OPINION:
Your Aug. 7 editorial discusses the banality of urban murder, a sign of our secularist times (“’Nobody kill anybody,’ but ’nobody’ listened,” Web). Regarding the epidemic of big-city violence, reference was made to the solemnity of the biblical Sixth Commandment, “Thou shall not kill,” but the reality is that the other nine commandments are likewise honored mostly in the breach, in Baltimore and elsewhere. On the streets, life is cheap.
In the 19th century, atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche shouted the obvious: There is no basis for biblical morality where there is no belief in the God of the Bible. The former presupposes the latter. Centuries earlier, Shakespeare perceived the moral consequences of a godless culture when he put the following words into the mouth of a murderous Macbeth: “Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
GREGORY L. LEWIS
Baltimore
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