Rise and Fall

An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.

CHARLES DARWIN

There are two competing views of humanity in the world today. The view you subscribe to has a large impact on your lifestyle, your values, your politics, your morality, and many other things. It is important that when picking which view to hold that you get it right because of the large effects such a viewpoint will have on you and on the world. These views center on two questions. Did humanity rise from humble origins to greatness? Or, did humanity fall from greatness?

The belief that humanity rises is the one held and promoted by those who subscribe to the worldview known as secular progressivism. These are your atheists, materialists, and left wing liberals who believe that the human race evolved by accident from lower organisms. According to these people, humanity was bestial but has become more civilized as a process of evolution. Now, humanity has the chance to evolve and progress further as it ascends to utopia. Many are the cries to not "turn back the clock" and "lean forward." Humans are getting better and better.

The Christian religion opposes progressivism and declares that humanity is fallen. Humanity is not getting better and better except to the extent that the Christian religion is allowed to flourish. Human beings began at a high place and have descended to a lower place. Instead of animals becoming men, men are becoming animals.

The antagonism between these two views is fierce. For the progressive, man's "elevation" has occurred accidentally through a process of deliberation. Now that we have attained our present enlightenment, we should no longer leave the progress of humanity up to mere chance. Progress should be directed collectively and from a centralized authority with great levels of control over families and individuals. Anything that thwarts progress such as Christianity needs to be eliminated.

In the progressive's mind, religions like Christianity represent useful stages in the evolutionary mindset of man. These religions helped to advance humanity but now outlive their usefulness being supplanted today with philosophy and science. The Church of Reason is the new temple in which all human beings will worship. All other religions are outdated superstitious ignorance.

Who is right? The argument would seem to hinge upon the idea of evolution. If human beings did evolve from primates, it would seem to indicate that our superior reason and intellect over the inferior reason and intellect of animals means that we are evolving or progressing to something higher since we started somewhere lower than where we are now. This is what I call the "clever monkey" view. Humans are merely clever monkeys, and our survival and flourishing depends upon us becoming more clever. This cleverness is the bedrock of the progressive ideology.

Religion's role in this progress was as a handmaiden to philosophy. Religion promoted culture, literature, art, and thinking. These are good things except that religion also retarded reason and science. This weird relationship is how things like pagan civilizations could build monumental structures, map the stars and their movement, and also sacrifice their infants to cruel gods.

The Christian viewpoint is decidedly different. Humanity was created in a harmonious relationship with God. God allowed humanity to eat of all the trees of the Garden of Eden except the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They were forbidden to eat of this tree. Essentially, all the trees of the garden are all the many fields of human endeavor. Humans excel at many of these things. One of these things is science.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is essentially the tree of religion. By eating of this tree, our first parents decided that they would be the captains of their souls instead of God. The result of that decision is a panopoly of civilizations that were adept at technology and architecture and many arts including warfare. They also sacrificed their infants to cruel gods we know today as the demons. The Fall was a trick where humans were not turned into gods but where Satan and his horde were turned into gods. Humanity has suffered ever since.

It is no accident that the most advanced civilizations in human history have also been the most cruel. Progressives will claim that it was the superstitions of these civilizations that fostered this cruelty, and they would be correct. Pagan religions are evil. They make you kill your own children. It is not unlike the carnage of abortion.

Millions face death in the name of progress. The Aztecs ripped hearts from the chests of their living victims. Yet, are we no different in declaring "brain death" before we start carving up people to harvest their organs and tissues? Is it the act or the reasons for the act that are the deciding factors in these atrocities? Would the Aztecs be seen in a better light if they had developed anesthesia first and used it on their victims? Is butchery of human beings OK as long as the living have no sensation of the pain?

The progressives are at pains to explain an uncomfortable fact of their program. Wherever progressive enlightenment is found, a lot of people end up dead. In France, the revolution lead to a reign of terror with priests and nuns being the primary victims of the purge that ended up taking down aristocrats, a king, and the revolutionaries themselves. This same thing would repeat itself in other revolutions whether it was the Russian revolution, the Maoist revolution, Pol Pot, or today's revolutions for "democracy." The glaring fact is that there is little progress in progressivism. The only difference between ancient paganism and modern progressivism is that atheists have a higher body count.

G.K. Chesterton stated that original sin was the one Christian doctrine that could be proven empirically, yet it is the one doctrine that scientifically minded progressives are at labors to deny. The simple reality is that humanity is evil. It has always been evil since the Fall. The tendency of man is not to become like the angels but to become like the demons that tricked them in the first place.

Christianity offers the antidote to this fallen condition. Yet, progressives are at pains to deny the uniqueness of Christianity. To them, Christianity evolved from paganism. The Christian religion supplanted the more primitive religions. Now, progressivism is the religion that must supplant Christianity. Yet, where are these saints of progress? What great moral person has science ever produced?

One does not have to believe in Christianity to believe in the fall of man. If man is merely a clever monkey, then he has not evolved from his base origin and will never evolve from it. His cleverness will increase, but his savagery will remain intact. Inevitably, the human race will annihilate itself in nuclear holocaust. The simple fact is that natural history shows that extinction is the end of virtually all species, and there is nothing to indicate that humanity will not share the same fate as the dinosaurs. The key difference between humans and dinosaurs is that humans will be the authors of their own destruction.

Christians are accused of creating a myth out of the past. By the same token, progressives make a myth out of the future. In their myth, the future is utopian and perfected. Humanity will achieve a greatness that will extinguish its flaws. The extraterrestrial is the icon of that perfected humanity.

The extraterrestrial represents an advanced sibling to humanity. If advanced civilizations exist beyond our own world, then this gives us hope that our own race can extend itself into space. Aliens have replaced pagan deities as the new gods of a new mythology. It is no coincidence that alien representations look so human. There is no scientific reason to think that aliens will look so much like us except with bigger brains and the absence of body hair. And what is the deal with those big black eyes? But it is no mystery. The lack of hair removes the animal from the being. The big brain is the advanced reason. The big black eyes are the lack of a soul and empathy. Basically, advancement means losing your soul to become more like a robot than a human being.

All of this is madness and nonsense. Humans are not advancing except in the cleverness department. Where civilization advances in all its facets, you find Christianity. Christianity is hope. The problem with people is not that they are stupid. The problem is that people are evil. They lack the sanctifying grace needed to become better. Yet, this sanctifying grace is the gift that Jesus Christ gives to all who believe in Him. Through Christ, the fallen man can be restored and put on his proper path.

The fact that the world hates Christianity testifies to these truths. People only become better when they submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ. The proper and fitting end of a man is to become a saint. The world has never had a saint before Jesus Christ. It can never have a saint apart from Jesus Christ. Jesus conquered the Fall. Eventually, we will be allowed to eat from the Tree of Life which is immortality in eternity. Those who follow Christ aim for a new destination for humanity. That destination is the elevation of humanity from evil to good. And if you lack faith on this, I would suggest that you follow the evidence. Progressives can merely lie and try to tell you that black is white, wrong is right, and the end that does not exist will justify the meanness of the means in the interim. What good can come from such evil?