By challenging the pagans concept of the unknown god in relation to the gods (idols of the mind) they claimed to know and by asserting the sovereignty of the revealed God of Scripture (Acts 17:22-31) Pauls' challenge seriously threatened their corpus of nature science, evolutionary cosmogony, and philosophy. This threat was taken seriously for Paul had in effect declared that if there exists an unknown god of the gods (idols of the mind) which pagans claim to know yet which is wholly unknown despite exercising influence for good or evil on that which they say and know, do they really know anything at all? If this unknown god of gods exists then why not destroy all the altars to the gods pagans claim to know since they are inventions of men’s creative imaginations, absurd idols, useless for salvation, the work of man’s hands:
"They have mouths, but they cannot speak; They have eyes, but they cannot see; They have ears, but they cannot hear; They have noses, but they cannot smell; They have hands, but they cannot feel; They have feet, but they cannot walk; They cannot make a sound with their throat. Those who make them will become like them..." Psalm 115:4-8
In other words, men who worship the idols of their own minds and inert, unknowing things of creation (i.e., matter, energy and/or evolution, time, space) become ignorant, absurd and stupid, unable to account for either the origin of life or man's thought-life, will, and conscience.
By contrast St. Augustine (AD 354-430), an ardent defender of creation ex nihilo, easily affirmed that as all men are the spiritual image-bearers of the transcendent Triune God of life and creation then it logically follows that each person is a trinity of being, — of body, soul and its citadel spirit (thought-life, will, conscience):
"The essence of the human is not the body, but the soul. It is the soul alone that God made in his own image and the soul that he loves....For the sake of the soul...the Son of God came into the world...." (Incomplete Work on Matthew, Homily 25, Ancient Christian Devotional, Oden and Crosby, p. 153) In Christian thought, a person is a spirit and personality is the total individuality of the spirit. Without spirit there is no person.
The key to individual liberty in the temporal sphere is man's spiritual liberty contrasted against a genetically programmed animal-like orientation. Animals do not have spirits, which are linked to intelligence, imagination, sensitivity, self-consciousness, reflection and the capacity for truth and moral goodness.
A human being is uniquely free because his inner person can spiritually transcend matter to access the supernatural dimension as Paul affirms:
"Now the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Cor. 3:17)
Cornelius Van Til, the most profound writer in apologetics in the twentieth century points out that on the basis of evolutionary naturalism (idols of mind) it is impossible to know anything unless everything can be known, and since it is impossible to know everything then the whole of nature religion, empirical science, and evolutionary philosophy is irrational because it cannot account for life, man's soul/spirit, objective truth and moral law. Therefore evolutionary naturalism is of ignorance,
"...of ignorance far deeper than (naturalists) are willing and able on (their assumptions) to own." On the basis of naturalism, "there is no knowledge at all; there is nothing but ignorance." (ibid, p. 48)
A: { crickets crickets crickets }
“I HAVE SWORN UPON THE ALTAR OF GOD ETERNAL HOSTILITY TO EVERY FORM OF TYRANNY OVER THE MIND OF MAN”
—Thomas Jefferson
Maybe if you hurry you can catch a ride on the elevator with a fellow religiously opinionated “intellectual” dominionist tyrant:
[Interview with Professor Martin Jay (University of California, Berkeley) on the Frankfurt School, January 2016.]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqRnnJnm3T4
Then you two can spend a few centuries bouncing dialectically between the 8th and 9th floors of Dante’s inferno theorizing about which one to get off on by spending the rest of eternity assuming dominion over it... with your opinions.