RATIONALITY AND HUMAN THRIVING REQUIRE US TO BELIEVE IN THE GOD OF THE BIBLE

The West still retains some semblance of Biblical thinking and habits. However, as these diminish, so too will many of the principles that all of us cherish and find necessary. The following are principles that secularism/atheism/materialism/naturalism (SAMN) will not be able to sustain for long and are now quickly disappearing from the cognitive landscape of the West:

HUMAN PRIMACY – Our legal systems give priority to humanity. Therefore, swatting a mosquito or cutting down a tree is still not a criminal offense. However, SAMN provides no adequate basis to regard the human as more valuable than the mosquito.

EQUALITY – With the demise of the Biblical faith, there is no reason to regard each human being as equal before the law. From an SAMN POV, we are unequal according to any possible measure – age, sex, strength, intelligence, societal contributions, likeability… Therefore, abortion and euthanasia and many other social evils have now become rampant.

HUMAN RIGHTS – SAMN has no rational basis to place human rights above the pig’s rights. Instead, SAMN regards human rights as something that the State grants. However, if the State grants these, it can just as easily retract these rights, when it no longer sees them as expedient.

FREE WILL – SAMN provides no basis to believe in the existence of Free Will. Consequently, many guilty people are not held to account and we suffer from de-motivation.

JUSTICE – This used to be administered according to the guilt of the individual, but now it is becoming a matter of group guilt relative to sex, sexual practice, race, and religion. SAMN has no basis to believe in an objective good and bad, just and unjust, right and wrong. These are now regarded as socially evolving ideas, relative to each society. Therefore, we now lack any objective standards to judge anyone or any culture.

OBJECTIVE MORAL LAW (and morality) – Once SAMN rejects the Law-Giver, there remains no basis for objective laws or principles. Laws, therefore, must be humanly created to assist the majority maximally. This represents a major shift from principled biblical thinking to a pragmatic cost/benefit analysis. However, human history has shown us that such thinking will inevitably favor those in power. Consequently, here in the States, we find that Congress has voted for themselves benefits far above those benefits of ordinary citizens.

MEANING AND PURPOSE OF LIFE – AMN has no rational basis to believe in the  objective existence of theses. Since the cosmos was not created with any purpose in mind, we are left to fend for ourselves to create our own arbitrary meaning and purpose. Why then are many SAMN people doing morally good things? Because it produces benefits for them! Once it doesn’t produce those benefits or temptations to do what will produce more benefits arise, their idealism will fade.

All of the above find their objective support in the biblical revelation. However, in the absence of any rational basis for these principles, SAMN folks counsel us to make-believe that they do have an objective existence because these principles are pragmatically necessary. Consequently, we are supposed to believe in free will, not because it really exists, but because we rationally need it to exist. Perhaps instead it is time to seek out a more coherent worldview.

Although the late German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, foresaw the demise of Christianity, he also held the common man in contempt, who rejoiced at the “death of God” but was unable to fathom its cost. Accordingly, Donna Gunderson Hailson has written:

·       More than a century ago, Friedrich Nietzsche suggested that the idea of God was dead and, that if the world were to be without this sense of divine order and attaching moral principles, it would be left with nihilism—no meaning, no purpose, no intrinsic value. Nietzsche attributed two central principles of Western civilization to Christianity: all people are created equal and in the image of God that our lives have moral worth and that we share the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Nietzsche’s warning was that none of these values would make sense without the background moral framework against which they were formulated. A post-Christian West, he argued, would have to go back to the ethical drawing board for a reconsideration of its values. (The Rockery,
Theology, Nature, and the Arts as Spiritual Ambassadors for the Christian Faith; e-magazine; August 7, 20016)