We never thought it would happen:
Planned Parenthood’s Manhattan Margaret Sanger Health Center will be renamed, and city officials are working to rename the nearby Margaret Sanger Square. The organization said the new name would be announced soon.
Sanger, who was a nurse, established the first birth control clinic in the U.S., which would eventually become the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
PPGNY said the decision came out of “a public commitment to reckon with its founder’s harmful connections to the eugenics movement.” …
The fact sheet noted that Planned Parenthood “denounces” Sanger’s involvement in the eugenics movement and her endorsement of the 1927 Buck v. Bell decision that allowed states to sterilize citizens who were deemed “unfit” without their consent. J. Edward Moreno, “Planned Parenthood to remove Margaret Sanger’s name from center over ‘racist legacy’” at The Hill
Like, she really did believe the awful things she said about poor people; it wasn’t as if she had hit her big toe while hammering something.
Plus, from back in 2011:
You say she was an equal opportunity vile eugenicist and vicious social Darwinist, but at least, not a racist? Get this from page 133:
“Sanger surrounded herself with some of the eugenics movement’s most outspoken racists and white supremacists. Chief among them was Lothrop Stoddard, author of The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy. Stoddard’s book, devoted to the notion of a superior Nordic race, became eugenic gospel. It warned, ‘”Finally perish!” That is the exact alternative that confronts the white race…If white civilization goes down, the white race is irretrievably ruined. It will be swamped by the triumphant colored races, who will eliminate the white man by elimination or absorption…We now know that men are not and never will be equal.” “
We are known by the friends we keep, no? If one welcomes a pernicious racist as a valued colleague into one’s movement, the defense that she was not “personally” racist rings as hollow as a Jack O’ Lantern pumpkin. Wesley J. Smith, “Margaret Sanger Was Too a Racist” at National Review
In 2016, Time Magazine tried to explain it all away as a big misunderstanding, but lots of people knew the facts.
At Evolution News and Science Today, David Klinghoffer comments:
If Planned Parenthood really sought to “reckon with [their] legacy,” and “address the problem,” they would have to change their whole business model not merely remove Sanger’s name from a building. As Ben Carson points out, “[Sanger] was not particularly enamored with black people. And one of the reasons that you find most of their [Planned Parenthood] clinics in black neighborhoods is so that you can find a way to control that population.”
The abortion provider would also need to “reckon” with the place of evolutionary ideology in Sanger’s thinking. In an article at The Stream, John West has traced “The Line Running from Charles Darwin through Margaret Sanger to Planned Parenthood“:
In Sanger’s view, humanitarianism threatened to swamp America with a tidal wave of the “feeble-minded.” As I explain in my book Darwin Day in America, feeblemindedness was an expansive category that included many people who today wouldn’t be considered mentally handicapped, including members of races (like blacks) considered by Darwinian biologists of the time to be “lower” on the evolutionary scale.
Sanger as a historical figure is impossible to understand without recalling the legacy of evolutionary thinking and scientific racism, detailed in the harrowing documentary Human Zoos. David Klinghoffer, “Memory Purge: Eugenicist Margaret Sanger Gets Canceled by Planned Parenthood” at Evolution News and Science Today:
The thing is, they could have addressed it all decades ago. One can only wonder why they didn’t. Perhaps they thought they could get away with ridiculing the growing numbers of people who knew.
As to,
Indeed Sanger was a moral monster
Sanger would be proud of Planned Parenthood’s targeting of African Americans today:
And Planned Parenthood, in what should be the very definition of the word ‘hypocricy’, had the nerve to write this about ‘Black Lives Matter’,
If that level of hypocrisy does not turn your stomach then nothing ever will.
“systemic racism that festers within our nation” has indeed been found and the name of that war on Blacks in America is called Planned Parenthood!
Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood were not responsible for the importation of 450.000 slaves to the US during the period of the slave trade. That was accomplished by the Christian peoples of Europe and North America of the period.
Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood were not responsible for the lynchings of 3,446 African Americans between 1882 and 1968 in the United States, again by people who otherwise no doubt considered themselves good Christians.
Systemic racism has infected the US and many other countries long before Sanger and Planned Parenthood and the atrocities committed by the colonial powers against the indigenous peoples of their colonies were done, again, by people who considered themselves good Christians.
Verse: Matthew 7:5
“Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye;
and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”
No just responsible for the millions of dead children for confusing murder with woman’s rights
Nice try Sev
U liberal
Seversky’s ignorance about the history of slavery is appalling. Had he bothered at least to read my posts on slavery, he would realize that Christianity fundamentally opposes slavery, that the large majority of the slave trade was divided between Latin America and Islamic slavery–about 11 million each–the latter preferring enslaving Christians because they were more docile.
Apparently, historical facts are not important when an attack against Christianity can be fabricated.
-Q
@Q
He actually blatantly ignores those posts by the way
I have challenged him multiple times on religion and even asked him to please stop but he does not I don’t even understand why he keeps bringing it up
He doesn’t even explain why he hates religion so much and yes a lot of his information is just ridiculously biased absolutely untrue and when faced with contradictory information he never responds to it
I’m sure he’s happy that China is currently ridding itself of all Christianity
Margaret Sanger, as all historical personages, needs to be taken into the context of her time rather than be judged solely on our current social values, which have been changing rapidly.
At heart, she was a radical socialist who was deeply disturbed by poverty and the plight of women who had one pregnancy after another. Her views were formed first by her father, a radical socialist and anti-Catholic, and then influenced (and misled) by Darwinism (likely influenced by a student of Thomas Huxley, namely H.G. Wells, with whom she had an extra-marital affair), Malthusian theory, and heredity studies of low IQ and criminality (perhaps Lombroso).
These led her into supporting Eugenics although she was always primarily focused on the causes of poverty and the sexual liberation of women. For example, she wrote in “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda” (1921):
Sanger met her spiritual needs with the occult, spiritism, and Rosicrucianism (the God within). She considered the greatest sin was to bring unwanted children into the world.
Sanger opposed abortion but promoted birth control and sterilization. Note that from about 1907 until 1979, more than 60,000 Americans were coercively sterilized. California lead the way with over 20,000 sterilizations of those with mental and physical disabilities and people of Latin-American descent. It’s almost needless to say that Nazi scientific research into Eugenics was heavily inspired by what was going on in California at the time.
This also painfully reminds me of one of my college professors, who seriously advocated legalizing postpartum abortion of children until the age of two years.
While some people (Seversky immediately comes to mind) glorify the triumphal march of scientific progress, we also need to accept the litany of gross scientific blunders of the past as a reminder of the certainty of our blindness to contemporary scientific fallacy.
-Q
Thanks for the explanation @5, AaronS1978. I was wondering about that.
It’s a pity that wild assertions and false accusations can so easily be mistaken for cogent thinking. I consider myself forewarned and I recognize the pointlessness of arguing with a parrot. 😉
-Q
Seversky:
When the American colonies were originally established, how many had slaves? The answer would be not a single one. It was illegal and considered immoral by the Christians who settled the land after escaping religious persecution by the Church of England. There were indentured servants, but that is a far cry from slavery.
Once slavery was legalized by a judge who twisted the law to suit his benefit and started to spread to the other colonies, it was not just Africans being sold into slavery. Convicts and orphans of European decent were sold as slaves.
Despite the belief that the United States had slavery for 400 years, it could not happen to a country that didn’t come about until the tale end of the 1700s. Unless you do some funky commoncore math, you don’t get close to 400 years and ignores the length of time at the beginning when slavery was illegal.
Slavery was and is evil, but only if there is an absolute moral compass, which you deny exists, since you deny free will. Sanger was worse than any slave owner. She believed in segregation or sterilization for all black people in the United States. She wanted to do what Darwin had written in Decent of Man and bring about the extinction of the savage races.
Sanger was a racist and anti-Semite who had the same views of Jews as the other eugenicists of her day, which included Hitler. She was also a socialist who associated with communists. You cannot be both Christian and socialist/communist, since there can be no God for socialism to work. Some may claim to be Rabbis or ministers, but claiming and believing are two different things.
Judaeo-Christian principles do not allow for slavery, any more than they allow for anti-Semitism When the root is removed and replaced with only Christian, that is when it moves away from the intent. Bastardized versions of Christianity, where you have Christians killing Christians, are far removed from the root, which remains Judaism.
The United States is the only Judaeo-Christian country in the history of the world. Protestants and Catholics lean more towards debate than murder. Jews were more welcome in the early days of the United States, than anywhere in Europe.
Seversky
How can anything be wrong, including the slaughter of the Jews, if there is no free will? How can you judge slavery that continues to exist? How can a single lynching be wrong? Without free will, not a single person has ever done anything that can be called right or wrong. You have no moral high road, since morality cannot exist. Everything is predetermined and not one person actually chooses to do anything. Choice requires free will, which cannot exist if Darwin was right as you believe.
BobRyan: The United States is the only Judaeo-Christian country in the history of the world.
Leaving out Canada, Australia and New Zealand at least.
Protestants and Catholics lean more towards debate than murder.
Except while crusading in the Holy Land and across Europe of course.
JVL, a counter offensive of 1,000 years ago before the reformation and its onward legacy of democratic transformation is irrelevant to current issues. But it is a case of a tainting red herring trifecta: red herring –> strawman, soaked in ad hominems –> set alight to cloud, poison, polarise and confuse discussion. A familiar destructive tactic too often used by advocates of evolutionary materialistic scientism. KF
Kairosfocus: a counter offensive of 1,000 years ago before the reformation and its onward legacy of democratic transformation is irrelevant to current issues.
The last crusade in the Holy Land was less than 1000 years ago, the last crusade in Europe was even more recent.
But it is a case of a tainting red herring trifecta: red herring –> strawman, soaked in ad hominems –> set alight to cloud, poison, polarise and confuse discussion. A familiar destructive tactic too often used by advocates of evolutionary materialistic scientism.
Frequent contributors to this forum have called people they disagree with clowns, liars, fools, morons, idiots, agi-prop operators, delusional and a lot of other demeaning terms. I have had my own comments and arguments dismissed as such, many times. Darwin and Atheists are blamed for the Holocaust, Eugenics, slavery, etc. And I hardly ever see you or anyone else complain that such comments are clouding, poisoning, polarising and confusing discussion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savoyard–Waldensian_wars
Note the dates, well after the reformation.
Let’s not forget the persecution of some Catholics by some Protestants as well. Or Catholics and Protestants killing each other during the last 60 years in Northern Ireland.
Anyway, my comments were initially directed at BobRyan because of his silly comments. I’ll stop now.
JVL
Canada, Australia and New Zealand are Christian, not Judaeo-Christian. Silly comments seem to be all you are capable of making, since they encompass little more than bumper sticker slogans someone else pointed you towards and have a blatant lack of understanding what others write. You assume a lot, which goes back to the old saying, but I will not allow you to make one of me.
You worship at the altar of the foolish and embrace the idea that there is no free will. You limit yourself, since you do not believe you matter. Your words have no other meaning than that of any other animal.
JVL, red herrings again, I obviously spoke of an epoch. You have been present when I laid out the civilisation level changes from c 1450 – 1650 that set up those of 1688 – 1787. That is what moved us beyond autocracy and oligarchy to a sufficiently informed, literate public shaped by gospel ethics that democratisation and putting the central duty of government as defending (with consent of governed) the due balance of rights, freedoms and duties. That is what we are in danger of destroying, with horrific consequences. KF
BobRyan: You worship at the altar of the foolish and embrace the idea that there is no free will. You limit yourself, since you do not believe you matter. Your words have no other meaning than that of any other animal.
Un huh. When do you see me make any comments on any of these issues?
BR, our heritage traces to the influences reflected in the three languages in the sign-board on the cross: Aramaic — Jerusalem, Greek — Athens, Latin — Rome. It is appropriate in that context to speak to the roots of the olive tree, that we have been grafted into. Judaeo-Christian is correct, as say the role of the decalogue that is the start of Alfred’s Book of Dooms (root of Common Law) and the Golden Rule of Moshe, Jesus and Paul testifies. KF
JVL, BTW, according to a certain Gen Dwight David Eisenhower, the last “Crusade in Europe” dates to 1944 – 45. KF
kairosfocus
When the Jewish root is cast aside, that is when problems arise. Anti-Semitism and Christianity are at odds, since Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi and there has been no shortage of false teachings in the name of Rabbi Yeshua. No matter how hard people try to remove Jesus’ Jewishness, the root remain.
BobRyan,
Nicely articulated posts! I would guess that your distinction between a “Christian” and a “Judeo-Christian” could also be described as the distinction between a cultural form of Christianity and an originalist or authentic Christianity, right?
That secular governments often try to tap into religious commitment, especially for a non-defensive war is no surprise. For example, I once toured a university exhibit on American WW2 propaganda posters that included a particularly memorable one. It showed an ominous Nazi dagger (with a swastika on its hilt for the sake of clarity) deeply stabbed into a black book titled “Holy Bible” and its incision left a bright red trail of blood across the cover that dripped down onto the table. Wow!
Certainly, the U.S. government was not at all interested in defending Christianity in Europe, but simply wanted to get more Christians to support the war and enlist.
Of course, this is not the first time this type of appeal has been made, but it shows up frequently across the pages of history for which Christianity is inevitably blamed.
-Q
JVL:
Not for merely disagreeing. But people who think that nature can produce coded information processing systems are definitely not qualified to discuss science.
Classic case of diversion. Sanger was the topic, ended with a spew over Christianity.
JVL,
as you know, I have objected to and corrected demeaning language, which does no good. However, you have tried to make an inappropriate, invidious association, which I will pause to correct.
Agit prop is in fact a well known feature of modern ideological contest; the term is originally Russian, introduced by the bolsheviks. In particular, agit prop is a known component of 4th generation wars, including insurgencies and civil wars. Recent examples include the Arab Spring, much of the course of events in the Ukraine, and more.
For cause, I have held that the US is in bleeding Kansas stage 4G civil war, with the kinetic element ramping up. To analyse that is not to insult.
As to the notion that there are actual 4GW agit prop OPERATORS — field level leadership involved in operational planning and implementation in the military sense!!! — intervening on any regular basis at UD, that is laughable. Though, I don’t doubt that operators are behind a fair part of the penumbra of attack sites and are heavily involved in activist groups such as NCSE, ACLU, SPLC, X Citizens for “Science” groups and the like.
Some of the more trollish regular/recurrent hecklers here and in the penumbra may have some training and be involved in front groups, but full bore operators they are not. The Marxists have a term for those caught up in front groups and their ideological schemes, I will refrain from using it. I simply note that the contempt in Lenin’s language was telling.
As for real 4GW strategists and backers, those are usually several degrees removed from activism. They will have operators, part of whose job is to take the fall, should anything break.
What we do regularly see and deconstruct, are the programs of talking points used to front and make the underlying ideologies and cultural/policy agendas seem plausible.
Just now ET (warts and all) has just taken apart a key argument in a line or two.
We notice, you have no substantial answer.
To get to the point of answering in a paragraph or a tweet length comment, heavy duty exchanges had to be hammered out, as has again surfaced over the Mathematics of infinity. Likewise, we see the playing out of the same patterns over the pandemic, the irresponsible dismissal of HCQ-based cocktails and the rise of a Red Guards insurgency are being hammered out.
For example in the OP here https://uncommondescent.com/control-and-anarchy/a-riot-human-shield-the-face-of-c21-4gw-culture-form-marxist-insurgency/ , we can see several overlapping patterns showing visually the links between culture form marxism, so-called critical theories and the current Red Guard and front group insurgencies playing out in the geostrategic centre of our civilisation. We need to realise that Marxism is back and has been on a significantly successful long march through the institutions. This has significantly undermined buttresses of constitutional democratic government. There is a surge, given an unexpected setback in 2016.
The intent is to bring us under a Marxist oligarchy of the ideological elites.
I believe it will ultimately fail, but we are in for an even wilder onward ride over the next 6 – 18 months. The US, likely, will never fully recover from the damage that has been done and is being done.
But, we can weather the storm and return to a saner framework.
It is going to be needlessly painful, dangerous, likely fairly bloody and unaffordably costly.
War, even 4GW, is like that, and this is a civilisational civil war with the USA as the main theatre of operations at this time.
Remember 4GW is so subtle that one often does not realise that the chaos is that of essentially military operations.
So, I suggest a careful reconsideration of the hellish matches that are being played with.
KF
How does alleged Christian hypocrisy centuries ago justify secular progressive hypocrisy today? The argument should be, if hypocrisy for them was wrong then it’s just as wrong for anyone else now. Jesus himself forewarned his followers about Christian hypocrisy (Matthew 7:15.) It’s rather telling that those defending so called secular progressivism (SJW wokeness) can’t own up to their own hypocrisy. Of course hypocrisy goes hand in glove with self-righteousness and obviously egotistical self-righteous people are never wrong, or at least they never see themselves that way.
John_a_designer, Bingo!
BobRyan @ 9
How do you define “free will”? Do you deny that you have inherited physical and psychological properties from your parents? Have you considered all the familial, social and cultural influences that came to bear on you as a child too young to be aware of them at the time but which have shaped what you are today? Was there a point at which you consciously and by an effort of will chose you current sexuality? I, like you, have the experience of exercising free will but, given that we cannot detach ourselves from our own histories, just how free is it?
As for moral judgements, who else should make them if not us? Are you saying that, if you were confronted with the abuse of a child or a rape or murder in progress, you would not have any inkling they were wrong unless some other being told you? If that is the case, then you would simply be doing what you were told and “just following orders” entails no moral credit or responsibility either.
Seversky:
You admit to having free well when you stated, ” I, like you, have the experience of exercising free will.” If you acknowledge free will and speak of moral judgements, then you must believe Darwin was wrong. Animals do not have free will and there is no morality in the animal kingdom. There are no courts set up to prosecute predators who kill other animals. There is no medical service in nature of any kind.
I believe humans are uniquely capable of being moral, since I am not a Darwinist. I believe all humans exercise free will and have inherent morality designed within. You cannot say there is free will and morality and still believe Darwin was right. The two are at odds with one another and cannot coexist. Either man is nothing more than another animal, or man is unique and something far greater than any other animal. One does not require responsibility to do anything, while the other requires the acceptance of responsibility.
How can we have an intellectually or ethically honest discussion if there is no objective standard of moral truth, honesty or truthfulness? In other words, if there is no such standard how can I trust that you are being honest? If I can’t trust that you are being honest how can we have any kind of honest discussion or debate?
Notice how our interlocutors have changed the subject. The subject was hypocrisy. Is moral hypocrisy something that is really wrong– that is, objectively wrong for everyone? Or is there a double standard? Hypocrisy is wrong for thee but not for me or we– for example, “the kind of group think in which all us secular progessives all agree.”
BobRyan,
Notice that Seversky @ 26 basically said that our compelling illusion of “free will” is not capable of initiating moral judgments, but that we’re merely following our inherited, environmental, and cultural mandates and no one is morally responsible for anything they do. These moral mandates emerged spontaneously and evolved based on the survival of the fittest” restated as “might makes right.”
Thus, his answer to your question about the slaughter of Jews in WW2 might be restated that it was wrong only because the Axis lost the war. Likewise, the Allies that held the subsequent trials and executions of the perpetrators of the genocide were also incapable of initiating moral judgments, but were also under the illusion of free will without any moral implications, either positive or negative.
So yes, it would indeed seem that he concludes that group think is all that matters to us as human robots, and by implication, it’s important for individual survival to belong to the largest group. Genocide then is merely the means for a moral form of natural selection. Murder is relevant only if he’s caught by a group whose consensus is that it was indeed murder and that murder is wrong.
Lovely. :-/
-Q
BobRyan @ 27
Our capacity for forming moral guidelines says nothing at all about whether Darwin’s theory is an accurate description of what we see in Nature. There is a difference between description and prescription. Our observations of animal behaviors in Nature does not mean that we should do the same. Specifically, if we observe that animals appear to behave amorally that does not mean that we should do the same. You cannot derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’.
You are free to believe whatever you want, just as we all are.
I have no problem recognizing the unique contribution Darwin made to biology and I see no inherent conflict between it and our moralities.
Darwin’s theory does not imply absolute determinism. That we are shaped and influenced by our past experiences cannot be denied but what is in question is the extent to which we are able to modify or override those influences.
John_a_designer @ 28
There is no need for objective moral standards – even if we could find such a thing – all we need are mutually agreed standards to which we can all voluntarily assent.
Even if there are objective standards, if you allow free will, then you can never be sure that others are abiding by those standards. It always comes down ultimately to trust.
I would say that hypocrisy is wrong but I would also say that accusing your opponents of hypocrisy just because they hold opposing views is also wrong.
Querius @ 29
No, what I argued was that those who believe that the only valid morality is that provided by someone else – their God, in the case of Christians – are surrendering their moral autonomy to that other being which could lead to good or bad consequences. If may lead them to take care of the poor and the sick but it may also lead them to seize the lands of other peoples by force, slaughter their men and take the women and children to be slaves or concubines as in the cases of the Canaanites, Midianites and Amalekites in the OT. Were the latter events right because God commanded them?
“Might makes right” is an improper restatement of “survival of the fittest” as it attempts to derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is”
@Seversky it’s difficult to take responsibility for your own behavior. Much easier to pretend you’re just doing what you’re told to do. Black and white. Imaginary objectivity.
John_a_designer: How can we have an intellectually or ethically honest discussion if there is no objective standard of moral truth, honesty or truthfulness? In other words, if there is no such standard how can I trust that you are being honest? If I can’t trust that you are being honest how can we have any kind of honest discussion or debate?
Perhaps then we should start by trying to elucidate an objective standard of moral truth. Seriously, how can we do that?
Seversky,
Wrong. The coercive “might” in a virtual or real genocide is not an “ought,” but an “is.”
Your criticism of Christians surrendering their will to their God makes absolutely no sense in context with your stated beliefs. Lacking authentic free will as you assert, leaves every group’s beliefs identical in their arbitrariness. All that would matter in your belief system is your allegiance to the group that you think is in the majority and can exert coercive “might.”
However, the obsolescence of deterministic materialism is confirmed by numerous discoveries within modern science. Observed chaos effects and quantum effects experimentally demonstrate that existence is neither material nor deterministic. For example, Vlatko Vedral is a professor of Physics at the University of Oxford who specializes in quantum theory and whose research papers are widely cited expresses the concept this way:
If you ever get around to reading James Gleick’s introductory book, Chaos: Making a New Science you’ll discover that the physical universe is NOT deterministic but chaotically unpredictable.
So, since science has moved beyond deterministic materialism, where does that leave your excuse of your presumed lack of free will?
-Q
seversky:
Says the person riding the coattails of those objective moral standards.
Seversky @ 31
There is no need for objective moral standards – even if we could find such a thing – all we need are mutually agreed standards to which we can all voluntarily assent.
How far reaching does mutually go? If there is no absolute morality, then anything can be justified, including rape and murder. It is only through absolutes can anything absolutely be wrong. How can someone do something morally wrong without free will, rather than the illusion of free will?
You have a higher standard for man than nature, yet deny any standard outside of nature can exist. Darwin had no problem with genocide, since similar wording can be found in Descent of Man. It was Darwin who wrote about the civilized races of man would bring about the extinction of the savage races of man. Hitler and the National Socialist did exactly what Darwin predicted.
If Darwin was right and there is no free will, no absolute morality, than no one can say what the National Socialists did was wrong. To say something is wrong is to imply an absolute morality inherent in only humans. Animals kill each other on a daily basis and no one calls it murder.
It is only if free will and absolute morality exist can any human be judged as doing something wrong. Darwin lived over a century ago and his prediction in Decent of Man was attempted in National Socialism and Imperial Japan. Both believed they were civilized races who had a duty to kill the savage races of man. Racial superiority was the only thing they needed to believe, which is what Darwin believed.
Over a century later, where is the evidence that Darwin was right about anything. In order for a hypothesis to become a theory, something must be witnessed and replicated, which has never happened with macro-evolution. All hypothesis and theories are based on what is known at any given time and not considered fact. If there has been no evidence of Darwin’s belief, then it is not even a valid hypothesis.
Sev,
you have been corrected any number of times on the direct link between evolutionary materialistic scientism and undermining of morality (with onward implication of nearly universal grand delusion and discredit of the mind). Provine is frank:
You can have your Darwin (on which our morals are grand delusion and we don’t have enough mental credibility in being jumped up apes to have any legitimacy in “scientific” “theories”) or you can have credible, morally governed rationality pointing to an inherently good, utterly wise moral governor as root and wellspring of reality. You cannot have both, the self-referential grand delusion and utter incoherence of evolutionary materialism sees to that.
The resulting waves of nihilism in our civilisation speak for themselves.
KF
PS: What you need to address instead . . . the roots of core agreement on reality and roots of moral government:
JVL, I just gave a start-point, one that is hardly new, but has been buried under the feeling that through evolutionary materialistic scientism we have reached the pinnacle. Ironically that view is self-referentially incoherent in many ways and so necessarily self-falsifying. Truth itself is inextricably bound up in first duties of reason that govern our entire rationality, inescapably.You literally cannot reason without implicitly relying on any number of identifiable moral truths; starting with the inescapability of duty to truth, reason and prudence etc. Moral truth then turns out to be truth regarding moral government, pointing to its roots in the wellsprings of reality. KF
PS: Epictetus roars:
Seversky at 31:
Hundreds of millions dead at the hands of atheistic socialists in the 20th century would beg to differ.
Seversky:
As an atheist, you deny the reality of free will and therefore deny that you can ‘voluntarily assent’ to anything. According militant Darwinist Jerry Coyne, (who was into cancel culture long before cancel culture was cool), you are nothing but a ‘meat robot’ with no more control over your thoughts and actions than a leaf falling to the ground has over its course to the ground.
Without free will, all hope for rational discussion is lost.
Seversky,
That sentence refutes itself. It is only because there are objective moral standards, and because we have free will, that we can be absolutely certain that, for instance, the Nazis were inherently evil and that they were NOT abiding by those objective moral standards. The fact they were evil in their actions was not arbitrary and up for debate. That Dietrich Bonhoeffer was morally righteous and Hitler was morally evil is a fact not an opinion. It will remain a fact and not an opinion no matter what time or culture we may be in. Even if the whole world says that it was OK for the Nazis to kill the Jews simply because they were Jews, the whole world would be wrong because of the fact is that it is always objectively wrong to kill for that reason.
Seversky,
First, on atheistic materialism, why is moral hypocrisy wrong? If abstract moral propositions are found to be contradictory in a person, well, as far as atheistic materialism is concerned, so much the worse for those abstract moral propositions. As Walt Whitman stated,
Secondly, at post 1, I did not say that Planned Parenthood was being hypocritical for disagreeing with me personally, I rightly pointed out that they were being blatantly hypocritical for claiming that ‘Black Lives Matter’ all the while targeting African American neighborhoods today with ‘mega’ abortion clinics.
At 32, Seversky once again brings up the Canaanites, etc..in the OT. What Seversky purposely, and repeatedly, forgets, is that God, because He is God, and because the Canaanites repeated refusal to repent of their evil deeds, was perfectly justified in bringing about their destruction. He is God after all!
Here is an excellent lecture by Peter J Williams on the logical contradictions inherent in how the new atheists try to use the OT in order to try to argue that God was a moral monster.
Apparently Seversky has left the building. 😉
Too bad, because Bornagain77’s link to this video makes a great scientific case that your mind is not the material brain. Worth watching!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQo6SWjwQIk
-Q