Tag Archives: Values

Polemics

What does the end of the universe tell us about the meaning of life?

8 Comments

Details of a recent scientific discovery from the Canberra Times.

Excerpt:

The universe is running out of usable energy and the end is nearer than expected, according to Australian National University astronomers.

[…]PhD student Chas Egan and his supervisor Charley Lineweaver from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics calculated how run-down the universe was and found it was 30 times more dilapidated than previously thought.

In doing so they measured the universe’s entropy a gauge of how ”disorderly” the cosmos is and how close it is to its cold, lifeless end.

[…]Mr Egan said all the processes that occurred in the universe increased its entropy.

”When you leave any isolated system it gets more and more disorderly,” he said.

[…]Scientists believe that end will take the form of a ”heat death”.

”All the matter currently in stars and planets will be spread out homogenously through space and it will be cold and dark and nothing will be able to live and no processes will go on.

More details of the discovery from the Australian newspaper The Age.

Excerpt:

The findings, to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, have implications not just for Earthlings but for any extraterrestrial life as well.

”We’re not just talking about our solar system or our galaxy, we’re talking about our universe,” he said.

”These constraints apply to all life forms that might be in the universe.”

What implications does this discovery have on the question of meaning and purpose in life? If nothing that we do now will survive the end of the universe, then what reason do we have to do anything?

Atheist and Christian responses to the end of the universe

We can get BOTH SIDES of the question from this clip of a formal debate featuring Christian scholar William Lane Craig and atheist writer Christopher Hitchens.

The question being debated is: “Is there objective meaning and purpose in life without God?”. Hitchens and Craig agree that without God, the universe will cool down and all life will die. And they both agree that if there is no God, then there is no objective meaning and purpose in life.

Hitchens says that he can arbitrarily choose a purpose for his life that makes him happy and fulfilled. But notice that this purpose is an arbitrary personal preference. Someone who chooses mass murder or slavery, and has the power to carry it out with impunity, has as much right to choose that purpose as Hitchens does to choose his.

What can we conclude from the atheist view of purpose and meaning?

What does it say about atheism that there is no way to distinguish between William Wilberforce and Josef Stalin? They were both just doing what made them happy, and there is no way either of them ought to have acted, and no objective moral standard by which to praise or condemn them. Some people admire Wilberforce. Some people admire Stalin. No one is right or wrong, because the choice of life purpose is arbitrary, on atheism. So long as you are happy, and the majority of people in your time and place applaud you, anything is permissible.

What would you think of a person whose every action is designed to maximize their pleasurable feelings in this life? What would you make of a person who believed that other people were just bags of atoms, with no human rights and no free will? What would you make of a person who thought that other people were just objects to be used (or dispersed) in whatever way made them feel happiest? What does a selfish attitude do to enterprises like marriage and parenting?

Is it any surprise that we have killed 50 million unborn babies as a result of our own irresponsible search for pleasure? Sex is fun, but taking responsibility for the decision to have sex is not fun. So we kill innocent people who are weaker than us in order to maximize our pleasure in this life. And why not? On atheism, there is no objective meaning in life, no objective purpose to life, and no objective moral standard of right and wrong.

News

Unemployment rate among men aged 25-54 is 19.4%

2 Comments

Check out this post over at Dinocrat. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

According to an analysis done by TIME Magazine’s Justin Fox, almost 20% of 25-54 year old men are unemployed today, a receord since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started keeping track of the data just after World War II. An unemployment rate of 20% among men in their prime is shocking. Absent the substantial government transfer payments today and the large labor force participation by women, the 20% male unemployment figure would be regarded as a national emergency.

Rome is burning. And yet Congress and the administration fiddle with crooked healthcare deals, tomfoolery such as AGW, perverse nonsense like cap and trade, imaginary “green” jobs, the treating of enemy combatants as mere crooks, etc. — and their policies towards hostile powers are even more ill-informed and provocatively weak. It’s hard to imagine a government more out of step with the people.

Here’s the graph from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing the decline since 1948. (H/T Time Magazine)

This is actually important to me, and something I am thinking a lot about. I have come to realize that marriage is really an incubator for passing on values to children that are often different from those of the state. Scholars like Stephen Baskerville and Jennifer Roback Morse have argued that the family is a buffer against the power and influence of the state. This is especially true for Christian men and women whose values are definitely not those of the secular leftist state. But where do families come from? How do they start?

In order to have a family, a man marries a woman who agrees with his worldview and values, and then they have children. It’s the man’s role to lead the family by protecting and providing for his wife and children. But that man needs a job so that he can have confidence that he can fulfill those responsibilities. The earning of money is what gives a man the respect and authority in the home so that he can lead his wife and children. Any challenge to the man’s role as protector and provider diminishes his authority to lead.

Already, I am concerned about how the massive tax burden placed on working men causes them to have their authority whittled down, since the state confiscates much of a man’s money and then provides services that he really should be providing himself. Often the services provided (abortion, etc.) are not compatible with Christianity at all! But this new statistic about 19.4% of men in their prime being unemployed is even worse, because now men are earning no money at all! How can they start a family with no income?

There really isn’t much thought going on today about the problem of how to get men to marry and stay married. Instead, people are more focused on dealing with a variety of of grievances from victim groups. I’ve blogged before about the problems that men are having in the schools today, largely due to the application of feminist theory to education. No one seems to be concerned about whether men are doing well in school, and whether they are being raised in families with actual fathers, instead being raised by government subsidies.

I think that young people really need to stop and think about what they want out of life. There seems to be a tendency today among young people to think that relationships are about fun, and that it isn’t necessary to be careful about your choice of mate because the government will always be there to take care of you if you get into trouble, (e.g. – unplanned pregnancy, abusive spouse, etc.). This must stop. We need to stop looking at the government as a substitute for making solid, long-term choices about sex and marriage.

At some point we are going to have to ask ourselves whether we are ready to abandon the family entirely and just substitute sperm donations and government checks for men. If the state is the source of money in a child-producing unit, then the state is the one who calls the tune about what the children will believe. And make no mistake – academics on the secular left are salivating at the thought of pushing their values onto the next generation of children. That is why they are hostile to voucher programs and private schools.

Related stories

Some stories from last year about just a few the problems men are facing.

There are actually many other problems that men are facing that I could have brought up, but my focus today is on education and jobs. These are serious problems and they have serious consequences.

News

Catholic church will stop all charity work if same-sex marriage passes in DC

5 Comments

From the Washington Post. (H/T Weasel Zippers via ECM)

Excerpt:

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn’t change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

“If the city requires this, we can’t do it,” Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. “The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that’s really a problem.”

This happens all the time with other charities like Catholic adoption agencies and hospitals. The left wants to force the people who actually do good to change their worldview to atheism. But self-sacrificial acts of charity are not rationally grounded by the atheist worldview. Atheists are NOT just like religious people when it comes to morality. The only standards of morality that are grounded by atheism are personal preferences and cultural fashions. Morality isn’t real, on their view. There is no objective ground for moral values and duties.

The problem with the atheistic worldview is that their purpose in life is hedonism. And there is no reason for them to care about the consequences of their actions on other people’s rights since rights are illusory on atheism. They want to pursue happiness, avoid moral obligations, and have others pay for the social consequences of their actions. They don’t care about how their selfishness hurts vulnerable children, born and unborn. And they are willing to use government to force religious people to subsidize and celebrate their selfish immorality.

The great moral accomplishment of atheists in the last 100 years has been to murder 100 million people. And this is not counting the millions of deaths caused by abortion, and environmentalist bans on DDT. It also doesn’t count the millions of broken homes caused by the sexual revolution, or the social costs of raising children without fathers who go on to commit crimes. Perhaps they should just mind their own business instead of interfering with the charity done by those whose worldview actually grounds morality rationally.