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Aug. 9, 2006 John wrote a response mostly aimed at David Gleeson. Gleeson is a better writer than I am and quite capable of writing his own rebuttal if he wishes. However, since John mentions me yet again and since there are a string of these articles about humanism, science and abortion that I'm involved with, I'll respond. I'll take it bit by bit, the italic text is John's. Let's assume that a woman has become pregnant and the embryo is growing inside of her. If she unintentionally and spontaneously aborts the embryo, that isn't the same thing as her purposefully having the embryo removed. A man on the golf course can be struck by lightning or shot to death by a poor sport he has just beaten. Legally the first is an "act of God." The second is legally a crime. The spontaneous abortion is like the lightning bolt or "act of God." The surgical removal is a deliberate human act so it is like the poor loser with a pistol. Simplistic picture-thinking aside, I say that circumstances alter cases and in certain cases an abortion is justified. I'm not in favor of outlawing abortion. Why leave it up to chance or “God”? Are they not installing a Tsunami early warning system in the East? If the premise is that life begins at conception and if we know for certain that the majority of these “lives” die off due to a medical condition, then where is the outcry to save all of these “people”? Where are the cries for implants which could give early warning to mothers so these people may be saved? Does life begin at conception, or not? The circumstances are utterly irrelevant. If life begins at conception, then what does it matter if the father is a rapist? The child bears no responsibility, after all! What if the parents are siblings? While this may indeed be shocking, surely form the point of view of the innocent human with a soul it matters not. If, on the other hand, life does not begin at conception, than killing 5 trillion fertilized eggs is no more wrong than picking dandelions. Now, John says later on in his article that different people have different reasons for considering when human life begins. That is a separate issue that I shall deal with below. What matters to me is consistency. For now, suffice it to say that regardless of how John reaches the conclusion that potential equals realized potential, John ought to be against fertility clinics which produce the research stock for stem cell research. If we dismiss simplistic thinking, then when is a baby a human person? Is an eight month old fetus a human person? Exactly what makes a specimen of H. sapiens a human person? And who says? Is David Gleeson our authority on this topic? Is Fred Smith? Is a child born without legs a person? And so more questioning follows and so forth. At what point do we draw the line? Whom do we defer to on this issue? Is a H. sapiens who isn't always 100% logical a real human person? Do we have to be dogmatic about this as well? Drawing the line is no simple matter. Before the scary world of “sci-tech” took hold, women depended on the quickening (feeling and knowing about the child within) in some cultures as their line. Other cultures used religious laws as a guide. But we have more knowledge now, we know with great detail why we have feelings and why bananas don't. We know why most reptiles lack individual personality and cannot be trained, and why dogs have individual personality and can be trained. While seemingly abstract concepts such as thought, dreams, seeing things in our mind while our eyes are closed and so forth sure seem related to an ethereal soul, we know that a soul is not required. We know a great deal from patients with brain damage. There are cases of folks who have lost the ability to see even though their eyes work fine. Other folks have lost the ability to recognize their memories or have radical personality shifts after brain accidents. If we do have souls, they seem rather inconsequential and irrelevant. We can demonstrate why an early fetus cannot feel pain, we cannot demonstrate that John Waters had a soul at that stage of his development. Most people believe in souls in the USA and most people remain pro-choice. Most also support stem cell research. Indeed, even folks who are quite conservative support stem cell research. This could be for a variety of political or personal reasons, but I rationalize it like this: It's one thing to believe in a soul, it is quite another to claim to precisely know how and why and when God inserts these immortal energy structures into our beings. An early fetus can't sin, it can't store memory, it can't cause harm or remember causing harm. Why then assume that it has a soul? Given the very many natural abortions, wouldn't it be very bad design to en soul humans so early in the process? Despite John's efforts, he is unable to lump stem cell research advocates, or indeed, even most pro-choice types with evil, cold, emotionless, humanist robots. For me, as a humanist interested in the play of religion in politics, I object purely on the supernatural “evidence” required for the “life at conception” view. To me, giving full human rights to a clump of cells is just as silly as giving full human rights to rats as some Hindu sects do. This is a secular, pluralistic, society. Laws should apply to us all where possible. Anyone is free to refrain from the services of a fertility clinic. Anyone is free to steer clear of rat poison. What about cows? Should Hindu have the right to force us all to shut down McDonald's? If the answers are no, then why should certain fringe Christian groups have the right to block medical research for equally dogmatic reasons? As for the line itself, wherever it is, it is certainly well beyond conception. I place the line when the higher parts of the fetal brain begin to develop, those structures which allow us our higher reasoning, empathy and so forth. I think what really bothers me about David Gleeson, Fred Smith, t411sh, and other trumpeters of the humanist manifesto of "reason ueber alles" is that hardly anybody is 100% logical about what is most important to them. Furthermore, what one person calls "evidence" may be interpreted in another way by someone else. Strong feelings often get in the way of pure reason. Trying to make reason the law of the mind is positing a rule that no one can follow. Aristotle should have included this caveat in his compendium on logic. Maybe Aristotle did, but I doubt it. Even Bertrand Rusell and Kurt Goedel had their lapses in logical thinking. So why is the humanist ideal of "reason ueber alles" set up as the impossible objective? What's more, cold reason is often heartless. Why shouldn't reason be a good substitute for dogma and religious tradition? Using reason as a basis for morality doesn't mean that we become Vulcans. John has made this error in the past when he attacked science [science is his real target] as somehow being anti-art and anti-poetry and anti-beauty. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mark Twain wasn't any less of a writer because he was a humanist. Humanism as a philosophy doesn't advocate “pure reason”, if there is such a thing. On the contrary, it advocates reasons as a source or the primary source in place of religious dogma. Lightning rods have saved many lives therefore, they are “good” and should be used. Christian churches fought their use because it was said to interfere with God's will. This is perhaps the best clear-cut example of the difference between the two ways of thinking: evidence versus superstition. Who knows or can say what God wants? But we can clearly demonstrate that rods save lives. I'm not saying stem cell research is bad. I'm trying to explain why the ideal of secular humanism is bad. The secular humanists need to re-think their agenda, and not be so dogmatic. If some potential humans are sacrificed for stem cell research, wny not just up and admit it? Humans donate their organs and their blood to medical science, so why not donate their eggs, sperm, and embryos to medical science? If medical science is what you want to give your sacrifices to, then just admit that is the case. But not everyone needs to agree with you, and you don't have to make your opinion the law of the mind for everybody else. A very strange passage indeed. John seems to be saying that human sacrifice is OK with him for medical research. How 'bout them morals! ;) I am opposed to sacrificing humans for medical research, and I'd wager that most humanists might agree. The comparison to organ donation doesn't match the “potential equals realized potential” or “life at conception” ideals. If a fetus has full human rights, then it is irrelevant if someone else wants to donate him, he is to be protected like any other person. Where is John's consistency? Choice is already the law of the land, and a good law it is too. It allows John to refuse future medical treatment produced by researching with stem cells, and it allows anyone to choose not to have an abortion. The pro-life stance, especially combined with “life at conception” would, in contrast, force everyone to adhere to specific religious dogma. Interesting how John uses that word “dogma” in association with humanism; I'd like an example. Some Christians refer to atheism as “just a religion”, or to evolution as “faith based belief”. These word-rapes always amuse me. Isn't John really just saying that dogma is negative? If so, I agree ;) When it comes to religion and worshiping a god, well, one doesn't have to be 100% logical to reject the idea of god. One can just note that no one has ever used reasoning to prove that God exists. No one has ever used logic to prove that God doesn't exist, either. Many people say that God is beyond logic and reason. Humans are beyond reason and logic as well, when they have to make a quick decision in an emergency. When there's no time to analyzing our thinking and draw up a truth table, a person simply acts on impulse or intuition. The emergency analogy confuses humanism's use of reason and rational thought as a replacement for religious tradition, with how one behaves in a given situation. I've covered this before and above – humanists aren't robots or Vulcans, nor do they strive to be. I've been in a few emergency situations, and once I lost my head and made many mistakes that I regret. This is utterly unrelated to my moral views on premarital sex, slavery, stem cell research or interracial dating, views which I construct using non-religious sources. For many, the definition of God includes that he/she/it is beyond logic. One might then say that in order for one to believe that God is beyond logic, that one would first have to believe in God. For many people, they can't accurately explain why they believe in God, but ultimately, the discussion wanders from a mere belief in a higher power to specific, practical, ramifications. Those specifics are often described in holy books. While I certainly can't prove that gods do not exist, I surely can show that many Bible passages are nonsensical. What would the practical purpose be for attacking a general, vague, belief in a higher power? Such ideas have no societal ramifications which affect me directly. Christians using specific Bible passages to thwart the teaching of science in public eduction is another matter, however. For me, I have no reason to believe in any gods, just like I have no reason to believe in unicorns. Perhaps unicorns are outside of logic and reason. Once we say that beings or objects can exist outside of logic and reason, we have a pretty open field to play in, don't we? Outside of logic and reason, there exist unicorns with magic powers. No one can prove that they don't exist. Now then, respect my view on the matter! ;) With respect to Fred Smith, I'm not sure I'm worried about "potential." I'm worried about arbitrariness- just defining something the way you want it to be or the way your intuition guesses it to be. Intuitions differ. What you consider "unhuman" might not be what others consider to be "unhuman." What makes YOUR intuition the correct one? Don't say "reason" because your reasoning always derives from some ideas that you can't prove. Even the most logical mathematicians agree that this is true. Before the proofs come the unproven definitions and the unproven axioms. I covered this above as well. If a fetus has full human rights, stem cell research is wrong. If it does not, then killing a billion is not immoral. If the issue is specifically stem cell research, then what is truly arbitrary about the process is fertility. We must make an arbitrary amount of fertilized eggs and keep trying until we succeed. I still cannot grasp why John isn't attacking fertility clinics and their practices rather than humanism. As I've said many times, one does not have to be a humanist to be in favor of stem cell research! “Reason” is valid. Evidence is valid. The evidence in play includes scientific/medical, historical, and the kind that applies in a court room. Those three views of evidence are all that are required for my personal view on abortion. So while a strange dream might suffice as evidence for a new age guru, I toss it out because it cannot apply to everyone in the same way that the other evidence types can. We can't base national policy on a dream or a feeling. This fact is really what undermines the humanist manifesto of "be reasonable above all." There is simply intelligence and knowledge that is more basic than logical argumentation. I've covered this above several times. Here are the basic tenets of secular humanism. Realize that there are also theistic humanistic philosophies.
Somehow after reading that list I don't get the urge to raise my hand like Spock and say, “live long and prosper”, or to control my urge to smile, or temper my sense of humor. This straw-man argument from John doesn't hold up, quite simply. I've conjectured before what his real issue is – the second item above. Many of his new age beliefs run contrary to that little nugget. Yes, He's got the whole world in His hands. Sci-tech humankind is presently playing God in transforming the world and philosophy also. Because of this, the human school-social agenda needs to center upon genuine wisdom, not just facts and memorized rules. In past ages the wisest persons were considered close to God or even sent by God. We can pretend that God does not exist, but we can't prove that God doesn't exist. We can find logical or factual errors in books believed to be "holy," but finding errors in books doesn't prove that God doesn't exist. Pretending that God doesn't exist implies that he does exist. John fails to mention the other, obvious, possibility: That God does not exist. In any case, which God? Why not gods? John doesn't buy many Christian myths. John isn't defending the Christian God here folks, what he is defending is mysticism and the supernatural as he sees it. John's target isn't humanism at all, but rather, science. John's new-age brand of neo-Amish sentiments are as dangerous to man's ultimate survival as the Christian and Muslim fundamentalists are. In every age there are those who say, “this is far enough, we dare not go further, we are peeking into things that mankind ought not probe into!” The movie, “The Last Emperor” had an interesting scene where an old Chinese man beats on a bicycle because he couldn't understand it and because it went contrary to his world-view. This kind of view will do nothing but close the window that we have. We are now shortly after the time of acquiring some technology, and before the next big extinction level event. This is our window. We either embrace science and technology even if it means probing into areas that today's religions or mystics find uncomfortable, or we perish. ------------ About the author Frederick Smith: I enjoy writing about the positive virtues of humanism - humanists are the good guys. I now have a blog that I will start to increasingly maintain and update. Here is the link: fredsuberview.blogspot.com/ About my personal background and life: I was born, I got some education, worked, ate, and had some kids. It seems I like to write � something that was unknown to me until relatively recently...How's that for detail? ;) Hate mail is welcome unless you are from the Army Of God. Please! It's not that I mind seeing pictures of aborted fetuses in my inbox, but once you've seen one you've pretty much seen them all... Email: dahlek65@gmail.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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