Secularism’s Problem With Truth and Terrorism

If someone has good moral values, and is a good person, but doesn’t believe in God, Heaven or Hell, what’s the big deal? At least they aren’t trying to kill anyone.

Well, why would their refraining from killing people be a good thing – just because the Bible tells us so?

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, secularism is “the belief that religion should not play a role in government, education, or other public parts of society.”

Religion is defined by Merriam Webster as “an interest, a belief, or an activity that is very important to a person or group.”

How can religion, a collection of firmly held beliefs, be prohibited from education, government, or anywhere else? Answer: It’s only Christianity that is removed, replaced by secularism, masquerading as non-religion. That’s how we arrive at personal truths and relative morality.

Secularism is simply a different religion, not a lack of one. Laws, designed to protect the innocent, legislate exactly where true morality, or man’s adherence to it, fails – true morality being the absolute definition of right and wrong. Secularism argues that everyone has their own morality, meaning their own religion.

In our schools, instead of teaching creation and the Creator, we now teach evolution and survival of the fittest – but not both. And although “fairness” is a popular subject these days, schools do not cover the topic of moral law, because if there exists a universal moral law, in which some specific act might be evil under any circumstance, then there must be a universal law-giver, the one whose existence our secular culture is intent on denying.

In removing God from the public square, the secularists have encouraged false teachings, numbed generations against seeking the truth, and promoted self-love, worship of the individual. America’s saving grace is the biblical values ingrained in our society. We have traditionally been the most generous of nations, according to our founding religion. The Ten Commandments, on which our legal system is based, for instance, tells us not to steal or murder. Christ’s message of freedom for the captives engendered our anti-slavery position.

This societal understanding of right and wrong is called moral capital, something American culture has inherited and is squandering now. Americans differentiate good from evil mainly because of our religious heritage. We’ve been steeped in it. A “good person” secularist cannot explain how he knows he is being good. He lacks the necessary component of an arbitrary judge. For him, being good is just a feeling, but it’s based on the Judeo-Christian culture.

In contrast, take a nation like Saudi Arabia, for example. Saudi Arabia imposes the death sentence for assumed atheism and long hair. That implementation of Sharia Law feels good to them, because that is their culture. The American secularist must bend over backwards to justify that kind of punishment. The farthest they can sanely go is “an eye for an eye,” (which is biblical). That kind of barbarism would never happen here, the secularist argues, because we have laws (which he conveniently ignores are all based on biblical principles). This, of course, is exactly what the good people of Germany believed, until the Nazis changed the laws, using their secular attitudes of what was right for them, the law-givers who had ascended to power. That was their truth, however, not ours, right?

As an aside, a move toward the “secular” is perceived as a good thing in countries such as Saudi Arabia because of the existing implementation of Sharia, or the Islamic law. Those accused of being secularists in countries that impose Sharia law – whether atheists or Christians, so long as they oppose a role for Islam in their government – are seen as “apostates” and their murder is seen as a state duty. In contrast, American law is, in a sense, the antithesis of Sharia, and therefore suffers from any kind of secularization.

Take the example of Kate Steinle, in San Fransisco. The irreligious culture of that town allowed for a seven-time convicted felon to roam the streets, and he shot her dead. What’s worse, the city refuses to learn from its mistakes, to change its “feel-good” policy, which bars deputies from notifying federal immigration officials that felons illegally present in the US have been released from local custody. San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos said, “There’s just a series of coincidences that happened that people add up to saying that there was a causal relationship between our sanctuary city policies and Kate Steinle’s death and nothing is further from the truth.”

Secularists might argue that one cannot force someone to believe. But one can be bullied, cajoled, or tempted into a belief. See the ridicule and derision for Ben Carson when he discussed his distrust of the Big Bang and evolution. The secular religion is gaining ground.

Examine the case of the little French boy who asked his dad whether the flowers and candles of remembrance for the victims of the Paris attack were protection against the guns of the terrorists. “Yes,” the dad lied. The toddler wasn’t buying it. Even he understands that flowers and candles don’t offer protection from evil men with guns. But a secularist cannot argue for moral superiority because they lack the universal standard of Judeo-Christian morality, and so they are left with weak attempts to reconstruct an acceptable worldview that accommodates evil as others’ truth and redefines their own, as flowers are a weapon against evil. Secularism is truthiness.

And here is the challenge for the secularist: accepting the theory of evolution and survival of the fittest as a replacement for the Judeo-Christian God advances the understanding that the terrorists are only doing what comes naturally. If “survival of the fittest” is truth, then what could possibly be wrong with Muslim refugees throwing twelve Christian refugees off the boat, appallingly killing them by drowning in the Mediterranean? By whose standard is life valuable, aside from the Judeo-Christian God? Every other standard is of this world, and therefore open to interpretation and modification.

Secularism lacks the moral standing on which to claim outrage and disgust at the heartless, sickening terrorist attacks in Paris, Egypt, Mali, and elsewhere. Those were just survival of the fittest, after all.

Sam Sorbo is the host of a current affairs and politics radio show. Listen to The Sam Sorbo Show Weekdays 9 AM to Noon here. Follow Sam on Facebook here.