Debra Rae | 15 Apr 2016
Any religion, by definition, sports its
own distinctive vocabulary, sacred symbolism, grand metanarrative, exclusive
truth exercised by faith, code of ethics/morality, creed, rituals, evangelism,
and discipleship. As is
true with any worldview, secularism by nature is a religion. Logically,
to discard religion is to separate from the above, but secularism instead
exhibits them all. Hence, “freedom from religion” is better understood as
switching religion from one brand to another.
In Part 1, we established that judicial acknowledgement, a
distinctive vocabulary, grand metanarrative, and vision for the ideal accompany
secularism and religion. All inform voters and influence the course of a
nation.
The
late journalist Christopher Hitchens reasoned, “Since it is obviously
inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion
is that they are all wrong.”[i]
Of course, one could counter, “Since it is obviously inconceivable that all
secularists (or progressives) can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is
that they are all wrong.” But I digress.
Belief Claiming Exclusive Truth
Naturalists
reproach biblical apologists for fortifying dogma by inserting “the God of the
gaps”; however, in a letter to Dr. Asa Gray, their hero Charles Darwin admitted,
“Imagination must fill up very wide blanks.” Despite these blanks, naturalists
embrace “settled science” as exclusive truth.
Having
studied under the famous scholar, Gamaliel, the Apostle Paul had legitimate
claim to knowledge of truth.
Because experience shows God’s unfailing
strength as perfected in weakness, Paul deemed God’s grace to be sufficient and
chose wisely to “boast” in his own weaknesses so that “the power of Christ
might rest upon him.”[ii] In Darwin’s world, to the contrary, the
weakest links are expunged as “maladjusted morons and misfits.”[iii]
In shunning lesser human specimens, secular elitists worship at their own
makeshift altar of exclusivity.
Mind
you, Darwin hated his time at school and applied himself minimally. He left
Edinburgh without a degree; and, at Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he
studied theology, he earned what was regarded as an “ordinary” degree. Darwin’s body of work was not wholly original, as
one might expect. Instead, its borrowed tenets were lifted from a poem written
by Charles’ grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin. The latter practiced an 18th-century pseudo-science (Galvanism) that
involved running electrical currents through corpses of dead animals to bring
them back to life.
Both
wellborn-and-bred British elitists of their day, forward-thinking cousins
Darwin and Galton identified with the dark side of the Enlightenment. Both
rejected democratic elements, but some semblance of science suited their common
cause.[iv]
Darwin’s legendary treatise, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of
Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, filled the bill nicely. In 1993, a
number of intellectually dissatisfied scientists representing a variety of
disciplines took a fresh look at Darwinism in light of ever exploding
scientific knowledge. Unlike Darwin, well-studied, degreed, and highly
decorated scientists found irrefutable evidence for Intelligent Design.
·
Accepted by Faith
FFRF professor of ecology and evolution at the University of
Chicago, Jerry Coyne, Ph.D., authored, Why
Evolution is True. For
Darwin’s theory to fly, faith in random genetic changes, at every turn, must
provide advantage in an organism’s struggle to survive. This is not only highly
improbable; it’s impossible. Even the evolutionary apologist British zoologist
Julian Huxley ceded that a mutation signifies abnormality, not evolutionary
advancement. Students of Darwinian thought are expected to overlook the fact
that distinctive human attributes (i.e., language, posture/gait,
moral/religious sensibilities, art/music appreciation) are not explicable by
variations—i.e., multiple mutations or genetic shuffling. If it isn’t
observable, repeatable, and measurable, and as long as scientists ask questions
and apply the scientific method, science is not settled. My point? Evolutionary
theory is just that: a theory.
Given the Second Law of
Thermodynamics, Irreducible Complexity, and Law of Mutation, chance takes even
more faith to believe than creation by an Intelligent Designer of an
astonishingly ordered universe! Professor Hoyle compared the Darwinian process
to the unlikelihood of a tornado’s sweeping through a junkyard and thereby
producing a Boeing 747 from materials therein! Odds of this ever happening are
astronomical.
Positive Impact
on Society
Wrongly so, freethinkers credit persons unconstrained by religion with most social
and moral progress throughout the history of Western civilization. Marketed to appeal to man’s best
intentions (the common good, survival, advanced societies), evolutionary
thought instead perpetuates a host of societal ills. Whether by abortion,
infanticide, forced sterilization, euthanasia, or assisted suicide, “useless
eaters” are targeted for extinction; and “the unfit” remain subject to human
experimentalism and pharmacological abuse.[v]
Darwin’s
theory validated his “good old boys” network of British elitists; and,
arguably, it spawned socio-political atrocities of monumental proportion. His
flawed line of secularist, elitist thinking is precisely what spawned slavery,
segregation, racist immigration laws (to turn away post-war Jewish refugees),
the infamous Tuskegee Project, and application of the “one-drop rule” to ensure
racial purity/ hygiene. Progress? Positive impact on society? I think not.[vi]
On
the other hand, Dr. James Allan Francis eloquently explained, “Today Jesus is
the central figure of the human race and the leader of mankind’s progress. All
the armies that have ever marched, all the navies that have ever sailed, all
the parliaments that have ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned—put
together—have not affected the life of mankind on earth as powerfully as that
one solitary life.”[vii]
Sacred Symbolism
FFRF
lawyers defend distribution of tracts (called “non-tracts” in the secularist’s
lexicon) and activity books on display tables in public schools. Purported
advocates of separation between church and state, secularists in Orlando and
Denver nonetheless display pamphlets that address sex in the Bible and problems
with the Ten Commandments (you know, religion).
Foundation co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor assures authorities that the
activity book for middle- and high school- students teaches “kindness” and, if
only by limiting the satanic theme to symbols in drawings, “the basic morals
that we all agree on.”[viii]
Occult symbolism gets a pass, but not prayer emojis. Recently, FFRF
called on Apple CEO Tim Cook to remove all prayer emojis (symbols of cruel and
unusual proselytizing) from iPhones and other devices. The Foundation’s
Co-President Dan Barker warns, "Apple may not be afraid of the FBI, but
they should be afraid of the millions of secular consumers who can't stand
these emojis."[ix]
Code
of Ethics/Morality
Although
Paul Kurtz insists that the Humanist
Manifesto is committed to reason, science, and democracy, secular humanism
is really secular de-humanism. After
all, Kurtz’s worldview recognizes no mandate to celebrate, facilitate, or
protect life. Instead, it advances an individual’s right to “die with
dignity”—whether by euthanasia or suicide. Because secularists perceive humans as mere products of
time and chance, it stands to reason that life is devoid of elevated meaning.
Darwinian theory defers to the paramount principle that “ends justify means.”
Freethinking poet-historian Jennifer
Michael Hecht reasons, “If there is no god — and there isn't — then we [humans]
made up morality. And I'm very impressed.” Claim to have created from nothing something that all can agree upon is indeed
impressive—but only as a feat of fancy (a miracle, if you will). In reality, despite secular claims,
basic morals that “we all agree on” don’t exist.
Creed (Dogma) and Catechism
Columnist for The Nation, Katha Pollitt regularly and energetically proclaims the
atheist’s creed, “There is no God.” In accordance with this creed, secularists must transcend “inflexible
moral and religious ideologies.” True to the secular catechism, believers celebrate, practice,
and reward “plain speaking” on the shortcomings of religion. Accordingly, at the FFRF 39th annual convention in
Pittsburgh (October 2016), theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss will
be awarded the Emperor Has No Clothes Award.[x]
The Humanist Manifesto urges “people of good
will” to work together toward “human ends,” but notable secularist, Oxford
professor emeritus Richard Dawkins, characterizes the God of the Old Testament as
“the most unpleasant character in all fiction.” While Dawkins claims for
himself the right to freedom from offense, he denies Christians and Jews the
same courtesy.
Conclusion
Both worldviews, secularism
and religion, hold claim to exclusive truth accepted by faith, a creed (dogma),
and sacred symbolism. Exercising an identified code of ethics and morality,
each claims to impact society positively. To
insist that secularism frees
one from religion is incredulous; nonetheless, the Freedom From Religion Foundation accepts the one as
truth, the other as fancy.
[i]
(Denton,
Evolution, A Theory in Crisis, 24)
and http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/151902/Charles-Darwin,
retrieved 29 January 2013.
[ii] 2 Corinthians 12:9—“And he said unto me, ‘My grace is sufficient for
thee’: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will
I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
[iii]
During the 1960 Presidential
campaign, Margaret Sanger referred to Catholics as “black moles invading our buildings of democracy.” Sanger called
for the segregation of “morons,
misfits, and the maladjusted” and for the sterilization of races
that she deemed to be genetically inferior (i.e., blacks).
[iv]
Chuck
Morse. The Monkey Trial: Evolutionary
Politics in the Post-Modern Age. (Boston: City Metro Enterprises, 2013).
[v]
In 1961, Aldous Huxley, an
important evolutionary thinker, lectured at the California Medical School in
San Francisco where he stated: “And it
seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next
generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their
servitude, and producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire
societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from
them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire
to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by
pharmacological methods. As part of a plan to help
pilots, sailors, and infantry troops become capable of superhuman performance,
many
German soldiers were high on Pervitin (speed) when they went into battle.
However, Nazis failed to monitor side effects.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/the-nazi-death-machine-hitler-s-drugged-soldiers-a-354606.html,
(Accessed 29 January 2013).
[vi] Angelo
M. Codevilla. The Ruling Class: How They
Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It (New York: Beaufort Books,
2010), 26-51.
[viii]
Colleen
Slevin, Associated Press. “Satanic Book, Bible Sex Tracts Provided at Colorado
Schools” (Seattle: The Seattle Times,
2 April 2016). News A5.
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