Posted by
Jan@Oasis on Monday, April 13, 2009 11:54:15 PM
I'm pretty sure I heard Christopher Hitchens say something today about people not needing reigion because it has "nothing to do with morality, and humans are born with an innate sense of what is right and wrong." Hoo boy. I may be paraphrasing; I HOPE I'm delusional, but it sounded like that is what he said. I can only assume that not only does Mr. Hitchens have no children, but that he has never actually met one either. I, on the other hand, have known quite a few human infants and children, including three of my own, and I am here to tell you that the only innate sense humans have at birth is "GIMME!" Gimme milk, gimme sleep, gimme attention, gimme Mama. Babies are not born good, nor are they born bad. They are born innocent, but they are no more born with any innate sense of morality than they are born with a degree in math. And anyway, if one is an atheist, who in the world has determined what is moral or not? You? Me?
I know Dr. Laura commented on whether one can raise moral children without religion, and I have purposely not watched her video on the subject, because I want to put down my own thoughts first. I can attest to the fact that I have never encountered a baby or child with an innate sense of morality. On the contrary, if you are going to try to raise children with only YOU as the Higher Authority, it's going to be Lord of the Flies at your house and I don't want to be your kid's teacher or neighbor or even live in the same city as you. I've seen these kids roaming the malls and streets and schools like hungry little monsters, demanding and whining and stomping their little monster feet and terrifying their parents and everyone else in their path. These are the kids whose parents have decided to be their friends and not to try to force anything on their little darlings or frustrate them in any way. When they realize that their children are lying, stealing, cheating, smoking dope, swilling booze, failing in school and just generally wreaking havoc, they are going to do what, exactly? It's a little late for "because I said so." Though that worked for me on a number of occasions, it was mostly because my children already knew I wasn't their friend. For years I was referred to here and there as a "mean mom." Good for me.
I didn't take my children to church. I had been a Presbyterian, but that church didn't really speak to me as I felt my church should. I figured I knew all the stuff, and I could just sort of infuse it into my kids without actually doing the formal church/Sunday School thing. I think now that was a huge mistake, though my children all turned out fine. They missed something though, and now we have all come back to church as Lutherans and all my grandchildren have always gone to Christian School. I would hate to offer my children what I guess the atheists must be offering: um, nothing means anything (how can it, if we are just random collections of cells who happened to get hatched onto this earth with no plan, no purpose, no soul?) and you're just here by accident, but hey, you shouldn't murder anyone or steal or cheat because, um, well, my innate morality tells me those things are wrong. Oh yeah? Who says? If atheists are teaching their children to behave morally, it is because of our Judeo-Christian values that they have any sense of what morals ARE. Also, if one is truly an atheist, why does one feel the need to write a book called "God is not Great," since by one's own admission one does not think there IS such a thing as "God." I don't believe in fairies, and I have yet to feel compelled to write a book about them, since I don't think they exist. I feel like I am running around in circles on the hamster wheel. Lefties often make me feel this way. Sigh.
ANYHOO, I am thrilled to be back at church, for the world is an ugly place to try to navigate on one's own without some framework of higher values and a sense that there is meaning in life. It amazes me that anyone could look into her child's eyes and not see something more than a mere human, attached to earth, never to soar above it all. No wonder atheists are crabby and morose. Most religious people I know are happy, kind, thoughtful, helpful and grateful. The few atheists I've heard often sound angry and irritable. And from a strictly practical point of view, I really think the United States must refute Odumbo's claim that we "don't consider ourselves a Christian nation" (notice how he threw "muslim" in there, as if that psychopathology is equal to Judaism or Christianity), because as we can plainly see, countries and people who believe in nothing are no match for nuts who believe strongly in SOMETHING. Check where Europe is going, and let's not go with them. Great Britain has abandoned the Anglican Church for islam dressed up as appeasement and political correctness, and before you know it England and Germany and France and Holland will all be overrun by and subjugated to islam. Why not? They have nothing to counter it with.
As for an innate sense of right and wrong, which is where I started--if you do not TEACH your children morals, they will be amoral. It is not human nature to do the right thing. Human nature is what we must try to rise ABOVE, and our religious foundation is truly helpful in that endeavor. I don't care what Christopher Hitchens thinks, or what any atheist thinks for that matter. I see no point in his trying to denigrate the faith of the majority of the people in the country he chose to be a citizen of. As I told my nephew in Germany when he wished for the "death of the fundamentalist Christian movement," be careful what you wish for. When the Christians move out, islam moves in, and while I cannot for the life of me remember any roving bands of fundamentalist Christians attacking people, cutting off their heads, raping them or torturing them, drowning women in swimming pools for being seen with men who are not related to them, locking women in padded rooms and leaving them there until they go mad and die, ALL those things happen when islam rules, and perhaps one might, if one thinks hard, be able to see a DIFFERENCE or two between the Judeo-Christian religious views and the islamic psychopathological ideology. "Religion" does not poison anything. It provides us with a sense of holiness to which we can and should aspire, and to which we can teach our precious children, our gifts from God, to aspire as well. I shudder to think of the day we do lose the sense of being a Judeo-Christian country, for it will sound the death knell for the United States. Go back to church America, or start going if you never have. Prove that once again Obama is out of touch and completely clueless as to what this country is all about. While he is kowtowing to the Saudis (his muslim brothers), reassert our faith in the Judeo-Christian values that MADE THIS COUNTRY WHAT IT WAS when it was the best country the earth has ever seen. It could be again, but not without those values and the moral absolutes therein.