I am still trying to wrap my brain around comments made earlier this month by Ken Ham about Republicans, evolution, and political affiliation:
Because after all, if there is no God and there’s no absolute authority, who does decide right and wrong? Who does decide good and bad? Those on the other end of the spectrum who believe in moral relativism, of course, wouldn’t want to be accountable to God and would want to believe that everything evolved by natural processes. So you’d more suspect that those people would say they believe in evolution.
Ham seems to lay it right down on the line here: for Ham and those who follow him, a view of scientific, religious and political reality comes from a psychological need for an absolute authority, for an absolute moral certainty, and for an escape from personal responsibility for moral choices. First comes the psychological need, and assertions about the nature of reality follow from that need.
Putting people in charge who begin by basing their conception of reality on their psychological needs for reality to be a certain way, and who follow up on that by trying to mandate that everyone else pretend along with them, seems like a pretty dangerous idea to me.
(Source: OneNews Now, June 14, 2007)
Like people of many denominations, Ham mistakes the particular prejudices of his own Southern Baptist organization as representative of all Christianity. What on earth does evolution have to do with accountability to God? They are not connected in any way, except in the minds of Falwell initiates like Ham.
I rather suspect that the Southern Baptist yearning for absolute authority means absolute authority for someone else. After all, who wants Someone, however divine and infallible, telling them what to do. On the other hand, telling someone else what to do might be a little more interesting. You will notice that these creationist people never seem to stay at home and try to figure out what God wants them to do. They always seem to be more concerned with what God wants other people to do.
There is an up side to divine authority as well–religions give kings and presidents and others with the capability of squashing the little people a reason not to do so–a higher divine justice and ultimate judgment as a limit to temporal absolute authority.
And I will answer the question of who decides right and wrong, good and evil, with or without a god, from the time of Mardok in ancient Babylon right down to the present. It is the people with money and power. They then select the religious group that can help them stay in power, and do everything to increase the influence and wealth of that group.
You cannot serve both God and mammon. Ken Ham does not serve God.
I have yet to meet anyone who seriously believes that “moral relativism” is rampant. In fact, few people know what it means. When I’ve pressed folks who use that phrase, I’ve found out that when someone points to another and says “moral relativist,” what he actually means is “someone whose morals are different from my own.”
Well, a moral relativist like you would say that, Bob. (wink)
Silly you.