Yes, the Charlie Kirk assassination (that is what it was) has sparked plenty of hot takes on various matters. But let’s get more fundamental.
In the past 75 years or so our society has bought into evolution without any consideration for the impact it would have on people’s minds. Why does this matter? Because no matter how you marinate in the sauce of evolution, you end up with humans being no more than sophisticated slime. Our position at the top of the food chain is, if evolution is swallowed whole, simply a matter of random forces wafting around in the universe. In other words, there would be no basis for suggesting humans have any sort of special status – we’re just one more cog in the cold, impersonal, and random reality of a non-thinking universe. It’s been said that it’s cold in space. Well, the sauce of evolution is equally cold.
The implications here are profound. If you learn from an early age that your existence is merely a feature of the universe and has no other inherent meaning or value (which meaning or value a non-thinking universe cannot provide), then you may reasonably conclude that being human is no more and no less meaningful than being a paramecium. Sure, you function differently and you have capacities that go beyond paramecium-ism, but in the end you cannot reasonably or rationally conclude that being human means something about your place in the cosmos that truly and ultimately differentiates you from the paramecium. Both of you will exist for some period of time, then die. Your species may or may not continue on for any particular or specified period of time.
Being bombarded with this message over and over and over for decades can only lead to de-humanization. If humans have no special place on earth, let alone in the cosmos, then one can quickly determine there is a moral equivalency between animals and humans or even paramecium. One need not come to this conclusion, but it is a perfectly acceptable conclusion in the evolutionary realm. Human abilities to organize, to invent, to think, to love, to hate, to laugh are all merely outgrowths of some inevitable movement that may, or may not, lead anywhere. Evolution has no specific end point in mind, since evolution is not a thinking entity. Perhaps evolution has already reached its zenith and the only place to go now is backwards? Why not? Nothing at all, other than a desire to believe otherwise, compels the conclusion that human beings MUST move into some “higher” stage of existence. Rather, there is simply movement. One cannot reasonably claim it is toward or away from any fixed point.
So we have “trans” humanism, “trans” genderism, and next is presumably “trans” speciesism (it’s already here in a primitive form). Why? Because people don’t actually believe there is anything special about being human. So changing into something else has no moral or any other implications whatsoever.
In fact, the inevitable grinding down of what it means to be human has made us more callous about human life, not more concerned Since evolution can provide no special meaning, value, or purpose to human life, then why should we concern ourselves with placing any such moral boundaries on the changing or taking of human life? Herein lies the bizarre and ironic world in which so many people live today.
People get very angry when Christians claim that human beings are made in the image of God and that this means human beings have definitive traits that, even if only dimly, nonetheless mirror the nature and being of their creator God. For instance, the Bible proclaims that the outside time for human life will be 120 years. Yet transhumanists believe they can live forever. The Bible says there are two sexes: male and female. Yet transgenders believe they can morph into the other sex (or any of some other arbitrary number of so-called sexes) at will. The Bible tells humans to take dominion over the earth, distinguishing them from animals, yet transspecies-ists will claim that humans can be some other species.
Who in these situations genuinely sees human beings as special and who sees them as nothing more than a “construct?” Which view establishes humanity as having real meaning and which treats humanity as a fungible good, to be rearranged like mere living room furniture?
Moreover, the American love affair with abortion is part of the irony. While claiming to uphold humanity, abortion strikes down the least able to defend themselves, children in the womb. I know all the arguments pro-abortionists make about blobs of cells, and fetus means XYZ and life doesn’t begin at conception and so forth and so on. But who really cares more about fellow human beings - the person who callously calls a living being a blob of cells in order to singe their conscience to allow for killing that living being, or the person who says that’s a human being who deserves to be protected?
Now to the cold hearted response of some to the death of Charlie Kirk – how is it “more human” and being a better human to conclude that because some other person said something you don’t want to hear it’s fine for them to be put to death? The irony is, of course, the amount of self-righteousness indicated in this view is appallingly grotesque. I’m a good person because I don’t say or like the “hateful” things Charlie Kirk said (or at least I don’t say or like the “hateful” things I was told he said or I assumed he said or I believe he said whether I actually know what he said or how he said it). In this case “hateful” tends to mean something like “stuff with which I disagree” because it somehow, possibly hurts someone’s feelings (not necessarily mine). Or, worse, “hateful” means, I’m so morally pure that I must take offense at words regardless of whether those to whom the words were directed actually take offense or not. More importantly, I’m so morally pure I am in a position to judge who should live and who should die by saying such words.
Yet, from where does such self-righteousness arise? It can’t be an evolutionary response, since morals don’t really factor into evolution. Morals are something we humans have that other animals don’t have – nature is red in tooth and claw as Alfred, Lord Tennyson noted. Evolution isn’t an entity seeking to guide us on any particular path, right? It can’t be or it crosses the line and becomes god-like and we can’t have that!
One can argue that it’s a societal determination. Fine, but doesn’t that mean I have the right to suggest society go another way, take another path? If society can be swayed in my direction, does that now make my morals justified and yours not? Society only very recently concluded gay marriage was a meaningful concept. What if I am able to convince society that gay marriage was a very bad idea? Do you get to kill me now?
All said, the Charlie Kirk situation has taught us there are very clear lines. Those on the side of evolution believe human life matters only if they say so. Those on the side of the Bible say all human lives matter because each one is an image bearer of God. Charlie knew this and preached it. Odd he was killed for saying something so profoundly kind.
No comments:
Post a Comment