Here in "The Use of Nuclear Weapons Is Inherently Evil":
[W]e stand in that stream of Christians who find no justification for the use of nuclear weapons. Under no circumstances would the use of nuclear arms be justified. Our reasons hinge on the sixth commandment, “You shall not murder,” and the indiscriminate nature of nuclear weapons. Simply put, they end up killing a great many more civilians than combatants, and therefore, their use violates one cardinal principle of just war: proportionality. Sadly, every war will entail the death of civilians, but as one summary of just war theory put it, “The violence in a just war must be proportional to the casualties suffered.” Thus, “innocent civilians must never be the target of war; soldiers always avoid killing civilians.” ...
This is not the place to argue the fine points, but it is the place to reiterate that we stand in that stream of Christians who find no justification for the use of nuclear weapons. This is not a politically radical view. Some of the most conservative of Christians and politicians, including evangelist Billy Graham, have also concluded that nuclear weapons are inherently evil or, to not put too fine a point on it, “totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization” (Ronald Reagan).
This is, as the kids say these days, a hot mess.
It begs the question of innocence for one thing, which God has found little of in the world, and cares as little for. Just last week a famous anti-nuclear weapons advocate, a survivor of Hiroshima, admitted she and her classmates were being trained as decoders for the Japanese army, in preparation for the expected American invasion.
This is not the place to argue the fine points, but it is the place to reiterate that we stand in that stream of Christians who find no justification for the use of nuclear weapons. This is not a politically radical view. Some of the most conservative of Christians and politicians, including evangelist Billy Graham, have also concluded that nuclear weapons are inherently evil or, to not put too fine a point on it, “totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization” (Ronald Reagan).
This is, as the kids say these days, a hot mess.
It begs the question of innocence for one thing, which God has found little of in the world, and cares as little for. Just last week a famous anti-nuclear weapons advocate, a survivor of Hiroshima, admitted she and her classmates were being trained as decoders for the Japanese army, in preparation for the expected American invasion.
The Bible is full of instances of the indiscriminate killing of innocents, civilian populations targeted for destruction by none other than Yahweh himself. The possession of the promised land was predicated on this very idea:
And thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee. -- Deuteronomy 7:16.
It was murder on a grand scale, mass murder.
It was murder on a grand scale, mass murder.
Perhaps the most famous of these stories is about how Saul was actually removed from being king, to be replaced by David the ancestor of Jesus, precisely because he disobeyed God by NOT destroying the Amalekites utterly:
Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. ... And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them: but every thing that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly. -- 1 Samuel 15:3, 8f.
Evangelicals often explain away such evidence by appealing to dispensational theology, which provides a convenient way of making self-contradictory evidence from the Bible of null effect. That was a different dispensation they will say, this is now. There is bad relativism, and then there is divine relativism. And yet they insist "He changeth not".
Well, things mundane haven't changed much, either. American Evangelicals are content to imagine God still blesses America despite a slaughter of over 60 million innocents through abortion since 1973, right under their noses. But somehow we're supposed to get exercised over the possibility that Donald Trump might fry up millions of North Koreans. If proportionality mattered, the death of every man, woman and child in North Korea today wouldn't add up to 45% of the slaughter that's occurred right here in the land of the free, the home of the brave.
Many Evangelicals being Democrats over the years voted for this abortion status quo. Are we supposed to believe that was not politically radical, just because that's the way it was? Ronald Reagan said something sweeping about nuclear weapons, so just because he said it it's not radical? The is-is-ought fallacy never had it so good.
Citing Ronald Reagan as an authority for your position isn't always a good idea, but it is telling.
Ronald Reagan couldn't imagine that signing abortion legislation in California when he was governor would lead to an explosion of abortions from the hundreds to an average of over 100,000 by the time he left office. Just as he couldn't imagine that his defense build up to defeat Soviet communism wouldn't be paid for after all by spending cuts. Instead it was paid for by borrowing, becoming part of the national debt of $20 trillion which we cannot repay. Just as he couldn't imagine his immigration amnesty would act like a magnet for an explosion of illegal immigration into the United States. Just as he couldn't imagine that signing EMTALA requiring hospitals to treat all comers would eventually lead to Obamacare.
Ronald Reagan couldn't imagine a lot of things.
The reason for this is because Ronald Reagan was an ideologue, specifically a libertarian ideologue. Not a dangerous ideologue like Lenin, but an ideologue nonetheless. That's what made Reagan the enemy of communism, because communism is a rival ideology. That was a good thing, because we all agree it's better to have a produce department brimming with variety instead of one which sells everything in theory but has only cucumbers.
But ideologues often get carried away by the primacy of their principles, which come to act like blinders on their eyes, rendering them incapable of seeing things they might need to see. The ideologue becomes like a pack horse which goes down the road, undistracted from pursuing its single, certain purpose. It can see nothing but what lies ahead, forgetting what lies behind, pressing onward toward its simple calling. This is fine, until the driver falls asleep, or the cargo comes loose and falls away.
Well, things mundane haven't changed much, either. American Evangelicals are content to imagine God still blesses America despite a slaughter of over 60 million innocents through abortion since 1973, right under their noses. But somehow we're supposed to get exercised over the possibility that Donald Trump might fry up millions of North Koreans. If proportionality mattered, the death of every man, woman and child in North Korea today wouldn't add up to 45% of the slaughter that's occurred right here in the land of the free, the home of the brave.
Many Evangelicals being Democrats over the years voted for this abortion status quo. Are we supposed to believe that was not politically radical, just because that's the way it was? Ronald Reagan said something sweeping about nuclear weapons, so just because he said it it's not radical? The is-is-ought fallacy never had it so good.
Citing Ronald Reagan as an authority for your position isn't always a good idea, but it is telling.
Ronald Reagan couldn't imagine that signing abortion legislation in California when he was governor would lead to an explosion of abortions from the hundreds to an average of over 100,000 by the time he left office. Just as he couldn't imagine that his defense build up to defeat Soviet communism wouldn't be paid for after all by spending cuts. Instead it was paid for by borrowing, becoming part of the national debt of $20 trillion which we cannot repay. Just as he couldn't imagine his immigration amnesty would act like a magnet for an explosion of illegal immigration into the United States. Just as he couldn't imagine that signing EMTALA requiring hospitals to treat all comers would eventually lead to Obamacare.
Ronald Reagan couldn't imagine a lot of things.
The reason for this is because Ronald Reagan was an ideologue, specifically a libertarian ideologue. Not a dangerous ideologue like Lenin, but an ideologue nonetheless. That's what made Reagan the enemy of communism, because communism is a rival ideology. That was a good thing, because we all agree it's better to have a produce department brimming with variety instead of one which sells everything in theory but has only cucumbers.
But ideologues often get carried away by the primacy of their principles, which come to act like blinders on their eyes, rendering them incapable of seeing things they might need to see. The ideologue becomes like a pack horse which goes down the road, undistracted from pursuing its single, certain purpose. It can see nothing but what lies ahead, forgetting what lies behind, pressing onward toward its simple calling. This is fine, until the driver falls asleep, or the cargo comes loose and falls away.
It shouldn't surprise us that Ronald Reagan's views on nuclear weapons became ideological, or that Christians of a certain sort would be attracted to those views, but those views are blind. The use of the atomic bomb in World War Two not only ended the war, but dramatically lowered the number of expected casualties from a conventional assault on Japan, on both sides. Tens of millions did not die who would have. Not only that, the fact that America developed the bomb before the Germans could meant the US homeland was spared the fate we inflicted on Japan.
Not developing the bomb in order to save America from moral culpability for killing millions might well have destroyed millions in America. We will never know for sure.
But not using the bomb in order to save America from moral culpability definitely would have destroyed much more of America, and all of Japan.
Those millions who did not die would insist that things weren't so simple. And they still aren't.
Those millions who did not die would insist that things weren't so simple. And they still aren't.
