{"id":9603,"date":"2021-08-17T11:00:31","date_gmt":"2021-08-17T18:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/realfaith.com\/uncategorized\/how-is-the-bible-the-only-real-defense-of-human-equality\/"},"modified":"2021-08-17T11:00:31","modified_gmt":"2021-08-17T18:00:31","slug":"how-is-the-bible-the-only-real-defense-of-human-equality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/realfaith.com\/what-christians-believe\/how-is-the-bible-the-only-real-defense-of-human-equality\/","title":{"rendered":"How is the Bible the only real defense of human equality?","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"

World religions did not come up with the idea of equal rights. Nor did it originate in a secular, non-religious outlook.<\/p>\n

No major faith apart from Christianity mandates a deep commitment to the equality of all people. In every other religion certain individuals and classes rank higher than others on a ladder of spiritual attainment. They are more enlightened, more holy, further along in paying their karmic debt, closer to the divine by virtue of their good works, and so on. And the result can be horrific inequities. In Hindu culture, for example, the caste system made untold masses unequal and untouchable. In Muslim culture, sharia law gives women and outsiders nothing resembling the rights and privileges of the male faithful. Eric Metaxas, author of Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery<\/em>, sums it up this way in an email interview I conducted:<\/p>\n

In India, the concept of caste is a perfect example of how some cultures today believe and act upon the belief that some human beings are inherently better than other human beings. In many Muslim countries today, a Jew or Christian is viewed as subhuman, and they are routinely called \u201cmonkeys and pigs\u201d and thought to be fit for extermination or slavery. Subjection breeds ignorance and pain. When you ask yourself, \u201cDo the religions of the world contribute to equality?\u201d the honest answer is no.<\/p>\n

The foundation of a dominant secular worldview\u2014 evolution\u2014leads to the conclusion that some are more fit than others. Some deserve to be winners, and losers deserve to die. And by placing animals and human beings on a continuum of development, evolution has given rise to racist views that some individuals, peoples, and races are more advanced than others. In a debate I participated in on ABC Nightline, Deepak Chopra, for example, referred to myself and some other people as \u201cprimitive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly, Charles Darwin himself wrote a famous book that you may have not known the full title of, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life<\/em>. Darwin also wrote, \u201cAt some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised [sic] races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world.\u201d [ENDNOTE #1] An evolutionary view of humanity cannot lead to equality because some races are more evolved and fit than others who are less evolved and fit hence the survival of the fittest.<\/p>\n

During the twentieth century alone, some 170 million people were killed by other human beings [ENDNOTE #2]. Of those, roughly 130 million died at the hands of those holding an atheistic and evolutionary ideology. [ENDNOTE #3] Stalin killed forty million people, Hitler killed six million Jews and nine to ten million others (mainly Christians), and Mao killed some seventy million Chinese [ENDNOTE #4]. In addition to this number could be added the more than one billion people worldwide who were aborted and killed in the wombs of their mothers during the twentieth century alone.<\/p>\n

Comparatively, roughly seventeen million people were killed by professing Christians in twenty total centuries of Christian history. No Christian today lauds them or calls them heroes apart from cases of self-defending preservation. So, in all of history, those proclaiming but possibly not professing Christian faith have killed only a tiny fraction of the number of people that atheists and followers of other religions have killed in one century.<\/p>\n

Unlike human religions and philosophies, the Bible espouses equality:<\/p>\n