The Pro-Life Movement On The Left

Most Americans who are pro-life don't experience it from the left side of the political spectrum. Without a doubt, it is terribly difficult to be pro-life on the political left. The current political landscape in America presents a dire problem for "pro-life progressives," even more so if they're Catholic and observe the Church's teachings. Pro-life progressivism is a growing, still voiceless, movement in the Democratic Party. There is a sense of alienation from pro-choice Democrats in regard to "women's issues" (abortion) and "life-saving scientific research" (embryonic stem cell research) as well a sense of being out of place amongst conservative Republicans whom we might agree with on a few issues, but disagree with on a host of others and perhaps fundamentally on political philosophy. This movement (I think) is really reflective of many American youth, who not only oppose abortion and euthanasia, but would like to see "life issues" extend to the 30,000 children who die globally each day from poverty and preventable disease, issues of genocide in places like Darfur, human trafficking, healthcare, foreign policy issues of war and peace, and even to environmental stewardship. Many Catholic Democrats see this as what the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin coined as the "consistent life ethic."

While I personally hold this view, I think there are two fundamental tendencies of this approach to politics ("the consistent life ethic") that presents a profound challenge, particularly to Catholics. The first is the prevailing tendency to make all political issues morally equal, i.e. fighting abortion is morally equal to providing universal healthcare. This is a tragic intellectual mistake. In the current election season this sort of thinking hasn't gone unnoticed with the wave of pro-life Americans voting for Sen. Barack Obama despite his radical abortion stance because "there are other issues." Indeed, I'm not one to deny that there are other issues that I care deeply about, but not even a monolithic committment to all these other issues in a "pro-life" way can draw attention away from the insurmountable horror of Barack Obama's hyper-liberal abortion agenda.

The second tendency of this group (this is just modern "progressivism" in general) actually causes the first. This tendency is toward moral relativism; the absence of an objective standard of good and evil easily allows for a pro-life individual to see reforming the American healthcare system as "more pressing" than stopping the genocide of 1.2 million unborn children every year. And the tendency toward this kind of thinking is more deep-seated than we like to realize. The American political tradition (and therefore the thinking of American citizens) is deeply rooted in legal positivism, which as a philosophy sees a disconnect between law and morality. This theory fundamentally presupposes moral relativism because allegedly the only way to maintain order in a secular society is not to affirm moral truths, which in itself establishes a false sense of peace, which begins to dissipate into what Princeton law professor Robert P. George calls the "clash of orthodoxies," i.e. secular humanist-moral relativists vs. Judeo-Christian moral conservatives.

It's safe to say then the fundamental problem is our moral thinking. Consider what C.S. Lewis coined as the "abolition of man." If God created us and endowed us with our human nature, then we can be assured that our nature is in harmony with His good purposes. Given that we have a nature, certain things go against it, won't fulfill us, and this is what we Christians call sin. But what if we could alter our nature? We live in a society where we create life in laboratories, can alter genetics, and implant embryos. This invokes to my mind a looming possibility of Huxley's Brave New World. The fundamental question is: is this in accord with our nature? Are humans meant to be created in this way? Whether or not a person believes in God will profoundly shape their conclusion to this question. There is no natural law without God and the fundamental notion that follows the absence of God is that our humanity is not a creation and therefore, there is no reason why we should not create embryos in laboratories for medical research nor for mothers who want a baby as if it were a consumer product.

How is this relevant to "pro-life progressives?" This group sees why abortion is a repugnant evil, which is wonderful. This movement may be key in ending the horror of abortion in America if they are successful in reversing the Democratic Platform and align themselves with pro-life conservatives. However, the mordern notion of "progress" may inevitably be their (and everyone else's) downfall.

In a recent political debate with a friend of mine, who like me, is a pro-life Democrat, except I'm Catholic, the fundamental difference is just as I described. He is voting for Obama and I'm voting for McCain. My friend sees it this way: American healthcare reform, namely universal healthcare is a "pro-life" issue, McCain won't do anything about abortion, and healthcare will help reduce the abortion rate. Perhaps he's right. But what about the fact that Barack Obama said that his worse choice in his senatorial career was his vote to save Terry Schiavo (he doesn't oppose euthanasia) and his expression at the "Compassion Forum" that he thinks people should have the choice to end their lives and their suffering if they choose to (physician-assisted suicide)? Or what of his remarks about funding abortion through his healthcare plan undermining the Hyde Amendment?

It doesn't matter. For my friend, healthcare reform is a pivotal issue that we cannot miss this time around. "Love your neighbor," he cited as his reasoning for voting Obama. But modern, hyper-liberal, pro-sexual revolution thinking doesn't really include God. The notion of the natural law is godless (because we have to include the atheists) because we cannot affirm the existence of God and without God, we cannot recognize our neighbors, whom we're supposed to love, for what they are. To be a person, according to the natural law, is to be a proper subject of absolute regard—a "neighbor"—it is persons whom I must not kill, must not steal from, etc. What is a person? A person is a creature made in the image and likeness of God.

The problem with losing sight of God is this: we don't lose sight of killing our neighbor as wrong, more than we don't recognize our neighbor when we see them (e.g. the unborn). In contemporary secular ethics, the ruling tendency is to concede that there are such things as persons, but to define them in terms of their functions or capacities—not by what they are, the image of God, but by what they can do. Therefore "personhood" is defined in terms of consciousness, reasoning, self–motivated activity, the capacity to communicate about indefinitely many topics, and conceptual self–awareness. If you can do all those things, you're a person; if you can't, you're not. The functional approach to personhood seems plausible at first, just because—at a certain stage of development, and barring misfortune—most persons do have these functions. But to think that they are their functions blows the core right out of the moral code.

This is often used as a justification for abortion. The slogan of pro-choicers is heard loud and clear: "every child a wanted child." But, by this logic, an unwanted child is not a child…so kill it? Obviously, unborn babies are not capable of reasoning, complex communication, and so on. If they cannot perform these functions, then by definition they aren't persons, and if they aren't persons, they have no inherent right to life. The real question is a philosophical one and it's undoubtedly moral. One might say, "surely a collection of tiny cells don't constitute personhood in such a way that trumps a woman's right to personal autonomy."

That's the mindset. But it cannot end with abortion. If unborn babies may be killed because they lack these functions, then a great many other individuals may also be killed for the same reasons—for example the asleep, unconscious, demented, addicted, infants, toddlers, someone in a coma on life-support (euthanasia), not to mention sundry other cases, such as deaf–mutes who have not been taught sign language. In such language, none of these are persons; in theological language, this is clear denial of the human person coming from God.

The cure for such blindness is not to tinker with the list of functions by which we define persons, but to stop confusing what persons are with what they can typically do. Functional definitions are appropriate for things which have no inherent nature, things whose identity is dependent on our own purposes and interests.

If I am a person then I am by nature a rights–bearer, by nature a proper subject of absolute regard—not because of what I can do, but because of what I am. Of course this presupposes that I have a nature, a "what–I–am," which is distinct from my present condition or stage of development, distinct from my abilities in that condition or stage of development, and distinct from how this condition, stage of development, or set of abilities might happen to be valued by other people. In short, a person is by nature someone whom it is wrong to view merely as a means. If you regard me as a person only because I am able to exercise certain capacities that interest you, then you are saying that I am not a person. And so the functional definition of personhood does not even rise to the dignity of being mistaken, it is just irrational and incoherent. With each different criterion of personhood, a different set of beings is welcomed through the gates of others' regard. This is the same rule of all oppression. Those who supported slavery were free and those who support abortion are born. Personhood is defined at our convenience.

It is clear then that moral principles are more important than policies. Moral principles gives us the capacity to priortize our political agendas accordingly and with a sense of how policies should be shaped, i.e. why abortion is a paramount issue. Much more can be said of this, but given the broad set of political issues, the pro-life movement (this is especially true of Catholics) has constantly faced a fundamental question often heatedly debated that I'm not at liberty to answer authoratatively. I have my convictions about if or when a pro-life Catholic could ever (if possible) vote for a pro-choice candidate, but I believe people of good will may disagree with me and I place no judgment on them. Honest disagreement can only lead to a healthy debate.

But we cannot avoid the question that often divides us: Can someone who is pro-life and Catholic vote for candidates who are not only pro-choice, but who promote policies such as universal healthcare that is accompanied by an unquestionably flawed approach to bioethics, which inevitably creates more problems? That is, can we argue "proportionate reasons" when the principles of one side is based on a terribly flawed view of the human person and society? It is striking to me that many pro-life Americans, even Catholics, go to great lengths to defend or qualify a pro-choice candidate's position, or even worse make them out to be more "pro-life" than the person who opposes abortion (Doug Kmiec).

I understand their argument and in all truthfulness, I don't disagree with them entirely, but I do think it gets so casual that one may vote consistently for pro-choice candidates without discerning the issue of abortion. Moreover, I don't think any of these same people would vote for a racist candidate no matter what that candidate said or how good, say, their economic plans are. No one would vote for Hitler because he supported universal healthcare (he did; Germany was the first nation in the world to have it) despite the fact he supported the genocide of 6 million Jews as well as nearly 6 million others who died along side them. Genocide would disqualify him from receiving our votes, period.

Yet when a candidate supports the systematic, public funded genocide of 1.2 million unborn children in America as well as subsidizing abortions overseas (e.g. not giving foreign aid unless they provided abortion facilities as was done under the Clinton administration) and below the border in Mexico, contributing to the over 45 million abortions that occur within 365 days worldwide, there are suddenly "other issues." Sometimes it is argued that overturning Roe v. Wade will not do anything, so we should leave abortion legal. Should we have left slavery legal and only sought to reduce the number of slaves? Such argument is incoherent. It's even argued that social programs will lead to less abortions. I think this is true to an extent, but on some level we (all) should agree that citing evidence from Europe is not convincing because Europeans are contracepting themselves to death and don't have nearly as many children to be carried by the safety net of social programs, hence, less abortions.

I won't objectively say a pro-life American, Catholic or otherwise, cannot (ever) vote for pro-choice candidates. Should they? That's another question and I think good Catholics may come down on both sides. Pro-life progressives, particularly Catholics ones, need to stop accomodating pro-choice candidates. Why should the Democratic Party feel any need to change its position on abortion, if they realize they will receive our uncritical support anyway, even while we disagree?

Christian Ethics and American Law

The American political debate is a heated landscape—a landscape that is not at all lacking in general presuppositions, that are undeniably philosophical in nature, that are scarcely brought to intellectual scrutiny. One might declare that some law is ‘unjust,’ or that this law in favor of the ‘common good.’ Another person may say certain public policies violate basic ‘human rights.’ Each of these claims presupposes that there is some universal norm by using words such as 'justice' and 'common good' that everyone is aware of, that has moral implications, and that we all have an obligation to uphold.

What is most concerning is the post-modern tendency to say that moral principles and the law should not be connected. Morality should not be legislated. This is a common American notion. While this problematic assertion can be approached in many ways, I think the most fundamental question that should be asked is, what is law?

It seems to me that the common American idea of law is a set of rules set forth by the State that are enforced by a credible threat of force and punishment. There is something undoubtedly true about that proposition, but does it fully capture the essence of the law? Are we prepared to accept that the law is merely a matter of obedience and control? Sure, obedience and control have something to do with effective laws, but do they adequately define the nature of the law? If so, what distinguishes the ‘just’ laws from ‘unjust’ laws? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps all laws are simply expressions of the will-to-power of an individual or a group. But if this is so, what are we really saying when we complain about ‘unjust’ laws? Is it merely anger because our self-interests have failed to win over the self-interests of others?

That may be so, but it would be undeniably strange. Why? Because the human experience has shown us that there is a difference between asserting our own wants and true ‘justice’—whatever that is. Children and adolescents commonly accuse their parents of being ‘unfair’ for not giving them something they want. But is that the same as, say, Martin Luther King saying that it was ‘unfair’ for the State of Alabama to refuse to allow African Americans to enroll in its universities? Both statements involve a claim on others. It seems safe to say that we are fooling ourselves if we think that there is no substantial difference between the two.

When parents deny children something they want, there is no universal moral reason as to why a child must have, say, a particular toy. The only reason a child may have to claim ‘unfairness’ against their parents is their own desires. Martin Luther King in his Letter From Birmingham Jail argued that rights due to him by virtue of the natural law, by virtue of his humanity were unjustly denied him and any laws protecting this injustice are not laws at all.

It is clear that Dr. King believed that laws are designed to protect justice. He also presupposes a natural moral order that we humans can know and must conform ourselves to. Is he right? I think so. What if he isn’t? What would that mean? Consider this. Adolf Hitler legalized every action he made while in power in Nazi Germany. Does legal status, morally qualify his actions, particularly the 6 million Jews that perished at his command? Did the legal status of slavery make it morally acceptable? It strikes me that most Americans would agree that Hitler did immoral deeds and slavery is immoral. But that same majority of Americans accepts the horror of abortion as the status quo and often cites that it won’t be illegal anytime soon. Or, they claim that the legality of abortion won’t stop women from seeking abortions. So why stop it?

The problem is abortion is murder. Take for instance the act of murder. Why is murder against the law? There are two reasons. One, to allow citizens to kill one another would produce anarchy and is against the interest of the State. Two, murder is an objective moral evil that is contrary to human nature. It is self-evident that the second reason has more bearing than the first. The convenience of outlawing murder for the State to maintain order is a by-product of the reality that the act of killing innocents is contrary to the moral order of the universe and that the endorsement of the action itself cannot yield any good or productivity for any human society.

One might ask, what does it all matter? It matters because it affects each and every individual in society. Why might we say that African Americans have a right to liberty over slavery? One might argue that slavery—free labor—is beneficial to the American economy and thus, the ‘common good.’ So why not allow slavery? Are there really any inviolable human rights that cannot be gone against no matter what profit or convenience doing so may yield? I certainly think there are.

We live in a society of ‘rights.’ We all have a right to something and we’ll be damned if anyone takes those rights away. But where do rights come from? In the modern, agnostic, morally relative world of scientific materialism all we are, is a collection of atoms no different in substance than that of a desk or a television. The universe in itself has no meaning and no purpose, which logically means that there is no meaning or purpose to our lives. If that’s true, what are ‘rights’ especially if we arguably have no meaning, and therefore, no dignity?

The notion of ‘natural rights’ was developed in the Catholic intellectual tradition in contribution to the philosophy of law. A fundamental concern for America is whether or not it is possible to preserve the notion of ‘natural rights’ without the Judeo-Christian understanding of the human person and of human nature which the notion of the natural law has been traditionally based. Can the idea of a natural law stand if we’re nothing but a random assortment of matter on a tiny dot that we call earth in a vast and meaningless cosmos? The short answer is no.

These questions are pressing. Western society is dominated by moral relativism, which leads ultimately to moral decay. We have come to idolize the biblical figure Cain in not wanting to be our brother’s keeper. America is in dire need of a strong, vibrant Christian presence to transform this debate and give it moral clarity. It is an imperative that there is an awareness of the origin of laws and a proper understanding of the moral and intellectual principles of interest in the American legal system—inalienable rights, civil liberties, federalism, separation of powers, etc.

This is why it upsets me that some Christians pull their children out of the public schooling system—still leaving millions of other children to go through the broken system—and refuse to be at the front of the campaign for American education reform so that Christian moral principles are not disregarded or given merely lip service. We need to return philosophy to our education system and instill moral values.

More importantly, Christians must be more than a force to illegalize abortion in the public square. It is vital that we are able to articulate our Christian moral perspective through rational and philosophical discourse because this vital tool (philosophy)—has been virtually eliminated and trivialized in western society—is the only way we may help America rediscover those human and moral truths that are written into the nature of the human person.

Lost in the Cosmos: the Plight of Man in the Modern World

The famous atheist-scientist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion arguably would have almost certainly failed any philosophical course on Logic unless he had the wonderful luck of studying under a professor who is also elementary in his reasoning skills. I read his book. It is not convincing. It was an absolute riot from cover to cover. There is no scientific argument that contests the existence of God. There is no sound philosophical argument that makes the existence of God unlikely. He talks about how intelligent design theorists point to ‘seeming designs’ in the universe without qualifying how things can only seem to be designed without actually having been designed. Are computers only ‘seeming designs’ despite their complexity and obviously designed-construct? He even rants about how ‘irreducibly complex’ universe is and jumps to the conclusion because this is so a Creator would be infinitely more complex and thusly improbable. Does that even make sense? I don't think it does. He throws around scientific facts and theories using eloquent terms without qualifying how this negates the existence of God or how his idea of an ‘irreducibly complex’ universe that somehow (conveniently) just exists is superior to the idea of creation by God. He fails to show why belief in God is irrational and fails in his mission to show that belief in God is delusional. So why is there so much hype about the book? It is a book about God.

A three letter word, such a small word, brings to mind the question of the Divine Reality; it induces a complicated multi-tiered emotion of both love and hate. In the history of our species, people have fought, died, bled, sweat, loved, hoped, and found moral rebirth in the name of God. The prevailing question in the modern world is, why believe in God at all? It is quite fashionable to believe that all the findings of science, one and all, are completely adverse to and inconsistent with the propositions of any religious tradition. Any atheist asks himself, how could any rational human being believe in God? As an atheist-to-Catholic convert, I will admit, this was a mind-boggling question. I was baffled that some of the most intelligent people I knew were devout religious believers. But in my journey, I found more than an answer, I found a new question: how can any rational human being not believe in God?

Despite my near idolatrous worship of intellectualism—Lord have mercy—I am admittedly a closet-case romantic heart. In the spirit of romanticism, imagine gazing into the celestial sky, lost in the beauty and splendor of the heavens above. It fascinates us all. Internally, we all wonder, what more is there? Beyond the specks of light lies a mystery of how it all came to be. The simple gesture of staring into the night sky can raise the most profound questions for all who share in the human condition. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do things exist? Why is there life at all? Why is there evil and suffering? The scientific field of cosmology is essential to these questions, in it we study the universe as a whole—its structure, origin, and development. Our understanding of the universe is so fundamental to our everyday life. It shapes our worldview, our philosophy of life, our view of the human person, and thus our moral framework of life and behavior. The advances made in this field and of any human discipline are—or should be—oriented toward helping mankind attempt to answer the fundamental questions of human existence.

It is hardly surprising that many have come to expect modern science to answer all human questions to their satisfaction. This is not to say that science cannot provide us with incredible amounts of valuable information. The sciences offer knowledge that is properly secured by proofs, established methodically, and logically consistent. We know more now about the development of the world, of human life, the laws that govern nature and of the mystery of man himself and all that regulates our relationships with one another in this web of life on earth than our ancestors. It is profoundly perplexing to consider this reality. We have relieved ourselves from unbearable physical labor, eliminated the threat of many diseases with diagnosis and cures, and through this, we have raised the human life expectancy. In the past two hundred years, particularly, mankind has faced changed at unimaginable proportions. But with all of this change brought by science, we face new challenges. We face environmental destruction and the exploitive and dehumanizing effects of technology, to name a few. Progression is ambivalent—with development comes the potentiality of ruin.

The question of ruin and of, perhaps, changing or abolishing our human nature via technology—particularly with the growing transhumanism movement—begs the question of what it means to be human. Inevitably to question what it means to be human will lead to the question of God. In the modern world, there are countless religious and non-religious views to the question of God. In fact, the modern approach to religion involves this curious notion that every religion is of equal value and therefore, equally true. Logically, this is impossible as it goes against the intellectual principle of non-contradiction. Judaism and Christianity can’t simultaneously be true because Jesus of Nazareth would simultaneously be God and not God. All religions cannot simultaneously be true, which implies that either they are all wrong or one has supremacy over the others by the merits of being completely true. Surely, two plus two equates only four, not five, six, and seven as well. Truth by its very nature entails one answer. The answer in itself may contain many parts and be rather complex. However, if you were to remove any part of the answer it would no longer be a true, full, and authentic answer.

Arguably, there are certain truths that all religions possess. I am speaking mostly of major world religions. Most eastern world religions—Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, etc—are in fact life-philosophies that were established as religions arguably for political reasons and even Hinduism itself comes across as a philosophy of life at first glance before taking into account the pantheon of gods that manifest the one Divine Reality and belief in reincarnation. A certain truth that appears all across the world is that we cannot reach the “divine realm” and be before the Divine Reality imperfectly. According to Christian revelation, we may reject this entire possibility or attain Heaven, but not without a process of purification. In Hinduism, a person must go through multiple cycles of life in order to attain communion with this Divine Reality whatever this Being may be. The understanding is similar, not the same certainly and the application is different. But both understand a common religious truth, if you will.

The world's religions may all equally hold certain truths that are fundamental, but only one logically may contain “the fullness of truth” in the words of St. Paul, if any of them are true at all. Certainly most religions embrace a God and a detailed moral code, but when you began to get definitive and specific, the religions of the world began to diverge greatly even within themselves. The differences may seem small at first glance, but they are often profound differences that cannot be said to be childish theological disputes. But, the truth of the matter remains, either every religion is wrong to some degree if not entirely or one of them is completely right. Rationally, there is no other possibility. The accounts of human origin recorded in religious scriptures most certainly are not naïve fairytales or stolen, integrated work of a foreign culture. Each is a unique understanding of creation and the human person in light of that understanding. Genesis, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, represents the fruit of ageless meditations of believing people and the thought of inspired authors sure of their faith. The writing may be considered primitive, but when properly interpreted in historical context and in the light of its theological tradition, Genesis is an exceptional understanding of God, humanity, creation, and the “sin condition.”

Man has a unique situation in the natural order. The cosmos is a mystery. But what is even more mysterious to man is himself. What it means to be human is not given with being human. Man is an embodied spirit—matter that is aware of itself. This is simply mind-blowing. Man is literally thrown into existence faced with this ineffable reality, faced with suffering and decay, and faced with the ominous mystery of death. In ancient and medieval times, not perfectly so and not with the same advanced knowledge, this human reality was the focus of human thought. Philosophy dominated in education. In the modern world, this isn’t the case at all. It seems that every morning we rise to carry on as though we are immortal and nothing is ever going to change. We endure human existence feeling bored, fed up, or at best, blasé. We cannot see what we have: the gift of life. It is heartbreaking that we never notice how much we take for granted…until it's denied us. Often enough, we then become angry with God. There are times that our minds do not have enough to occupy it—when we're at leisure, the vulnerable moments before we fall asleep, long car rides, in quiet places—and it is only then we realize that souls walk within us, restless spirits that can perceive the silence and begin their roaming…drawing forth all the questions of life that we try so hard to ignore because no one wants to see their own sins laid out before them.

The world today is riddled with distractions from the fundamental questions of life—television, music, nightclubs, gambling, videogames, et cetera. The fashion industry, for example, makes millions on selling images and identities because in a world without God, without a clear sight of what it means to be human. We need an identity. We need something to feel the void of emptiness. But it seems even the teens in our society who aren't satisfied with the 'norm' and must be 'different' may go out and find a proper 'different' identity at, say, Hot Topic instead of at Abercrombie and Fitch entirely unaware that the two, Hot Topic and Abercrombie and Fitch, have the same owner. But the cool look and identity of today isn't the same as it was ten years ago, five years ago, and in some ways, it is not even the same as one year ago. The marketing industry must subtly dissatisfy their customers so that they can continue to sell and collect profits; they must continue to sell identities that are temporary because more money is to be made.

We accept whatever science tells us. We accept the status quo. We don’t open ourselves to anything. We create tight little world-constructs and allow very little room for any new information and ideas. Never mind that every 3.6 seconds someone dies from starvation, 48,000,000 million unborn children are slaughtered worldwide in a single year, or that the United States uses somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of the world’s resources to ill-effect of third world countries and impoverished nations. We just change the channel, watch reality-TV and are caught up in someone else’s lives and not evaluating our own. It seems that everyone wants to stay busy and distracted from reality because when we're idle, we're bored in our feeble meaningless and unfathomable existence.

Why has the world become so bitter, cold, and selfish? Perhaps, it has always been this way. But with what we know, should we not be changing? “Progress!” We all proclaim. Yet, again, in must be in accord with our humanity. But what does it mean to be human? Philosophy can help us address this almost impossible question. Through the centuries, religion has also provided answers. These answers, contrary to what many will argue, are not solely in theory and speculation, but in life as a whole, in rites and practices, in prayers and songs, in stories, symbols, images, feasts, art, ministries, in communion, and in intellectual tradition. Religion is written into history. Religion calls man out of himself, to be a moral creature, to be selfless, and loving. Man often neglects this vocation and because this is so today, as in the past, there are those who question God and criticize religious practitioners. Today, many religious people have unquestionably lost their sense of God in the midst of the crisis of our age—God has been obscured in the secularity of everyday life—in culture, peer pressure, ideologies, politics, habits, experiences, and personal choice.

We live in a world where we don’t have time for anything especially God. In the past, the day ended at sunset, which made time for long evenings of conversation, communal time, reflection, or leisure. When people were sick they stayed in bed and rested until they were better. Now we have electricity and we can stay up all night writing term papers, reading, watching Youtube.com, playing videogames—totally isolated from everyone else and free not to think of our responsibilities. We take antibiotics immediately when sick, which we should to preserve our health, but in doing so, we also don’t take a day off, we don’t miss a day of work—we stay busy, busy, busy. The structure of American society makes it difficult to include God in your life, to ponder the most profound questions there is to ponder, and to really devote yourself to charitable causes in addition to a full work load.

All of our human challenges endlessly bring us back to the question of God. God is irrevocably intertwined with the questions that have driven us rational animals since we began to inscribe words on tablets of clay. Who am I? From, what, why, and for what purpose am I? Can I really believe anything? That is, can I trust? What should I believe, and whom may I believe and trust? It is such questions that follow man as his life flows along, day by day, week by week. Anyone could concur that man from his beginning is perpetually trying to master and understand the human condition. It is obscenely evident in the million questions a child will pose in the course of a single day. What is that? Why is that so? What is that for? And in trying to answer these questions, we all find that we don’t know as much as we thought or the things that seemed so overly self-evident before are now hidden. The question of life comes differently to each of us, but it takes the same impact on each individual. Despite sincere intellectual conviction, Richard Dawkins and other atheists, should see that the God they reject, perhaps, has more to do with our existence than just being a convenient explanation of things yet to understood. Ultimately, it is the search for our origin, our purpose, and our meaning that drives us. And in seeking an answer, we are forced to look to the beginning, and He who made us is waiting for us.

Words of Wisdom from the Holy Father:

"The world needs God. We need God. But what God? In the first reading, the prophet tells a people suffering oppression that: 'He will come with vengeance' (Isaiah 35:4). We can easily suppose how the people imagined that vengeance. But the prophet himself goes on to reveal what it really is: the healing goodness of God. The definitive explanation of the prophet's word is to be found in the one who died on the cross: in Jesus, the Son of God incarnate. His 'vengeance' is the cross: a 'no' to violence and a 'love to the end.' This is the God we need."

"We are not some casual or meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
- Pope Benedict XVI

Further Reading: God and Evolution by Avery Cardinal Dulles

The Dictatorship of Relativism and "The Abolition of Man"

The Catholic Church holds that "deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment...For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God...His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths." (CCC 1776).

The psychological phenomenon that we have coined, conscience, is not merely a personal feeling or opinion. But it is God attempting to speak to us through our brokenness—through the limits of our humanity—and our conscience in action is our last best judgment at the good or evil of an action based upon our intellectual, religious, and experiential understanding of human nature (i.e. the natural law—the law of human nature.)

This view is vehemently challenged by modernity. We ask ourselves: do moral absolutes exist? Are there behaviors, mindsets, or bits of speech which may be called morally right or wrong—for all people, regardless of how anyone might feel? If not, what would it mean for there not to be any objective standards of right and wrong? What is significant should be given to the fact that many people do not live up to their understanding of right and wrong? These are all pertinent questions.

Moral Relativism

It is a common conviction—based on observation—that moral codes differ in every society. But mistakenly, the conclusion is drawn that morality is merely a social construct of acceptable behavior and habits, and thereby, is fundamentally relative. Certainly there is disagreement among nations and even individual people on what is right and wrong. But mere disagreement does not imply that there is no answer—objective, external, and independent on anyone's personal convictions. If a person is to say, "all religions are equally true," this would yield to reason as nonsensical. By this logic, Muhammad is and is not the last great prophet of God. The immediate contradiction would prove the assertion false.

One might say that there are certain moral rules that all societies will have in common because these fundamental rules are necessary for society exist to defend the initial proposal of relativism. Yes, while that may be true, what is common is not coincidence, but perhaps the universal realization amongst nations of certain moral truths that are fundamental and simultaneously necessary for an operating society, e.g. don't steal, don't murder, etc.

The presumption that there are no facts and no one is right when morality is concerned is severely flawed. It is simple (and more rational) to say, "He has his opinion, and others have their opinions" and that might just be the end of it. But it is another thing to say: morals are based upon feelings and nothing more. If morality is entirely subjective, that is, relative to the person, then discriminating against a person for any specific reason whether it be race, sexual orientation, gender, appearance, height, weight, eye color, or identifying characteristic is not morally wrong—not wrong it any universal sense that would be obligatory for the person to change their behavior or binding on anyone else to also protest. It may, in fact, upset your personal moral taste, but you will just have to accept the moral tastes of others, which is, by the acceptance of moral relativism, just as right as your moral position.

Even more, there is a fundamental self-contradiction to the idea of moral relativism. To say that "all morality is relative" is a self-defeating claim. First, since morality is entirely relative to the person, anyone holding such a position is only saying, "It is my opinion…that all morality is relative." This is not true at all, but rather an opinion and opinions don't hold water in philosophical arguments of discerning whether or not something is true.

But what is more problematic is that the claim "all morality is relative" is a universal claim about the very nature of morality itself. It is a determination of the nature of morality for everyone, in all places, and at all times: it is relative. The fundamental idea of relativism is that there are no absolutes, but the very proposition of relativism: 'there are no absolutes' is an absolute claim and this renders moral relativism an inherent contradiction.

It is such thinking of morality being determined by the person and not any standard that leads to statements, such as, "while abortion might not be right for me, it could be the right choice for someone else." Essentially, every individual determines what is morally right for him or her. But disagreement, again, fails to demonstrate that there are no moral absolutes. If two men were to disagree over whether there is life on Mars or not does not make it logical to say, "while there may be life on Mars for you, there isn't life on Mars for me." It's absurd. There either is or isn't life on Mars.

Consider this curious phenomenon: human beings at all times and in all place have had this curious idea that they should behave in a certain way and they cannot get rid of this notion. If you were to witness two people arguing over the good or evil of some action, they silently recognize an unspoken standard. Even if one of them violated this unspoken standard, there is an excuse, a reason, that in their circumstance, under certain conditions, it was acceptable to violate said standard—the standard is never denied.

But even in recognition of this standard of ideal behavior that humans imagine, we do not behave consistently with it. We know the natural law; yet we break it. Where does this natural law derive? Perhaps, moral truths just exist. Moral truths could only be a psychological projection of a certain standard that we perceive to be ideal based on our realization of the flaws in our social contracts. I think this insight is not wholly untrue—it may be how we began to think about our moral failures—but this it would not make the morals truths necessarily true at all, but rather morally relative because the projection would vary person to person. Then again, moral awareness just may be a biological adaptation that is necessary for the survival of our species. But this too would not imply moral truths.

Why else might there be moral truths? Perhaps we are the creation of a moral Creator, thus, the universe is the purposeful work of a righteous God and our moral awareness, rooted in our human nature, is a result of the character and purpose of the God who made us in His image. But this is too far a leap for our agnostic, post-modern world.

Ironically enough, it is arguable that there aren't substantial differences in each culture's values. Murder, for example, has been wrong in every culture at every time in history. The only thing that changes is the concept of justification. Hitler justified killing Jews because Jews were said to be subhuman and not fit for the beautiful new world order that he envisioned. Murdering of human beings remained wrong. The same can be said of people who favor choice in regard to abortion. They do believe that human life is valuable, but they do not believe unborn babies are "persons" that have human rights. In the same way, supporters of embryonic stem-cell research ask the question, do six tiny cells with human DNA qualify as a "person" with human rights? Hence, in many cases, apparent moral discrepancies between cultures only reflect a difference in perception of the same facts pertaining to a particular circumstance not an outright conflict in the values themselves. We live in a world of competing philosophical frameworks that dictate our moral convictions. The presence or absence of God from these frameworks makes a critical difference.

Read this well-written, articulate "First Things" article by J. Budziszewski entitled "The Second Tablet Project" that eloquently illuminates what a metaphysically unfounded moral theory really means and the effects of removing God from morality.