“Apologetics in the Void” are repostings from an on-going electronic discussion and debate I had some time ago with members of our local community. The list serve is called Vision 20/20, and hence the name “visionaries.”
Dear visionaries,
This entire discussion — about the Joke, coming out as a gay or lesbian, appropriateness of coming out in the classroom, etc. — has resulted in what I would call a veritable frenzy of unsupported dogmatic (albeit secular) fundamentalism. Myriads of moral assertions have been made, imperatives that apply far beyond personal choices, and which we are all to understand as governing the behavior of others. This assumed framework of moral values is the same one that is currently reigning as the interpretive framework in the government schools.
What I have asked for, and have not yet received, is any indication of what this worldview actually is from the defenders of it, or the enforcers of it, or the tax collectors for the advancement of it. You all impose your morality, without apology. What is the standard you appeal to, and why do you insist that it applies to me and to my children? And why are you willing to force me to pay for it?
Lesslie Newbigin put it well: “All understanding or reality involves a commitment, a venture of faith. No belief system can be faulted by the fact that it rests on unproved assumptions; what can and must be faulted is the blindness of its proponents to the fact that this is so.”