According to LaShawn Barber, this piece of crap linking the death of Terri Schiavo to godless Darwinism is a must-read:
Next, I have titled this short entry “Charles Darwin Killed Terri Schiavo” simply to make one point: when culture as a whole embraces the idea that man is merely an animal, the random result of the chance toss of the cosmic die, a purposeless biological accident without any meaningful superiority to an ape, a dog, or a microbe, no firm basis can be provided for a culture of compassion and life. The natural realm is a savage place, and there is no reason, within an evolutionary framework, to seek such things as compassion, tenderness, or mercy. We are seeing, especially in European culture, but more and more in the United States as well, the long-term impact of a belief in not the theory of evolution, but the religion of evolution. The impact of religious naturalistic materialism is tremendously clear as we see the judiciary abandoning the rule of law (especially as law reflects God’s creatorship and sovereignty) and issuing edicts that treat man as a mere animal, or worse (in the case of Terri Schiavo).
It was because of an intution that this sort of thing was coming that I asked tubers a week ago whether they were creationists.
Doesn’t surprise me in the slightest – there’s a very strong medievalist and anti-intellectual streak in much of the evangenical and right-to-life movement, and Darwin has been one of their principal Satans for 4 or 5 generations. Evolution dethroned Man as Lord of Creation and made him just another part of the biomass, and the Christian Right has never forgiven Mr. Darwin or modern biology for that.
What I find really ironic about this is that the “tubers” a.k.a. right-to-lifers are, in this case, taking the “materialistic” position. They are the ones insisting that we have an obligation to maintain a human body alive in a state of purely biological functioning, where its level of consciousness is far below an ape or a dog (though, possibly, not a microbe). Seems to me that if you believe in the soul, in a divine spark in man, etc., you would feel that it’s completely degrading to human dignity to be kept “alive” in that condition.
Cathy, it’s eery the way they’re fetishizing the body. I half expect them to start building pyramids soon.
Deepak Chopra, somebody I don’t generally respect, made the quite coherent point on Scarborough that cognition, consciousness, is what makes us human, not simply a heartbeat. We had the same discussion over Karen Ann Quinlan 30 years ago, but I suppose we have to revisit the question each generation or so.