How Do You Treat the Human Body?

A society’s worldview ultimately determines whether it treats the human body as another piece of matter or whether it grants the body and dignity, imbuing sexual relations with the depth and significance we all long for.

Nancy Pearcey, “Silicon Debauchery,” Salvo Magazine, Issue #44, Spring 2018.

We Learn About Humanity From History, Not Science

Why is it that, contrary to what people think, we can learn more about humanity from history than from science? (As John Lukacs notes, history seeks to understand human beings as agents and subjects, whereas in science they can never be more than objects.)

How do secularists hope to help the advanced modern world rise above a hedonistic mass culture and civilization when they have no strong values to offer, let alone transcendent values, when they have deliberately destroyed such institutions as tradition and the family, and when they are now intent on gutting the independence of the world of civil society and allowing it to be invaded by the forces of the state and market?

Os Guinness, Impossible People, pg.150

Is Human Character Natural?

In wars men are repeatedly asked to undertake acts of selfless courage that they will not themselves survive.  Men are expected to be responsible for the women who bear their children, for as long as they live.  Women in return are expected to be faithful to those men.  For economies to develop, men must be trusted to guard valuables that are not their own.  Again and again, for civilization to exist and advance, human creatures are required to do things that they would not do “naturally” as mammals.  Marriage is unnatural.  Building for the future is unnatural.  The practice of medicine is unnatural.  The deferment of immediate gratification for a greater reward is unnatural.  Literacy is unnatural, as is the passing on of lore and history from one generation to another.  The Beaver may be able to build a dam, but it has always been the same dam, and it will always be the same dam.  Only mankind can advance from making huts out of branches to building the Parthenon (and only mankind can fall back from the Parthenon to shacks and caves).

Peter Hitchens, The Rage Against God, pg.145-146

Study History to Avoid Genocide

Humans are very susceptible to groupthink, ignorance, propaganda, agitation, and psychological manipulation that weakens their resolve. People are also often all too eager to blame their own problems on convenient scapegoats. These human flaws clarify why “Never forget” is the cry associated with the Holocaust and all crimes against humanity.

This is why everybody must respect the study of history. After all, studying history is about remembering. It’s about learning from experience, which is why we must emphatically reject any attempt to water down the accurate teaching and study of history.

Stella Morabito, We Must Never Forget That Genocide Begins With Groupthink

Humans Are NOT Animals

Regardless of how often fallen human beings seek to classify themselves as merely biological, they know on the basis of their common rationality, morality, and search for meaning that this is not the case.  No matter how many times Darwinians, for example, speak of humans as one more kind of animal, and no matter how many times some psychologists explain our behavior on the basis of evolutionary mechanisms, human beings know it just isn’t so.  We know there is something distinctive about us….

Russell D. Moore, “What Does the Bible Teach About Human Beings,” in The Apologetics Study Bible, p.795.

Human Nature vs Desires

The argument against same-sex marriage is based on the nature of human persons as beings with a gender who have a purpose derived from that nature.  That is to say, male human persons are meant for coupling with female human persons, even if their coupling does not result in procreation.  This argument is not based on a human person's function, ability, or desire, which could each be inconsistent with how human beings ought to be by nature.

For example, a person who is comatose, insane, sightless, or sexually desirous of his neighbor's young child lacks something either physically, psychologically, or morally.  But he remains a human person who by nature ought to be conscious, sane, seeing, and desiring well.  In the same way a sterile, aged, or willingly childless person is still a gendered human person whose purpose for marital union (unless called to celibacy) can only be consummated by one-flesh communion with a spouse of the opposite gender even if he or she has contrary desires.

Desires, after all, can be immoral and sometimes harmful to a human person's good, such as desires to overeat, commit adultery, molest children, and engage in gay bashing.


Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, “Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air,” pg.123

The Key to Humility

We are the result of God's creation; what is more, we are the apex of that creation.  Trying to persuade ourselves that we are nothing carries two terrible risks.  One is that we laugh at the absurdity of thinking such fine creatures as ourselves to be nothing and we abandon the attempt to find humility.  The second risk is even worse:  We may actually come to believe that we really are nothing.  And if we are really nothing, then none of our actions could possibly mean anything either, could they?  So why worry about what we do?  If humans are nothing, then nothing matters.

Humility is attainable but not through considering ourselves to be utterly worthless.  Anyone who lives responsibly, and invests his time in durable values rather than in the frivolous pursuit of fun, has achieved something.  Such a person is not nothing.  They key to humility is not to denigrate what you have become, but rather to renounce any credit for it.  You are a real somebody.  To begin with, you are utterly unique.  You have thoughts that nobody else has ever had.  You have dedicated yourself to more than your own gratification.  You have supported your spouse.  You have labored faithfully at a job.  You are raising good children.  You have added to your store of knowledge about the world.  No, you are nowhere near being nothing.  You are somebody!

But who gets the credit for you being you?  Taking the credit yourself makes you arrogant.  First of all, God created you as a unique, fearfully-and-wonderfully-made individual.  Then there are your parents; after all, they endowed you with a pretty useful set of genes.  They also imparted crucial knowledge and habits as they raised you.  You probably picked up a thing or two as your formal education progressed, so there are teachers to thank.  How about that long-forgotten associate who gave you your first leg up in business?  You may not be nothing, but you probably had a lot of help in becoming a somebody.  For that we must thank others, most notably God Almighty, and avoid the folly of arrogance.


Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," p.70-71