"I wouldn't be in such a hurry to see them go, if I were you. With them goes the last semblance of law and order." -- Rhett Bulter talking about the Confederate Troops to Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind"
The Pope’s trip to the U.S. serves to remind us of the most fundamental of questions: Is there a God? If not, the Pope speaks for himself.
But if there is a God, what sort of God? A God content to merely create/set the physical universe in motion? A God each of us can know by searching within ourselves? The God of Moses, the lawgiver, who ordains right and wrong? A God who has incarnated and died to expiate man’s sins? A God who loves and nurtures each of us as his children?
But what if there is no God? Does each of us then become a god unto ourselves? Can there be any objective right or wrong? Any afterlife? Any reward for good; any punishment for evil. Or are good and evil merely subjective? And if subjective, whose view prevails? In a world where all men are equal, does not every man have the right to determine his own right and wrong?
If there is no God, what is the source of morality? If there is no God, the Pope can’t be God’s agent. Without a God, the Pope is just another man. In the absence of God, does legality (and illegality) replace morality (and immorality)?
Many Holocaust survivors and other skeptics ask, “How can a just and loving God have permitted Auschwitz? What is presently taking place in the Middle East? How can God allow evil to destroy good? A great many people conclude “God is dead.”
“The horror of Auschwitz is a stark challenge to
many of the more conventional ideas of God. The remote god of
philosophers, lost in a transcendent apatheia, become intolerable. Many
Jews can no longer subscribe to the biblical idea of God who manifest
himself in history, who they say ... died in Auschwitz. The idea of a
personal God ... is fraught with difficulty. If this God is omnipotent,
he could have prevented the Holocaust. If he was unable to stop it, he
was impotent and useless. If he could have stopped it and chose not to,
he is a monster.”
The logical consequence of “the death of God” manifests itself in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. For Alinsky, the notion of personal morality and moral notions of right and wrong are irrelevant to the good of mankind. Only the good of society matters.
His “Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”
As to the “ends and the means”, Alinsky writes,
“Life and how you live it is the story of means and ends. The ‘end’ is what you want, and the ‘means’ is how you get it. ... The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work.”
As long as the “means” chosen will work, Alinsky has no moral constraints.
“One does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one’s individual conscience and the good of mankind. The choice must always be for the latter. Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual’s personal salvation.”
In Alinsky’s Utopia, there is no objective truth.
“An organizer ... does not have a fixed truth -- truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing. ... We live in a world where ‘good’ is a value dependent on whether we want it. ... The Haves want to keep; the Have-Nots want to get.”
Alinsky’s Utopia scares the hell out of me. It’s a world in which I have no wish to live. It is a world of plunder and extermination.
Hitler and Stalin both believed they were working for the betterment of their people. They were men of action, untroubled by notions of personal morality.
Hitler exterminated 6 million Jews, as well as his political opponents, the mentally deficient, Poles, Slavs, gypsies -- all for the betterment of the Aryan Race and to provide “living space” for the German people.
Stalin used murder, assassination, psychological terror, beatings, threats, torture, forced confessions and secret tribunals to eliminate all opposition to his rule, including from within the Communist Party itself. The Red Army was purged, along with the “rich peasants” who opposed “collectivization,” and the “intelligentsia.” According to the declassified Soviet archives, during 1937 and 1938, the Secret Police detained 1,548,366 persons, of whom 681,692 were shot. During that two-year period, between 950,000 and 1.2 million were either shot, or died in the gulags.
Like Alinsky and Hitler, employed whatever means worked to eliminate all opposition.
So, if God is dead, there can be no objective good, no objective evil.
Morality becomes subjective. We are all gods, and, as Rhett Butler warned, “might becomes right.”
The state, possessed of overwhelming power, eventually enslaves and destroys or the individual.
I can’t prove God exists; but I dread a world without him and without Christian teachings made in his name.
The Pope’s trip to the U.S. serves to remind us of the most fundamental of questions: Is there a God? If not, the Pope speaks for himself.
But if there is a God, what sort of God? A God content to merely create/set the physical universe in motion? A God each of us can know by searching within ourselves? The God of Moses, the lawgiver, who ordains right and wrong? A God who has incarnated and died to expiate man’s sins? A God who loves and nurtures each of us as his children?
But what if there is no God? Does each of us then become a god unto ourselves? Can there be any objective right or wrong? Any afterlife? Any reward for good; any punishment for evil. Or are good and evil merely subjective? And if subjective, whose view prevails? In a world where all men are equal, does not every man have the right to determine his own right and wrong?
If there is no God, what is the source of morality? If there is no God, the Pope can’t be God’s agent. Without a God, the Pope is just another man. In the absence of God, does legality (and illegality) replace morality (and immorality)?
Many Holocaust survivors and other skeptics ask, “How can a just and loving God have permitted Auschwitz? What is presently taking place in the Middle East? How can God allow evil to destroy good? A great many people conclude “God is dead.”
The logical consequence of “the death of God” manifests itself in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. For Alinsky, the notion of personal morality and moral notions of right and wrong are irrelevant to the good of mankind. Only the good of society matters.
His “Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”
As to the “ends and the means”, Alinsky writes,
“Life and how you live it is the story of means and ends. The ‘end’ is what you want, and the ‘means’ is how you get it. ... The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work.”
As long as the “means” chosen will work, Alinsky has no moral constraints.
“One does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one’s individual conscience and the good of mankind. The choice must always be for the latter. Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual’s personal salvation.”
In Alinsky’s Utopia, there is no objective truth.
“An organizer ... does not have a fixed truth -- truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing. ... We live in a world where ‘good’ is a value dependent on whether we want it. ... The Haves want to keep; the Have-Nots want to get.”
Alinsky’s Utopia scares the hell out of me. It’s a world in which I have no wish to live. It is a world of plunder and extermination.
Hitler and Stalin both believed they were working for the betterment of their people. They were men of action, untroubled by notions of personal morality.
Hitler exterminated 6 million Jews, as well as his political opponents, the mentally deficient, Poles, Slavs, gypsies -- all for the betterment of the Aryan Race and to provide “living space” for the German people.
Stalin used murder, assassination, psychological terror, beatings, threats, torture, forced confessions and secret tribunals to eliminate all opposition to his rule, including from within the Communist Party itself. The Red Army was purged, along with the “rich peasants” who opposed “collectivization,” and the “intelligentsia.” According to the declassified Soviet archives, during 1937 and 1938, the Secret Police detained 1,548,366 persons, of whom 681,692 were shot. During that two-year period, between 950,000 and 1.2 million were either shot, or died in the gulags.
Like Alinsky and Hitler, employed whatever means worked to eliminate all opposition.
So, if God is dead, there can be no objective good, no objective evil.
Morality becomes subjective. We are all gods, and, as Rhett Butler warned, “might becomes right.”
The state, possessed of overwhelming power, eventually enslaves and destroys or the individual.
I can’t prove God exists; but I dread a world without him and without Christian teachings made in his name.
Posted: Tuesday, October 6, 2015 11:00 pm, QCOnline
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