| Re pilot secular ethics classes in primary schools |
Some of the proposed principles set down relating to secular based ethics are all well and good, but what is the ultimate foundation for such values within a relativistic secular world view, which is absolutely sure there are no God given absolutes, and for them this is an absolute principle. Any ship with a moral rudder controlled by crew members all intent in taking the ship in different moral directions will ultimately find itself shattered on the hard shores of reality. Indeed, an estate agent told me last week that half the homes for sale in our area were the result of broken marriages, along with shattered families. How can anyone measure the direction and speed of secular ethics and values when the moral trees and signposts are moving along with the car, and in the same direction - downhill. How can anyone start out with a pitiless mindless unfeeling godless universe of "matter in motion", together with an unfeeling, pitiless, mindless Darwinian evolutionary process, (which hasn't the foggiest notion of knowing where anything and everything is evolving to, or even why.) And then suggest this is an adequate basis for human dignity, caring, ethics and altruism. Like many, the secularists and atheists have noble ideas and commendable moral aspirations, but ultimately have no basis in reality for their perceptions. The Judeo-Christian moral world view, together with the Ten Commandments, have proved largely to be a very workable formula, sufficient to sustain Western civilization for centuries. These values and ethics have provided the moral and intellectual framework for government, law, social order and conduct. It functioned on the reality that humans were by nature sinners, and thus systems of checks and balances where instituted. Such was the moral and ethical success of this world view that the Ten Commandments even providing the foundational principles for the International Covenant of Civil & Political Rights. However, when there are no God given moral absolutes to which humanity can appeal, than the individual and the state is absolute. And the ever shifting, ever changing, ever declining yardstick of situation ethics and moral relativism becomes both the secular means, and the measure. And a secular moral measuring device that is constantly changing with every situation is utterly useless.
John Heininger |