We see this constantly in life: the foolishness of even brilliant men when they are in contempt of God. Down the centuries those who have not respected Christ and honoured the word of God, and believed in his message: that people find God by repentance and seeking his forgiving love, and believing in Christ who suffered and died on Calvary to bear the eternal weight of punishment due to them for their sin – those who reject all that: what do they put in its place? Well, they use their reason, and they say if there is a God he will only be pleased with us if we try to do good works and please him by our own efforts. So they throw away grace and they put in its place works. They get everything the wrong way round, because they have no respect for his promises and what he said.
You see it in the church even among some people who are supposed to be Bible-believers. Their judgement is at fault. They say, if we are going to win people around us, and we are going to draw people to Christ, we can only do it by turning our services into entertainment, and borrowing all the decadent musical styles of the world and setting religious words to them, and even promoting dancing and everything else. You cease to believe in the power of God and his methods and his promises, and you put these other things in their place. And what do they produce? Superficial worldly churches, not true churches of belief and proving the Lord, with deep things taught and Christ loved and served.
It is the same with scientific humanism. ‘How are we going to change society?’ they say. ‘By getting rid of all these moral shibboleths that the church has given us, and letting people grow up and be adults, and have free sex, and conduct themselves as mature civilised way, and do away with all the commandments of God, and suppress faith.’ And what they produce is an increasingly confused and suffering society. Because they reject God and his word, and reject Christ, they make foolish mistakes.