What people call ‘atheism’ these days is specifically materialistic atheism. Certain Buddhists, for example, claim to be atheist — not believing in an all-powerful God — but they nonetheless understand that Man has a soul (which they believe to be immortal); that there is a spiritual dimension underpinning life; and so on. What sets modern, materialistic atheism utterly apart is that it states that the material world is the only dimension of reality; that all aspects of life, thought, emotion and the world are entirely material or physical.

This what the materialist atheists consider to be a scientific point of view.

I want to emphasise a point I touched on previously. The idea — as expressed by the communists and others — that the moral underpinnings of secular Humanism (at least the anti-religious version), are simply bourgeois sentimentality, and that in secular Humanism or in any philosophy constructed on a foundation of materialist atheism, the logical end result is the Holocaust and the Killing Fields.

Mr Dawkins and Mr Hitchens would deny this strenuously. In fact, they both claim that neither Hitler nor Stalin were atheists in the true sense — for example I have it argued by atheists that Hitler was some sort of Pagan mystic, and that Stalin drew his world view from some corrupted Chritian notions he picked up in Childhood.

(This is in fact classic Socialist doublespeak — wherein whatever wrongs the Party does are immediately imputed upon the other side, of which the offenders are then said to be agents. I believe Mr Dawkins and Mr Hitchens are revealing something of themselves they might prefer hidden.)

Mr Dawkins argues that atheism was ‘incidental’ to Hitler, but the truth is, it is Secular Humanism itself which is inconsistent with materialistic atheism. Marxism, Nazism and mass murder are the logical and inevitable consequence of the philosophy of atheist materialism.

Now, the typical atheist will immediately object. In the West, this person is usually a ‘me first’ sort of person, and in most cases the basis of their belief is nothing more than ‘I can’t see it so it doesn’t exist’ (’If a tree falls in a forest and I wasn’t there to see it, did it make a sound?’). So, this person will become annoyed if confronted with the statement that atheism leads to genocide and mass murder. He or she will argue that ‘I am not like that, nor my atheist friends, therefore the argument is preposterous.’

And it’s natural that he or she would be offended, so please let me assure him or her, that I am not suggesting he or she is a Nazi Brownshirt. What I am saying is that, in the communist vernacular, he or she is a sentimental or ‘decadent’ Bourgeois, who has an attachment to traditional morality logically inconsistent with their philosophical outlook — a characteristic the ‘heroes’ of Socialism understood very well, hence their scorn and hostility to middle class ‘’reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries’, even those who regarded themselves as Socialists.

This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.
–Che Guevara

(Let me hasten to add, I am no friend of the communists. If you find yourself in the sad position of having been persuaded an evil philosophy such as materialistic atheism is true, having a moral code that is inconsistent with it is not a bad thing.)

As I argued previously, atheism taken to its logical conclusion leads to a nihilistic disregard for human life and human exceptionality; and the subsequent license to murder and destroy. That most Western middle class atheists (to their credit) do not embrace this is a result of their upbringing, the social surroundings and habits, and sadly it will diminish over time (rapidly on a generational scale). There is no logical philosophical basis in materialistic atheism for the values our society holds dear, its ‘progressive’ and godless middle class included. They are just a product of affinity to those we most encounter (’people like us’).

I would say this to materialistic atheists: it’s a mistake to open this Pandora’s Box. You feel wise and knowledgeable when you broadcast to the world the foolishness of the old ways, and your great superiority in intellect and reasoning. You see this as the clear light of reason, a gift for young and old.

But cast far, this seed will land in hearts and lives very different from your own, and the results will not be what you predict. The evidence for this is that it has happened numerous times before. When you broadcast your message to the world, the young and impressionable, the disillusioned, the lost — that there is no God; and that Man has no soul and knows of no truths other than what he constructs for himself — not everyone is going to embrace this philosophy in the half hearted manner of the Western Bourgeois

Not everyone is going to put their mind into this brave new world of pure freedom, but keep their heart in the altruistic moral order of times past.

Sentimentality is a product of comfort. What will happen when this philosophy finds as its raw material those who have grown up ouside the cocoon — the timid Georgian boy whose childhood was a constant torment of fear; the poor Austrian small town boy, impoverished and humiliated in an imperial capital full of privileged elites? What when these men, grown to manhood, their souls shaped by the influence of their harsh life experience refracted through a philosophy of spiritual nihilism?

Bred outside the cocoon, outisde the middle class comfort zone, what attachment will these men have for middle class values?

When they arrive, with their armies of lost and twisted souls, will you be the first to recoil in shock and dismay as they work out the implacable logic of a soulless world?

Will you be the first to cry ‘why me?’, as they line you up for elimination.

‘You called us forth,’ they will say. ‘Why do you cry out?’

Will you then also cry out “Oh, God, no!”

‘Too late to call for God’, they will say. ‘God is dead.’

…and who killed Him?

Ha ha! What a brilliant post!

[T]he same way a brain-damaged child simply cannot perform the basic mental functions of speech and reason is said to be mentally retarded, a man whose conscience cannot reach the most obvious, practical and necessary conclusions of moral law is morally retarded.

Moral retardation can be detected when man’s conscience is not telling him the moral information he needs to live his day-to-day life. If your conscience tells you human life is no more valuable than that of a cat or pig, then, logically, you should be able to castrate your son with no more moral ramifications than gelding your tomcat, or likewise cut up your wife for bacon. This is not a practical way to live.

…

Are we pre-eminent above other species in acts of justice, charity, oblative love, beauty, in pomp and circumstances, in the building of cathedrals, the writing of symphonies, the launching of moonshots? The question is absurd in the asking. No animal cares about these things, or has the capacity to understand them. You can have a space race between Uncle Sam and Uncle Joe Stalin. We are not competing with the bears to see who puts the first pawprint on Mars.

So in what sense is it “perversely comforting” to contemplate the annihilation of our species and the vanity of all human hopes and aspirations? Only someone who looks on man with a shudder of distaste is comforted.

Someone who is rooting for mankind, a human, would not ask these things. Someone who is cheering for the death of humanity, a monster, to him it is the most natural thing in the world.

So here is my question. When did the atheists suddenly turn into monsters?

Read it and relish it!

The man above (standing in front of the bookcase) is Professor Peter singer, the man who preaches infanticide, who teaches that if it suits their doctors or guardians, infants can be regarded as less than animals.

When the Nazis began the large scale extermination of the Jews, Heinrich Himmler (who himself was made physically sick by the things his men did) famously gave a speech to those of his SS troops who were then tasked with those abominable deeds, telling them they must suppress their natural human responses to what they were about to do — their feelings of horror and revulsion — because Reason demanded that the Jews must be exterminated.

The Iblis Pill

Among those who died in the camps were Professor Singer’s grandparents.

And yet the lesson the Professor Singer has taken from the Nazi Holocaust is not that the post-Christian, secular, atheist, materialist West had lost its soul, but that the West was not post-Christian enough, that there was still too much human emotion ruling our affairs, indeed that it was emotion itself that caused the Holocaust.

That Reason would save us. The same Reason that had marched us through the slave trade, the French Revolution, Marxism, the Gulag, Eugenics, Nazism, the Final Solution, the Killing Fields…

We had spent our 400 years in the wilderness. This time, Reason would lead us to the promised land.

Evil begets evil, perhaps the pain of such a personal loss — and such a profound loss of power — has produced a man with the overpowering desire to possess that power.

But no, the truth is that the highly intelligent are so often the greatest fools, the most easily seduced. He’s just a stupid man, in love with his own brilliance, who’s taken the Iblis Pill.

The ability now exists in a small way, and will probably increase significantly over time, for IVF doctors to select embryos based on the presence or absence of certain genes — ie. to select for genetic criteria. This is being compared by some to the ‘eugenics’ movement of the early 20th Century.

Based on the crude philosophies of Darwinism (not to be confused with Darwin’s scientific theories which are a different thing altogether), this profoundly misguided medical movement proposed that it was Man’s right role to weed out the genetically unfit. In the West, and the USA in particular, forced sterilisations were performed on women who were considered genetically unworthy — usually because they were poor, of low intelligence, or had been sentenced to prison — a horrible crime perpetrated against these women, and a dark chapter in medical science.

Subsequently, Eugenics was enthusiastically adopted by the Nazis who went one step further and began murdering the sick, the retarded, those with Down Syndrome, the mentally ill, as well some homosexuals (homosexuality was considered a mental illness in those days). As with all evil, having once embraced it, it was a short logical step for the cultured people of Germany to become the perpetrators of the most monstrous crime in all history, the attempted extermination of the entire Jewish race.

The history of the Eugenics movement thus raises a huge range of questions, and casts a dark shadow not just on Darwinism but upon all of Secular Rationalism. It also serves as a warning against giving too much power to welfare bureaucrats, as these were the people behind the selection of women to be sterilised.

And it quite rightly means that whenever anyone suggests undertaking genetic selection in any medical or social context, sensible people become concerned. This was the case when insurance companies suggested requiring their customers to pass genetic tests, and it is the case now that IVF doctors propose testing embryos for genetic conditions before implanting them.

I am troubled by selection of embryos for specific genetic characteristics, although I don’t reject the idea outright. It depends on the severity of the condition. Doctors have already begun selecting embryos of women who have difficulty carrying a pregancy to term due to miscarriage, with much success. This seems an ethically acceptable decision to me, as that human life would die anyway (the principle of triage).

Much more troubling is the selective abortion of certain unborn babies, for example if they have Down Syndrome. In my opinion this is wrong in almost all cases. Although, like many things that are wrong, it may be impossible to legislate against it.

And if genetic selection of IVF embryos were to become based on more trivial genetic factors (for example intelligence or eye colour), I think most people would be appalled. At its best this would mean treating humans like livestock, and at its worst, to be seeking ‘God-like powers’ to control human evolution.

There are other aspects of IVF that some lead some Christians to regard the whole field as morally wrong. The most usual objection is that destruction of human life — particularly innocent life — is wrong in all cases. In other words, it is wrong during abortion and so it must be wrong during IVF. This is a reasonable objection, but I don’t believe on closer examination it is justified.

Yes, most embryos will fail to implant and will die, as do many or most naturally conceived embryos, some others will be frozen, and if not used will eventually cease to be viable, at which point they are thawed, and die. Is this murder, or is it like switching off life support for a patient who will never recover, or neither, or both? People of Faith and good faith can ponder this question.

However, the idea that vast numbers of unused embryos need to be wantonly destroyed during IVF is not true. Almost all those that die, will do so in the process of trying to give them a life. Once pregnancy is acheived, not every couple will even have left over embryos, and for those who eventually do, usually by this time many more than this viable embryos have been implanted. The number unused will typically be quite small. In our own case, four ova were harvested, two of these successfully developed into embryos, both were implanted, and we were blessed with non-identical twins. What could be more life-affirming?

Furthermore, there have been moves recently (for example by President Bush) to promote the adoption of unused embryos, which is a good response to a valid ethical quandry, as well as an act of great kindness for infertile men and women who cannot produce embryos at all.

Note, too, the broader ethical questions that arise once a medical treatment becomes available. Deliberately withholding medical care from someone, who subsequently dies when they would have been expected to live had they been treated, is considered homocide. Could it not be argued that withholding fertility treatment from someone, who remain childless when they could reasonably have been expected to have children with treatment, is equivalent to sterilisation?

Getting back to the Eugenics movements, are there not similarities between condemning women to sterility who could readily be treated by modern medicine — for philosophical reasons — and the sterilisation of ‘undesirable’ women by the 20th Century Eugenicists — also for philosophical reasons.

In fact, I find blanket opposition to IVF to be a very strange sort of way to sanctify life — since it denies it.

Finally, there is an argument often used against IVF — particularly when it was a very new treatment, but which I believe is still the official position of the Catholic Church — that it is wrong simply because it is unnatural. It’s wonderful to sanctify natural human reproduction and relationships — the proper name for marriage is ‘Holy Matrimony’, after all — and I fully support the principle that children belong in families of a mother and father who share physical, emotional and spiritual bonds, and who have demonstrated their commitment to each other by making a binding contract of legal, spiritual and physical union, but to extend this principle so far that it results in the enforced barrenness of a proportion of these married couples is wrong.

It is applying the principle in a manner which could not be foreseen when the principle was laid down. It is adhering to the letter of the law but ignoring its spirit. In fact it reminds me strongly of the objections of the Pharisees when Christ healed on the Sabbath. Religious rules are a fine thing, but Jesus teaches us that sometimes we must follow a higher law. Just as Christ taught that healing ruined bodies superceded religious rules designed to protect the sanctity of the Sabbath, likewise healing couples so they can bring new life into the world — and life is the greatest thing any of us can give the world — must surely supercede religious rules put in place to protect the sanctity of the sexual act.

Furthermore, to some degree it can be seen as a variation on the argument that because things are a particular way, therefore it must be God’s will they should remain thus. I totally reject this simplistic point of view. In fact I find it not at all Christian, more fitting in fact to a fatalistic heathen religion. As Christians, don’t we accept that Satan has marred the world, and we are under instruction to ’subdue’ it — to use our abilities to do God’s work on earth? Where would we be otherwise?

On balance, there are some grave ethical questions are raised by infertility treatment — as indeed they are by very many areas of medicine and technology — but like most of the ills of modern life they are not central to the process. They can be ameliorated without robbing good women of the opportunity to be good mothers.

A footnote to my last post - more free advice for those Christians opposed to IVF (cheap at twice the price).

This battle is Gallipoli for the pro-life movement

The reason, because:

1) it’s a sideshow in the war to save the unborn,

2) it can’t be won,

3) even if it could be won, it would not win the war,

If you are pro-life, consider this; the war for the unborn will be won or lost in the main theatre of action — abortion.

So God created man in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Genesis 1:27-28

On the matter of IVF, some Christians are pitilessly cold-hearted.

There are undoubtedly serious moral questions raised by this medical miracle. Embryos are human, and I agree with the concerns Catholics and other Christians have about their destruction. IVF clinics and prospective parents should give deep thought to how they treat human embryos — embryo adoption has begun in America, that’s a great thing. Destroying embryos that might be genetically ill is also morally questionable. Raising these questions is necessary and I hope will lead to moral outcomes.

But if there are those who seriously see no difference between the miracle of IVF and the horror of the abortion industry, then I would suggest they know nothing about humanity, life or why life is sacred. There’s something cruelly legalistic (in the worst possible sense of that word) about manipulating the teachings of Jesus to reach an outcome that would deny life.

IVF clinics are bringing life to children who would not otherwise exist and they are helping to make happy loving families where before there was just barrenness and heartbreak.

There is no life in a barren womb. No life is not pro-life.

“That which I would not, that I do!”

Good medicines kill patients, good policemen and good soldiers kill innocents. Speeding ambulances kill pedestrians.

Often when we try to do good, harm comes as a side effect — people die. We walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Death is all around us, that’s why life is sacred.

That’s why doctors fight to give Granny a few hours of life. That’s why ten guilty men go free rather than we convict a single innocent one. That’s why hundreds of volunteers will search for one climber lost in the snow, why ships and helicopters scour the ocean for one lost sailor. That’s why a platoon of US Marines will go into battle to rescue one of their own, even if it means they will take greater casualties in the process!

We spend millions — the equivalent of lifetimes of work — and risk lives, for even the possibility of saving a single life, even of adding a single day to a single life.

We are moral people, that is the Lord’s work.

Replenish the earth, and subdue it

In the midst of the shadow stretching infinitely in every direction, here is this precious, fragile, little flame of life. That is why life, every moment of it, is sacred.

Bringing life to children, and children to families, is the Lord’s work. He commanded it.

And for some people, bringing life into the world is hard. The doctors counsel them not to, but they bond with every embryo, investing their hopes, praying to God to protect this tiny life. Most of the time, the embryos die — when they die, there’s blood. And the parents grieve and they weep, but they try again and again.

It’s excruciating.

But still they persist, because life is so very precious.

The quest to bring life into the world has consumed lives and fortunes. The parents learn bitterly what our ancient forbears knew, that life triumphs for but a moment and death is always at our shoulder.

And there are those Christians who would say ‘let there be no life here, it contradicts our philosophies.’

How are such cold hearts, who would deny life when it conflicts with their philosophies, any different from the utilitarians — the Peter Singers — who would destroy life when it conflicts with their philosophies? How is the philosophy that says you may not cultivate embryonic life, because the likelihood the embryo will die is high, different from the philosophy that says you must not allow a child to be born, because the likelihood it will suffer severe illness or loss of quality of life is high? Each philosophy results in life denied.

Which if us, if offered the option of ‘no life’ or ‘a chance of life’ would choose ‘no life’.