Subject: America’s Abandonment of Objective Morality – The New Most Hated Man in America
Judges 21:25 “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
Daraprim is the drug used to treat toxoplasmosis, a deadly disease which attacks unborn babies and those with weakened immune systems (as with those suffering from HIV or cancer). Before September last year, daraprim was expensive – $13.50 per pill. The price per pill since then? $750 – a 5,000% increase.
Why are many patients now unable to afford the drug they need to survive? Enter 32-year old Martin Shkreli, CEO of New York-based pharmaceutical company Turing. He bought the drug, set up a restricted distribution system controlled by his company, then marked the price up for sale to $750 per pill. Mr. Shkreli now has the been declared by multiple news media to be the “most hated man in America.” Shkreli commented that firms that previously owned the rights to the drug had been “virtually giving it away”. “We needed to turn a profit on the drug,” he said. “It is still under-priced compared to its peers.”
Devin Foley, in his February 5th entry on his blog ‘Intellectual Takeout’, says we shouldn’t be too quick to attack Shkreli. He points out that our outrage at Shkreli is unjustifiable since America has abandoned objective truth: “On February 4, 2016, he (Shkreli) was called before a Congressional committee to testify about his actions. About all he did was smirk and plead the Fifth. Infuriating isn’t it? But why? If truth is relative and there is no objective good or evil, then Shkreli simply pursued his own truth and interests. He is an embodiment of Nietzsche’s “will to power”, which should make all of us very uncomfortable.”
Foley goes on to explain that because we as a culture have rejected objective moral truth, we are left rudderless, with nothing except an outrage we cannot justify: “We sense in his actions and his attitude at the hearing that there is something morally offensive about purposefully raising prices of a drug that vulnerable people are dependent upon, but would likely be unable to afford after the 5,000% price hike. Yet, what moral and intellectual framework do we really have to work with other than the feeling that what he did is wrong? In a world in which we have rejected the idea of truth, we lack the ability to logically appeal to objective principles to properly convey our outrage. We are left only with outrage.”
Our verse this week is the last verse of the Old Testament book of Judges, and it should be eerily familiar to us today in America, as we are following the same destructive path: “…everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” This verse summed up the condition of the nation of Israel after the time of the kings. Since the Israelites had rejected God as their King, now there was no authoritative position in the nation. So everyone decided for themselves what they believed was morally right versus wrong. Again, as Foley so eloquently concludes: “Martin Shkreli has willed into existence his own morality or “table of what is good” – and that seems to be whatever makes him rich. If there is no objective truth to which we can appeal, all truth is relative and therefore does not exist. There can be no good or evil in such a world. Martin Shkreli is, to the horror of our society, actually acting on the foundational ideas that our culture is now promoting.”
How is this ludicrous idea of relative moral truth invading our culture? One main source is through our education system. Dinesh D’Souza explains in his bestselling book ‘What’s So Great About Christianity?’: “One way in which science can undermine the plausibility of religion, according to atheist biologist E.O. Wilson, is by showing that the mind is the product of evolution and that free moral choice is an illusion. ‘If religion can be analyzed and explained as a product of the brain’s evolution, its power as an external source of morality will be gone forever.’ Children spend the majority of their waking hours in school. Parents invest a good portion of their life savings in college education to entrust their offspring to people who are supposed to educate them. Isn’t it wonderful that educators have figured out a way to make parents the instruments of their own undoing? Isn’t it brilliant that they have persuaded Christian moms and dads to finance the destruction of their own beliefs and values? Who said atheists weren’t clever?”
If we desire that our children know how to discern what is morally right versus wrong, the solution is not to replace Christian worldview teaching with pseudoscience. The solution is to increase the training of our children in the critical thinking of a Christian worldview, which centers on the Person of Jesus Christ.
The ‘Faith, Substance & Evidence’ ministry exists to promote Jesus Christ as not only the greatest moral teacher in history (whom our children must listen to and follow) but also as America’s remedy for our sin that has blinded us to restoring our moral compass: turning to Him as our Savior and Lord.