The effort to subvert moral responsibility is not just something that’s just abstract and philosophical, it’s not limited to the college and the university and to the think tank; it is filtering its way down into the legal system; it is working its way down into the educational system; and it’s working its way through popular culture. One of the things we need to be watching is how an effort to subvert moral responsibility begins to gain traction in this society, because here is the inevitable result: if no one is responsible, then nothing is ultimately right and nothing is ultimately wrong. The loss of moral responsibility means moral anarchy, and that means not only do we lose the concept of what it would mean to be a parent, and try to teach a child, or to be a judge and try to reach a verdict, or frankly just to live next door to a neighbor and know whether you can trust that neighbor; it comes down to the fact that it reduces what it means to be human to being just one more animal, one more among the species in the animal kingdom. And one of the sad things we need to note is that there are those who are alive today who operate from worldviews that would have us reduce humanity to the level of just any other animal. And that, dear friends, is something we have to see, detect, discern and confront.
Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Audio Sermon 08/21/2008
I wanted to post this quote because my previous entry, as well as my next major entry, are both about free will, and this is more or less a perfect representation of what our opponents believe. This is their clarion call. They are confused and scared, and people who are confused and scared lash out. This is why we are engaged in a culture struggle which started when Giordani Bruno was burned at the stake for defending the view that the Earth turned around the Sun, and can only end with one side being utterly extinguished. The fight against the free will delusion is just another new front in this struggle.
Thanks to Naturalism.org.
The Prime Directive 
I’m guessing you wouldn’t agree with the criminal justice system part of the piece.
I wouldn’t agree with ANY part of the piece! LOL! At least, if it’s as theologically-oriented as the quote…
Interestingly enough, Mohler is a Calvinist so; I find it funny that he is running around warning of the dangers of subverting moral responsibility. At the base of his worldview is the assertion that God predetermined every single action that every creature would ever perform. Fulke Greville’s famous adage comes to mind: “created sick, commanded to be well.” The only way that this assertion, which is fundamental to all Calvinists, is made to not undermine even the slightest account of responsibility is to import pure sophistry. Freedom is merely doing what you desire to do and well, it just so happens that God preloaded you with those very desires that you can’t help but obey: compatibilism. I really don’t see how theists like that can say that blind, natural processes undermine responsibility, while the cold, arbitrary, and brutal hand of a celestial dictator have it come to fruition. Clearly for naturalists, responsibility is in the here and the now; it’s something that we create, nurture, and grow. Though unaware, the theist’s assertion undermines moral responsibility in this life and in the next. There are really only three options for a case such as Mohler’s. He’s willfully ignorant, blissfully unaware, or has a bad habit of projecting.
Good catch, walkthejosh! I didn’t know he was Calvinist. How deliciously ironic.
[…] judgment, and that this absence of moral judgment will cause the downfall of human civilization (for example). Some simplistic criticisms of evolutionary psychology by constructionists have likewise argued as […]