I've just read the article entitled; "God's Murderers" By Charles Cutter Apr 14, 2005.
He discusses the issue of anti-abortionists committing murder as they pursue their cause. He raises important issues with which I agree, except his last points. I quote:
"It's important to remember that we needn't look to foreign groups like al-Queda to find those who hate America - people who believe their religious beliefs trump both the law and human life. This country has its own crop of home-grown terrorists, zealots who believe their god has sanctioned the acts of murderers".
Firstly, Mr. Cutter (although he may realise it) does not point out that his two mentioned types of terrorists, are exactly the same in nature. They both believe that God has given them the right to murder and kill; that God has made them judge of all; that the laws of the state MUST be subservient to the law of God.
Mr. Cutter's 'home grown brand' of terrorists, are not a different (to Al-Queda) group of people, they are the same people living in two different places, sharing the same vision.
One could justifiably (though perhaps not correctly) conclude that Mr. Cutter's real purpose is to attack 'religion' as a specific 'antisocial' entity. To do so would be to ignore the positive examples of a civil society that is based on or associated with religion, be it Christian, Muslim or otherwise.
While it might be said that he pictures the 'religious' involved in these mentioned incidents, as representative of all religious people, that is definitely not true. The people he mentions are in exactly the same mold as the other terrorists he mentions. They are all terrorists, backing up their claims by reference to God.
Now as to his statement that these home-grown terrorists believe that their god has sanctioned the acts of murderers, he has in fact explicitly demonstrated that these same terrorists are exactly like all those 'non religious' Americans, who believe that their god - 'human rights', gives them the right to murder the innocent, defenseless and unwanted. If you can kill an unborn child because it is unwanted, and it's presence is an inconvenience, it is not a big step to do the same to the aged.
In fact, the 'zeal' of the abortion activists, inherently identifies them as zealots, and given that there is no 'true sentient God out there', (as the atheists believe), God is then nothing more than a core value with which one identifies and which justifies or condemns certain behaviours, and as such, 'human rights' can legitimately be defined as a 'god'.
In this case, the abortionists and the murderous terrorist anti-abortionists, are both murderers justifying themselves by faith in their own particular 'gods'.
Mr. Cutter equates the actions of the anti-abortionists as being those of people who hate America. This I doubt. What I do know however, is there are plenty of people in the world who do hate America, and one can be sure, that if America were conquered, even Mr. Cutter would find 'religion'; either that of the conquerors, or through a return to his nominal one.
Although what I now write might be seen as irrelevant to what has proceeded, I would like to draw your attention to an article just released at TechCentralStation entitled: Reflections on the Revolution By Paul J Cella
The article commences with:
- "We are in a war of a peculiar nature. It is not with an ordinary community, which is hostile or friendly as passion or interest may veer about; not with a State which makes war through wantonness, and abandons it through lassitude. We are at war with a system, which, by its essence, is inimical to all other Governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace or war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. So Edmund Burke wrote near the end of his days, describing the awful marching modern spirit that animated Jacobin France -- a spirit which has beset us with its morbid vigor ever since."
It continues with:
- "We might say that the French Revolution was the culmination of a brewing revolt: the final break-up of Christian Europe and the debut of the Modern Age. .... That Edmund Burke writing in 1789, knew better than E. J. Payne writing in 1875, means the life of the mind of man regressed in some palpable and central way, even as most everyone of stature proclaimed its progress........He knew the secret truth: that a society usually must be civilized before it can really go bad; that great civilizations do not so much fall backward into barbarism, as march headlong into it with eager gleaming eyes and sophisticated sermons. Barbarism masquerading as progress is often the proud boast of a society grown morally rotten."
Much of modern society and its' ways, are neither progressive nor illumined. They are barbarisms eagerly marched into by self-styled sophisticates of our time.
Abortion on demand, is just one of many examples.
Nobody cares much if one person dies in a car accident, but everybody seems to care if 200 people die in an airplane crash.
Whatever the religious might preach, at the end of the day, what they are fighting for is a return to civilised society, in which deviations can be ignored; rather than an 'in your face' deviant society, in which civil behaviour is despised.
Additional reading from TechCentral Station: Religioso, Ma Non Troppo By Glenn Harlan Reynolds
- But Americans really don't like busybodies telling them what to do. The decline of the Left as a political force in America coincided precisely with its shift from a politics of individual freedom to that of tut-tutting politically-correct nanny-statism. I suspect that if the religious Right decides to emulate the Left in this regard, its influence will evaporate in similar fashion. R eligious, yes. But not too much.
R.P.Bendedek
Email: rpbendedek@hotmail.com
R.P.BenDedek is the pseudonym of the Author of 'The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran' (www.kingscalendar.com), and is a guest columnist at Magic City Morning Star News. An Australian, he currently teaches Conversational English in China.
King's Calendar Social Commentaries.
The King's Calendar is a chronological study, of people and events listed in the Bible, Josephus, and The Damascus Document of the Essenes. It both confirms and challenges many cherished concepts in relation to Biblical Infallibility and Bible History, The Dead Sea Scrolls, the writings of Josephus, the Reign of Nebuchadrezzar, Moses and the Exodus, Jeremiah's Seventy year prophecy of the Babylonian Exile, Daniel's Vision of Seventy weeks, and discrepancies between the Septuagint and Masoretic Texts of the Bible.