PHILOSOPHY

NATURALISM SEES no distinction to be made between what a family does and how a family's members ought to act in it. Goodness is no longer objective, that is to say, coherent and ordered to human <em>being</em> or family <em>being</em>. Rather, it is idiopathic and subjective, the exercise of unexamined <em>common sense</em>. Bereft of moral principles, however, common sense cannot defend itself against idiosyncrasy, error, or the fabrication of meaning where none exists.  Such reductionism demands the denial of the obvious and the ruthless disavowal of objective good and evil. Naturalism recognizes no cause that is not observable in nature. Divine revelation, faith and spiritual knowledge are denounced as inappropriate means of obtaining the truth about reality. Only fools would mistake a rubber stamp for a signature or prefer cubit zirconias to diamonds, yet innumerable media sycophants shamelessly hustle pleasantness as the true meaning of the good.

The aggressive secular agenda is a playbook for wholesale aggression against human life and sexuality. Promiscuity is neither the price of freedom nor a roadmap to Shangri-la but a downward spiraling binge-purge of surfeited consumerism. There is a term for this: Original sin. The massive fact staring at us is that human beings are fallen creatures capable of creating meaning where none exists. When ordinary people give in to lassitude and give up trying to distinguish the truth from the imaginary, irrational optimism fills the void. This phenomenon is not neutral as if human beings, liberated from religious and philosophical mumbo-jumbo, are now parked at a cultural rest-stop between extremes. Rather it is a prelude to the horrifying spectacle of a civilized community devouring itself with jaw-dropping cruelty.