The Flight of the Gadfly

Here’s a letter that I wrote to the Editor of the Roanoke Times this evening. Recently, there has been an onslaught of ad hominem mud slinging in the Roanoke paper. A Christian letter writer did a piece on how indefensible Islam is in light of Jihad. Then, of course, the scorching responses came, day after day, evoking Christendom’s spotty past (the Romish Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, et cetera). However, no one was addressing the real issue, Whose position is consistent with violence?

Neither was anyone mentioning the most fanatical class of all, atheistic humanists. So, being the local editorial gadfly that I am, I offered the following observations. Sadly, the pithy 200 word limit restrained my most formidable weapon—verbosity and sheer volume; I was truly out of my element!

For Sake of Fair Disclosure

In the firestorm of recent letters, regarding the violence associated with Christianity and Islam, some fair disclosure seems in order.

It appears that none has raised the most fundamental question: When violence and pogrom are means of progress, which group is acting consistently with their touchstone principles?

Additionally, the field of consideration needs broadening. Arguably, no ideology has a bloodier history than atheistic humanism, which is rooted in Darwinism. Consider Darwin’s words:

“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination...Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man...Excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed” (The Descent of Man, 1871. 168).

“Christian violence” is self-condemning. The violence of the atheistic regimes of the 20th century is self-supporting; it’s consistent Darwinism—the stronger eliminating the weaker, “in the struggle for life.”