Think Outside the Box
Dr. R. Chris Metcalf offers a counter point to various issues introduced in recent books by Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. Please note that these responses are excerpts taken directly from Letter to a Christian Nation: Counter Point. Since Dr. Metcalf is writing as if responding to a letter, they are often written in the second person :
On Embryonic Stem Cell Research
more to come...
Many others have written equally important articles on religion's influence in American culture. Articles recommended by Dr. Metcalf will be listed here:
Why Religion Matters: The Impact of Religious Practice on Social Stability by Patrick F. Fagan, PhD (courtesy of The Heritage Foundation)
more to come...
This portion of Matthew's gospel is quoted on page 10 of Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. He writes:
"Many Christians believe that Jesus did away with all [the Old Testament] barbarism in the clearest terms imaginable and delivered a doctrine of pure love and toleration. He didn't. In fact, at several points in the New Testament, Jesus can be read to endorse the entirety of Old Testament law." (Page 10, LTACN)
What Mr. Harris fails to include is the critical preceding verse. In Matthew 15:17 we read:
In his new book responding to Mr. Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation, R.C. Metcalf writes:
Woven into this one verse we discover the sine qua non … the summum bonum of the Christian faith. Jesus’ purpose here on earth was to fulfill the law, not only by living in total obedience to the law, but also by paying the penalty each of us rightfully incurred by the necessity of our own sin. God offered himself, through His son, so that those who place their trust in Him will not suffer the punishment for their sin. This leaves us free to follow Christ by adopting His (not the Old Testament's) moral teachings here on earth and to enter eternity in God's good graces. (LTACN:CP, p. 6)
John wrote, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” (John 1:8) Jesus was the only person who could unequivocally make such a claim." John's claim amounts to the fact that all of us are, in reality, sinful. Whether we break the law in only one point or in many, we all do break the moral law of God. Richard Dawkins asks, “What kind of ethical philosophy is it that condemns every child, even before it is born, to inherit the sin of a remote ancestor?” (The God Delusion, p. 251)
Dr. Metcalf writes, "We are not all born with the burden of Adam’s specific sin pressing down upon us. Rather, we are each born with an inherent tendency toward sinful behavior; a sense of selfishness that yields a desire to promote our own personal happiness." (Page 6, LTACN:CP)
Dr. Metcalf adds, "Contrary to always being morally virtuous, most of us would categorize [our] behavior as sinful at times, even if only in the sense that, in the process, we may cause suffering to others. From the moment of our birth, we exhibit selfish behavior. But, you may argue, don’t all babies disturb their mothers by crying in order to be fed? Isn’t this behavior morally neutral? Isn’t this simply a necessity that assures our survival? Yes, yet this same tendency toward selfishness, that assures our survival past infancy, causes one child to hurt another simply to obtain a coveted toy. Suddenly, what originally assured survival and promoted our personal happiness has become a means by which we promote human suffering."
In fact, Dr. Metcalf would argue that original sin, an inherent aspect of all humanity since the time of Adam, has been transmitted genetically throughout the entire human race. Dr. Dawkins, in his book The Selfish Gene, recognized that genes themselves, though not cognizant, contain a "selfish desire" for immortality. Even so, he failed to see the connection between the selfish gene and the Christian doctrine of original sin. While natural selection will always select against altruism at the level of the individual organism, it will vastly favor an individual organism's selfishness. It is this "selfish" characteristic of genes that leads to inherent individual selfishness, which in turn assures survival of the fittest.
Since every gene is endowed with a "selfish" nature, the trait of individual selfishness must be located diversely throughout the genome. As such, a "gene for selfishness" will most likely never be isolated.
A genome full of "selfish genes" can only yield a selfish organism ... endowed with original sin.
