Matt Slick and Rape-Babies

This is a letter I just sent to Matt Slick from CARM:

Dear Matt Slick,

I wanted to bring to your attention a discrepancy I found on your CARM site. Particularly this page:

http://www.carm.org/questions/rapedwithchild.htm

Now Mr. Slick, as a Christian you believe that sin can be transferred between people. In other words, you believe that guilt can be shifted to a person other than the one that committed the offense. As a Christian you believe that all humans are guilty for fruit eaten by Adam and Eve, and you believe that Jesus was able to suffer punishment and "forgive" or pay the consequences of these sinners. This concept of guilt re-assignment is the centerpiece of Christianity itself.

However, in your "rapedwithchild.htm" page on your CARM site, you specifically say, "Why should I make the child pay for the sins of another?"

I hope you see the significance of this major slip. Your natural, instinctive (non-Bible-based) morality automatically tells you that to have a child suffer for the sins of another is wrong, and you express this in your writing about rape resulting in pregnancy without any second thought or hesitation. It just came naturally to you that to make an innocent child suffer for the sins of another is immoral.

This of course is contradictory to the very centerpiece, the very core of Christian theology. Christianity, and the Bible, quite clearly say in many different verses that guilt and sin can be inherited, traded, and otherwise passed around to people other than the guilty or responsible ones.

It is interesting to see your natural human moral code pop its head out and speak its mind through your writing when you had your guard down. And the ease with which you wrote that sentence makes it clear to me that your moral code is indeed a Godless one. But then again, every human’s moral code is a Godless one when you get down to the subconscious core of it. Your moral code existed before you ever learned about the Bible, and it was fine just the way it was before you ever adopted Christianity.

See, I am an atheist, and I agree with you: it WOULD be wrong to make ANYONE suffer for the crimes of another, PERIOD. You obviously hold on to this tenet except for just a few circumstances: Adam and Eve eating the fruit, and Jesus suffering on the cross. In those two instances, you break your own moral code and say to yourself "That is ok. That is correct." But when any other specific example is put forth before you, without a fruit eating or crucifying context, you say, "That is not ok. That is not correct."

Now Mr. Slick, how do you reconcile this discrepancy? Do you stick true to your Christian beliefs and revise your "rapedwithchild.htm" page and instead say "I should make the child pay for the sins of another," or do you betray your Christian facade and admit that truly, it is NOT OK to have anyone ever be assigned blame for the sins of another, ever?

Mr. Slick, what I am looking for from you is consistency. So in this case, who loses? Your Christian faith, or the rape-baby? One of them has got to give.

I look forward to your reply.

Aaron Kinney