Serial Killer: “Evolution Kills”

After I posted this video about how serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer, blamed evolution for his conduct, a Facebooker took issue. I responded:

You wrongly claim that evolution provides us with an adequate reason to act morally:

·       “I would argue that understanding evolution has the opposite effect, let me explain:

·       As far as we know, we only have one life and we share this planet with billions of other life-forms that have the exact same purpose as we do. We're no better or no worse than any other individual, ESPECIALLY not other human individuals.”

“Better” is a value judgment. Since evolution denies that life has a purpose, claiming that everything just happened without design or purpose, you have no basis to talk about “better.” Better for what?

You are claiming that humans are essentially equal. However, you have no basis for this claim either. When we look at humans through evolutionary eyes, we see commonalities but also differences – sexual, racial, physical, mental…  Evolution has no basis to say that some are not more evolved than others.

You also claimed that because humans are social, evolution has provided morality through this:

·       “We're a social species and couldn't have evolved as a species without a sense of morality. It is plain and obvious when you ACTUALLY study evolution. There's no way around this.”

However, the fact that we have certain inclinations or moral feelings does not mean that we should follow them. Morality requires some concept of “ought” or moral obligation. An evolutionary understanding cannot provide this. There can be no basis for an “ought” in a meaningless world, apart from an “ought” that we arbitrarily and meaninglessly create for ourselves to fill the void. In fact, we have many dangerous feelings – murder, hatred, jealousy, lust…  Why not follow these? What can evolution possibly have against these instincts?

Six Reasons why Objective, Transcendent Moral Law is Necessary to Preserve Equality

When we think about equality, we think of many different issues:

1. Equality among all Life Forms
2. Equality of Role among the Various Age and Sex Groupings
3. Equality of Income

The list can be extensive, and so I want to limit my discussion of equality to those things that the vast majority of Westerners value – The Bill of Rights reflecting our unalienable human rights, equal protection under the law, and the value of all human life.

What is necessary to provide an adequate rationale and foundation for these kinds of equality? Many offer the rationale of “majority rules” based upon pragmatic considerations – what works in terms of providing the maximum benefit to the greatest number of people.

While I don’t reject such pragmatic considerations, I want to argue that more – objective transcendent moral law - is necessary for any legal or ethical system. Let me try to explain. If moral law is not objective, it doesn’t exist outside of our own thinking. It’s merely a human creation without any reality of its own.

In contrast to this, the sun has an objective and independent existence apart from what I might think about it, while those who claim that morality is just a matter of our own decision-making deny that morality has any independent existence of its own.

(Moral law must also be transcendent. It must transcend all of our conflicting thinking and feeling and hold us all accountable. As such, it must be higher and more authoritative than our philosophies and cultural biases. It must also be immutable and not subject to changes in culture, human thought, and the opinions of humanity. It must partake of the same immutability and universality as do the laws of physics. Finally, it can only be authoritative if it comes from and is enforced by an all-just and wise Being.)

Let me just focus on one aspect of moral law – equality. The principle of quality is incoherent and therefore unsustainable without objective moral law for several reasons:

1. Without objective transcendent moral law, there is no rational basis for equality. We certainly do not find equality in nature but rather the survival-of-the-fittest. When the Transcendent is rejected, we are left with philosophical materialism. From a material point of view, there isn’t any equality even among humans. So are taller, stronger, smarter, better educated, and more popular than others. More importantly, some contribute to the common welfare, while others detract. Therefore, from a materialistic point of view, some would therefore be more deserving of rights and privileges than others.

On an interpersonal level, we believe that everyone is entitled to respect. As a probation officer, I would try to treat everyone in a way that respected his/her dignity as a human being. However, the material world does not provide any basis for such respect. Some of my probationers had arrest records yards long. Yet, as a Christian, I knew that they still bore the image of God and consequently were endowed with certain unalienable rights. If I had been a materialist, I would have been constrained to treat them in accord with their past performance alone.

2. Pragmatism is inherently selfish. The secularist denies Transcendence. He must therefore base his morality on pragmatic considerations – on what brings benefits. However, we all want benefits. We are all pragmatists. Pragmatism has been the default morality of humanity, and it has borne bad fruit. Whenever a nation has denied the Transcendent – the communist nations are a prime example – we observe unmitigated horrors. This is because pragmatism, the quest for benefits, is inherently selfish. As such, it can bear good fruit but also the worst imaginable evils.
   
   Most secularists will admit this problem and will respond that pragmatism has to be an enlightened and egalitarian pragmatism. However, this is just what communism had boasted to be. Even “enlightened” pragmatism is doomed to failure simply because pragmatism is based upon self-interest and not on immutable, transcendent moral law.

3. Pragmatic idealism will eventually run out of steam and not motivate the sacrifices necessary to make this ideal work. Without the confidence that we are serving the God of all truth and love, we will not be able to continually take risks to save Jews and merely to be a whistle-blower. The stresses of life will eventually lead us to the “why bother” philosophy.

4. Without the biblical revelation that we are special and created in the image of God and therefore possess indelible worth, we will not be able to counter the charges that our morality is chauvinistic – man-centered. Why should our laws favor humanity and not cows or even termites? What makes us any more valuable than the termite? Some would answer, “our intelligence.” However, such an answer undermines the very human equality we wish to protect. If we are valued according to our intelligence or creativity, then we must value the more intelligent and creative above others.

Even the Deist, Thomas Jefferson, was unable to conceive of our rights apart from God: “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?” (Notes on the State of Virginia)

The anti-Christian philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche acknowledged the connection between the Bible and equality: “Another Christian concept, no less crazy: the concept of equality of souls before God. This concept furnishes the prototype of all theories of equal rights.” (Will to Power)

5. Subjective secular morality is arbitrary, culture-based and changeable. How then can anyone take it seriously if we regard our laws as merely the product of the cultural elite or the majority. Such laws and ethics lack the power to motivate in a positive direction. For example, take the testimony of serial-killer, Ted Bundy:

• Then I learned that all moral judgments are “value judgments,” that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’…I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable value judgment that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these ‘others?’ Other human beings with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as ‘immoral’ or ‘bad’? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me – after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self. (Christian Research Journal, Vol 33, No 2, 2010, 32)

6. Without the biblical sanctity-of-human-life orientation, we inevitably move in a quality-of-life direction, where we are valued, not according to our God-given value, but according to a cultural assessment of value. Under this form of valuation, some humans will inevitably be considered more valuable than others – the less esteemed members of society. These might include criminals, odd-balls, or even republicans or democrats. Such a system of valuation will only regard certain members as “equals.”

In addition to the problem of denying the Transcendent’s impact on moral law and equality, is the problem of finding a purpose in life. Without the Transcendent, there is nothing higher into which we can plug ourselves to derive any sense of purpose and dignity. We are relegated to living according to our feelings for our commitment to family or any other ideal. However, our feelings are highly changeable. Therefore, if our lives depend on our feelings, our lives will be characterized by instability and confusion. In order to escape this confusion, we will have to turn off our minds. And this is just what this generation is doing.

Hilary Clinton, Human Rights, Gay Rights, and God

Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, is evidently not a moral-relativist or a multi-culturalist. She has stated that “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights,” and she’s so sure about this that she’s imposing this equation on the rest of the world.

This means that human rights - moral absolutes – ought to take precedence over the laws and traditions of the rest of the world. However, in order for this to be so, human rights must partake in at least three characteristics. They must be universal, immutable, and authoritative. In fact, all of these characteristics require transcendence – something or someone that exists beyond the laws of time and space, matter and energy. Let me try to illustrate why this is the case:

UNIVERSAL: If human rights weren’t universal, Clinton would have had no basis to insist that other nations make rooms for these “rights,” especially in light of the fact that they violate the laws and traditions of these nations. However, if human rights aren’t universal, she would need to qualify her position by stating something like this:

• “Gay rights are human rights only in the West but not in Africa or in Muslim nations,” or “They are human rights as long as they don’t violate your own traditions.

However, by claiming that gay rights are human rights, she is claiming that they trump anything that might contradict them - any teachings from any religion or any culture. (The USA is making this assertion a universal one by denying US foreign aid to any nation that will not provide gay rights, even when they violate their culture or religion.)

We now have to ask, “What makes a law or a right universal?  It can’t be based on a law or power source operating within the universe under its limitations. Just think about any energy source – a radio station, for example. The further you remove yourself from it, the weaker the signal.

Why don’t human rights and other laws operate in this manner? Why do they not generate more influence at one point of the globe than another? If they are closer to their source, we should expect that they would exercise a great influence, that is, unless their source is transcendent and therefore can impact the universe uniformly. It depends on the existence of transcendent laws – laws that operate uniformly throughout the cosmos –laws that are not subject to the influences of time, matter, energy, space and relativity. Laws and rights cannot be expected to act uniformly if they are based within the cosmos.

IMMUTABLE: In order for Clinton to make her assertion, human rights must be immutable –unchangeable. She is not simply saying that human rights trump any laws to the contrary just for today or this week. Instead, she is saying that there is something timeless about them. While our laws and cultures change, Clinton’s assumption is that human rights do not change.

This is partially why human rights are more inalienable than national laws. They are unchangeable because they are based upon something greater, which is also unchangeable.

However, Clinton failed to articulate what or who it must be that is the basis for our human rights. In fact, this question demands articulation. We live in a world of molecules-in-motion. There is nothing in the physical world that is not changing or moving. We are even told that there the molecules in a steel plate are moving around – even deteriorating. What then can be the basis of moral absolutes, including human rights?

Our Declaration of Independence provides the one possible answer: We have been endowed by our Creator “with certain inalienable [unchangeable] rights.” If human rights were granted by governments, then governments can also deprive us of these rights. However, Clinton speaks as if these rights transcend government, culture, and human society, but without explaining what makes them inalienable or transcendent.

If human rights are based upon our culture, laws, or even evolution, they would rest upon a shifting foundation, which would mean that they too are changing and relative to our differing foundations. If so, then Clinton would not be justified in telling Nigeria – and their conditions are different than our own - to adopt gay rights, lest they lose American foreign aid. Such a requirement would be nothing short of cultural imperialism.

Instead, there is only one adequate foundation for immutable human rights, and that is an immutable Being who is greater than all cultures, religions, governments, majority-rules, and historical precedence.  Also, in order to be immutable, He must also be transcendent – beyond the created universe, which is enmeshed in the changes of time, space, energy, and matter. This is a universe in which every molecule is in motion.

However, some will appeal to impersonal laws as a basis for human rights. After all, gravity is universal and immutable. Why then can’t there be impersonal moral absolutes? Why can’t they operate impersonally as a karmic principle or law?

I’ve already alluded to the fact that the existence of our physical laws, like gravity, can’t be used an argument for non-transcendence or naturalism. Instead, these laws bear unmistakable qualities that set them apart from the things that we find within the cosmos. They too partake of universality, uniformity and immutability. However, moral absolutes partake of a quality that goes beyond the qualities of the laws of physics. They are authoritative.

AUTHORITATIVE: Underlying Clinton’s assertion is also the idea that human rights must be authoritative. They should require our submission to them. To put it another way, let’s assume that there exists human rights that are universal and immutable. This in itself isn’t adequate to persuade us to live according to them. Something immutable and universal might lack clout or sanction. In other words, why should anyone allow these human rights to trump their own traditions if they are not authoritative?

OK, gravity is universal and immutable. But we need not live according to its “dictates.” We can defy gravity in many ways. We can fly in a plane or even blast into outer space where we can float freely, outside of gravity’s grasp. Perhaps we might even build an anti-gravity machine. And why not? Would there be another wrong with this idea?

However, no one will suggest that we build an anti-human rights machine or establish a zone where the requirements for human rights wouldn’t penetrate. This, of course, is ridiculous. But what makes it ridiculous? If we can get-around the force of gravity, why not also human rights?

Intuitively, we know that human rights and moral absolutes carry an authority that gravity lacks. It’s an authority that impresses itself upon our conscience and even our identity. It’s also an authority that makes pragmatic sense to us. We legislate laws in accordance to this authority and require obedience, and they work to build better societies.

We also know that there is an absolute Authority Figure who stands behind our intuitive sense (Romans 1:18-32; 2:14-15). And He is essential. Arthur Leff, atheist and professor at the Duke School of Law, wrote of His necessity:

·        The so-called death of God wasn’t just His funeral, but was the elimination of any coherent ethical or legal system…As it stands now, everything is up for grabs…Napalming babies is bad, starving the poor wicked, buying and selling people is depraved—but, ‘Sez who?’ God help us.

Leff is right. We can have absolute, universal, and immutable moral principles, but if there is no God whose moral authority stands behind them, why bother! Human rights must have this Authority supporting them. Without this supreme Authority, there exists nothing higher than our various contending ideas and desires. Besides, if human rights were merely the result of an impersonal and unintelligent karma, there would be no reason at all to not try to find a way around them, as we do around gravity.

However, Clinton would not condone any attempt to get around gay rights. But why are these human rights? Is the lifestyle of a polygamist, a pedophile or a beastophile a human right? Why then should we even consider gay rights human rights? Every major religion fails to recognize such “rights.” Perhaps Clinton needs to confer with God about this! However, I think that she would find this consultation less than satisfactory.

The Expendable Lives of the “Morally Irrelevant”

From where do we derive our value, significance and self-esteem? A recent article, although it fails to establish such a standard, is nevertheless dogmatic that, for some, there is no value:

• Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevant” [MI] and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued…The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life.”

If babies are “morally irrelevant,” who then is relevant? Is it adults? Productive citizens? Likeable people? People who look and think as we do? Perhaps everyone is an expendable commodity, socially valued according to their temporary usefulness? And babies are just not that useful!

Who then decides if another individual is “morally irrelevant?” The ruling class? The party in power? The majority? Do we want to live in a society where our ultimate value is determined by others who might deem us “morally irrelevant?”

By virtue of what criteria can they say that babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life?” Is it age? Why not also the unemployed, the infirm, the aged or the mentally ill? Some, like the renowned ethicist Peter Singer, assign value according to intelligence. Perhaps then we should all be accorded value and influence according to an IQ test. If you score 180, then you should receive a greater vote than those who score lesser, and if you score under 100, then you are socially expendable.

If babies can be put to death, why not others? Why not me? For how long can I feel safe in such a society? I read that the elderly fear going to the hospital in Holland, no longer knowing if their doctor is their advocate or their executioner.

These are very real questions. If babies are subject to murder, where does it stop? If there is nothing holy about their lives, by what arrogance can I convince myself that I have adequate, socially-assigned value – enough to insure that I will be reckoned “morally relevant” by my morally relativistic society?

When value is equated with convenience and profit, then anyone is fair-game – the unpopular, the vulnerable, and the weak. I don’t think that we realize what a great portal to hell we’ve cracked open when we replaced the Biblical concept of “sanctity of life” (Genesis 1:26-27) with a pragmatic assessment of the value of life. This has unhinged us from the Christian values that had once made the West great.

We’ve replaced the dignity of each human life with a cold-blooded, materialistic determination of who is relevant and who isn’t – a virtual survival-of-the-fittest, of-the- popular, and of any life that doesn’t look like our own. We are on a slippery slope. For example, euthanasia and physician-assisted-suicide (PAS) used to only apply to the terminally ill. However, now membership to the “morally irrelevant” has been liberalized:

• The Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) has released new guidelines for interpreting the 2002 Euthanasia Act that now includes “mental and psychosocial ailments” such as “loss of function, loneliness and loss of autonomy” as acceptable criteria for euthanasia. The guidelines also allow doctors to connect a patient’s lack of “social skills, financial resources and a social network” to “unbearable and lasting suffering,” opening the door to legal assisted death based on “psychosocial” factors, not terminal illness.

When pragmatism replaces principle – the transcendent measure of evaluation – only “choice” remains, whether it’s the individual’s choice or the State’s choice. When convenience and comfort are the measures, the value of all humanity is degraded and the lives of those at the margins are endangered. It is therefore not surprising that the margins are now being pumped full with those who lack “social skills, financial resources and a social network.”

The Oxford study deemed that “newborn babies” are “morally irrelevant.” But if newborns are MI, why not also two-years-olds? If two-year-olds, why not also four-year-olds or ten-year-olds? What principle will stop this steady slide?

If a society is measured by its care for the marginalized and defenseless, then we are going in the wrong direction. We were aghast at Hitler’s social experiment to build a new society by ridding itself of the undesirables. How is it that we no longer blink an eye?

(Touching testimonial: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/03/the_new_scar_on_my_soul.html)