Right and Wrong and Free Speech

I came across this today which amazingly continues on the theme of my Right and Wrong post. This is from an article in response to Obama's U.N. Anti-Free Speech resolution; as USA Today stated "the Obama administration has joined a U.N. effort to restrict religious speech." From the John Birch Society, "It has been pretty clear that the Obama administration does not look with particular favor on the second amendment, but it is also becoming increasingly evident that the President is not much of a ‘fan’ of the first one, either...The Obama administration has marked its first foray into the UN human rights establishment by backing calls for limits on freedom of expression."

Apparently, Obama described the measure as a method to stop blasphemy and to protect religion. Yet why, world wide, are people being persecuted for saying "homosexual," being "anti-gay," by classifying disagreement with abortion as "hate speech," etc? These things may show intolerance, but they do not deal with religion or blasphemy.

So what is the common thread running through all these speech prohibitions? The standard being applied is not one of blasphemy.
It is offensiveness.

Thus, what’s happening here is not religious but quintessentially secular. After all, blasphemy is predicated on the idea that external, universal, unchanging laws (God’s laws, the Truth) dictate that certain things really are sacred and that we must respect them, that we must, in a manner of speaking, avoid “offending” God. Yet [they] are only concerned about offending man. And in making “man the measure of all things,” they are guilty of a typical atheist mistake. That is, if there is no Truth (a notion that reduces morality to opinion) who is to say it’s wrong to offend people?

Moreover, making man god and then saying “Thou shalt offend no god” is far scarier than anything Mideastern Imams conjure up. This is because blasphemy prohibitions are actually fairly limited, only pertaining to impious utterances relating to a certain religion. Yet, since the secularists are using that which “offends man” as the yardstick, and since man comprises thousands of groups the world over, there conceivably is no limit to the number of speech prohibitions such a standard could spawn (Selwyn Duke).

Obama says he is stopping blasphemy, but his blasphemy has nothing to do with God. Looking at his war on Fox News, Obama seems to define blasphemy as anything that contradicts him. He has out rightly attacked Fox News, attempting to stop their reporting. The other major news agencies, having watched the circus the last few weeks, have finally banded together with Fox.

Now, I know all the articles I have quoted are extremely conservative. I apologize for that. I actively sought for a balanced perspective on this UN Free Speech discussion. Shockingly, none of the larger media other than Fox have touched this; but it is moving like wild fire on the smaller sites and blogs. And obviously my support for an eternal Right and Wrong only comes from conservatives. As Selwyn Duke put it:

An atheist would say that religionists' reasoning is based on a silly assertion; namely, that the divine exists. I won’t argue that here but will only say that the secularists’ offensiveness-based speech laws are silly regardless of the facts. After all, while secularists’ relativism dictates nothing can be wrong, they claim it’s wrong to offend others. They also claim nothing can be sacred but yet would have us treat certain people’s feelings as sacred.

They just don't make sense...

Right and Wrong and Math

Here are the principle points of People’s Law as practiced by the Anglo-Saxons…[point number three] The laws by which they were governed were considered natural laws given by divine dispensation, and were so well known by the people they did not have to be written down (5000 Year Leap, p 13).

It is interesting how the more I read about the Constitution and early US Government, the more I hear about Natural Law. Our Founders, and the majority of people at the time, believed in Natural Law which, simply and roughly put, is God’s unalterable Law. It is a divine, eternal right and wrong. Today, Natural Law has been erased almost completely. Modern dogma states that there is no way to know absolutes, and it is inappropriate to judge others by your belief. In example, why is homosexuality wrong if there is no eternal law on sexual reproduction? Why is anything wrong, for that matter? Who said cheating, or lying, or stealing, or killing is wrong? If not God then society. You may say, “but I make up part of society, and I really see no reason for those things to be wrong. And why deny physical desire? I want it now. Who came up with abstinence, tolerance, patience? If not God then society; my friends and I say ‘wait no more.’ In the words of Better Than Ezra, ‘If it feels good, do it. If it tastes great, drink’ (Teenager).”

I feel the battle in our society is not whether this or that is right or wrong, but whether there is right or wrong. If there is no wrong, then whatever the majority desires is correct. However, if there is no wrong, there is no right. No right, no good; no good, no bad.

This argument just seems ludicrous to me.

Abraham Lincoln said, "When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion." Why did he feel good when he did good or bad when he did bad? Why do you? For that matter, why does charity and service exist in the world at all? Why does the general populous not lie, steal, and kill? It makes no sense for us not to do any and everything we can to get gain. So there has to be something more at play here. Example: if the government stopped punishing murder, that would not suddenly make man, woman, child, willing to go out and kill. Yes, I’m confident the murder rate would soar. But I believe that those increased murders would be primarily committed by the same few who now kill. The majority would still be horrified at the idea of taking life. Why is that so, if there is no absolute right and wrong?

I find solace in mathematics. In math, there are rigid laws set in place that function under all conditions and through all time. As you undoubtedly know, 1 + 1 can only equal 2. It did so six thousand years ago. It does so today. It will tomorrow. Saying there is no absolute right and wrong, no Natural Law, is like saying the natural law of math allows for 1 + 1 to equal 2, 3, 271, or whatever the public majority feels like this certain year. ‘Who are you to say that it equals 2 and all the rest of us are wrong for saying it equals 271?’



This argument is far larger than I care to make at this point; far larger, in truth, than I have yet thought out. But it seems to me that since there is a law that clearly states mathematically that there is a right and there is a wrong, and that law is the foundation of everything in our existence, then it seems odd to ignore its implication in human interaction and ethics. It was the mathematical law that allowed the Egyptians to build the pyramids. It is this same law that today thrusts humans into the void of space. It is this same law that dictates the decoding of DNA and the formation of cells within us. It is the same law that shows when, say, chemicals inhaled from cigarettes reach a certain threshold, a chain reaction occurs within the body. Or that cells die in the absence of oxygen after so much time. It also dictates the formation of planets, the movement of their paths, and the fusion in stars.

The natural law of mathematics is the basis of everything and it empirically points out the validity of absolute rights and wrongs.

Our nation was built upon Natural Law, despite what the prevalent thought de jour may claim. On July 4th, 1776, Congress declared that they were “to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them,” (Declaration of Independence, para 1). Again, who said there is wrong and there is right? Who said that free sex, drugs, and killing babies is wrong? If not God, then who? Our founding fathers knew these things were wrong. Just as the 1776 congress and Lincoln, I surmise that when I do good, I feel good and that Natural Law decrees it; just as 1 + 1 equals 2.