Month: August 2004

Nothing is more sure, than that as “the Lord is loving to every man,” so “his mercy is over all his works;” all that have sense, all that are capable of pleasure or pain, of happiness or misery. In consequence of this, “He openeth his hand, and filleth all things living with plenteousness. He prepareth food for cattle,” as well as “herbs for the children of men.” He provideth for the fowls of the air, “feeding the young ravens when they cry unto him.” “He sendeth the springs into the rivers, that run among the hills, to give drink to every beast of the field,” and that even “the wild asses may quench their thirst.” And, suitably to this, he directs us to be tender of even the meaner creatures; to show mercy to these also. — John Wesley

Ramesh Ponuru has a piece at Tech Central Station debunking some misleading poll numbers on stem-cell research.

“Who’s Afraid of Noam Chomsky?” A fair and balanced take on the self-styled American dissident from a “right-libertarian” perspective.

Look out! It’s the “Antiwar, Anti-abortion, Pro-Jesus Party”!

John Harris offers us a vitriolic attack on religion in the LA Times today. His criticism seems to consist of two distinct components:

a) Religious beliefs are false and/or irrational, and shouldn’t be treated as beyond rational criticism

b) Religious beliefs lead people to engage in morally objectionable forms of political action(e.g. suicide bombing, opposing embryonic stem cell research)

Concerning (a), obviously I think that some religious beliefs are true (e.g. that God exists) and that one can rationally affirm some religious beliefs. I do, however, agree that religious beliefs are not, and should not be, exempt from rational criticism.

However, Harris has done nothing (at least in this piece) to show that religious beliefs are false or irrational except by claiming that they lead to morally objectionable actions, which leads us to claim (b).

Harris claims, for example, that some religious people believe, on religious grounds, that destroying human embryos for research purposes is wrong:

Consider the subject of stem-cell research. Many religious people, drawing from what they’ve heard from the pulpit, believe that 3-day-old embryos — which are microscopic collections of 150 cells the size of a pinhead — are fully endowed with human souls and, therefore, must be protected as people. But if we know anything at all about the neurology of sensory perception, we know that there is no reason to believe that embryos at this stage of development have the capacity to sense pain, to suffer or to experience death in any way at all. (There are, for comparison’s sake, 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly.)

For starters, I’ve never seen a convincing argument for why size is a morally relevant category. Is it less wrong to kill a very short man than a very tall one?

Also, note the straw man Harris has constructed to represent the opponents of stem-cell research. Those who oppose the destruction of embryos do not do so because they think the embryos can feel pain. Surely Harris knows this, all his hand-waving about “the neurology of sensory perception” notwithstanding.

Harris seems to assume that we (i.e. we sophisticated cosmopolitan readers of the LA Times) will take it as self-evident that it’s okay to destroy 3-day-old embryos for research purposes. But if you don’t take this as self-evident, then the fact that some religious people oppose it really has no bearing on the issue. Moreover, there are plenty of atheists and agnostics who believe that life begins at conception too. All this does nothing to show that religious belief qua religious belief lead to dangerous consequences. Though it may show that religious beliefs sometimes lead to conclusions that John Harris, for reasons that remain mysterious to me, finds unacceptable.

Likewise Harris’ treatment of suicide bombers:

Anyone who thinks that terrestrial concerns are the principal source of Muslim violence must explain why there are no Palestinian Christian suicide bombers. They too suffer the daily indignity of the Israeli occupation. Where, for that matter, are the Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers? The Tibetans have suffered an occupation far more brutal. Where are the throngs of Tibetans ready to perpetrate suicidal atrocities against the Chinese? They do not exist. What is the difference that makes the difference? The difference lies in the specific tenets of Islam versus those of Buddhism and Christianity.

Leaving aside whether he’s accurate in his exegesis of the tenets of Islam, this actually seems to undercut Harris’ main point – that religion per se is somehow uniquely responsible for evil. Some religious beliefs encourage morally objectionable actions, just as some non-religious beliefs do. For instance, the brutal occupation the Tibetans have been suffering under is the result of a secular (indeed, explicitly atheistic) government’s belief that it has a right to their homeland. People can be motivated to do unspeakable acts for non-religious reasons as well as religious ones. And specifically religious (and non-religious) beliefs can motivate acts of supreme heroism, justice and compassion.

Whether, in the grand scheme of things, more evil has had religious or non-religious roots is probably unknowable (though the history of communism alone gives religion a run for its money). What is certain is that moral actions and the beliefs that inform them are proper subjects for critical scrutiny, whether those beliefs are religious or not. But this has to be judged on a case-by-case basis; sweeping generalizations like Harris’ only serve to undermine critical thought.

[C]owardice involves not only fear of danger to one’s life, but danger to one’s life objectives. The terrorist – disregarding all moral rules protecting innocents and exploiting the trust of others so his project cannot be defeated – is a coward. Cowardice implicates not just how one views one’s own life, but those of others. — Carlin Romano

The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden — that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time. — C.S. Lewis

An interesting idea from Paul Contino, a professor at Pepperdine University, writing in the LA Times:

“We can do better. And help is on the way.”



When I heard that refrain in Sen. John F. Kerry’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, it reminded me of why I am a Democrat at heart. In my lifetime, the Democratic Party has stood consistently on the side of the poor, the weak, the vulnerable.



But I have not cast my vote for a Democratic presidential candidate in 12 years because the Democrats have refused to extend their protection to the weakest and most vulnerable — unborn children.

Given the terrible number of abortions that are allowed each year, each day in our country — “1.31 million pregnancies were terminated by abortion in the U.S.” in 2000, the most recent statistics available, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute — we surely can do better. And Kerry should make just such a proposition part of his campaign. I am not suggesting that Kerry commit himself to overturning Roe vs. Wade — although I think it should be overturned. But I am suggesting that he challenge those who are considering abortion to “do better,” and that he challenge the United States as a nation to “do better” by them.



Which brings me to Kerry’s other rhetorical flourish: “Help is on the way.” I am confident that the Democrats could create a policy that the Republican Party, for all of its pro-life rhetoric, has to my knowledge never offered. Kerry could offer a guarantee that any woman with an unwanted pregnancy would be assisted by the federal government, perhaps in league with faith-based initiatives, and that she would be granted the kind of support that would help her consider her options. That means financial aid, adoption counseling and, most important, should she decide to raise her child, continuing material support after the birth.



I think if Kerry adopted something like this the Dems could go a long way toward neutralizing the Republican advantage among evangelicals, Catholics and others who consider themselves “pro-life,” but who also have a strong “social justice” streak. And nothing in Contino’s proposal is inconsistent with a strict “pro-choice” position. If anything, a proposal like the above would expand the range of choice.

Many people in the debate about cloning curiously assume that “reproductive” cloning is monstrous and immoral, while “therapeutic” cloning is perfectly fine, or at least less morally objectionable than reproductive cloning. I say “curiously” because it seems to me that the truth of the matter is almost exactly the reverse.

Think about it. Reproductive cloning, whatever else might be said about it, would, in theory, produce a human being with all the dignity and rights that you and I enjoy. Why should the act of bringing a human being into existence, no matter however extraordinary the means, be thought immoral? I think part of the reason is the “ick” factor – the shudder most normal people have at the thought of a person being created in such an artificial way. More substantively, it appears that the process of cloning, which is far from perfected, would have a high failure rate – that is, there would likely be several short-lived and/or deformed early models before we were able to clone a healthy, normal human being. This alone would seem to rule it out.

But suppose we did have a fail-safe method of cloning. Imagine a cloning machine where a person could step into a chamber and their clone would appear in an adjoining chamber (I’m imagining something like the matter transporter in Star Trek). Would it still be immoral to clone?

Now, you might say that having a clone of yourself running around the world could have all kinds of weird psychological effects on both you and him. Fair enough. So imagine that somehow you are unaware of the clone’s existence and he’s unaware of yours. Is there anything immoral per se in the mere act of bringing a human being into existence in this way? As I said, we all assume (rightly) that once a clone exists he or she would have all the same rights as anyone else. Biologically, psychologically, spiritually, etc. he would be indistinguishable from a non-cloned human. So, it’s hard (though perhaps not impossible) to come up with a compelling reason why it’s wrong to bring this person into existence.

On the other hand, so-called therapeutic cloning involves the creation of nascent human life solely for the purposes of exploitation. Proponents actually trumpet the fact that cloned embryos will never be brought to term. Rather, they will be harvested and destroyed long before they ever get to that point.

And this is supposed to be reassuring? It just reaffirms that therapeutic cloning is the creation of life that exists solely as a means to the well-being of others, not as an end in itself. Whatever we think about reproductive cloning, at least the person produced would still have to be treated as an end in himself. In the case of therapeutic cloning we are facing the prospect of turning human life into a mere commodity that can be bought, sold, experimented on and destroyed at will.

If reproductive cloning is wrong, it seems to only be wrong contingently. That is, it’s wrong only because there’s no way to do it that wouldn’t entail morally unacceptable risks. But we can imagine a method that avoided these risks, thus making it permissible. Therapeutic cloning, on the other hand, appears to be wrong in itself.

The obvious rejoinder here is that the cloned embryo is not a “person” and therefore doesn’t merit moral consideration. But this, I think, misses the point. Even if you are pro-choice on abortion, there are still good reasons to worry about human embryos (cloned or otherwise) being turned into a commodity.

Methodist ethicist Amy Laura Hall puts it this way:

Unlike abortion, ESCR [embryonic stem cell research] involves neither a conflict between two physically interconnected lives nor the rare, unplanned and deeply regrettable destruction of incipient human life. When advocates of ESCR rhetorically evoke prior debates on abortion by presenting ESCR as a choice between a living person and an early human embryo, we are distracted from the broader context of ESCR.

A multimillion-dollar medical industry surrounds the supposedly simple “which of these two entities matters more?” approach. Endorsing ESCR means endorsing an elaborate, systematic, routine industry of embryo production and destruction, an industry not likely to limit itself to therapies for chronic disease. To suggest that we will not also see the emergence of more generally applicable, and more widely lucrative, products defies common sense.

I think even those who support abortion rights would balk at saying that nascent human life (and that’s indisputably what an embryo is) has no moral worth whatsoever. But if it has any worth whatsoever, then surely that is a reason for saying that we can’t simply do whatever we like with it. Otherwise, what does it mean to say that it has moral worth?

And if embryos have no moral worth, then there would properly be no limits to what we could do with them. Suppose we found that human embryos could be used to make a face cream that would get rid of wrinkles. Botox without the injection! Would there be anything wrong with that?

Therapeutic cloning is ultimately about reducing human life to its scientific, research and market value. This makes it far more morally questionable than merely bringing a new life into existence by unusual means.

Calvin College has a nice virtual library of Christian Philosophy. In browsing it I came across this article by Richard Mouw, an evangelical philosopher, called “On Letting Chickens Strut Their Stuff.” Mouw rejects the view of the likes of Peter Singer who say that an animal might have greater moral worth than a newborn infant, but he nevertheless thinks that the Bible has important lessons to teach us about how we should treat animals:

I keep remembering a lesson that a devoutly Christian chicken farmer taught me many years ago….



“Colonel Sanders wants us to think of chickens only in terms of dollars and cents,” he announced. “They are nothing but little pieces of meat to be bought and sold for food. And so we’re supposed to crowd them together in small spaces and get them fat enough to be killed.”



And then he moved toward his theological lesson: “But that’s wrong! The Bible says that God created every animal ‘after its own kind.’ Chickens aren’t people, but neither are they nothing but hunks of meat. Chickens are chickens, and they deserve to be treated like chickens! This means that we have to give each chicken the space to strut its stuff in front of other chickens.”

When chickens or pigs – social, sentient animals – are stuffed into factory farms, they’re denied the possibility of living the kinds of lives that they’re suited for. Surely this is a frustration of the creator’s design. Animals have their own kind of dignity, appropriate to their place in creation, and recognizing this doesn’t require putting them on the same moral plane as human beings.

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types–the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution. — G.K. Chesterton

Earlier I suggested that the moral law is the means God provides us for restoring our broken relationships with him and each other. Let’s explore the implications of this a little more. One consequence is that the moral law is not an end in itself. It is the route we take back to God, but it isn’t the destination.

What does this mean?

One common account of morality, derived from Kant, stresses the opposition between duty and inclination. Duty is what I ought to do in a given situation. Inclination is what I’d like to do if I had my druthers. Only those actions that involve choosing duty over inclination have moral worth, according to this view.

I think the conflict between duty and inclination certainly describes a common feature of our moral experience. However, according to Christianity, this is not our natural state. Ideally we would be inclined to do the good. The fact that there is a fissure in our moral selves indicates that we’re in need of healing. This fissure is the symptom of our sin, our alienation from God.

Because of sin, we need an external standard to direct us toward our true good. This is one of the functions of the law. It shows us where we need to resist inclination for the sake of duty.* But Christianity teaches that this shouldn’t be our permanent state.

A saint could be defined as someone in whom the conflict between duty and inclination has been fully healed. This is what Christians mean by sanctification. If union with God is the goal of human life, the saint is someone who has traveled so far down that road that he spontaneously does what the moral law requires. He has no further need of it. In heaven there will be no law because all the saints will spontaneously love God and one another without needing to be directed by the law.

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*We also, according to Christianity, need God’s grace in order to resist disordered inclinations and do what is right.