Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Matt 24 watch, 119: The UK's trend to delegitimise and penalise Christians under false colours of Anti-Discrimination Law

Hardly has this blog taken a moment to address the Bull Guest House case when a fresh ruling by High Court Judges in the UK further underscores the key problem that Mike Judge complained of previously:
Discrimination law is meant to act as a shield to protect people from unfair treatment, not to be used as a sword to attack those whose beliefs you disagree with.
That is immediately deeply troubling, given that UK precedents have significance for the thought of our own judiciary in the region. 

A concern that is multiplied for British Overseas Territory jurisdictions like Montserrat where (under the prompting of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office), very similar anti-discrimination provisions have been written into our new Constitutions.

So, we need to put the current cases under the microscope, noticing with Mike Judge how:
[t]he same laws used against the Bulls [and which have threatened their livelihood and the sanctity of their home]  have been used to shut down faith-based adoption agencies that want children to have the benefit of a mum and a dad who are committed to each other in marriage. Children were sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.
Indeed, we must now wonder with Mike Judge as well, if "Personal liberty may be next."

In this fresh case, as

There is no place in British law for Christian beliefs, despite this country’s long history of religious observance and the traditions of the established Church . . . . 

Lord Justice Munby and Mr Justice Beatson made the remarks when ruling on the case of a Christian couple who were told that they could not be foster carers because of their view that homosexuality is wrong. 
The judges underlined that, in the case of fostering arrangements at least, the right of homosexuals to equality “should take precedence” over the right of Christians to manifest their beliefs and moral values. 
In a ruling with potentially wide-ranging implications, the judges said Britain was a “largely secular”, multi-cultural country in which the laws of the realm “do not include Christianity”.
Campaigners for homosexual rights welcomed the judgment for placing “21st-century decency above 19th-century prejudice.




Rom 1: 19  . . . what may be known about God is plain to [men], because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

 28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.


Britain is now a “largely secular”, multi-cultural country



live in real dominion over others
Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent . . . .



. . . if I cannot but wish to receive good, even as much at every man's hands, as any man can wish unto his own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire which is undoubtedly in other men . . . my desire, therefore, to be loved of my equals in Nature, as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to themward fully the like affection. From which relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn for direction of life no man is ignorant.
Assume (per impossibile) that atheistic naturalism [[= evolutionary materialism] is true. Assume, furthermore, that one can't infer an 'ought' from an 'is' [[the 'is' being in this context physicalist: matter-energy, space- time, chance and mechanical forces].  (Richard Dawkins and many other atheists should grant both of these assumptions.)
Given our second assumption, there is no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer an 'ought'. And given our first assumption, there is nothing that exists over and above the natural world; the natural world is all that there is. It follows logically that, for any action you care to pick, there's no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer that one ought to refrain from performing that action.
Add a further uncontroversial assumption: an action is permissible if and only if it's not the case that one ought to refrain from performing that action . . . We've conformed to standard principles and inference rules of logic and we've started out with assumptions that atheists have conceded in print. And yet we reach the absurd conclusion: therefore, for any action you care to pick, it's permissible to perform that action. If you'd like, you can take this as the meat behind the slogan 'if atheism is true, all things are permitted'.
For example if atheism is true, every action Hitler performed was permissible . . . . 
Now, we all know that at least some actions are really not permissible (for example, racist actions) . . .









2 comments:

IlĂ­on said...

Growing up, we attended one of those churches which had the End Times all charted out, thereby "proving" that present-day Christians (at any rate, those in N.America) would not have to face persecution as so many Christians have over the ages.

But, in my heart of hearts, I have always believed/feared that that was wishful thinking, and that we would face ferocious persecution in my lifetime. I could be wrong (and certainly hope I am), but recent-and-ongoing events look to me like setting the stage for persecution and mass-murder of Christians.

We certainly need to be aware of what is going on, such as you discuss here, and speak out while we can.

GEM of The Kairos Initiative said...

Ilion

Life is a rose garden -- complete with thorns.

Little while ago, when I was looking up Alice edu programming language, I saw how the Minister for Minorities in Pakistan was just murdered, because he was concerned for said minorities, especially Christians.

Positively demonic, that.

We need to do some sober re-thinking about what we are doing, and where we are headed.

Right now, this UK thing does not look so good. And a lot of people are blind to implications of playing games like that with core liberty issues.

Somehow, we don't like to learn from history. In this case, 2,400 year old history that we just saw underscored over the past 100 years.

G