Origin Ideas Steer Values

A culture’s understanding of the origins issue steers the value of its people: The Judeo-Christian origins perspective tells the story of morally culpable human beings made in God’s image and for companionship with one another. This understanding alone leads to a particular view of free will, the intrinsic value of human life, and traditional marriage as a part of God’s plan. The Darwinian origins story, on the other hand, is one of individuals in constant competition, seeking not to flourish in harmony but to survive at the expense of the other, which justifies Nietzsche’s view of the world—the pursuit of unbridled power. Where you begin will determine where you end up, and this carries great consequences for everything in our lives, especially how human society should be organized.

Jeff Myers & David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times: A Survey of Competing Worldviews, pg. 256.

Morals vs Ethics

Religion is concerned with morals, Philosophy with ethics: the difference between the two being essentially this, that morals have to do with man’s relationship to God and ethics with man’s relationship to man.  Morals are absolute, ethics are relative. If we may substitute meta-nature for metaphysics we may say that the subject matter of Philosophy is meta-nature (as the subject of Science is Nature) but the subject matter of Religion is super-nature. In Religion, miracle is in one sense and essential adjunct, but in Philosophy miracle is simply of no concern. The end object of all Religion is to find God, but the end object of Philosophy is to find truth. This does not mean that Religion does not have the discovery of truth as and object, but only that it is a secondary one.

Arthur C. Constance, The Doorway Papers: Shem, Ham, and Japheth in World History, pg.18

What Is YOUR Ethical System?

When a person makes up his own ethical code he always makes up an ethical system which he thinks he has kept. In the law of God, we find a law which smashes our self-righteousness, eliminates all trust in our own goodness, and convinces us that we are sinners. The law of God leaves us with our hands over our mouths and our faces in the dust. We are humbled before God and convinced that we are guilty transgressors of his law.

D. James Kennedy, as cited in Understanding the Times: A Survey of Competing Worldviews, by Jeff Myers & David A. Noebel, pg. 40

Good, Ethical Role Models Needed

What society really needs more of is good, trustworthy, ethical role models in leadership positions. Not needed are untrustworthy woke role models who are graduating from a failing, increasingly dogmatic, ideological, and misguided public educational system which now includes public colleges and universities. Education is failing miserably on many counts. Only time will tell whether individualized, interactive, audio-visual computer instruction will rescue education from its deterioration, especially in poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods.

Uldis Sprogis, “What should be taught in public schools”

Principles Are Needed to Guide One's Life

Not having strict ethical principles to guide your life means for many a hedonistic lifestyle that can’t distinguish which behavior is good or bad, and what addictions to avoid as much as possible. The do your own thing or do what feels good philosophy often results in mental illness caused by addictions to lying, laziness, selfish behavior, promiscuity, pornography, alcohol, drugs, gambling, video games, social media, excessive shopping, and even crime. The net result is a disorganized dysfunctional brain and lifestyle filled with misery, stress, confusion, and yes, mental illness for many.

Uldis Sprogis, “What should be taught in public schools”

Convictions vs Opinions

People in those old times had convictions; we moderns only have opinions. And it needs more than a mere opinion to erect a Gothic cathedral.

Heinrich Heine, born 1797

Do You Have Willful Blindness?

Willful blindness is a term used in the legal profession. It refers to any situation in which people intentionally turn their attention away from an ethical problem because the problem is too disturbing to deal with. We are afraid to look reality in the eye, because it may take us in a direction we don’t want to go.

Richard E. Simmons III, Reflections on the Existence of God, pg.143

Do the Task

If a task is once begun, never leave it ’til it’s done.

Be the labor great or small, do it well or not at all.

Are You A Slave?

The slave is the one who obeys a vicious master, which may all be the man’s own lusts.  The free man obeys God.

Anthony Esolen, Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture, pg.133

Commercial Surrogate Motherhood

Media portrayals of surrogacy feature beaming parents and adorable babies, hiding the blatant class exploitation and profiteering, the commodification of women and children, and the serious, even life-threatening health risks to women who sell their eggs or rent their bodies as surrogates. The New York Times, for example, published a marketing article on surrogacy and placed it in the Fashion & Style section of the paper, as if children were must-have accessories for narcissistic elites. Drawing on patriarchal stereotypes, surrogates are presented as selfless, giving women who exist only to be of service to others.

In reality, commercial surrogacy is a predatory, profit-driven industry that preys on marginalized women, creating a breeder class for the wealthy, be they heterosexual or homosexual. It subjects women to life-threatening health risks to produce custom-made children and children being intentionally severed from genetic and biological sources of identity—human rights be damned. In essence, it is the ultimate manifestation of the American neoliberal project of capitalist commodification of human life to create profit and fulfill the narcissistic desires of an entitled elite.

Kathleen Sloan, “Trading on the Female Body: Surrogacy, Exploitation, and Collusion by the US Government”

How to Harm the Souls of Citizens

A culture whose institutions do not prize intrinsic value but rather seek justification by appealing to an instrumental value such as desire, want, pleasure, or personal autonomy, harms the souls of its citizens.

Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, “Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air,” pg.127

Ethics Is Obsolete

Ours is an age where ethics has become obsolete.  It is superceded by science, deleted by philosophy and dismissed as emotive by psychology.  It is drowned in compassion, evaporates into aesthetics and retreats before relativism.  The usual moral distinctions between good and bad are simply drowned in a maudlin emotion in which we feel more sympathy for the murderer than for the murdered, for the adulterer than for the betrayed, and in which we have actually begun to believe that the real guilty party, the one who somehow caused it all, is the victim, and not the perpetrator of the crime.

Robert E. Fitch, "The Obsolescence of Ethics," Christianity and Crisis: A Journal of Opinion, 19, no. 19 (November 16, 1959), 163-65. Cited by Ravi Zacharias in "The Real Face of Atheism," p.65-66