The Kosher Gourmet by Ethel G. Hofman: The former president of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, whose members included the likes of Julia Child, is back with contemporary Shavous cuisine: Ruby Fruit Soup, Sweet Noodle Kugel with Cheese, Key Lime Curd, Calsone Casserole Frittata with Wild Mushrooms, Sun-dried tomatoes and Olives, Baked Tilapia with Pepper Cheese Cream and Brown Sugar Shortbread
May 24, 2012
Jeff Jacoby: The peace process battered Israel's reputation
Melissa Healy: National strategy on Alzheimer's disease aims to halt it by 2025
The Kosher Gourmet by Joyce White : GOODNESS GRACIOUS: GREENS! 4 winning recipes that are no longer just for down-home folks (Includes expert tips & techniques)
Jett Stone: Forget face-lifts and fake knees. Scientists have seen the fountain of youth --- and it's broccoli
The Kosher Gourmet by Chef Mario Batali: The famed chef's vegetable dish that tastes true to the season: FAVAS AND SUGAR SNAP PEAS WITH POTATOES AND TARRAGON
Sergei L. Loiko: Putin sends warning to U.S., NATO in Victory Day speech at Red Square
Mary Rourke: How being a 'mentch' got Vidal Sasoon his start and fighting in Israel's War of Independence provided him with confidence and a strong sense of his own identity
The Kosher Gourmet by Betty Rosbottom: Gleaming with its golden, crimson, and snowy white hues, this silken smooth and creamy STRAWBERRY ORANGE TRIFLE looks impressive, but is easy to prepare
May 9, 2012
John Rosemond: Parents, stop destroying the American male
Valerie J. Nelson: Maurice Sendak, author of 'Where the Wild Things Are,' dies at 83
A Plea to Atheists: Pedophilia is next on the Slippery Slope; Let us turn back before it's too late
By
Rabbi Moshe Averick
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
It is axiomatic that in the world of the atheist there is neither morality nor immorality, only amorality. This is often misunderstood to mean that atheists have no values. That conclusion would clearly be erroneous. To associate atheism with amorality is not to say that atheists have no values, they certainly do; amorality is a commentary, not on the existence of values, but on the significance of those values. Since in the atheistic worldview we are nothing more than upright walking primates, our value systems have no more significance than those of our jungle dwelling relatives. In the Darwinian view, the human is to the cockroach as the cockroach is to the paramecium. To imagine that we are something "more" is just that: a product of the human imagination.
It would be absurd then for the atheist to suggest that the pronouncements of any individual or society obligate others to behave accordingly. For the atheist, morality is simply a word that is used to describe the type of system that an individual or society subjectively prefers. Each society establishes, maintains, and modifies its values to suit its own needs.
"Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibalistic country." (Samuel Butler)
It becomes obvious that these values will shift and metamorphose to accommodate changing needs, attitudes, and preferences. In my own lifetime I have witnessed radical societal swings in moral behavior and attitudes regarding marriage and sexuality, homosexuality, the killing of unborn children, euthanasia, and the use of illicit drugs.
FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO GUTSY NEWSLETTER
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". HUNDREDS of columnists and cartoonists regularly appear. Sign up for the daily update. It's free. Just click here.
One can reasonably predict that as the infatuation with skepticism and atheism grows among the influential "intellectual elite" of our society, so too will their readiness to embrace more radical changes in moral values. Religious believers expressing dismay and horror at the ominous moral storm clouds looming on the horizon are met with smug derision, hysterical counter-accusations, or utter indifference. There is nothing that atheistic societies are incapable of rationalizing and accepting --- including the sexual molestation of children.
No doubt, this assertion will appear preposterous to some atheists, and will spark outrage. Yet the logical and philosophical consequences of atheists' belief systems are inescapable. When asked by journalist William Crawley if he thought that pedophilia was "just wrong." Professor Peter Singer of Princeton University — a world-famous philosopher of "ethics" — responded as follows:
"I don't have intrinsic moral taboos. My view is not that anything is just wrong…You're trying to put words in my mouth. "
Singer went on to explain that he is a "consequentialist." For the benefit of the philosophically challenged let me explain "consequentialism" in a nutshell: If you like the consequences it's ethical, if you don't like the consequences it's unethical. Thus, if you enjoy child pornography and having sex with children it's ethical, if you dislike child pornography and having sex with children it's unethical. In an article entitled "Heavy Petting," Singer likewise gave his stamp of approval to bestiality. As a reward for producing such pearls of wisdom, he has been granted the privilege of teaching our children "ethics" at an Ivy League university. Moreover, he is by no means the only atheistic philosopher industriously engaged in greasing the precarious slope on which Western society totters. Hence, my "plea" to atheists, for the philosophical groundwork for the acceptance of pedophilia has already been put in place by such philosophers.
Joel Marks, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the U. of New Haven, who for 10 years authored the "Moral Moments" column in Philosophy Now, made the following, rather shocking about-face in a 2010 article entitled, " An Amoral Manifesto."
"This philosopher has been laboring under an unexamined assumption, namely that there is such a thing as right and wrong. I now believe there isn't…The long and short of it is that I became convinced that atheism implies amorality; and since I am an atheist, I must therefore embrace amorality…I experienced my shocking epiphany that religious fundamentalists are correct; without G0d there is no morality. But they are incorrect, I still believe, about there being a G0d. Hence, I believe, there is no morality.
Marks then quite boldly and candidly addresses the implications of his newfound beliefs:
"Even though words like "sinful" and "evil" come naturally to the tongue as say a description of child molesting. They do not describe any actual properties of anything. There are no literal sins in the world because there is no literal G0d…nothing is literally right or wrong because there is no Morality…yet we human beings can still discover plenty of completely naturally explainable resources for motivating certain preferences. Thus enough of us are sufficiently averse to the molestation of children and would likely continue to be…
At this point the utter intellectual (and moral) bankruptcy of Marks' position becomes apparent. After correctly concluding that a world without the Divine is free from the shackles of the illusory concepts of morality and immorality, he pathetically attempts to have his cake and eat it too by suggesting that there is something "good" or "better" about the preference to being averse to child molestation. One does not know whether to laugh or cry at this dismally transparent exercise in grasping at straws. Isn't that very point the entire difference between "preference" and "morality?"
The recognition that there is something inherently and intrinsically abominable in child molestation renders the act immoral, rather than merely not to one's taste. Morality implies that there are principles of behavior that are part of the very fabric of reality; principles which Dr. Marks understands can only have significance if they come from the Almighty. Preference, on the other hand, is subjective and notoriously capricious. As in: I prefer chocolate ice-cream over vanilla. I prefer jazz to hip-hop. I prefer that people have sex with adults instead of children and the family pet.
However, as Dr. Marks acknowledges, others have different preferences, no less valid than his own. Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins University proclaims: "If I were to see the case of a boy aged ten or twelve who's intensely erotically attracted toward a man in his twenties or thirties, if the relationship is genuinely totally mutual, and the bonding is genuinely totally mutual…then I would not call it pathological in any way." (In view of his professional opinion, I wonder how many neighbors are courageous enough to arrange play-dates for their children at the Money residence.)
On August 17, 2011 a symposium sponsored by an association of mental health professionals called B4U-ACT took place in Baltimore, Md. The official brochure declared:
"This day long symposium will facilitate the exchange of ideas among researchers, scholars, mental health practitioners, and minor-attracted persons who have an interest in critical issues surrounding the entry for pedophilia in the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association."
In plain English, this is a symposium whose goal is to facilitate the removal of Pedophilia from the American Psychiatric Societies official list of Mental Disorders (DSM). B4U-ACT has already coined a bland, innocuous, and inoffensive term to make the idea of child-sex more palatable: "minor-attracted persons." This phrase sounds almost pleasant, distinctly unlike those nasty and soon-to-be-politically-incorrect words like "pedophile" and "child molester." (How does pedophobic grab you?) Not surprisingly, the featured speaker is Dr. Fred Berlin of Johns Hopkins University, a colleague of Dr. John Money. Child advocate, Dr. Judith Reisman disclosed that the conference is part of a strategy to condition people into accepting pedophiles: "The first thing they do is to get the public to divest from thinking of what the offender does criminally, to thinking of his emotional state…to empathize and sympathize…You don't change the nation in one fell swoop, you have to change it by conditioning."
Although first published nearly two decades ago, a special issue of The Journal of Homosexuality called "Male Intergenerational Intimacy" edited by three prestigious scholars (all PhD's) gives us a taste of what is to come:
"In contemporary Western society, intimate sexual relations between men and boys are considered as immoral…regardless of the emotional contexts in which they occur [not according to Joel Marks and Peter Singer!]…the current social climate makes it rather difficult to look at these relationships in an objective way…man-boy relationships are not uncommon. As in homosexuality, man-boy sexuality occurs and not seldom in a context in which both partners consent…in these relationships a diversity of feelings are or can be expressed: affection, attachment, desire, domination and submission…men who feel attracted to boys have to legitimize their feelings toward themselves as well as towards society."
All we are missing now is a scholarly "scientific" study which informs us that we have finally isolated a "man-child attraction" gene! An old German expression comes to mind: "So fangt es immer an"— "It always starts in the same way." What also comes to mind are the lyrics of an old Barry McGuire protest song from the 60's:"And you tell me over and over again my friend, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction?"
The atheistic notion that life emerged randomly from ancient Earth's prebiotic slime, coupled with the Darwinian belief that humans are no more than intelligent chimpanzees, leaves us morally bereft. In a society whose schools consider it a noble undertaking to teach a teenage boy how to use a condom, but streng verboten to teach him that the Divine has forbidden us to steal or murder, how can one anticipate anything other than a gaping and ever-expanding moral sinkhole? While there exist real challenges in determining exactly what the Almighty requires of us in the moral sphere, let us, at least, agree on the following before it is too late, and move forward from there:
All men are created in the image of the Lord and are therefore inherently and intrinsically precious
All men have been endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights and among these are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
Thou shalt not murder
Thou shalt not steal
Thou shalt not bear false witness
Thou shalt not commit adultery, incest, or bestiality
Thou shalt not have sex with children, and if you do you will be looked upon as a disgusting and contemptible criminal and will be treated as such
Thou shall teach these laws to your children
We hold these above truths to be self-evident, not by proxy of some pragmatic social contract that can be amended and revised as often as societal whim and convenience demands, not as the result of the pompous and vapid philosophical musings of so called professors of "ethics," but because they reflect the eternal, immutable, and absolute moral laws that emanate from the Almighty, the Creator of the universe and all mankind.
A wise man once observed that while belief in the Divine after the Holocaust may be difficult, belief in man after the Holocaust is impossible. The choices before us are clear: we will either seek a transcendent moral law to which we will all submit, or we will seek our own personal and societal indulgence. If we turn to Him in our quest to create a moral and just world, we have a fighting chance; if not, we are doomed to spiral into the man-made hell of the human jungle.
Interested in a private Judaic studies instructor — for free? Let us know by clicking here.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and the media consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Rabbi Moshe Averick is an Orthodox rabbi and author of Nonsense of a High Order: The Confused and Illusory World of the Atheist. It is available at a 15% discount by clicking here and in Kindle edition for $4.99 by clicking here . He can be reached via his website at http://rabbimaverick.com/
