Words from Our Presidents: Reagan on a Nation “Without God”

Words from Our Presidents, ,

As part of a series entitled Words from Our Presidents we are bringing you different from quotes from U.S. Presidents on religious liberty and individual freedom. Today we have a quote from President Reagan’s 1984 address at the Ecumenical Prayer Breakfast in Texas.

RonaldReagan_WithoutGod

“Without God, there is no virtue, because there’s no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we’re mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”

President Ronald Reagan
August 23, 1984

READ MORE

40 Days for Life Story from Little Rock

Abortion,

Today is Day 13 of 40 Days for Life. Pro-lifers across the country are gathering outside abortion clinics for peaceful prayer that abortion will end.

40 Days for Life posted the following story from Little Rock about a woman who decided not to have an abortion:

Little Rock, Arkansas

When a prayer volunteer first approached a young couple arriving for an abortion, the woman was quite hostile. But the volunteer didn’t give up. She kept talking – and it paid off.

The young woman said the man who’d driven her to the abortion center was the baby’s father. She didn’t want the abortion, but he was pressuring her. He gave her a handful of cash, then drove away.

“She was 14 weeks pregnant,” said Mary in Little Rock.

The young woman went inside . . . but came back out about 45 minutes later and smiled at the volunteer. She took the money, stuffed it in her pocket – and left.

There is still time for you to come out and pray as part of 40 Days for Life. You can find out about prayer vigils in Little Rock and Fayetteville by visiting 40DaysforLife.com.

READ MORE

Eric Metaxas on “Producing” Children from Skin Cells

Bioethics, Medical Ethics,
[audio:http://www.breakpoint.org/images/content/breakpoint/audio/2013/100713_BP.mp3]

Nearly a year ago scientists in Japan developed a process by which mice offspring were “produced” in a lab using little more than skin cells obtained from the mice.

The discovery has many wondering if it is possible for scientists to “produce” biological children for human beings by a similar process, but it also carries troubling implications for bioethics.

Eric Metaxas comments on the ethical questions this discovery raises,

“Well, I think C. S. Lewis would have responded with another question: ‘Is there anything that should be forbidden?’ That’s precisely the challenge he issued in his famous essay, ‘The Abolition of Man,’ and to which academics of his day had no answer….As part of mankind’s conquest of nature, Lewis argued, we’ve conquered our own belief in moral absolutes. After all, the materialist would say, such beliefs are also part of nature. They’ve evolved to help us survive. But now that they’ve outlived their usefulness, we’re free to rise above them. The problem, as Lewis pointed out, is that we have no higher level to which we can rise. When we give up saying, ‘I ought,’ the only thing we can still say is, ‘I want.'”

You can read a full transcript of Metaxas’ comments at BreakPoint.

READ MORE