Violence and the Decline of Faith

At the very root of our society is a terrible sickness: We hate ourselves. We loathe ourselves. We are committing a kind of corporate suicide. Why?

The disease is complex and the diagnosis difficult. We loathe ourselves and our culture for a variety of reasons–some moral and some philosophical. We loathe ourselves because of the attack of the “ism’s”. Utilitarianism tells us that the bottom line of efficiency and economy is all that matters. If something works it is good. It is effective it is what we want. If it is cost effective even better. Utilitarianism assumes that there is no God, no afterlife, no heaven and no hell. Therefore, whatever we want to do–as long as it is cost effective and brings pleasure–is what we should do. This evil philosophy has brought us to indulge ourselves in every imaginable pleasure without restraint–and the history of the world shows that unbridled pursuit of pleasure leads ultimately to violence, bloodshed and suicide. When the pleasure addict realizes that the pleasure high no longer works they seek ever more bizarre and sick forms of ‘pleasure’ through violence, sadism and masochism.

Utilitarianism breeds a sort of default atheism. People become atheist in their basic mindset even if they still profess a kind of belief in religion. What happens is that a sickness and despair sets in. They live only for money and only for pleasure and their emptiness results in self loathing and despair.

Utilitarianism is linked with Scientism–the belief that the only form of truth that can be known is Scientifically validated truth. This harsh form of Utilitarianism also denies the supernatural, the afterlife and the existence of anything beyond the physical realm. Scientism has no need for morality nor has it any system to develop or promote morality. Scientism is morally neutral. Therefore it must be evil since evil is the absence of good–the absence or perversion of morality.

Scientism and Utilitarianism are ultimately philosophies without hope. “Let us eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die”. This cynical philosophy ends just where it says it ends: in death.

These philosophical monstrosities have undermined our society and turned many of us into de facto atheists. Atheism has become the new default setting. If there is no faith–no belief in God–no belief in the afterlife–no belief in a God who reveals the Truth–why can there be any mandatory morality? What I mean to say is that there may be some form of morality–man without God can borrow the golden rule or the ten commandments from Judeo Christian religion, but it is not mandatory. It is voluntary. If it ‘works’ it may be used. If it doesn’t work it may be abandoned.

This is what has happened. The first generation of atheists insist on maintaining some sort of morality which, for them means doing good. The second generation of atheists may maintain a lower form of morality which for them means not doing evil. The third generation of atheists asks why morality is mandatory if there is no God, and makes all morality voluntary. The fourth generation of atheists says, “Do what you will.”

Mankind therefore descends to doing what he wills, and what he wills is to kill unborn little girls, video his acts of murder and violence, watch such things onscreen and so on into unimaginable horrors and madness.

The only answer is repentance and a return to faith, and this return can only be realized if and when the Christians themselves show that a different kind of life is possible–that a different kind of life can be lived day by day–that a different kind of life is available to all.

Only when Catholics get up out of their complacency and begin to lead this life of faith, hope and love will society change–and not until.

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