I originally wrote this as a comment on Rick’s post but decided to post it on its own as well: I have gotten very interested in the way that the two main atheistic philosophies of the 1800s - Marxism and Darwinism - were adopted by governments and brought about some of the greatest darkness the world has ever seen. Marxism among many things was a war on Christian contentment. Marx seemed to hate religion so much because it taught people to be grateful even in the midst of trying and unjust circumstances. This gratitude is the root of happiness, but Marx hated it because it made people less likely to revolt. A big time symptom of Marxism is unhappiness and depression and all one has to do is look at the adherents of Marxism today to see that this still holds true. Darwinism - which when its principles are applied to governmental policy is called “social Darwinism“ - was a war on Christian compassion. The believers in Eugenics really thought that Christian charities and works for the poor were causing evolution to stagnate and human progress to stop, because it was allowing “inferior genetics” - that they supposed evolution would have caused to die off - to stay in the gene pool. This created very dark policies that, depending on how far they were taken, ranged from sterilizing criminals and the mentally ill in America to the deeply evil mass euthanasia and “racial struggle” of the Nazis. There is a lot to unpack about this - both in that the adherents of these ideologies fought each other but were at bottom extremely similar to each other in that they established totalitarian governments that sought to establish what they thought to be “good” things by force. There’s also the embarrassing endorsement of Eugenics by leaders in the Liberal/Modernist Church in those days and the switch in our day for similar leaders to endorsing Marxism. Why people can’t just trust the Bible and what it teaches about human worth, individual freedom and the fallenness of man so that we seek to create a government that protects individual liberties and guards against tyranny is beyond me. What is also beyond me is how the 1900s - where these 2 dark philosophies wrecked their havoc - has been largely forgotten in people’s minds. All people want to talk about is how America has made mistakes. We all acknowledge that America isn’t perfect and that we have our own sins - particularly slavery, segregation and abortion - but we fought a civil war to end slavery and peacefully ended segregation, all while maintaining our system of government. The same cannot be said of Marxism and Social Darwinism. They refused to reform themselves and either had to collapse or be defeated in war to change. Anyway sorry for the long post, it just felt good to say it.

Posted by Clifford Paul Engels at 2024-03-28 17:41:31 UTC