I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline Republican.
I have discovered that is very difficult to get moral nonabsolutists to tell me how they come up with what is right and what is wrong. After asking this question of them over and over it is very rare for me to get a straight answer. I think that is because they don’t really know themselves how to come up with a basis for their relative moral system.
On 2-21-13 on the Arkansas Times Blog the person using the username “mudturtle” asserted:
Saline “By absolute we mean that which always applies, that which provides a final or ultimate standard”
Absolutes? Not so much. “Thou shalt not kill” sounds pretty absolute, but even a 6 year old knows about capital punishment, wars, and the food process. “Honor your father and mother” doesn’t apply so much when you’ve been raped by your dad.
Absolutes? Go for them Saline.
As for me, I prefer to go with what’s “right”
On 2-21-13 on the Arkansas Times Blog I responded:
Mudturtle you said, “Absolutes? Go for them Saline.As for me,I prefer TO GO WITH WHAT’S RIGHT.”
Really you can figure that out how? Let me challenge any moral nonabsolutist to answer this question below concerning a morality issue.
Remember back in April of 2012 when we saw some newly released pictures from Hitler’s bunker?
Hitler’s last few moments of life were filled with anxiety as they should have been. He went on to face his maker and pay dearly for his many sins. When I look at the never before released pictures of Hitler’s bunker, it makes me wonder how anyone can claim that this life doesn’t count for all eternity and people like Hitler are home free like Woody Allen’s movie “Crimes and Misdemeanors” suggests.
Mudturtle answer this one question. HOW COULD JUDAH HAVE REMOVED HIS TROUBLESOME MISTRESS FROM HIS LIFE WITHOUT KILLING HER? Woody Allen knew what he was doing in this film and he was showing that without God and an afterlife then there is no reason not to murder!!!!
Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS , is concerning the need of God while making decisions in the area of personal morality. In this film, Allen attacks his own atheistic view of morality. Martin Landau plays a Jewish eye doctor named Judah Rosenthal raised by a religious father who always told him, “The eyes of God are always upon you.” However, Judah later concludes that God doesn’t exist. He has his mistress (played in the film by Anjelica Huston) murdered because she continually threatened to blow the whistle on his past questionable, probably illegal, business activities. She also attempted to break up Judah ‘s respectable marriage by going public with their two-year affair. Judah struggles with his conscience throughout the remainder of the movie. He continues to be haunted by his father’s words: “The eyes of God are always upon you.” This is a very scary phrase to a young boy, Judah observes. He often wondered how penetrating God’s eyes are.
Later in the film, Judah reflects on the conversation his religious father had with Judah ‘s unbelieving Aunt May at the dinner table many years ago:
“Come on Sol, open your eyes. Six million Jews burned to death by the Nazis, and they got away with it because might makes right,” says aunt May
Sol replies, “May, how did they get away with it?”
Judah asks, “If a man kills, then what?”
Sol responds to his son, “Then in one way or another he will be punished.”
Aunt May comments, “I say if he can do it and get away with it and he chooses not to be bothered by the ethics, then he is home free.”
Judah ‘s final conclusion was that might did make right. He observed that one day, because of this conclusion, he woke up and the cloud of guilt was gone. He was, as his aunt said, “home free.”
Woody Allen has exposed a weakness in his own humanistic view that God is not necessary as a basis for good ethics. There must be an enforcement factor in order to convince Judah not to resort to murder. Otherwise, it is fully to Judah ‘s advantage to remove this troublesome woman from his life. Tell me what should have Judah done Mudturtle? What is right?
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In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented against abortion (Episode 1), infanticide (Episode 2), euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close look at the truth claims of the Bible.
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have. Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.
Many liberals actually truly do argue for abortion rights over human rights. Prochoice advocate Elizabeth Williams came out and said that on 1-23-13 in her article on Salon. We hear reasons for abortion such as poverty,and child abuse, but why not consider adoption? Instead, the political left will stop at nothing to push the pro-abortion agenda. Why not stop and take an honest look at when life begins for the unborn child and when she begins to feel pain?
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Francis Schaeffer pictured above.
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Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE
Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis
On the 40th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade: A Public Discourse Symposium
Witness to the truth matters for its own sake, but persistent, winsome witness also tends to bear good fruit, even if it takes 40 years and counting.
“Supreme Court Settles Abortion Issue”: So declared a front-page New York Times headline the day after the Court handed down its Roe v. Wade decision. Of course, as the past forty years have made painfully clear, there is no question less settled in American public life than abortion. But it wouldn’t have seemed that way in the years just after Roe, when public opinion shifted strongly in favor of abortion access.
Day after day, another pro-life public figure—Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, Al Gore, Bill Clinton—would have a change of heart and come to embrace abortion on demand. Elites ridiculed pro-lifers as being on the wrong side of history. It looked like a losing battle; how easy it would have been just to give up and go home.
But courageous people refused to sit silently.
Academics such as Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Thomas Hilgers, and Hadley Arkes developed the philosophical, scientific, and legal arguments that now roll off our tongues so easily. Activists such as Nellie Gray, Mildred Jefferson, and L. Brent Bozell, Jr., organized the marches, advocacy groups, and think tanks that still fuel the pro-life movement.
Statesmen such as Henry Hyde, Ronald Reagan, and Ed Meese pushed for the laws, policies, and nomination criteria that changed our political and legal culture. And at the heart of it all were good shepherds like Pastor (later Father) Richard John Neuhaus, John Cardinal O’Connor, and Francis Schaeffer, nourishing the flock for what, in the final analysis, is a spiritual struggle for the Gospel of Life.
And now, well, the pro-life side has, in a word, won. No, Roe hasn’t been overturned. But can anyone find a law professor who actually defends Roe as good jurisprudence? Even the Supreme Court—in its Casey decision upholding Roe, after two decades of attempted rationalizations—couldn’t bring itself to declare Roe right on the merits. And you’d be hard-pressed to find a serious moral philosopher who cogently defends abortion without also justifying infanticide.
If the choice is killing newborns up to age two or protecting life in the womb, the pro-life side wins, hands down. Even socially, abortion is on the wane. Hollywood doesn’t celebrate abortion; Juno, Knocked Up, and Bella all celebrate choosing life. “Pro-choicers” can’t even bring themselves to say which choice it is that they affirm; “abortion” has become an ugly utterance.
Last year, Frances Kissling, the pioneering former president of Catholics for Choice, took to the pages of the Washington Post to confess that her side was losing and to plead with her allies to change course before the loss became final:
[Our] arguments may have worked in the 1970s, but today, they are failing us . . . The “pro-choice” brand has eroded considerably. . . . We can no longer pretend the fetus is invisible. . . . It may not have a right to life, and its value may not be equal to that of the pregnant woman, but ending the life of a fetus is not a morally insignificant event.
Indeed.
Studies show that the past few years have set new records for the amount of pro-life legislation at the state level. Thirty-two states since 2010 have passed over 100 pro-life laws. And the latest public opinion polls show the current generation of young adults to be more pro-life than their parents. Forty years after Roe, a majority of Americans identify as pro-life.
There are lessons for us as we continue in this struggle and gear up for new ones. As a young person, I basically inherited pro-life arguments, organizations, and strategies ready-made. New challenges call on my generation to produce the next Grisezs, Grays, and Hydes. No matter what the media, intellectuals, and other elites may tell us, there is no “wrong side of history,” unless people of moral integrity choose to sit idly.
As Fr. Neuhaus (paraphrasing T. S. Eliot) reminded us in one of his last public addresses, “there are no permanently lost causes because there are no permanently won causes.” As he saw it, “To be recruited to the cause of the culture of life is to be recruited for the duration; and there is no end in sight, except to the eyes of faith.”
Just so, and so too for the fights for religious liberty and the protection of marriage. Arguments must be developed, coalitions formed, strategies devised, and witness borne. Witness to the truth matters for its own sake, but persistent, winsome witness also tends to bear good fruit, even if it takes forty years and counting.
Faithful witness also builds community. What started as Christian-Jewish and Catholic-Protestant-Orthodox co-belligerency in a culture war on Roe has developed into real interfaith and ecumenical understanding—fraternity and charity at least as great as any achieved by formal dialogue.
Celebrating four decades of gains, let us pray and plan for many more. For as Fr. Neuhaus reminded us, we must persist—argue and write, advocate and march, vote and repeal and propose, counsel and console—“until every human being created in the image and likeness of God is protected in law and cared for in life.” Until then, “we shall not weary, we shall not rest. And, in this the great human-rights struggle of our time and all times, we shall overcome.”
* * *
The Public Discourse symposium on Roe at 40 features the following six articles; check back each day for the new essay:
Ryan T. Anderson, “On the Fortieth Anniversary of Roe v. Wade: A Public Discourse Symposium”
Elise Italiano, “Forty Years Later: It’s Time for a New Feminism”
Michael New, “Abortion Promises Unfulfilled”
Daniel K. Williams, “The Real Reason to Criticize Roe”
Gerard V. Bradley, “The Paradox of Persons Forty Years After Roe”
Michael Stokes Paulsen, “The Right to Life Forty Years from Now”
Ryan T. Anderson is the William E. Simon Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and the Editor of Public Discourse, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, NJ. He is author, with Sherif Girgis and Robert P. George, of What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense just released by Encounter Books. This piece originally appeared in the Fall 2012 issue of the Human Life Review.
Receive Public Discourse by email, become a fan of Public Discourse on Facebook, follow Public Discourse on Twitter, and sign up for the Public Discourse RSS feed.
Support the work of Public Discourse by making a secure donation to The Witherspoon Institute.
Copyright 2013 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.
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Taking on Ark Times bloggers about abortion on the 40th anniversary date of Roe v. Wade (Part 7) “Poverty not good reason for abortion, why not give up for adoption?”
Dr Richard Land discusses abortion and slavery – 10/14/2004 – part 3 The best pro-life film I have ever seen below by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop “Whatever happened to the human race?” Over the years I have taken on the Ark Times liberal bloggers over and over and over concerning the issue […]
Taking on Ark Times bloggers about abortion on the 40th anniversary date of Roe v. Wade (Part 6) For many pro-abortionists ” …the problem is not determining when actual human life begins, but when the value of that life begins to out weigh other considerations”
The best pro-life film I have ever seen below by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop “Whatever happened to the human race?” Francis Schaeffer pictured above._________ The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really […]
Taking on Ark Times bloggers about abortion on the 40th anniversary date of Roe v. Wade (Part 5) “Slavery issue compared to rights of unborn child”
The best pro-life film I have ever seen below by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop “Whatever happened to the human race?” Over the years I have taken on the Ark Times liberal bloggers over and over and over concerning the issue of abortion. I asked over and over again for one liberal blogger […]
Taking on Ark Times bloggers about abortion on the 40th anniversary date of Roe v. Wade (Part 4) “How do pro-lifers react to the movie THE CIDER HOUSE RULES?”
Francis Schaeffer pictured above._________ The best pro-life film I have ever seen below by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop “Whatever happened to the human race?” Over the years I have taken on the Ark Times liberal bloggers over and over and over concerning the issue of abortion. I asked over and over again […]
Taking on Ark Times bloggers about abortion on the 40th anniversary date of Roe v. Wade (Part 3) “What should be the punishment for abortion doctors?”
The best pro-life film I have ever seen below by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop “Whatever happened to the human race?” On 1-24-13 I took on the child abuse argument put forth by Ark Times Blogger “Deathbyinches,” and the day before I pointed out that because the unborn baby has all the genetic code […]
Taking on Ark Times bloggers about abortion on the 40th anniversary date of Roe v. Wade (Part 2) “The pro-abortion child abuse argument destroyed here”
PHOTO BY STATON BREIDENTHAL from Pro-life march in Little Rock on 1-20-13. Tim Tebow on pro-life super bowl commercial. Over the years I have taken on the Ark Times liberal bloggers over and over and over concerning the issue of abortion. Here is another encounter below. On January 22, 2013 (on the 40th anniversary of the […]
Taking on Ark Times bloggers about abortion on the 40th anniversary date of Roe v. Wade (Part 1)
Dr Richard Land discusses abortion and slavery – 10/14/2004 – part 3 The best pro-life film I have ever seen below by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop “Whatever happened to the human race?” Over the years I have taken on the Ark Times liberal bloggers over and over and over concerning the issue […]
The Daily Hatch 
Comments
“How do moral nonabsolutists come up with what is right?”
Glad you asked, Everette.
Do not onto others what you would have them not do onto you.
It’s not rocket science.
-dlj.
Great response David. Do you realize that those are the words of Jesus? By the way I wanted to make a few points and give you a link. Here is a link with a great debate with Paul Kurtz on this issue. It is from the John Ankerberg Show and I put it in a series of 4 posts. Here is the first one: https://thedailyhatch.org/2012/10/23/debating-with-the-gentleman-paul-kurtz/ . I had an opportunity to read Dr. Paul Kurtz’s book “Forbidden Friut” which is on ethics from a secular humanist point of view and I corresponded with Dr. Kurtz.
From a purely secular point of view the atheist can’t even say that Hitler was wrong in my view. I know that you considered Hitler evil but on what basis? The movie “The Quarrel” illustrates this very well and it will be shared later below.
Let us take a close look at how you are going to come up with morality as an atheist. When you think about it there is no way around the final conclusion that it is just your opinion against mine concerning morality. There is no final answers. However, if God does exist and he has imparted final answers to us then everything changes.
Take a look at a portion of this paper by Greg Koukl. In this article he points out that atheists don’t even have a basis for saying that Hitler was wrong:
What doesn’t make sense is to look at the existence of evil and question the existence of God. The reason is that atheism turns out being a self-defeating philosophic solution to this problem of evil. Think of what evil is for a minute when we make this kind of objection. Evil is a value judgment that must be measured against a morally perfect standard in order to be meaningful. In other words, something is evil in that it departs from a perfect standard of good. C.S. Lewis made the point, “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call something crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.”[ 1 ] He also goes on to point out that a portrait is a good or a bad likeness depending on how it compares with the “perfect” original. So to talk about evil, which is a departure from good, actually presumes something that exists that is absolutely good. If there is no God there’s no perfect standard, no absolute right or wrong, and therefore no departure from that standard. So if there is no God, there can’t be any evil, only personal likes and dislikes–what I prefer morally and what I don’t prefer morally.
This is the big problem with moral relativism as a moral point of view when talking about the problem of evil. If morality is ultimately a matter of personal taste–that’s what most people hold nowadays–then it’s just your opinion what’s good or bad, but it might not be my opinion. Everybody has their own view of morality and if it’s just a matter of personal taste–like preferring steak over broccoli or Brussels sprouts–the objection against the existence of God based on evil actually vanishes because the objection depends on the fact that some things are intrinsically evil–that evil isn’t just a matter of my personal taste, my personal definition. But that evil has absolute existence and the problem for most people today is that there is no thing that is absolutely wrong. Premarital sex? If it’s right for you. Abortion? It’s an individual choice. Killing? It depends on the circumstances. Stealing? Not if it’s from a corporation.
The fact is that most people are drowning in a sea of moral relativism. If everything is allowed then nothing is disallowed. Then nothing is wrong. Then nothing is ultimately evil. What I’m saying is that if moral relativism is true, which it seems like most people seem to believe–even those that object against evil in the world, then the talk of objective evil as a philosophical problem is nonsense. To put it another way, if there is no God, then morals are all relative. And if moral relativism is true, then something like true moral evil can’t exist because evil becomes a relative thing.
An excellent illustration of this point comes from the movie The Quarrel . In this movie, a rabbi and a Jewish secularist meet again after the Second World War after they had been separated. They had gotten into a quarrel as young men, separated on bad terms, and then had their village and their family and everything destroyed through the Second World War, both thinking the other was dead. They meet serendipitously in Toronto, Canada in a park and renew their friendship and renew their old quarrel.
Rabbi Hersch says to the secularist Jew Chiam, “If a person does not have the Almighty to turn to, if there’s nothing in the universe that’s higher than human beings, then what’s morality? Well, it’s a matter of opinion. I like milk; you like meat. Hitler likes to kill people; I like to save them. Who’s to say which is better? Do you begin to see the horror of this? If there is no Master of the universe then who’s to say that Hitler did anything wrong? If there is no God then the people that murdered your wife and kids did nothing wrong.”
That is a very, very compelling point coming from the rabbi. In other words, to argue against the existence of God based on the existence of evil forces us into saying something like this: Evil exists, therefore there is no God. If there is no God then good and evil are relative and not absolute, so true evil doesn’t exist, contradicting the first point. Simply put, there cannot be a world in which it makes any sense to say that evil is real and at the same time say that God doesn’t exist. If there is no God then nothing is ultimately bad, deplorable, tragic or worthy of blame. The converse, by the way, is also true. This is the other hard part about this, it cuts both ways. Nothing is ultimately good, honorable, noble or worthy of praise. Everything is ultimately lost in a twilight zone of moral nothingness. To paraphrase the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer, the person who argues against the existence of God based on the existence of evil in the world has both feet firmly planted in mid-air.
Francis Schaeffer noted, “If the intrinsically personal origin of the universe is rejected, what alternative outlook can anyone have? It must be said emphatically that there is no final answer except that man is a product of the impersonal, plus time, plus chance.”
As a Christian I have a source of truth in the Bible that comes from the infinite-personal God of the universe. I have posted many times on this blog of evidence that indicates that the Old Testament prophecies of the Bible are amazing. The evidence can be examined. The Bible also tells us that there is an enforcement factor and that is there will be awards and punishments given in the afterlife. That is why I keep talking about Woody Allen’s movie “Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
Let me ask you a question: Will the “Angel of Death” Josef Menegele be punished for his evil crimes or not even though he evaded capture for 34 years?
Here is what Wikipedia says happened to Mengele:
In Buenos Aires, Mengele at first worked in construction, but soon came in contact with influential Germans, who allowed him an affluent lifestyle in subsequent years. He also got to know other Nazis in Buenos Aires, such as Hans-Ulrich Rudel and Adolf Eichmann. In 1955, he bought a 50 percent share of Fadro Farm, a pharmaceutical company; the same year, he divorced his wife, Irene. Three years later, he married Martha Mengele in Uruguay, the widow of his younger brother, Karl Jr.; she then went to Argentina with her 14-year-old son, Dieter. Mengele lived with his family in a German-owned boarding house in the Buenos Aires suburb of Vicente Lopez from 1958 to 1960.[30] While in Buenos Aires, Mengele practiced medicine, specializing in illegal abortions, and was briefly detained by police on one occasion for the death of a patient during an abortion.[31]
Isser Harel, Chief Executive of the Secret Services of Israel (1952–1963), personally presided over the successful effort to capture Eichmann in Buenos Aires. In his account of the operation, he reports no sightings of Mengele in 1960, but feels that they might have got him if they could have moved more quickly. When asked about the secondary target by the co-pilot who helped transport Eichmann at the time, he claims to have told him that “had it been possible to start the operation several weeks earlier, Mengele might also have been on the plane.” They checked on the last known location for Mengele in Argentina, but he had apparently moved on just two weeks earlier.[33]
Mengele’s home in Hohenau, Paraguay
The same year, Mengele moved to Nova Europa, about 200 km (120 mi) outside São Paulo, where he lived with Hungarian refugees Geza and Gitta Stammer, working as manager of their farm. In the seclusion of his Brazilian hideaway Mengele was safe. In 1974, when his relationship with the Stammer family was coming to an end, Hans-Ulrich Rudel and Wolfgang Gerhard discussed relocating Mengele to Bolivia where he could spend time with Klaus Barbie, but Mengele rejected this proposal. Instead, he lived in a bungalow in a suburb of São Paulo for the last years of his life. In 1977, his only son Rolf, never having known his father before, visited him there and found an unrepentant Nazi who claimed that he “had never personally harmed anyone in his whole life”.[29]
Mengele’s health had been deteriorating for years, and he died on 7 February 1979, in Bertioga, Brazil, where he accidentally drowned, or possibly suffered a stroke, while swimming in the Atlantic. He was buried in Embu das Artes under the name “Wolfgang Gerhard”, whose ID card he had used since 1976.[35]
Mengele showed little regret or remorse for his crimes, and expressed in a letter his astonishment and disgust over the remorseful position taken by Hitler’s chief architect and Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer.[36]
Mengele was listed on the Allies’ list of war criminals as early as 1944. His name was mentioned in the Nuremberg trials several times, but Allied forces were convinced that Mengele was dead, which was also claimed by Irene and the family in Günzburg. In 1959, suspicions had grown that he was still alive, given his divorce from Irene in 1955 and his marriage to Martha in 1958. An arrest warrant was issued by the West German authorities. Subsequently, West German attorneys such as Fritz Bauer, Israel’s Mossad, and private investigators such as Simon Wiesenthal and Beate Klarsfeld followed the trail of the “Angel of Death”. The last confirmed sightings of Mengele placed him in Paraguay, and it was believed that he was still hiding there, allegedly protected by flying ace Hans-Ulrich Rudel and possibly even by the dictator President Alfredo Stroessner. Mengele sightings were reported all over the world, but they turned out to be false.
In 1985, the West German police raided Hans Sedlmeier’s house in Günzburg and seized address books, letters, and papers hinting at the grave in Embu. The remains of “Wolfgang Gerhard” were exhumed on 6 June 1985 and identified as Mengele’s with high probability by forensic experts from UNICAMP. Rolf Mengele issued a statement saying that he “had no doubt it was the remains of his father”.[29] Everything was kept quiet “to protect those who knew him in South America”, Rolf said. In 1992, a DNA test confirmed Mengele’s identity. He had evaded capture for 34 years.
After the exhumation, the São Paulo Institute for Forensic Medicine stored his remains and attempted to repatriate them to the remaining Mengele family members, but the family rejected them. The bones have been stored at the São Paulo Institute for Forensic Medicine since.[40] According to the Find a Grave database, Mengele’s body has been cremated. Since the family has not claimed the ashes, they remain in the custody of unnamed Brazilian officials.[41]
On 17 September 2007, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum released photographs taken from a photo album of Auschwitz staff, which contained eight photographs of Mengele. According to museum officials, these eight photos of Mengele are the first authenticated pictures of him at Auschwitz.[42]
In February 2010, Mengele’s diary, kept from 1960 until his death in 1979, which included letters sent to Rolf and Wolfgang Gerhard, was sold at auction in Connecticut by Alexander Autographs for an estimated $200,000 (£130,000). According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), the buyer was an East Coast Jewish philanthropist who wished to remain anonymous. The auction caused protest amongst some Holocaust survivors, describing it as “a cynical act of exploitation aimed at profiting from the writings of one of the most heinous Nazi criminals.”[43] The previous owner, who acquired the diary in Brazil, is said to be close to the Mengele family.[44]