What Evolution is not - Good for society (preface post)
Recently my Christian mentor wrote this, with his words in black and my comments in normal color:
For some time, we wheezers and geezers have been huffing and puffing about the ways in which the underlying philosophies of our culture and society have been shifting, especially in the direction of relativism. Relativism is an approach to thinking that maintains that there are no such things as moral absolutes; that things are only right or wrong depending on how they relate to a variety of other issues (societal norms, cultural trends, the pronouncements of the academic elite, the way in which Hollywood chooses to present reality and so on. In fact, according to the prevailing thinking of today there are absolutely no moral absolutes (with one notable exception: the moral absolute that there are no moral absolutes).
I intend to show (within another post or two) that Darwinism/Secular Naturalism is the underlying cause of the erosion of morality. The reason is that a belief in Naturalism is a rejection of the Biblical moral code, the Judeo-Christian ethic upon which the United States stood when formed as a nation. The Declaration of Independence acknowledged God and the Constitution was based on the Bible more than any other document or source and the laws of the land were also written on the basis of Biblical Morality. When the nation was formed based on the Judeo-Christian set of absolutes and then we try to govern and live with relativism as our code it is like trying to run a Kenworth 16-wheeler that was designed to run diesel fuel on unleaded gasoline. Not going to work right.
For a time, this was just one of the things that philosophers and other intellectuals sat around and talked about when they had nothing else to do - which was most of the time. The first breakthroughs into common consciousness began in the ‘60's and were in the moral realm and demonstrated and promoted by Bill Clinton. But things have grown progressively worse and come into focus about as sharply as possible with the ascension of Barack Obama to power. Now the "free-thinkers” who are all in bondage to their own preconceived and greatly desired outcomes have come fully out into the open were even the most myopic of normal thinking people can readily see them.
Unfortunately, the most influential Americans are often the athletes and entertainers who are among the top 1% of incomes, people who have no idea how much a gallon of milk costs today and are not feeling the pain of the ordinary citizen who finds his basic cost of living are doubling.
While the Obama Administration does what it can to block drilling for oil, transporting said oil, reaping natural gas, mining for coal and building atomic energy plants, it throws our money away on so-called "green energy" solutions that ordinary investors would never back (because they would lose money)!
Did you know that this President (Obama) has driven up the national debt more than all the debt accumulated by all the other Presidents that preceded him PUT TOGETHER???!!!
We have a situation where truth is no longer determined by cultural or even rational standards. Truth is now what you either believe it to be or want it to be. In the pursuit of this new definition of truth, strange things are happening. If a person says something that is recorded by either audio or video device or even both, it is perfectly acceptable for him or her to maintain that he or she simply didn’t say or do that, even though there is a clear record of the opposite. For instance, a large number of statements made by President Obama while he was running for office in 2008 are available on video/audio recordings, but he simply says,”I never said that.” Challenged, he would say that he has watched the visual/audio record, knows that he did indeed say that, but maintains that he never did so.
What is involved here is relativism at its worst. The President has decided what benefits him and his re-election bid then most and arbitrarily declared it “good.” Anything that detracts from that good simply never happened. And it is not just the President who is using this philosophical ruse. Nancy Pelosi never embraced the OWS (as she obviously did) because it is now turning into a liability for her Lord and Master. Thus she simply did not say what she said. The desired narrative determines truth, and if you produce visible records to the contrary, you are the liar because you are meddling with the immutable truth of the narrative being promoted. Eric Holder also seems well versed in relativism, but someone forgot to tell Secretary Chu about it before he admitted that he was wrong about gas prices four years ago.
This is a very dangerous pathway to trod, but the further down it politicians travel, the more apparent it becomes just what is involved. The artificially inflated numbers being dispensed by the Administration involving unemployment and the overall economy are manifestly inflated but they fit the narrative and therefore become true even though those promulgating them know they are wrong.
The truth is that joblessness is at an all-time high. Gas prices have already passed $4.00 a gallon in March and I can remember when it sold for less than 30 cents a gallon! Yes, in my freshman year of college I could get gas for 29.9 cents most days and, when there was a gas war, maybe 24.9 and in fact one big gas war drove prices down to 17.9 one day at one corner on US 41 where two competing gas stations were seeking to drive the other out of business. Ordinary gas stations had gas from 32 to 35 cents a gallon in that part of Indiana (Terre Haute). In fact, a trip my brother and I took to Canada had to be cut short when we saw gas cost 45-50 cents a gallon in Ontario and therefore our trip budget was challenged. Now people would line up for blocks to fill up their tanks for 50 cents a gallon!
But the effect of having a man in the White House who has no respect for Christian morality and normal social mores is not just paid at the grocery store and the gas pumps. We have had many Presidents in the last 100 years who did not respect traditional values and filled the judiciary with activist liberal judges. Agencies like the EPA which basically are a law unto themselves wield great power. Socialism has seeped into the nooks and crannies of our laws and programs. Congress has passed more and more laws, established more agencies and unfunded mandates and enabled the President to grow the deficit and put us in hock to other nations well beyond our means.
We allow babies to be murdered. There are many elitists who have established "hate crimes" and you can be sure that "thought crimes" are close behind. The First Amendment is under direct attack! The Democrats fight voter ID laws so they can perpetrate more voter fraud so they can move the nation closer to a totalitarian socialist country in which individual liberties and property is confiscated "for the greater good." How can this so-called good be so bad?
Confusing? Not if you have a solid belief in and basis for the absolute truth found only in God and fully revealed in the Bible. Even the unconverted are beginning to see through it. It is a product of the self-determination of the academic elite, it is readily embraced by those desiring to be unchecked by any moral considerations at all and included in the thinking and positions of those who see it as an extraordinary means of self- preservation or advancement.
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Many Darwinists make charges claiming that someone has lied or misled another and, when they do, I have to smile. The history of Darwinism is lies and unfounded suppositions tied together with fairy tales and promoted for religious reasons. To be a Darwinist is a faith position, not a science position. You see, Darwinism cannot include a fundamental moral code, because the only philosophy of true naturalistic materialists is, as Douglas Wilson pointed out in his debate series with (the late) Christopher Hitchens is "Shit Happens." The Apostle Paul stated quite clearly that if there was no Christ and no afterlife or Creator then we should "...eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." There is no such thing as a true Darwinist who can defend the idea of free will and immoral actions logically. A true Darwinist must realize that he only does what he has evolved to do and his thoughts are simply the firings of various synapses and the effects of certain secretions so really, the idea that he thinks at all is not logical. Then again, there is no rationality in a naturalistic Universe. Only a Universe conceived and created by a Rational Being can include rational beings within it.
I in fact do not ever lie on this blog, although I have been wrong or mistaken now and then. Yet if a Darwinist commenter claims I have indeed lied, I could simply retort, "So what?" For a Darwinist has no moral code he can point to and claim as a standard. No fair taking God's moral code and using it unless you also acknowledge the God!
The certain knowledge that there is good and evil and there is a standard of behavior established by God is fundamental to law enforcement and for the good of society. Good social mores come from understanding that disobedience is sin and that sin is BAD. A life of love and joy begins with understanding sin and then turning to Christ for salvation and relationship with God. Only then does a man or woman truly find real joy and peace. Those who know joy and peace are the basis for a just and successful society. All empires have failed and all empires have fallen victim to sinful societies. Is the USA getting close to an end?
Mark Farnham
“To speak of sin by itself, to speak of it apart from the realities of creation and grace, is to forget the resolve of God. God wants shalom and will pay any price to get it back. Human sin is stubborn, but not as stubborn as the grace of God and not half so persistent, not half so ready to suffer to win its way. Moreover, to speak of sin by itself is to mischaracterized its nature: sin is only a parasite, a vandal, a spoiler. Sinful life is a partly depressing, partly ludicrous caricature of genuine human life. To concentrate on our rebellion, defection and folly–to say to the world “I have some bad news and I have some good news”–is to forget that the center of the Christian religion is not our sin but our Savior. To speak of sin without grace is to minimize the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the fruit of the Spirit, and the hope of shalom.
“But to speak of grace without sin is no better. To do this is to trivialize the cross of Jesus Christ, to skate past all the struggling by good people down the ages to forgive, accept, and rehabilitate sinners, including themselves, and therefore to cheapen the grace of God that always comes to us with blood on it. What had we thought the ripping and writhing on Golgotha were all about? To speak of grace without looking squarely at these realities, without painfully honest acknowledgement of our own sin and its effects, is to shrink grace to a mere embellishment of the music of creation, to shrink it down to a mere grace note. In short, for the Christian church (even in its recently popular seeker services) to ignore, euphemize, or otherwise mute the lethal reality of sin is to cut the nerve of the gospel. For the sober truth is that without full disclosure of sin, the gospel of grace becomes impertinent, unnecessary, and finally, uninteresting.”
Source: Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Eerdmans, 1995).
This is a preface post to the assertion that Darwinism is bad for society, because one thing Evolution is definitely NOT is good for society!