About a year ago Aliza Shvarts of Yale University did her senior art project using the medium of her own reproductive system. Rumor mill has it that she never actually went through with her project, but the zeitgeist that birthed the idea is still prevalent. Her “art” included her artificially inseminating herself multiple times and then having an abortion. She explained the meaning of her project as such:
[The project] creates an ambiguity that isolates the locus of ontology to an act of readership. An intentional ambiguity pervades both the act and the objects I produced in relation to it. The performance exists only as I chose to represent it. For me, the most poignant aspect of this representation... is the impossibility of accurately identifying the resulting blood. Because the miscarriages coincide with the expected date of menstruation (the 28th day of my cycle), it remains ambiguous whether the there was ever a fertilized ovum or not. The reality of the pregnancy, both for myself and for the audience, is a matter of reading.
In laymen terms she is attempting to show how an object is nothing in and of itself, rather we predicate meaning and purpose onto it. According to her, the fetus, and everything else, are "very much a linguistic and political reality, an act of reading constructed by an act of naming — an authorial act." Her pregnancy relies not on some source beyond herself, whether nature or God, but on her own interpretation of the facts. "Just as it is a myth that women are 'meant' to be feminine and men masculine, that penises and vaginas are 'meant' for penetrative heterosexual sex (or that mouths, anuses, breasts, feet or leather, silicone, vinyl, rubber, or metal implements are not 'meant' for sex at all), it is a 
myth that ovaries and a uterus are 'meant' to birth a child."
The world agrees.
The pseudo-philosopher of the quantum world argues that light is both a wave and a particle; that subatomic particles exist and do not exist at the same time; that we form and appear to change reality just by observing it. Is it there, is it not there? That's in the eye of the beholder. Hollywood, through movies such as Pulp Fiction, argues that one nation calls a burger a Cheeseburger Royale, another a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and even another as the Whopper. The burger is whatever we declare it to be. Some people prefer ketchup on their fries, others mayonnaise. Some mother's are having a child, others are merely carrying a choice. Some men prefer to marry a woman, some prefer to marry a man, and others their own family.
The birthing begins, as Nietzsche's observed, with the idea that “God is dead"; however, few actually look further down the page to what he declared must necessarily follow. When God dies so do the stars on which we chart our course. How is one to answer Nietzsche's flurry of questions without a fixed point of reference?
myth that ovaries and a uterus are 'meant' to birth a child."The world agrees.
The pseudo-philosopher of the quantum world argues that light is both a wave and a particle; that subatomic particles exist and do not exist at the same time; that we form and appear to change reality just by observing it. Is it there, is it not there? That's in the eye of the beholder. Hollywood, through movies such as Pulp Fiction, argues that one nation calls a burger a Cheeseburger Royale, another a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and even another as the Whopper. The burger is whatever we declare it to be. Some people prefer ketchup on their fries, others mayonnaise. Some mother's are having a child, others are merely carrying a choice. Some men prefer to marry a woman, some prefer to marry a man, and others their own family.
The birthing begins, as Nietzsche's observed, with the idea that “God is dead"; however, few actually look further down the page to what he declared must necessarily follow. When God dies so do the stars on which we chart our course. How is one to answer Nietzsche's flurry of questions without a fixed point of reference?
Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?
What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun?
Whither is it moving now?
Whither are we moving?
Away from all suns?
Are we not plunging continually?
Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions?
Is there still any up or down?
Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing?
Do we not feel the breath of empty space?
Has it not become colder?
Is not night continually closing in on us?
Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning?
The Bible, as always, completely contradicts the starting point of the world. Genesis begins with God as does the Gospel of John: "In the beginning God," and "in the beginning was the Word"--they are one and the same. Pause and meditate on this for a moment, for it places a whole new meaning on the phrase “the Bible is the Word of God.” It's not merely some things that God has said, but it is quite literally speaking about how everything that has ever been should be seen. The Word is absolute and never changing. Heraclitus was wrong when he said “you could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.” While this world is ever changing and evolving there is a standard to be found beneath it all. The river is not defined by the water, but by its bed; there is a relationship between the two, but the bedrock is fixed.
Shvarts's art project is only an example of the natural outcomes in a world that has no where left to turn but to our own autonomy. Human life thrown away in the name of art, philosophy, and a piece of paper. Life destroyed not only because of a political statement, but life destroyed because we don't even know how to begin to define it anymore. A unified and universal context through which to define the particulars is no more, and man's hands are left bloodied as he tries to find his way through the dark.
Who are we to say that abortion is morally wrong? Who are we to say that a man should not enter into another man as he does a women? Who are we to say that one religion or answer is better than another? After all, if everything is merely in the eye of the beholder, then on what ground do we have to affirm anything at all? If God has not said, then man is left talking to himself. Fro
m these rationalizations the perverse idea of freedom is born. If something is possible, then we seem to want to have a right to do it. Yet, freedom does not mean a freedom to do and live however one pleases. That is not freedom, that is anarchy; and those who subscribe to such a philosophy have nothing to be free in. Rebelling against everything leaves nothing for one to freely live in. Freedom requires boundaries, and without the boundaries set by God we will never have a world to be free in.
GK Chesterton dares us to imagine a tall island in the middle of the ocean where children are playing. If there are walls, then they can play without worry and care tossing themselves about more than the raging seas below. Remove the walls, however, and these children will no longer sing their songs of joy, but instead will be gathered in fear in the middle of the island. As secularism continues to take hold of America and we continue to erode our Christian walls we will not see the sun illuminating the world to live as we please, but we will instead be left huddled in terror not only from the ferocity of the sea, but the ferocity of one another.
Shvarts's art project is only an example of the natural outcomes in a world that has no where left to turn but to our own autonomy. Human life thrown away in the name of art, philosophy, and a piece of paper. Life destroyed not only because of a political statement, but life destroyed because we don't even know how to begin to define it anymore. A unified and universal context through which to define the particulars is no more, and man's hands are left bloodied as he tries to find his way through the dark.
Who are we to say that abortion is morally wrong? Who are we to say that a man should not enter into another man as he does a women? Who are we to say that one religion or answer is better than another? After all, if everything is merely in the eye of the beholder, then on what ground do we have to affirm anything at all? If God has not said, then man is left talking to himself. Fro
m these rationalizations the perverse idea of freedom is born. If something is possible, then we seem to want to have a right to do it. Yet, freedom does not mean a freedom to do and live however one pleases. That is not freedom, that is anarchy; and those who subscribe to such a philosophy have nothing to be free in. Rebelling against everything leaves nothing for one to freely live in. Freedom requires boundaries, and without the boundaries set by God we will never have a world to be free in.GK Chesterton dares us to imagine a tall island in the middle of the ocean where children are playing. If there are walls, then they can play without worry and care tossing themselves about more than the raging seas below. Remove the walls, however, and these children will no longer sing their songs of joy, but instead will be gathered in fear in the middle of the island. As secularism continues to take hold of America and we continue to erode our Christian walls we will not see the sun illuminating the world to live as we please, but we will instead be left huddled in terror not only from the ferocity of the sea, but the ferocity of one another.
Those without God have no basis for defining what is human, what marriage is, what right and wrong are and how to apply the titles. For them it's not a matter of what should be, but what could be. But they live a lie. Shvarts is wrong. Absolutes exist and they dictate who we are and what things are meant to be for. There is meaning, purpose and design in life, but that is only because God is there and He has spoken.
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