Every band needs a front man, otherwise the message is never delivered.
Every song has a message, whether that song is banal, or indeed,
thought-provoking. And, the more I hear from the ubiquitous Richard
Dawkins, the more I suspect that the 'new atheism' that he shouts from
the rooftops with his own brand of mysterious infallibility is not quite
as empty a belief system as I had at first thought. Far from it, in
fact, Dawkins is full of belief. Richard Dawkins is a believer. It is
what he believes that makes his message so dangerous, rather than what
he does not believe which is, as we know, God.
See, Richard Dawkins may be an atheist, but Richard Dawkins is not just
any atheist - he's an atheist with a belief system that stems from his
own education and expertise in evolution, Darwinism and genetics. His
background is biology and, as far as I can see, Professor Dawkins rose
to a degree of fame in the United Kingdom mainly through his Royal
Institution Christmas Lectures back in 1991. Since then, through his
books and excessive media grandstanding, Dawkins has received the ear of
the general public of the United Kingdom to an astonishing degree which
would be unthinkable for any Churchman.
It is notable that the prestigious Royal Institution lectures have been
graced with some big names before Dawkins, names such as the famous
eugenicist and British Eugenics Society member, Julian Huxley, the first
Director of UNESCO and brother of the author of Brave New World,
Aldous. Members of this society, now known as the Galton Institute, have
included Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes, John Maynard Keynes, Neville
Chamberlain and William Beveridge among a host of other 'luminaries'.
Nowadays, the Institute is more coy of its membership. I know, because I
emailed them and asked for a list of members, a request which was
refused me. However, the Galton Institute's President and Vice President
and supporting staff are named on its website and both are eminent
geneticists. Given the history of the Institute and its well documented
churning out of propagandists for eugenics and those who practiced it in
their chosen specialist fields, the names now mentioned on its
hierarchy are interesting.
In fact, if you read the list of those who have given the Royal
Institution Christmas Lectures in the past, mysteriously, some of the
same names appear on the list of those who we do know are key players in
the Galton Institute. Sir Walter Bodmore is one who has given a
Christmas lecture at the Royal Institution. There are others. In fact,
there are quite a few. As recently as 2009, Professor Steve Jones, good
friend of Richard Dawkins was the President of the Galton Institute.
Another sworn atheist and hater of the Catholic Church, Jones is
essentially a geneticist and genetics is the field which continues to
‘pioneer’ new research into the fabric of the human DNA – and –
therefore, delve into the fabric of society itself.
And in order to understand what Dawkins actually believes, you have to
understand the scientific fundamentalism and empirical reductivism which
he espouses so vocally. Dawkins is just one man, of course, but he is
undoubtedly the voice of an atheistic movement that prizes science and
empiricism above all other avenues of human enquiry. In fact, Dawkins’s
atheism is not particularly interesting. What does interest me is what
he does believe and in order to understand what Dawkins does believe,
we have to examine Darwinism and how many Darwinists including, I would
suggest, Dawkins himself, apply Darwin’s theories to the human person
and to human society at large.
While many credit his Darwinism as his greatest strength, it is,
ultimately, Dawkins’s greatest weakness and it is a weakness that must
be exposed in order to protect society from the barbarity of the real
belief system of this man and a considerable number of his associates,
friends and followers. Allow me to elaborate as to why this is the
case.
In the years after Charles Darwin’s death, the scientist’s explosive
theories were presented as a body blow to the Church and to religions
and, up to a point, they were, because the processes of Creation were
cast in a new light that caused doubt in the existence of a Creator.
There can be little doubt that Darwinism shook the faith of many
especially in Europe and it is an easily forgotten irony that Darwinism,
having caused a great loss of Christian faith, also gave rise to an
ideology that ran in total contradiction to the Christian faith and that
led to the barbaric cruelty of Auschwitz, in which a huge number of
men, women and children died at the hands of Hitler’s executioners.
This ideology was, of course, Social Darwinism. It was then, and is
now, Social Darwinism, rather than evolutionary theory itself, that
poses the great threat to human society that we are now seeing ‘through a
glass, darkly’ every time we pick up a newspaper.
Evolutionary theory is about examining and explaining how nature works
and learning more about it. Social Darwinism is applying Darwin’s
theories to mankind with inherently destructive consequences as
encapsulated by the phrase ‘the survival of the fittest’.
You see. It is no coincidence that Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes and a
veritable army of eugenicists were members of the British Eugenics
Society because the Eugenics Society was, and is still, as its name
suggests, very much about people rather than plants. Eugenics means
simply ‘good birth’. In the minds of eugenicists there are ‘good’ human
births and there are ‘bad’ human births. The Galton Institute – to this
very day – cherishes Darwin’s theories but more importantly, still – to
this very day – applies them to human beings in its lectures and
research, available on the internet, in a manner which robs human beings
of their inherent dignity as human beings ‘made in the image and
likeness of God’.
Historians can point to the various factors that led to the Holocaust
which claimed the countless lives of those deemed by the Nazi State as
‘unfit’ for society. They can talk about the terrible economic climate
of the day. They can discuss the decadence into which society in the
Weimar Republic had fallen and the search for some kind of order. They
can talk about the grievances held by the population in the wake of
World War I. However, what historians cannot deny is the role that the
ideology of Social Darwinism played in the destruction of European Jewry
and a host of other people deemed by the Nazi regime as ‘unfit’ for
society, including the mentally ill, the handicapped, the homosexuals,
those seen as a drain on the economy and all those who Hitler and his
supporters saw as ‘unfit’ for society.
With the rise in Social Darwinist ideology and its attending scientific
breach in the hull of the Church and the faith of Europe came a movement
so cold-hearted, so brutal, so barbaric and so reductivist of the human
person and man’s place in the World that the moral foundations of that
society collapsed and an extermination process so chilling that it still
haunts Europe to this day became possible and executable – and it all
came to pass via the powerful arms of the State. Yet, without Darwin’s
theories being applied to humankind, it may never have happened at all.
After the horror of the Holocaust, eugenics received a great deal of
negative publicity as it became apparent that the ideology that drove
the Nazi regime and which was adopted by many in Germany (and other
parts of rest of Europe and the USA) had led to human destruction on a
hitherto unprecedented scale. Well, it is unprecedented, if you do not
count the number of abortions which have taken place in the World since
that time.
Eugenics may have received negative press in the aftermath of the
Holocaust, but it is blatantly obvious that, just as Nazi war criminals
managed to find escape justice and flee to safety in South America, like
Dr Josef Mengele, eugenics managed to discreetly smuggle itself into
the very fibre of human societies in the West – even those societies
like Great Britain – which ostensibly fought the Nazis and their evil,
destructive and ruinous ideology. I have already pointed out that this
could not have taken place without the sexual revolution and I shall not
labour the point, but in order for eugenics to become a part of British
life, sexual taboos had to be broken and the fundamental underpinnings
of society had to be destroyed. Without the sexual revolution, it would
have been impossible for the liberal State to redefine every sphere of
human activity to suit its own ends. You could not redefine marriage to
include homosexual marriage without the sexual revolution.
You could not liberalise divorce law without the sexual revolution. You
could not have IVF without the sexual revolution which separated the
sexual act and procreation and as I’ve already said, you could not
legalise abortion without the sexual revolution. It was the method by
which marriage, sex, personhood, human reproduction, the family,
morality, fertility and, ultimately, you and me, could be redefined.
The sexual revolution was wholly necessary to placing at the very heart
of society, the individual and the State, the promotion of an ideology
of a latently eugenic persuasion. Because of that revolution in our
understanding of sexuality and fertility, we allowed ourselves to be
redefined because of the temptation that was put in our way and, as this
essay will assert, as we have sown, so shall we reap,
Why? Because now that every society in the West has been persuaded to
voluntarily control our fertility, buy into the notion of sex without
consequences, separate children from the sexual act, redefine ourselves
along the lines of sexual identity, forget or disregard the true meaning
of marriage and the raft of consequences of that revolution, we run the
huge risk of moving into a period in which all of these things can
pass, even without our notice, into the hands of the State. It doesn’t
happen overnight, of course, but slowly, surely, we can see the State
asserting itself over matters which, 50 years ago, would be absolutely
unthinkable, because 50 years ago, the institutions of marriage and the
institution of the family and public morality informed by Christianity
was far stronger. That’s not to say that there aren’t Churchmen listed
in the British Eugenics Society membership list from yesteryear, but
then, sadly, that’s Anglicanism for you.
So, how does this all relate to where we find ourselves today? Well,
when His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI came to visit the United Kingdom,
His Holiness upset a number of people in the National Secular Society
for drawing a link between atheism and tyrannical regimes which
disregard the dignity of the human person and destroy those who both the
State and society have a duty to protect. He talked of the horrors of
Nazism and linked it to atheism which denies objective moral values and
thereby takes a subjective view of the value attributable to human
beings, made, we would say, ‘in the image and likeness of God’. His
Holiness remarked that it is when faith, religion and conscience are
pushed to the private sphere and driven from the public sphere that it
is then that the objective morality of societies are destroyed. It is
no coincidence that His Holiness should have said such things at this
time in the history of the United Kingdom because His Holiness can see
that the trends taking place in the UK and Europe are only going in one
direction.
One man who led the campaign against Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the
United Kingdom was Professor Richard Dawkins. His letter to The
Guardian was published in the days running up to the Papal Visit. My
letter was, surprisingly, published the following day, though it was
signed by ordinary Catholics, rather than a host of celebrities. One of
Dawkins’s other signatories was Professor Steve Jones, the eminent
geneticist, atheist and former Galton Institute President. Now,
ostensibly, these two figures in British life wanted to arrest Pope
Benedict XVI for running an ‘international pederast ring’ called the
Catholic Church. I would assert, however, that there is far more to
these two men’s deep and violent opposition to the Catholic Church than
the sexual abuse crisis.
See, in the modern mind, after years of press reports, the Catholic
Church is synonymous with paedophilia, cover up and corruption.
However, it also stands for something else and despite the extraneous
sins of some of Her priests and members it stands above all for Her
Divine Founder, Jesus Christ, of course, but also for the unique dignity
of every human person from conception to natural death, ‘from the womb,
to the tomb’.
The Catholic Church has a totally and radically different understanding
of the definition human person to that which is posited by Professor
Steve Jones and Professor Richard Dawkins. These two men are Darwinists
and, more importantly than that, they are Social Darwinists. They are,
instinctively,
eugenicists. Both are on record as holding views
on ‘good births’ and ‘bad births’ that are reprehensible to the
Catholic Church for whom each and every person, regardless of their
condition is to be valued and treated with dignity. Richard Dawkins, as
recently as this year, can be viewed endorsing the possibility of
infanticide for newborn disabled babies. Professor Steve Jones’s
Presidency of the Galton Institute guarantees his eugenic credentials.
Why are these things so rarely discussed in the mainstream media? You
might well ask, but the media couldn’t possibly comment.
And the reason the media couldn’t possibly comment is because eugenics
is fashionable again. Thanks largely to genetics, the NHS and pre-natal
scanning, it has experienced a revival in an age which, again, has lost
its moral foundations. In the modern media, eugenics cannot be
criticized without the left and elements of ‘the right’ calling anything
that sounds like criticism ‘hate speech’. Few in the media, for
instance, criticize IVF, even though IVF has been widely reported as
being explicitly eugenic, in selecting embryos with the right colour
eyes, the right colour skin, the right colour hair, keeping the ones
that are healthy and destroying all the rest. Only a fantasist could
observe these trends and not call IVF what it most assuredly has become –
eugenics.
In the modern media, abortion is criticized as eugenic and morally
outrageous when it becomes apparent that doctors in London, Birmingham
and Manchester are signing through abortion requests for parents who
want a boy and not a girl. That’s called gendercide and the Government
‘promises to investigate it’. However, nobody, or very few, will
criticize abortion on the grounds of disability, such as Downs Syndrome
or even abortions procured for cosmetic reasons such as ‘cleft palate’
and ‘cleft lip’ even though both are operable and curable. We are at a
stage in our history when eugenics is such a deeply embedded part of
British life that doctors on the NHS express total shock and even dismay
when parents tell them that even though they know that their unborn
baby will be born with a disability, they don’t want the ‘seek and
destroy’ order to go ahead. Professionals in the BMA just don’t
understand why any woman or set of parents, wouldn’t want to destroy
their unborn child because it is imperfect.
Professor Steve Jones has worked for the UCL where ‘pioneering’ research
in human embryology yields few miracle cures for humanity’s ills, but
humanity itself is stripped of dignity and farmed in a laboratory and
has its DNA crossed with animal DNA to form hybrids in order to find
cures to diseases which never appear and all with the blessing of the
State.
Both the State and leading atheist and Darwinist, Richard Dawkins, are
for all of these things: abortion, IVF, human embryology, eugenics, and,
ultimately, the weeding out of the ‘unfit’ from human society by
stealth and all with the general approval of the British public. All
this has been sold to the British public as ‘progress’ and the British
public, while remaining uncomfortable about aspects of all of it, go
along with it because we trust our Government with all of these things,
even, yes even the power over the creation of human life itself – even
human reproduction itself. At the moment, these things – abortion, IVF,
artificial contraception and human embryology are undertaken (aside
from the human embryos destroyed in abortion, IVF and embryology) on a
voluntary basis, but there are signs that suggest that this may not be
the case forever.
I would say to you, ‘We had better hope that this extraordinary power
over the creation and destruction of human life is not one day used
against us,’ but there really is no point, because if you think that
these technologies and methods of birth control were designed to just
help out the odd childless couple here, or ‘assist’ the ‘reproductive
freedom’ of the odd poor, pregnant mother there, then you are, at best,
an optimistic and trusting individual of the State or you are a very
naïve person indeed and if you think that any State with these kinds of
powers is trustworthy then I would say that you are a fool, because
‘power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely’.
Power can be no more absolute than the power to create life and to bring
about death. That, after all, as the Catholic Church says and as
Professors Steve Jones and Richard Dawkins deny, is the sovereign role
not of some mythical ‘sky-fairy’ but of Almighty God Himself. History
bears witness to the fact that, regardless of what people say of Him,
God is a lot better at being God than men are and when men try to play
God, or usurp His role in the giving and taking human life, the results
are, without exception, disastrous, especially when the State is
involved.
Of course, people like Richard Dawkins will keep talking about the
‘sky-fairy’ and a lack of ‘empirical’ or ‘scientific’ evidence for God’s
existence despite the fact that Faith has seldom, if ever, been rooted
in graphs and algebra. His media buzz words have to keep being
disseminated to the British public, because his agenda and that of his
eugenicist friends, is about demolishing Faith in order to carry out a
eugenic dream which is, in their minds at least, utopian, but is, in
reality, dystopian and a total affront to human dignity. Richard
Dawkins has to keep talking about the God that he does not believe in
because if he were to be totally honest about what he does believe in,
eventually, sane-minded people of Great Britain would turn away from his
doctrines in disgust. Ultimately the eugenic nightmare is not about
only population control, but total control of the population in deciding
who ‘fits’ in and who does not.
‘Ah’, you may say, ‘Well I don’t believe that embryos are human beings
anyway.’ Well, if embryos are not human beings, then why are they
called human embryos and why is it that the Government so desired that
human embryos be handed over to research faculties, companies and a very
eager scientific community to be tested upon, stripped of dignity,
crossed with animal DNA and abused for the sake of scientific progress,
the creation of ‘saviour siblings’ and ‘pioneering’ medical research?
If these beings are not human, then what on earth does the scientific
community want with them? Ultimately, the scientific community in the
Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act did not want just any old
embryos. It wanted human embryos.
‘Well, even so’, you may think, ‘as long as this is happening to beings
inside the womb or in labs, then that is okay because it doesn’t affect
me.’ My answer to that would be, it may not affect you now, but it will
affect you and your children or your children’s children, one day,
because one day, if the State obtains total control over human
reproduction, which it shall if it remains unchecked, your grandchild
may never make it into the World because he or she didn’t have the right
colour hair, eyes, skin, or suffered a major or even minor, treatable
medical condition because that is where this all ends. The media are
always telling you to look after the environment for future generations
to enjoy. If you want future generations to enjoy the environment with a
measure of freedom, then I suggest you watch what your Government is
actually doing in your name, to people, born and indeed, unborn.
In a way, what we are currently seeing in terms of individual ‘freedom’
at the beginning of life, in terms of abortion, artificial contraception
and IVF is quite devilish. I say this because, like the Devil, the
State has presented these moral evils to the population as services
which can be bought, or even obtained on the NHS – an arm of the State –
if citizens should choose to do so. As the Church teaches, in return
for succumbing to his temptations, Satan drags you into Hell, unless you
are repentant. So it is, that likewise the State has presented these
‘services’ to its population in a similar temptation – aimed at taking
advantage of the population’s moral confusion, relativism and very human
weaknesses. Likewise, for succumbing to these temptations towards
controlling the beginnings of human life, the State will eventually drag
you into Hell on Earth, because these ‘services’ can so easily become
mandatory, should the State decide that it is viable to do so, with the
help of a steady stream of propaganda.
The fundamental premise of this essay is to assert that none of these
things were legalized, promoted and then made widespread throughout the
United Kingdom because the State is generous to its people. That is
what the State would like us to think but let us not be fooled. No, for
if the State were generous to its people then the State would support
British family life, marriage, welcome children and support the role of
the Church in the public sphere, rather than exclude it, since
Christians are citizens as well as atheists.
The fundamental premise of this essay is that these and other services
were made available to the British public after the 1960s so that the
British public would become so accustomed to them that, eventually, we
would accept them as so integral to the way in which society operates
that we would also accept the State’s enforcement of these provisions on
us even against our own will.
All that is required for this to happen is enough propaganda through the
mass media to soften the population’s position on these matters. An
economic crisis, of course, also comes in rather handy - as does
hysterical concern for the environment and population issues - for the
State giveth 'reproductive freedom' to its citizens, but likewise, the
State taketh it away. The same too can be said for end of life issues
such as voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide, of course, which is
surely to come. We've been here before.
