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Individuals are seen not as persons but as useful products. What happens when the "product" is deemed less than useful? As the excellent chapters on radical individualism and utilitarian hedonism show, these "products" are discarded by means of the culture of death. It is cogently argued that subhumanism is a direct consequence of the anti-religious thoughts of Feurbach, Comte, Marx, Nietzsche and others. It is noted that Descartes radically re-defined the role of philosophy, making way for the pantheism of Spinoza, the subjectivism of Kant and the other errors we see today. Theology too has fallen into error. We have the fideism of Luther and the emotivism of Schleirmacher. Doctrine is replaced by warm feelings and God is reduced to being, according to C S Lewis, a " senile grandfather in heaven." Without traditional Christian beliefs, we end up behaving like the people of the late Roman empire who "morally yawned at slavery, infanticide, aggressive war, the slaughter of enemy civilians, authoritarian government with no code of individual rights, prostitution and gladiatorial entertainment." The authors offer five principles to promote a culture of life: to absolutely value every human being, to recognize a transcendent moral order, to recognize that governments have an obligation to defend civil society, to promote the moral unity of the human family and to promote a humane economy. In other words, we need to promote Catholic social teaching which transcends the political left-right ideology. This book shows us how to get out of the mess we are in.
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