And Even More Religious Q&A

 

Christianity vs. secular humanism & atheism: Understanding how our different beliefs affect our stand on abortion:

Most Christians tend to be pro-life while most secular humanists and atheists tend to be pro-choice. This is because Biblical and secular viewpoints on the origins of mankind are vastly different, resulting in diametrically opposing views on abortion. Here are the basics:

 

1) Origin of mankind:

The Bible says mankind was created by God himself:

 

Genesis 1:27: "...male and female he created them."

 

Acts 17:26: "From one man he made all the nations..."

 

The secular or atheistic belief is that mankind arose out of a series of thoughtless, impersonal, and random circumstances, and with varying levels of evolutionary development - some higher and some lower. We are nothing more than a collection of atoms:

 

"Human life is sacred only if there is a God to sanctify it. Otherwise man is just another collection of atoms and can be treated as such." (Ref:  Robert R. Reilly, “Atheism and Arms Control”, Intercollegiate Review, Fall 1988).

 

"Darwinism undermines both the idea that man is made in the image of God and the idea that man is a uniquely rational being. Furthermore, if Darwinism is correct, it is unlikely that any other support for the idea of human dignity will be found." (Ref:  James Rachels, "Created from Animals", 1990).

 

If we view our fellow human as created by God - with a divine origin - then we will treat them with the utmost of care and respect. They are God's child and we will treat them as such. On the other hand, if we view others as a mere collection of atoms assembled by the random process of evolution, we will see them as nothing more than a collection of tissue and bone - with no divine origin. This is precisely how pro-choice advocates view the unborn - as a mere clump of underdeveloped tissue. And this, in turn, makes the convenient disposal of that tissue through abortion, that much easier on the conscience.

 

2) Essential nature of mankind:

The Bible says mankind was lovingly and painstakingly created in God's image:

 

Genesis 1:27: "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them;"

 

Psalm 139:14: "I will praise You because I have been remarkably and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, and I know this very well."

The Bible gives mankind a special elevated status above the animal kingdom. God created all flying and swimming creatures in one day and all land animals in another. But then, God devoted one day of creation just to create mankind alone - which is something He didn't do for any other creature. God then commanded mankind to be masters over all of the other creatures:

 

Genesis 1:28: "Be masters over the fish in the ocean, the birds that fly, and every living thing that crawls on the earth!"

The secular or Darwinist belief is that mankind is merely a more advanced member of the animal kingdom; one type of animal amongst many, and as such, has neither special status nor right to life than any other animal. Furthermore, various races of mankind are at various stages of evolutionary development:

 

“It is a plain truth that we are cousins of chimpanzees, somewhat more distant cousins of monkeys, more distant cousins still of aardvarks and manatees, yet more distant cousins of bananas and turnips … continue the list as long as desired.” (Richard Dawkins - atheist and evolutionist, "The Greatest Show on Earth", 2009).

 

"In the world of Darwin, man has no special status other than his definition as a distinct species of animal. He is in the fullest sense a part of nature and not apart from it. He is akin, not figuratively but literally, to every living thing, be it an amoeba, a tapeworm, a flea, a seaweed, an oak tree, or a monkey—even though the degrees of relationship are different and we may feel less empathy for forty-second cousins like the tapeworms than for, comparatively speaking, brothers like the monkeys." (Ref: George Gaylord Simpson, "The World into Which Darwin Led Us", Science, vol. 131, 1960).

 

“It has often been said, as Mr. Macnamara remarks, that man can resist with impunity the greatest diversities of climate and other changes; but this is true only of the civilized races. Man in his wild condition seems to be in this respect almost as susceptible as his nearest allies, the anthropoid apes, which have never yet survived long, when removed from their native country.” (Ref:  Charles Darwin in "Descent of Man" (1871), referring to Africans as "wild" and with apes as their "nearest" relatives).

 

"Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory." (Ref: Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard professor, "Ontogeny and Phylogeny", 1977).

 

"We were victims of a cruel social ideology that assumes that competition among individuals, classes, nations or races is the natural condition of life and that it is also natural for the superior to dispossess the inferior . . . . The law of natural selection is not, I will maintain, science. It is an ideology, and a wicked one. . ." (Ref: Kenneth J. Hsu, "Is Darwinism Science?" Earth watch, March 1989).

 

Rather than being a special creature reflecting the image of God, atheism and Darwinism promotes the belief that mankind is just another member of the animal kingdom - and still in a state of evolutionary development. And this, once again, makes the convenient disposal of the unborn "sub-human" through abortion, that much easier on the conscience.

 

3) Purpose of mankind:

The Bible says we were created specifically with the purpose of having communion and fellowship with God:

 

1 Corinthians 1:9: "God will do this, for he is faithful to do what he says, and he has invited you into partnership with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord."

 

1 John 1:3: "And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ."

 

The atheistic view says there is no God and we have no specific purpose in life at all. Famous atheist Jean-Paul Sartre affirmed the purposelessness of our existence from the secular viewpoint:

"Being is without reason, without cause, and without necessity." (Ref: Jean-Paul Sartre, "Being and Nothingness", Philosophical Library: New York, NY, 1956).

 

Contemporary atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel said: "Viewed in this way, death, no matter how inevitable, is an abrupt cancellation of indefinitely extensive possible goods." (Ref: Thomas Nagel, “Mortal Questions”, Cambridge University Press, 1979).

If God has given us the important purpose of having close fellowship with Him, then nobody has the right to take that opportunity and purpose away, especially by aborting or killing us. Applying Nagel's view on death to the issue of abortion, nobody has the right - through abortion - to cancel the "possible good" that each unborn life holds.

 

Likewise, if there is no God to have fellowship with, and no special or important purpose to be taken away from us, then aborting an unborn child who has no purpose in life, becomes that much easier on the conscience.

4) Destiny of mankind:

The Bible says we all have an eternal destiny - heaven or hell. We will consciously experience an ongoing state of reward or an ongoing state of punishment:

Matthew 25:26: "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

 

On the other hand, the secular or atheistic view says that once we die, we will no longer exist - in any state, neither conscious nor unconscious. Thomas Nagel's statement reflects this atheistic belief: "If death is the unequivocal and permanent end of our existence, the question arises whether it is a bad thing to die." (Ref: "Mortal Questions", Thomas Nagel, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1979).

 

If the unborn child has an eternal destiny, that is, heaven, then that should cause any thinking, fair-minded individual to pause before acting to bring about the demise of that child - a sentient, cherished, eternal soul created by God. There is always an eternal significance in how an eternal being was treated, and how that eternal being physically died - whether by natural causes or by the deliberate act of another.

 

On the other hand, if the unborn child came from nothing more than the combination of sperm and egg, and will eventually and permanently pass out of existence almost as quickly as it came into existence, then there is no significance in how it came into existence or how it's existence ended - any more than the life and death of a potted plant or weed out in the field. And this lack of significance, in the mind of the secular humanist/atheist, makes the ending of a life through abortion that much easier to accomplish, without any pangs of conscience.

 

5) Hope for mankind:

The Bible says we have a great hope that surpasses and transcends even death - an eternal future in heaven:

1 Thessalonians 4:13-17: "But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord."

 

Several points are made in this passage:

 

- Because of our hope in eternal life, we grieve the passing of our saved loved ones - but not in the same, hopeless fashion as those who are outside the faith and have no such hope in life after death.

 

- Jesus proved he overcame death by rising after his own death, so he can be relied upon to raise us from the dead also.

 

- There is a specific day in the future, the Rapture, when Christians who are alive will be taken up into heaven. Along with them will be those who previously died whom God will raise up also, those who loved him and put their hope in him.

 

For the atheist who believes death is the permanent end to their existence, there is no such hope.

 

Famous atheist and philosopher, Bertrand Russell, called this hopelessness in life an "unyielding despair":

"That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built." (Ref: Bertrand Russell, "Mysticism and Logic", New York, NY, 1929).

 

Since everything - including ourselves and even the entire universe - is doomed to eventually go out of existence, there can be no ultimate significance - according to the secular humanist's view. Certainly, making a positive contribution to society can give our lives relative significance - relative to certain times, events, circumstances, or people who are affected by our contribution. But since those things which were positively affected by us will eventually come to their end as well, there is no ultimate significance, and hence, no ultimate hope. Therefore, since the existence of everyone and everything will eventually come to an end, there is ultimately no hope for the individual who chooses to believe in atheism.

 

To put this in another perspective, the atheist believes that when he dies, he will lose contact with all of his loved ones, friends, and possessions. This is the most all-encompassing and total loss an individual can experience. To try and conjure up hope in the face of such a total loss is a false hope - which is no hope at all.

The message of the Bible gives us a hope for our own personal future, and also a hope for others in their future - including the future of those who are yet to be born.

 

Atheism, on the other hand, gives us absolutely no hope for our own future, so how then can we have a hope for the unborn child or anyone else? Just as in the case of a tragic murder-suicide where a gunman kills his family and then kills himself, the one who despairs to the point of suicide sees no hope or value in living - either for himself...or for others. And without hope for oneself or others, killing the unborn through abortion - comes that much easier.

 

6) Accountability of mankind:

The Bible says if we reject God's mercy and forgiveness for our sins, we will be held accountable for every violation of his moral law:

 

Ecclesiastes 12:14: "For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil."
 

Matthew 12:36: "But I tell you that men will have to give account on the Day of Judgment for every careless word they have spoken."
 

1 Corinthians 4:5: "Wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts."

 

Atheism, on the other hand, says we will not be held accountable for our actions because there is no God to hold us accountable. And without God, neither is there any ultimate meaning in life. Furthermore, since mankind's systems of justice are extremely limited and rather impotent, this means mass murderers, rapists, child molesters, human traffickers, etc. will never get true justice. They will simply die and rest in peace.

 

Atheist and serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer put it this way: "If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That's how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing." (Ref: Jeffrey Dahmer, Interview with Stone Phillip, Dateline NBC, 11/29/94).

 

Famous atheist Aldous Huxley spoke of this atheistic philosophy of meaninglessness and the underlying motive for such a belief - to gain complete freedom from moral constraint: "For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaningless was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotical revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever." (Ref: Aldous Huxley, "Ends and Means", 1937).

 

Once again, without ultimate accountability for our actions, there is no significant deterrent for killing others - even killing a helpless unborn child - thus making the murderous act of abortion that much easier.

 

Could this also explain why the vast majority of people behind human history's genocides were atheists and secular humanists - and all were evolutionists? Here is a partial list of infamous genocides of the twentieth century:

 

- Karl Marx (died 1883): Atheist and Darwinist; Best known for his remark "Man makes religion...It is the opium of the people"; of Darwin’s book "Origin of Species", he said: "This is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our views.” the most brutal regimes in history adopted his atheistic philosophies to murder millions. In Russia alone, more than 20 million Christians were killed in the 20th century as a result of his policies.

 

- Friedrich Nietzsche (died 1900): Atheist; Best known for his remark "God is dead"; also an evolutionist but differed with Darwin on the details; his writings are credited as the driving force behind German militarism and Nazism which murdered millions; later suffered from a complete mental collapse.

 

- Vladimir Lenin (died 1924): Atheist and Darwinist; Bitterly renounced his belief in God following the death of his father and beloved brother; as a Marxist himself, he said: "Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism..."; he supported Darwin's theory and said: "Darwin put an end to the belief that the animal and vegetable species bear no relation to one another, except by chance, and that they were created by God, and hence immutable."; his dictatorship was responsible for the deaths of 2 to 3 million people by starvation, execution, and war.

 

- Leon Trotsky (died 1940): Self-proclaimed "irreconcilable atheist" and Darwinist; he denied both the existence of God AND absolute morality by stating, "We call our dialectic 'materialist', since its roots are neither in heaven nor in the depths of our “free will”, but in objective reality, in nature...There is place within this system for neither God nor Devil, nor immortal soul, nor eternal norms of laws and morals."; he took intellectual pride in being a Darwinist and said, "Every educated person since Darwin has labeled themself an “evolutionist”. But a real evolutionist must apply the idea of evolution to his own forms of thinking"; as a Bolshevik leader he masterminded the murder of hundreds of thousands of Russians through starvation and war during the Communist Russian Revolution.

 

- Benito Mussolini (died 1945): Atheist; known for "daring God to strike him dead" on many public occasions; also a Darwinist and extremely anti-Christian; persecuted both the Protestant and Catholic church; responsible for 400 to 500 thousand deaths; executed by a firing squad while attempting to escape from Italy.

 

- Adolf Hitler (died 1945): Darwinist; he was so anti-Christian that Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, noted in his diary in 1939: "The Fuehrer is deeply religious, but deeply anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race." This is also why Martin Bormann, Hitler's secretary and right hand man, publically stated in 1941, "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable." Hitler himself said, "Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.”; “Christianity is the worst of the regressions that mankind can ever have undergone...”; “The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity.” Nevertheless, Hitler publically and repeatedly invoked the name of God as a ruse to justify his brutal military and political actions; he applied Darwin's theory of evolution and "survival of the fittest" while attempting to develop a biologically superior race through ethnic cleansing; showed no regard for accountability to a higher power by killing 11 to 14 million people through starvation, execution, and war; committed suicide to avoid capture at the end of World War 2.

 

- Joseph Stalin (died 1953): Became an atheist and Darwinist after reading Darwin's "Origin of Species", stating: "God's not unjust, he doesn't actually exist. We've been deceived.” he made atheism the official ideology of Russia and flooded the media and schools with atheistic propaganda; he crushed the Russian Orthodox Church, leveling thousands of churches and killing more than 100,000 priests, monks and nuns during the religious "purge" between 1937 and 1938 alone. Overall, his atheistic dictatorship killed 20 to 60 million people by starvation, execution, and war.

 

- Margaret Sanger (died 1966): Atheist and Darwinist; Known for her remark "The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it"; advocate of eugenics (Darwinist-based attempts to develop a superior race through selective breeding of humans), mandatory sterilizations of the "unfit", and infanticide; founder of Planned Parenthood - America's largest abortion provider responsible for the deaths of untold millions of preborn children.

 

- Mao Zedong (died 1976): Atheist, with Darwin as his favorite author; he stated "Religion is poison." and "Chinese socialism is founded upon Darwin and the theory of evolution."; He made atheism the official ideology of China and flooded the media and schools with atheistic propaganda; lived an opulent lifestyle while the common people starved; his regime caused the deaths of 40 to 70 million people by starvation, torture, and executions.

 

- Jim Jones (died 1978): Atheist; responsible for the 1978 mass murder/suicide of 908 members of the People's Temple cult in Guyana, including his ordered executions of several members of the press and a visiting Congressman. He said: "Off the record, I don’t believe in any loving God. Our people, I would say, are ninety percent atheist...I felt somewhat hypocritical for the last years as I became an atheist...you feel tainted, by being in the church situation. But of course, everyone knows where I’m at. My bishop knows that I’m an atheist...He must have spent twenty thousand dollars traveling around, hoping to get my denomination to remove me, because I was so atheistic.” (The Jonestown Institute audiotape, 1976).

 

- Pol Pot (died 1998): As leader of the deadly Khmer Rouge, he admired and adopted Mao's atheist and Darwinist philosophies; known for his "Cambodian killing fields"; closed all religious institutions including Buddhist temples but especially persecuted Christians and Muslims; responsible for 1 to 3 million executions, mostly using axes, hammers, and sharpened bamboo sticks to save ammunition.

 

Here are several points to remember on the above list of genocides with their associated leaders/dictators:

 

a) The vast majority of atheists are obviously not genocidal. Since all humans including atheists were created in God's image, most atheists inherently understand God's moral Law, and therefore understand right from wrong:

 

Romans 2:14: "Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness..."

 

Ironically, atheists are in denial of the God who gave them knowledge of His moral law in the first place. Instead of being grateful for that knowledge, they reject him.

 

However, the atheist's deliberate denial of God's existence is also evidence of an indifferent conscience and as such, is "without excuse":

 

Romans 1:20-21: "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened."

 

b) We all have varying degrees of a numb, indifferent God-given conscience. By watching violent shows, for example, our conscience becomes dulled. When our conscience no longer functions properly, the Bible calls it a "seared conscience":

 

1 Timothy 4:2 says: "Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron."

Since all of humanity is sinful, this process of developing an indifferent conscience can and does happen to all individuals to varying degrees.

 

c) Atheists who deny God's existence but still retain an understanding of His moral law (right from wrong) have a partially seared conscience while atheists who deny God's existence AND deny His moral law have a more fully seared conscience. Most atheists fall into the former category while genocidal dictators fall into the latter - for the aforementioned reasons.

 

d) Communism and atheism is not the same thing. Communism is only a political view in which private property is eliminated and all property is owned by the state for the common good. No inherent numbing of the conscience is required to adopt communism. Neither does it say anything about the value of human life, either way. Therefore, communism cannot be blamed for these genocides.

 

e) Atheism, on the other hand, is a belief that a supreme being does not exist - a condition which requires a deliberate numbing and searing of one’s own conscience. This denial goes against common knowledge of God's existence initially given by God to all humans. The deliberate searing of our own conscience - anywhere along the process from mild to severe - correspondingly lowers our respect for human life.

 

"Today's Darwinists are not Nazis and not all Darwinists agree with Dawkins, Wilson, Ruse, Singer, or Watson. However, some of the ideas being promoted today by prominent Darwinists in the name of Darwinism have an eerily similar ring to the ideologies that eroded respect for human life in the pre-Nazi era." (Ref:  Richard Weikart, history professor at CSU, "Darwin and the Nazis", American Spectator, April 16 2008).

 

f) The genocides cannot be said to have been done "in the name of atheism". Atheism does not cause genocides; extremely seared consciences do. Atheism itself is merely a symptom of a seared conscience. Therefore, the list of names above shows it is by no mere coincidence almost all genocides of the twentieth century were led by hardened secular humanists and atheists.

 

Likewise, also by no mere coincidence, most secular humanists and atheists today are pro-abortion advocates and see nothing wrong with the violent dismembering and killing of millions of innocent, helpless unborn children - our modern-day genocide.

 

"My heart got callous to the fact that I was a murderer, but that baby lying in a cold bowl educated me as to what abortion really was." (Former Abortionist Dr. David Brewer, from the film "Meet the Abortion Providers")

 

"The first time, I felt like a murderer, but I did it again and again and again, and now, 20 years later, I am facing what happened to me as a doctor and as a human being. Sure, I got hard. Sure, the money was important. And oh, it was an easy thing, once I had taken the step, to see the women as animals and the babies as just tissue."  (Abortionist quoted from a radio talk show by John Rice in "Abortion" Murfreesboro, TN.)

 

“We were just involved in a bloody, dehumanizing business, all of us for our own reasons. Whether we were justifying our past advocacy (as I was), justifying a previous abortion (as many were) or whatever, we were just trying to cope--and if we couldn't laugh at what was going on, I think our minds would have snapped. It's not as easy trying to confuse a conscience that will not stay dead.”  (Norma McCorvey, “Won By Love”, 1998)

 

Pro-choice feminist Naomi Wolf addressed this hardening of the conscience and stated: "Clinging to rhetoric about abortion in which there is no life and no death, we entangle our beliefs in a series of self-delusions, fibs and evasions. And we risk becoming precisely what our critics charge us with being: callous, selfish and casually destructive men and women who share a cheapened view of human life." (Naomi Wolf, "Our Bodies, Our Souls," The New Republic, October 16, 1995, 26-35).

 

g) The vast majority of charities who feed starving children around the world have been, and continue to be, specifically Christian charities. They are the same people who also form pro-life groups, not atheist or pro-abortion groups. Those who love pre-born children enough to come to their defense and protect them are also the ones who love post-born children enough to feed them.