I am becoming astounded by the extent to which Christians are seeking wisdom in the words of men and completely blind to a secularist view of the world due to their perception of what is kindness or justice. I may go further into the words kindness and justice in the future but in this article I think I am going to focus more on the debate between religion, secularism, and democracy.
To someone who is religious and has placed their faith in a particular God, or even god’s, let’s call them a deity, religion can provide them with the teachings and answers to life’s big questions. Such as morality, what it takes for society to grow, and what may help an individual become a whole person and a good person. Basically, lessons for life and living it.
Many who are faithful, if not most, place their religious text and belief as an authority for life. Throughout history various religious interpretations have been used to justify great good and great evil. Interpretation are done by people of finite wisdom, and at times evil motive. Those being taught by the leaders of a faith often fail to do their own research to validate the things they are being taught and fall into the logical fallacy of taking an argument from authority as immutable fact. This hearkens back to what I believe is the evil tendency of rationality to idolize it’s own beliefs. The ability of the human mind to rationalize is incredible. I tend to learn things with skepticism. To determine the motivation and timing of the person doing the interpretation. All interpretations done by humans may have flaws because all humans are flawed in some way. Even Aristotle had a problem with group think and using the logical fallacy. Most famously he taught that women had a different number of teeth than men. Rather than simply check for himself by asking to see his wife or friends teeth and count them he took the word of a respected person at the time and never verified the assertion.
I believe that an individual or groups radical interpretation of the Bible is typically seeking a personal benefit from that interpretation. Or they seek to change a long held belief for secular expediency. It is used to alleviate discomfort by the believer allowing them to justify changing their belief yet still be seen in their own eyes as faithful. Non-religious people do this as well all the time. We all have a hard time believing we may be wrong so we rationalize what is right.
If anyone knows me well or has ever debated me knows am very annoyed at using vague words. I am extremely annoyed when I hear someone parrot the latest popular phrase or argument statement/headline from the news because it just tells me they have not done their due diligence to even formulate a half baked opinion.
What I mean by vague words is that some of the words I used above that should be given more clarity such as: kindness, justice, good, evil, science. Secular Society seems to think the words are axiomatic or at least try to make you believe they are. These words and others can be up to interpretation that’s why when someone says to be kind I think, “what do you mean?” Or we want justice, I think “What does that mean when you say justice?” With a religious person or a person of faith they can go back and identify what they mean typically from one source. For a person who has no religion or faith they must find meaning from other people. Those other people tend to be called experts, intellectuals, philosophers, politicians, teachers, parents, trending social media influencer, news casters, charismatice leaders, to even begin to formulate an answer for what is right, just, good, bad, evil, justice, kind. But the problem is all those sources vary in their interpretation.
The reason I mentioned the word kindness is because there is a secular belief that kindness means absence of causing pain, suffering, rejection, disagreement. More harm has been done in the name of kindness than you can imagine. Margaret Sanger, touted as the mother of Planned Parenthood was involved in the belief of eugenics. Part of what eugenics was that according to “science” at the time the black population was genetically inferior. They believed that their population was primarily destined for poverty partly due to lower IQ capacity. This was a strongly held belief by the intellectuals and elites of the time and in their eyes an indisputable fact. This American movement’s belief was also used as a “justification” made by Hitler in viewing certain groups as lesser than and killing them. The eugenicists “kind solution” was to save a person from poverty and suffering by “supporting” them through encouraging access to abortion and contraceptives. This would also help progress society with more intelligent people and slow the population growth of the undesirables. During that time the reliability and access of contraceptives was extremely poor and limited and thus the push for abortion access. Was it to help and be kind? I guess in a convoluted way it was based on the prevailing belief of the intellectual elite but was it really?
Welfare was also believed to be an act of kindness. The structure of welfare and the subsequent failures to modify it have resulted in the destruction of the family so that single parent households went from approximately 20 percent to over 70 percent today. This breakdown of the family has been directly linked to poverty, and lack of success by children of single parent households. (Don’t be stupid and think i’m saying that all kids in single family homes fail, but it is clear that there is a significant negative impact on the potential success of a child particularly where there is no father figure in the household).
Something of interest to note. Does the “destruction of the nuclear family” sound familiar. It is rooted in the Marxist ideology and it was a primary goal of the BLM movement until they removed it from their website due to the backlash. The leaders of BLM are also proud Marxists.
The structure of welfare encouraged single motherhood and having no father in the home. This concern was raised by Moynihan who was a liberal in a report to President Nixon and congress at the time. He had identified the problem of welfare breaking up minority families and creating single mother homes as well creating a perpetual dependency on government assistance and its impact on the success of children. He was unable to convince congress to make the changes to help solve the problem, although Nixon was supportive of the changes.
I kind of digressed there. Back to the topic. Secular vs religion…
So for quite some time there has been a debate about how much influence religion should have in a democratic society. The argument stated in it simplistic terms come out as “don’t force your religious beliefs on me” implying that those beliefs are imposed on someone by the government, or by the individual through government. There are also modern pastors who parrot the concern of using faith in determining law and potentially resulting in a theocratic government.
So I thought about this for quite some time and I saw it come up in a recent post by someone who I assume was re-posting the statement to argue that a religious belief should not be a basis for something such as Roe v Wade, which it wasn’t. I’ll probably write more on the Roe decision but an interesting note is that Although former Justice Ginsburg supported the right to abortion she felt the original opinion was constitutionally flawed. I have taken the time to read the original opinion, the current opinion, and the stories about the child and mother originally a part of the Roe decision.
Then I though to myself why should a person’s religious belief, something that they believe to be true not be relevant when they vote? Or when they make an argument of societal concern? I would argue that not doing so goes directly against your faith. You are abdicating your faith for secular beliefs, and you might as well call yourself Judas because you denied your faith when it may have counted.
If you are concerned about the separation of church and state constitutional argument you should go back and read the constitution. There was actually very little dispute about the meaning for over 150 years. It was as it says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. The debate likely rose due to political self-interest in an attempt to use the constitution as a tool of an ideology vs a foundational document.
Think of a theocracy as the government imposing, by law with possible punishment, the establishment of a specific religion. The US is not that and cannot be that. The government has permitted all types of religions to be established including the church of Satan against much dissent. In fact, if I wanted to I could create the church of the fidget spinner and as long as I had a couple followers I could be identified as a religious organization. Just because certain beliefs may make it into law does not mean we are trending to a theocracy and i’ll explain more below.
Let’s take faith out of it and throw away the word religion and let’s discuss the Bible as an agnostic would. To an atheist or agnostic the Bible has no higher meaning than let’s say the writings of Aristotle, Socrates, Khant, Epicurus, neitzche, and the many other “educated and wise” thinkers. To those who don’t believe, the Bible is just writing of thinkers expressing their view of good and evil and how to live life. There are and have been many scholars that view the Bible just like that and extract what they believe to be profound wisdom from it. What is also interesting is that the famous philosophers and thinkers post date the earliest writings of the old testament and often used the fundamental teachings in the Bible when they spoke or wrote. If we hold the popular belief that society and wisdom progresses over time and the beliefs of old should no longer apply to today then the most prominent philosophers including Aristotle, Socrates, Epicurus, and yes Marx should all be obsolete along with all teachings of the Bible. If we follow that path we eventually become nihilist which is a recipe for disaster when people believe their is no good or evil, there is no truth, and there is no moral standard. Good luck holding a society together with that view and avoid bloodshed.
An argument I have seen against religion is that religion has caused a lot of death and problems. Many bad things have been caused in the name of religion and as such religion should be a thing of the past. Intellectuals and today’s society want you to believe that there is no definite truth and each truth is as valid as any other truth. That our group identity is as valid as any other group identity. That we need to ensure that all distributions are to be equitable ignoring that there are varying degrees of talent, gifts, effort. One problem is that not all truths are created equal. Also, there is nothing in natural law that indicates that equity is even a possibility. Equality of opportunity is mostly possible but equity is not (unless you redefine a word to fit your idea, but that is for another writing). Modernists wish to eliminate the responsibility of the individual in favor of the group identity. I’ll be honest I don’t really understand the foundations of Post Modernism because the beliefs are not defined and seem to be on a spectrum. I do know Post-modernism is a manifestation of Marxism/Neo Marxism which are the ideologies that gave rise to the likes of Stalin (Communist), Lenin (Communist), and Hitler (National Socialist German Workers Party).
There is a lot of argument about whether Hitler was a socialist or just pretending to be. The things I have read that say he was just using the socialist ideology all give evidence that he did follow socialist beliefs by his statements however they always put a “but” and try to explain some rationalized interpretation of what he really meant. The fact is that he was the leader of the party, socialism desires big government (The People), The Nazi’s hated capitalism (The core tenant of socialists and communism to overthrow Capitalism), and they also hated Communists. This just means they liked socialism, but didn’t like the fact that Communists didn’t believe in private property or a fully equitable society. If you study Marx he explained the progression of society which included capitalism then socialism followed by communism. Each having its own differences.
I also noted that each of those tyrants may have had a varying degree of religious upbringing but they all turned against it arguing that religion has no role in politics. They were also all strong supporters of separating your religious beliefs from politics. Sound familiar. In the end they all believed that “religion is the opium of the masses” as Karl Marx put it.
I have difficulty with someone who may have a problem with religion because some humans used it as a justification for evil, but those same people who hate religion seem to be completely oblivious to an ideology that has killed millions of people in some of the most tragic moments and events of modern times that had nothing to do with religion. It’s almost as if some people want to ignore that good and evil do actually exist and the capacity for evil exists in every person.
I also find the modern social movement antithetical to Christianity, and antithetical to what is right. Christianity believes that a savior came for all people regardless who they are. Regardless of economic status (zacchaeus), Disability and economic status (Bartimaeus), Sexual immorality (Rahab), Illness and nationality (Naaman). The Bible also begins showing the equality of man and woman and being a part of another. God and Jesus used both men and women as an integral and equally important role to further the kingdom. There is a lot of violent and terrible things in the Bible as well but that is for another article.
Contrary to Christianity modern society wants to make you believe in intersectionality (A recent intellectual buzzword for how much of a victim you are) basically a hierarchy of perceived victimization based on one or more identity characteristics. It is a view of the world that looks at everything in the context of power and victim-hood. You know where this ideology is sourced as well? In Marxist ideologies related to class struggles. The strong vs the weak. The rich vs the poor, everyone wants to be rich, but they hate the rich because this ideology implies that in order to be rich you must have stolen or taken something from someone else, resulting their failures. Rather than look internally as to what I did or did not do for an answer, it is someone else’s fault…it is societies fault, it is the world’s fault, it is God’s creations fault…for my failures. Does this sound like something that Jesus was trying to teach?
I would like to say that modern society is rooted in science and because they cannot prove God then they cannot believe in Christianity. However, so much of what is happening in society has no scientific basis, is contrary to proven science or is being argued by moving goal posts and manipulating discourse with newspeak and forced semantic shift of a word meaning.
Secular belief wants to separate us by identity with a power argument which is rooted directly in Marx and Engels writings, and are ideologies pervasive in universities. They believe life is a zero sum game. If someone succeeds then someone must have been stepped up or stolen from to get there. Working harder, more hours, having higher intelligence, none of it matters when looking at disparities of outcome to Neo Marxists…Rich vs Poor, White vs (apparently all others), Gay vs Straight, Man vs Woman. It is essentially tribalism. I encourage anyone to research the results of tribalism. In some other writings i’ll hit on the lies you are being told about certain disparities with objective evidence to refute the lies quite easily.
The current secular ideology (secular religion) is rooted in Marxism and taught in universities. It is the belief that power structure is at the foundation of society and the only way to change it is to flip the “evil patriarchal capitalist society” on its head. The problem is that they have no idea what to replace it with. They ignore the recent evidence of catastrophic failures of their ideologies in other countries. They believe if you are not succeeding then you are a victim of only something external not something you did or did not do. There is no personal responsibility. Because to believe as such would be blaming the victim. Even the gender ideologies are all rooted in Marx’ view of a utopian genderless classless fully equitable society.
“A false science makes atheists, a true science prostrates men before the Deity.” -Voltaire
Science is a quest to understand the physical aspect of existence.. and Religion is the quest to give existence meaning. They are quite complementary to each other….Religion can’t explain how fire works. Science can’t explain why we feel better sitting around a fire and telling stories…Each thing has its own place and purpose. The problems start when you don’t use them as intended…Using religion to prevent forest fires is just as silly as using DNA to judge personal character. -Unknown