Posted on 12/01/2001 10:28:24 AM PST by Brian Kopp DPM
By Gary L. Morella
I have a question for those who believe that the atheistic worship of the state is to be recommended over an appreciation of a "higher" or "natural" law as the foundation for the rights that government ought to secure for the common good.
Natural law can be readily appreciated in the American experience, given the preamble to the Declaration of Independence: "When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary ... to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them ..."
Natural law is something above power or force that gives content to the notion of justice. This notion suggests that there is a higher law by which the positive law of the state is to be measured and judged. Slavery was ultimately abolished in America because of the recognition of this "higher law."
Thomas Aquinas sets the most famous variation of this approach in his Summa Theologica. His natural law is a participation in the wisdom and goodness of God by the human person, formed in the image of the Creator. It expresses the dignity of the person and forms the basis of human rights and fundamental duties. This was the approach later used by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," which contains references to Aquinas.
Simply put, what has state worship done for us lately? We only have to look at recent history for an answer. We saw the deaths of six million Jews and 20 million Ukrainians in the concentration camps and gulags of Hitler and Stalin, respectively. Today, we see the killing of 40 million innocents in what should be their safest place of refuge, their mothers' wombs.
If the state is the final arbiter of the law, the sole dispenser of rights, we're in big trouble, given the lessons of history. The state can easily take these rights away with catastrophic consequences. This is inevitable when each man is a universe unto himself, courtesy of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which ignored a very important question: What happens when each citizen's "personal universe of rights" collides with another's? In the absence of some absolute, immutable, higher law, knowable through reason and not just faith, we're left with anarchy.
But more to the point, the traditionally recognized goal of a respected political regime is the common good. Does killing our children when they're most vulnerable and promoting aberrant behavior that leads to physical ruin meet that goal?
The fact is that ignorance of the necessity for human law to be rooted in the natural law has led to the major ills plaguing society today. This has nothing to do with theocracy. It has everything to do with common sense and the rule of right reason. This is obvious to any Christian who knows that God's supreme gift to us was the opportunity to choose him freely.
Interestingly, those decrying theocracies have no problem accepting a "state religion of amorality," which is promoted by demagogues who won't stand for any opposition. This is the current state of affairs in a "politically correct" but "morally bankrupt" America for which we can thank the example of the former "adolescent-in-chief," whose main claim to fame was making the country more comfortable with its vices.
Come visit us at Freepathon Holidays are Here Again: Let's Really Light Our Tree This Year - Thread 6
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Thanks, this thread fell off my radar screen. So much Freeping, so little time.
I'm not calling you a liar, I'm just curious.
By R.J. Rummel
Charlottesville, Virginia:
Center for National Security Law,
School of Law, University of Virginia, 1997; and Transaction Publishers, Rutgers University
Decide for yourself his relative objectivity.
Yeah, whatever. If he doesn't want to publicly defend public criticsm of his publicly posted article, that's his business. Dialoging with a disingenous theocratic fanatic sounds like a waste of time to me.
Really? The nerve of me huh? I just got home 10 minutes ago and found this little gem in my inbox.
I wish you good fortune in your journey as well. Regards, Bill
"Dear Mr. Carson,I'm still waiting to hear from you. Are you afraid to talk to me? You're real good at showing your lack of acumen on what it means to be an atheist on your website, and at throwing invectives at individuals. Let's see how good you are in a private discussion that gets to the nitty gritty of your arguments. I challenge you to have the courage to do that.
I don't have to. I didn't post my letter to your site. Nor did I give permission for it to be posted. I chose long ago not to get involved with websites that are populated with people who don't know what they're talking about. They can criticize; but they can't take seeing their criticism piecemeal destroyed in front of them. Are you one of those? Just wondering. Still waiting to hear from you. So if light of that posting, I look forward to seeing just how intelligent you really are. Per my experience, people like you prove talk is cheap.
I would be more than happy to privately give you an education. You can thank me later. Consider it a Christmas present for me.
Best regards,
JMJ
Gary L. Morella"
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Let's see... Islamofascists -- nope (Moslem). Nazis -- nope (variant of old German paganism). Communists -- yep. Traditional Fascists -- nope (Bennie and Frankie made a point of being in the good graces of the Catholic Church).
One out of four is a pretty miserable average.
Does he also define "alone", "sex", and "is"?
The only way Bill Clinton would be an atheist is if he quit believing in himself.
Also, there were simply more people alive to begin with in the 20th century (which is, of course, another result of modern technology). Using the proper comparison (percentage of population), the carnage of the Thirty Years' War holds its own nicely.
I recall Martin Gardner touching on this question in The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener. One point he made was that ability to appreciate art is hierarchical -- the set of people able to read and appreciate Hamlet is a subset of the set of people able to read and appreciate a bodice-ripper; hence, one can conclude that the former is more sophisticated than the latter.
Not even the rules of English grammar?
Er, copy the solution used by theists with the same disagreement?
Atheism means not believing in THE God, from a Christian perspective
Er, no it doesn't. (Geez, I thought was joking when I drew a comparison to Clinton's elastic verbiage, but it turns out to be the literal truth.)
So why would anyone want to refer to a statist as someone not believing in God
Er, you tell me -- you're the one who did that in the first dozen words of your essay!
Moreover, why would anyone want to misuse the word statist to imply such an error? I certainly didn't.
Somebody held a gun to your head and made you write: "I have a question for those who believe that the atheistic worship of the state"?
LOL, well, I did not think of it from that stand point, but I guess he does consider himself to be some sort of god, doesn't he?
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