The next time you pick up a science textbook, Scientific American or similar resource, read it carefully, and I think you will notice something. It goes like this:
The basis of naturalism, and thus modern science since the mid-to-late 1800s, is time + chance = everything. Design in the universe is only an illusion. The universe came from nowhere and is going nowhere. You get the picture. Yet pick up any scientific article, and I would wager good money that it contains some of the following words, or words similar in meaning to them: selection, advantage, purpose, adaptation. What do these words have in common? They all have teleological connotations. In other words, they all make reference to an agent bringing about a state of affairs for a certain reason. For example, here is an excerpt from an article on sleep I just read this morning.
During sleep, animals cannot hunt for food or produce more offspring and may be more vulnerable to predators. So to have endured all these millennia, snoozing is likely to offer some adaptive advantage that outweighs its risks. But what? Stickgold suggests that the different stages of sleep—with their distinctive patterns of brain activity—were selected for (sic) because they help the brain to perform different kinds of memory tasks.
(See entire article here.)
Notice that the different stages of sleep were "selected" for a reason: to aid the brain in memory. By whom were they selected? Certainly not by the animals themselves; after all, they would have been asleep at the time! By Nature? Nature is just another word for the universe. How can the universe, which is an inanimate object, select anything for any purpose? By definition, selection for a specific purpose must involve a personal agent. (I think we are talking about more than the selective abilities of animals at this point.) Or, to put it bluntly, how can time + chance = selection for a purpose?
I know that the typical response to this would be that such talk is not literal. Time and chance work on (again, another word that infers an agent by definition) the environment, and whatever survives propagates, thus "selecting" certain traits over others. If this is the case, then we are faced with another problem. Science, which focuses on exactness, is using inexact and ultimately incorrect terminology. It is nearly impossible, however, to speak in such a way that excludes any reference (implied or stated) to a personal agent when speaking of nature. Using teleological terminology and twisting the meaning behind the scenes only serves to obscure the fact that humankind is not able to live in or even describe a completely naturalistic world.
Perhaps language reflects reality after all.
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Language is a kind of power, it is fascinating to observe scientists using language that suggests a higher power that goes way beyond scientific parameters but used in a manner to further naturalism, and sometimes to go beyond that in commenting upon theological issues.
There are some words in North American culture that are command words, such as “intolerant” which is often used to attack the person because of a lack of a feasible argument against an opponent. It is smoke and mirrors, most miss the point.
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