Fruit of the Secular part 2
Previously I began to describe what I see the real fruit of the secular to be. First it is apathetic and second it is hopeless or marked by despair. Now I would like to go on and finish with a third fruit, anarchy.
Anarchy
Anarchy, as I see it, is a complete lack of control or order. It would be the result of a society without laws and mores. We often see glimpses of this after natural disasters or in the wake of wars when governments are powerless to control the people. Death, looting and general chaos are the markers of this type of situation. You may be thinking, "well, just because a society is without religion does not mean that it is without laws or morals." This is partially correct but, as I mentioned earlier, without a religious framework, of whatever sort, there are no grounds for either laws or morals. They may be transferred from a religious worldview but they are not natural for the secular.
Let us look for a moment at the idea of laws. These are imposed on a society because certain things are seen as admirable and certain things are seen as despicable. For instance, in most societies it is illegal to steal someone's property. This is an almost universal notion and one that, if someone says it is not wrong, they will likely agree to as soon as something is stolen from them. C.S Lewis speaks of this in terms of quarrels. He says that every quarrel appeals to a baseline of right or wrong because both parties feel they are "right." Otherwise there would be no disagreement.
The objection is commonly offered that laws and notions of right and wrong are foisted upon people by the society in which they find themselves. This may be partially true but it ignores an interesting consequence. If laws and morals are unfairly pushed upon the unwilling masses then it follows that these could be changed. In the United States we live with a government system that allows for laws to be changed and amended by popular vote or opinion. This is, at once, the beauty of democracy and the danger of uneducated democracy. This means that if the popular opinion was strong enough just about anything could be made legal whether or not it was the healthy or right thing to do. That is, if opinion was strong enough that murder was a moral action then it could be made so. Unfortunately, we have seen this take place in a number of other societies and in a sense our own.
Let me toss this out there for our thinking. If popular opinion said that 2 +2 = 5 then we could pass a law that says it is. Sadly, this does nothing to change the reality that 4 is the correct answer. Likewise, if popular opinion said that evolution was the means by which the universe and the species came to be they could pass laws that required that it be taught in schools, despite evidence to the contrary...oh wait...they already have. Popular opinion and societal norms are no way to determine whether or not something is actually admirable or despicable. It is merely a means of showing how far away or near to a society is to what is right. Said another way, popular opinion is only the thermometer which measures the moral climate of a people. We can see this plainly in our political system. When a person is elected to an office, such as the president, there are those who like the election and those who dislike the election. Who is right? In the secular worldview, there should be no discontent with the choice of the people because it is exactly what they subscribe to, popular opinion running society. The death nail is, even those with a secular worldview believe that they have the "right" one and that their notions of morals, laws and values are correct. How can they say this? Sadly, I don't have an answer that makes any sense.
Finally, in the secular framework there would be no basis for either creating or obeying laws. If something can be true for you and not true for me then that would apply to laws as well. How can one person tell another that it is not right to steal, murder, rape or anything else without an agreed upon standard that is true no matter the situation? "Yes officer, 85 miles an hour in this school zone may be too fast for some people but not me." Who is to say otherwise?
Conclusions
Sadly, the secular worldview does not pass the crucial test of functionality. If the Wright brothers had built a heavier-than-air craft that did not fly no one would have offered them a patent or a contract to build them. This is what has happened in our culture today. Secularists have applied for a patent on a worldview that simply doesn't work, it doesn't fly so to speak. In fact, to make their worldview pass scrutiny they must borrow from religious worldviews and extravagant conjecture. They have produced a "bigger and better" system of beliefs that must transfer religious morals and values to itself and yet claim it does so without the aide of God.
If the fruit of a tree is bad then there must be something wrong with the tree. Clearly, the fruit of the secular is poisonous but we have yet to see it for what it really is because only the deranged and pathological can carry it to it's logical outworkings. In an effort to evict God from the picture these individuals have only shoved God behind a curtain and the image that displays on the screen is their own. It is equivalent to someone stealing my car, putting a new tag and new bumper stickers on it and trying to sell it back to me as if they never stole it in the first place. It isn't going to work.
Anarchy
Anarchy, as I see it, is a complete lack of control or order. It would be the result of a society without laws and mores. We often see glimpses of this after natural disasters or in the wake of wars when governments are powerless to control the people. Death, looting and general chaos are the markers of this type of situation. You may be thinking, "well, just because a society is without religion does not mean that it is without laws or morals." This is partially correct but, as I mentioned earlier, without a religious framework, of whatever sort, there are no grounds for either laws or morals. They may be transferred from a religious worldview but they are not natural for the secular.
Let us look for a moment at the idea of laws. These are imposed on a society because certain things are seen as admirable and certain things are seen as despicable. For instance, in most societies it is illegal to steal someone's property. This is an almost universal notion and one that, if someone says it is not wrong, they will likely agree to as soon as something is stolen from them. C.S Lewis speaks of this in terms of quarrels. He says that every quarrel appeals to a baseline of right or wrong because both parties feel they are "right." Otherwise there would be no disagreement.
The objection is commonly offered that laws and notions of right and wrong are foisted upon people by the society in which they find themselves. This may be partially true but it ignores an interesting consequence. If laws and morals are unfairly pushed upon the unwilling masses then it follows that these could be changed. In the United States we live with a government system that allows for laws to be changed and amended by popular vote or opinion. This is, at once, the beauty of democracy and the danger of uneducated democracy. This means that if the popular opinion was strong enough just about anything could be made legal whether or not it was the healthy or right thing to do. That is, if opinion was strong enough that murder was a moral action then it could be made so. Unfortunately, we have seen this take place in a number of other societies and in a sense our own.
Let me toss this out there for our thinking. If popular opinion said that 2 +2 = 5 then we could pass a law that says it is. Sadly, this does nothing to change the reality that 4 is the correct answer. Likewise, if popular opinion said that evolution was the means by which the universe and the species came to be they could pass laws that required that it be taught in schools, despite evidence to the contrary...oh wait...they already have. Popular opinion and societal norms are no way to determine whether or not something is actually admirable or despicable. It is merely a means of showing how far away or near to a society is to what is right. Said another way, popular opinion is only the thermometer which measures the moral climate of a people. We can see this plainly in our political system. When a person is elected to an office, such as the president, there are those who like the election and those who dislike the election. Who is right? In the secular worldview, there should be no discontent with the choice of the people because it is exactly what they subscribe to, popular opinion running society. The death nail is, even those with a secular worldview believe that they have the "right" one and that their notions of morals, laws and values are correct. How can they say this? Sadly, I don't have an answer that makes any sense.
Finally, in the secular framework there would be no basis for either creating or obeying laws. If something can be true for you and not true for me then that would apply to laws as well. How can one person tell another that it is not right to steal, murder, rape or anything else without an agreed upon standard that is true no matter the situation? "Yes officer, 85 miles an hour in this school zone may be too fast for some people but not me." Who is to say otherwise?
Conclusions
Sadly, the secular worldview does not pass the crucial test of functionality. If the Wright brothers had built a heavier-than-air craft that did not fly no one would have offered them a patent or a contract to build them. This is what has happened in our culture today. Secularists have applied for a patent on a worldview that simply doesn't work, it doesn't fly so to speak. In fact, to make their worldview pass scrutiny they must borrow from religious worldviews and extravagant conjecture. They have produced a "bigger and better" system of beliefs that must transfer religious morals and values to itself and yet claim it does so without the aide of God.
If the fruit of a tree is bad then there must be something wrong with the tree. Clearly, the fruit of the secular is poisonous but we have yet to see it for what it really is because only the deranged and pathological can carry it to it's logical outworkings. In an effort to evict God from the picture these individuals have only shoved God behind a curtain and the image that displays on the screen is their own. It is equivalent to someone stealing my car, putting a new tag and new bumper stickers on it and trying to sell it back to me as if they never stole it in the first place. It isn't going to work.
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