Freedom Loving Conservative

In his recent column on Humanevents.com Mac Johnson, a man whose writing I’ve always admired, claimed that the concept of Intelligent Design is a “really, really bad idea –scientifically, politically, and theologically.”  He attacked ID using the usual list of specious arguments, distortions, and straw-man fallacies commonly used by the minions of scientism.  Since I wrote rather extensively on the subject in a previous article, I won’t rehash it all here in detail.  However, I felt the need to respond to at least some of the theological garbage spewed by Johnson in this piece.

The appellation ‘Darwin’s Lapdog’ is a tribute to Johnson’s predecessor Thomas Huxley.   Popularly known as ‘Darwin’s Bulldog,’ Huxley, a contemporary of Darwin, had two mitigating factors in his favor which Johnson cannot claim: First, he was an avowed agnostic (in fact he coined the term,) while Johnson claims to believe in God; and second, Huxley, unlike Mac Johnson, didn’t have the advantage of 150 years of scientific research which utterly failed to prove Darwin’s theory.

Johnson claims that “ten years ago, ID had enough confidence and honesty to go by its birth name, creationism.  Whereas today, it has been dressed up in a lab coat and a mail-order PhD…”  This petty attack on the credentials of the scientists studying ID and the thousands of doctors and scientists who are on record doubting Darwinism is another favored tactic of the left.  His over-simplified and inaccurate description of ID has already been addressed by the Discovery Institute, the world’s preeminent ID think-tank: “the charge that ID is ‘creationism’ is a rhetorical strategy on the part of Darwinists who wish to delegitimize ID without actually addressing the merits of its case.”  They continue, “Creationism typically starts with a religious text and tries to see how the findings of science can be reconciled to it.  ID starts with the empirical evidence of nature and seeks to ascertain what scientific inferences can be drawn from that evidence.”  This is the first of many straw-man logical fallacies with which Johnson clumsily tries to prove his point.

Johnson claims that ID is not scientific because “it predicts nothing, since it essentially states that everything is the way it is because God wanted it that way.”  In fact, ID begins, according to the Discovery Institute, with the hypothesis that “if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of complex and specified information.  Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information.”  They cite the concept of irreducible complexity as one example.  This conforms to the scientific method of hypothesis, experimentation, and observation, leading to a conclusion.

Johnson, who claims to believe in God and may or may not be Catholic, mocks the idea of a Creator- the most fundamental of the underlying pillars of Judeo-Christian doctrine; one simply cannot be a Christian if he rejects the concept of a Creator.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity, and order.”  It further states, “The world began when God’s word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all of human history are rooted in this primordial event, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time began.”

The only scriptural reference he uses in defense of Darwin is from the extra-Biblical apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, a rather opaque quote attributed to Jesus: “If the flesh came into being because of the spirit, that is a marvel; but if the spirit came into being because of the body, that is a marvel of marvels.  Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty.”   It is more likely this quote refers to the Incarnation of God as man in the Person of Jesus Christ than an endorsement of Darwinian evolutionary theory; but, nevertheless, its use proves Johnson found little validation for Darwinism in the actual Bible.

Bizarrely, he uses an out of context quote from St. Thomas Aquinas (“In the end, we know God as unknown”) to bolster his claims.  I wonder why he didn’t pick the following quote from Aquinas’ Shorter Summa:  “multiplicity and distinction occur in things not by chance or fortune but for an end…multiplicity in things is not explained by the order obtaining from intermediate agents, as though from one simple first being there could proceed directly only one thing that would be far removed from the first being in simplicity, so that multitude could issue from it, and thus, as the distance from the first simple being increased, the more numerous a multitude would be discerned.  Some have suggested this explanation.  But we have shown that there are many things that could not have come into being except by creation, which is exclusively the work of God, as has been proved.”  He goes on to write, “the multiplicity and distinction existing among things were devised by the divine intellect.”  Sounds a bit like intelligent design, huh Mac?

In lieu of any actual argument, Johnson, like all Darwin sycophants, continually uses the straw-man tactic of culling the evolutionary examples he cites from the domain of micro-evolution – the universally accepted (and scientifically observable) concept that small changes occur within a given species such as when a bacterium develops a resistance to antibiotics – rather than citing an example of macro-evolution, or how one species transmogrifies over time into an entirely new species.  There is a very simple reason for this sleight-of-hand: there is no evidence to support this, the cornerstone of Darwin’s theory – even after 150 years of looking.

In the 17^th century, scientist/philosopher Pascal posited his famous wager: It is better to wager that God is because if you win, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.  If you wager God is not, you gain nothing if you win; if you lose, you lose all.  An obvious concomitant to this would be: If He is, then we should honor Him and His works, not mock them.  Otherwise the wager is a mere intellectual exercise and really quite useless.  For his part, Johnson, with customary humility, and heedless of the implications of Pascal’s famous wager repeatedly mocks the God of creation:  “I spend most of my time as a pharmaceutical researcher thinking about how to correct the commonly occurring mistakes of our allegedly intelligent body design” (emphasis added) And this: “wouldn’t an omniscient designer have come up with a countermeasure to malaria that, say, wouldn’t kill so many innocent children.”  And how about this for a stunning example of child-like theological ignorance: “…have you ever thought about what sort of God it implies we have?” (It being the idea that God made the AIDS virus, smallpox, and polio.)    Disease and death, in Christian belief, are the wages of original sin – man’s fall from grace through Adam’s transgression – and are the very reason God sent a Redeemer through Whom death may be defeated and eternal life obtained.  Maybe a little less time in the laboratory and a bit more in Sunday school might have paid dividends.

Since he mocks and ridicules the concept of a Just God Who created man in His image, and asserts God had nothing to do with the diversity of life we see all around us, it begs a simple question: just what kind of God does he believe in?  What role does he assign God in this new religion he has created outside of scripture and revelation?

If Mac Johnson feels he must defend Darwinism (and he is certainly more qualified than me in this area,) that is his right; but since he clearly has no idea what Intelligent Design theory really is, and is even more ignorant of basic theological concepts, perhaps Mac Johnson (and his readers) would have been well-served by listening to the advice of one of his apparent ancestors, the Geico caveman, before writing this article: “How about a little research first?”  And his argument would be more effective if he refrained from the usual straw-man tactic of pretending the ID community rejects micro-evolution and instead produce some evidence to support his position on the real point of contention in this debate: that man was not created by a loving God in His image, but rather developed by mere happenstance along with every other form of life on the planet, over millions of years from a single common ancestor.  I won’t hold my breath.

It has become an accepted tenet of conventional wisdom to begin all discussions about science and nature with the understanding that religion has no place in such debates and that, in fact, faith is diametrically opposed to reason and scientific thought.  To this end the concept of classical education, including any mention of God has been thoroughly removed from all Western public schools and replaced with a rather drab and mundane scientism.  This, however, need not be and was not always the case; in fact, Christian scholars had been on the cutting edge of scientific thought since the Middle Ages and the application of human reason to theological and later scientific questions has been a hallmark of Christianity since its very beginning – a fact which is evident to anyone who has read the work of Augustine and Aquinas, among others.  How, then, did this notion of religion as the enemy of science first take root?  And what are the dangers it poses to man and society?

The rise of radical secularism in philosophy and government first emerged as a formidable force in eighteenth century France and was characterized by an antipathy to objective moral standards and a belief in the perfectibility of man which spawned the humanist search for an egalitarian utopia and led to the horrors of the French Revolution.  When this political philosophy was apparently validated by science, it proved to be a witches’ brew which led directly to the bloodiest century in human history, the twentieth.

Its manifestation in science (the consequences of which I will discuss later) came about a century later with the publication, in 1859, of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species.  In this landmark book the British naturalist was the first to present a cogent evidentiary argument in favor of the theory he labeled natural selection – the theory that all life on earth evolved naturally – and quite by accident – from a single common ancestor over millions of years.  This work and the strong feelings it inspired in its supporters and opponents alike marked the fork in the road which permanently split science from religion.

In his much vilified, yet misunderstood Papal address at the University of Regensburg on September 12, 2006 Pope Benedict XVI lamented this gradual severing, by Western academics, of faith from reason – a process he believes has done great harm to both theology and science.  He also compared the secular left’s adherence to relativism to Islam’s concept of the nature of God as not bound by reason, contrasting these concepts with the Christian tradition (inherited, in part, from the Greeks) of a rational God in whose image rational man was made.  Christian doctrine teaches that God in creating the physical universe bound it to immutable laws and thus there is a divine order to it that may be theorized upon, observed, and explained by man.  To Christians proof of God’s adherence to His laws may be deduced from His incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ for the purpose of the redemption of man before God.  Were He so inclined and not bound by His own nature, God may have simply forgiven man for his rebellion without ‘putting on’ human form to suffer and die on the cross.  That He chose the latter is clear proof to Christians of the existence of a Divine order to the universe.

This uniquely Christian concept is precisely the reason science developed in Medieval Europe and not in the East.  Christianity then is not the enemy of science; on the contrary, properly understood, the Christian faith and reason are the two inseparable sides of a single coin.

Nevertheless, in his 1890 Autobiography Darwin’s friend and apologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), who famously debated Darwin’s theories with Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (1805-1873) at Oxford University in 1860, wrote that religion “is the deadly enemy of science.” In 1880 he published an essay entitled Science and Culture in which he argued that religion and classical scholarship should be replaced by science as the focus of education.

To the extent Huxley’s essay helped form the foundation of the secular scientific movement this movement was built on very shaky ground indeed.  In it he grossly distorts many of the main pillars of Christian doctrine, replacing them with an offensive and false caricature which tended to support his agnosticism.  He claimed that Christian belief taught that “all material existence was but a base and insignificant blot upon…the spiritual world, and that nature was, to all intents and purposes, the playground of the devil.” This assertion contradicts the classical Christian concept that evil is merely a corruption of the good and that when God first beheld the physical universe He “saw everything that He had made, and it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31)  This dismissive and erroneous remark of Huxley’s is also contradicted by the Christian belief that in the last days, Jesus will return to resurrect His elect into new physical bodies to inhabit the new earth.  Clearly the physical universe is seen by Christians not as “base and insignificant” but as God’s crowning achievement, His masterpiece.

Huxley also mocked the fact that Christians “learned that the earth is the center of the visible universe” while ignoring the fact that virtually every culture in history – Christian, pagan, and secular alike – held this belief prior to the breakthroughs of Christian scientists such as Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler.  He neglects to mention that the scientific achievements of these Christians in no way contradict true Christian theology.  And he also fails to acknowledge that such theories as heliocentrism and evolution were questioned just as vigorously by dissenting contemporary scientists as ecclesiastical authorities.  And the house arrest (it was not a death sentence as popularly believed) which was imposed upon Galileo by the Church in 1633 was punishment for his defiance of a Papal edict not to advocate his theory as fact (only to offer arguments for and against it) until it had been proven scientifically.  The fact that heliocentric theory has since been disproven (The sun is the center of our solar system, not the universe) seems to be lost on the secular scientific community; in retrospect it appears the Church was correct to urge caution.

In response to Huxley, the conservative poet Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) published an essay, Science and Literature, which defended classical education against this creeping scientism.  In it he writes, “those who are for giving to natural knowledge, as they call it, the chief place in education of the majority of mankind, leave one important thing out of their account: the constitution of human nature.”  He adds, “The instinct for beauty is set in human nature, as surely as the instinct for knowledge is set there, or the instinct for conduct.”  As Arnold suggests, Huxley’s belief that science should replace the study of literature, history, and religion in education is far too narrow and leads to a very dangerous place.  That is, a purely science based education devoid of the restraints placed upon it by a background in ethics and morality and reinforced by a historical knowledge of the cruel lengths to which men will go to control and dominate his fellow man is simply to sow the seeds of chaos and war to be reaped by posterity.  Huxley, a Hobbesian at heart should have understood the existential danger such a philosophy poses to civilization.

Huxley also curiously states that man, unlike other animals, is endowed with a “moral sense and with freedom of the will.”  It is unclear from his writing whether he feels this moral sense is due to biology or culture but what is clear is the inherent contradiction in such a belief without acknowledging the Author of such a moral sense: a purely biological or cultural morality would, by definition, differ according to time and place; but as C.S. Lewis pointed out in his books Mere Christianity and the Abolition of Man the universal moral code, written on the heart of human beings, has remained unchanged throughout recorded history.  It is true, of course, that certain individuals, such as the sociopath, may have been born without this inner knowledge of right conduct, but to say this proves it does not exist is like saying that since some are born lactose intolerant it follows that humans have no capacity to digest dairy foods; or that because some are born color-blind that proves there are no colors in the visible universe.

There is also a distinct difference between moral virtue and mere convention.  When a person enters into a home in Japan without removing his shoes he is guilty in that culture of bad manners.  In the United States, when a person removes his shoes upon entering a home, it is considered presumptuous and in poor taste.  This is a purely cultural difference and is not evidence of an inner or universal morality.  On the other hand, to cut your hosts throat while stealing his watch would violate the God-given universal moral code prohibiting such acts.  The immorality of such an act is a fact which transcends both time and place and was acknowledged as such by every civilization in recorded history.

In any event, this idea of science without the moral restraints of revelation, tradition, faith, and conscience – restraints explicitly rejected by the radical secularist followers of Darwin and Huxley – may have been due to what Lewis has called “chronological snobbery” or the belief that the current age need learn nothing from previous ones.  Whatever the cause the results are self-evident: when given free in Europe, 19^th century pseudo-science, detached from faith and coupled with the bastard step-children of 18^th century secular political philosophy – namely the ideas of men like Marx and Nietzsche – can quickly become a Frankenstein’s monster.  When the Godless, humanist political movements ascendant in the eighteenth century, which already lacked a firm moral foundation, were seemingly confirmed by the theories of agnostic science and augmented by an equally amoral pursuit of scientific knowledge, the results were truly horrifying.  With the clarity of hind-sight we see what should have been predictable: that however unintentional, the ‘progress’ begun by these secular scientists inevitably led to the practical efforts of people like Margaret Sanger and Adolf Hitler.  After all, what are abortion, eugenics, the creation of a master race, and the final solution if not an acceleration of Darwin’s principle of natural selection?  Is this not Social Darwinism writ large?

The dogmatic pursuit of scientific knowledge artificially divorced from the reality of a Creator is a corruption of the scientific method as practiced by men of science since the Christian Scholastics founded the world’s first universities in the Middle Ages.  When scientific progress began to be viewed as its own end rather than as a means to achieve some higher moral purpose, it became corrupted not by religion but by hostility to it.  Indeed history’s greatest scientists such as Galileo, Newton, and Copernicus were all faithful Christians.  In fact Newton spent more time studying the Bible than the cosmos.  And Darwin, arguably the founder of the secular scientific movement, only lost his own faith in Christ after his ten year old daughter died in 1851.  It is entirely possible that his motivation in pursuing his hypothesis was, for the grieving father, more a bitterly personal quest to disprove the existence of God then a dispassionate pursuit of truth.

When science lost its moral foundation through hostility to religion it became preyed upon by another corrupting influence: politics.  And once infected thus, science slowly transmogrified into scientism, or the religious advocacy (by elites within the scientific, academic, journalistic, and government communities) of consensus-based theories whereby a majority-rule mentality takes the place of the traditional scientific method.  Under this system theories need not be proven, only agreed upon, and once agreed upon, these dogmatic beliefs become the stuff of enforced orthodoxy and woe to anyone who dissents from the majority.

This new scientism is then used as a means to justify extreme and dangerous political orthodoxies.  It is how the dubious and scientifically unsupported claims (namely that the use of pesticides to control mosquito populations have a catastrophic ripple effect across the food chain) of an obscure writer named Rachel Carson led to the ban on the use of DDT as an insecticide, which in turn resulted in the loss of tens of millions of lives to a disease (malaria) which had been all but eradicated by Western science.  The human cost, particularly in Africa, was disregarded by a preening elite of self-satisfied Western secularists who abused science to institute a new and infinitely more insidious form of imperialism affecting mostly poor, third world people.  One wonders how long the ban would have lasted had it been Europeans dropping dead by the thousands daily.

Similarly dubious scientific claims are made to oppose such things as over-population, man-made climate change, the use of bio-engineered foods, and nuclear power.  These are clearly political movements dressed up as science and have some truly bizarre results.  For example, some proponents of secular scientism are in the weird position of rejecting the consumption by humans of bio-engineered foods while supporting efforts (through cloning, selective abortion, euthanasia, DNA manipulation, embryonic stem-cell cultivation, etc.) to bio-engineer human beings themselves!  They then propose to mitigate the unproven harmful effects of the consumption of bio-engineered foods by increasing the malnutrition and starvation which inevitably result from its ban.

They seek to save the planet from the scourge of global, ‘man-made’ climate catastrophe, but rather than applying their collective genius to the task of learning how mankind can best cope with the realities of a warming planet, they seek instead to prove that man himself, through capitalism is to blame for the phenomenon.  They do this in spite of the similar warming (and cooling) trends throughout geological history and on several other planets in our solar system uninhabited by man – a clear indication that the phenomenon is solar, not man-made.  They then seek, in spite of the potential cost of millions of lives through the likely increase in poverty caused by the implementation of such radical eco-political policies as the Kyoto Protocols, to limit the potential for global economic growth through their opposition to the use of such technologies as nuclear power and the burning of fossil fuels needed by modern economies by overstating their harmful effects.  These restrictions will impact worst those in the developing world least able to withstand the economic repercussions.  This is not a magnanimous or moral application of science for the betterment of mankind, this is raw power politics.  The cosmopolitan proponents of centralized, global power here seek to use science not to serve, but to control.  And as such it is entirely appropriate that, as Mac Johnson has pointed out on National Review Online, that Earth Day is celebrated on the anniversary of the birth of Communist pioneer Vladimir Lenin.  It appears green is the new red.

This is the terrible paradox in which the secular scientific community finds itself: because they cannot acknowledge that God created the Universe and gave man dominion over the earth they must often advocate public policy positions which adversely affect mankind in favor of other species or the planet itself.  They are presumably in the curious position of preferring poor Africans have less access to clean water, adequate sanitation, and economic opportunity so that polar bears can have more glacial ice on which to hunt.

Secular scientists are afflicted with a sort of tunnel vision: they see only that which is directly in front of their face; anything on the periphery is ignored or rejected.  The existence of a Creator is the most prominent example and is the most reasonable assumption one can make to account for the universe.  This is not to say that we must blindly accept the story of creation as explained in the first chapter of Genesis as literal truth; in fact St. Augustine, perhaps the greatest of the Church Fathers, cautioned against such an overly-literal interpretation.

In the biblical account of creation God is said to have completed His work in six days; but are these days the same as ours – that is one complete rotation of the earth on its axis?  Perhaps; but since He created not one but billions of stars, it is reasonable to consider whether the scriptural “day” is the equivalent of our twenty-four hours or something much more.  In fact in 2 Peter it is said “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years.”  But since in the beginning God created time this day can mean virtually anything.  Christian’s believe that for God time is not merely linear or progressive as we understand it.  For God yesterday, today, and tomorrow are the same.  This is the reason the concepts of ‘free will’ and ‘destiny’ are not necessarily contradictory: just because God has already seen what decisions we will make does not mean we were not free to make different ones.

It is entirely possible that were God to have revealed the Book of Genesis not to Bronze Age man but to us moderns with our relatively sophisticated understanding of physics and mathematics He would be more technically specific and less cryptic or symbolic.  But since the story of creation was revealed over three thousand years ago it may have been allegorical or a condensed version of the whole story mankind was then capable of understanding just as later, during His ministry on earth, Jesus would use parable when teaching all but His closest disciples.  The fact is, the Bible was not meant to be merely a recitation of history but rather a guide by which mankind may be redeemed before God.  In this respect, it is entirely appropriate that the geological history of the earth is given just a cursory treatment.  In the fullness of time the truth will be revealed.  In the meantime, we can think on it, study it and draw educated conclusions; but I’d wager that in the end these will tend to confirm the Biblical accounts – not contradict them.

Nevertheless, being neither a scientist nor theologian I do not pretend to have the answer to such questions; being a man of both faith and reason I do accept God as creator because without Him we (scientists included) are in the impossible position of explaining how everything came from nothing.

The secular scientists, on the other hand, refuse to accept the idea of a Creator, thus they seek not merely to explain the orderly functions of His creation but to rationalize away the very existence of God Himself.  And here we see another paradox: the self-appointed paragons of reason and human intellect are doomed to fail in their futile search for ultimate truth and meaning in the universe because these answers lie in the one place they cannot look.

Moving from creation to evolution, it is Darwin’s contention that man was not created by a loving God but developed, perhaps in some mystical primordial soup – growing and shedding, through the process of natural selection, limbs and organs along the way.  If this is true then the conduct of all earth’s creatures, including man, must be ruled by what is merely individually expedient to ensure survival so that one might pass on favorable genes to the next generation.  This process, if true, would also mean such virtuous but self-defeating human instincts as altruism, mercy, tolerance, and self-sacrifice would have been bred out of existence many thousands of generations ago.  In the place of such virtues, Darwinism gives an intellectual stamp of approval to such vices as selfishness, cruelty, and intolerance as mere physical survival becomes the main concern of all men rather than worries about the salvation or damnation of the eternal soul.  This is the slippery-slope of secular scientism.

On a more technical level, the unreasonable and almost religious adherence to Darwin’s evolutionary theory and the concomitant nature worship it inspires in the secular scientific community and its supporters is quite problematic: one hundred fifty years after his theory was first postulated enough unresolved issues (The problem of spontaneous generation of life, a complete absence of transitional species in the fossil record, the Cambrian explosion, lack of evidence to support macro-evolution, the concept of irreducible complexity, etc.) remain to render his theory just that – a theory.  These problems include issues Darwin himself anticipated and hoped future scientists would resolve.  Yet in spite of the unsettled status of the theory, skeptics and dissenters are routinely dismissed, mocked, and black-listed so quickly by believers it makes the inquisition seem positively tolerant and open-minded by comparison.  It is indeed an ironic twist that to the extent the prospect of being labeled a heretic by the Church was among the reasons for the birth of this peculiar movement it has itself tolerated no dissent from its often unsupported consensus beliefs.  Like the Rwandan Hutus turning the tables on the Tutsi, the oppressed have become the oppressor.    Why?  Because to question evolution is to put God back into the picture and this is simply unacceptable to those whose religion is secular scientism.  Like the pagans of old their god is creation, not its Creator; thus to question their theories is akin to denying the resurrection of Christ to a Christian or the prophet-hood of Mohammad to a Muslim.

On the question of evolution there is no clear consensus among believing Christians, however the Catholic Church, for its part, while taking no official position on the subject is nevertheless open to the concept of Theistic evolution – the theory that if Darwin’s evolving species’ were dominoes, then it was God’s hand that set them up and toppled the first one.  Since I myself am not a scientist the details of the scientific debate here are beyond both my capacity and the purposes of this essay; however from my (layman) point of view, I would say that believing mankind and this wonderful and orderly universe of ours ‘just happened’ through a series of accidents is akin to suggesting that random chunks over time fell from a block of marble to reveal the form of the Blessed Mother cradling the lifeless body of our Lord Jesus rather than crediting the vision, inspiration, talent, and genius of Michelangelo for creating the Pieta.  Likewise one simply cannot fully understand or explain nature without an acknowledgement of and appreciation for its Creator.

Clearly faith in God need not and should not be a disqualifier when discussing scientific questions.  A proper foundation in the moral as well as the physical laws of God’s glorious creation should be a requirement of a well-rounded educational curriculum.  And the moral restraints placed upon science by faith need not be a hindrance to discovery and progress, but merely a rudder to help point progress in the proper direction.  And if this means that certain core beliefs of the secular scientific community need to be re-evaluated this does not mean mankind is regressing to a past mired in superstition and unreason because to paraphrase C.S. Lewis, if we have made a wrong turn somewhere along the line we will be no nearer our destination by stubbornly continuing on; it is truly progressive at such times to double back to where you veered off track and find the proper path.

In the decades old debate over abortion there are two main issues to contemplate – one legal, the other moral.  With respect to the moral considerations there are two distinct schools of thought: those who believe in universal moral principles authored by God and those who posit that morality is a wholly human construct.  With respect to the legal question there are those who support the integrity of the Constitution and the intent of its framers, and those who do not.

Both of our nation’s founding documents spell out certain human rights they consider universal.  Neither these documents nor their author’s ever claimed to have created these rights, rather that our government was formed to secure and protect them.  Natural Law or human rights are granted to man by God, not by governments, international treaties, or even by consensus – let alone gestalt.  Take, for example the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: suppose a particular country is not a signatory to this treaty; does it follow that people in that country have no claim to human rights?  If they do in fact still have rights, then on who’s authority?  To argue that natural rights were developed by man is a non sequitur: the word “natural” (according to Merriam-Webster) means to be based on an inherent sense of right and wrong; it is, by definition, then, not a man-made construct.  To argue otherwise is base relativism, which I reject root and branch.

In the relativists’ worldview there is no such thing as “universal values”, but as C.S. Lewis argued in his great debunking of relativism “The Abolition of Man”, virtually every civilization in history has shared certain immutable core values which serve as the foundation of each disparate society.  This is true even when there was little or no prior contact between these civilizations.  In other words these same values developed separately, if not concurrently in each civilization without influence from the others. In this light the proposition that morality is a “contract” of sorts between men seems dubious at best.

Lewis cites as an example the striking similarities between the teachings of Moses, Plato, Jesus, Confucius, Buddha, and other great moral philosophers.  (Conspicuously absent from his essay is any mention of Mohammad; however he does cite laws and customs of pre-Islamic Arabia and Persia.  The reason for this omission is that many of the Prophet’s teachings stand in diametric opposition to those of history’s great moral teachers.)

Lewis argues that to question the validity of fundamental and universal value judgments, such as the sanctity of life, is self-contradictory, and thus self-invalidating.  Do relativists not value multiculturalism or women’s rights?  If so, they acknowledge values do exist, do they not?  And if so, an objective value of life itself must precede all others.  How can the relativist embrace a subjective approach to values until a conflict arises with a particular value to which they subscribe?  At that point the relativist becomes, conveniently and temporarily, a believer in objective value and seeks to impose that value on others (usually through a court decree rather than through the legislative process.)

The great Moral Philosopher Sir Thomas Browne wrote: “Think not that morality is ambulatory; that vices in one age are not vices in another; or that virtues, which are under the everlasting seal of right reason, may be stamped by opinion.”  This defense of traditional morality as understood in every civilization in history was written more than one hundred years before the philosophers of the French Enlightenment (as opposed to the contemporaneous American and English movements) first elevated man above God in their misguided belief in the perfectibility of man and the related search for a utopian system which guaranteed equality.  The inevitable and catastrophic result of this fundamental misunderstanding of human nature was the French revolution, the reign of terror, the Napoleonic wars, and all the subsequent and ultimately barbaric “humanist” political movements of the 20^th century: communism, socialism, and fascism.

These relativist movements are common in human history.  During the time of Socrates, one of the father’s of Western civilization, there were the Sophist’s who, much like modern litigators, elevated the art of persuasion over the search for truth.  And in our own time the baby-boomer’s, hippies, and pseudo-intellectuals who, in their arrogance and vanity, have undertaken man’s latest attempt at redefining morality as subjective, amorphous, and relative – a human construct, they suggest, differing based on the various mores in each generation or society. Their descent into self-indulgence and relativism have had a lasting and deleterious effect on the world ever since.  A few examples are crime, drug abuse, aids, divorce, abortion, etc.

As the great Moral Philosopher and the Christian apologist suggest, when Nature’s God created the universe with physical laws that govern, for example, the movements of celestial bodies as described by histories greatest science teachers: Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and others, he created also laws of moral certainty that are immutable and absolute.  Histories greatest moral teachers (Jesus, Confucius, Buddha, and others) described these laws.  And just as God’s natural laws are often bent (do not birds fly in defiance of gravity, or man through the principles of propulsion and lift?) so too through the abuse of God’s gift of free will are these moral laws often defied in man’s proclivity for sin.

The relativist of every age refuses to distinguish between good and evil, or to recognize right from wrong.  What they might call rationality, I often see as intellectual laziness, moral vacuity, or open hostility to faith and reason.  When they proclaim the virtue of their open-mindedness, I would caution (to quote Flannery O’Connor) “sometimes people can be so open-minded that their brains fall out.”

With respect to abortion, in particular, the moral relativist, humanist, or “enlightened”, values-neutral, post-modern intellectual is either incapable or unwilling to pass moral judgments upon the brutal practice.  Taken to its logical conclusion, their pro-abortion argument may be compared to that of a sociopath: characterized by a lack of empathy for others, remorselessness, and a tendency to rationalize deviant behavior.  They neither see nor acknowledge any intrinsic value to human life. And having no legitimate ethical or scientific arguments in their favor simply eliminate the condemned child from the equation, coldly sanitizing their position.

One might ask such a person “when is a fetus a baby?” or “At what point is abortion infanticide?” or “If a third trimester abortion is acceptable, what about a fourth trimester (postpartum) abortion?” Any answer they give, were they so inclined would be arbitrary.  Their only method of justification is to de-humanize the child and reduce the procedure to something akin to having a boil lanced, and then take the high moral ground by self-righteously demanding “control of their own bodies,” or claiming privacy or women’s rights.

In fact the barbaric procedure is almost too sadistic to describe, let alone behold. In many abortion procedures the child’s limbs are torn from her body, her skull crushed, and brain sucked out, all without anesthesia.  The various remaining body parts are then scrupulously removed from the uterus, (lest the woman become infected by her child’s decomposing remains) and the child is discarded without ceremony or dignified burial.  The brutal nature of this terrible act should leave no room for fence sitting or equivocation, yet the pro-abortion relativist does precisely that.

In addition to the relativist there is also a category of people who are personally opposed to abortion but support a general “right to choose.”  This is the “see no evil crowd” who would never choose abortion themselves nor allow one by their child and may even be repulsed by the practice, but for fear of ostracism or perhaps a polite refusal to talk about the issue, simply disengage from the debate and feel their conscience clear so long as no blood stains their hands.  These folks can be charitably described as enablers whose refusal to stand and be counted drains what little moral fortitude exists in our elected representatives and hence retains and perpetuates the tragic status-quo.

Turning now to the legal perspective, in a casual reading of our nations founding document’s one will note two references to life: the Declaration of Independence states that his Creator endows man with the unalienable right to life; and in the 5^th amendment to the Constitution, the deprivation of life is proscribed absent due process.  These documents were based, in large part, on English common law, the English Bill of Rights, and the various State Constitutions.  Nowhere in any of these sources can be found a preference for or an endorsement of a “woman’s right to choose.”

Furthermore, by virtue of the 10^th amendment to the Constitution, which reads “Those powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people” the abortion question is one legally within the jurisdiction of the State legislatures, not the federal Courts.  The federal right to abortion is wholly a creation of an overzealous, activist Judiciary acting well outside its Constitutional authority, creating a brand-new right out of thin air.  Fortunately the Framers, in their brilliance, both anticipated and feared this very sort of usurpation of legislative authority by a “Judicial Oligarchy” and checked it with the Constitutional amendment process.

For the sake of restoring constitutional balance and ensuring its long-term viability the U.S. Congress and/or the several States must re-assert their constitutional prerogatives and strike down Roe v. Wade through the amendment process (If the Robert’s Court doesn’t strike first.)  And for the sake of countless precious future lives, the fence sitters in the abortion debate must choose life openly to give their elected officials the political courage to act.  The moral relativist’s, for their part must be made to explain why their position which manifestly runs counter to universal moral values, basic human nature, (A parents instinct to protect their young) the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and Constitution, is the just one.

The existence of a “universal moral code” is a question which has been hotly debated in recent weeks.  In a recent article on the subject Steven D. Laib argued that “morality is what people believe it is.”  The arguments he presents to support his thesis however, are mostly a list of examples of immoral behavior, not behaviors that are moral by some other standard.

For example, he cites the existence of the practice of human sacrifice in history as proof that what we consider unacceptable today, was “once considered proper in certain times and places.”  However, citing the barbaric acts perpetrated by the autocratic elites in a primitive society is not adequate evidence of an “evolving” or “subjective” morality.  I doubt whether the masses in Mesoamerica believed the practice of human sacrifice was culturally acceptable, let alone morally right and proper.  Rather this practice was imposed upon them by the clerics and kings who ruled those societies.  And to the extent that certain individuals were willing to sacrifice themselves in the misguided belief they were serving some greater good, I would argue that would actually be a very noble and even moral act: giving ones own life that another may live is an example of the very highest moral act (in a sense, akin to the willingness of Christ to die for our salvation); this, however does not mean the man who wields the implement of death is behaving morally.

And the fact that a majority of the indigenous people of Central America allied themselves with Cortez and his Conquistadors (and their Catholicism) demonstrates their rejection of the Aztec cult-of-death.  Once the Spaniard’s landed in Montezuma’s backyard, the oppressed people subject to ritualistic human sacrifice at the whim of their masters had a champion to rally ‘round.  Thus, they aided Cortez in the sack of Tenochtitlan.  It matters little that the Spanish, in turn, eventually subjugated the teeming masses (that was simply a lesser evil).

One may cite each and every example of brutality and injustice in history but it is frankly beside the point.  Those of us who argue in favor of a “universal moral code,” authored by God do not believe that man is pre-disposed to behave morally; rather they have an innate sense of what is moral yet tend to choose sin over righteousness.  The belief in the innate goodness of man is pure folly, especially when one attempts to design a political system upon this porous foundation.  A just political system (ours is the closest thing to it in history, though hardly truly just) is built upon the bedrock principles of the universal moral code, no matter how far short of this ideal man tends to fall.

As Dr. Phillip Ellis Jackson pointed out in his essay on the subject, there a variety of reasons why man behaves immorally; poor socialization and mental illness, among them.  I would add that the very belief in the non-existence of a moral code (relativism) could also cloud ones judgment when confronted with a moral choice.  But I would submit that the root cause of most aberrant behavior is the immemorial king of all the deadly sins: pride.  Whether man is elevating himself above God’s laws or the rights of other men, the excessive love of ones self may be the most pernicious and destructive sin of all; and whatever the cause of immoral behavior may be, its mere existence does not preclude the reality of the universal moral code.

The example of the three children Steven Laib uses in his essay is, in reality, not so much an argument against the existence of a universal moral code as a demonstration of differing types of immoral behavior: the school bully who uses force to get what he wants is guilty of both pride and avarice, not a champion of a different moral choice; and the socialist in his example is guilty of the sins of both pride and envy – another example of immorality in practice.  These are not innovators of a new or different morality; they are, in fact demonstrators of immoral behavior.

And the use of Islamic law and custom in reference to a debate on the existence of a universal moral code is simply setting up a straw man: many teachings of Islam, and many of the actions of its Prophet are, in fact egregious violations of the universal moral code, not proof of its non-existence.  If one objectively studies the life and teachings of Mohammad, one cannot be faulted for concluding that his was less a life of virtue than an exercise in vice: he had at least a dozen wives and his favorite, Aisha was reportedly six years old when they were married and nine when the marriage was consummated; he engaged in scores of raids where men, women, and children were killed and property stolen- in fact the Koran actually stipulates how to divide the booty seized in battle; he violently spread his faith through conquest and killed or subjugated those who refused to submit; he ordered the execution of bound prisoners and the death by stoning of adulteresses.  This is why these brutal acts are rampant today in the Islamic world, not because a “peaceful” religion was hijacked by militants.  The act of stoning a woman to death for having sex out-of-wedlock is not moral (in an Islamic context) because Islamic morality differs from ours; it is quite simply immoral.

It matters not how clever or well-intentioned a man or even a generation of men may be, they may not legitimately re-write or alter God’s moral code.  As C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “The first thing to get clear about Christian morality between man and man is that in this department Christ did not come to preach any brand new morality.  The Golden Rule of the New Testament is a summing up of what every one, at bottom, had always known to be right.  Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.  The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see.”

The universal moral code is comprised of those beliefs which are shared by most every civilization in history and described by the great prophets, philosophers, and holy men of every age.  For Christians, it was best described by the Sermon on the Mount and has been summed up as “The Golden Rule.”  It was written by God and is the standard by which man will eventually be judged by the same.  What it is not is fungible, arbitrary, or alterable by man.

Alas, this debate may ultimately prove futile for as Lewis stated in The Abolition of Man, one cannot prove the truth of the universal moral code because “its validity cannot be deduced.  For those who do not perceive its rationality, even universal consent cannot prove it.”