The Rise in Atheism Has Caused Abortion To Become Socially Acceptable
The New York abortion bill — which allows for the termination of a pregnancy up until the time of birth — signed into law less than a week ago raises a clear question. How is this morally permissible?
A baby typically has a heartbeat at around 22 days after conception and a 50% survival rate outside the womb at 24 weeks with current medical technology. With the average length of human gestation being 40 weeks and with the previous information in mind, why does anyone believe that killing a baby at 39 weeks, 6 days and 11 hours is ethical? The answer may be the increase in atheism.
According to a 2018 fielded survey by the Deseret News and The Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University, 36 percent of Americans are without a religious affiliation. But why is a lack of religious affiliation or a sense of devout disbelief in a higher moral authority linked to the acceptability of abortion?
A higher moral entity, especially the Judeo-Christian God, provides the foundation for what is morally and ethically right and wrong. Because God is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent, believers are subject to consequences in the eyes of God after this life comes to an end. Your actions in this life determine whether or not you will reside eternally in heaven. However, non-believers and atheists do not fear these same consequences.
Atheism, like that of nihilism, lacks a moral foundation, because it lacks a sense of consequence. When your only belief is the lack of belief itself, anything is permissible. And when anything is permissible, one’s only goal is to seek maximum pleasure. Such pleasure can be sought by any means: rape, assault, theft, lying and even murder.
Now not all atheists are societally out of line. Most atheists are not burglars, rapists or murderers, because they are bound by governmental laws; governmental laws that are derived from religious doctrines: thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill.
But in order to enforce such laws, as philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it, society needs a sovereign.
The people under the sovereign give up certain freedoms in return for protection and security. In the earthly world, the sovereign is the respective government and its branches of authority, but in the virtuous world, the sovereign is God. Theists are subject to both sovereigns, but atheists are only subject to the earthly sovereign. So all the atheists need for something to be morally right is for it to be legal.
An omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent moral authority is exactly what keeps society collapsing into the Hobbesian “state of nature,” that is “nasty, brutish, and short.”
The lack of religious belief in our time has led to the cancer and genocide that is abortion, but even when looking to the past we see that this too was the case in many atrocious regimes.
In World War I, soldiers were given copies of Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” which emphasized the ideas of “the death of God,” and the “Ubermensch.” The “Ubermensch,” translated as “Beyond-Man,” outlines the ideal human, or in other words, a master or Aryan race. A young soldier in WWI, Adolf Hitler, likewise likely read this work by Nietzsche and used many of the ideas outlined in it when constructing the ideology of the Nazi Party.
We also see a lack of morality under the authoritative reign of Joseph Stalin, who outlawed religion in the Soviet Union. Stalin was quite possibly influenced by Karl Marx’s “The Communist Manifesto,” which states that religion is a means of oppression, because it encourages believers to strive for a good afterlife and neglect their worldly life.
The times we are living in may not be as overtly atrocious as some in recent history, but we are nonetheless living in an increasingly atheistic and secular world.
This atheism and lack of belief is largely the cause of morally and ethically impermissible acts becoming permissible in our society. Without a sense of being judged by an all powerful, all knowing and always present supreme moral being, anything is acceptable, even abortion.
Those who do not fear the consequences inflicted by a god, or especially God, are only subject to the laws of the earthly sovereigns. For atheists, the only thing needed for something to be morally and ethically acceptable is for the law to permit it.
However, as Flannery O’Connor wrote, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
Nicolas Borovich is the Republican Committeeman for the Borough of Midway, PA 15060. He is a member of the Robert Morris University College Republicans and is the former representative for the group within the Student Government Association. He is also a former student senator within the Student Government Association.
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