William Vallicella, of Maverick Philosopher, has a post (with much of which I agree) in which he enumerates the principles of conservatism which cause him to identify himself as conservative. I think the entire post is worth a read.
A well-known and highly influential British bioethicist, Baroness Warnock, has gone beyond arguing for a patient’s “right to die” to suggesting that a patient has a “duty to die.” Specifically in the case of dementia, because of the drain on health care resources and the burden to family members and caregivers, she hopes that providers will be “licensed to put others down” if they are unable to look after themselves.
Warnock has been an outspoken advocate of euthanasia and has been very influential in encouraging embryonic stem cell research. This latest cause gives one reason to shudder. It is a frightening thought that some will have the authority to “put down” those who are judged to be a burden to society and family members. Of course, we’ve seen such logic before, most memborably, perhaps, in the Nazi extermination of those who were a drain on German society, the Jews.
Al Mohler has an insightful look at the issue here. Here are some of his comments:
Few issues throw the chasm between the Christian and secular understandings of humanity into such sharp focus. The biblical worldview begins with the premise that every single human being possesses full human dignity at every stage of life and development, simply because each human being is made in the image of God. Life is a divine gift to be celebrated and received under God’s own dominion. Human life is thus to be treasured and protected from conception until natural death.
The secular worldview, on the other hand, can see human beings as no more than highly-developed organisms in an accidental cosmos. Given that starting point, it is virtually inevitable that life will then be defined in terms of certain capacities or qualities that are more and less present in human beings. Thus, ethicists such as Peter Singer (and Baroness Warnock) start from the assumption that the ability to communicate and possess self-consciousness is necessary in order for an individual to be considered fully human — and thus to possess basic human rights.
Before long, the secular worldview devolves into a cost/benefit analysis. Some lives are simply more important and more valuable than others, this worldview implies. Like the medical motto taken up by Nazi Germany asserts, some people represent “life unworthy of life.” Baroness Mary Warnock now extends that argument to the mentally incapacitated.
This month’s free audiobook from Christian Audio is Charles M. Sheldon’s classic, In His Steps. In this 1896 work, he encourages believer’s to live in a Christ-like way. Long before the recent craze of WWJD paraphernalia, Sheldon asked, “What would Jesus Do?”
I read with interest, a couple of days ago, that the Church of England (at least a senior official of the Church of England on their official website) felt it necessary to offer an apology to Charles Darwin. The Rev. Dr. Malcom Brown said, in this apology:
Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practice the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends.
It is unfortunate that Brown seems to neither understand Darwinism, nor the criticisms of Darwinism put forward by those who are a part of the intelligent design movement. Al Mohler adresses the issue in this post on the situation.
Contrary to Brown’s assertion that nothing in Darwinism “contradicts Christain teaching,” Mohler argues that Darwinism does indeed conflict with Christian teaching and in fact Darwin himself understood this. He states:
Well, Charles Darwin sure thought that the theory of natural selection contradicted Christian teaching. But, then again, he may have had a better understanding of Christian teaching than Dr. Brown.
To the end of his life, Darwin identified himself as a “nominal” Anglican, but by that time he had long abandoned theism and any belief in a personal God. The relationship between Darwin’s changing religious beliefs and his developing scientific theory can be read either of two ways, and even Darwin appeared to have been unclear in his own mind how the two were related. The two options are these: Either Darwin’s theory of natural selection undermined his belief in a personal God who directed creation, or his abandonment of his belief in a personal God as the agent of creation led to his development of the theory of natural selection. Either way, Darwin himself was clear that the belief that God is Creator and the belief that life is evidence of natural selection are incompatible beliefs.
Darwin differed, for example, with the American botanist Asa Gray over just this question. Gray allowed for God as the agent of design, working through what appeared to be natural selection — a form of what is often called “theistic evolution.” But Darwin would have none of that, and he rejected any role for a divine Designer.
And:
Charles Darwin abandoned belief in God, and he himself traced this loss of faith to his theory of natural selection. He believed that his own doctrine of evolution was a direct contradiction to theism in general and to Christianity in particular.
Darwin argued that belief in miracles was insane and that the Christian doctrine of hell is immoral. In his Autobiography he wrote, “I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my father, brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.”
Mohler quotes Janet Browne of the British Society for the History of Science and University College, London:
Living out or himself the archetypal Victorian crisis of faith, Darwin perhaps recognized that he had lost the last vestiges of faith when he discovered that biology provided him with the answers he most desired. In the end, in his autobiography, he asserted that religious belief was little more than inherited instinct, akin to a monkey’s fear of a snake.
Malcom Brown is wrong in thinking the Church owes Darwin an apology. Brown owes the Church an apology for further confusing the issue.
I just watched a hilarious Saturday Night Live clip featuring Tina Fey, former cast member, doing a remarkable job of impersonating Sarah Palin. You ought to watch it.
Particle physicist, Stephen Barr, in his post, On the Edge of Discovery, at First Things, explains the significance of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which was turned on last week in Geneva. Prior to its start-up, there were concerns by many that when the “on” switch was flipped, the earth could be sucked into a black hole created by the machine. That obviously didn’t happen.
The realm of particle physics is not easily grasped by the non-particle-physicist. I’ve done some reading on quantum mechanics and usually end up with more questions than I had when beginning. According to Barr, the excitement about the LHC has to do with the possible discovery of the Higgs Particle and information concerning a deep puzzle with which it is associated:
The deep puzzle, however, is that the Higgs field “ought” to be much, much more intense than it is. In fact, there are strong arguments that suggest that it ought to be about seventeen orders of magnitude (100,000,000,000,000,000) more intense than it is. That would make the electron seventeen orders of magnitude more massive than it is, and similarly for lots of other particles that we know and love.
Barr suggests that this puzzle may have deep implications regarding complex life on earth. Although, the idea of supersymmetry may turn out to explain this unexpected value of the Higgs field, there may be something more involved:
First of all, theories based on the supersymmetry idea are not without serious difficulties. But what has made the doubts increase in many physicist’s minds recently (including many top physicists) is the possibility that the Higgs puzzle may be explained anthropically rather than by supersymmetry. If we live in a multiverse, it is possible that, in different places in the multiverse, the Higgs field has different strengths. In most places it might have its natural strength. But in rare places it may happen to have the much smaller value that it has where we are. And—it can be argued convincingly—only in those rare places can there be life. We see a strangely small value of the Higgs field, because we are living in a highly atypical part of the multiverse, namely a part where the Higgs field has a value that allows life to exist.
We may be provided with more evidence to support the existence of an intelligence who has “monkeyed with” the laws of physics, fine-tuning them to support complex life.
Senator Joe Biden’s recent comments concerning abortion are totally incomprehesible to me. Here’s how Biden, a strong supporter of abortion rights, answered the question of when life begins:
I’d say, “Look, I know when it begins for me.” It’s a personal and private issue. For me, as a Roman Catholic, I’m prepared to accept the teachings of my church. But let me tell you. There are an awful lot of people of great confessional faiths-Protestants, Jews, Muslims and others-who have a different view. They believe in God as strongly as I do. They’re intensely as religious as I am religious. They believe in their faith and they believe in human life, and they have differing views as to when life-I’m prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception. But that is my judgment. For me to impose that judgment on everyone else who is equally and maybe even more devout than I am seems to me is inappropriate in a pluralistic society.
Let’s just quickly unpack those comments.
1. It is my judgment that a human life exists at the moment of conception.
2. Others disagree with my judgment.
3. It is wrong to impose my judgement on others.
Let me interject another premise, which I don’t think is very controversial, which might be placed between 1 and 2 of the above:
4. It is wrong to murder, or kill innocent human lives.
Given these premises, 3 of which were stated by Senator Biden, the 4th which I don’t think he would argue about, how can one defend his position on abortion. Is he insincere in his affirmation of life beginning with conception? I almost hope he is! This would be preferable to not only holding that it would be wrong to “impose” on others who wish to murder innocent human beings, but also voting to give them the right to do so!
I can’t imagine that Biden is that kind of immoral human being that would advocate and enable murder. I am left to believe that Biden does not really believe that life begins with conception and does not want to be seen as a bad “Catholic” by going against the teachings of the church. I prefer a liar to a murderer. I don’t mean to be unduly harsh or unkind. If I am mistaken in my reasoning, I would gladly listen to those who disagree.
The point of this post is not to argue that abortion is murder or that life begins with conception (both of which I believe). The point is to show how incredible is the position taken by Senator Biden and other politicians (Democrat and Republican) who have often made similar statements.
A recent post on this site commented on the oxymoronic nature of the phrase, “A Catholic for abortion.” Is the phrase, “A moral atheist” equally oxymoronic. Can atheists be moral? I think the obvious answer is yes. There is nothing contradictory about a person living a moral lifestyle and yet not believe in God. I am certain there are many atheists who live moral lives. The important question is not whether or not an athiest can be moral, but is there any grounding for that morality. Tom Gilson, at Thinking Christian has been discussing that question in a couple of recent blog posts. I don’t think morality can be grounded if there is no God.
An important question which needs to be answered is - Exactly what do we mean when we say that a thing (like morality) is grounded. Tom has an excellent explanation of this concept which I’ll reproduce here:
An answer to the question, “I don’t believe D moral duty or value applies to me, and I want you to tell me why I should. You might have some instrumental or pragmatic reasons for me to practice D, or you may tell me D is ‘what we customarily do in our culture,’ but I don’t know why D should be considered good in itself, or why I should take it on as a value or duty of my own.”
A proper ground for morals would be something that, if true and if understood by the subject (the questioner, in this case) to be true, would provide sufficient reason for the subject to change his or her mind about the goodness of the behavior, value, or duty in question. It would explain how said behavior, value or duty actually is good in itself; not merely instrumental, pragmatic, or customary.
It would do so by reference to some condition of reality that can bear the weight placed upon it. For example, if it is suggested that D is good because it contributes to reproductive fitness, then reproductive fitness’s goodness would have to be good in itself (or based on something else that is good in itself).
Yes, there are moral atheists. But if there is no God, morality has no grounding.
Christianity today has a nice article comparing the party platforms of the Democrats and Republicans on a number of issues, including abortion, climate change, embryonic stem cell research, as well as several others. It is interesting to compare the respective parties’ stands on each of these issues.
HT: Stand to Reason
In a recent post, I linked to the first three articles provided by the Christ on Campus Initiative designed for college students addressing intellectual and cultural issues from a historical Christian perspective. The latest article is now available, A Christian Perspective on Islam.