Life is cheap today in a world of elective abortions and calls for death panels. It was Ezekiel Emanuel, who was involved in the creation of Obamacare, said that he hopes to die by age 75.

“Why I Hope to Die at 75

“An argument that society and families—and you—will be better off if nature takes its course swiftly and promptly

“Seventy-five.

“That’s how long I want to live: 75 years.”

Emanuel is 57. Let’s check back in 18 years and see what he does.

Given the state of modern-day science and its godless foundation, survival of the fitness, and nature, red in tooth and claw, why is it morally wrong to kill, dismember, and, if you wish, eat your neighbor?

Atheists have repeatedly told us that we got here by the chance occurrences of natural forces. There’s no God, no design, and “DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.”

Apparently for Steven Miles, who “ferociously stabbed 17-year-old Elizabeth Thomas in his bedroom, then wrapped her dismembered limbs in clingfilm,” his DNA danced to its own music. Who are other receptacles of DNA — you, me, and everybody else, even the late Elizabeth Thomas — to argue with Steven Miles’ DNA?

“Steven Miles, who was 16 at the time of the murder, killed Elizabeth Thomas in the bedroom of his home in Oxted, Surrey on January 24 this year.

“Having stabbed her in the head and back, he went on to dismember her legs and an arm, wrapped the limbs in clingfilm and placed them in bin bags, before covering her body in a green plastic garden sheet.

“Miles, now 17, has been jailed for 25 years.

“The teenage politics student used saws and tools from his father’s tree surgeon business to cut up Elizabeth’s body.”

Miles was fascinated with horror movies and the macabre and had wanted to emulate the actions of Dexter – the lead character of an American TV series about a police forensics officer who is also a serial killer.”

The ‘Dexter’ character had his own moral justification for his killings, and even if he didn’t, who is anyone to argue with the unpredictable and ever-evolving motives of DNA?

Philosopher Richard Rorty (1931–2007) provided a good thought-provoking moral experiment for a naturalistic/materialistic philosophy. Rorty challenges atheists to offer a compelling satisfactory naturalistic answer to the following:

“Aliens from another planet, with vastly superior intelligence to humans, land on earth in order to consume humans as food. What argument could you make to convince the aliens not to eat us that would not also apply to our consumption of beef?”1

We’re becoming desensitized to such horror, and not only because of the horror genre and shows like Dexter.

Denying that God is the Creator makes all of us simply pliable cogs in a vast matter-only cosmos. There are moral implications for such a view over time as more of a foundational Christian worldview is jettisoned for. . . Well, we’re not told, other than pure reason. But any butcher like Steven Miles can be quite reasonable if given the chance.

God is prohibited and the idea of creation is dismissed:

“Prohibiting the teaching of creationism in favor of evolution creates an atheistic, belligerent tone that might explain why our kids sometimes perform like Godzilla instead of children made in the image of God. While evolution teaches that we are accidents or freaks of nature, creationism shows humankind as the offspring of a divine Creator. There are rules to follow which govern not only our time on Earth, but also our afterlife. . . . If evolution is forced on our kids, we shouldn’t be perplexed when they beat on their chests or, worse yet, beat on each other and their teachers.”2

 There is no full consistency yet, but give it some time.

1. Quoted in Richard Mankiw’s Blog (June 11, 2007). [↩]
2. Barbara Reynolds, “If your kids go ape in school, you’ll know why,” USA Today (August 27, 1993), 11A. [↩]