Kerby Anderson

In the midst of the debates about which lives matter is a more important question as to why lives matter at all. This is not a commentary about “Black Lives Matter” or “All Lives Matter.” There is a more fundamental question. If you start with an evolutionary view that all of life is the result of chance, then on what basis can you argue that any life is more important than any other? One of the guests on my radio program argues that if you accept naturalistic Darwinism, then “No Lives Matter.” In the midst of this debate and discussion, you would hope that Americans living in a society influenced by Judeo-Christian values might have a better answer. But that is not what George Barna has found in his latest survey through the Cultural Research Center. He concluded that less than four in ten (39%) of Americans today view human life as having unconditional, intrinsic worth. Most of those people are found in the deeply religious segments of society. As you might expect, an evolutionary view surfaced in the research. One out of eight (12%) claimed that people are merely “material substance – biological machines.” Even more interesting was the fact that another one-eighth (12%) argued that people are “part of the mind of the universe.” Some people even argued the humans are “an illusion” or that we are a “sleeping god, part of the soul of the universe.” A substantial share of the population combined to offer views such as “life is what you make it but it has no absolute value” (37%) and “life does not attain its full value until we reach our highest point of evolution and expression” (11%). All of this suggests that the best question to ask is why any life matters and on what basis. Americans obviously have some very confused ideas about this.