Ran across this delightful quote from Clarence Darrow.
It’s long.
And it reveals how beliefs, not laws, determine morality and ethics.
Darrow was a lawyer who made history with the ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’.
The quote below is from the defense Darrow offered on behalf of his clients.
The clients were two teenage boys who had murdered another boy in cold blood.
“Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one nineteen. They had all the prospects that life could hold out for any of the young; one a graduate of Chicago and another of Ann Arbor; one who had passed his examination for the Harvard Law School and was about to take a trip in Europe,–another who had passed at Ann Arbor, the youngest in his class, with three thousand dollars in the bank. Boys who never knew what it was to want a dollar; boys who could reach any position that was to boys of that kind to reach; boys of distinguished and honorable families, families of wealth and position, with all the world before them. And they gave it all up for nothing, for nothing! They took a little companion of one of them, on a crowded street, and killed him, for nothing, and sacrificed everything that could be of value in human life upon the crazy scheme of a couple of immature lads.
Now, your Honor, you have been a boy; I have been a boy. And we have known other boys. The best way to understand somebody else is to put yourself in his place.
Is it within the realm of your imagination that a boy who was right, with all the prospects of life before him, who could choose what he wanted, without the slightest reason in the world would lure a young companion to his death, and take his place in the shadow of the gallows?
…No one who has the process of reasoning could doubt that a boy who would do that is not right.
How insane they are I care not, whether medically or legally. They did not reason; they could not reason; they committed the most foolish, most unprovoked, most purposeless, most causeless act that any two boys ever committed, and they put themselves where the rope is dangling above their heads….
Why did they kill little Bobby Franks?
Not for money, not for spite; not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly, for the experience. They killed him because they were made that way. Because somewhere in the infinite processes that go to the making up of the boy or the man something slipped, and those unfortunate lads sit here hated, despised, outcasts, with the community shouting for their blood.
. . . I know, Your Honor, that every atom of life in all this universe is bound up together. I know that a pebble cannot be thrown into the ocean without disturbing every drop of water in the sea. I know that every life is inextricably mixed and woven with every other life. I know that every influence, conscious and unconscious, acts and reacts on every living organism, and that no one can fix the blame. I know that all life is a series of infinite chances, which sometimes result one way and sometimes another. I have not the infinite wisdom that can fathom it, neither has any other human brain”
Darrow was a Presbyterian minister who went into law because he saw it as a noble way to glorify God.*
*Actually, Darrow was a staunch atheist. If you believed the ‘minister’ line, you don’t understand anything about Presbyterians. Darrow’s defense is horrifyingly consistent with a godless worldview.
76 Responses
Good choice.
Run, jerboa, run!
Is plagiarising other people’s jokes all you got?
No.
I’ve got hours of original material.
I’ve been a successful, evangelical comedian for more than 25 years.
My claims contradict nothing.
We see intelligence everywhere.
Send me evidence that your octopus got its smarts from something other than intelligence.
Or just copy and paste your question again… Your choice.
OK, I’ll just leave it here for when (if ever) you want to engage evidence-based reality.
And the original question:
You know, I’m a little creeped out by the way our opponents stalk around on the blogs of people who comment here, looking for PERSONAL information for some as-yet-unknown master plan.
It’s the Internet equivalent of having a heated exchange with someone at a bus stop, and then following them home, just to see where they live…
Yikes.
It’s a little obsessive…and weird. :/
God, grant me wisdom, since the ones outside are watching closely…
“In wisdom, walk toward the ones outside, redeeming the time. Let your word be always in grace, having been seasoned with salt, to know how it is necessary for each one of you to answer.” 1 Cor. 4:5,6
It’s weird to not believe in God, right?
Atheism is the last superstition. 🙂
IT IS A NON-SUPERSTITION !!!
You two have finally learned something.
IT’S A NON-LEARNING PROCESS!
Creeped out that someone would read your PUBLIC blog, mrsmc? I think that’s called paranoia. You did publish your blog to have people read it, correct?
…creeped out that people are ONLY reading it in search of some incriminating personal thing they can use against me.
But, yes, by all means, search away! Open the fridge. Check under my bed. You’re welcome to stalk whenever you want.
Our fringe religious sect publishes blogs in hopes that they won’t be read. It’s a special piety for which there are vast rewards in Heaven.
Oh, and Jasmine – please feel free to give us a few of the ‘hundreds of examples of atheism’.
Please, I bow to your superior knowledge of atheism. I have no doubt you could supply them for me.
Atheism doesn’t require knowledge.
It’s held together by sheer stubbornness.
Actually, atheism is ‘held together’ by rational thought, logic and good sense.
As opposed to faith, which is belief without evidence.
Two other definitions you should be aware of by now, JB.
Faith is not belief without evidence.
It is belief without proof.
Faith is something that everyone possesses, including you.
If faith is belief without proof, and proof is evidence, then what is your evidence to support your faith?
Intelligence always arises from intelligence. I did not will myself into existence.
Dead wrong.
Intelligence (as demonstrated through the evolutionary paradigm) is a compounding thing. It rises with increasing biological complexity.
So, again: If Faith is belief without proof, and proof is evidence, then what is your evidence to support your faith?
What evidence supports your faith in this evolutionary paradigm?
I won’t even entertain such an asinine question.
To the actual question: If Faith is belief without proof, and proof is evidence, then what is your evidence to support your faith?
I’m literally laughing at you JZ!
My asinine question becomes reasonable when YOU ask it.
Throw away your antiquated faith!
Your state of wrongness just keeps compounding.
Conflating Faith with Belief (in this case, rational belief supported by a universe of hard evidence), merely demonstrates just how utterly lost you are in your pantomime world.
It is, though, a blunder you just keep repeating, despite knowing just how wrong you are to do so. This, I’m afraid to say John, indicates a severe problem. Not saying you’re mentally ill, because that would actually excuse your behaviour. Your behaviour is deliberate. You repeat this falsehood consciously, willingly, despite knowing it’s wrong, and that indicates an emotional problem you have, not mental.
So, once again: If FAITH is belief without proof, and proof is evidence, then what is your evidence to support your faith?
You made my “atheist wisdom highlight reel” again, JZ. You’re probably going to be MVP this year.
Take a gander up thread and notice that I answered this question.
Why won’t you?
Errrrum, your answer, “intelligence,” was completely and hopelessly backwards.
I did point this out to you, didn’t I?
Of course, you can try and prove me wrong. All you’d have to do is demonstrate intelligence increasing the further back we go through the evolutionary paradigm.
Good luck with that, John.
So, one more time:
No. I don’t have to prove you wrong.
You have to provide evidence for why your FAITH in evolution makes sense. The same question you’re asking of me.
You know this.
Stop asking me to give a different answer from the one given above.
Defend your faith or be quiet.
Tantrums, I’m afraid John, won’t ever make Faith equal Rational, Evidence-Based Belief.
So, when you can demonstrate that a 200,000 years old human being (with 200,000,000,000 neurons) is less intelligent than a 550 million years old octopus (with 500,000,000 neurons), and that a550 million years old octopus is less intelligent than a 1.5 billion years old protozoa (with zero neurons), then, I’m afraid, your “answer” is nonsense on stilts.
Sorry.
Everything in your list came from an infinitely intelligent source. That was my answer from the beginning.
Now, prove me wrong. (Or are you the only one allowed to say that?)
”Everything in your list came from an infinitely intelligent source.”
Oh really?
That’s a “claim,” John, not “evidence.”
You do know the difference, don’t you?
And worse, it’s a claim, John, that is not based on anything. Indeed, it flatly contradicts everything we see. It contradicts the pattern, where increasing complexity correlates PRECISELY to increasing intelligence.
So, until you can demonstrate that a 200,000 years old human being (with 200,000,000,000 neurons) is less intelligent than a 550 million years old octopus (with 500,000,000 neurons), and that a550 million years old octopus is less intelligent than a 1.5 billion years old protozoa (with zero neurons), then, I’m afraid, your “CLAIM” is nonsense on stilts.
Sorry.
Murder is wrong because we are created in the image of God.
God assigns intrinsic value to human life. It is His to give, and His to take.
God does not assign the same value to animal life. Scripture even demands the death of an animal that takes a human life.
Apart from God’s decree, there is no basis for the sanctity of human life.
God put within us a knowledge that murder is wrong. Lions tearing into each other, be they adults or cubs, are not murdering, for murder is defined (at least until someone decides to “redefine” it) as “the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought”. Or so says Webster. I think he gets it pretty well.
People often call murderers “animals”, because they think of the act of murder as sub-human.
So murder is illegal because it is first immoral. What is immoral is agreed upon by a society (in today’s usage of it). Society agreed upon it because they know within them the value of human life. Not because of a biological imperative, but because of their Creator.
If one argues that murder is wrong because of a biological drive, perhaps for the survival and thriving of the species, then it would make sense for them to advocate the killing of the elderly, the infirm, the sterile, or those with harmful genetic defects that could be carried on to future generations. To kill the poor and unproductive would make the rest stronger and make more resources available to the rest. We prune plants after all. But we are not animals with consciences.
The fact that we are created in the image of God, with a divine moral code, drives us to compassion for the weak, poor, and old. Gives us the sense that life is to be valued in more than a “survival of the species” way. I am kind to my neighbor because he was created in the image of God. I do not steal from him for the same reason. Not for the fear of being caught or the fear that he would steal from me. I do not kill him because he bears the image of God. I treat the poor as well as the rich for the same reason. The child with Down syndrome has as much intrinsic God-given value as does the brightest Nobel laureate. The most sinful to the purest in heart, as well. The sterile as well as the fertile. The unborn as well as the healthy or the bedridden centenarian.Or even the Oakland Raiders fan (Sorry, Lord. But it had to be said).
I have no anger in my heart or disdain or mockery for unbelievers. I long for them to believe and know the joy of serving their Creator. I have no power of persuasion to change men’s hearts, but I pray for them, that the Lord will do His “magic”. I am but a wanderer and pilgrim on this earth, telling others about God’s love and forgiveness for sin. It is my job to preach the Gospel. It is His job to change hearts. I will be faithful, whether I am mocked by the media, whether my faith and my God is attempted to be explained away by the scientist, or whether persecuted by the government (and maybe one day prosecuted). My faith is not based on some “woo woo” experience or cool thing God has done for me, or because I seek prosperity. or am simple or uneducated or superstitious. It is built on a firm foundation that is unshakeable. I have certainly understood how Job felt when life crumbles around you, and yet still say “Though he slay me, I will hope in him.” (Job 13… read the chapter if you dare. If you are truly brave, read the whole book. Truly humbling.)
We all build our lives on a foundation. I pray the foundation you build it on is secure, O reader who has endured my prolix missive to the end.
An excellent article that is much more articulate that I have been in my attempt to avoid another novelette (though it might be too late for that):
https://bible.org/seriespage/lesson-19-sanctity-human-life-genesis-91-7
Dave
Psalm 119:81 (ESV)
My soul longs for your salvation;
I hope in your word.
P.S. – Psalm 119, in its entirety, is another beautiful expression of a man’s faith, even during struggles. Tolle lege!
Dave,
All those same directives are in the Koran – are you sure it isn’t Allah who is the creator?
Of course, you cannot be. This little treatise is another example of what you BELIEVE to be true. Just think – millions of other people in the world believe something different than you – and they’re all RIGHT!!! You are, too! Oh, joy!
I mean, JB’s got his very own god in his very own head and look how smug it makes him! Amazing, isn’t it? 🙂
I’m pretty sure there are hundreds of different variations of atheism, and yet you’ve settled on one as “the right one”. Why is the idea that there is only one God that is right seem so weird to you when you guys have done the self same thing?
Also, why does atheism seem to be excused of having a worldview? I don’t care what you claim as truth, whether that be evolution or that we descend from a line of magical leprechauns, it still comes with a worldview.
Maybe we should have the Atheist explain what they would tell Darrow, if he were sitting across the table from him. How would you correct his bad thinking? (JZ may notice this is similar to the question I asked a few weeks ago, about how he would talk a suicidal person of a ledge. The question he never answered.)
Pretend I’m Darrow. Counsel me. Show me why I’m wrong.
Pat Robertson – oh, and Phil Robertson – are fellow Christians, John. You must sing their praises, do you?
Do you know how silly you sound?
Neither Pat Robertson nor Phil Robertson would suggest that killing a kid is no different from killing a spider.
Silly is your attempt to distance yourself from your atheism. If there is no God, Darrow’s defense is logically sound.
Actually, if you are talking about gods, there have been – what – 5000 of them?
A few more than 5,000, Carmen. He’s just some
http://i1027.photobucket.com/albums/y336/johnzande/some-gods_zpsnelz77cb.png
Since John B. Is the expert on gods, I’d expect him to know that. .. Not me, the old heathen! 😉
Sure. And Darrow rejected every one of them. It’s from that enlightened atheist worldview that he wrote the above quote.
Darrow is a fellow atheist, Carmen. Why aren’t you applauding this?
Darrow believed in just one less god than you, John.
You’re an atheist to all these othjer gods, except your Middle Eastern god, the god of the Pentateuch, Yhwh.
Wow! I’ve never heard that before, JZ!
*crawls back under bed to cower*
He’s doing some verbal side-stepping on this issue with Ark on the last thread, JZ. Apparently because JB’s conception of his god is completely unique, he feels that he doesn’t deserve that kind of pinpointing. But he’s not a deist!
Carmen, are you an atheist or not?
Yes, I am. Here’s the definition: a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in gods. Period.
No worldview there, John.
Brace yourself, Carmen. Here comes John’s classic Straw Man: Atheism is full of content!
Don’t press him on trying to prove this, though…. He’s not big on backing these dolls up.
Got it.
A void.
Carry on.
I’m sure you have. What’s interesting is that you’ve never let any of it sink in.
It soaked in.
I considered it and dismissed the argument as futile.
Certainly your towering intellect has already surmised the problem(s). Please brief Carmen so she doesn’t re-post this lame argument somewhere else!
I see no problem.
Please, if you think there is one, enlighten me…
Most of the women in the world are not my wife. My wife continues to exist even if you go ‘one woman less’ than me in your beliefs.
I am a non-resident in regards to every city on Earth except one. To just go ‘one city more’ doesn’t erase my citizenship (or make me homeless).
Your argument assumes that ALL God theories are equally plausible. It erodes the possibility of ever finding answers. Whenever we need to choose one right answer from a group of possibilities, someone can always say, “You rejected all those answers, why settle on this one?”
I could say exactly the same thing to you in regards to your book. “You don’t believe those other religious books, I’m just going one less book than you.”
Just because there are thousands (or millions) of incorrect theories doesn’t mean that ALL theories are incorrect.
Ah, there’s your problem, and the flaw in your reasoning. You are pleading for special attention to be paid to your particular Middle Eastern deity.
Sorry, but the answer is, No.
You see John, all god hypotheses ARE equally plausible.
More people believed in Shiva than Yhwh for millennia… So, by your popularity reasoning, that would make Shiva more plausible in a historical context, right?
See your problem?
I made no special plead for any God.
I made no statement about plausibility being based on popularity.
The popularity of a hypothesis has no bearing on its truthfulness.
The problem is that you’ve inserted stuff I never said.
And if ALL God theories are equally plausible then that includes your own.
See your problem?
No, that was what you were implying. Don’t be shy, just say so.
If ALL God theories are equally plausible, why did you settle on yours?
Because mine is the exception. It is true.
That about wraps this up, doesn’t it?
See how special pleading works, John?
Yes.
Everyone special pleads for their beliefs.
But your beliefs are REALLY correct.
Wow, you’ve even exceeded your usual state of wrongness here, John. Congratulations!
Rationally justified beliefs require no special pleading… Or do you often find yourself arguing for the existence of, say, gravity?
You seem to have a tremendous problem in distinguishing between rational belief and irrational belief.
To your credit, though, you’re thoroughly consistent in this blunder.
Let me save you some typing. Your contempt for me is understood. You needn’t preface every post with a reminder.
“Rationally justified beliefs require no special pleading.”
…that’s a special pleading isn’t it?
And you are, of course, the arbiter of what is ‘rational’. Correct?
And John, in case you didn’t notice, women are real. I can even present quantifiable evidence for their existence… If you need it.
But all women are not my wife.
Sorry. I thought you were keeping up…
You’re missing that little intrinsic detail: women are real. Would you like me to present evidence for them?
I’ll hand it to you, though, John, you have an astonishing skill in presenting ridiculous arguments with flawed analogies. I believe Sirius Buzinus has pointed out another on your other post.
You don’t believe that males are women, I just go one gender less than you.
Sweet Neptune, you’re a veritable factory for pumping out these hilariously juvenile straw men dolls, John.
Add another one to your Lego box.
Hey, JZ.
Strawman Argument:
“A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent’s argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not advanced by that opponent.”
A direct quote is NOT an argument.
I wasn’t refering to the quote, rather your Magic-Doll-Making-Act at the end.
Pray tell us what a ‘godless worldview’ is. . .
Your worldview is a godless worldview.
Just what would that be, specifically, since you seem to know so much about me and my views.
That there is no such thing as God.
There’s no such thing as unicorns and sprites, too, and their non-existence doesn’t change the way I (and I suspect Carmen, as well) conduct myself.