With Prejudice

Dastardly Malaysians

We have argued the groundless basis for ethics, morality, and truth that encompasses our established religion of secular humanism.  Others, changing the metaphor, have argued that the ethics and morality of Unbelief hang on skyhooks.  In the end, it is just the particular prejudices that happen to be in favour in a society at some particular time that carry the day.  One generation's moral good is another generation's evil.

Try getting a card-carrying secular humanist, who believes that everything is only matter and subject to evolutionist randomness, to develop an authoritative and cogent case for scrapping the death penalty, for example, and you end up with repeated ad nauseum emphatic emotive assertions about brutality, savagery, cruelty, primitiveness, and so on, along with trite slogans such as "two wrongs do not make a right" without any foundations or over-arching principles beyond gratuitous groundless assertions.  In the end, the argument relies upon vituperative emotive repetition as its highest and final authority.  Say it loudly enough, often enough, and passionately enough and people will believe you.

Take the common appeal to "human rights" for instance.
  Human rights have become a bulbous wax nose to be twisted into whatever shape our current prejudices lust after.   Women have a universal human right to practice abortion we are told.  On what foundation or higher authority does this human right rest, we ask?  Well, it just is--you ignorant, stupid, misogynistic, sexist pig.  Yeah, right.  We get the picture.

Or again, all people have a human right to a living wage.  On what grounds, we inquire?  Because "justice" requires equality.  Really?  On what does that assertion rest, we wonder?  It is self-evident.  Everyone believes it.  Once again, we get the picture.

In passing, we observe that all of these bald assertions come from the mouths of folk who believe in "progress" being achieved by the survival of the fittest, on the one hand, and the ultimacy of sub-atomic particles swirling in a ceaseless sea of brute chance, on the other.  These two ultimate realities are supposed to provide a basis for a human right to a living wage.  Go figure. 

Whenever our established religion is confronted with "other ideas" in nations elsewhere in the world the point is illustrated handsomely.  The emotive fulminations shoot out faster than rounds from the barrel of an M-60 machine gun.  An instance presents itself in a case presently occupying the attention of the Commentariat--the case of a Malaysian diplomat who allegedly raped a woman whilst posted to Wellington, New Zealand.  The diplomat in question claimed (and was initially granted) diplomatic immunity.  He returned to his home country, where the authorities publicly committed to an investigation and trial.

We await developments, but in the meantime a right royal brouhaha has exploded over the New Zealand government's (allegedly) supine compliance with Malaysia's insistence upon the accused's diplomatic immunity.  This, from the NZ Herald:

Documents released by NZ officials show the Malaysian Government asked New Zealand to drop all charges and seal the court record of the official.  The man at the centre of the allegations was identified yesterday as Muhammed Rizalman Bin Ismail, a 38-year-old junior military official with three children, who had worked at the Malaysian High Commission in Wellington since October.  . . .

In a diplomatic notice on May 10, Mfat wrote: "The New Zealand police believes it is in the public interest to prosecute these offences due to the serious nature of the offending."

Ismail was facing charges of burglary and assault with intent to rape after following a 21-year-old woman home in Brooklyn the previous day. Mfat asked Malaysian authorities to waive the personal immunity granted to diplomats under the Vienna Convention.  In its response on May 21, the high commission said it would not waive immunity and had "decided that [Ismail] should be repatriated to Malaysia as soon as possible".

Now, the assumption lying behind much of the "outrage" over Malaysian diplomatic official is that he will return home, only to be given a slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket, and let off.  New Zealand justice would have been denied.  But that's the point.  Who is to say that New Zealand's justice is any better or worse than Malaysia's?  By what standard could such an assertion ever be made and carried, apart from the crudest nationalistic prejudice? 

But there was a sting in the tail--which has been hinted at.

The Malaysian Ministry of Defence had established a Board of Inquiry for the investigation, Ms Zappei said.  "We don't have futher details as to how long this investigation will take, what penalties he can face, what crimes he can be charged with.  "The board was investigating Ismail under the Armed Forces Act."

It was unclear if Ismail had been stood down from his post, she said.  [Malaysian Foreign Minister] Mr Aman said Ismail could face jail, "or worse".  The board would rely on evidence provided by New Zealand authorities, Ms Zappei said.

Mmmm.  What could be worse than a jail sentence?  The death sentence.  Malaysia utilises such as the ultimate penalty.   We wonder how that would have changed the narrative and conversation in this country, if it turned out to be the case.  Why, those primitive Malaysians!  Poor Ismail!  How dastardly of the NZ Government to hand him over to those wretchedly backward, bloodthirsty Islamist Malaysians.

We are so full of such high prejudice--without absolute principles or foundations upon which to ground any moral judgment.  Materialism and evolutionism do not provide foundations or warrant for morals and ethics.  Rather, whatever is, is "right".  Matter is blind, unthinking, dead.  Nevertheless, we continue to insist that rape is wrong and a criminal offence, that abortion is morally neutral and none of our business, and imply that Malaysian justice is suspect, despite having no warrant or ground for any such principles or beliefs.

In conclusion, if any reader finds this piece to be frustrating and annoying, we will have made the point successfully.  May your disquiet grow to the point where you commence re-evaluating your blind adherence to a world-view that can never rise higher than random meaninglessness and brute chance--no matter how much you would desperately like it to do so.

Postscript: the Malaysian government has waived diplomatic immunity and sent the accused diplomat back to New Zealand to stand trial.  From the solid ground of the Christian Gospel, we are pleased with this outcome.  Rape is not just a gross sin.  It is also a crime.  God, the Judge of all the earth, has declared it so.  He has appointed the civil magistrate as His minister to wield the sword of justice to avenge such atrocities.  The Christian position on such things is not meaningless, but grounded upon the glory and majesty of the infinite, eternal God. 

But for the evolutionist, rape in the final analysis must remain an amoral act.  It cannot be rejected in principle--and all evolutionist Unbelievers who do so, are confused or inconsistent.  The doctrine of the survival of the fittest makes one agnostic on the "morality" of rape--as it does on eugenics, murder, abortion, and euthanasia, all of which involve terminating the unfit.