CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW MATTERS

Christian religion was never meant to be a private thing. And if your religion is private, it's not the religion of Jesus, Paul , Peter, and John.

* "Why is it OK to use the F-word in the office, but not the J-word?"
* "Why can you use the name of Jesus in a foul, cursing, abusive way, but I can't tell people I love Jesus and why I love Him?"
* "Why can someone talk about horoscopes, astrology, reincarnation, drunken parties, one-night-stands, radical drug highs and the details of our sex lives...but I can't talk about my personal faith in Jesus Christ?"
* "And when you answer those questions, tell me how you expect me then to go back to your people and teach them they should act rightly, morally, and ethically towards their fellow man."

Why the Christian Worldview Matters
http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=2826

In delivering her “personal rant” Murray complained that assisted suicide is illegal in Great Britain only because it is demanded by a “religious minority” who hold to outdated views concerning the value of human life. Furthermore, this “religious minority” also holds to the quaint belief that children have a moral obligation to care for elderly parents.

Murray began her argument by suggesting that she did not want to be a burden to her own two children as she reaches advanced years. Nevertheless, she shocked her television audience by suggesting that she does not want to be “trapped” into caring for her own mother who is currently ill with Parkinson’s disease.

In response to controversy, a BBC spokesperson said: “Jenni is angry that, having fought so hard to become liberated and independent, woman are now being trapped into caring for dependent parents.”

these arguments should demand the attention of all persons who believe in the inherent dignity of human life. We are witnessing the embrace of a pact with death.

Without doubt, this dimension of Murray’s argument—and the revealing statement released by the BBC—demonstrates the true nature of her pact with death. It is not just about ending her own life, but the obligation of others to die and get out of the way, lest they interfere with her own life plans.

Increasingly, arguments for “assisted suicide” and euthanasia are moving from claims of a supposed “right” to die to an obligation to die.

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Will Nietzsche Win?
http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=2906
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A Life Worth Living
http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=1495
Max, as some of you may know, is autistic.
But as I stood that day in Max's classroom, a troubling thought crossed my mind. Why does the public education system spend as much as $65,000 per year to tend kids like Max? He will never go to college and never get a productive job. I couldn't help but think of Peter Singer, the famous utilitarian philosopher from Princeton, and his argument that societies ought to spend their resources creating the maximum happiness for the greatest number. Singer's logic would urge us to think about how many starving children could be fed for the cost of Max's tuition. A chill came over me as I realized just how natural that argument sounds and how dangerous it is.

Singer and others, as a matter of fact, would argue against letting Max come into the world at all. And that argument has infiltrated our culture to an almost unbelievable extent. Ninety percent of couples who learn that their unborn children have a disability end up aborting them. Singer takes that mentality a step further, however, arguing that it's ethical to kill these children after they're born.
Looking at Max's life, I have to conclude that the good life is not about the sum total of what we contribute to the world. It's about loving. Utilitarianism knows nothing of love -- as Peter Singer discovered when he found himself lavishing money and care on his Alzheimer's-stricken mother, something that's completely against his own philosophy.

So the argument becomes -- why should efforts like Max's school, or taking care of very elderly people, continue if it's in our power to make it unnecessary? The person who says, "yes," to Max now and in the future can reason only on the basis of something completely other than a cost-benefit analysis. In a utilitarian accounting, Max's life is meaningless.

Truth matters, and the truth is we are creatures made in the image of a loving God, and life has an ultimate value. So beware of the smooth-talking philosophers in our midst. Their position may seem very appealing and even logical. But it's a deadly logic.

Truth matters! And it matter whether there is a transcendent supreme arbitrator, or is man to be the final judge. If that's the case then we truly are in trouble.
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The Christian Roots of Religious Freedom
http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=4917

Let's start with relativism. Many Americans think the notion that relativism -- your beliefs are true for you, my beliefs are true for me -- is a praiseworthy American value, rooted in our Constitution. In fact, as historians Gary Amos and Richard Gardiner show in their book Never Before in History, what's especially American, and valuable, is our legacy of religious freedom -- which is different.

Though often confused, religious freedom and relativism are not the same thing. Amos and Gardiner point out that the American tradition of religious liberty rests on a Biblical foundation. Why did the Puritans leave England to sail to America? Because the Bible taught them that every human being must respond to God and His Word alone, in freedom -- and no one should be forced to assent to doctrines against his conscience. While relativism denies the very existence of truth, real religious freedom upholds truth as something precious, created by God, which we may freely embrace -- or not. Never Before in History explains that our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and our entire system of government work because their framers "drew their ideas about religious liberty and separation of church and state from Christian sources."

there's a world of difference between the freedom of conscience that the Bible teaches, where truth is real and precious, and the relativism that uses the cloak of freedom to deny the existence of truth itself. Never Before in History makes the case that if we forget the foundations of our freedoms, we'll lose them
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Men without Chests.
http://www.americanvision.org/articlearchive2007/02-07-07.asp
When confronted with the charge that “atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history,” Mr. Harris dodges the accusation by claiming that atheist regimes like fascism and communism “are too much like religions.” He’s closer to the truth than he realizes. The ideological engine of atheism is evolution, and by the declaration of its own practitioners, it’s a religion. Why should we expect its practitioners not to act consistently with its belief system? As evolutionary apologist Michael Ruse makes very clear: “Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.”3 Ruse is not alone in his admission that evolution is a materialistic religion founded on unaccounted for metaphysical assumptions. “The distinguished biologist Lynn Margulis has rather scathingly referred to new-Darwinism as ‘a minor twentieth century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon biology.’ Stuart Kauffman observes that ‘natural selection’ has become so central an explanatory force in neo-Darwinism that ‘we might as well capitalize [it] as though it were the new deity.’”4
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The Religion of Evolution
http://www.americanvision.org/articlearchive/religion_of_evolution.asp
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Why All Atheists
Aren’t Monsters
http://www.americanvision.org/bwarchive/2-07%20Atheists%20Aren't.pdf
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What’s a worldview?
http://www.family.org/faith/A000001057.cfm

A worldview is the framework from which we view reality and make sense of life and the world. For example, a two-year-old believes he’s the center of the world, a secular humanist believes that the world is all that exists and a Buddhist believes he can be liberated from suffering by self-purification. Someone with a biblical worldview believes his primary reason for existence is to love and serve God, and in doing that to serve mankind.

Whether conscious or subconscious, every person has some type of worldview. A personal worldview is a combination of all you believe to be true and what you believe becomes the driving force behind every emotion, decision and action. Therefore, it affects your response to every area of life: from philosophy to science, theology and anthropology to economics, law, politics, art and social order — everything. It is the interpretive “lenses” we use for understanding what we believe is real. From our personal worldview spring all of our actions and thoughts, and it is in unguarded moments when we can really see what we believe to be true.
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Does truth matter? Truth matters! It matters whether there is a transcendent supreme arbitrator, or is man to be the final judge of ultimate morality. If that's the case then we truly are in trouble.

Ideas have consequences, and what we believe determines how we behave, what we value and care for, and what kind of society we leave out children.

"Self-evident truths," "inalienable rights," "equal protection," "limited government with delegated powers" -- all these flow naturally from the Judeo-Christian worldview.

They maintain that God is merely a creature of our imagination. Human beings were not created, they say. Rather, humans evolved by chance from slime, and they are accountable only to themselves. They are but "beasts," albeit the best of the beasts. There is no such thing as truth, no right or wrong. There is no authority greater than the state, and it is from the state that human beings are granted their rights. What the state gives, the state can take away.

The secular worldview of those who condemn religious conservatives has also had an impact on the rights and freedoms of our citizens. To assess that impact, one may again ask a few simple questions:

-- On what basis does a creature of chance claim to have worth, value and dignity worthy of the protection of the law?

-- On what basis can such a creature claim to have a "right" to resist the will of the majority or the weak to resist the will of the strong?

-- What claim can such a creature lay to inalienable rights conferred by the Creator, when the very existence of the Creator is denied?

The answers to these questions suggest that when it comes to preserving our legal rights, it is the view of the secularists, not of Christian conservatives, which is to be feared.

Thomas Jefferson rightly declared, "God, who gave us life, gave us liberty." Then he wisely asked, "Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are a gift of God?"

Whether conscious or subconscious, every person has some type of worldview. A personal worldview is a combination of all you believe to be true, and what you believe becomes the driving force behind every emotion, decision, and action. Therefore, it affects your response to every area of life: from philosophy to science, theology and anthropology to economics, law, politics, art, and social order — everything. It is the “interpretive lenses” we use for understanding what we believe is real. From our personal worldview spring all of our actions and thoughts, and in unguarded moments we can really see what it is that we believe to be true.

Peter Singer Ethics professor at Princeton says there is no sharp distinction between the foetus and the newborn baby.
He’s pushing his “extreme” views on others in the public arena.

Another questioner asked him what was the most immoral thing that he had ever done and Singer replied, “Spending too much money on myself when others need it a lot more.” Singer’s own brand of fundamentalism allows him to rationalize that spending too much money is a greater evil than killing a newborn baby.

Christian religion was never meant to be a private thing. And if your religion is private, it's not the religion of Jesus, Paul , Peter, and John.