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It is hoped that stem cells will provide new and more effective treatments for many of the debilitating diseases which we face. Stem cells are fast growing, unspecialized cells that can reproduce themselves and grow new organs for the body. All 210 different types of human tissue originate from these primitive cells. Because they have the potential to grow into almost any kind of tissue, including nerves, bones, and muscle, scientists believe that the introduction of healthy stem cells into a patient may restore lost function to damaged organs. It is hoped that these cells will provide replacement tissues for damaged and diseased tissues resulting from many disease processes. Stem cells are found in embryos as well as in adults.

Embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) involves the destruction of human embryos so that their stem cells can be transplanted into the bodies of those suffering from illness. Therapeutic cloning involves creating an embryo that is a genetic clone of the patient and using that embryo as a source for stem cells, which would guarantee that the resulting tissue is not rejected by
the patient’s body. The cloning technique is called Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT). In SCNT, first, an unfertilized egg is taken from a woman and its nucleus is removed. Genetic material (DNA) from the patient is then placed inside the vacated egg. Chemicals are added and a spark of electricity jolts the cell into dividing and growing into a clone. Thisprocess gave us “Dolly,” the first cloned sheep.

Adult stem cells have already been used with positive results in the treatment of various diseases. Studies using non-embryonic stem cells (all considered “adult” stem cells), derived from umbilical cord blood, bone marrow, brain tissue and fat, have moved well beyond theory to application. Clinical studies have offered solid benefits to patients suffering from heart disease, blood disorders and other afflictions. See here for information on the progress made in adult stem cell therapies. Despite the scientific communities focus on the potential benefits of ESCR, embryonic stem cells have yet to demonstrate a single human therapeutic benefit.

Next, a continued evaluation of the ethics of ESCR based on naturalism.

This is the third of a series of posts on ESCR and Naturalistic Ethics. Ronald A. Lindsay proposes that scientific naturalism provides the best ethical foundation for understanding ESCR.

Lindsay’s ethics also appeal to the concept of “reflective equilibrium”, a term initially coined by John Rawls as a method for arriving at the content of principles of justice. This approach presupposes a coherence model of justification. This model claims that all beliefs are on par with each other and the main, or more likely, sole source of the justification of a belief is the fact that the belief coheres with the other beliefs in one’s noetic structure. Certainly, one might expect that one’s beliefs should cohere well with other beliefs one holds, however to claim that a belief is justified on that basis seems suspect.

J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig offer three criticism of this method of justification. First, there is a vicious circularity and implausibility of the transfer of justification of one belief to another. No belief can be the basis of itself. On the view called linear positive coherentism, belief A justifies B, B justifies C, and on and on until the loop is closed by Z justifying A. This is obviously visciously circular.

Second, this theory makes a belief justified solely on the function of the internal relations among beliefs in one’s noetic structure, thus, justification has nothing to do with anything outside one’s set of beliefs, such as the external world or truth. This is otherwise known as the isolation problem. Since the objective of justification is to give us knowledge of the external world, if coherence theories cut us off from that world, they must be inadequate.

The third problem with coherence theories is that two or more equally coherent sets of beliefs could be logically incompatible with each other. A schizophrenic individual may think that he is the president of the United States and have set of beliefs equally coherent with those of the president of the United States. The coherentist would have to admit that the beliefs in each set are equally justified. This surely does not seem to be the case. There is no reason one should accept Lindsay’s coherence theory of justification in his attempt to ground ESCR ethics in naturalistic science.

Next, Lindsay turns to a discussion of the moral implications of ESCR. In order to discuss the moral implications of ESCR, one must have at least some understanding of the science involved. It is beyond our scope provide a detailed explanation of the science. However, I will attempt to offer some basic background information regarding this process in my next post in this series.

This is the second in a series of posts evaluating the application of naturalistic ethics to embryonic stem cell research. This is a response primarily to Ronald A. Lindsay’s white paper on the subject.

It seems Lindsay vanquishes any non-scientific moral arguments to the realm of dogma. He argues:

We should resist the temptation to resort to dogma and vague and uninformative principles such as ‘the sanctity of life’… We cannot approach novel moral questions with preset limits on acceptable answers. Dogma is not very helpful in any human endeavor. It has no utility in bioethical inquiry.

I would wholeheartedly agree with Lindsay. However, it seems he is blind to his own naturalistic dogma which he insists is the only answer to the ethical challenges of ESCR. Dogma may be defined as a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds. This is exactly what Lindsay is claiming we should base our ethics on, because without adequate grounds or support he authoritatively claims we should only accept scientific evidence as grounds for our moral norms. Why is it that those who claim there is a basis for morality outside of science only spout forth dogma, while those who claim there is no basis for morality outside of science are reasonably approaching the subject with an open mind? This is certainly inconsistent.

Lindsay’s foundation for ethics is subject to the “is/ought” fallacy. He claims:

Our moral arguments must be grounded in an accurate understanding of the available scientific evidence.

However, science can only tell us how things are. But there seems to be a big difference between descriptive statements (about what is) and prescriptive statements (about what ought to be). He casually brushes aside this accusation without adequately addressing the problem by claiming:

We are not suggesting that we can deduce our values from facts. ‘Is’ does not imply ‘ought’. However, even though facts do not dictate our choices, they do circumscribe them.

Granted, one must have an adequate understanding of the science when one is attempting to provide ethical guidance for that scientific endeavor. But, Lindsay seems to be going beyond this by claiming that science is the source of that ethic. This, in turn, seems quite dogmatic.

In addition to relying on science for much of its ethical foundation, Lindsay further develops his naturalistic ethics by turning to a utilitarian approach.

In ethics, our moral judgments should continually be tested for adequacy by considering their practical implications.

He dogmatically asserts that…

… we do not lose sight of the fact that morality is a practical enterprise with certain widely shared objectives.

Lindsay lists some of these objectives for his reader: To help us achieve a less painful, more desirable existence by helping to provide security to members of a community, ameliorating harmful conditions and facilitating cooperation in achieving shared or complementary goals. I must wonder what scientific discovery allowed Lindsay to gain this insight into moralities objectives. What experiment did he perform to reach these “scientific” conclusions? If we accept his utilitarian foundation for the ethics of ESCR, why should we accept his objectives as being the correct ones? On what basis can he make these claims?

I am going to post a series of blogs examining the ethics of Embryonic Stem Cell Research (ESCR). Specifically, I will evaluate the argument in favor of ESCR based on ethical arguments from a naturalistic perspective. This will take several posts which may be interspersed with other topics.

The field of bioethics has become increasingly complex as advances in medical technologies and scientific breakthroughs have come with increasing frequency. None of the disputes over the limits which should be placed on scientific research have been more divisive or controversial than the debate over ESCR. President Bush has described ESCR as “the taking of innocent human life” and claimed that each embryo “is a unique human life with inherent dignity and matchless value.” These remarks were offered after Bush’s first veto of his five-year presidential career, a veto of a bill to lift funding restrictions for ESCR. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) called the veto “a shameful display of cruelty, hypocrisy and ignorance.” These contrasting viewpoints are obviously based on two different systems of morality. There is an ongoing battle between two competing worldviews: The Judeo-Christian tradition and Naturalism.

Ronald A. Lindsay, the legal director of the Center for Inquiry, a non-profit organization dedicated to a naturalistic and secular humanistic worldview, responded to the veto of President Bush with a white paper, Stem Cell Research: An Approach to Bioethics Based on Scientific Naturalism. In it he lays out an argument for ESCR based on a naturalistic ethic. The goal is to examine his argument and to determine whether a naturalistic ethic is a sufficient foundation upon which to ground ESCR. I cannot fully evaluate every claim, but I will address the major issues.

Lindsay rightly claims that we should not simply assume that our moral norms apply to embryos without having offered well-reasoned and persuasive argument. It is just that kind of argument which I hope to offer against his naturalistic ethic. Unfortunately, a naturalistic bias artificially limits the arguments which may be considered persuasive since, according to Lindsay, “at a minimum we need a compelling argument, firmly grounded in scientific evidence to support an extension of our moral norms and principles to encompass embryos.” At this point, one might wonder what science can tell us about morality at all and why one should accept that an argument grounded in scientific evidence is required to give us direction on the ethics of ESCR.

Next, more on Lindsay’s argument.

I was doing a little study recently on philosophical defenses of the traditional view of an everlasting hell, and something mentioned by Michael Murray in his article on the subject in Reason for the Hope Within caught my attention and made me think. Although I’m not going to go into a full-scale defense of the traditional view now, the basic idea is that an everlasting hell is the only kind that does justice to both the seriousness of the crime of rejecting the infinitely worthy creator and the dignity that we have as free and responsible creatures. It is this latter point that caught my attention.

What is interesting that when we think about the difference between capital punishment and a life sentence, we intuitively see capital punishment as the more severe penalty and one to be avoided if possible. Furthermore, I’m betting that most of the people who think the idea of an everlasting hell is revolting would also be against capital punishment. But why do we intuitively judge capital punishment worse than life in prison? Presumably, because we think that the intrinsic worth of persons is so high that their continued existence, even a very limited one, is better than their lack of existence. But what is interesting is that the difference between capital punishment and a life sentence seems strongly analogous to the difference between an everlasting hell and the annihilation view. Just as in a life sentence, on the everlasting view, the condemned person continues to exist in hell, but they are stripped of the good things they previously enjoyed (obviously, there is a difference in that in hell this stripping is total, whereas it is only partial for the person serving a life sentence). Similarly, just as in a case of capital punishment, on the annihilationist view, the person is snuffed out of existence.

What is interesting is that, if these two situations are truly analogous in the relevant ways, and if our intuitions are correct about the death penalty being worse than a life sentence, then we should think that the view of an everlasting hell is morally better than the annihilationist view. Obviously, we don’t all think this way (and I would bet most don’t), but it’s not clear exactly why on the face of it.

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
when sorrows like sea billows roll;
whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
It is well with my soul,
it is well, it is well with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
let this blest assurance control,
that Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
and hath shed his own blood for my soul.
It is well with my soul,
it is well, it is well with my soul.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
It is well with my soul,
it is well, it is well with my soul.

And, Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
the clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
the trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
even so, it is well with my soul.
It is well with my soul,
it is well, it is well with my soul.

- Horatio G. Spafford -

In the realm of religion, we often place much more emphasis on the sincerity of belief than on the truth of the belief. I find this quite remarkable. What is belief anyway? Greg Koukl, in his latest Solid Ground, discusses this issue. He argues that when we say we believe something, we are claiming that something is a certain way, that reality matches up with what we are claiming. If you claim, “I believe that President Bush is the president of the United States”, you actually are claiming that this state of affairs is actually so. We don’t usually say such things as, “Well, I believe that George Bush is president of the United States, but if you believe that Fidel Castro is then that’s alright. I’m not claiming it is true that George Bush is president, but I just believe it is so.”

So, when we say we believe something, we are saying that that is a fact. Everyone thinks his beliefs are right, or else he would not believe them. Now, my beliefs can be wrong or they can be right. Either George Bush is president or he is not. Both Castro and Bush are not president of the U.S. at the same time. Why do we hold this so clearly for non-religious belief, but when it comes to religious beliefs, suddenly belief turns to mush.

Another important point is that our beliefs are not truth-makers. My believing something to be true does not make it true. If so, there is no distinction between fantasy and reality. A thing is true regardless of my belief. According to Koukl:

If truth is when things are the way we think they are, then “things” - objects in the world - are what make our beliefs true. Facts of the world are truth-makers. A true proposition describes a fact. If this is the case, then if there is no truth, there are no facts.

Paley’s Watchmaker Argument has been updated and animated. To view this animation, click here. (HT: ID Update).

Today is Friday the 13th. Are you afraid? If you are, you have paraskevidekatriaphobia. This word was coined in the early 90’s by psychotherapist Donald Dossey, who also claimed if you could pronounce the word you were cured. The term is based on the Greek words paraskevi (‘Friday’) and dekatria (‘thirteen’) with -phobia as a suffix to indicate ‘fear’.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was one of the most important 19th-Century philosophers. He incorportated Buddhist and Hindu ideas into his philosophy. A nice guy however, he was not! At The Teaching Company, I came across an essay which he wrote entitled, 38 Ways to Win an Argument. I think that some of those who comment on our posts must have read this. I would not recommend that Christians follow these rules. You may win arguments, but that is not our goal. Our goal as rational beings created in the image of God is to use our reason correctly and help others to do the same. One may use tactics in Christian Apologetics, as brilliantly laid out by Greg Koukl at Stand to Reason, however, the tactics suggested by Schopenhauer are not among those Koukl advocates. I have found it not uncommon at all to find these tactics used by opponents. It is important to recognize that these are frequently used. Here is some of the edited essay (It’s rather long, so feel free to browse):

1. Carry your opponent’s proposition beyond its natural limits; exaggerate it. The more general your opponent’s statement becomes, the more objections you can find against it. The more restricted and narrow your own propositions remain, the easier they are to defend.

2. Use different meanings of your opponent’s words to refute his argument.
Example: Person A says, “You do not understand the mysteries of Kant’s philosophy.” Person B replies, “Oh, if it’s mysteries you’re talking about, I’ll have nothing to do with them.”

3. Ignore your opponent’s proposition, which was intended to refer to some particular thing. Rather, understand it in some quite different sense, and then refute it. Attack something different than what was asserted.

4. Hide your conclusion from your opponent until the end. Mingle your premises here and there in your talk. Get your opponent to agree to them in no definite order. By this circuitous route you conceal your goal until you have reached all the admissions necessary to reach your goal.

5. Use your opponent’s beliefs against him. If your opponent refuses to accept your premises, use his own premises to your advantage.
Example: If the opponent is a member of an organization or a religious sect to which you do not belong, you may employ the declared opinions of this group against the opponent.

6. Confuse the issue by changing your opponent’s words or what he or she seeks to prove.
Example: Call something by a different name: “good repute” instead of “honor,” “virtue” instead of “virginity,” “red-blooded” instead of “vertebrates.”

7. State your proposition and show the truth of it by asking the opponent many questions. By asking many wide-reaching questions at once, you may hide what you want to get admitted. Then you quickly propound the argument resulting from the opponent’s admissions.

8. Make your opponent angry. An angry person is less capable of using judgment or perceiving where his or her advantage lies.

9. Use your opponent’s answers to your questions to reach different or even opposite conclusions.

10. If your opponent answers all your questions negatively and refuses to grant you any points, ask him or her to concede the opposite of your premises. This may confuse the opponent as to which point you actually seek him to concede.

11. If the opponent grants you the truth of some of your premises, refrain from asking him or her to agree to your conclusion. Later, introduce your conclusion as a settled and admitted fact. Your opponent and others in attendance may come to believe that your conclusion was admitted.

12. If the argument turns upon general ideas with no particular names, you must use language or a metaphor that is favorable to your proposition.
Example: What an impartial person would call “public worship” or a “system of religion” is described by an adherent as “piety” or “godliness” and by an opponent as “bigotry” or “superstition.” In other words, inset what you intend to prove into the definition of the idea.

13. To make your opponent accept a proposition, you must give him an opposite, counter-proposition as well. If the contrast is glaring, the opponent will accept your proposition to avoid being paradoxical.
Example: If you want him to admit that a boy must do everything that his father tells him to do, ask him, “whether in all things we must obey or disobey our parents.” Or, if a thing is said to occur “often,” ask whether you are to understand “often” to mean few or many times, the opponent will say “many.” It is as though you were to put gray next to black and call it white, or gray next to white and call it black.

14. Try to bluff your opponent. If he or she has answered several of your questions without the answers turning out in favor of your conclusion, advance your conclusion triumphantly, even if it does not follow. If your opponent is shy or stupid, and you yourself possess a great deal of impudence and a good voice, the technique may succeed.

15. If you wish to advance a proposition that is difficult to prove, put it aside for the moment. Instead, submit for your opponent’s acceptance or rejection some true proposition, as though you wished to draw your proof from it. Should the opponent reject it because he suspects a trick, you can obtain your triumph by showing how absurd the opponent is to reject an obviously true proposition. Should the opponent accept it, you now have reason on your side for the moment. You can either try to prove your original proposition, as in #14, or maintain that your original proposition is proved by what your opponent accepted. For this an extreme degree of impudence is required, but experience shows cases of it succeeding.

16. When your opponent puts forth a proposition, find it inconsistent with his or her other statements, beliefs, actions or lack of action.
Example: Should your opponent defend suicide, you may at once exclaim, “Why don’t you hang yourself?” Should the opponent maintain that his city is an unpleasant place to live, you may say, “Why don’t you leave on the first plane?”

17. If your opponent presses you with a counter-proof, you will often be able to save yourself by advancing some subtle distinction. Try to find a second meaning or an ambiguous sense for your opponent’s idea.

18. If your opponent has taken up a line of argument that will end in your defeat, you must not allow him to carry it to its conclusion. Interrupt the dispute, break it off altogether, or lead the opponent to a different subject.

19. Should your opponent expressly challenge you to produce any objection to some definite point in his argument, and you have nothing to say, try to make the argument less specific.
Example: If you are asked why a particular hypothesis cannot be accepted, you may speak of the fallibility of human knowledge, and give various illustrations of it.

20. If your opponent has admitted to all or most of your premises, do not ask him or her directly to accept your conclusion. Rather, draw the conclusion yourself as if it too had been admitted.

21. When your opponent uses an argument that is superficial and you see the falsehood, you can refute it by setting forth its superficial character. But it is better to meet the opponent with a counter-argument that is just as superficial, and so dispose of him. For it is with victory that you are concerned, not with truth.
Example: If the opponent appeals to prejudice or emotion, or attacks you personally, return the attack in the same manner.

22. If your opponent asks you to admit something from which the point in dispute will immediately follow, you must refuse to do so, declaring that it begs the question.

23. Contradiction and contention irritate a person into exaggerating his statements. By contradicting your opponent you may drive him into extending the statement beyond its natural limit. When you then contradict the exaggerated form of it, you look as though you had refuted the original statement. Contrarily, if your opponent tries to extend your own statement further than you intended, redefine your statement’s limits and say, “That is what I said, no more.”

24. State a false syllogism. Your opponent makes a proposition, and by false inference and distortion of his ideas you force from the proposition other propositions that are not intended and that appear absurd. It then appears that your opponent’s proposition gave rise to these inconsistencies, and so it appears to be indirectly refuted.

25. If your opponent is making a generalization, find an instance to the contrary. Only one valid contradiction is needed to overthrow the opponent’s proposition.
Example: “All ruminants are horned,” is a generalization that may be upset by the single instance of the camel.

26. A brilliant move is to turn the tables and use your opponent’s arguments against himself.
Example: Your opponent declares, “So and so is a child, you must make an allowance for him.” You retort, “Just because he is a child, I must correct him; otherwise he will persist in his bad habits.”

27. Should your opponent surprise you by becoming particularly angry at an argument, you must urge it with all the more zeal. No only will this make your opponent angry, but it will appear that you have put your finger on the weak side of his case, and your opponent is more open to attack on this point than you expected.

28. When the audience consists of individuals (or a person) who are not experts on a subject, you make an invalid objection to your opponent who seems to be defeated in the eyes of the audience. This strategy is particularly effective if your objection makes your opponent look ridiculous or if the audience laughs. If your opponent must make a long, winded and complicated explanation to correct you, the audience will not be disposed to listen to him.

29. If you find that you are being beaten, you can create a diversion-that is, you can suddenly begin to talk of something else, as though it had a bearing on the matter in dispute. This may be done without presumption that the diversion has some general bearing on the matter.

30. Make an appeal to authority rather than reason. If your opponent respects an authority or an expert, quote that authority to further your case. If needed, quote what the authority said in some other sense or circumstance. Authorities that your opponent fails to understand are those which he generally admires the most. You may also, should it be necessary, not only twist your authorities, but actually falsify them, or quote something that you have entirely invented yourself.

31. If you know that you have no reply to the arguments that your opponent advances, you by a fine stroke of irony declare yourself to be an incompetent judge.
Example: “What you say passes my poor powers of comprehension; it may well be all very true, but I can’t understand it, and I refrain from any expression of opinion on it.” In this way you insinuate to the audience, with whom you are in good repute, that what your opponent says is nonsense. This technique may be used only when you are quite sure that the audience thinks much better of you than your opponent.

32. A quick way of getting rid of an opponent’s assertion, or of throwing suspicion on it, is by putting it into some odious category.
Example: You can say, “That is fascism” or “atheism” or “superstition.” In making an objection of this kind you take for granted:
1. That the assertion or question is identical with, or at least contained in, the category cited; and
2. The system referred to has been entirely refuted.

33. You admit your opponent’s premises but deny the conclusion.
Example: “That’s all very well in theory, but it won’t work in practice.”

34. When you state a question or an argument, and your opponent gives you no direct answer, or evades it with a counter-question, or tries to change the subject, it is sure sign you have touched a weak spot, sometimes without intending to do so. You have, as it were, reduced your opponent to silence. You must, therefore, urge the point all the more, and not let your opponent evade it, even when you do not know where the weakness that you have hit upon really lies.

35. Instead of working on an opponent’s intellect or the rigor of his arguments, work on his motive. If you succeed in making your opponent’s opinion-should it prove true-seem distinctly prejudicial to his own interest, he will drop it immediately.
Example: A clergyman is defending some philosophical dogma. You show him that his proposition contradicts a fundamental doctrine of his church. He will abandon the argument.

36. You may also puzzle and bewilder your opponent by mere bombast. If your opponent is weak or does not wish to appear as if he has no idea what you are talking about, you can easily impose upon him some argument that sounds very deep or learned, or that sounds indisputable.

37. Should your opponent be in the right but, luckily for you, choose a faulty proof, you can easily refute it and then claim that you have refuted the whole position. This is the way in which bad advocates lose good cases. If no accurate proof occurs to your opponent, you have won the day.

38. Become personal, insulting and rude as soon as you perceive that your opponent has the upper hand. In becoming personal you leave the subject altogether, and turn your attack on the person by remarks of an offensive and spiteful character. This is a very popular technique, because it takes so little skill to put it into effect.