On a more serious note, there are many hurting people out there who are currently ignoring God’s answers to their problems, driven by the false hope of human autonomy. Hopefully, this series will lead them to consider their relationship to their Creator and help them to find the abundant life that is available to all who believe (John 10:10).

How do I propose accomplishing this? Having laid the foundation in the prologue as noted above, I have then moved on to establish the historicity and reliability apart from any supernatural content, first of the Old Testament (Part 1) and then of the New Testament (Part 2) documents, including the accuracy of the transmission to present day.  In short, if you are to reject the Bible’s claims simply because it records supernatural events, you do so based on false a priori assumptions and not on the basis if facts. Oh, and furthermore, to be consistent, you must also reject all of recorded history, because the Biblical documents are, in fact, better attested to than any other extant literature of antiquity. Historical revisionists might not have a problem with this since they wish to engage in Doublethink anyway, but anyone interested in the truth should find this level of irrationality abhorrent.

Continuing the chain of logic, I then turned to the content of these reliable documents to ask the question, what is there here that suggests that the source of these manuscripts goes beyond the naturalistic explanation of human authorship (thus the series title, More than men’s writings)?

The first line of evidence examined was that of prescience (Part 3), particularly in the areas of astronomy and medicine. There we saw that the Bible contains statements of scientific fact that were made long before the technology existed to discover them. How does one account for this? How does this fit into a godless world view? Were the Biblical authors just really good at guessing? (And yes, we covered extraterrestrials as a source for this information there despite the total absence of any evidence for such despite what your atheist friends might have told you.) Well, we begin to see coincidence stretching to the breaking point with the facts presented in the post under that topic.

Ordinarily, I would now turn to a different line of evidence than the one to which I will turn, but the timing of this post being so close to Easter, I will skip ahead to a consideration of the events surrounding that which so many celebrate this weekend (and which so many despise), especially since it goes directly to the heart of Christianity.

On a technical note, I will be referencing many passages of Scripture in what follows without putting the text in this post. The reader is strongly encouraged to look them up in the version of his or her choice to ensure I am not taking anything out of context.

JESUS CLAIMS TO BE GOD

The first thing we must consider is that Jesus Himself claimed to be God in several ways:

He made Himself equal to God (John 5:15-18): to call God “my Father” was in the Jewish mindset a clear claim to being equal to God. That’s why they responded the way they did; they understood Him even if modern man has a problem doing so.

He claimed to be one with the Father (John 10:28-33): the word “one” in verse 30 is in the neuter, meaning one in essence and nature, not one in purpose, meaning, or goals. Again, note the response of the audience (vs. 31) and their own reason for doing so (vs. 33).

He claimed to be the Son of God, a title which expresses equality with God in that time and culture, not the limp “we are all children of God” expression modern liberals would have you believe (Matthew 16:15-17). Even His enemies confirm his assertions (Matthew 27:41-43).

He forgave sins, exercising a prerogative of God alone (Mark 2:5-12): note that verse 7 clearly shows that they understood what Jesus was claiming.

He claimed to be YHWH God, the Great I Am (John 8:56-59, compared to Exodus 3:14; John 8:24, 28): were He not doing so, then it would seem that when your audience is picking up stones to throw at you would be a fine time to correct their misunderstanding!

Lastly, he was, in fact, tried and sentenced for claiming to be God (Matthew 26:59-66;  Mark 14:60-64; John 19:5-7).

Rationally, this brings us to a trilemma: there are only three alternatives to explain these claims. First, His claims were either true or they were false. If they were false, then either He knew His claims were false and He was a consummate liar, or He did not know His claims were false, in which case He was a raving maniac. If they were true, then He was and is God and needs to be worshipped as such. It really is as simple as that.

C. S. Lewis points this out eloquently:

“I’m trying, here, to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him. ‘I am ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who is merely a man and said the sorts of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher; he would either be a lunatic on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg, or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”[1]

For those who think they have no problem assuming Jesus was either a liar or a lunatic, Lewis more pointedly explains:

“The historical difficulty of giving for the life, sayings and influence of Jesus any explanation that is not harder than the Christian explanation is very great. The discrepancy between the depth and sanity and (let me add) shrewdness of His moral teaching and the rampant megalomania which must lie behind his theological teaching unless He is indeed God has never been satisfactorily got over. Hence the non-Christian hypotheses succeed one another with the restless fertility of bewilderment.”[2]

THE PRE-RESURRECTION FACTORS

The core of Christianity lies in the historicity of the resurrection. It is one of the primary evidences God Himself uses to testify to the deity of His Son (Romans 1:4), another reason we spent time on showing that He claimed to be God. If it did not happen as an event in history, it is of no consequence theologically. Paul points this out in 1 Corinthians 15:13-19 when he explicitly says:

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up—if in fact the dead do not rise. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.

This core historical issue is related to the previous one in that Jesus claimed on multiple occasions recorded in all four Gospels that He would be raised from the dead (e.g., Matthew 12:38-40; Mark 10:32-34; Luke 9:22-27; and John 12:34). Wilbur Smith makes the connection thus:

“If you or I should say to any group of friends that we expected to die, either by violence or naturally, at a certain time, but that, three days after death, we would rise again, we would be quietly taken away by friends, and confined to an institution, until our minds became clear and sound again. This would be right, for only a foolish man would go around talking about rising from the dead on the third day, only a foolish man, unless he knew that this was going to take place, and no one in the world has ever know that about himself except One Christ, the Son of God.”[3]

Now let us give serious consideration to the circumstances, the historical realities/facts, at the scene in Jerusalem. The first point is that prior to the resurrection, Jesus was most assuredly dead. The Romans, rather experienced in administering death, and certainly familiar with its appearance, were convinced (Mark 15:43-45; John 19:33-34). The Jews were convinced (Matthew 27:62-64). Those who buried him were convinced (Matthew 27:59-60; Mark 15:46; Luke 23:52-56; John 19:38-42). And these were all eyewitnesses who, in many cases, handled the dead body, in sharp contrast to modern day critics who weren’t there by definition! The Jewish preparation of a body for burial was rather extensive. We will get to that in a moment. The point is, only an idiot would assert that Jesus had only fainted from pain on the cross (yet that is a theory that has been put forward to allegedly explain the miracle away…seriously!).

Next there is the tomb. It was a real tomb and He was buried by friends in it. And the Jews knew there was a tomb and knew where it was; otherwise, how would they have placed a guard at it? (Matthew 27:62-66)

We now come to the burial process. Michael Green tells us:

“The body was placed on a stone ledge, wound tightly in strips of cloth, and covered with spices. St. John’s gospel tells us that some seventy pounds were used, and that is likely enough. Joseph was a rich man, and no doubt wanted to make up for his cowardliness during the lifetime of Jesus by giving him a splendid funeral. The amount, though great, has plenty of parallels. Rabbi Gamaliel, a contemporary of Jesus, was buried with eighty pounds of spices when he died.”[4]

Next we must examine the evidence of the stone used to seal the tomb. These were typically 1.5-2 tons. There were minimally large enough for a group of women to believe they could not roll it away (Mark 16:3). Frank Morison (a lawyer who set out to disprove the resurrection and ended up being convinced by the evidence and becoming a Christian) discusses the situation:

“Let us begin by considering first its size and probably character…no doubt…the stone was large and consequently very heavy. This fact is asserted or implied by all the writers who refer to it. St. Mark says it was ‘exceedingly great.’ St. Matthew speaks of it as ‘a great stone.’ Peter says, ‘for the stone was great.’ Additional testimony on this point is furnished by the reported anxiety of the women as to how they should move it. If the stone had not been of considerable weight the combined strength of three women should have been capable of moving it. We receive, therefore, a very definite impression that it was at least too weighty for the women to remove unaided. All this has a very definite bearing upon the case….”[5]

In addition to the stone, it has a seal affixed thereon. A. T. Robertson tells us the method of sealing the stone was:

“…probably by a cord stretched across the stone and sealed at each end as in Daniel 6:17. The sealing was done in the presence of the Roman guards who were left in charge to protect this stamp of Roman authority and power. They did their best to prevent theft and the resurrection, but they overreached themselves and provided additional witness to the fact of the empty tomb and the resurrection of Jesus.”[6]

This brings up the Roman guard (Matthew 27:62-66). Linguistic and internal (Matthew 28:14) evidence indicates this to be a Roman guard and not the Temple guard. This is significant because we know a considerable amount about the nature and character of the Roman soldier.[7] The military discipline of the Roman army was exceedingly strict; 18 offenses were punishable by death, including desertion, losing one’s weapons, leaving the night watch, or falling asleep on the night watch! In a 16 man security unit, each man was trained to protect six square feet of ground. Thus, sixteen men in a square of four to a side were supposed to be able to protect 36 square yards against an entire battalion and hold it. We are obviously not talking about a bunch of pansies in miniskirts holding wooden spears, as you might sometimes see in modern artwork. It thus becomes exceedingly unlikely that a group of timid untrained fishermen could overcome such opponents to steal away the body, another preposterous theory put forward to explain the empty tomb.

And that brings us to those disciples. Simply put, they were scared out of their ever livin’ lovin’ gourds and running any which way out of there (Matthew 26:56; Mark 14:50)! Peter and John were notable exceptions, but of course, Peter soon denied he knew Jesus as vehemently as possible. Only John seems to have been immune, being at both the trial and the cross at the end with Jesus’ mother, Mary. Again, these are not a likely band of grave robbers three days later.

THE POST-RESURRECTION FACTORS

The post-resurrection factors are most formidable. The primary one is, of course, the tomb deprived of its occupant: no body! Professor E. H. Day explains:

“If it be asserted that the tomb was in fact not found to be empty, several difficulties confront the critic. He has to meet, for example, the problem of the rapid rise of the very definite tradition, never seriously questioned, the problem of the circumstantial nature of the accounts in which the tradition is embodied, the problem of the failure of the Jews to prove that the Resurrection had not taken place by producing the body of Christ, or by an official examination of the sepulcher, a proof which it was to their greatest interest to exhibit.”[8]

Asking the right questions is a key to thinking critically here. So let’s consider some of the hypotheses offered up to provide a nonsupernatural explanation for what happened. How do you explain the empty tomb?

Did they go to the wrong tomb? If so, why wasn’t the correction made by Jesus’ foes?

The Roman guard fell asleep and the disciples tip toed to the stone and so quietly broke the seal and rolled the heavy stone (without even grunting once!) that they never woke the guards? If you know for certain that if you fell asleep on duty, you would be stripped of your clothes and burned alive in a fire at a stake started with your own garments, would you fall asleep? And if they were asleep, how did they know it was the disciples who committed the theft? (Matthew 28:11-15, note verse 14 relative to the question of the penalty for falling asleep on guard duty)

Did the disciples actually attack and overpower the guards? Right! A band of untrained and badly frightened rabbits overcame disciplined and trained soldiers who had overcome the best armies known to man at that time? Then where did the graveclothes left behind come from, and why were they left?

Did the authorities move the body? Um…if they did, why didn’t they just produce it later to nip this thing in the bud instead of the lame excuse they fabricated (remember Matthew 28:11-15)?

Another interesting fact to be explained: the tomb was actually not entirely empty – there were the aforementioned graveclothes. The careful language of John (John 20:3-9) in describing the discarded graveclothes indicates eyewitness testimony to something of such great impact that it convinced him of a miracle. The clothes were not strewn helter-skelter around the tomb, but like a collapsed cocoon missing its occupant.

Our penultimate difficulty in this enumeration revolves (pun somewhat intended) around the stone to which we have already referred. Let the record note that the stone was not just barely moved to let a body slip by, but moved a “great” distance. Matthew 27:60 says, “a large stone was rolled [Greek kulio = to roll] against the entrance of the tomb.” Then Mark 16:4 says, “The stone was rolled away” [Greek anakulio = to roll up an incline or slope, away from] from the entire sepulcher! Note in Mark 16:3, the women, who did not know about the Roman guard, discussing how to remove the stone just from the door. And then John 20:1 uses an interesting word: “the stone taken away from [Greek airo = to pick up something and carry it away] the sepulcher”!! Ladies and gentlemen, we are talking Richter scale movement with this terminology. How?

Finally, how does one explain multiple appearances of Christ between the resurrection and the ascension? 1 Corinthians 15:5-8 enumerates many, including one in which 500 people simultaneously saw Him. Hallucinations? 500 people don’t hallucinate in unison! Furthermore, the record clearly shows that the disciples did not believe at first either (e.g., Luke 24:36-43 where Jesus has to eat a piece of fish to convince them…since when to hallucinations clean off your table?). Thus, the appearances go against all known psychological data concerning spurious visions and hallucinations.

And still, if it were only hallucinations, where was the body?!

The only rational conclusion is aptly summed up by Simon Greenleaf, the famous Harvard professor of law:

“All that Christianity asks of men…is, that they would be consistent with themselves; that they would treat its evidences as they treat the evidence of other things; and that they would try and judge its actors and witnesses, as they deal with their fellow men, when testifying to human affairs and actions, in human tribunals. Let the witnesses by compared with themselves, with each other, and with surrounding facts and circumstances; and let their testimony be sifted, as if it were given in a court of justice, on the side of the adverse party, the witness being subjected to rigorous cross-examination. The result, it is confidently believed, will be an undoubting conviction of their integrity, ability, and truth.”[9]

Here is the complete record:

First installment

Previous installment

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We ought diligently to be aware of sophistry, which not only consists in doubtful and uncertain words, that may be construed and turned as one pleases, but also, in each profession, in all high arts, as in religion, covers and cloaks itself with the fair name of Holy Scripture, alleging to be God's Word, and spoken from heaven.  Those are unworthy of praise who can pervert everything, screwing, condemning and rejecting the meanings and opinions of others, and, like the philosopher Carneades, disputing in ultraque parte, and yet conclude nothing certain.  These are knavish tricks and sophistical inventions.  But a fine understanding, honestly disposed, that seeks after truth, and loves that which is plain and upright, is worthy of all honor and praise.

It's something in liberals' DNA: They think they can pass a law eliminating guns and nuclear weapons, but teenagers having sex is completely beyond our control.

The demand for more gun control in response to any crime involving a gun is exactly like Obama's response to North Korea's openly belligerent act of launching a long-range missile this week: Obama leapt to action by calling for worldwide nuclear disarmament.

"The shooter will eventually run out of ammo" strategy may not be the best one for stopping deranged multiple murderers.

Instead of having Planned Parenthood distribute condoms in schools, they ought get the NRA to pass out revolvers. It would save more lives.

Postman’s Forward places before us a contrast between the equally chilling prophecies of two of the twentieth century’s earlier writers. George Orwell wrote in his novel, 1984, of a totalitarian society that burned books, of a Big Brother who militantly deprived the people of their autonomy, maturity and history. On the other hand, Aldous Huxley’s vision in his Brave New World foresees the day when “people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” To quote Postman more extensively on this contrast,

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

As the ramifications of the last election are slowly (or not so slowly, depending on your level of consciousness) dawning on this country, I want to propose an expansion to Postman’s hypothesis that extends his predictions further into the 21^st century in which we now find ourselves.

My hypothesis is based on the fact that both dystopias envisioned by Orwell and Huxley share a common denominator: the death of critical thought, indeed, of any thought, where “Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think.” The difference is the executioner and his methods, but the result is the same.

Orwell’s version of history is rather more obviously oppressive in that it is an overt tyranny, however slowly it may have entered into the system. But a thinking man has a tendency to recognize and take action against tyranny just as a functional immune system recognizes and attacks disease organisms. In the past, overt Communism and fascism were discerned and opposed almost immediately by other free countries and eventually by at least some in the subject population even when they were overcome by the military might of such totalitarian regimes. It is no accident that one of the first steps after coming to power in these forms of government has been, and is, the persecution and elimination of the thinking educated class. Thus, Postman is correct in that Orwell’s dystopia would not have been successful at the time he created his work.

Postman’s thesis that Huxley was right has been born out by history: we have become (note the past perfect tense, which for those readers who have had the misfortune to have been edjumacated in the current public school system, denotes an action started in the past and continuing into the present) a culture whose thought processes have been slowly shut down by a shift to the worldview that the visceral is superior to the cerebral, that feelings trump fact, and that the image is more important than the content of the message. All too many train wrecks along the cultural landscape, not the least of which being the most recent election, hinge upon the departure of average American’s neural material as he/she narcissistically gazes ever more longingly into his own navel (pay my mortgage, Mr. President!).

So if Postman is correct and Huxley is the correct model over which we should be troubled, what is my new hypothesis? Simply this: because of the cognitive decay created by the Brave New World, a 1984 becomes possible. Said another way, the common denominator in the death of critical thought creates first a trivial culture that is then ripe for becoming a captive culture. When one reads Postman and Huxley, one sees the later part of the Twentieth Century clearly described. Ladies and gentlemen, I submit that it has already happened. We’ve become a trivial culture, steeped in a narcissistic pursuit of our own pleasures, adopting the posture of entitlement while abandoning responsibility with abandon.

I further submit that when one reads Orwell, one sees what the liberal Left is actively trying to do in this country now in the first part of the Twenty-first Century. Their success to date is merely a product of the encephalopathy that permeates and plagues our culture today. They are attempting to make us a captive culture, and the immune system of critical thought is compromised to the extent that the cancer is metastasized and slowly eating away at our freedoms. Some of the data for these conclusions I will now present, and to do so, we only have to look at the key concepts used to control society in Orwell’s textbook, 1984, and compare them to what we see in the news around us every day. (All emphases in the following quotes are added.)

Probably the most vital of these concepts is

...the labyrinthine world of Doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word “Doublethink” involved the use of Doublethink.

…

To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word Doublethink it is necessary to exercise Doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of Doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.

Does any of that sound familiar? This goes way beyond hypocrisy to deliberate self-deception. Just look at the statements made during the last election season. This process is clearly active in how the liberal left maintains its double standards, vilifying conservatives for behavior and positions that are virtuous when held by, evidenced in, and applied to members of their own class. Thus, the Pelosi/Reid/Obama triumvirate can denounce corruption in Republicans and pledge to clean up government, all the while blithely ignoring, indeed, even propagating, much worse illegal and scandalous behavior in their own party, and believe in their own virtue in the process. It explains how Steve Guilbeault of Green Peace can get away with uttering nonsense like:

"Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter; that's what we're dealing with."

and still be considered rational.

Now, consider the following in light of the abysmal ignorance evidenced by the post-election surveys, or the “man on the street” segments of talk shows such as Sean Hannity, where simple questions like “who is the vice president?” are greeted with blank stares and vacuous guesses:

In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.

This willful ignorance permeates our culture and the MSM.

Consider the following in light of how Democrats such as Joe Lieberman are treated when they have the audacity to side with the Republicans on any issue whatsoever:

What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked on as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect. In a Party member, on the other hand, not even the smallest deviation of opinion on the most unimportant subject can be tolerated.

Consider the street language of many of today’s youth, particularly in black neighborhoods, (both major voting blocks specifically courted by the Democrats) and compare the current state of illiteracy with the following characterization of Newspeak (that’s new-speak, as contrasted to old-speak), the spoken language of Doublethink:

Newspeak, indeed, differed from most all other languages in that its vocabulary grew smaller instead of larger every year. Each reduction was a gain, since the smaller the area of choice, the smaller the temptation to take thought. Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centers at all.

…

The use of them encouraged a gabbling style of speech, at once staccato and monotonous. And this was exactly what was aimed at. The intention was to make speech, and especially speech on any subject not ideologically neutral, as nearly as possible independent of consciousness.

In other words, the goal of Newspeak is to reduce the “natural” state of affairs of all communication to putting the mouth in motion with the mind not only not in gear, but totally missing in action.

Consider the way American history is distorted in alleged higher education institutions today by the Left and compare with:

This day-to-day falsification of the past, carried out by the Ministry of Truth, is as necessary to the stability of the regime as the work of repression and espionage carried out by the Ministry of Love. The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc [English Socialism]. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it. It also follows that though the past is alterable, it never has been altered in any specific instance. For when it has been recreated in whatever shape is needed at the moment, then this new version IS the past, and no different past can ever have existed. This holds good even when, as often happens, the same event has to be altered out of recognition several times in the course of a year. At all times the Party is in possession of absolute truth, and clearly the absolute can never have been different from what it is now.

…

“Who controls the past,” ran the Party slogan, “controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. “Reality control,” they called it: in Newspeak, “Doublethink.”

And lastly (for now), consider how malleable words have become for such leftists as the homosexual activists who label any opposition, however emotionless, as “hate,” and then spew a heretofore unimaginable hateful vitriol at those who oppose them, in the name of “tolerance,” and compare this to the principles of Newspeak:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the worldview and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.

…

This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatsoever.

…

Newspeak was designed not to extend but to DIMINISH the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.

Rich Galen recently tabulated for us some additional examples of how the One is deciding we should be “creatively relabeling” various and sundry of his efforts to give a more “positive” impression (translation into oldspeak: lying through the teeth to mask the true goal of such endeavors).

It is not as if we have had no warning. Huxley, Orwell, and Postman have all sounded the alarm. An even earlier alarm was recently noted in the keen observer, Alexis de Tocqueville. In his essay entitled “What Kind of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear,” in Democracy in America (translated by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop), he writes [comments added]:

I want to imagine with what new features despotism could be produced in the world: I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. . . . [the Huxley model]

Above these an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fate [Big Brother…big government]. It is absolute, detailed, regular, far-seeing, and mild. It would resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood; it likes citizens to enjoy themselves provided that they think only of enjoying themselves [the Huxley model]. It willingly works for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that; it provides for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances; can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living? [A Brave New 1984!]

…

Thus, after taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole [the Orwellian model]; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd [the death of excellence]; it does not break wills but it softens them, bends them, and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one's acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which government is the shepherd. . . .

The differences between Afghanistan and Iraq are myriad and meaningful -- that is clear -- but the focus on implementing our newly recast counter-insurgency doctrine in the "other" war should give us reason to consider what exactly we did to turn the tide in Iraq. As most now recognize, the change began in Iraq's most infamous province, al Anbar. The popular consensus regarding Al Anbar contends that the tribal movement known as the "Awakening" was an impromptu rejection by Sunnis of Al Qaeda in Iraq's (AQI) brutal methods and radical rule. This consensus is wrong, or at best, only partially right.

I saw this dramatic transformation as a Marine officer deployed to Haditha in 2006 and Karma in 2007-2008. The Anbar Awakening was not a spontaneous uprising against the horrible brutality of the insurgents. Rather, it occurred and succeeded due to the conditions created by U.S. forces who steadily built the foundation for Anbar's stability. Through dynamic security operations, complex relationships with tribal leaders, and consistent moral authority, we successfully separated the population from the insurgency, demonstrated our potential for victory, and earned the support of Iraqis yearning for peace. It was only after we established these conditions that the Sunni sheiks could urge their tribes to awaken and stand together with U.S. forces against the AQI terrorists.

—Professor Geoffrey Raisman, director of the Spinal Repair Unit at the University College London Institute of Neurology, from "Health: Stem Cell Therapy — Question for Short Debate," House of Lords Debate, March 3, 2009.

Now the Logan to whom I am referring appears in a novel by William F. Nolan and George C. Johnson entitled Logan's Run. To quote the Wikipedia article (emphasis added):

Published in 1967, it depicts a dystopian future society in which population and the consumption of resources is managed and maintained in equilibrium by the simple expedience of demanding the death of everyone upon reaching a particular age, thus avoiding the issue of overpopulation. The story follows the actions of Logan, a Deep Sleep Operative or "Sandman" charged with enforcing the rule, as he tracks down and kills citizens who "run" from society's lethal demand only to himself ultimately "run."

In short, it is a society where “the right to die” has become “the duty to die.” 

The alert reader will notice that this kind of society is viewed as a “dystopia,” a totalitarian government run amok and to be opposed, something which we can still see as antithetical to the value of human life as put forward by the Judeo-Christian ethic (and admittedly, even many atheistic ethics, although they have no real foundation for such pronouncements).

Surely we don’t have to worry about this kind of scenario here in the United States, right? Right?

Imagine that you have lung cancer.  It has been in remission, but tests show the cancer has returned and is likely to be terminal.  Still, there is some hope.  Chemotherapy could extend your life, if not save it.  You ask to begin treatment.  But you soon receive more devastating news.  A letter from the government informs you that the cost of chemotherapy is deemed an unjustified expense for the limited extra time it would provide.  However, the government is not without compassion. You are informed that whenever you are ready, it will gladly pay for your assisted suicide.

Think that's an alarmist scenario to scare you away from supporting "death with dignity"?  Wrong.  That is exactly what happened last year to two cancer patients in Oregon, where assisted suicide is legal.

Yes, that is the Oregon on the west coast of the good old U.S. of A., as documented by Wesley Smith in the Telegraph. He rightly concludes that (emphasis added),

The Oregon experiment shows how easily the "right to die" can become a "duty to die" for vulnerable and depressed people fearful of becoming a burden on the state or their relatives.

This process of moral putrefaction is slow and under the radar, so the alarm is not being triggered as it would be if we just started killing the elderly. The frog is being slowly cooked, and we are the frogs.

Mr. Smith then continues (emphasis added):

A study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine last year, for example, found that doctors in Oregon write lethal prescriptions for patients who are not experiencing significant symptoms and that assisted suicide practice has had little do with any inability to alleviate pain – the fear of which is a chief selling point for legalisation.

The report said that family members described loved ones who pursue "physician-assisted death" as individuals for whom being in control is important, who anticipate the negative aspects of dying and who believe the impending loss of self and quality of life will be intolerable. They fear becoming a burden to others, yet want to die at home.  Concerns about what may be experienced in the future were substantially more powerful reasons than what they experienced at that point in time.

When a scared and depressed patient asks for poison pills and their doctor's response is to pull out the lethal prescription pad, it confirms the patient's worst fears – that they are a burden, that they are less worth loving.

Understand clearly, these are patients whose disease has not progressed to the point of imminent death. The possibility of cure has not been ruled out. Years of productive life are still a possibility, but because they are sick and know it, and have no control over it, they become depressed and dwell on all the problems involved rather than the opportunities that may present themselves. And apparently the fragmentation of the family and social structure of the immediate past has left them with no support from the family that should be cherishing and valuing their life and knowledge and wisdom, and communicating that with them so they understand the value their life has to others.

It is a sign of our present narcissistic culture that the only good in a situation is what might be good (and convenient) for me, and that “dignity” is defined as “doing it MY way,” and that goes for both the patient and the immediate family of the patient.

One of the keys to understanding this issue is in the last quote above. The issue of control, or rather, who is in control, is one that defines man’s pride. Man in his pride wants to be in control (cf. Psalm 2). Translation: man wants to play God with his life. This is the bioethical quandary over euthanasia. As the above instances show, it is usually not a matter of alleviating pain, but of convenience and the all too pragmatic issue of cost.

So, what is this true dignity with which we are exhorted to die? Oxford defines it as “the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect.” Modern man has translated that into respecting the desire of one who wants to die…and then encouraging them to do so. But tell me, who do you really honor and respect more, someone who gives up and takes the easy way out, or someone who fights the good fight all the way to the end? For whom do you really have more respect, the one who essentially shoves their elderly relative under the rug, seeking to be rid of them as soon as possible so they can get on with their own freakin’ life, or the one who shows the strength of character to live sacrificially, taking care of another without thought of reward and “what’s in it for me?”

Please note that I am not diminishing the fact of pain and suffering on the part of loved ones, and the anguish faced by those responsible over difficult decisions involving their loved ones care. But as noted above, these are people who are NOT on their death bed who are being told that they may as well just up and die. And while I have been blessed to date with not having to make such decisions personally myself, I have had such in my immediate family. My mother-in-law with whom I actually have a good relationship despite all the mother-in-law jokes, while in her 70’s, took care of her mother, by herself, until her mother died. Her mother was in her 90’s and had Alzheimer’s and some other medical issues that raised the stress levels to astronomical heights. It was not pretty. It was not convenient. At times it was incredibly thankless as her mother didn’t recognizer her and ranted at her regardless of what she did for her. I have tremendous respect and honor for my mother-in-law for how she handled herself with her mother (her mother passed on a few years ago and she herself is still vertical and ventilating, running a Bed-and-Breakfast and raising dogs, goats and chickens outside of Detroit!).