Ours Is Not to Reason Why
Secular humanists stand accused. We are charged with the offense of making people
think. The April 17 issue of the Chronicle of Higher
Education published a two-page feature about the Campus Freethought Alliance. Along with
the eloquent comments of freethinking students, the article included a memorable
condemnation of the Marshall University group Rationalists
United for Secular Humanism (RUSH). Bobby Williamson, a Baptist studying at Marshall
in West Virginia, declared, "Students are looking to the human mind for answers, and
RUSH provides that. It disturbs me, because they are leading people in the wrong
direction." RUSH ought to be ashamed. Imagine, they actually encourage young people
to use their minds! And at a university of all places.
Waiting for God Oh!
Cheng Hengming, leader of the Taiwanese sect God's Salvation Church, prophesied that
God would appear on Channel 18 across the USA on the night of March 25. Imagine my horror
when I turned on Channel 18 that evening and saw ... me! Did this mean I was God? If so,
would I, an atheist, lose all belief in myself? Then I realized the show was a repeat of a
local cable program I filmed a few weeks before. Still, I breathed a sigh of relief the
next day when Cheng Hengming admitted that his prophecies had been "nonsense."
Satanic Titanic
Titanic
has won 11 Oscars and is already the highest grossing movie of all time.
It tells an inspiring tale of love, courage, and selflessness in the face of hypocrisy and
tragedy. Here are some Christian comments on the world's most popular movie:
- "Titanic reminds me of the distinctions between people of faith and
secularists. ... The heroes of this modern Titanic fit into this latter
category. ... [Titanic is] fundamentally immoral."
(Elizabeth Farah,
conservative commentator)
- "For millions the Titanic is now a triumphant story of how one upper-crust girl
found salvation - body and soul - through sweaty sex, modern art, self-esteem lingo and
social rebellion. Titanic is a passion play celebrating the moral values of
the 1960s as sacraments. Rose sums it up by saying that she could abandon her old life and
family because her forbidden lover [Jack] `saved me in every way that a person can be
saved'."
(Terry Mattingly, syndicated columnist)
- "The line that set me off I believe also to have been the defining line of the
film: the assertion that the sort of saving that Jack did was, ultimately, the only kind
of saving possible. If that was the thesis statement of the film, then I start looking for
the cloven hoof and sniffing for brimstone."
(Father Patrick Henry Reardon, a
philosophy professor and Orthodox priest, writing in the ecumenical journal Touchstone)
Titanic's director James Cameron seemed to confirm his critics view of the
film as promoting secularism when he said of the ship's tragic voyage: "I think I
discovered the truth of its lesson - which is all you have is today."
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