In a paper titled “Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law,” law professor Arthur Leff laments the impossibility of disconnecting law and religion. In his refreshingly honest assessment of the dilemma, he wrote:
My plan for this Article, then, is as follows. I shall first try to prove to your satisfaction that there cannot be any normative system ultimately based on anything except human will. I shall then try to trace some of the scars left on recent jurisprudential writings by this growing, and apparently terrifying, realization. Finally, I shall say a few things about—of all things—law and the way in which the impossibility of normative grounding necessarily shapes attitudes toward constitutional interpretation. (Source)
Despite the obscuring lawyer-speak, Leff is letting the cat out of the bag: in a random-chance world “created” by evolution, ethics cannot be grounded on anything authoritative. He admits that human will can’t be that standard, because human will varies and changes with each passing year; humans are fickle. An ethical standard must, by definition, be authoritative and binding on all humans, and yet we don’t find agreement among humans. The serial killer and the child molester are clearly wrong, but according to what standard, Leff asks.
Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths
Christianity's failure to show itself practical in the past 150 years has guaranteed the success of secularism and militant Islam, both of which are doing incalculable harm at home and abroad. The rejection of any type of ‘this-worldly’ application of the Bible has resulted in the proliferation of man-centered worldviews that have steadily drained the life out of our world and left behind a spiritual vacuum.
Buy NowEveryone has a religion—both the rabid atheist and the spiritual hippy have this in common. Similarly, every political movement begins first with a religious commitment. On today’s podcast based on Chapter 9 of Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths, Gary discusses the myth that religion and politics don’t mix. Saying they don’t is to misunderstand both topics. Religion and politics ALWAYS mix.