SCOTUS Gives Rise to the Dawning of a New Day for Me. What about you?
Dec 20, 2024 by David Fowler
It dawned on me on Monday that God has used the godless to shatter the Overton Window that’s said to define the range of “legitimate” answers to political questions. It came to me as I read the transcript of the argument recently made to the United States Supreme Court by the U.S. Department of Justice against Tennessee’s transgender-medicine law. I believe its argument, when explained, will pierce the darkness of many about God and the world. I invite you to consider what “dawned” on me.
What is the Overton Window?
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy provides this explanation of the Overton Window (emphasis supplied):
Because the concept is drawn from society, the Overton Window (the “Window”) can be applied beyond politics to a variety of societal settings. An example follows in the next section.
How the Overton Window Works
Consider the distant relative you invite for Christmas dinner. Now, suppose that relative and a politician at a town hall meeting both insist on talking about the importance to the social order of the two fundamental doctrines of Christianity—the doctrines of the Trinity and creation ex nihilo.
The Window in our day excludes these two fundamental Christian doctrines from “legitimate” conversations about politics and seasonal family gatherings. Both would be thrown through the window of their respective venues.
Those who convinced us to “close the window” on this kind of conversation are the “enlightened” thinkers of the last three centuries. What happened bears directly on Supreme Court arguments and will influence the thinking of your children and grandchildren.
Who Began to Define the Overton Window We Have Today
The creation of our present-day Overton Window began in earnest over three hundred years ago.
Over the first two hundred years, the “enlightened ones” worked to supplant God and revelation with reason applied to what we see. They assured us that reason applied by the empirical sciences was all we needed to arrive at the truth about things.
It seemed to work for a while given the exponential growth in scientific discoveries and their useful application. Even many Christians got carried away with it—natural theology independent of any written revelation.
However, as I’ll next explain, in God’s inimitable way, the very people who tried to shut Him out of the conversation came to realize their alternative didn’t work. The Overton Window excluding the two fundamental doctrines of Christianity cracked!
Why the Overton Window of the Enlightened Cracked
The best and easiest book I’ve read on the subject was written by an atheist and one of the persons of the 20th century who most influenced our understanding of history, Carl Becker. His book, The Heavenly City of the 18th Century Philosophers, is worth reading multiple times.
I won’t give you the details he provided, but he wrote the following about the realization “achieved” by these enlightened thinkers:
The “why” is simple, says Becker: “If nature is good, then there is no evil in the world.” But they knew that wasn’t true. Man’s pseudo-deification of nature by human reason came to a jarring halt.
The enlightened ones realized they had nothing to provide the foundation for meaning and morality that had once been supplied by Christianity’s two fundamental doctrines. That God had given meaning to everything and with that meaning came given rules for the ethical ordering and use of everything.
So, why didn’t thinkers like Becker and others like him not turn back to the two fundamental doctrines of Christianity for meaning and values?
What Kept Rationalists from Returning to Christianity’s Two Fundamental Doctrines.
I think the practical answer is what Becker said next, “If there is evil in the world, then nature is so far not good.” The key is “so far.”
“So far” explains why atheists like Richard Dawkins and Elon Musk can hang onto their atheism even though they lament the passing of many improvements in the human condition made by those who lived by a supernaturally-bestowed faith in those doctrines. Like the enlightened but religiously respectful enlightened thinker before them, they must believe a better day lies ahead or they would despair of living. Otherwise, why would Musk think DOGE has any lasting value?
The Bible’s answer is different. It says they hang onto their atheism because, deep down, they hate God. And that’s what the enlightened thinkers of our day—atheists—proved.
What Rationalists Preferred Over Christianity’s Two Fundamental Doctrines.
Again, I’ll spare you the details, but atheists had to replace the cracked panes in the Overton Window to keep God out of legitimate conversations.
So, they did the only thing a self-respecting atheist could do: They assumed the earlier dead-end meant that our reason gets to make up an alternative ending. (Don’t take agnostics seriously because they know more than they let on; they seem to know what God must and must not be like!)
The atheists’ alternative to the two fundamental doctrines of Christianity is called Nihilism. Nihilism comes from the Latin word “nihil” meaning “nothing.”
Nihilists, like their naturalistic evolutionary compatriots, believe there are forces behind things that shape them into what they are. They will concede that we don’t understand everything about those forces so far, but they say that deficiency is unimportant.
What’s important, they say, for getting on in this world is to know that nothing—which includes everything—has any given and objective meaning; everything just evolved mindlessly into what it is.
But that means nothing can have any given (objective) meaning. Therefore, no objective value can be attached to anything. Consequently, what we make of things and do with them ethically is all up to us. For example, we are free to decide that protecting pre-born turtles is more ethical than protecting pre-born babies. That’s Nihilism.
Sounds crazy, but they gave a plausible explanation. They said the concepts of meaning and value evolved only after we arrived on the scene by an evolutionary process. Human beings created those concepts!
What god-like power, huh? No wonder we like it! But the promise of atheism gets better.
Guess what happens when scientific breakthroughs allow human beings to reshape themselves without them necessarily dying? That’s next!
How the Atheists Replaced Christianity’s Two Fundamental Doctrines
Atheists say the answer to the previous question is we get to “create” new words or reshape old ones to describe the meaning and value of things in the newest version of forever-developing story we want to tell about ourselves (think about new personal pronouns and attaching old ones without regard to sex!).
This is story atheists tell us: Stuff—our cosmos—came into being. That’s rather old-hat evolution, but what’s new is we now understand that we supply meaning and values to things by our words! In a real sense, we get to “create” the cosmos with our words, and then use words to tell a story that explains what we created.
It’s an atheists-as-God type Bible story. Only the Bible tells us that the Triune God, by His Words, created the cosmos and by that same Word gave meaning and value to everything He created. Finally, that Word told us the true story behind everything.
Once I saw this comparison, a light went off: The audacity of atheists to tell people that Christians were the ones making up a story to suit themselves! But their story, not ours, was the one the Supreme Court justices were listening to on December 4th.
What the Department of Justice Argued That Turned the Light Into a Blaze
As I read the transcript of the oral argument made by the Department of Justice, everything in that Courtroom became clear! I saw the Nihilism of the Department of Justice in all its impoverished and faux glory in full parade, masquerading before the Justices as constitutional jurisprudence. And all but Justices Thomas and Alito appeared to have stripped off their robes to lay bare their naked souls before God’s High Bar of Justice.
It was as though the glass panes of the Overton Window were melting as glass could only do before God’s searing and purifying heat.
What the Department of Justice Said That I Pray You Understand
The Department’s attorney said that Tennessee statute “is quintessentially imposing sex-based rules and expectations on adolescents in the state.” Transcript, 35. Other similar statements were made. But the gravamen of the Department’s complaint is the state is imposing rules about sex on human beings.
I thought God had “imposed” those “rules,” but that’s the old story, outside the Window. So let me translate this statement according to Window put in place by Nihilism:
This is the Department’s legal argument in layman’s terms:
This new story is “legitimate” according to the rules of the Overton Window. The old one isn’t.
Making the Department’s New Creation Story Real to the Non-Lawyer
The Department is saying the U.S. Supreme Court must interpret the U.S. Constitution to prohibit state legislators from using their legislative powers to deny anyone the power to create coself and ensilf in their own image (new pronouns for “himself” or “herself” according to the LGBTQIA Resource Center’s page).
Put another way, the state must be constitutionally required to use its powers to let everyone tell their new creation story in their own words.
No one must believe or be forced to believe the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and Creation ex nihilo are true. And people can still believe in common sense if they want to risk it.
Relying on Common Sense Is Risky Business
As I retire from FACT for new endeavors, let me pass along a warning about rejecting God’s revelation to rely on good old-fashioned common sense. The sense that was fashioned in the “old days” is growing obsolete fast.
Every day scientists are telling the impressionable young people who will lead your children and grandchild in the future a partially true story: When they looked deeper into things like atoms, what they found was both unexpected and unpredictable.
In other words, they will be telling our youth that what was commonly understood for centuries to be true about the world around us is no longer true. Science “proves” it.
They will also assure our youth that science will eventually explain what it doesn’t understand so far. That’s why they will tell our young people to keep tracking with them. And why shouldn’t our youth do that? They are being offered the power to be their own God!
That story has already sunk in with the “redefined” human beings in the transgender and homosexual communities. It has sunk in with policy advocates and the lawyers running the Department of Justice (and Department of Education).
And when it sinks in with another generation or two, common sense to them won’t be what you remember.
My Christmas Offer to You
When Christians grasp the foregoing, I believe they will conclude, as I have, that God has prepared an open door for them to re-introduce the two fundamental doctrines of Christianity into the public square.
It’s past time for Christians to form a new Overton Window. Doing that won’t be easy. It will require thought, wisdom, and prudence.
But the good news is I have explained the two fundamental Christian doctrines in relation to transgenderism in about 50 pages. It’s in my book, Transgenderism—Raising Ancient Issues Only the Ancient of Days Can Answer. It also provides several commentaries showing how this applies to legal and political issues
If you want to see a new Overton Window formed, I want to give you a pdf of the book. It will be my parting Christmas present. Click this link. It will let me know you want permission to access it, and I will grant it.
What is the Overton Window?
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy provides this explanation of the Overton Window (emphasis supplied):
The Overton Window is a model for understanding how ideas in society change over time and influence politics.
The core concept is that politicians are limited in what policy ideas they can support — they generally only pursue policies that are widely accepted throughout society as legitimate policy options. These policies lie inside the Overton Window.
Other policy ideas exist, but politicians risk losing popular support if they champion these ideas. These policies lie outside the Overton Window.
The core concept is that politicians are limited in what policy ideas they can support — they generally only pursue policies that are widely accepted throughout society as legitimate policy options. These policies lie inside the Overton Window.
Other policy ideas exist, but politicians risk losing popular support if they champion these ideas. These policies lie outside the Overton Window.
Because the concept is drawn from society, the Overton Window (the “Window”) can be applied beyond politics to a variety of societal settings. An example follows in the next section.
How the Overton Window Works
Consider the distant relative you invite for Christmas dinner. Now, suppose that relative and a politician at a town hall meeting both insist on talking about the importance to the social order of the two fundamental doctrines of Christianity—the doctrines of the Trinity and creation ex nihilo.
The Window in our day excludes these two fundamental Christian doctrines from “legitimate” conversations about politics and seasonal family gatherings. Both would be thrown through the window of their respective venues.
Those who convinced us to “close the window” on this kind of conversation are the “enlightened” thinkers of the last three centuries. What happened bears directly on Supreme Court arguments and will influence the thinking of your children and grandchildren.
Who Began to Define the Overton Window We Have Today
The creation of our present-day Overton Window began in earnest over three hundred years ago.
Over the first two hundred years, the “enlightened ones” worked to supplant God and revelation with reason applied to what we see. They assured us that reason applied by the empirical sciences was all we needed to arrive at the truth about things.
It seemed to work for a while given the exponential growth in scientific discoveries and their useful application. Even many Christians got carried away with it—natural theology independent of any written revelation.
However, as I’ll next explain, in God’s inimitable way, the very people who tried to shut Him out of the conversation came to realize their alternative didn’t work. The Overton Window excluding the two fundamental doctrines of Christianity cracked!
Why the Overton Window of the Enlightened Cracked
The best and easiest book I’ve read on the subject was written by an atheist and one of the persons of the 20th century who most influenced our understanding of history, Carl Becker. His book, The Heavenly City of the 18th Century Philosophers, is worth reading multiple times.
I won’t give you the details he provided, but he wrote the following about the realization “achieved” by these enlightened thinkers:
Reason is totally incompetent to answer ultimate questions. . . . Reason is incompetent to answer any fundamental question about God, or morality, or the meaning of life.”
The “why” is simple, says Becker: “If nature is good, then there is no evil in the world.” But they knew that wasn’t true. Man’s pseudo-deification of nature by human reason came to a jarring halt.
The enlightened ones realized they had nothing to provide the foundation for meaning and morality that had once been supplied by Christianity’s two fundamental doctrines. That God had given meaning to everything and with that meaning came given rules for the ethical ordering and use of everything.
So, why didn’t thinkers like Becker and others like him not turn back to the two fundamental doctrines of Christianity for meaning and values?
What Kept Rationalists from Returning to Christianity’s Two Fundamental Doctrines.
I think the practical answer is what Becker said next, “If there is evil in the world, then nature is so far not good.” The key is “so far.”
“So far” explains why atheists like Richard Dawkins and Elon Musk can hang onto their atheism even though they lament the passing of many improvements in the human condition made by those who lived by a supernaturally-bestowed faith in those doctrines. Like the enlightened but religiously respectful enlightened thinker before them, they must believe a better day lies ahead or they would despair of living. Otherwise, why would Musk think DOGE has any lasting value?
The Bible’s answer is different. It says they hang onto their atheism because, deep down, they hate God. And that’s what the enlightened thinkers of our day—atheists—proved.
What Rationalists Preferred Over Christianity’s Two Fundamental Doctrines.
Again, I’ll spare you the details, but atheists had to replace the cracked panes in the Overton Window to keep God out of legitimate conversations.
So, they did the only thing a self-respecting atheist could do: They assumed the earlier dead-end meant that our reason gets to make up an alternative ending. (Don’t take agnostics seriously because they know more than they let on; they seem to know what God must and must not be like!)
The atheists’ alternative to the two fundamental doctrines of Christianity is called Nihilism. Nihilism comes from the Latin word “nihil” meaning “nothing.”
Nihilists, like their naturalistic evolutionary compatriots, believe there are forces behind things that shape them into what they are. They will concede that we don’t understand everything about those forces so far, but they say that deficiency is unimportant.
What’s important, they say, for getting on in this world is to know that nothing—which includes everything—has any given and objective meaning; everything just evolved mindlessly into what it is.
But that means nothing can have any given (objective) meaning. Therefore, no objective value can be attached to anything. Consequently, what we make of things and do with them ethically is all up to us. For example, we are free to decide that protecting pre-born turtles is more ethical than protecting pre-born babies. That’s Nihilism.
Sounds crazy, but they gave a plausible explanation. They said the concepts of meaning and value evolved only after we arrived on the scene by an evolutionary process. Human beings created those concepts!
What god-like power, huh? No wonder we like it! But the promise of atheism gets better.
Guess what happens when scientific breakthroughs allow human beings to reshape themselves without them necessarily dying? That’s next!
How the Atheists Replaced Christianity’s Two Fundamental Doctrines
Atheists say the answer to the previous question is we get to “create” new words or reshape old ones to describe the meaning and value of things in the newest version of forever-developing story we want to tell about ourselves (think about new personal pronouns and attaching old ones without regard to sex!).
This is story atheists tell us: Stuff—our cosmos—came into being. That’s rather old-hat evolution, but what’s new is we now understand that we supply meaning and values to things by our words! In a real sense, we get to “create” the cosmos with our words, and then use words to tell a story that explains what we created.
It’s an atheists-as-God type Bible story. Only the Bible tells us that the Triune God, by His Words, created the cosmos and by that same Word gave meaning and value to everything He created. Finally, that Word told us the true story behind everything.
Once I saw this comparison, a light went off: The audacity of atheists to tell people that Christians were the ones making up a story to suit themselves! But their story, not ours, was the one the Supreme Court justices were listening to on December 4th.
What the Department of Justice Argued That Turned the Light Into a Blaze
As I read the transcript of the oral argument made by the Department of Justice, everything in that Courtroom became clear! I saw the Nihilism of the Department of Justice in all its impoverished and faux glory in full parade, masquerading before the Justices as constitutional jurisprudence. And all but Justices Thomas and Alito appeared to have stripped off their robes to lay bare their naked souls before God’s High Bar of Justice.
It was as though the glass panes of the Overton Window were melting as glass could only do before God’s searing and purifying heat.
What the Department of Justice Said That I Pray You Understand
The Department’s attorney said that Tennessee statute “is quintessentially imposing sex-based rules and expectations on adolescents in the state.” Transcript, 35. Other similar statements were made. But the gravamen of the Department’s complaint is the state is imposing rules about sex on human beings.
I thought God had “imposed” those “rules,” but that’s the old story, outside the Window. So let me translate this statement according to Window put in place by Nihilism:
God could not impose any rules about sex on human beings, because there isn’t one and, even if there were, God is unknowable to us. Civil government creates and imposes the rules!
This is the Department’s legal argument in layman’s terms:
Science has given us a newly developed creation story with its breakthroughs in the manipulation of the human body and its endocrine system. The “evil” here is that the state is telling the old creation story that science vanquished. And the state is imposing that outdated story on everyone. The old story about the meaning of birth sex is false considering the new story we are telling about ourselves.
This new story is “legitimate” according to the rules of the Overton Window. The old one isn’t.
Making the Department’s New Creation Story Real to the Non-Lawyer
The Department is saying the U.S. Supreme Court must interpret the U.S. Constitution to prohibit state legislators from using their legislative powers to deny anyone the power to create coself and ensilf in their own image (new pronouns for “himself” or “herself” according to the LGBTQIA Resource Center’s page).
Put another way, the state must be constitutionally required to use its powers to let everyone tell their new creation story in their own words.
No one must believe or be forced to believe the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and Creation ex nihilo are true. And people can still believe in common sense if they want to risk it.
Relying on Common Sense Is Risky Business
As I retire from FACT for new endeavors, let me pass along a warning about rejecting God’s revelation to rely on good old-fashioned common sense. The sense that was fashioned in the “old days” is growing obsolete fast.
Every day scientists are telling the impressionable young people who will lead your children and grandchild in the future a partially true story: When they looked deeper into things like atoms, what they found was both unexpected and unpredictable.
In other words, they will be telling our youth that what was commonly understood for centuries to be true about the world around us is no longer true. Science “proves” it.
They will also assure our youth that science will eventually explain what it doesn’t understand so far. That’s why they will tell our young people to keep tracking with them. And why shouldn’t our youth do that? They are being offered the power to be their own God!
That story has already sunk in with the “redefined” human beings in the transgender and homosexual communities. It has sunk in with policy advocates and the lawyers running the Department of Justice (and Department of Education).
And when it sinks in with another generation or two, common sense to them won’t be what you remember.
My Christmas Offer to You
When Christians grasp the foregoing, I believe they will conclude, as I have, that God has prepared an open door for them to re-introduce the two fundamental doctrines of Christianity into the public square.
It’s past time for Christians to form a new Overton Window. Doing that won’t be easy. It will require thought, wisdom, and prudence.
But the good news is I have explained the two fundamental Christian doctrines in relation to transgenderism in about 50 pages. It’s in my book, Transgenderism—Raising Ancient Issues Only the Ancient of Days Can Answer. It also provides several commentaries showing how this applies to legal and political issues
If you want to see a new Overton Window formed, I want to give you a pdf of the book. It will be my parting Christmas present. Click this link. It will let me know you want permission to access it, and I will grant it.
