What happens to the children of parents who espoused the Christian faith? Franky Schaeffer has repudiated his father’s work and much of his own work he did with and for his father. Josh Harris has denounced the faith of his father, Greg Harris. Jonathan Merritt is promoting same sex everything. His father is James G. Merritt, the Senior Pastor of Cross Pointe Church in Georgia.
Ronald Reagan, Jr. is a self-professed “unabashed atheist.” He did a video ad promoting the anti-Christian advocacy group Freedom from Religion Foundation. Appropriately, the 30-second ad ran during the 2012 Democrat presidential debate. The Democrat Party has become the Atheist Party. In 2012, the Democrats voted to remove “God” from the Party’s platform. After some pushback (optics), “God” was reinstated, probably because the Party’s God is the State, and the Dems are OK with that.
Against All Opposition
The starting point is the God of the Bible. The Bible begins with this foundational presupposition: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ (Gen. 1:1). Against All Opposition lays out the definitive apologetic model to help believers understand the biblical method of defending the Christian faith.
Buy NowWith the election of Joe Biden, a variant form of Roman Catholicism is being tolerated by the Left. Nancy Pelosi has appealed to her Catholic faith for some time. But when it comes to abortion and homosexuality, Biden and Pelosi are far from the fold. They talk religion and hold to “a form of godliness, although they have denied its power” (2 Tim 3:5). They, like many politicians, take God’s name in vain.
Actually, neither party cares that much for the one and only God. He gets in the way of so many godless policies.
Here’s some of what Ron Reagan said in that ad:
Hi, I’m Ron Reagan, an unabashed atheist. I’m alarmed by the intrusions of religion into our secular government. That’s why I’m asking you to support the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the nation’s largest and most effective association of atheists and agnostics working to keep state and church separate, just like our founding fathers intended…. Ron Reagan. Lifelong atheist. Not afraid of burning in hell.
Let’s be clear, the Constitution doesn’t say anything about the separation of church and state. That was settled long before the Constitution was drafted and voted on. Christians believe in a jurisdictional separation between church and state. None of our founders believed in separating God from government.
Does the First Amendment require a secular government as “our founding fathers intended”? Is the First Amendment violated when Christians apply biblical principles to public policy issues like stopping legislations that supports women from killing their preborn babies, redefining marriage, working for true justice, and limiting the power and authority of the State? The Civil Rights Movement was founded by ministers who used biblical arguments to support their cause even if some of them today (e.g., Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Rev. Raphael Warnock, Democrat Senator from Georgia) abuse their claims to be following God’s will. The anti-slavery movement in Great Britain and the United States was led by Christians. Atheists can’t account for why enslaving people is morally unjustified. “If we are all biological accidents,” as atheists claim, “why shouldn’t the white accidents own and sell the black accidents?”[i]
I wonder what Ron Reagan would say to Democrat Senator Cory Booker who appealed to Micah 6:8 to defend one of his policies:
He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the LORD require of you
But to do justice, to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God?
Here’s the thing, “atheists use Christianity in order to … beat Christianity. It is easy to point to medieval atrocities, etc. But these are only atrocities to us today because we are viewing these through a Christian lens. As [Rene] Girard[ii] offers: if someone went to the Roman [government] two-thousand years ago with some complaint of justice or past atrocity (e.g., the taking of native lands, demands for reparations, etc.), the response would be ‘Who are you? You are not a citizen.’ After which, a death sentence would be proclaimed.” (Source)
As an atheist, Ron Reagan can’t account for goodness, love, or justice because we are, given the dictates of atheists, animals. Lewis Dartnell begins his book Origins: How Earth’s History Shaped Human History with these four words: “We are all apes.” Actually, we’re much less than apes given the operating assumptions of atheists. We’re descendants of pond scum.
John West of the Discovery Institute had this to say about the real-world implications of Darwinism, the religion of atheists like Ron Reagan, in a must-read interview with J. C. Derrick in World Magazine:
Where has Darwinian thought had the most influence on society today? The area of faith. Darwin’s theory wasn’t just about change over time—it was that we’re part of an accidental process. So Darwin has been the greatest gift to people who would like to deny that God exists. But it’s gone way beyond that: We’ve seen Darwinism used to devalue human life, because Darwin thought humans are basically animals. At the end of On the Origin of Species he says it’s through death, disease, and starvation that the best things have come about in nature.
It seems like some of these ideas are not always connected to Darwin because people read On the Origin of Species without reading his later book, The Descent of Man. Exactly. I have met scholars who say Darwin has nothing to do with religion or morality—it’s just about science. I ask: “Have you read The Descent of Man?” No. That is where Darwin talks about religion, morality, mind, and social policy, about how he thinks we’re destroying the human race by inoculating people against smallpox and helping the poor.
Let the weak die on their own. Correct. Darwin was a kind and compassionate man, so he worried about the implications, but that’s what he thought the theory meant. He thought that if we follow reason, we probably shouldn’t be doing things to help the people he thought were defective.
When atheists argue that it’s OK for the State to kill preborn babies, atheists are using the State to enforce its beliefs. Forcing schools to promote atheism is not neutrality.
The Leftist anti-Christian hate group Southern Poverty Law Center has a version of Amos 5:24 engraved in stone outside its offices. It was a favorite Bible passage of Martin Luther King, Jr. “It was the civil rights movement and many religious leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and others who, based on Christian convictions, pushed back and made [the] view [of Darwinism] unfashionable.” You see, atheists can’t live consistently with their matter-in-motion worldview, so they borrow the moral shell of the Bible and redefine its language to suit their bankrupt worldview:
But let justice roll down like waters
And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Again, there is no such thing as “righteousness” and “justice” in an atheist worldview.
On March 16, 1776, “by order of Congress” a “day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer” was proclaimed where people of the nation were called on to “acknowledge the overruling providence of God” and bewail their “manifold sins and transgressions, and, by a sincere repentance and amendment of life, appease his righteous displeasure, and, through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, obtain his pardon and forgiveness.”
Congress set aside December 18, 1777 as a day of thanksgiving so the American people “may express the grateful feelings of their hearts and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor” and on which they might “join the penitent confession of their manifold sins … that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance.” Congress also recommended that Americans petition God “to prosper the means of religion for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which consists in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.”
On April 30, 1789, George Washington took the oath of office with his hand on an open Bible. After taking the oath, he added, “I swear, so help me God.” Following Washington’s example, presidents still invoke God’s name in their swearing-in ceremony.[iii] The inauguration was followed by “divine services” held in St. Paul’s Chapel, “performed by the Chaplain of Congress.”[iv]
Atheists like Ron Reagan cannot account for what’s right or wrong, moral or immoral, just or unjust given the operating assumptions of a materialist microbe to man worldview or dismiss how Christianity was one of the firm foundation stones of our nation.
“Until a few hundred years ago, no one would have considered … not believing in God (or the gods) would be like not believing in gravity. Kind of silly once you start walking down the stairs.” (Source)
Apologetics 101
Apologetics 101 is an in-depth study of defending the Christian faith. The Greek word apologia simply means ‘defense,’ and apologetics is the art and act of giving a defense. Christian Apologetics then is the art and act of defending the Christian faith, not a proof of God in general. The Christian apologist must be ready to answer truth claims about the Bible, not claims about Hinduism, Islam, or any other false religion. The Bible makes the bold claim that Jesus is the ONLY way, and the Christian apologist must set his sights on the Bible alone, not on a defense of arbitrary theism.
Buy Now[i]James Scott Bell, The Darwin Conspiracy (Gresham, OR: Vision House, 1995), 64.
[ii]René Noël Théophile Girard (1923–2015) was a French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science.
[iii]Richard G. Hutcheson, Jr., God in the White House: How Religion Has Changed the Modern Presidency (New York: Macmillan, 1988), 37.
[iv]Anson Phelps Stokes and Leo Pfeffer, Church and State in the United States (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 87.