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It's the heart versus the Bible
townhall.com ^ | 3/16/04 | Dennis Prager

Posted on 03/15/2004 9:57:21 PM PST by kattracks

I recently interviewed a 26-year-old Swedish student about her views on life. I asked her if she believed in God or in any religion.

"No, that's silly," she replied.

"Then how do you know what is right and wrong?" I asked.

"My heart tells me," she responded.

In a nutshell, that's the major reason for the great divide within America and between America and much of Europe. The majority of people use their heart -- stirred by their eyes -- to determine what is right and wrong. A minority uses their mind and/or the Bible to make that determination.

Pick almost any issue and these opposing ways of determining right and wrong become apparent.

Here are three examples.

Same-sex marriage: The heart favors it. You have to have a hard heart not to be moved when you see many of the loving same-sex couples who want to commit their lives to one another in marriage. The eye sees the couples; the heart is moved to redefine marriage.

Animal rights: The heart favors them. It is the rare person, for example, whose heart is not moved by the sight of an animal used for medical research. The eye sees the cuddly animal; the heart then equates animal and human life.

Abortion: How can you look at a sad 18-year-old who had unprotected sex and not be moved? What kind of heartless person is going to tell her she shouldn't have an abortion and should give birth?

The eyes and the heart form an extraordinarily powerful force. They can only be overcome when formulating policies by a mind and a value system that are stronger than the heart-eye duo.

With the decline of Judeo-Christian religions, the heart, shaped by what the eye sees (hence the power of television), has become the source of people's moral decisions.

This is a potentially fatal problem for our civilization. As beautiful as the heart might be, it is neither intellectually nor morally profound.

It is therefore frightening that hundreds of millions of people find no problem in acknowledging that their heart is the source of their values. Their heart knows better than thousands of years of accumulated wisdom; better than religions shaped by most of the finest thinkers of our civilization (and, to the believer, by God); and better than the book that has guided our society -- from the Founders of our uniquely successful society to the foes of slavery to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and most of the leaders of the struggle for racial equality.

This elevation of one's heart is well beyond self-confidence -- it is self-deification.

One of the first things you learn in Judaism and Christianity is that the eyes and heart are usually terrible guides to the good and the holy. " . . . (D)o not follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after" (Numbers 15:39); "the heart is deceitful above all things . . . " (Jeremiah 17:9).

Supporters of same-sex marriage see the loving gay couple, and therefore do not interest themselves in the effects of changing marriage and family on the children they do not see. And since they venerate their hearts, the biblical ideal of male-female love, marriage and family is of no significance to them.

Animal rights supporters' hearts are deeply moved by the animals they see experimented on, not by the millions of people they do not see who will suffer and die if we stop such experiments.
Likewise, the hearts of the people who support PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) are so moved by the plight of slaughtered chickens that the organization has a campaign titled "Holocaust on your plate," which equates our slaughtering of chickens with the Nazi slaughtering of Jews.

For 25 years I have been asking high school seniors across America if they would save their dog or a stranger first if both were drowning. The majority has nearly always voted against the person. Why? Because, they say with no self-doubt, they love their dog, not the stranger. An entire generation has been raised with no reference to any moral code above their heart's feelings. They do not know, and would not care if they did know, that the Bible teaches that human beings, not animals, are created in God's image.

So, too, those who cannot call any abortion immoral are moved by what they see -- the forlorn woman who wants an abortion, not by the human fetus they do not see. That is why abortion rights groups are so opposed to showing photos of fetuses that have been aborted -- such pictures might move the eye and the heart of viewers to judge the morality of many abortions differently.

It is undeniable that many people have used their minds and many have used the Bible in ways that have led to evil. And some of these people have been truly heartless. But not one of the great cruelties of the 20th century -- the Gulag, Auschwitz, Cambodia, North Korea, Mao's Cultural Revolution -- came from those who took their values from the Bible. And the great evil of the 21st century, though religion-based, doesn't come from the Bible either.

Meanwhile, the combination of mind, Judeo-Christian values and heart has produced over centuries the unique success known as America. Reliance on the heart will destroy this painstaking achievement in a generation.

©2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Contact Dennis Prager | Read Prager's biography



TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: dennisprager; homosexualagenda
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To: I got the rope
Actually, homosexuality is condemned in the NT... first chapter of Romans.
161 posted on 03/17/2004 6:21:16 PM PST by ican'tbelieveit
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To: qam1
Give it up Dennis, You don't need Christianity to be moral

You've probably found common ground with Prager, as he's an observant Jew.
I believe he also teaches (occassionally?) at the University of Judaism in
Los Angeles.
162 posted on 03/17/2004 6:31:16 PM PST by VOA
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To: ican'tbelieveit
No arguement here...I was talking about our resident homosexual apologist..."breakem".
163 posted on 03/17/2004 6:34:31 PM PST by I got the rope
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To: I got the rope
Yeah, and I missed everyone else who pointed that out. Sorry, I realized it as soon as I posted it that someone must have already put the passage up. What a dip... accusing others of picking and choosing theology; yet guilty of it themselves.
164 posted on 03/17/2004 6:42:32 PM PST by ican'tbelieveit
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To: I got the rope
I thoroughly enjoy the fact that almost all of these 'detractors' and 'agitators' never make up a biographical page on FreeRepublic---obviously, it is to keep others from knowing who they really are and waht they 'don't stand for'---want to see a man who is proud of 'who he is and what he stands for'?--try "dougfromupland"
165 posted on 03/17/2004 7:09:35 PM PST by cmotormac44
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To: qam1
You stated that "Atheist are more moral then the fundamentalist (sic)." An interesting statement, given the history of the last century. Let's look at the record:

Atheists Responsible for Mass Murder
Vladmir Lenin
Felix Dzerzinski
Leon Trotsky
Joseph Stalin
Laventri Beria
Nikita Khrushchev
Mao Tse Tung
Ho Chi Minh
Pol Pot
Kim Il Sung

Protestant Fundamentalists Responsible for Mass Murder

None

When Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were under the Communist yoke, the rulers had to erect structures like the Berlin Wall to prevent their subjects from leaving their atheist "paradise." The United States, the nation with more fundamentalist Christians than any other on Earth, debates tougher measures to keep the citizens of other countries out. Under the rule of the atheistic Soviets, Russia, which had exported grain, hides, and other farm products for many decades under the Tsars, became a net importer of wheat and other foodstuffs. Rural America, a stronghold of fundamentalist Christianity, became the world leader in agricultural production and technology.

Your statement regarding the superior morality of atheists has been weighed, measured, and found wanting.

166 posted on 03/17/2004 8:03:05 PM PST by Wallace T.
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To: kattracks
bump
167 posted on 03/17/2004 8:15:53 PM PST by aberaussie
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To: Wallace T.
Protestant Fundamentalists Responsible for Mass Murder

None

Hermann Göring
Rudolf Hess
The KKK
Aryran Nations
The British who put smallpox in the Indian's blankets
The Salem Witch trials
John Knox
Zwingli
Melanchthon
Cromwell
Calvin
James I
Henry VIII
Bill Clinton

168 posted on 03/17/2004 9:29:39 PM PST by qam1 (Tommy Thompson is a Fat-tubby, Fascist)
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To: qam1
Other than Goering and Hess, none of the individuals you cite were associated with committing murder on the scale that the Communists that I listed did. Neither one of these two top Nazis made the decisions that resulted in the mass extermination of six million Jews and millions of others in the German concentration camps. The Communists l listed were either dictators, their principal henchmen, or the heads of the secret police.

It is also absurd to claim that the people and groups you listed are Christian, much less Protestant fundamentalist. Let's review your list.


Hermann Göring A neo-pagan, as were all of the leading Nazis
Rudolf Hess Refer to comments on Goering.
The KKK Some, though not all, of the Klansmen were Protestant fundamentalists. However, the KKK's ideology was primarily driven by white supremacy, which was mainly based on natural selection theories derived from Darwin.
Aryran Nations Like the Nazis, their ideology is pagan and naturalistic.
The British who put smallpox in the Indian's blankets British generals in the 18th Century were virtually all Anglicans, not fundamentalists. Attempting to infest blankets with smallpox was a dirty trick and unjustified. However, do not forget that the Indians were ruthless in warfare as well. Two wrongs do not make a right. But the Indians were no more fundamentalist Protestant than were the British officer corps.
The Salem Witch trials The witch trials resulted in the deaths of a few dozen people, not dozens of millions. Additionally, leading Puritan clergymen, such as Cotton Mather, condemned the trials.
John Knox Never a civil magistrate. The Protestant Reformers did kill Catholics because of their religion, but generally not on the scale the Catholics did through their Inquisition. In turn, the Inquisition was almost beneficent compared with the gulags of Communism.
Zwingli Refer to comments on John Knox.
Melanchthon Ditto
Cromwell The only genuine bad guy on this list who might be considered a Protestant fundamentalist. He was brutal to the Irish and English Catholics. However, the Catholics who supported the Royalist cause during the English Civil War were responsible for massacres of their own. However, two wrongs do not make a right.
Calvin Refer to comments on John Knox, above.
James I Under his reign of this Anglican (and, some say, clandestine Catholic), Protestant fundamentalists (Puritans, Separatists, and Baptists) suffered persecution. It was during his rulership that several New England colonies were founded for Puritan and Separatists refugees from persecution. Additionally, James I ran no concentration camps nor imposed totalitarian socialism on his country.
Henry VIII The founder of the Anglican Church, his theology was Catholic to the core, so much so that a Pope granted him the title, Defender of the Faith. After seceding from the Roman Catholic Church, he persecuted those who were loyal to the Pope, e.g. Sir Thomas More, but he also harried Lutherans and Calvinists. He hardly qualifies as a Protestant fundamentalist. Additionally, his reign was not particularly harsh (unless you were one of his wives).
Bill Clinton A fundamentalist? You must be joking!

In essence, your list of allegedly Protestant fundamentalist mass murderers boils down to one person, Oliver Cromwell, who died almost 350 years ago and whose death toll pales before even a second tier atheistic Communist dictator like Walter Ulbricht or the Ceaucescus. Your attempt to show moral equivalency between Protestant fundamentalist rulers and atheist rulers falls as flat as your previous assertion that atheists are morally superior to Protestant fundamentalists.

169 posted on 03/18/2004 6:01:58 AM PST by Wallace T.
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To: BikerNYC
"Are you saying that God needs a good reason to commit genocide?"

Everything God does is for a good reason. That doesn't mean He needs to justify Himself to us. But He often does anyway. With regard to both the Flood and the Canannites, God did explain why he was ordering it. He has also explained why He will almost annilate man in the Great Tribulation in Revelations.

But look around, 40,000,000 abortions and murders, rapes, child abuse, terrorism, etc. If He destroyed man once because the "earth was filled with violence because of man", how can much longer do we expect that he let this go on?

170 posted on 03/18/2004 10:56:25 AM PST by DannyTN
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To: DannyTN
Everything God does is for a good reason. That doesn't mean He needs to justify Himself to us.

The question is not whether he has to justify his actions to us, but whether his actions have to be justified at all. If they do have to be justified, he is subject to a moral code over which he has no power. If they do not have to be justified, then 'might makes right' and he falls into the classic definition of a tyrant.

...how can much longer do we expect that he let this go on?

I expect him to keep his hands off and let us determine the course of our own history.
171 posted on 03/18/2004 4:20:32 PM PST by BikerNYC
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To: BikerNYC
"If they do not have to be justified, then 'might makes right' and he falls into the classic definition of a tyrant. "

He is sovereign. The word Tyrant usually refers to a harsh and cruel ruler. God is only harsh when we either deserve it or are in danger. Typically most agree He is far more merciful than we deserve.

I expect him to keep his hands off and let us determine the course of our own history.

So you think God shouldn't put an end to abortion and murder and violence. No matter how wicked man becomes, you think God should let man just keep on reproducing out of wedlock and killing and becoming more and more perverted.

You can wish that, but I assure you, God will not keep his hands off forever. He will bring it to an abrupt halt. And I predict, that He will do that largely by removing his protection and letting man reap the folly of his own decisions. So in a way, you might very well get "hands off", but you aren't going to be pleased with the result when God removes His protection.

172 posted on 03/18/2004 4:32:44 PM PST by DannyTN
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To: DannyTN
God is only harsh when we either deserve it or are in danger.

So there must be a reason for him to be harsh? Why? What has caused God to act harshly only when we either deserve it or are in danger? It seems that his actions are morally constrained in some way.

No matter how wicked man becomes, you think God should let man just keep on reproducing out of wedlock and killing and becoming more and more perverted.

Yes. I think we should deal with our difficulties ourselves, and we don't need any foreign power meddling in our affairs. God has already declared himself to be an enemy of humanity when he drowned almost all of us. He has pledged to burn many of us some day. Such a being cannot be considered our friend.
173 posted on 03/18/2004 4:39:25 PM PST by BikerNYC
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To: Wallace T.
Hess was a true believer till the end and he was most certainly involved in at least in the planning the Holocaust before he fled. I am sure there were more Nazi but I don't have the desire to go through all the biographies right now. The KKK Darwinist??? Yeah you go ahead and mention Darwin at a Klan rally and see how far you get.

Oh and I forget about the 30,000 went to the stake for witchcraft in England and in Protestant Germany the figure was 100,000

As for the others (Well not Bill Clinton, I know he is not a Fundy I just like pointing out he is a Christian)

1) Nice loopholes, I can do loopholes do, So none of those commies count as Atheist because instead of a God they worshiped the state or their leaders instead of nothing so they weren't true Atheist. Plus Stalin opened the Churches during the Nazi invasion which is not something a true atheist would do so you can toss him out of the equation. Plus I am not arguing that Left wing ideologies are good, They are all evil, Be they Atheist, Christian or whatever leftism is bad thing. If you can ignore the Catholics I can ignore the commies so can you name me one right wing or Libertarian Atheist that committed mass murder?   

2) Your argument is flawed, You are excusing/justifying bad behavior with other bad behavior. You whole argument comes down to we are good because we only killed hundreds of thousands to a few million while the Commies killed many millions. Sorry but murder is murder, It doesn't matter the exact body count, Were the innocent people whose death on a burning stake somehow less horrific then a person thrown in a gulag? Is Jack the Ripper who only killed 5 not evil or less evil compared to Jeffery Dahmer who killed 20+ ? 

And the only reason Communist were able to kill more is because they did their dirty work in the 20th century in which there were higher populations (more people to kill) and better weapons. Give followers of Luther machine guns, trains, tanks, airplanes, etc and a population size similar to what Stalin and Mao had to work with and the results would have been the same if not worse, Hell if Luther, Calvin or Cromwell had nuclear weapons we all probably wouldn't even be here right now.

Actually if we use your flawed logic, According to this very Christian site all those killed in ‘the name of Christ’ in all of recorded history was at most around 17 million. (I don't know the breakdown between Catholics and Protestants but I am sure not all those 17 million were done by Catholics) we can say Saddam Hussein and his Bath Party are good (or Christianity is more evil than the Bath party) because the Bath party only killed ~1 Million people.

3) Actually speaking of Commies vs Witch hunters, That's where Atheist are better than fundamentalist, The vast majority of Atheist would not want to live under/impose a communist system of government where as the vast majority of fundamentalist really wish we could go back to the dark ages where they could burn the unbelievers. Oh well we don't have to worry about neither of them since both philosophies are thanfully slowly vanishing from the Earth.

174 posted on 03/18/2004 6:02:35 PM PST by qam1 (Tommy Thompson is a Fat-tubby, Fascist)
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To: DannyTN
I am both perplexed and horrified by your response.

Well understand that we are all the Lord's, to do with as he pleases.

Like Job for instance, Who God ruined his life (including killing his children) just to win a bet with the devil. That's not exactly someone I would want in charge of things.

The problem here is your perspective on death. You think death is a terrible thing, but it is not always. The Lord has decreed that we all die, it's just a matter of time. You will die just as surely as the infant you are defending.

Death can be a terrible thing. I hope you can see the difference between a person who dies of old age in his/her bed compared to an innocent child brutally murdered for no good reason like his king took a census or because he called someone a name.

That the Lord determines the time, is His business. Physical death is an object lesson for us. It's meant to teach us about spiritual death, which is by far the more permanent of the two. Death is not always a terrible thing. An innocent child would go to be with God immediately, thus God spares the child being raised by heathern parents where he would likely turn away from the true God resulting in his spiritual death.

HUH? So you are saying abortion is good in certain circumstances? Because acording to that logic a non-Christian women who has an abortion is doing the embryo a favor.

Life and Death have always been God's progative. God is not wrong when He takes a life, for we are His creation. Taking a life is only wrong, when we do it. For we have been authorized to take life ONLY in certain special situations.

Yes God (if he actually exsisted) would be wrong if takes lives for no good reason, I am sorry but what happened to Job was wrong, And the killing of 70,000 people because David took a census of his army is just plain silly, If God finds the taking of a Census so offensive then kill or punish David not 70,000 innocent people same with Judges 19-21 why not just kill the rapist instead of everything else sick and demented that happens later.

The severe judgements in the Old Testament were to teach people to pay close attention to the Word of God. Failure to do so is how Israel or anybody falls into sin and gets led astray. It's why Eve sinned in the garden. And it is a serious judgement because the stakes are so high. Spiritual lives hang in the balance. You play fast and loose with the word of God then eventually you aren't even following it at all. Spiritual death results.

Really, I would really like to know what word of God or lesson I am suppose to learn from the Book of Judges 19-21.For the life of me that's one part of the Bible I can not figure out. As an Atheist I don't believe those events happened in exactly the way as written but I just can't fathom the sick, demented mind that could up with something like that. That story makes Natural Born Killers look like a Disney film and I am sure Mel Gibson won't be making a movie about that story.

God never advocated abortion, or human sacrifice. (He tested Abraham with that but He stopped Abraham, and Abraham knew that God could raise his son back up, even if God let him go through with it.)

God did require human sacrifice as part of his "Booty" in Numbers 31:25 - 35

also in Exodus chapter 13 to commemorate the massacre of the Egyptian children God requires the first born of the Israelis to be sacrificed.   

God did specify genocide in a case, but archeological digs have confirmed that this society was burning children in sacrifice to their false gods.

No I think you are confusing the Canaanites who were wiped out in Numbers 21 with the Midianites who were killed in Numbers 31. Lots of bloodshed in the Bible so I understand your confusion, The only "Bad" thing I see the Midianites did was some Israeli dated one of their women, Which is odd this was such an offense since Mosses had a foreign wife.  

God didn't want Israel or anybody else contaminated by their false teachings, so he ordered them destroyed.

So much for that free will thingy, Huh?

175 posted on 03/18/2004 7:36:06 PM PST by qam1 (Tommy Thompson is a Fat-tubby, Fascist)
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To: kattracks
What a great article bump...
176 posted on 03/18/2004 7:39:06 PM PST by DouglasKC
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To: steve-b
One has assumed a responsibility for one's dog. Whether or not one has a responsibility for a stranger depends on the circumstances (e.g. one owes a certain allegiance to the police and soldiers who guard your peace).

So given an equal situation you would save your dog insted of a stranger? I hope I never get into any type of accident with you and your dog. :-)

As much as I love my dog, I would gladly sacrifice her to save the live of another.

177 posted on 03/18/2004 7:55:23 PM PST by DouglasKC
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To: qam1
None of the Nazi leaders were Christians in the dictionary sense. (Webster's II New Riverside University Dictionary defines the term: "Declaring the belief in Jesus as Christ or following the religion based on His teachings.") The term, Christian, first appears in Acts 11:26 to describe the followers of Christ in Antioch.

Nazi beliefs were rooted in neo-paganism, which was an offshoot of the Romantic movement in 19th Century Europe. In turn, Romanticism was a reaction to the rising tide of rationalism. Hitler's association with occultists dated back to his Vienna days. A major influence on Hitler in his early career was the neo-pagan mystic Dietrich Eckhardt, a leader in the occultic Thule Society, the initial founder of the Nazi Party. Whether baptized in the Catholic or the Lutheran churches, all the top Nazis subscribed to this pagan belief system. It is not the ordinance of baptism or occasional affirmations of membership in a particular church, but the commitment to the beliefs of the Christian faith, that defines whether a person is Christian or not.

Pope Pius XI wrote his encyclical, "Mit Brenneder Sorge" (With Burning Sorrow), to denounce the revival of paganism represented in Nazism. He specifically decried neo-pagan writings of Nazi propagandist Alfred Rosenberg, whose book, The Myth of the Twentieth Century, considered the Christian faith as charlatanism.

The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung saw in Nazism (and other European fascist movements) cathartic release from repression, a smashing of the very thin veneer of "civilization" that had held back the tribal, warrior ethos flowing through the veins of Europeans from the mists of creation, waiting to be reawakened and released. Jung stated, "We cannot possibly get beyond our present level of culture unless we receive a powerful impetus from our primitive roots. But we shall receive it only if we go back beyond our cultural level, thus giving the suppressed primitive man in ourselves a chance to develop. We need some new foundations. We must dig down to the primitive in us, for only out of the conflict between civilized man and the Germanic barbarian will there come what we need: a new experience of god."

The World War II Wehrmacht slogan may have been "Gott Mit Uns," but the god referred to was not the God of the Bible. There may have been Protestants or Catholics wearing the uniforms of the German armed services, just as there were Russian Orthodox believers in the Red Army, but that does not make their leaders Christians.

178 posted on 03/18/2004 9:56:31 PM PST by Wallace T.
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To: qam1
The development of white and Nordic supremacist movements in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, the second Ku Klux Klan of the 1910s and 1920s included, was motivated by the widespread popularity of the theory of natural selection being applied to the human race.

The concept of macroevolution by natural selection was popularized by Charles Darwin. Darwin's premise was that natural selection, applied over millions of years, was the principal reason for the origin of all species of flora and fauna. (I am aware that modern evolutionary theory takes into account the effects of genetic mutation in DNA. However, this area of science was not known to Darwin or his contemporaries.) What Darwin observed in his studies on the Galapagos Islands was that the "fittest" species survived in the struggle of life.

There is little evidence to suggest that Darwin himself was a racist. However, numerous political theorists, sociologists, and others applied his theory of natural selection to other areas. For example, Herbert Spenser utilized the concept of survival of the fittest to justify laissez faire economics. Similarly, racial theorists such as Houston Stuart Chamberlain, Arthur de Gobeneau, Madison Grant, and Lothrop Stoddard applied concepts from Darwinian evolution to support white, and particularly Nordic, supremacy. Books by these authors circulated widely in the English and German speaking nations. One hundred years ago, theories of Nordic supremacy were as current in elite academia and among the Eastern establishment as political correctness is at present.

The mutated Darwinism called Nordic supremacy. Hiram Wesley Evans, a 1920s era national leader of the Ku Klux Klan, favorably cited Grant and Stoddard, the principal American advocates of Nordic supremacy. (He did not, however, cite Scripture.) In his pamphlet, "The Klan's Fight for Americanism," Evans stated that the revived and reformed KKK of that era "released one of the most irresistible forces in human affairs, the fundamental instinct of race pride and loyalty - what Lothrop Stoddard called 'the imperious urge of superior heredity.'" This pamphlet also referred to Protestantism, not in terms of doctrine or belief, but as the "natural" religion for Nordics.

The ideology of the second Klan drew from the same sources as did the Nazi and fascist movements of Europe - basically a "blood and soil" belief augmented by evolution based racial psuedo-science. Racist ideology had a reliance on natural selection that was akin to the historical process advocated by Marxists. Whatever the rank and file Klansman may have believed about evolution or Charles Darwin, his leaders' theories on racial supremacy and survival of the fittest drew from doctrines derived from Darwin's theory of natural selection.

Needless to say, the KKK's ideology denied key elements of Christian doctrine, notably the unity of all believers, regardless of race, class, or sex, in Jesus Christ, the sovereignty of God, and the Golden Rule. Whether a Klansman called himself a Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, etc., the doctrines to which he subscribed were anti-Biblical and un-Christian.

179 posted on 03/19/2004 8:46:02 AM PST by Wallace T.
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To: qam1
i was gonna jump in to help out here, but you seem to being doing quite well.
180 posted on 03/19/2004 8:51:38 AM PST by whattajoke
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