Burn the heretics
Hindu Humanist Mohandas Ghandi
Dennis Prager
The
case for Judeo-Christian values: Part II
TownHall.com
January 12, 2005
“ Though most college-educated Westerners never hear the case for the need for God-based morality because of the secular outlook that pervades modern education and the media, the case is both clear and compelling: If there is no transcendent source of morality (morality is the word I use for the standard of good and evil), "good" and "evil" are subjective opinions, not objective realities.
Full Article
In other words, if there is no God who says, "Do not murder" ("Do not kill" is a mistranslation of the Hebrew which, like English, has two words for homicide), murder is not wrong. Many people may think it is wrong, but that is their opinion, not objective moral fact. There are no moral "facts" if there is no God; there are only moral opinions.”
In contrast to conservatives who ignore just about everything the bible says about poverty, the left has strong values rooted in equality of opportunity and an obligation to make sure no one in society is excluded, religiously, financially, or otherwise. These are the values on which our country was founded, and anything less than a full commitment to them is un-American.
Read On! |
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| Those who do not believe
in God are incapable of moral action. “Secularism has led to moral confusion, which in turn has led to moral paralysis.” |
Many people who
do not believe in God have strong moral compasses. Secular morality
is humanist, based on human rights and human dignity. This philosophy
has its roots in Judeo-Christian morality, but has since evolved
into a secular morality around which peoples of all faiths and cultures
have built a moral consensus. If history has taught us anything, it has taught us how utterly false this crap is. Remember the middle ages? the Crusades? Let's just say that religion observance is not always the best determinant of moral and ethical behavior. |
| Moral relativism makes morality irrelevant. | It is an objective fact that there are many different moral systems in the world. Each moral community has different views on right and wrong, good and evil, that are agreed upon by members of the community. We, the people of the U.S., have rallied around a core set of moral beliefs regarding equality of opportunity and justice for all, that is, unless you’re a conservative… |
| Morality is the exclusive purview of the Judeo-Christian tradition. | Prager might be surprised to find that people who go to a Mosque or Hindu temple have strong moral beliefs. Buddhists have very strong beliefs about the sanctity of life. In contrast, those on the religious right who condemn abortion but support the death penalty apparently believe that the “right to life” begins at conception and ends at birth. |
| Only Jews and Christians regard the “old testament” as divine revelation. | Islam also regards the “old testament” as a holy book, but much like Christians and the New Testament, Muslims believe that the Koran supersedes the teachings of that book. |
| “If you could not call the Soviet Union an "evil empire" or the Iranian, North Korean and Iraqi regimes an "evil axis," you have rendered the word "evil" useless.” | Nonsense. The word “evil” is still very useful for describing the Bush administration. Depriving children of the resources they need to learn, cheating people out of their retirement money, killing innocent people in Iraq, and promoting those who promote torture like Gonzalez and Rumsfeld, are all deplorable acts that deserve moral condemnation. The Soviet Union’s repression of dissent, Iran’s support of terrorism, and North Korea’s starvation of its own people are also evil acts. |
You might want to grab
an air sickness bag for this one. Dennis Prager joins the legions
of hypocritical moralizers on the right with an argument in favor
of Judeo-Christian values. Trouble is, Prager unwittingly attacks
the very Judeo-Christian values upon which secular humanism is based,
and instead bolsters fundamentalist beliefs. Prager’s column covers the usual ground: liberals are spineless commie-sympathizing abortion-lovers. This kind of moralizing drivel has only one purpose on the right, to fuel the culture war in this country and a clash of civilizations (read: crusade against Muslims) abroad. If the left has a problem with good and evil it is because the framework of morality has been hijacked by fundamentalists and others like Prager who use morality as an excuse to exclude, oppress and sometimes kill.
In contrast to conservatives who ignore just about everything the bible says about poverty, the left has strong values rooted in equality of opportunity and an obligation to make sure no one in society is excluded, religiously, financially, or otherwise. These are the values on which our country was founded, and anything less than a full commitment to them is un-American.
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