"Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning."
C.S. Lewis
"The fingers of your thoughts are molding your face ceaselessly."
Charles Reznikoff
"Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere."
G.K. Chesterton
"Humility enforces where neither virtue nor strength can prevail, nor reason."
Francis Quarles
"Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil."
C.S. Lewis
Resistance Thinking Society
'Society' is a term used to describe a grouping of individuals and outlines the structures employed to ensure that the individuals within a society relate to each other in an appropriate fashion. Different societies may have distinctive cultural behaviours and different institutions. In this society section you will find news, articles and reviews that relate to Australian society, or more specifically, individuals who live in Australia.
Topics in this section will cover: science and technology - stem cell research, IVF, cloning, intelligent design, evolution etc.; politics - ideologies (communism, anarchism, totalitarianism, capitalism etc.), state and federal politics, the free market, the United Nations etc.; sociology - globalisation, prisons, welfare, government; environment - global warming, alternative energy etc.; and moral issues - poverty, homosexuality, euthanasia, abortion etc.
The role of the Christian within society is to stand for truth, for justice and most importantly, to represent God's agenda on the earth. As the Resistance Thinking journey continues, our aim is to stimulate engaging dialogue exploring the complexities of how followers of Jesus should engage with society in our day and age.
The dust has settled upon a nation now destitute. Britain has been rocked by excessive riots that has left experts scrambling for reasons. The UK Centre For Social Justice claims that it is the break down of marriage that has caused the rioting. Usually I am disinclined to agree with any group promoting social justice as ultimate importance however this report may be on to something. As Bill Muehlenberg says:
“When we play fast and loose with fathers and marriage we simply invite the sort of barbarism witnessed in London to become mainstream. We had better wise up before it is too late.”
“When fathers have little ongoing connection to or oversight over their children, the protective structures of family are diminished. When nihilism replaces a common morality broadly based on religious values, responsibility to the wider community is lost. When people at the margins of society are relieved of personal responsibility to work and contribute to the community, and are left to live aimless, dependent lives, the type of anarchy we have witnessed in Britain is never far away.”
Britain has divorced itself from God and laid waste to His commandments. It has created its own morals and lives in an age of self obsession. There are many who legitimately believe that it is better to keep God out of a countries affairs (as if that was what the concept of Church and state was designed for). One only has to turn to Isaiah 1 to see God's message to a nation that had turned its back on Him:
“Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged.
Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and raw wounds; they are not pressed out or bound up or softened with oil.
Your country lies desolate; your cities are burned with fire; in your very presence foreigners devour your land; it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners.”
Isaiah 1:4-7
It it time for us to stop standing dumbly while Satan uses our fellow men as pawns. To Satan man is expendable but to God man is worth dying for. As the saved we need to be interceding for the lost. We need to be prayer warriors for a hurting nation and a broken world.
Of late I have been borrowing a number of weekly movies from the local Blockbuster. Usually I do some research on RottenTomatoes and other websites which review movies so I can borrow quality movies. Two movies that were well recommended and I borrowed this week touched on the theme of nihilism.
Match Point is written and directed by Woody Allen. It is not a hidden fact that Allen is a staunch atheist who doesn't pull any punches when it comes to religion. However, Woody has the ability to illustrate great character struggles and depth in his movies as well as a good dose of cheeky humour. In Match Point we are presented with Chris Wilton (performed by a very cynical Jonathan Rhys Meyers) a guy who strikes it lucky with the right family and so he soars to London's high society.
As Woody Allen is prone to do he keeps throwing spanners in the works. Because Chris Wilton is having an affair with his brother-in-laws ex-fiancé Nola (a blonde Scarlett Johansson). So the chief struggle of this movie is Chris's desire for the woman he claims to love and the family and fortune that he has married into. Chris's adultery is hardly honourable, and it is not portrayed as ethical in this movie, yet somehow Allen keeps us riveted on the moral corruption of Chris Wilton.
Match Point is about a man with a mask. Despite extreme pressure Chris keeps both sides of his life at bay behind the mask. He wants what he can't have and he loves what he is asked to leave behind. This places him on the edge of a knife, or, as expressed in the movie, a tennis ball teetering on the cord strings of a net. And herein lays Allen's message. At the start of the movie Chris Wilton commentates, "The man who said 'I'd rather be lucky than good' saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control".
Match Point is a portrayal of a world without God. A world where we are just here "by blind chance. No purpose. No design". We are presented with a bleak world where life, love and happiness play no significance because these things are at best subjective and trivial. At the end of the movie Chris reflects upon his sins and wishes he would be punished for his actions, because then "there would be some small sign of justice - some small measure of hope for the possibility of meaning".
This is a similar theme in the 2007 epic No Country For Old Men. This is an undeniably good film by the brilliant Coen brothers. Their character depth and emotional themes is as good as any director filming in Hollywood at this time. In No Country For Old Men we again have a protagonist who could also equally be the film's antagonist. Anton Chigurh (Academy-award winning Javier Bardem for this performance) is a hitman in 80s Texas and is trying to track a large amount of money which has fallen into Llewelyn Moss's (Josh Brolin) possession.
In one of the most chilling depictions in recent Hollywood productions Anton displays an unrelenting, unwavering desire to complete his goal. There have been many movies about assassins over the years but this is probably the best. Chigurh, at times, leaves someone's fate up to chance and will even interact with victims in conversation before he dispatches them. He does it ruthlessly and yet does not display any love for his job. Here is a scene from the movie:
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Anton Chigurh epitomises nihilistic thinking. It is chance that dictates our fate and not God, or so we are told. Of course this brings up the tender topic of Calvinism which I do not wish to discuss in this article. I merely want to show two examples of the despair and pessimism of existential nihilism. That is, life exists without purpose, we are insignificant and our actions do not have any bearing in the grand scheme of things. In philosophical terms this may not be entirely accurate, but it is enough to for us to understand nihilism in a simple form.
Nihilism is a perception which exists widely among western nations because it inexorably springs and stems from atheism. It is where atheism leads in a philosophical sense. This is unfortunate because, as Christians, we know there is purpose and meaning; hope and joy in this life. It is not just wishful thinking to believe our lives are given purpose through Jesus' sacrifice. I will, perhaps, leave the last words up to C. S. Lewis as he describes his conversion:
"But what, in conclusion, of Joy? for that, after all, is what the story has mainly been about....
I now know that the experience, considered as a state of my own mind, had never had the kind of importance I once gave it. It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer."
(Robert Spencer,Regnery, 2007) Reviewed by Bill Muehlenberg, August 2007 There are three worrying trends which make this book necessary. The first is the hatchet job on the term fundamentalism, which had quite a good meaning a century ago, but today has become a pejorative term, applied equally to any religious group that takes its faith seriously. Thus we hear of Islamic fundamentalists and Christian fundamentalists in the same breath, even though there is a world of difference between the two.
The second is the interfaith movement, which is really the old ecumenical movement in new garb, which seeks to downplay theological differences and bring all religions together. Usually the first casualty of such an endeavour is the exclusive truth claims of Christianity.
The third is the simultaneous attack on Biblical Christianity, with a corresponding push to legitimise Islam. It seems that Western secularists and liberals are much more intent on bagging Christianity than they are to take on Islamic jihadists. All three of these trends have resulted in clouded thinking about religion in general and the differences between Christianity and Islam in particular. Thus the need for such a book as this.
Robert Spencer is a keen observer of Islam, and has been quite prolific, turning out a number of excellent books warning us about the danger which militant Islam poses. As he and others are want to point out, while there may be many moderate and peaceful Muslims, the real question is, what about Islam itself? Is it indeed a religion of peace, or is it in fact a religion fully compatible with, and the theological ground for, Islamist violence? And how does Islam compare with Christianity on a number of key points, such as the nature of democracy, the treatment of women, and freedom of conscience?
In all these areas, Spencer demonstrates that there is a very wide gulf indeed between the two world religions. Consider just one important difference: the broader issues of politics, democracy and freedom. Leftist, secular critics argue that both radical Islam and conservative Christianity seek to impose a theocracy on the free West. They are half right. The Islamists are absolutely dedicated to this aim. The imposition of sharia law over the entire globe is clearly at the forefront of the Islamist agenda. Indeed, leading Muslims are quite unguarded about their intentions here. Spencer cites many of these leaders, and their clear aims to wage holy war against all unbelievers, until a universal Islamic caliphate is established on planet earth.
In contrast, where are the Christians calling for an end to democracy and the establishment of a theocracy? In response, the critics usually point to the Christian Reconstructionists. But what about them? They are for the most part few in number, and hardly mainstream in the Christian community. They are mainly confined to the United States, and there are plenty of leading Christian groups which have distanced themselves from the Reconstructionists. And there certainly is no global movement to replace secular law with Biblical law.
By contrast, Islamist jihad is an international movement, with activist elements working to achieve their aims around the globe. Even if some Christians are arguing for a Christian America, they state that this is to be a voluntary outcome, achieved by Christian evangelisation and Christian persuasion. This is hardly at odds with the Constitution, as Spencer reminds us. And for all the scare-mongering about the Christian Reconstruction movement, many associated with this group are really on about such harmless agendas as getting Christians to vote, and raise their voices in the public arena.
This is clearly not an anti-democratic crusade. And it was really Christianity that gave the modern world the notion of the separation of church and state. This goes straight back to the words of Jesus, when he said that we should render unto Caesar his due, and render to God his due. There has been a long Christian tradition of the concept of the two swords: the state and the church. Each is ordained by God, and each has its own sphere of authority and influence. The fact that these two spheres may have become confused at times, or seen as one on occasion, does not minimise the basic Biblical position that the two are to remain separate, yet overlapping, authorities.
This of course is quite the opposite of Islam. There is no separation of church and state in Islam. There is no secular sphere in Islam. All of life must come under sharia law and the will of Allah. That is why true democracy is hardy achievable in Muslim nations. Even those Muslim states where democracy is more or less in place, such as Turkey or Indonesia, are a far cry from Western democratic nations. While Muslims enjoy the full range of rights and benefits in Western nations, Christians are at best second class citizens in so-called Islamic democracies.
Persecution of Christians in Turkey and Indonesia is an ongoing problem, and their condition of dhimmitude, or servanthood, is well documented in such nations. Spencer examines quite a few other major areas, and finds very clear differences between Islam and Christianity. In an age that seeks to minimise differences in the name of tolerance and getting along, this can only result in the denigration of Western democratic freedoms, and the blunting of a necessary criticism of Islamist jihadism.
There is a real war going on, and there is a real clash of civilisations occurring. Says Spencer, this clash between the Judeo-Christian worldview and that of Islam is about “two fundamentally opposed visions for society: one based on sharia – a true theocracy – and the other based on freedom”. And Spencer reminds us that Islam means submission, and that all people are to be the slaves of Allah. Jesus made a radically different claim: “I no longer call you slaves … But I have called you friends.” (John 15:15)
Freedom and responsibility characterise the Judeo-Christian view of personhood. Servitude and tyranny are the inevitable results of the Islamic worldview. The two could not be further apart, and it is time that these distinctions are heralded, instead of being covered up by the Christophobes and the appeasers of Islam. As such this book deserves a wide reading. At: culture watch
So Finance Minister Penny Wong has announced that she and her partner Sophie Allouache are expecting a child. Bill Muehlenberg, again, read my mind and has penned this article on the announcement.
"Is God interested in government? Does God’s word have anything to say to us today about godly governance? Does character matter when it comes to running a nation? Are economic issues related to moral issues? Does the strength of a nation rest only in political and economic matters? These and related questions are certainly very timely, and Christians of all people should address them carefully.
Given what looks like another global financial crisis, tied in with economic meltdown in Europe and the debt crisis and downgrading of the credit rating in the US, along with Britain in flames, we certainly need to think through these matters.
Indeed, given how many people who call themselves Christians were happy to vote for atheists, homosexuals, pro-abortionists, and so on at the last Federal election, it seems that some believers have not been thinking carefully about these matters at all.
When we think about the various leaders running Australia, America, and other Western nations today, and assess them in the light of Scripture, we would appear to be in a very precarious place. Simply consider Australia. Our two leaders, Gillard and Brown, are both hostile to Christianity. Indeed they revel in their atheism and ungodliness.
She is a pro-abortion socialist who is shacking up with her boyfriend. He is a pro-abortion socialist who is shacking up with his boyfriend. Both are living lives far from what Scripture upholds as leadership material. And today we read of another high-ranking government minister who is also publicly flaunting her ungodly lifestyle.
Finance Minister Penny Wong and her female lover have just announced that they are expecting a baby through IVF. This is another nail in the coffin of marriage and family, and is another blow to the well-being of children. All children have a fundamental right to be born into and raised by their own biological mother and father. To deliberately deprive them of this is a form of child neglect, if not abuse.
But this is typical of the leadership we have in this nation. And many other Western nations would also have such political figures running their countries. In the US we have the most militantly pro-abortion and pro-homosexual President ever to hold office.
And of course these nations are now in a real mess. Australia might think it can escape the economic collapse taking place in Europe (especially the PIGS: Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) and America, but in a global economy this will be unlikely. We will all be impacted by the global financial meltdown.
We clearly need to recall the strong connection made in Scripture between the state and fate of a nation and its spiritual and moral condition. The Bible of course speaks to this time and time again. Let me offer just a few passages here:
Proverbs 14:34 Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people. Proverbs 29:2 When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked rule, the people mourn. Proverbs 11:14 Without wise leadership, a nation falls. Psalm 14:1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God”.
When we take passages like this and put them together, we get a pretty good explanation as to why Australia, America and the West is in such a mess today. When we – and especially our leaders – abandon God, indeed, shake our fists at God, we are asking for trouble.
Solzhenitsyn said this decades ago when he looked at the disaster which had befallen the former Soviet Union: “It is because we have forgotten God. That is why all this is happening to us.” Or as Yahweh put it when his covenant people asked why great disaster had befallen them: “All this happened because you people sinned against the LORD and did not obey him” (Jeremiah 40:3).
One American commentator has just penned a piece which also deals with these matters. Michael Brown entitles his piece, “It’s the Morality, Stupid!” He says, “Could it be that there’s more to the story? Could it be that we make a serious and fundamental mistake when we separate economic issues from moral issues? Could it be that we are often treating the symptoms rather than the cause? There was bipartisan disgust as the nation watched the president and both political parties wrangling over a solution to the current financial crisis, and in the end, all we got was a very small, largely ineffective band aid. As one political cartoonist depicted it, the congressional ‘solution’ was like slowing down the speed with which the Titanic was sinking.
“Across party lines, there was a feeling that we were not really getting to the root of the problem, but few, if any were suggesting that it is impossible to separate economics from morality. Eventually, our moral choices will have a definite and direct impact on the money (or lack thereof) in our pockets.”
He mentions four root areas which are having a decided impact on the nation and the economy: “1) Instant gratification. 2) We have become consumers rather than producers. 3) The breakdown of the family. 4) Abortion.”
Consider the last one: “With all the concerns about Social Security defaulting, very few leaders are talking about the 800 pound gorilla missing from the room, namely, multiplied millions of working Americans who are not here to pay into the system and contribute to the economy because their lives were cut short in the womb. Yes, there is an economic consequence to abortion as well.
“Perhaps, then, it would be wise for political candidates who really care about what’s best for America to change their slogan to, ‘It’s the morality, stupid.’ Or is this slogan too true to be good?”
Yes moral, spiritual and cultural issues need to be looked at as closely as we looked at the trade balance or fiscal policy. But most leaders today are secularists living immoral lifestyles, so those are the last sorts of things they wish to consider. They think that tinkering around the edges of the economy, or making crafty political moves will somehow fix everything up.
Sorry, they are deluded, and are deluding the nations they lead. Our problems are far deeper than what these leaders imagine. Until we get our priorities right, and stop leaving God out of the picture, the West will continue to head down the gurgler.
Tobacco companies are notorious for using their impressive array of resources to bully a point across. Usually they are trying to bully the state into paving them a golden pathway to skip along without any consequence. Occasionally they implement significant advertisement campaigns when the state doesn't respond to their primitive tactics.
So it comes as no surprise that the tobacco industry has released a new set of advertisements condemning the Federal Government's plan to legislate to require all cigarette to have plain packaging. The reasons for such reform include reducing the appeal of cigarettes as well as reducing the ability of the packages to mislead people (http://www.yourhealth.gov.au/internet/yourhealth/publishing.nsf/Content/factsheet-prevention-02).
The anti-packaging campaign has its own website (http://www.nonannystate.com.au/) which represents the government as taxing the tobacco industry merely for funding purposes. This is an attack on the idea that the government has not increased prices on cigarettes to dissuade people to stop using them (as the government may claim). This, in part, may be true. However, this does not stop this contention by the tobacco industry as being found as intellectually dishonest.
The tobacco industry shows its hypocrisy in two ways. Firstly, this campaign seeks to portray the government as using the tobacco industry to make money (from taxes). This completely ignores the fact that large tobacco companies are doing the same thing. They are creating, processing and selling cigarettes for a profit. All the government is doing is skimming a bit off the top. Now, certainly there are issues with the government doing this. But those same issues exist for the tobacco company. Tobacco industries are not providing a legitimate product to their customers.
Secondly, tobacco industries have also been known to claim that if there is a price hike on legitimate cigarettes then consumers will start using other brands that are cheaper and likely to have unhealthy tobacco. Such dishonesty is astounding. How can an industry which knowingly causes death and cancer point the finger at everyone else? The evidence to show the affect that tobacco has is undeniable (http://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/).
Perhaps the most bizarre thing about this new ad campaign is the fact that the tobacco industry wants to implicate the consumer in their vehement attack on the government. In one clip we hear that consumer say "I'm over eighteen, it's legal". One has to wonder why this seems to be the only argument posed by the tobacco industry in either of their advertisements. After all, cigarettes are not used exclusively by those over the age of eighteen. Nor does the age of the consumer ever endorse a dangerous activity.
Herein lays the problem. The tobacco industry is right. The government is using cigarettes as a major form of taxation. This is wrong, it is manipulative and it is not in the best interests of the layman. What the government should have implemented years ago was a complete ban on the sale of tobacco-related products. Of course, there would be screaming by the tobacco industry that some consumers would turn to highly dangerous varieties of tobacco, yet like a similar argument for legalised abortion, this specifically ignores the ethical issues at hand. A government is responsible to its people. It is their best interests (and not a budget) which should take precedence.
The tobacco industry would have us believe that the Australian Government is some evil nanny state for trying to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes. Instead of ignoring their responsibilities to the consumers of their product they are trying to scapegoat the government. It only goes to show there is no benefit for getting into bed with evil money-hungering corporations.
It is not often discussed, but perhaps the biggest losers in the new biotech revolution are women. They often pay the heaviest price, be it in IVF, surrogacy, or other assisted reproductive technologies. The same is true in the cloning debate.
Katrina George had an excellent article on this theme in the Herald Sun, November 2, 2006. Entitled, “Not enough eggs in cloning basket,” she warned how women would especially suffer if cloning is given the green light. Says George, “Cloning depends on a continuous supply of fresh human eggs and without eggs cloning is impossible. . . . Egg extraction requires large doses of powerful hormones to hyper-stimulate the ovaries. Prof Bob Williamson told federal MPs that egg extraction involved an element of discomfort and a small element of risk. An element of discomfort to say the least.”
She explains the risks: “In one study of egg donors, nearly 30 per cent reported a week or more of discomfort so significant that it kept them in bed, prevented them from working, or interfered with their ability to care for their children. A small element of risk? It’s called ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, experienced by up to 10 per cent of women. Thirty or more eggs start to develop simultaneously and fluid leaks out of the blood vessels and collects in the abdomen. The ovaries can swell to the size of a grapefruit.”
But wait, there’s more: “And Prof Williamson did not mention the risk of stroke, organ failure, intrauterine polyps, ovarian cysts, respiratory distress, or that women have died. And no mention of long-term risks of infertility and reproductive cancers. It is no wonder scientists find it difficult to persuade women to hand over their eggs. Therapeutic cloning has been described as a wildly inefficient process requiring hundreds of eggs to produce just a single clone.”
And that raises another crucial question: Just where will all these eggs come from? “[The two cloning bills before the Senate] say scientists can use animal eggs. But in countries such as Britain, where there is cloning, scientists say they want fresh eggs from young women. Only the best will do. Some scientists have suggested that women with diseases such as diabetes or cystic fibrosis should donate their eggs for research. But how can it be in the best interests of these seriously ill patients to subject themselves to dangerous drugs and egg harvesting?”
She continues, “Others say the mothers, sisters and friends of the sick and suffering should donate. This would create an expectation that women sacrifice their own health and risk their lives for cures that may never happen. Cloning advocates have failed to show that you can get ova without harming women. They have offered a number of other half-baked ideas: harvesting ova from dead women, from frozen ovarian tissue and producing them from stem cell lines. None of these options is proven or reliable.”
Other proposals have been suggested: “Liberal MP Mal Washer said we could use leftover eggs from IVF, but all the research showed that cloning with left over eggs was not realistic. What about women who are undergoing IVF? Can’t they just donate a few of their extra ova? They have tried this in the UK and it doesn’t work. Women, not surprisingly, are very attached to their ova. Each precious ova is the opportunity of a baby. Why should they give them up?”
Overseas experience shows that the only guaranteed way to get a sufficient supply of eggs is to pay women to ‘donate’ them. Is that what we want here? “In Australia, we were reassured that that could never happen. Who are we kidding? It’s just taken a few years for Britain to go down the commercial path. Why do we think we will be any different? Women are not egg farms. Our lives are not collateral damage along the biotech superhighway. Australians deserve medical research that heals, not harms.”
Exactly. What is merely possible today often becomes imperative tomorrow. What we simply can do often becomes what we should do. The temptation will be all too real, especially for poor women, to sell their own eggs to scientists quite happy to pay the right price. The commercialization of human life will continue, as sure as night follows day.
Better to head this hole sordid process off at the beginning. A complete ban on all forms of human cloning is the only way we can ensure that the Frankenstein scenarios being warned about do not become realities.
Chris's adultery is hardly honourable, and it is not portrayed as ethical in this movie, yet somehow Allen keeps us riveted on the moral corruption of Chris Wilton.
This is a similar theme in the 2007 epic No Country For Old Men. This is an undeniably good film by the brilliant Coen brothers. Their character depth and emotional themes is as good as any director filming in Hollywood at this time. In No Country For Old Men we again have a protagonist who could also equally be the film's antagonist. Anton Chigurh (Academy-award winning Javier Bardem for this performance) is a hitman in 80s Texas and is trying to track a large amount of money which has fallen into Llewelyn Moss's (Josh Brolin) possession.