The evil of rape

southernprose_cover_CAFGRape is not about sexual gratification — it is an act of reprehensible violence intended to degrade and humiliate a woman. I could never nor want to defend the act of rape in any way, shape, or form. It’s simply deplorable behavior.

Furthermore, I want to hear nothing said about “legitimate rape” or any other such nonsense intended to diminish the gravity of the crime. Blaming the victim is a despicable tactic all too frequently employed by unscrupulous defense attorneys more interested in winning than in seeing justice served.

Survivors of rape are already forced to live with memories of the violence and the feelings of helplessness, rage, and humiliation for the rest of their lives. If the woman happens to become pregnant as the result of being raped, an additional unfair burden is placed on her shoulders.

At that point, the innocent victim faces a truly horrible choice — what does she do with the baby? She became pregnant through no fault of her own — but how can she keep that baby, if she cannot love it?

Does she have that child aborted? Should she have the baby, and put it up for adoption?

No woman should ever be forced into the position of having to make such a difficult decision through no fault of her own. And I can’t judge her decision from where I stand. Because of rape and incest, I could never in good conscience bring myself to support a universal ban on abortion, no matter how evil and barbaric I think most abortions are.

Men who rape women are cowards. If murder is the worst thing one human being can do to another, rape would have to be a pretty close second.

I have no problem with a convicted rapist being sentenced to death or castration for his insidious crime. Or both, for that matter.

Okay, by now I think I’ve made my point. It should be painfully obvious about how I personally feel about the crime of rape or what should be done with a rapist.

However, I must now ask the reader a serious question: why is rape wrong? How do we know it is wrong? Is it because I said so? Is it because rape is forbidden by law? What makes rape a criminal offense?

Personally, I happen to think there’s a lot more to the answer of how we know rape is inherently wrong than simply because it’s illegal.

When acts of adultery, murder, rape, or incest are reported in the news, the word most frequently associated in my mind with any of those acts is evil.

And we all believe that rape and murder are evil, criminal behavior,  whether we want to admit it or not. Rape is surely one of the worst things one human being could do to another. We are “hard-wired” to know rape is wrong because we were created with that knowledge.

Therefore, when someone asks a remarkably stupid question like “Did God create rape?” rather than giving an equally inane answer, one could see this as an opportunity for a “teachable moment.”

Please allow me to dispense with the ridiculous notion that “God” might have created rape.

God created human beings, endowing us all with the gift of free will that allows us to choose between doing good and evil. Otherwise we would be tantamount to slaves, with no choice but to worship our creator God.

In truth, rape was devised by mankind as another in a long list of acts of depravity, yet one more way for one person to inflict harm on others to make them miserable.

Now I don’t mean to pick on Ms. Burris of Blue Nation Review for misunderstanding the point that Mr. Isaacs seemed to be attempting to make about evolution theory.

Isaacs was merely trying to say if evolution theory really have caused all life to exist without any assistance from a supernatural Creator, then there is no rational explanation for objective morality. In a world absent the objective morality that can only come from God, there is no reason for anyone to assume behavior such as rape or incest would automatically be considered improper.

Furthermore, if evolution really happens without God, it would only be natural that our genes should be selfish. Spreading our DNA indiscriminately through the gene pool should be the perfectly acceptable, reasonable thing to do.

That’s what “survival of the fittest” really means.

The honest atheist who accepts evolution theory as the explanation for their existence may naturally conclude that their life has no true meaning or purpose. We would exist simply to live, breed, and die.

In an atheist world, morality is subjective and therefore must be arbitrary, varying from person to person.

By refusing to acknowledge the existence of objective morality, an evangelist for atheism like Lawrence Krauss, while cleverly disguised as a physicist, can claim with a straight face that he really isn’t sure incest should be declared to be always wrong under every conceivable circumstance.

To be fair, Dr. Krauss isn’t the only atheist academic who gets confused about the source of the “ingrained taboo” of such abhorrent behavior.

Richard Dawkins has also gotten himself into hot water more than once in the past by making comments that trivialized rape and sexual assault.

I recognize that objective morality can only come from the God that created me. Because I really believe that, I have no problem saying that rape and incest are always wrong.

Period.

Exclamation point, even.

Speak Your Mind

*