Posted on 08/19/2008 2:38:07 AM PDT by goldstategop
We are constantly reminded about the destructive consequences of religion -- intolerance, hatred, division, inquisitions, persecutions of "heretics," holy wars. Though far from the whole story, they are, nevertheless, true. There have been many awful consequences of religion.
What one almost never hears described are the deleterious consequences of secularism -- the terrible developments that have accompanied the breakdown of traditional religion and belief in God. For every thousand students who learn about the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials, maybe two learn to associate Gulag, Auschwitz, The Cultural Revolution and the Cambodian genocide with secular regimes and ideologies.
For all the problems associated with belief in God, the death of God leads to far more of them.
So, while it is not possible to prove (or disprove) God's existence, what is provable is what happens when people stop believing in God.
1. Without God there is no good and evil; there are only subjective opinions that we then label "good" and "evil." This does not mean that an atheist cannot be a good person. Nor does it mean that all those who believe in God are good; there are good atheists and there are bad believers in God. It simply means that unless there is a moral authority that transcends humans from which emanates an objective right and wrong, "right" and "wrong" no more objectively exist than do "beautiful" and "ugly."
2. Without God, there is no objective meaning to life. We are all merely random creations of natural selection whose existence has no more intrinsic purpose or meaning than that of a pebble equally randomly produced.
3. Life is ultimately a tragic fare if there is no God. We live, we suffer, we die -- some horrifically, many prematurely -- and there is only oblivion afterward.
4. Human beings need instruction manuals. This is as true for acting morally and wisely as it is for properly flying an airplane. One's heart is often no better a guide to what is right and wrong than it is to the right and wrong way to fly an airplane. The post-religious secular world claims to need no manual; the heart and reason are sufficient guides to leading a good life and to making a good world.
5. If there is no God, the kindest and most innocent victims of torture and murder have no better a fate after death than do the most cruel torturers and mass murderers. Only if there is a good God do Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler have different fates.
6. With the death of Judeo-Christian values in the West, many Westerners believe in little. That is why secular Western Europe has been unwilling and therefore unable to confront evil, whether it was Communism during the Cold War or Islamic totalitarians in its midst today.
7. Without God, people in the West often become less, not more, rational. It was largely the secular, not the religious, who believed in the utterly irrational doctrine of Marxism. It was largely the secular, not the religious, who believed that men's and women's natures are basically the same, that perceived differences between the sexes are all socially induced. Religious people in Judeo-Christian countries largely confine their irrational beliefs to religious beliefs (theology), while the secular, without religion to enable the non-rational to express itself, end up applying their irrational beliefs to society, where such irrationalities do immense harm.
8. If there is no God, the human being has no free will. He is a robot, whose every action is dictated by genes and environment. Only if one posits human creation by a Creator that transcends genes and environment who implanted the ability to transcend genes and environment can humans have free will.
9. If there is no God, humans and "other" animals are of equal value. Only if one posits that humans, not animals, are created in the image of God do humans have any greater intrinsic sanctity than baboons. This explains the movement among the secularized elite to equate humans and animals.
10. Without God, there is little to inspire people to create inspiring art. That is why contemporary art galleries and museums are filled with "art" that celebrates the scatological, the ugly and the shocking. Compare this art to Michelangelo's art in the Sistine chapel. The latter elevates the viewer -- because Michelangelo believed in something higher than himself and higher than all men.
11. Without God nothing is holy. This is definitional. Holiness emanates from a belief in the holy. This explains, for example, the far more widespread acceptance of public cursing in secular society than in religious society. To the religious, there is holy speech and profane speech. In much of secular society the very notion of profane speech is mocked.
12. Without God, humanist hubris is almost inevitable. If there is nothing higher than man, no Supreme Being, man becomes the supreme being.
13. Without God, there are no inalienable human rights. Evolution confers no rights. Molecules confer no rights. Energy has no moral concerns. That is why America's Founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence that we are endowed "by our Creator" with certain inalienable rights. Rights depend upon a moral source, a rights giver.
14. "Without God," Dostoevsky famously wrote, "all is permitted." There has been plenty of evil committed by believers in God, but the widespread cruelties and the sheer number of innocents murdered by secular regimes -- specifically Nazi, Fascist and Communist regimes -- dwarfs the evil done in the name of religion.
As noted at the beginning, none of this proves, or even necessarily argues for, God's existence. It makes the case for the necessity, not the existence, of God. "Which God?" the secularist will ask. The God of Israel, the God of America's founders, "the Holy God who is made holy by justice" (Isaiah), the God of the Ten Commandments, the God who demands love of neighbor, the God who endows all human beings with certain inalienable rights, the God who is cited on the Liberty Bell because he is the author of liberty. That is the God being referred to here, without whom we will be vanquished by those who believe in less noble gods, both secular and divine.
Abiogenesis: the supposed spontaneous origination of living organisms directly from lifeless matter
The standard definition of abiogenesis is akin to spontaneous generation.
God CREATING would not be “spontaneous.” It would be Intelligent design. I’m sure you see the difference.
The eternal.
In the beginning, there was either NOTHING of there was SOMETHING.
We believe the only sufficent SOMETHING able to give rise to all of all would have been the intelligent being we refer to as GOD.
Your disbelief based on faith is just another unfounded belief.
I don't know, but I doubt it was magic.
> Your disbelief based on faith is just another unfounded
> belief.
As is yours.
I’m certain that, in your erudition, you have considered Pascal’s Wager.
You are well informed.
The rest is God’s work.
You may think I am silly and superstitious, but I was once a skeptic like you. Pascal’s Wager did nothing for me, either.
It took a spiritual breakthrough. That’s what it will take for you, and I pray that you get to enjoy it before you leave this world.
Absolutely correct and well evidenced in the 20th Century by Stalins Soviet Union, Mao's Communist China, Hitlers NAZI Germany and Pol Pots communist Khmer Rouge.
The 50 million or so murdered by these secularists? No big deal in a world where objective ethics rules the roost. After all who's to say their ethos was wrong? Objectively speaking of course.
Magic is the multiverse where all events will happen, even energy ex-nihlo. Of course that also rules in a Supreme Being so that doesn't get us anywhere.
Hitler credited God for his actions.
LOL.
I do not act out of fear of divine punishment or for any reward. But then obviously you wouldn’t understand this.
Please speak for yourself, Soliton.
“My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice. And as a man I have the duty to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did the civilization of the ancient world some two thousand years ago — a civilization which was driven to its ruin through this same Jewish people.
“Then indeed when Rome collapsed there were endless streams of new German bands flowing into the Empire from the North; but, if Germany collapses today, who is there to come after us? German blood upon this earth is on the way to gradual exhaustion unless we pull ourselves together and make ourselves free!
“And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited.”
( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Munich, April 12, 1922)
bump
You’re not a quick learner. Twice I have posted Hitler’s plan for the destruction of Christanity in Germany from the Nuremburg Archives. There won’t be a third time. Some folks don’t have the capability to learn or to be honest. Such is life.
Absolutely.
Your statement about Christians believing in “anything” is really silly. That’s the reason we are always in trouble with the secular world, because we believe very specifically and pointedly. Secularists, on the other hand, will fall for anything because they are not anchored to anything at all save themselves.
You need to read up your history a little more in depth. Hitler was into the occult and he was no Christian. A Christian is a follower of Christ and nothing that man did even remotely looked or smelled like Christ.
Hitler claimed to be a Christian. As far as I know that is the only test for whether you are one or not. The KKK also claimed to be a Christian organization.
Only to nutters incapable of critical and honest thought processes.
First of all, there is no test. You have actually made my point, however. Just because one “says” something, it is meaningless. As the Scripture teaches, “you will know them by their fruit.”
I don’t know where you are at spiritually but I would be happy to talk to you off-forum (via freepmail), if you would like. I can tell you this one thing, however, just because one makes a claim, it does not mean it is so. I am sure you can appreciate that fact.
If I say I love you but my actions show nothing of love, then my words have no meaning and are without merit and false.
Please think about that, will you. It is very painful for me when I think people actually would consider Hitler as a Christian, while the real Christians were risking their lives to shelter Jews.
I’m not suggesting that Hitler followed the teachings of Jesus. Just that he claimed to be Christian.
I am the son of a Baptist Deacon and spent years going to church. I have a collection of Bibles and commentaries that were my father’s and grandfathers. I am therefore a “backslidden Baptist” and very comfortable with it.
I love sincere believers. I am less inclined towards those who want to pervert science in the name of their religion.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.