Posted on 12/07/2007 2:52:30 AM PST by rhema
No one would be surprised later this month, I suppose, if the editors of Time magazine were to announce they were putting Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris on their year-end cover as co-winners of the annual Person-of-the-Year award. Nobody, the editors would explain, had done more than these three pioneers during the year 2007 to encourage humankind to rethink its superstitious bondage to theism. Nobody had made it more legitimate to leave God out of the day-to-day discussion. Their widely published books, lectures, and debates—for better or for worse—were pacesetting and world changing.
But if the editors of Time did such an unsurprising thing, they would be dead wrong. They should instead have nominated themselves.
For the truest and most effective proponents of godlessness are almost never those who are most blatant about their mission. They are instead those who purport to pick up any topic at all for further discussion—and then leave God out of that conversation. Do that with a dozen such discussions, or maybe 20 or 100, and you don't have to do much more. You've implicitly made your case. God doesn't exist—or if He does, He doesn't matter.
No example could be more telling than Time's Dec. 3 issue, whose cover brashly announces the main article: "What Makes Us Good/Evil."
It isn't just that the article is terribly trivial and wrong-headed—like when the author says flat out that "gorillas and chimps [have] mastered sign language" or when he goes on to suggest that using "tools" (as in throwing a rock) is at all the same as conceiving and making tools. But the author, you see, needs to elevate other species, even if he does so clumsily, in order to bring humans down to a level where moral judgment is nothing more than anatomy and chemistry. But that, I say, is not what makes a venerable magazine like Time look worst.
The possibility that a meaningful God—or even a meaningless god, for that matter—is part of such a discussion gets not a single mention. In more than 3,000 words, the broad topic of "religion" is never suggested. There's not a hint that anybody has ever talked about something called the "Fall." It's breathtaking, in fact, that Time could take on a cover story like "What Makes Us Good/Evil?" and leave out so much that seems so basic.
Except, of course, that such is the essence of practical atheism—which is so dangerously more lethal than anything ever concocted by formal atheists like Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris. With an in-your-face atheist, you at least have time to get your senses in gear and your defenses set. With Time, the atheism is so quiet that many will miss it altogether.
It's a way of thinking that has been picking up speed for a long time in our culture. Our society, for the most part, decided long ago that it's embarrassing and intrusive to try to drag God into a conversation about education or politics or entertainment or family or economics or art. So it may have been noteworthy—but not especially startling—to see in our local Sunday newspaper a feature titled "Merry Music —Add these 12 Christmas CDs to your holiday collection," and to note that not a single one of the 12 was devoted to the historic "religious" aspects of Christmas. Christmas now instead means Clay Aiken and the Smithereens.
OK. So the spirit of secularism has the wind at its back. Time says that the ability to empathize is a big part of the ability to understand the difference between right and wrong. And the magazine's editors headline their optimism that "science is now learning what makes us both noble and terrible—and perhaps what can make us better."
But even allowing for all that, isn't it still pretty arrogant and uppity to leave out of the whole treatment of "What Makes Us Moral?" all reference to everything that has historically been central to the discussion?
Or should we just concede that not just secularism, but practical atheism, is now the religion of our culture—and encourage the editors of Time to put a portrait of themselves on their year-end cover, symbolizing that tragic and terrifying fact?
[The possibility that a meaningful God—or even a ...]It’s [breathtaking, in fact, that Time could take on a cover story like “What Makes Us Good/Evil?” and leave out so much that seems so basic.]
Should I believe God or fallen man. Just because fallen man is the minion of the fallen angel Satan does not mean all men should and will choose to die and sin and suffer the consequences of not beleiving how the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins and rose again the third day for our salvation and now sits at the right hand of God the Father making intercession for the saints.
As for the rest including the arrogant fools, God that created all things has said of them;
Psalms 51
14 Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High:
15And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.
16 But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth?
17 Seeing thou hatest instruction, and casteth my words behind thee.
18 When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.
19 Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit.
20 Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother’s son.
21 These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.
22 Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.
PSALMS CHAPTER 2
1 Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying,
3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.
4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.
5 Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.
6 Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.
7 I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.
8 Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.
9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.
10 ¶ Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.
11 Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.
23 Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me: and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God.
While I don't want religion foisted on me, I've never felt like it has been. So I can't figure out why all these liberals, all of whom claim to be "personally" religious, feel they have to protect me from persecution that simply doesn't exist.
I may be non-Christian, but it seems that most of the Democrats are ANTI-Christian.
They can't seem to grasp that just being something except a religion isn't enough. Their grasp on their own ideas is shoddy, at best, a free-floating FEEEELING about how we should be nice to each other and "share the wealth" that others create. When you tell them about the social experiments they promote leading to the deaths of millions in Russia, China, Africa, they don't want to hear.
God bless you, Darkwolf377 ... and I don’t mean that in a snidely way.
Thank you. I respect and admire those with religious faith, and I have these things called eyes which help me realize the truth about this Christian nation. The haters are so afraid that someone doesn’t see things their way that they have to behave as if hundreds of years of history are meaningless. Have a great day.
That’s because none of these idiot writers have ever bothered to pick up a book.
If they want to explore Good and Evil, perhaps they can start with a simple one: ‘Mere Christianity’ by CS Lewis.
Big ditto on ‘Mere Christianity’ by CS Lewis. But, he wrote in a style foreign to many of today’s crowd. Were it to be edited for today’s common reading level, more might read all of it.
If there is a God . . .all of that would have to change and we don't want to change. . .got that, God? We don't want to change. . .so stop bothering us, okay? . . .anyway, you're supposed to be dead.
Ditto
Ditto and everyone should buy a copy it will do you good.
Well-put and reasoned.
INTREP
and
I’m an atheist. I’m in the minority but if the choice was between leftist atheists and conservative Christians, I’d choose to live in a society of the latter.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d still harp on them for advocating the violation of my individual rights but the left would be so much worst.
And I don’t care what you believe, if anyone supports individual right (social, economic, whatever) they have my support.
What a lovely post. May God ever bless you Darkwolf377.
Well said.
It is said that an Adversary exists, who seeks to make himself as though he is God. Now consider there are many who believe in God through simple faith alone in Christ alone. Likewise, there are those who not only reject Christ, but seek the Adversary actively.
A major difference between the two, is that the Christian through faith in Christ shall honestly and honorably seek to communicate to you exactly the truth of what he believes so that the listener might have a frame of mind where God is able to show that same faith to him. The adversarial advocate, though, similar to many violent Muslims, doesn't mind intentionally deceiving those who will give him audience if he thinks it will advance his interests which may range from simply insisting upon independence from anything holy to adamantly supporting anything that is antiChristian.
Those atheists like myself who simply don't believe but don't hate any religion have no problem discussing our positions. We don't need to play the victim.
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