Humanism and Marriage
An increase in the popularity of the atheistic philosophy of humanism is one symptom of the decline of vital godliness in our land. Secular humanism is a comprehensive world view embracing reason and naturalism while advocating an altruistic morality. It rejects supernaturalism, faith and all religions as superstitions, while claiming that human beings have the right to give meaning to their lives and to adopt moral values through reason. Well-known humanists include media personality Stephen Fry, and Ken Livingstone, former Mayor of London. Solemnly, their rejection of God, heaven and hell, judgement, and of course original sin leaves them and their followers in a perilous place. All their philosophical wisdom will prove ultimately to be folly. “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God” (Ps 14:1).
Recent press reports have suggested that their influence is gaining ground in many sectors of our society, including marriage. A record 2975 humanist weddings were performed in Scotland last year, a 26% increase on 2011. God instituted marriage in the Garden of Eden before Adam sinned and this has been reflected over centuries in Christian countries by the majority of couples holding a religious wedding. In 1971 two-thirds of weddings in Scotland were held in churches; however, over the last few decades traditional church marriage has been increasingly rejected in favour of “non-religious” celebrations, most of them conducted by civil registrars. In 2010 the Church of Scotland performed just over 5000 ceremonies but only 4500 in 2011, a lower proportion of the 29 135 marriages taking place in Scotland that year.
The Registrar General authorised humanists to conduct weddings in 2005, when they married only 82 couples in Scotland. In England and Wales a
second ceremony, by a minister or civil registrar, is still required to make it legal but in Scotland legislation allows the Humanist Society of Scotland to perform a marriage without any additional ceremony. The floodgates are opening and, even when people reject God and religion, they still search for some “spiritual” dimension in their ceremonies. Into this vacuum steps the Humanist Society offering weddings as well as funerals and baby-naming services. Indeed the Society claims that, by 2015, humanist ceremonies will become more popular than traditional church services. One of their spokesmen, Tim McGuire states, “We share many of the same values as traditional faiths, but we like to make up our own minds and not be restricted to what a faith teaches. Many couples see this and while they want to have a traditional service, which we provide, they also want to share the experience in their own words, not those set down by a traditional faith.” Can we hear echoes here of the serpent’s subtle voice to Eve in the Garden of Eden?
Ironically, marriages carried out by humanist celebrants at present are classed as “religious” in spite of their beliefs being totally irreligious. And the Scottish Government, sadly ever eager to accommodate the secularists, plans to introduce a third type of marriage under the draft Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Bill. This new category of marriage is called “belief” and would be added to the existing religious and civil marriages. Our Government is clearly catering for the humanist as well as the homosexual lobby in this notorious bill. We need the Lord to overturn those evil counsels and bring humanists, and indeed every one of us, to have real religion and saving faith in Jesus, the Saviour of lost sinners.
KHM
Margaret Thatcher’s Legacy
It is not the place of the Church to delve into party-political issues, but such was the late Mrs Margaret Thatcher’s influence on our national life that we feel that a few comments may be made on the legacy of her time as Prime Minister. Mrs Thatcher, it is fair to say, exhibited much courage and resolution in the discharge of her premiership. Whatever one’s view of her political and economic policies, we ought to be grateful to the Most High that she was raised up, along with President Ronald Reagan of the United States, to stand fast against communism in Eastern Europe until that godless tyranny was peaceably overthrown in God’s providence. She also came to see very clearly the great dangers posed by European federalism to our national sovereignty and liberty.
We feel, however, that in tackling the damage done by secular humanism and hedonism to the moral fabric of our society, Mrs Thatcher’s administration was far less thoroughgoing. The ultimate reason for this, we believe, is that
she attempted in the main to use economic and political methods to rectify problems which were fundamentally of a spiritual nature. No mere political philosophy can adequately address the deepest needs of individuals and communities. The great deliverance this nation still awaits is that of emancipation from the shackles of sin and ungodliness in every department of life. Civil government is incapable of bringing that about, for it can only be accomplished by the Holy Spirit blessing the preaching of the gospel to “the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:4,5).
We are thankful for Mrs Thatcher’s explicit endorsement of Christian moral principles and particularly of the Establishment Principle during her time in office, as exemplified in her speech to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1986, and we would wholeheartedly agree with many parts of that speech. On that occasion she declared, “Ideally, when Christians meet, as Christians, to take counsel together, their purpose is not, or should not be, to ascertain what is the mind of the majority but what is the mind of the Holy Spirit – something which may be quite different”.
May the time be hastened when both churchmen and politicians will indeed take counsel in accordance with the teachings of God’s Word more consistently than Mrs Thatcher herself was able to. Her commitment to the Sabbath, for example, was greatly lacking, as her endeavours, in 1986, to liberalise laws regulating trading on the Lord’s Day so sadly proved. It is worth noting that, although her party won the next General Election with a reduced majority, her own political strength ebbed away in the years following this attempt to undermine the law of God. We were also sorry to hear that Mrs Thatcher’s mortal remains were subjected to the unbiblical practice of cremation.
AWM
Circular RNA
Recent discoveries in the study of RNA, a vital component of human cells, have brought consternation to evolutionists. The “traditional” view in the 1960s was that RNA acted as a messenger in living cells and transmitted information about DNA to the ribosomes, which produce proteins. Mutations in the DNA led to changes in a protein, and natural selection could then “choose” the animal or person who had the best protein for survival or reproduction. This view is essentially the one put about by Richard Dawkins, but it is now regarded as hopelessly simplistic and old-fashioned.
One reason for its modification was the discovery in more recent years of various other forms of RNA, including micro-RNA which “blocks” certain
parts of the RNA and prevents that part of the information being transmitted to ribosomes. Thus there is a mechanism for preventing random mutations in the DNA from interfering with protein production. This makes it less clear how natural selection could favour the mutated DNA over the original.
These various forms of RNA are all linear and have ends or “tails”, but in the last few months it has been announced that most human RNA is circular or looped and therefore has no tails. It has hitherto been missed by the detection process geneticists use, because the detection process was explicitly looking for tails. The circular RNA turns out to be ten times more common than the linear RNA and thus the geneticists are in the painful position of admitting that they know very little about RNA and protein production, notwithstanding 50 years of confident assertion. It is clearly much more complex than was previously realised: for example the circular RNA seems to block the activity of the blocking micro-RNA, showing that there is a further level of regulation in protein production beyond what was imagined.
The more complicated that things turn out to be, the more difficult it is for evolutionists to think of plausible pathways by which “chance” has brought such highly ordered objects into existence; and the more difficult it is to cram all the necessary changes into the rather limited time-scale that they have at their disposal.
DWBS