Tag Archives: Secular Humanism

News

Republican lawmaker introduces bill to protect questioners of Darwinism

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From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Excerpt:

An Arlington lawmaker has filed a bill aimed at protecting Texas college professors and students from discrimination because they question evolution.

The measure from Republican state Rep. Bill Zedler would block higher education institutions from discriminating against or penalizing teachers or students based on their research into intelligent design or other theories that disagree with evolution.

Zedler said he filed the bill because of cases in which colleges had been hostile to those who believe that certain features of life-forms are so complex that they must have originated from a higher power.

“We can have the academic freedom to have all kinds of ideas and philosophies but, lo and behold, even mention intelligent design and there are people that want to run you out of town on a rail,” Zedler said.

Zedler said fear of workplace discrimination is preventing evolution critics in colleges from speaking their minds.

“I do believe there are people that want to say something but … they’re afraid to because there are people around the country that have been discriminated against,” Zedler said.

Secular leftists place a great premium on getting “consensus” for whatever ideas provide maximum autonomy from moral obligations, whether the ideas are true or not. They don’t care whether the consensus is true, just that everyone agrees on it and that it produces good feelings. They just don’t handle differing points of view well… it confuses them and makes them anxious and frustrated. They are uncomfortable with concepts like being judged, or being punished. The don’t want anyone to disagree with their religion of materialism, which allows them to pursue pleasure apart from any objective moral obligations. Since the religion of materialism, which is so popular on the left, does away with morality, we have to be very careful to enshrine into the law protections for those who would dissent from this denial of objective morality. Otherwise you end up with cases like the Guillermo Gonzalez case or the Richard Sternberg case. There are no limits to what a materialist will do in order to keep up the illusion that no one is there to hold them accountable. They’ll believe anything. They’ll do anything. There isn’t anything in their materialism to stop them from committing atrocities. That’s why we need laws to contain their abuse of power.

A quotation from Martin Luther King, Jr. illustrates the point:

“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”

Until the time where those on the secular left learn to accept dissent, and allow debate, without resorting to insults and personal attacks, laws that protect dissenters will be necessary.

Videos

UK media discussing whether Christians are fit to be foster parents

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Here’s the video:

Basically, the state thinks that Christians cannot be parents because their individual morality clashes with the moral relativism and sexual hedonism of the state. Many (most) people of the people who agree with fascism will be on the political left. That’s why fascism is only and exclusively a phenomenon of the political left.

But not all people on the secular left are fascists.

Here’s some useful commentary about one of the speakers: (H/T Mary)

The historian, television and radio presenter, David Starkey is gay and an atheist.  He is also an honorary member of the National Secular Society.  You might therefore expect him to be clearly in favour of the ruling in the High Court this week that banned a Christian couple from fostering children because of their religious beliefs.

Starkey is not a fascist. I thought it was interesting that he mentioned his mother but not his father in the clip. Homosexuality is highly co-related with a breakdown in the relationship of the same-sex parent. When you have an absent/abusive/weak father and a domineering mother, that puts you at risk, if you are male. And the situation is reversed for women, where different environmental factors come into play, making the little girl feel devalued and vulnerable as a little girl. Parents – take heed. And be careful how you present Christianity to your children. If you present it as rules with no evidence or warrant, you will get a rebellion. If you present in the context of being informed about science, etc., within the context of a respectful, open-minded relationship, you may win the child over.

Back to the video – I thought it was interesting when the red-haired woman said that Christians could have their pro-life, pro-marriage, anti-slavery, anti-infanticide morality at home, but at work they had to object the state’s version of morality. She would fit in well in Nazi Germany or Communist North Korea. David Starkey would not have fit into to those fascist regimes at all.

Fascism is the imposition of state morality and purposes over individual morality and purposes. Conservatism limits the state’s ability to impose morality and purpose onto the citizens, and also limits involuntary wealth redistribution from one group of individuals to another. In conservatism everyone makes their own choices and pays their own way. In liberalism, the government endorses certain lifestyles over others, and transfers wealth involuntarily from unfavored groups to subsidize the favored groups – as with taxpayer funding of abortion, in vitro fertilization or sex changes. Christians are usually not favored by the state because our strong moral views conflict with the sexual hedonism that is so prevalent today. We have nothing to gain from an overbearing state, and much to lose.

Here’s a debate I posted a while back in which British fascists agree with the red-haired woman that Christians have no human rights to things like free speech, and that some group of people (atheists) have the right to silence other groups (Christians) because they are “offended”.

News

Obama administration rolls back conscience protections for health care workers

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From Life Site News.

Excerpt:

The Obama Administration has rescinded a federal regulation from 2008 that protected the conscience rights of health care providers opposed to providing abortifacient contraception, such as the Plan-B “morning-after” pill.

The Health and Human Services Department under Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, issued the new “final rule,” which leaves health-care workers of federally funded entities a narrower conscience exemption that only protects them from having to participate in abortions or sterilizations.

The new regulation replaces the earlier one enacted in the waning days of the George W. Bush administration, which broadened the interpretation of existing federal conscience statutes related to abortion to include health professionals opposed to emergency contraception, such as Ella or Plan-B, drugs which pro-life advocates say also act as abortifacients.

Sebelius alleged in the promulgation of the new final rule that the Bush-era conscience regulations “instead led to greater confusion”, citing comments received by HHS. She said her department was changing the rule because it was “unclear and potentially over-broad in scope.”

The HHS Secretary said in her statement that her department did share the concern of those in favor of rescinding the rule that it had the “potential to negatively impact patient access to contraception and certain other medical services” esp. for certain sub-populations, such as “low income patients, minorities, the uninsured, patients in rural areas, Medicaid beneficiaries, or other medically under-served populations.”

The ruling is a victory for Planned Parenthood and other “family planning” groups that have insisted that drugs like Plan-B (taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse) and Ella (taken within five-days of intercourse) should be defined as “contraception.” Pro-life groups countered that pro-life health providers should be protected from discrimination under federal statutes, because these drugs could prevent a conceived human embryo from implanting in the mother’s womb, thereby aborting it.

[…]“Today’s erosion of conscience protections for medical professionals is a blow both to medicine and the right to practice one’s deeply-held convictions,” said Dr. J. Scott Ries, on behalf of the 16,000-member Christian Medical Association (CMA).

Ries said the new HHS final rule disregarded the findings of the previous HHS 2008 final rule which stated that allowing health professionals to practice according to their convictions would negatively impact patient services or create “new barriers.”

“Losing conscientious healthcare professionals and faith-based institutions to discrimination and job loss especially imperils the poor and patients in medically underserved areas,” said Ries. “We are already facing critical shortages of primary care physicians, and the Obama administration’s decision now threatens to make the situation far worse for patients across the country who depend on faith-based health care.”

As the days go on, I find myself missing George W. Bush more and more. Say what you like about him, he was a Christian. And now we have a non-Christian (atheist) president and an atheistic administration. Things like conscience protections are naturally under attack. Naturally, people on the secular left think that the state has a right to impose their views and overrule the religious and moral views of individual citizens. That’s what fascism is – and fascism is exclusively a phenomenon of the political left. The right values individual liberty and free market capitalism.