Posted on 02/06/2015 11:46:54 AM PST by xzins
Atheist Richard Dawkins has declared, "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. ... DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music."
But Dawkins doesn't act like he actually believes that. He recently affirmed a woman has the right to choose an abortion and asserted that it would be "immoral" to give birth to a baby with Down syndrome. According to Dawkins, the "right to choose" is a good thing and giving birth to Down syndrome children is a bad thing.
Well, which is it? Is there really good and evil, or are we just moist robots dancing to the music of our DNA?
Atheists like Dawkins are often ardent supporters of rights to abortion, same-sex marriage, taxpayer-provided healthcare, welfare, contraceptives and several other entitlements. But who says those are rights? By what objective standard are abortion, same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption, taxpayer-provided healthcare and the like, moral rights? There isn't such a standard in the materialistic universe of atheism. So atheists must steal the grounds for objective moral rights from God while arguing that God doesn't exist.
Now, I am not saying that you have to believe in God to be a good person or that atheists are immoral people. Some atheists live more moral lives than many Christians. I am also not saying that atheists don't know morality. Everyone knows basic right and wrong whether they believe in God or not. In fact, that's exactly what the Bible teaches (see Rom. 2:14-15).
What I am saying is that atheists can't justify morality. Atheists routinely confuse knowing what's right with justifying what's right. They say it's right to love. I agree, but why is it right to love? Why are we obligated to do so? The issue isn't how we know what's right, but why an authoritative standard of rightness exists in the first place.
You may come to know about objective morality in many different ways: from parents, teachers, society, your conscience, etc. And you can know it while denying God exists. But that's like saying you can know what a book says while denying there's an author. Of course you can do that, but there would be no book to know unless there was an author! In other words, atheists can know objective morality while denying God exists, but there would be no objective morality unless God exists.
Atheists are caught in a dilemma. If God doesn't exist, then everything is a matter of human opinion and objective moral rights don't exist, including all those that atheists support. If God does exist, then objective moral rights exist. But those rights clearly don't include cutting up babies in the womb, same-sex marriage and their other invented absolutes contrary to every major religion and natural law.
Now, an atheist might say, "In our country, we have a constitution that the majority approved. We have no need to appeal to God." True, you don't have to appeal to God to write laws, but you do have to appeal to God if you want to ground them in anything other than human opinion. Otherwise, your "rights" are mere preferences that can be voted out of existence at the ballot box or at the whim of an activist judge or dictator. That's why our Declaration of Independence grounds our rights in the Creator. It recognizes the fact that even if someone changes the constitution you still have certain rights because they come from God, not man-made law.
However, my point isn't about how we should put objective God-given rights into human law. My point is that without God there are no objective human rights. There is no right to abortion or same-sex marriage. Of course, without God there is no right to life or natural marriage either!
In other words, no matter what side of the political aisle you're on—no matter how passionate you believe in certain causes or rights—without God they aren't really rights at all. Human rights amount to no more than your subjective preferences. So atheists can believe in and fight for rights to abortion, same-sex marriage and taxpayer-provided entitlements, but they can't justify them as truly being rights.
In fact, to be a consistent atheist—and this is going to sound outrageous, but it's true—you can't believe that anyone has ever actually changed the world for the better. Objectively good political or moral reform is impossible if atheism is true. Which means you have to believe that everything Wilberforce, Lincoln and Martin Luther King did to abolish slavery and racism wasn't really good; it was just different. It means you have to believe that rescuing Jews from the ovens was not objectively better than murdering them. It means you have to believe that gay marriage is no better than gay bashing. (Since we're all just "dancing to our DNA," the gay basher was just born with the anti-gay gene. You can't blame him!) It means you have to believe that loving people is no better than raping them.
You may be thinking, "That's outrageous! Racism, murder, assault and rape are objectively wrong, and people do have a right not to be harmed!" I agree. But that's true only if God exists. In an atheistic universe there is nothing objectively wrong with anything at any time. There are no limits. Anything goes. Which means to be a consistent atheist you have to believe in the outrageous.
If you are mad at me for these comments, then you agree with me in a very important sense. If you don't like the behaviors and ideas I am advocating here, you are admitting that all behaviors and ideas are not equal—that some are closer to the real objective moral truth than others. But what is the source of that objective truth? It can't be changeable, fallible human beings like you or me. It can only be God whose unchangeable nature is the ground of all moral value. That's why atheists are unwittingly stealing from God whenever they claim a right to anything.
atheists need God but they cannot tolerate the idea that there is one. their position is very sad.
“Atheists Steal Rights From God”
And through the Transitive property steal them FROM US!~!!
I hate it when people take politics and the bible on the same level, because it is mixing the word of man with the word of God.
Agreed. Atheists are moral parasites. If they took their beliefs to their logical conclusion, they’d be sociopaths. Thankfully they parasitically usually adopt Christian morals in their dealings with other humans.
I [provisionally] agree — the bible itself says that the law cannot save, it's a heart issue. (Rom 7,8; Hebrews, James)
However, 1 Cor 6:3 clearly rebukes early Christians for deficiency in the realm of governance: Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life!
However, there's a certain mode of thought which says something like if you're in a position of [governmental] authority, you cannot have your faith inform you of [moral] actions without violating the "separation of church and state"
, but what this mode of thought doesn't take into account is that a faith which is not acted on is no faith at all. (i.e. it is an assertion that a Christian in an authority position cannot practice his religion.)
“But Dawkins doesn’t act like he actually believes that.”
So true.
Stealing from God is a good term.
Atheism of this sort is just another form of not growing up. They want to live off of others who do and have done the work of instilling morals in to society.
My guess is that will come to an end. The bible says that those who worship other gods or embrace godlessnes are given over to depravity:
Romans 1: 28 28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
We already see it working out in the immorality of our culture and in its soft persecution of Christians.
So very true, dear brother in Christ!
I watched Fox News' "Cost of Freedom" this morning. I was stunned to hear Eric Bolling describe 0bama as a Christian. Where on earth did he get the idea that 0bama is a Christian? It seems clear to me that he has zero commitment to Christianity or Christians, and incredible sympathy for Islam.
Which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows his personal history. Both his father and step-father were Muslim. Not only that, but both were Marxist activists and anti-colonialists. (Stanley Ann Dunham evidently had execrable taste in men.) 0bama was educated in madrassa schools in his boyhood. He has said that the muezzin's call to prayer is the most beautiful sound he has ever heard.
The horrific persecution of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East and Africa does not seem to disturb him in the least. He won't lift a finger to help them. Rather, he forms committees to study and make recommendations that never seem to produce anything. But all his temporizing does is to signal to the Jihadists that, as far as he is concerned, they have a free hand to operate in furtherance of their goal of instituting a global caliphate. In short, he is an enabler of these savages.
His schtick is moral relativism. No way this guy is a Christian.
FWIW
I agree that Obama is not a Christian. Boling is forced to say that since Obama is on record saying he IS a Christian, and the media types are really nervous about religion unless their bashing Christianity. He is acclaimed as Christian due to his years at Wright’s UCC (I think) church in Chicago. Attending church is an accepted definition of ‘christian’ among the unthinking.
Obama’s actions make sense instantly if we just assume he is a muslim. Everything falls into place then, and your final thought is right on the money: “But all his temporizing does is to signal to the Jihadists that, as far as he is concerned, they have a free hand to operate in furtherance of their goal of instituting a global caliphate. In short, he is an enabler of these savages. “
I knew some Christians thought he was also a Christian early on, before he became well known, just because he had learned how to mimic the right catch phrases. That was the source of some of the support he had among otherwise conservative people at the beginning.
But once people were introduced to Reverend Wright, all that fell away.
At this point only a non-Christian would ever mistake him for a Christian, whether close up or at a distance. No Christian would make that mistake. Atheist, marxist, muslim, all together at the same time, yes. Christian, no, its laughable even to think it.
Adding to my previous post, what’s the possibility that Obama is an atheist? His actions say ‘muslim’, but so many socialists seem to get along with muslims that I’ve wondered if there is some affinity or some similarity that socialist/atheists see in islam. A caliphate — a single strong man with a retinue of bureaucrats/aristocrats overseeing the population — is not far from a socialist idea. What do you think?
Gay, atheist, marxist, muslim, seem like contradictions but in his case I believe they all apply.
Socialists believe they are democrats but in fact they are all looking for a king to set things aright. You have an “unholy” coalition between the people who want to be taken care of, and the ones who believe they will be among the elite taking care of them.
So many of them envision a bucolic world, the masses toiling happily in the verdant fields, while they look out over them from their high tower. They think deep thoughts and seek the very best for the little people out there.
Add in a bit of the old ultra-violence to keep things spiced up, and you have the caliphate. Since most people, especially academics, tend to believe they’ll be one of the ones in the tower, and not one of the ones toiling happily in the fields, or one of the ones having his head severed from his neck, caliphate sounds just fine.
There is another element that occurred to me. When you look at the generations of bohemians who fled to Morocco to live lives doing things you couldn’t legally do back home, there is in the western mind the idea that Islam has some kind of escape clause or bubble that somehow applies to them.
One thing many forget is that God did not WANT to establish a kingdom in Israel. He warned them about the abuses that kings would institute.
At the time of Moses, God established what looked to be an independent people united by a judge/judicial system that tied into their religious system. When they stayed close to it, they stayed united and able to overcome external enemies. When they departed from it, they fragmented and were ripe pickings for external enemies.
Imagine our system of judges with no politicians and parties.
Exactly, dear brother in Christ! If his words do not match up with his actions (and it seems they never do), then we must look at his actions — or non-actions as the case may be — to understand what he's really all about.
Some people say he's just incompetent. I say he knows exactly what he's doing. So look at his deeds for enlightenment into his character — and motives.
One thing more: 0bama seems to be of the opinion that if we change the way we think — and speak — about the world, then we can actually change the world in reality. Evidently he believes words have this magical effect. He must be a "black magician" to believe such a thing: He thinks he can intone his zauberwort — his magic word — and presto-changeo!!! — the world complies.
This man is totally insane, a dangerous lunatic. He is tearing down America, "brick by brick." And then dares anyone to try and stop him.
I so agree. Your observation bears repeating.
Assuming a reasonably moral, reasonably godly people, and reasonably moral and godly judges, yes.
That is actually the key. Its not the structure, its the character of the people themselves. Given a moral and godly people, almost any system can work. Without that, every system will ultimately fail.
Still, its clear to me that, as you say, God intended power to be well distributed and close to the people themselves. He did not want power to be centralized in the hands of any king or bureaucrat.
Freedom implies that you govern yourself, and the capacity to govern yourself is a moral quality. If God is king, you don't need an earthly king, just judges and clerks to referee the inevitable disagreements among otherwise good people.
I posted a thread not too many months backed entitle, Is Obama Insane?
“http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3214343/posts";
As I recall, many thought he was intelligent, cunning, capable, and crazy. Others didn’t want to give him the moral out of insanity, so they went with some variety of sociopath. My sense is that those aren’t mutually exclusive.
I agree that watching his actions is key. Ultimately, he’s in it for power, the supreme narcissism, I suppose.
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