Explain Dignity

We have had many post about the fundamental argument for the existence of God and confirmation of the Christian system.

Bahnsen says in his book Pushing the Antithesis that the naturalistic worldview cannot account for freedom.

If naturalism is true, then naturalists have no reason to believe in naturalism. The naturalists says that all thinking is but electro-chemical response of the gray matter in the material brain, and that these responses are determined by our environment. Human thinking is on the same order as weeds growing. If naturalism is true, then the advocate of the naturalistic approach is only saying he affirms naturalism because nature has determined that he would.

Naturalism contradicts freedom (and dignity). He has no reason for declaring naturalism to be true; he is just forced to say so.

Basic assumptions about human nature lead most deniers to distinguish man from the animals. Or as Aristotle would express it: higher up the "scale of being."

Take funerals to illustrate our inherent sense of dignity. In the Shanidar cave in Iraq, what evolutions claim as "Neanderthal" skeletons have been discovered with a characteristic layer of pollen, which suggests that they buried the dead with gifts of flowers. Even the far left wiki claims, "This has been interpreted as suggesting that Neanderthals believed in an afterlife." So even with evolutionary assumptions, anthropologists acknowledge the idea of human dignity.

Laws in courts is yet another example of the human race's assertion of dignity. Our entire legal system shows our inner realization of human dignity. Is that so within the entire animal kingdom? Lions, for instance, have been known to sniff their dead relatives then consume them.

Respect for the dead as evidenced in funerals and memorials is a distinctly human experience lacking any correspondence to animal activities.

If we are merely advanced animals, why can't we discover any primitive behavior in the animal response to death that "evolved" into our more advanced ceremonies? Certainly funerals have no survival benefit for the species of homo sapiens, as per evolutionary views of animal instincts. Rather funerals point to our sense of dignity and recognition of our personal values, which are wholly lacking in animals.

Idolatrous deniers cannot account for Human dignity.

Bahnsen also made me chuckle as he explained about these extreme environmentalists (tree hungers) who claim respect for all life. "They care for the environment and are kind to all living things. But if that were true then even being a vegetarian wouldn't make sense, for what of the dignity of carrots?"

What dignity, in a materialists worldview, inheres in a collection of DNA strands?

"No inherent moral or ethical laws exist, nor are there absolute guiding principles for human society. The universe cares nothing for us and we have no ultimate meaning in life" claims William Provine, his atheist worldview comes clearly to expression in this statement and certainly precludes any justification of human dignity.

Evolutionist J.W Burrow wrote the intro for a new edition of "The Origin of Species: "Nature, according to Darwin, was the product of blind chance and a blind struggle, and man a lonely, intelligent mutation, scrambling with the brutes for his sustenance."

Bahnsen says "Dignity does not rest on anything in the evolutionary Universe. It defies the law of gravity, so to speak, and just hangs there-if it is affirmed at all. As it has been put, an atheist is someone with no invisible means of support. At best, dignity is simply a human convention. And when affirmed, it becomes a contradiction in the unbeliever's worldview."

The Christian view of man's dignity is affirmed in our Declaration of Independence.


bit.ly/Dignity