Trust God, Not Man by Charley Reese

Christians and other religious people have a perfect right to advocate their moral positions in the public arena. The idea that one can have a purely secular morality disconnected from religious beliefs is nonsense.

Not true. I am not religious, but I deeply oppose aggression, torture, hypocrisy, and obfuscation. The religious George Bush apparently endorses these behaviors. Both secular morality and religous morality (as opposed to simply professed morality) haver their foundations in personal values. It is possible that this arises from one's treatment and upbringing during one's formative years.

All morality has its origins in religion of some kind, and laws are reflections of morality. There is no purely practical reason why it is wrong to steal and to kill, yet virtually all societies recognize that those activities are wrong. Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and other religions condemn them, and religions preceded the modern state.

This is an unproven assumption. That every societies tend to discourage these behaviors within their groups is necessary for the survival of the society. In other words, certain behaviors are naturally socially-selected.

Nazism and communism should stand as warnings to those who think you can build a rational society devoid of religious beliefs. Millions of people were murdered under those systems, and why was that? Because without religion, one can make a perfectly logical and reasoned argument for murder. Why should society spend the money to maintain the lives of the hopelessly insane or retarded? Why shouldn't the government round up and execute people it considers a threat? Does not the greater good trump the fate of individuals?

Have secular regimes really killed more individuals than religious regimes? This is quite dubious considering the crusades, inquistions, and witch hunts.

If indeed there is no God, then human life is just an accidental phenomenon and no more valuable than that of a mosquito. As we saw in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, societies without God create rivers of blood. In a crazy way, humans will always be under a god – if not the God of the universe, then the state will become God. Personally, I prefer the one in the sky to the one in the uniform.

All life is naturally valuable to those who possess it. The lives of others are valuable to the extent that we have naturally-occurring and socially-encouraged empathy.

Western civilization was built on the foundation of Christianity. That's a fact, not an opinion. A lot of sinning notwithstanding, the laws and institutions of the West were derived from Christianity. It is no accident or whim that Europe was long known as Christendom. It is no accident that George Washington said a man who was an enemy of religion was also an enemy of the republic.

The founders were greatly influenced by the enlightenment, which was a completely independent influence from religion. This country has always had a strong secular tradition from Benjamin Franklin to Mark Twain.

Unfortunately, the West is losing its Christian moorings. Europe today is far more secular than the United States. The Europeans could not even bring themselves to acknowledge Christianity in their new constitution.

What Christian mooring have we had? Where is religion mentioned in our constitution other than to limit its influence?

In the United States, the push is on to lock Christianity up in its church buildings. Keep it out of politics. Keep it out of the public arena. Well, this militant secularism is one way to commit national suicide. Washington's comment was connected to the fact that it was impossible for a free republic to exist with immoral people. Cut people loose from the moral moorings of religion, and the state will have no choice but to step in and control them. Remember, it's always a choice between the God in heaven or the God who commands the army and the police.

Define heaven. Define God.

One of the favorite canards of the secular folks is to blame wars on religion, but the truth is that the all-time champion murderers have always been atheists. Nobody in human history murdered more people than Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot. The 20th century was the bloodiest in human history, and not one of its wars was about religion.

The fact that communism, which advocated violent revolution and happened to be atheistic, was widespread in this century casts an unjustified pall over atheism; however, it seems likely that the advocacy of violent revolution is a more likely reason for violence than atheism.

One piece of sophistry employed by the secularists is the claim that "you have no right to impose your morality on other people." That's bull. Every law in every law book in the land is an imposition of morality on other people. The only question is whose morality is going to be imposed. What the secularists are really up to is imposing their morality on Christians and other people of faith.

You just contradicted your claim that atheists can have no morality because all morality comes from religion. How do you impose your morality if you have none?

I really believe the future of America depends on whether we experience a revival of the spirit. If we don't, if the secular trend continues, then politics won't save us. In fact, politics devoid of God will doom us.

Liberals hate it when I say this, but the Third Reich was secular liberalism carried to its logical conclusion. That's plain enough if you study the Third Reich and compare it with the positions advocated by today's secular liberals. It is always a fatal error to put one's trust in man instead of in God.

So what? I have seen the gamut of secular beliefs: from liberalism to libertarianism to conservatism. It seems as though a lack of belief in a divine creator is compatible with the gamut of political thought.