1. Don't confuse 'secular' with 'urbane.'
To be 'urbane' is to be hip, refined, suave, …a cool dude.
Secular includes this characteristic: "asserting the right to be free from religious rule and teachings, or, in a state declared to be neutral on matters of belief, from the imposition by government of religion or religious practices upon its people (Google).
2. 'Secular' is the direct result of the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. Religion was no more than superstition.
Instead of morality and the Bible, society was to be guided by reason and science, with the unspoken understanding that everyone simply knew how to behave, and, in fact, agreed with what was called 'the general will.'
The corollary of this new ethos is that there is no such thing as 'evil:' reason could now explain every behavior, no matter how hideous or villainous.
"…evil became medical instead of medieval. The diagnosis was more enlightened….It is the difference between saying 'The man is a paranoid schizophrenic, driven by homicidal delusions,' and 'The man is evil.'
The difference, of course, relates to responsibility and punishment. The paranoid schizophrenic is himself a victim…."
Lance Morrow, "Evil: An Investigation," p. 177
3. The result is how society deals with those who take the lives of innocents.
Genesis 9:6 prescribed the death penalty for murder when it said that if a man “shed the blood” of another man, by man must his blood be shed. The only law repeated in all five of the books of the old testament.
a. To add insult to injury, well-intentioned Christians will often attempt to comfort the families of murder victims by suggesting that “God works in mysterious ways” as if He were somehow responsible for allowing the murder to occur. http://www.truthortradition.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=223#null
b. "Capital punishment is to the whole society what self-defense is to the individual." "The Ethics of Life and Death," J.P. Moreland, p. 115.
c. "It is based on the assumption that normal adult beings are rational and moral beings who knew better, who could have done otherwise, but yet who chose to do evil anyway, and who therefore deserve to be punished." JPM, Op. Cit. p. 118
4. Yet a secular society supposedly based on reason and science, does everything possible to ignore reason and science when it come to recognizing evil….there is copious evidence that the death penalty saves innocent lives….
"Most commentators who oppose capital punishment assert that an execution has no deterrent effect on future crimes. Recent evidence, however, suggests that the death penalty, when carried out, has an enormous deterrent effect on the number of murders. More precisely, our recent research shows that each execution carried out is correlated with about 74 fewer murders the following year.
For any society concerned about human life, that type of evidence is something that should be taken very seriously."
Capital Punishment Works
To be 'urbane' is to be hip, refined, suave, …a cool dude.
Secular includes this characteristic: "asserting the right to be free from religious rule and teachings, or, in a state declared to be neutral on matters of belief, from the imposition by government of religion or religious practices upon its people (Google).
2. 'Secular' is the direct result of the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. Religion was no more than superstition.
Instead of morality and the Bible, society was to be guided by reason and science, with the unspoken understanding that everyone simply knew how to behave, and, in fact, agreed with what was called 'the general will.'
The corollary of this new ethos is that there is no such thing as 'evil:' reason could now explain every behavior, no matter how hideous or villainous.
"…evil became medical instead of medieval. The diagnosis was more enlightened….It is the difference between saying 'The man is a paranoid schizophrenic, driven by homicidal delusions,' and 'The man is evil.'
The difference, of course, relates to responsibility and punishment. The paranoid schizophrenic is himself a victim…."
Lance Morrow, "Evil: An Investigation," p. 177
3. The result is how society deals with those who take the lives of innocents.
Genesis 9:6 prescribed the death penalty for murder when it said that if a man “shed the blood” of another man, by man must his blood be shed. The only law repeated in all five of the books of the old testament.
a. To add insult to injury, well-intentioned Christians will often attempt to comfort the families of murder victims by suggesting that “God works in mysterious ways” as if He were somehow responsible for allowing the murder to occur. http://www.truthortradition.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=223#null
b. "Capital punishment is to the whole society what self-defense is to the individual." "The Ethics of Life and Death," J.P. Moreland, p. 115.
c. "It is based on the assumption that normal adult beings are rational and moral beings who knew better, who could have done otherwise, but yet who chose to do evil anyway, and who therefore deserve to be punished." JPM, Op. Cit. p. 118
4. Yet a secular society supposedly based on reason and science, does everything possible to ignore reason and science when it come to recognizing evil….there is copious evidence that the death penalty saves innocent lives….
"Most commentators who oppose capital punishment assert that an execution has no deterrent effect on future crimes. Recent evidence, however, suggests that the death penalty, when carried out, has an enormous deterrent effect on the number of murders. More precisely, our recent research shows that each execution carried out is correlated with about 74 fewer murders the following year.
For any society concerned about human life, that type of evidence is something that should be taken very seriously."
Capital Punishment Works
