should be obeyed; the pattern of life established by God should be emulated or striven after. I don’t think there should be this concern with proving “it’s real.” Of course it’s real; faith makes it real to you, and that’s all you can have—wanting more than faith isn’t for human beings. You can’t make the promises of God or his miracles more real or man more certain of their reality through investigation into these things.

Attacking the fallacies of Darwinism might help a Darwinist or Darwinist-inclined see the errors bound up in his claims (and bound up in his view of himself as a moral man of Nature). This can be good for the faith, insofar as there are enemies of the faith.