Happy Mother's Day!

Do not forsake the teachings of your mother!

Proverbs 6:20

What George Jones Can Teach Us About Atheists

George Jones died last Friday (April 26). Jones was an icon of country music since before I was born. I admit that my father was literally a hillbilly, having been born and raised in eastern KY, and he was also a big fan of country music. Jones was one of my dad's favorites. I remember being only five or six and sitting with my father, in his den, listening to the old vinyl records of Jones and other country singers. Later, I actually bought him the Best of George Jones and Tammy Wynette on 8-track. That gives you an idea of how old I am.

Anyway, Jones wasn't what anyone would call a model Christian character. He was married four times. His early career was marred by alcoholism and later he became involved in cocaine. I'm not trying to disparage the man, mind you, I'm just trying to say that Jones is not usually the kind of person we would turn to for spiritual advice.

Stay with me, because I'm going somewhere with this.

So, I'm watching some George Jones videos on YouTube – He Stopped Loving Her Today is probably my favorite – when a thought occurred to me. One of Jones' biggest hits was, She Thinks I Still Care. If you haven't seen it, you owe it to yourself to watch it.

Here's the first stanza of the song:

Just because I asked a friend about her
Just because I spoke her name somewhere

Just because I saw her then went all to pieces

She thinks I still care

Excuse the gross alliteration but the story in the song is simple: the man has lost the woman he loves – a typical country theme – and he begins doing little things like asking friends how she's doing, “accidentally” calling her number, going to the same places they used to go together, etc. He denies that these things mean he still cares about her but as you hear all the things he does, you know that he obviously still does.

What, then, can George Jones teach us about atheists? Let me give you a theory. People may deny feeling or believing certain things.  But when they obsess over that thing they deny, it belies their denials. Have you ever noticed that? Maybe so. I know I certainly have.

I believe in God. I believe the Bible. I believe in creation. I'm not coy about my beliefs and spend a great deal of time defending them. If you've ever read my blog, you'll see that I'm sincere. Conversely, I don't believe in Big Foot, I don't believe professional wrestling is real, and I don't believe in alien abductions. These things aren't important to me. If other people want to believe in them, I don't care. I think it's foolish but I guess people have the right to be foolish. I'm not going to waste a lot of my time trying to talk them out of it.

I think a lot of people feel the same way that I do. How many websites have you visited that are dedicated to disproving Big Foot? People might mention it, as I've done here, but they don't dedicate a blog to it. They don't write books about their non-belief.  They don't visit college campuses and lay out their arguments against Big Foot for impressionable, young students.  In other words, they don't obsess about it.

You probably see where I'm going with this but let me spell it out. Atheists claim they don't believe in God. I get it. To them, my belief in God is about as rational as a belief in alien abductions. However, atheists don't “not believe” in God the same way that I don't believe in Big Foot. They don't passively disbelieve but rather, they actively promote their disbelief. They blog about how foolish it is to believe in God. They wax on and on about how science has disproved the Bible and Jesus wasn't a real person.  They write books and make speeches about why they don't believe... yadda, yadda, yadda. They want to not believe and they also want everyone else to not believe. Atheists obsess about the idea of God.

Isn't that curious?  I mean, if I were an unbeliever, why should it bother me if someone else believed in God? I'm sure it also wouldn't bother me even if someone tried to persuade me to believe in God. It doesn't bother me now, for example, when people try to convince me there's a Big Foot. I listen politely but later I put it out of my mind. It's not so with atheists. They militantly brandish their unbelief and would bludgeon Christians with it if they could.

I think I know the reason why they speak so. They deny there's a God but their continued obsession belies their denial. They act like they don't care about the existence of God but, as George Jones said, I think they still care.

Morals are Silly!

Morals are silly! That's not my opinion, it's the title of a YouTube video posted by a girl calling herself “healthyaddict.” Healthyaddict is an atheist who posts videos where she usually bashes Christians and occasionally defends atheism. In this video, she's responding to another video by a person posting as “Jesusfreek777” and she attempts to explain where morals come from. As usual, I'm going to recommend you view the video before I begin discussing it. It's only 3:12 long. Go ahead. I'll wait. //RKBentley taps his foot patiently//

I didn't choose this video because healthyaddict is the most articulate defender of atheism. Frankly, I've heard other, more articulate atheists make these same points. I picked this video because healthyaddict is very brief and I believe she is more representative of the casual way people usually make this argument. By the way, I spend about as much time looking at material critical of Christians as I do examining material defending Christians. When I talk about the unbelievers' arguments, I want to fairly represent their views and not build a straw man of their position. In this case, you can hear healthyaddict's position in her own words. I can't be accused of misrepresenting her.

Are we all agreed? Then let's move on.

She opens her video with the comment that “morals are silly” but she never really addresses what she means by that. It's very strange. From there, she changes direction and begins explaining her theory on the origin of morals. It's to this point that I'm going to respond.

Healthyaddict says that morals come from natural selection. That's not a big surprise because that's all that atheists or evolutionists ever have as an explanation. She's a little vague, though, in that she doesn't explain how this mechanism works. Is she saying that morality is a conscious act where we choose behavior that offers the greatest survival advantage or is morality an evolved trait where we instinctively act in ways that offer the greatest chance for survival? Either way, I will show you why she's wrong.

For her first example, she says that if we go around killing people “then the species would die off.” I guess she's saying that if we killed people carte blanche, then eventually we'd kill everyone. That's a little overreaching, don't you think? Again, I don't want to put words into anyone's mouth but I'm going to try to help her out. What she might be trying to say is that if we go around killing people, we are more likely to be killed in revenge. Therefore, if we act peaceably toward our neighbors, we're more likely to be left alone by them and, so, are more likely to live longer, have more kids, and pass along the trait of being peaceable.

This sounds plausible at first but it fails under scrutiny. First, it's well known that animals often fight and kill each other – even members of the same species. Sometimes, they fight for reproductive rights where the victorious male is allowed to mate and the defeated male is dead. This actually strengthens the species as a whole by removing the weaker males from the gene pool. If survival of the fittest is the goal, why would it necessarily be morally wrong for humans to kill each other if it were for something like the love of a woman?

Furthermore, under the “don't kill and you won't be killed” theory, would imperialism be objectively immoral? In the US, under our Manifest Destiny mission, we militantly displaced whole nations of American Indians, killing many of them and forcing many more onto reservations. Since this allowed the invading, white men to prosper, it must be moral by healthyaddict's standard.

Healthyaddict also attempts to tackle the dilemma of altruism. Why do humans do things that are a cost to them and a benefit to others? It doesn't make any sense according to evolution where everything is measured only by its survival benefit. Healthyaddict suggests altruism is a sort of reverse to the “don't kill and you won't be killed” principle; altruism is a “do this and they'll do it back to you” strategy. She gives the example of chimps picking bugs off other chimps. They do it in the hope that later, some chimp will pick bugs off them. I think healthyaddict needs to look up the definition of altruism. If you are expecting something in return, then it isn't altruism by definition. When people give money to starving children in third world countries, they never expect the children to someday repay them. Neither does the giver imagine that someday he might find himself in a third world country and will need some, middle class Westerner to give him food.

About 2 minutes into the video, healthyaddict undoes her entire point. She says, “I do think some things are very core when it comes to altruism, not killing each other generally, not raping each other. I think that's kind of like a universal standard because of natural selection.” You can see that the idea of morality by natural selection is so vague as to be meaningless. It's far more subjective than objective. No behavior could really be called immoral if an argument could be made that it offers some survival value. Yet she uses words like “core” and “universal standard” when it comes to the immorality of things like murder or rape. Is there a “core,” “universal standard” of morality or isn't there?

Immediately after stating that some things are universally wrong, healthyaddict points out that some attitudes of morality change over time. She uses the example of homosexuality. Now, homosexuality does not convey any survival benefit. Evolution hinges on reproduction and attraction to the same sex guarantees there can be no offspring. If perpetuation of the species is the objective, then homosexuality should never be viewed as moral. So if attitudes toward the morality of homosexuality have changed, something other than natural selection must be the standard by which it is judged. I would ask healthyaddict, what is that standard? What makes murder and rape always wrong and homosexuality sometimes wrong?

Healthyaddict highlights the futility of the atheist's position. Atheists strive mightily to demonstrate that there is no transcendent, absolute standard of morality. They know to acknowledge the existence of immutable morality strongly suggests there must be a transcendent Judge of right and wrong. So they equivocate and change the meaning of morally “right” to mean “what is expedient.” Yet when it comes to things like rape and murder, atheists immediately label them as absolutely immoral.

Earth Day 2013 AKA Radicals on Parade

I don't know if Earth Day has an “official” site, but Kathleen Rogers on this official-looking site billed Earth Day as “the largest secular event in the world.” I'd have to think about that one for a while. I don't know about the world but it's certainly not the largest, secular event in the US. I'm sure it ranks well behind Halloween, Independence Day, and probably even Cinco de Mayo. Still, it does get enough support that I could take a few moments to laugh at... er... I mean, write about it.

In the infancy of Earth Day, back in the 70s, the focus was on “over population.” It was feared that the earth did not have enough resources to support the three billion or so people who lived in the world back then so an early objective of Earth Day was to push for zero population growth. The idea of having children was booed by environmental advocates. Paul Erlich, author of The Population Bomb and an early champion of Earth Day made these radical statements:

“[T]he first task is population control at home. How do we go about it? Many of my colleagues feel that some sort of compulsory birth regulation would be necessary to achieve such control. One plan often mentioned involves the addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired population size.” [The Population Bomb, pp. 130-131]

Of course, abortion was also one of the big issues of the 70s and liberals used population control as another reason to support their argument to allow abortion. Liberals often defend their radical agendas by saying, “it's for the children.” In the case of abortion, that doesn't quite have the same effect so they instead said, “it's for the planet.”

We now have doubled the population of the planet since Mr. Erlich wrote his book so all of his dire predictions have been proven false. God commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful and fill the earth (Genesis 1:28) so He gave us a world capable of supporting many times the number of people who are alive now. The idea of purposefully limiting population growth is not only unnecessary, it's also a direct rebellion to God's plan.

Liberals also hate the free market and capitalism and so, over the years, they have used environmental concerns as a cudgel to beat down private property rights and for-profit endeavors. At first, radicals simply did things like chaining themselves to trees to prevent logging. I wonder if any of these nuts lived in houses built with lumber? Anyway, it's gotten worse over the years and now we are forced to save the environment or face criminal fines. We can't drill for oil in Alaska because there are caribou there. California farmers couldn't water their orchards due to the delta smelt. I can't buy a five gallon flush toilet or incandescent light bulbs because legislators believe these things are destroying the planet. Now the EPA even wants to fine (fleece?) cities and states for the rainwater that runs off of roads and highways.

Liberals have even used the environment to meddle in healthcare. For example, the Feds have banned over the counter inhalers used to treat asthma and have forced asthma suffers to buy more expensive, prescription-only inhalers. The reason: the over the counter inhalers contained CFCs.

On this Earth Day, the focus is “climate change.” It's simply a new spin on the old theme of forcing everyone to comply with liberal ideology by making everything seem to be about the environment. Liberals want to control everything that everyone does. Even something like eating meat is condemned because cow flatulence is supposedly destroying the ozone layer.

And I can't resist mentioning the evolutionary connection to Earth Day. A few years back, I posted this Oakland Zoo quote about their Earth Day celebration:

Bring the whole family out to the Oakland Zoo from 10:00am - 3:00pm for Earth Day 2009 Festivities! This year, the theme is "We're All Connected." All of the world is connected in a beautiful web of life, including you!

You see, Earth Day advocates want everyone to believe we're all connected via evolution: people, pandas, and petunias – we're all the same.

Finally, Kathleen Rogers includes this quote in her article:

More than one billion people from almost every single country on earth will take an action in service to our planet.

What probably bothers me about Earth Day more than the liberal agenda on parade is the not-so-subtle idea of earth worship that seems to be going on. What exactly does Ms. Rogers mean when she says talks about acting “in service to our planet”? The Bible says that God gave us every green thing to be our food (Genesis 1:29). God gave man dominion over the birds and the fish and the beasts of the earth (Genesis 1:26). In other words, the earth was made to serve us; we were not made to serve the earth!

God gave us a wonderful world because He loves us. On this earth day, let's be good stewards over what God has given us but let's not glorify the earth. Instead, give glory to God for His providence!

Have a Christ-centered Earth Day!