Can pro-choice Sister Christian persuade pro-life Brother Pagan that God is good?
….the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions…. --And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. NARA | The National Archives Experience
- "The Virginia Declaration of Rights strongly influenced Thomas Jefferson in writing the first part of the Declaration of Independence. It later provided the foundation for the Bill of Rights." The Foundation for the National Archives
- "I - That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety." Virginia Declaration of Rights
- Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, acknowledged the source of Rights and expressed the fundamental purpose of government: "....all Men are created equal...endowed by their Creator with...unalienable Rights, that among these are Life....to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted...." Declaration of Independence : July 4, 1776
- Preamble to the U.S. Constitution," We the People of the United States, in Order to....secure the Blessings of Liberty to...our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution...." Preamble
- "No person shall be...deprived of life...without due process of law...."Amendment V
- The National Lawyers Association takes the position that the practical effect of the legal connection or relationship between the Declaration and the Constitution is that the Constitution is to be interpreted in the light of the principles set forth in the Declaration.[...] The Preamble introduces and explains the purpose of The U.S. Constitution, and links it to The Declaration of Independence." The Preface to the United States Code - Annotated states that "this code is the official restatement in convenient form of the general and permanent laws of the United States in force December 7, 1925...." The Preface also states that there is also contained therein a copy of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Ordinance of 1787 and the Constitution with Amendments. Robert C. Cannada, Senior Counsel, Butler, Snow, O'Mara, Stevens & Cannada, PLLC, Jackson, Mississippi, "America's Choice: A Limited Government Or A Totalitarian Government," The National Lawyers Association Review, Winter 1996.
- Ethic of Reciprocity - Every person shares certain inherent human rights, simply because of their membership in the human race.
Brother Pagan can demonstrate that Pro-Choice Sister Christian is evil of the worst sort, and conclude that whatever God she follows must be no different than the devil himself. If Brother Pagan does a little investigation, he will discover that Jesus, in Matthew 19:18 reiterated Deuteronomy 5:17 "You must not murder," and that Paul stated in Romans 13:3 "For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: 13:4 For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. 13:5 Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake."
Brother Pagan concludes that Jefferson & Paul agree that the fundamental purpose of government is to secure rights granted by God by punishing evil and he discovers that it does 'outside the abortion context.'
- The laws of the 30 states that recognize the unlawful killing of an unborn child as homicide in at least some circumstances. State Unborn Victim Laws
- State: Homicide laws of all 50 states protect human life and the dignity of every human being--especially the vulnerable; laws of many states already specifically protect vulnerable embryonic human beings outside the womb; most prohibit destructive human embryo and human fetal research. National: The present Congressional ban on federally-funded human embryo research explicitly excludes "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death"; existing laws requiring separation between the death of an unborn child in abortion and research objectives using the unborn child's tissues preclude the destruction of human embryos as a means of achieving research objectives. International: Documents such as the Nuremburg Code, the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki, and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights reject the use of human beings in experimental research without their informed consent and permit research on incompetent subjects only if there is a legal surrogate, minimal risk, and therapeutic benefit for the human subject. stemcellresearch.org - Founding Statement
- It may strike some as surprising that legal protection of embryonic human beings can co-exist with the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 legalization of abortion.29 However, the Supreme Court has never prevented the government from protecting prenatal life outside the abortion context,30 and public sentiment also seems even more opposed to government funding of embryo experimentation than to the funding of abortion.31 The laws of a number of states-including Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Utah-specifically protect embryonic human beings outside the womb. Most of these provisions prohibit experiments on embryos outside the womb.32 CBHD: On Human Embryos and Stem Cell Research
Brother Pagan continues his investigation, and discovers that Sister Christian worships at the bench of Most High Court which has broken the Law of the Most High God. He concludes that pervasive evil in his country exist because Sister Christian has chosen to be a slave of Satan rather than a servant of God who overcomes evil with good, by demanding adherence to the rule of Law expressed in the Constitution, and not the deviant dictates of a judicial oligarchy that breaks the Law of Moses, Christ, Jefferson, Paul, and common sense found in Rom.2:15.
Brother Pagan realizes that Sister Christian doesn't have a head, but might have a heart:
- This time the good thing GE brought to life was the reality of the humanity of the unborn child. As the popular song "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" played in the background, new parents (GE was even careful to show the father's wedding ring) were depicted gazing enthralled at the moving, three-dimensional image of the baby in the mother's womb. The infant's facial features and fingers were all clearly delineated. The camera demonstrated the continuity of individual human life by ending with a shot of the ultrasound image "morphing" into that of the newborn nestled between his parents. PFM | Good Things to Life
- A new wave of research suggests that the fetus can feel, dream, even enjoy The Cat in the Hat.By monitoring changes in fetal heart rate, psychologist JeanPierre Lecanuet and his colleagues in Paris have found that fetuses can even tell strangers' voices apart. They also seem to like certain stories more than others. The fetal heartbeat will slow down when a familiar French fairy tale such as "La Poulette" ("The Chick") or "Le Petit Crapaud" ("The Little Toad") is read near the mother's belly. When the same reader delivers another unfamiliar story, the fetal heartbeat stays steady Psychology Today: Fetal Psychology
- Judge Jones cited evidence showing that neonatal and medical science "now graphically portrays, as science was unable to do 31 years ago, how a baby develops sensitivity to external stimuli and to pain much earlier than was then believed." The evidence reviewed by Judge Jones on the issue of fetal pain was similar to that produced by the federal government in recent trials on the constitutionality of partial-birth abortion. There, an Oxford-educated specialist in neonatal pain, Dr. Kanwaljeeet Anand, testified that unborn children are likely to feel pain in the womb by 20 weeks of gestation — perhaps even earlier — and that abortion could therefore cause excruciating pain for an unborn child. Reviewing similar evidence before her, Judge Jones concluded that "if courts were to delve into the facts underlying Roe's balancing scheme with present day knowledge, they might conclude that the woman's 'choice' is far more risky and less beneficial, and the child's sentience far more advanced, than the Roe court knew.". — Shannen W. Coffin is a former deputy assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. A Tough Boat to Roe, National Review Online, September 16, 2004
The goodness of God is partially obscured by the evil in his 'believers,' and no where is it more obscured than in the American Holocaust, which has eclipsed the Jewish Holocaust many times over.
Years ago, C.S. Lewis took the same journey that Antony Flew appears to be on, and he made this comment about evil:
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not even done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) by quiet men in clean, carpeted and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters. New York: Macmillan, 1964. Page ix.
The description fits those on the U.S. Supreme Court who routinely break the laws that states make to protect human life, and the politicians who endorse or tacitly approve their law breaking.
Men that weren't feminized had the courage to throw off a tyrant once upon a long time ago:
"….that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these" states "; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present" United States Supreme Court "is of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States."
Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution provides the means to overthrow the tyranny of the Most Hight Court. Presently, Article 3 has no constituency, because there is no 'pork' in it, and you have a lot of good for nothing politicians who are content with the triumph of evil.
Hopefully for Flew, it won't take him another 81 years to grow up the rest of the way from a philosophical theist to a committed and active Christian.
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http://www.newadvent.org/summa/100203.htm
Whether God exists?
Objection 1. It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word "God" means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist.
Objection 2. Further, it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. For all natural things can be reduced to one principle which is nature; and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle which is human reason, or will. Therefore there is no need to suppose God's existence.
On the contrary, It is said in the person of God: "I am Who am." (Exodus 3:14)
I answer that, The existence of God can be proved in five ways.
The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality. Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it. Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.
The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.
The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence--which is absurd. Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary. But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.
The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But "more" and "less" are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.
The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.
Reply to Objection 1. As Augustine says (Enchiridion xi): "Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil." This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good.
Reply to Objection 2. Since nature works for a determinate end under the direction of a higher agent, whatever is done by nature must needs be traced back to God, as to its first cause. So also whatever is done voluntarily must also be traced back to some higher cause other than human reason or will, since these can change or fail; for all things that are changeable and capable of defect must be traced back to an immovable and self-necessary first principle, as was shown in the body of the Article.
The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas
Second and Revised Edition, 1920
Literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province
Online Edition Copyright © 2003 by Kevin Knight
Nihil Obstat. F. Innocentius Apap, O.P., S.T.M., Censor. Theol.
Imprimatur. Edus. Canonicus Surmont, Vicarius Generalis. Westmonasterii.
APPROBATIO ORDINIS
Nihil Obstat. F. Raphael Moss, O.P., S.T.L. and F. Leo Moore, O.P., S.T.L.
Imprimatur. F. Beda Jarrett, O.P., S.T.L., A.M., Prior Provincialis Angliæ
MARIÆ IMMACULATÆ - SEDI SAPIENTIÆ
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Copyright © 2004 by K. Knight. All rights reserved. Updated 18 August 2004.
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