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Chaplain’s Corner Evil
everything on humans and discredited whatever was spiritual (and thus all religious faiths). Several authors admitted this bias and stated this was their goal. Tragically, the beliefs of these authors were adopted into the books by Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler. They formed the basis for both communism and fascism and led to the extermination of hundreds of millions of people prior to and through both World Wars. They also led to not only twisted but barbaric ideas about humanity. While many have repudiated these authors and their books, they still have followings in many parts of the world, especially in the communist controlled nations. Yes, even here in America, some of these authors and their views still circulate and are revered. Every one of these authors expressed extremist beliefs and views, and sadly, we are currently seeing a revival of extremism across the social, political, religious, and commercial spectrums. The Bible describes the end of the age in graphic and terrible ways. One expression highlights what all these authors promoted, and what too many are pursuing today. It says that near the end, people will call good evil and evil good. Jesus calls us to promote what is loving, good, and true for everyone everywhere, and to hate evil. In His well-known prayer, Jesus prayed, “deliver us from evil” (sometimes translated “evil one”). May the Lord help us to avoid the extremes that promote what is false, foolish, and wrong, and promote His good teachings.
I just finished reading a book about the ten most harmful books ever written. It was a fascinating if not also depressing read. Most of these books were written by
historians, politicians, psychiatrists, philosophers, anthropologists, and scientists in the 1800’s and 1900’s. They became immensely popular around the world and changed human history. While the majority of these books are now viewed as skewed, outdated, falsified, or immensely destructive (and one author now banned by the organization he founded but who still follows much of his beliefs), the remnants of what they taught are still very much with us today. The beliefs and views espoused all share the same basic tenets: atheism, eugenics, political extremism, scientific evolution, human sexuality, and deviation of human behavior. For those uninformed about eugenics, it was a popular belief from the mid 1800’s through the 1940’s (while lingering in some ideas still around) and defined by a dictionary as the “study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed as a method of improving the human race, eugenics was increasingly discredited as unscientific and racially biased during the 20th century…” Most of these authors based their beliefs and writings on “humanism,” which centered
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