No person, group of people, or government, can force another person to form a union with someone they don’t want to form a union with, and likewise, neither can anyone force another person to fulfill the only discernable purpose of life by creating new life. However, those who engage in the act to create new life undertake an obligation to fulfill the obligations which arise from their actions.
An extract from The Ten Principles of Freedom: A Presentation of the Ten Principles to the Founding Fathers by Joseph BH McMillan. * * *
Ch. 1: Laying the Foundations
Ch. 2: The Equal Freedom Principles; Principles 1 to 4
Ch. 3: Principle 5 and the Purpose of Life
Ch. 4: Principle 5 & the Equal Freedom Principles
Ch. 5: Principles 6 and 7, and the Source of Obligations
Ch. 6: More on Principle 7, and Principles 8 to 10
Ch. 7: Conclusion, and Some Observations
Joseph BH McMillan (JBH): Gentlemen, I concluded the last part of my presentation by setting out the basis of Principle 5. That is, that the perpetuation of human life on earth through the union of a man and a woman to create new life is the only discernable purpose of human life on earth. I should stress again, however, that this purpose of human life on earth is distinct from any purpose each person may find for his or her own life on earth. So it does not mean that those who are unable to produce offspring can have no purpose to their lives. The only discernable purpose of life is that which defines our obligations in life, and thus determines the entire concept of ‘morality.’
But before I demonstrate what obligations flow from the only discernable purpose of life, I’d like to make a few observations on the interaction between Principle 5 and the Equal Freedom Principles.
First, no person, group of people, or government, can force another person to form a union with someone they don’t want to form a union with, and likewise, neither can anyone force another person to fulfill the only discernable purpose of life by creating new life. That emerges from the application of Principles 1 and 2, and prohibits, amongst other things, forced or arranged marriages, and, of course, rape.
The converse of that, however, is that those who do not wish to enter into a union to create new life cannot prohibit others from entering into such a union, and more importantly, no one, including government, must undermine or otherwise denigrate the fulfillment of the only discernable purpose of life. That provides for the sanctity of the union to create new life in order to perpetuate the human species.
Further, no person, group of people, or government can circumvent the prohibitions that emerge from Principles 1 and 2 by claiming that some law, or custom, or even religion, vests in them some special authority to compel others to enter a union without their consent, or to enter into a union with someone they don’t want to enter into a union with. And likewise, no person, group of people, or government, can ‘redefine’ the only discernable purpose of life by claiming that some law, or custom, or religion vests in them an authority to compel others to ‘recognize’ a different purpose of life, or to undermine or denigrate the only discernable purpose of life. This latter prohibition prevents governments, for example, or activist groups, from claiming that some ‘law of toleration,’ or ‘social justice,’ or ‘equality,’ demands that other ‘lifestyle choices’ be regarded as ‘equally valid’ to the fulfillment of the only discernable purpose of life. I shall demonstrate later how the elevation of other ‘lifestyle choices’ to ‘equality’ with the only discernable purpose of life has the effect of undermining and denigrating that purpose of life, and how that in turn leads to a breakdown in society, which in turn has given rise to the myriad of social problems we face today, including soaring divorce rates, rampant abortion, promiscuity (even from a very young age), juvenile crime, drug and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancies, and so on.
Principle 3 expands on the application of Principles 1 and 2 in respect of the only discernable purpose of life. It prohibits any person, or government, from compelling any other person to assume the obligations which attach to those who create a new, unique and exclusive human being. But it also has the reverse effect. When someone creates a new life, the obligations which attach to that act are that person’s alone, together obviously with the person they created that life with. Thus, when a man and a woman create a new life, but are unable to meet their obligations towards that life, they cannot expect others to assume those obligations on their behalf. Neither can government impose on some people an obligation to assume the obligations of those people who are unable, or unwilling, to honor their own obligations.
There is also a further consequence of this Principle. Principle 3 is not a blanket prohibition against obligations attaching to human beings – it is subject to individual consent. Yet, consent is not only given by an express ‘agreement’ to consent to an obligation attaching to any particular person, but can attach to a person simply by virtue of that person’s actions. And that is precisely what happens when two people engage in the act the natural consequence of which is the creation of a new human being. If that act creates a new human being, obligations automatically attach to the two people who engage in the act. Those who engage in the act thus consent to those obligations attaching to them by virtue of consenting to engage in the act itself.
Once the act creates a human being, therefore, those who were involved in the act, the natural consequence of which is the creation of life, cannot invoke Principle 3 to refuse to meet their obligations towards that new life.
Thus, where someone does consent to engage in the act which attaches obligations in respect of the natural consequence of the act, a new human being, they also consent to honor those obligations. That is, those who engage in the act to create new life undertake an obligation to fulfill the obligations which arise from their actions. More importantly, however, they also consent not to betray any of the obligations that attach to the creation of new life.
Are you with me Gentlemen?
Founding Fathers (FFs): We are!
JBH: Good! Now, the converse of that must necessarily follow. Once obligations attach to two people who create a new life, no person, group of people, or government must interfere with, or undermine, the ability of those two people to fulfill their obligations, especially since the obligations towards the new life they create are the most fundamental obligations that can attach to any human being. What this means is that government, for example, can have no authority to impose additional obligations on those who create new life which may frustrate their performance of those obligations. And especially, government can have no authority to impose an obligation on one set of people (who have themselves created new life), to meet the obligations of another set of people who have done the same, but who are unable or unwilling to honor their own obligations. If anyone does wish to assume some of the obligations others have towards the life they create, that is a matter for their own conscience. It does not vest in them an authority to impose obligations on others without their consent. The exercise of compassion is a matter for individual conscience, not collective compulsion.
Principle 4 has a similar effect. It prohibits any person, or government, from compelling one person to labor for another. Yet, once any person partakes in the act the natural consequence of which is the creation of life, and whether or not that was the intention, that person immediately assumes the obligations which attach to that enterprise. The parents of that child thus assume an obligation to labor for another; the new life they create. Their consent to assume the obligation to labor for that life is derived from participating in the act, irrespective of the motive or intention behind that participation.
This assumption of obligations reinforces the prohibition in Principle 4 – it means that no person, group of people, or government, can interfere with the obligations parents have to labor and acquire property for the life they create, by compelling them to labor for another person, or by compelling them to surrender property to another person, at the expense of the life they have created. It is for the parents to decide, and them alone, what level of labor and property they consider necessary to fulfill their obligations towards the life they have created, subject only to those additional obligations which they freely assume under these Principles.
Taken together, therefore, Principles 1 to 4 prohibit any person being compelled to assume the obligations of creating new life, or being compelled to create new life with someone they do not want to create new life with. But I should caution here again that it is the act itself that attaches obligations, not the motive or intention behind the act. As I shall demonstrate in the next stages of the presentation, the simple fact of participating in the act, the natural consequence of which is the creation of human life, attaches obligations on those who engage in the act. In fact, as I shall show, even the contemplation of entering into a union to create new life, or contemplating the act itself, attaches obligations. So where two people engage in the act, and a new human being is the result, they cannot claim that because that was not their intention, they should not be bound by the obligations which attach to them as a result. That is just commonsense, and we recognize the phenomenon in virtually every other walk of life. Hence, when someone gets into a motor vehicle, they recognize that certain obligations attach to them in the conduct of that vehicle. If they drive recklessly and kill someone, it is no defense to say that they had no intention of harming anyone; that they just wanted a bit of fun . The obligation attaches once they get behind the wheel, and even before they get behind the wheel – because they need to satisfy others that they are competent to be behind the wheel in the first place.
On the other hand, Principles 1 to 4 provide for what can best be described as the ‘sanctity of the family.’ No one, and especially not government, can interfere with the obligations people assume by creating new life, and neither can anyone, including government, impose obligations on the parents of children, without the parents’ consent, which tend to interfere with, or limit, the ability of parents to meet the obligations they assume by creating new life. And government certainly cannot apply the labor of some parents for the benefit of other parents.
Now remarkably, Gentlemen, you did not mention the family anywhere in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights, never mind define what it is, identify any obligations which attach to that institution, or prohibit government from interfering in the parental exercise of those obligations. And that has given the courts carte blanche to invent its own definition of family, define what obligations attach to it, and interfere at will with the obligations that attach to the creation of new life.
But the danger is even more profound. You did say that Congress shall have the "power to lay and collect taxes" for, amongst other things, the "general Welfare of the United States." I shall return to this later, but I am sure you can see that such a provision opens the door for government to interfere quite radically with the obligations which attach to those who create new life.
James Madison (JM): We can see that. But I did say that we "have staked our future on our ability to follow the Ten Commandments." But, as you have already pointed out, the courts then used the First Amendment to turn that on its head.
JBH: That’s my point, Mr. Madison. If, as you say, you staked the future on the Ten Commandments, why did you not set out some principles, based on those Commandments, by which government, and the courts, should be bound? Or why not simply make government bound by the Ten Commandments themselves – that would have been considerably better than government by mob-rule.
JM: Hindsight, dear boy, hindsight!
JBH: Well, anyway, in the next part of my presentation I shall return to the other obligations that flow from the only discernable purpose of life, following roughly, the categories I identified earlier.
* * *
NEXT: The Ten Principles of Freedom: Principles 6 and 7, and the Source of Obligations. This article is an abridged and slightly modified extract of the forthcoming book The Ten Principles of Freedom.
The author writes “No person, group of people, or government, can force another person to form a union with someone they don’t want to form a union with…”
That’s just ignorant. How many millions of young men have been drafted (“forced”) into their governments’ armies? And are you honestly not aware of the current news stories about the religious leader in Utah who forced a 14-year-old girl into a marriage union she didn’t want?
See http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_6902425 .
“Principle 3 … prohibits any person, or government, from compelling any other person to assume the obligations which attach to those who create a new, unique and exclusive human being.”
To understand exactly what this means, let’s consider how it applies to this situation: A woman is raped and becomes pregnant. Obviously, the woman did not “consent” to the act which led to creating a new life. According to these Principles, she would be morally free to abort the developing child (i.e. she has no “obligation” to carry it to term). I use the term “morally”, because “legally” simply means that a law is passed. Something can be legal yet immoral, or to put it in the context of this discussion, legal yet violate one of the Principles that has been espoused.
If I understand these Principles correctly, the woman would be justified in aborting the child because it violates a basic Principle. Yet the child who is the product of a rape is still a human being — even if an “unwanted” one — and is entirely innocent of any crime demanding the death penalty, which is what an abortion is.
So these Principles appear to justify abortion. If they don’t, and the woman is required by these Principles to carry the child to term (with the option then of giving it up for adoption), how does that reconcile with the Principle that says that an individual should not be compelled to assume “obligations which attach to those who create a new, unique and exclusive human being” when they weren’t a willing party to that act?
It appears to me that a person can act immorally (by deliberately harming an innocent human life), and still act in accordance with these Principles. If this is correct, these Principles do not reflect the fundamental decision points that tell us all we need to know about how to live our lives. Something else (i.e. a recognition of a God-given universal moral code) is required to put these Principles in context. Without that context, the Principles cannot always direct us to the proper course of action.
PaulBurnett,
The author is not saying that it is physically impossible to force someone to form a union with someone else. He is merely saying that it is wrong to do so. He proposes a principle to be used in judging laws and actions. If the law or action runs afoul of the principle, it cannot be allowed.
He uses “can’ where technically he should use “may,” but his meaning is obvious.
Phil,
I think abortion in the case of rape is clearly not immoral.
Say there’s a person with a heart ailment. To be cured, he needs to be hooked up to another person with a healthy heart for nine months. Officials from the local hospital cannot find a volunteer, so they kidnap you, and hook you up to the ailing person. If they unhook you, he will die.
As far as I can tell, the situation the hospital put you in above is equivalent to being raped into pregancy (assuming we grant your assumption that a fetus is a person). You are forced to support somebody else’s life for nine months, though you did not consent to do this. Are you morally required to remain hooked-up to the ailing person for nine months?
I think not. If another person’s dependence on you arises from a violation of your rights, you are not required to support that person. You are entitled to recover your rights, and to, as nearly as possible, recover the position you held before your rights were violated.
This argument limits itself to those cases where pregancy was induced by rape, but so does your argument against Mr. McMillan.
Dear Mr Jackson, it’s wonderful to hear from you again. May I call you Phil?
I think a discussion on this issue would be more fruitful after the next three articles appear (which deal with these issues), but perhaps I could mention a couple of things at this point for you to consider.
First, you seem to suggest that abortion must be prohibited in every single eventuality. You don’t differentiate between abortion because of an ‘inconvenience’ arising from the pursuit of physical pleasure, and something as grotesque as rape. So it seems that you are suggesting that someone like a rapist should have an ‘authority’ to impose on some innocent woman the obligation to carry and bring up his children. But it goes further. It suggests that the husband of the woman, and the children of the family, should be subjected to the ‘authority’ of a rapist as well.
Consent is fundamental to any undertaking. Once we impose obligations on others without their consent, where does it end, exactly? Would you consider it appropriate, for example, for a government to appoint ‘fathers’ who would have the sole ‘right’ to create children even without the ‘consent’ of the woman or her husband?
Or perhaps you would consider it appropriate to reintroduce droit de seigneur? Should my wife and I have an obligation to treat as our own the child of some ‘noble’ exercising such a ‘right’?
You mention a God given system of morality. May I refer you to Exodus 19:5. God Himself does not seek to impose such a ‘morality’ by way of the Ten Commandments. He says this: “Now therefore, IF YE WILL OBEY MY VOICE INDEED …” And ALL the people agreed [Exodus 19:8]. So, if God Himself didn’t claim an authority to impose a system of ‘morality’, which no doubt He could have done if He does in fact exist, where exactly do we find this ‘immutable morality’?
And did God not Himself sacrifice His own totally innocent son because of the sins of others? Did God Himself not kill all the first-born of Egypt – mostly innocent, I expect – so as to set His people free?
If a woman were ‘compelled’ to carry to birth the child of a rapist, that could destroy her family. Is the product of rape more important than a stable and secure family for the benefit of the children conceived and born of consent?
So, in short, yes, these Principles would not prevent a woman aborting a child conceived as a result of rape (although they would in almost every other circumstance). On the other hand, any woman who finds aborting a child conceived in even such circumstances ‘immoral’ is, of course, free, under these Principles, to keep it. The Principles just don’t permit someone else to compel her to do so. And I’m sure you are not claiming such an authority for yourself!
But, as I have said, hopefully we can revisit this issue after the next three articles.
Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com
“If another person’s dependence on you arises from a violation of your rights, you are not required to support that person. You are entitled to recover your rights, and to, as nearly as possible, recover the position you held before your rights were violated.”
Katzen, I completely disagree. As a legal issue, you may be correct. But “human Rights” are not granted by man, they are bestowed by God. Despite the fact that a woman who has been raped has been subjected to a terrible tragedy, it’s immoral to compound this with the deliberate death of an innocent life. Carry the child to term and then give it up for adoption — that ends any “obligation” the woman might have. But killing the child because it’s unwanted can’t possibly be a morally-correct action. Put the rapist in jail, since he committed a crime. But what did the developing innocent life do to deserve extermination?
“First, you seem to suggest that abortion must be prohibited in every single eventuality.”
*** No. I present a case for judging elective abortion as immoral. Morality and legality are separate issues. In fact, I argued in my “What Kind of Car Would Jesus Drive?” essay that morality should not be legislated. It must be embraced, after being understood through education, reason and the discussion of moral issues. Then legislation by consensus follows.
“it seems that you are suggesting that someone like a rapist should have an ‘authority’ to impose on some innocent woman the obligation to carry and bring up his children.”
*** No. I’m suggesting that the rapist should be prosecuted for committing a crime. In the US today, a woman can abort her child for ANY reason in the first 20 weeks. I’m arguing that elective abortion is immoral. My point was that your discussion of “Principles” seems to suggest that elective abortion (at least in the case of rape) would be acceptable, even moral. An act can be legal, yet immoral. An act can follow the principles you outline, and be immoral. You seem to be arguing that all morality should be relative, and as long as an abstract human-created principle is followed, the act is perfectly fine/moral.
“It suggests that the husband of the woman, and the children of the family, should be subjected to the ‘authority’ of a rapist as well.”
** The rapist committed a crime, and should be punished according to the law. He’s punished for breaking a law, not acting immorally. Like I said above, not everything legal is moral, and as the case of abortion and slavery show, some things that are immoral are perfectly legal.
You are focusing exclusively on the woman and her family in your discussion of rights. But there is another innocent life involved — the developing baby. What did it do to deserve extermination? To act morally, I contend that the mother has a [moral, not legal] obligation not to kill an innocent life however conceived. After carrying it to term she can put it up for adoption and end any “obligation”.
In the US, legally a woman is free to kill that child produced by a rape just as she is free to kill a child conceived in love with her husband that she no longer wants for whatever reason. But this conversation is not about what the law says is okay. It’s about what IS okay. You’ve focused on Principles to guide this judgment. I want those principles to be grounded in more than human consensus, or relativistic morality.
“Would you consider it appropriate, for example, for a government to appoint ‘fathers’ who would have the sole ‘right’ to create children even without the ‘consent’ of the woman or her husband?”
** No. This is state sponsored rape. But if a child was conceived through such a practice (think Nazi Germany), I wouldn’t kill that develop child. That child didn’t do anything wrong.
“Or perhaps you would consider it appropriate to reintroduce droit de seigneur? Should my wife and I have an obligation to treat as our own the child of some ‘noble’ exercising such a ‘right’?”
** I don’t know what this is, or what it means relative to the point I’m making. I would support the state creating orphanages to house these children born of a rape until they are voluntarily adopted by another family, rather than killing the children before birth or putting them down like stray animals after birth. In a government like that in the US, which is premised on the belief in God-given inalienable rights, I think a case could be made for using public money for this purpose, particularly when the alternative is killing an innocent child who did nothing to deserve being killed.
“You mention a God given system of morality. May I refer you to Exodus 19:5.”
*** I have specifically rejected any notion that morality comes from religious texts. Have a look at “The True Nature of Human Morality” (my debate with Raymond Ingles). Here I lay out my position on the existence of a God-given Universal Moral Code. Religion may help further the expression of morality, or as in the case of Islamo fascism, rationalize immoral acts. But religion does not provide the content of morality, which is expressed as “it is immoral to deliberately harm an innocent human life”.
”If a woman were ‘compelled’ to carry to birth the child of a rapist, that could destroy her family. Is the product of rape more important than a stable and secure family for the benefit of the children conceived and born of consent?”
*** I don’t know. There may be terrible consequences for her family as you described, or there may not be. All I know for sure is that an innocent life will be killed by aborting it.
You speak about Principles that should guide our life. I have trouble with Principles that someone can use to justify killing an innocent human life simply because it’s inconvenient. I want the words you use like “authority” and “Principles” to be put in a real-world context. If exercising my own authority means that it’s okay morally, as well as legally, to electively abort a developing child, it makes me question whether these principles are grounded in anything other than self-centered convenience.
And please do call me Phil
Phil,
So would you agree to remain plugged to the ailing man for nine months? If not, how is it different?
Your example is not a true comparison. In your scenario, the state is acting. In the case of rape, it’s an individual action, not a state-sanctioned enterprise. You’ve described an immoral state where there is a bigger issue at play than the example you put forward. Everyone should be working to bring this state down and replace it with another one based on the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence. In the case of rape, the police should be looking to put this person in jail.
Moreover, in all due respect, the hypothetical example has to bear some semblance to reality to be useful to get to the fundamentals of an issue. Being impregnated by aliens, or having the government snatch someone off the street and hook them up to a complete stranger, isn’t even remotely plausible. Neither of these reflect real world possibilities. It’s as if I was to argue that every child about to be aborted would grow up to cure cancer, or eliminate poverty, or was actually the Messiah. These kinds of positionings distract from getting to the core of the issue, instead of illuminating the issue at question.
Rape by a husband or relative instead of a stranger, or even some crazed scientist drugging a woman and artificially impregnating her as part of an experiment, would qualify as derivative examples. In each case they reflect something that could actually happen (even though the crazed scientist example is far-fetched and would be a rare case, it’s infinitely more plausible and possible than your example). These actions would produce a human child, and I would still say that in either case it’s morally incorrect to exterminate an otherwise viable human being who does not threaten the life of the mother. After birth, she can give it up for adoption.
The mother carrying such a child to term is an inconvenience at best, and a terrible reminder of an assault on her at worst. But aborting the child produces only one consequence for the child: death. And of all the parties involved, that child is the least guilty of deserving any such fate. It is innocence in its most pure form, regardless of whether its father was a rapist or not. Why does the child deserve to die for the act of its father?
If you were to now argue that a fertilized human egg is not an actual human being, I’d refer back to what I said before about the uniqueness of the act of conception. Defining what is human is not man’s job. It’s God’s decision. When in doubt about where to draw the line, we should err on the side of not deliberately killing innocent human life.
As I wrote before: When I look at a newborn baby girl I don’t see anything that resembles a thirty-year old woman. The head and limbs are not in the same size or proportion, and its body shape is completely different. It doesn’t communicate the same way, or have any appreciation at all for its surroundings. I’d be just as justified calling it “proto-Mary” as I would be to call the adult woman “Mary” if I based my criteria on the same distorted logic that abortionists use to distinguish between a 19- and 20-week old fetus.
“Creating human life” is just that. Creation does not mean that life can’t develop, and that in developing life cannot change appearance, often radically. A caterpillar bears no resemblance at all to a butterfly, but still represents the same life — just at a different stage in development. As 30-year old Mary continues to age (or “develop”) her external features and internal organs will change too. Change is what defines life. Without it we’re dead. So why should change be used to deny life to a developing human being, instead of indicate absolute proof of it?
You can take a trillion human sperm and a thousand human eggs and place them in two separate containers. As long as they do not mix, human life is impossible. But allow a single sperm and a single egg to unite inside a woman’s body, and human life has begun. One sentence, identifying the precise moment in time when the status of each constituent element fundamentally changes, is all that is needed to supplement this statement with the logic to support it. Find me the same parsimony in words to justify an elective abortion at week 19, 30, 22, 15, or any point in between, and I’ll support the wisdom of that choice instead of labeling it what it really is, a rationalization disguised as a thoughtful choice to advance a political agenda.
In the United States, 20 weeks represents the “magic” date that human life is assigned to the developing child. Why does 24 hours make such a difference either way in granting “human” status? Or even 4 hours? I can tell you exactly why one second matters in the view that life begins at the moment of conception.
Take care,
Phil
Phil,
I don’t want to get into a distracting debate about when human life officially begins. I’ve conceded for purposes of this discussion that there is a person from the moment of conception.
You made two objections to my hypothetical. The first is simply wrong. I did not say anything about a state doing the kidnapping and hooking-up. I said “officials from the local hospital.” I didn’t say that it was not a private hospital, and if it makes a big difference to you I will say definitively that it is a private hospital. I take it you would be in favor of jailing the hospital officials responsible. But would you demand to be unplugged?
Your second objection–that it is unlikely to happen–is irrelevant. The fact that it hasn’t happened and probably won’t says nothing about whether, if it did happen, it would be parallel to a woman becoming pregnant as a result of rape. When you dismiss the hypothetical because you don’t see it happening any time soon, you avoid confronting the issue I raised.
Feel free to raise parallels involving aliens, cancer-curing, or whatever else. If they are truly parallel, they might be interesting thought experiements.
I should have said earlier that credit for this thought experiment belongs to Judith Jarvin Thompson (“A Defense of Abortion”).
“I said “officials from the local hospital.” …
*** My error about state sponsorship.
“… But would you demand to be unplugged?”
*** See below.
“Your second objection–that it is unlikely to happen–is irrelevant.”
*** It is relevant. The problem with relativistic thought in general is that it keeps throwing irrelevancies into the discussion that prove nothing. I oppose driving drunk. Then someone says “well, imagine your friend steps on a scorpion and has 30 minutes to live. You’re in the middle of the desert, and you have no cell phone, and your friend will die if you don’t drive. But your blood alcohol level makes you legally drunk, and you say that drunk driving is wrong. Assume that the road to the hospital is completely deserted, so if you do drive drunk, you will only be risking your life, not anyone else’s. What do you do?”
My response: How could answering this question shed any possible light on the principle of whether it’s right or wrong to drive drunk? And would it make any difference if I drank the alcohol voluntarily, or someone spiked my drink? In the same regard, what could we possibly learn from answering a hypothetical where you’re walking down the street and some doctor from a local hospital snatches you and hooks you up to a heart patient? This example is not only unlikely, it’s completely implausible. Answering it will tell us nothing about whether elective abortion is morally right or wrong, even in the case of rape. It’s so far-fetched, it’s a distraction, not a “parallel” example as you contended. [And thankfully, it’s not your original idea!]
If I was to try to come up with a parallel example not involving the physical act of rape, I’d suggest this alternative. It’s still pretty far-fetched, but at least it’s plausible as I outline it below. And it doesn’t require being abducted off the street by a posse of mad scientists.
You have been dropped off on a remote, supposedly uninhabited island to conduct scientific research on the local shoe-fly population for 9 months. During this time you will have absolutely no contact with the outside world, since electronic/radio signals may interfere with their mating habits.
As soon as the boat leaves you stumble across a newborn baby lying next to its dead mother. No one else is on the island. You can keep walking and let the baby die too, and no one will ever know. You can’t be condemned, and you can’t be prosecuted for neglect (should such a law exist). The baby is no relation to you at all; it’s a perfect stranger.
If you save the baby, you will need to care for it for the next 9 months. You must feed it, nurse it when it is sick, etc. Doing this will cut into your own resources, not to mention take away from some of your valuable research time.
“Saving” the baby is a voluntary act in one sense, but it is equally true that circumstances are “forcing” you to do something that you otherwise have no interest in. Now what do you do? Do you allow yourself to remain “hooked up” to that innocent human life and save it from certain death, or do you “unhook” yourself and walk away and let it die?
Legally, you can do whatever you please with no consequences. Morally, could you really live with yourself if you let that baby die? And if “baby” is a too emotionally-charged image, now make it a severely injured 40 year old man who will die without your constant care for 9 months. Does this really make any difference in answering the question?
I don’t think you could let the baby or adult die. And I believe that any other decent human being would act the same way. The only reason abortion for rape victims is thought permissible is because people define away the humanity or innocence of the developing child. Once we recognize it as a human being, morality helps focus or minds to do the right thing.
The question on the table is clear. A human life has been created by an act of rape. Legally, a woman in the United States has every right to abort it. Morally, I ask the question: what did that child-about-to-be-aborted do to deserve to be executed?
I believe this is a better example to illustrate your point than the mad scientist example. It’s hard to envision being abducted off the street and physically hooked up to another person. But anyone can imagine stumbling across another human being in need (though maybe not for 9 months!). Still, it’s a question all of us face in one way or another, and to one degree or another. And when the example becomes more “real”, the people living or dying become more real — and not just abstract foils to advance a position. Therefore, the answers we get are likely to be more relevant — even if the original question was pretty far fetched and not all that on point! :)
My original point in all of this was to question a set of Principles that are supposed to help guide our lives that do not inherently recognize the immorality of killing a developing child whose only crime is that he is the product of a rape. In discussing rights and authority in this case, there is more in play than the mother. Another human life also hangs in the balance.
Take care, Phil
Phil,
From what you say, I think we will be better able to debate all this when all the Principles are listed.
But in the meantime, perhaps you could clarify a few points: when you refer to a ‘god given morality’, are you not really invoking your own ‘conscience’? Otherwise, where do we find this ‘morality’? If it is nothing more than an expression of ‘conscience’, does one person’s conscience then give him an authority to impose his conscience on others – even if it follows a bout of what you call “education, reason and the discussion of moral issues”?
Let’s consider another scenario; if someone breaks into my home and threatens my family, and I kill him, do I become ‘morally’ bound to support his ‘innocent’ family because they no longer have a breadwinner?
Let’s also take your scenario that the State should pay for the children conceived in rape until such time that they can be adopted. Is that not claiming an ‘authority’ to impose one person’s ‘conscience’ on others? If there were such a ‘moral obligation’ in respect of children conceived as a result of rape, must it not also be the case that such a ‘moral obligation’ exists in respect of all children if their parent’s cannot, or will not, meet their obligations towards those children.
As I show in the later articles, if someone’s conscience is moved by any particular circumstance, he puts an onus on himself to relieve his own conscience, it does not give that person an ‘authority’ to compel others to exercise ‘compassion’ in order to relieve his own conscience. If it were any other way, then who’s ‘conscience’ prevails?
And is the imposition of ‘authority’ not itself a ‘moral’ issue? Is it not a ‘moral’ question to ask whether one person can have an ‘authority’ to tell another person what to do, or what obligations to assume, without that person’s consent?
I look forward to revisiting this discussion once all the Principles are on the table, and the arguments which support them. I trust you will then see that these Principles are not just ‘legalistic’ – they are also the foundation of all ‘obligations’, and the basis of everything we recognize as ‘morality’. Katzen got it right – the Principles I propose are to be “used in judging laws and actions.” And judging actions is what ‘morality’ is really all about.
Joseph BH McMillan www,freedomvrights.com
Phil, I noticed that I did not explain droit de seigneur. It means the ‘right of the lord’. It meant that ‘nobles’, or ‘lords’ as they liked to call themselves, had the ‘right’ to have sex with the bride of any of their underlings on the first night of their union. I expect that they would have insisted in their day that this was some ‘god-given’ right. Amazing how these ‘rights’ change over time! But, nevertheless, I expect few vassals would have challenged the ‘right’ in those days.
Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com
“perhaps you could clarify a few points: when you refer to a ‘god given morality’, are you not really invoking your own ‘conscience’? Otherwise, where do we find this ‘morality’?”
*** I’ve written three main articles on this subject: “What Kind of car would Jesus Drive to take his girlfriend to an abortion Clinic?”, the Jackson-Carmine debate, and most recently my debate with Raymond Ingles on “The True Nature of Morality”. It posits that there is a God-given universal moral code instilled in everyone at the moment of conception, whose content and substance is NOT the product of human consensus, societal influences, genetics, or any other social, environmental or biological factor, and is expressed in the statement “it is immoral to deliberately harm an innocent human life.”
“Let’s consider another scenario; if someone breaks into my home and threatens my family, and I kill him, do I become ‘morally’ bound to support his ‘innocent’ family because they no longer have a breadwinner?”
*** No. He is a criminal who deserves to be punished by the state for his actions according to the penalties the law delineates for that action. If he has a wife and children, the wife now has an obligation to support her family’s basic needs (food, shelter, etc.). There may not be enough money for designer tennis shoes and a trip to Disneyworld, but they will not starve. If the wife is incapable of providing life-sustaining food and shelter, it’s appropriate for the state to have a welfare-to-work program to help provide these basic necessities (via food stamps, etc.). If the mother doesn’t want to do what is required to work for these benefits, the state has an obligation to remove her children to an orphanage or foster care to provide food and shelter until they become adults. The mother, as an adult, can wander the streets and die from her own stupidity, since she is an adult capable of making a rational decision not to work, and the state has no obligation to feed and clothe an otherwise normal, healthy and rational adult. If she becomes a public nuisance she should then be put in jail. If she is mentally ill, she reverts to an “innocent” status and should be institutionalized for her and society’s welfare.
“Let’s also take your scenario that the State should pay for the children conceived in rape until such time that they can be adopted. Is that not claiming an ‘authority’ to impose one person’s ‘conscience’ on others? If there were such a ‘moral obligation’ in respect of children conceived as a result of rape, must it not also be the case that such a ‘moral obligation’ exists in respect of all children if their parent’s cannot, or will not, meet their obligations towards those children.”
*** If the rapist has no money to pay the state for the child’s support (which ideally would be part of any penalty that also includes jail time as direct punishment for him), and the woman does not want to raise the child as her own, the state has an obligation to step in and protect innocent life. Your principles apply to adults who have the capacity to reason and can (and should) be held accountable for their actions — thus jail and fine the rapist. But you can’t possibly contend that an abstract notion of “authority” means that we should let orphans wander the street, the mentally ill go untreated, and kill babies who are victims/products of rape because they are unwanted. The state [national, state and/or local] has an obligation to its citizens to do certain things in the collective interest (defense, build roads and schools, keep the streets safe, care for the truly helpless [mentally ill, orphans, etc]). It doesn’t need my expressed permission to do this — it’s part of the inherent social contract of living together as a nation.
The problem is that liberalism has perverted these things by moving beyond meeting basic needs for the innocent and truly needy to giving them a middle class lifestyle at taxpayer expense, with no corresponding obligation to work to change that status. “Workfare” has moved in this direction, but the system still allows you to be a bum and get state aid. [In fact, the state has eradicated the “bum” designation and now everyone is “homeless”, as if everyone who is a bum is just a victim of circumstances and not an adult who made a series of decisions that got him/her into that predicament]. The Courts no longer allow the mentally ill to be forcibly instutionalized and treated. Now we have to ask an insane person if they want to be locked up and treated. And if the insane person thinks they’re sane and says no, they wander the streets and collect government aid.
Don’t throw the baby (literally and figuratively) out with the bathwater because you’ve devised a system of Principles that depend on rational adults to make rational decisions to give or withhold “authority”. It doesn’t account for the truly innocent and/or truly needy. A Just society has an inherent obligation to protect innocent life.
“if someone’s conscience is moved by any particular circumstance, he puts an onus on himself to relieve his own conscience, it does not give that person an ‘authority’ to compel others to exercise ‘compassion’ in order to relieve his own conscience. If it were any other way, then who’s ‘conscience’ prevails?”
*** When people agree to form a political union , its scope and purpose is more than the sum of its constituent parts. It’s not simply a group of people who are just looking out for their own bank accounts and doing a zero-sum analysis of their own family interests, but is meant to also achieve some collective goals — “life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness,” the principles embodied in the Declaration of independence as well as the Bill of Rights, etc.
The very fact that a political union exists means that people will cede certain authority to a common, collective purpose. 18 year old men don’t volunteer to sign up for selective service; it’s a legal obligation imposed on them. I don’t consent to driving 55 mph in a 55mph zone, it’s a law imposed on me. The same with paying my taxes. I don’t refrain from shooting Liberal Democrat politicians because I’m afraid I’ll go to Hell if I commit murder; I live in a society where I concede that elections will determine who governs — even elections in cities like Chicago where a corrupt system favors one political party. Only when that corruption crosses a line that is so blatant that it cannot be ignored will I rebel; otherwise I’ll live with a system that perverts the authority I gave it. This is the reality of how political systems function. This is the reality of what “authority” and “consent” mean. With all do respect, you seen to rely on highly abstract definitions of these terms that don’t stand a chance of playing out in the real world. You’re describing a bunker, not a state.
“And is the imposition of ‘authority’ not itself a ‘moral’ issue? Is it not a ‘moral’ question to ask whether one person can have an ‘authority’ to tell another person what to do, or what obligations to assume, without that person’s consent?”
*** You are using the term moral in a general, and somewhat relativistic sense. I’m using it in a more structured way. Doing something moral involves more than doing something that is in your own exclusive interest. It means looking beyond yourself — as in protecting the innocent. This doesn’t require another relativistic extreme of having a nanny state that oversees every aspect of one’s life, as I explained above. That’s what liberalism tries to do by perverting this notion to serve another political agenda. I contend that humanity as a whole, and society specifically, cannot possibly lay claim to acting morally if it will allow an innocent human life to be deliberately harmed. Killing a child whose only crime was to be the product of a rape, or not caring for parentless children, are two examples of walking away from an innocent life in danger. Forcing a woman who is raped to raise that child after birth is not moral (the state should do this if others won’t adopt it), and requiring that orphans live as middle class children is not the same thing as meeting their basic needs.
“droit de seigneur”
*** Appreciate the explanation. I think this was a movie with Mel Gibson! Again, this is an example of a man-made “right” that is rationalized as a God-given right, not a true God-given right as I’ve discussed previously. Using the state to sanction rape does not lead to a truly moral act, which is defined as not deliberately harming innocent human life.
Again, good discussion.
Phil
Phil,
To make your scenario parallel, we have to tweak it a bit. We have to say that I was put on the island against my will. We also have to say that taking care of the baby would not be merely difficult, but pose as great an inconvenience as pregnancy, complete with sickness, wear on mental health, and all the rest. And since I can’t imagine giving six pence about fruit flies, let’s say that I have a choice of any fun activity.
In every case, the duty to take measures to save another human being’s life depends on the burden of undertaking those measures. I am, for instance, required to cross the street if it would save the life of an innocent baby–even if my fruit fly experiment would be delayed. I am not, however, required to provide constant, round-clock, 24/7 care for 9 months, regardless of the inconvenience to me and my physical and mental health, and regardless of whether I chose to put myself in the position.
It is difficult to imagine what literally “constant” care for nine months (270 days) would entail. The scenario you provided doesn’t pose the same inconvenience to me as unwanted pregnancy or being forcibly hooked-up to a hospital patient. The worst thing that would happen to me is that I wouldn’t be able to study fruit flies in those nine months. Horror! We needed to tweak your scenario to make the inconvenience comparable.
I don’t think I am morally required to save innocent babies “no matter what” the inconvenience to me is. If I were willing to live on the most modest means possible, I could donate enough money to save many starving babies. So could you. And you and I would be better people if we did. But there is no moral requirement to be Mother Teresa.
I realize I have given you an out here. You can say that the burden of pregnancy does not compare with the burden of being confined to a hospital for nine months. In the case of a rape victim, I’m not so sure that’s true. The horomonal side effects of pregnancy are difficult for psychologically healthy women to handle. I imagine they would be made only worse by the trauma of having been raped.
In short, what this comes down to is that I am not willing to force a rape victim to experience pregnancy and all that it entails so that the baby dependent on her as a result of the rape can survive.
“To make your scenario parallel, we have to tweak it a bit. We have to say that I was put on the island against my will.”
*** Not necessarily. You are presented with an “obligation” that is thrust upon you by circumstances, just as the man snatched off the street is presented with an obligation he didn’t volunteer for. It doesn’t matter whether the person grabbed by the mad scientists was lost, in front of his house, on his way to work, etc., any more than it matters that the person in my example volunteered to go to the desert island or was stranded there. Each has another human being who depends solely upon them for survival. And each didn’t volunteer to be that other person’s caretaker. Fate/curcumstances put them in that position.
“We also have to say that taking care of the baby would not be merely difficult, but pose as great an inconvenience as pregnancy, complete with sickness, wear on mental health, and all the rest.”
*** If you’ve ever had a child, you’ll know that this is an all-consuming obligation to begin with (even during pregnancy for the other spouse. I gained 50 sympathy pounds myself!) Now care for a child without a spouse to help, with no extra food supplies other than your own, with no doctors to call when it’s sick, etc. Caring for a child by yourself on a deserted island for 9 months would meet each of these tests.
“I am not, however, required to provide constant, round-clock, 24/7 care for 9 months, regardless of the inconvenience to me and my physical and mental health, and regardless of whether I chose to put myself in the position.”
*** Generally, I agree. Living in a society where there is a government or churches or NGOs that provides social services, I have no personal moral responsibility to do this. But if I am in a situation where I am the ONLY ONE available, I do. If it takes an hour of my time, a day, a week, or 9 months until the social safety net can be employed, I must morally care for that innocent life. Doing so may make me miss a ballgame, or even my daughter’s wedding. [Can you imagine otherwise --- “Sorry I’m a little late for your wedding honey. I thought about saving a kid from certain death, but when I realized I couldn’t walk you down the isle I let that baby die so I could be here for your big day. But there’s no harm done since I just missed the first few seconds of the wedding ceremony.”] This moral obligation is of course balanced by many factors — we can’t rescue everyone in need. But there are certain obvious cases where we cannot just walk away. And even though I’d hate to miss my daughter’s wedding, I wouldn’t want to do so knowing that I deliberately let another person die just to be on time.
“It is difficult to imagine what literally “constant” care for nine months (270 days) would entail.”
*** Again, you must not have any children!
“The scenario you provided doesn’t pose the same inconvenience to me as unwanted pregnancy or being forcibly hooked-up to a hospital patient.”
*** As a man, I can’t really understand pregnancy either, regardless of how the child was conceived. But my example is a good parallel, because it does two important things:
First, it removes the silliness of the mad scientist scenario. This distracts from the main issue because everyone is reacting to the thought that they are snatched from the streets and forcibly hooked up to another person by way of a machine. This isn’t real, so the example becomes an abstract issue.
Second, by making it a more realistic situation, I force you to look at both the adult and baby, and measure the impact on two real lives. I force you to say you would leave the baby to die, or do everything to care for the child regardless of the way it impacts you. I force you to actually deal with human life, without any distractions like not wanting to be kidnapped, not wanting to be physically hooked up to another person, wondering why a scientist would do such a terrible thing to you in the first place, etc.
“The worst thing that would happen to me is that I wouldn’t be able to study fruit flies in those nine months. Horror! We needed to tweak your scenario to make the inconvenience comparable.”
*** If “fruit flies” don’t seem like a convincing enough motivation, pick something else — a one-time chance to make a million dollars. (I actually know people who devote their lives to the study of quarks, which to me are interesting but hardly life-consuming. I wouldn’t care less if a quark study was interrupted; he would see his whole life fading away. Don’t judge the scenario by imposing what you feel is important on another person. The premise is that caring for the child will dramatically affect what that person feels is important.)
“I don’t think I am morally required to save innocent babies “no matter what” the inconvenience to me is. If I were willing to live on the most modest means possible, I could donate enough money to save many starving babies. So could you. And you and I would be better people if we did. But there is no moral requirement to be Mother Teresa.”
*** I said a single human life that will otherwise die. You have changed this to multiple babies/many starving babies. I never said that we have an individual obligation to see that every starving child is saved. I said that when presented with a case where a child will die if we do not act, and we are the ONLY ONE there, we must act regardless of whether it inconveniences us, or cuts into our immediate standard of living, etc.
You have changed the parameters of the argument to make your point. I believe that you have done this because you are basically a decent guy, and broadening this example to make it all encompassing (thus ridiculous) is the only way to challenge the statement I made. Otherwise, you know that your decency and sense of morality would not let you walk away, regardless of the inconvenience or personal sacrifice.
Katzen, I know you from our past conversations, and I do not believe if you found yourself as the only thing between an innocent child’s life or death you would walk away. You would do whatever it took, for as long as it took. If you ended up on a raft in the middle of the ocean with limited food, you would share it with everyone even though it might possibly mean that all of you would die before rescue. You wouldn’t pick one or two people on the boat to be thrown overboard so you would have more food.
This is the problem with thought experiments where we speak abstractly about human life. It’s easy to say “I have no obligation; I’d just walk away.” But if you make that judgment in a specific real-world case, it won’t be because you “have no obligation”. It will be because you’ve concluded that the state will step in to do the job, or the police will come to render aid, or there are other people around who will do it instead of you, etc. But if you are the ONLY person, and walking away means certain death for that innocent life, you’ll sacrifice whatever you need to. And if that sacrifice takes a day, a week, or even months until additional help arrives, you’ll continue to do it because you’re a decent guy. You won’t look at the baby after 3 days and say “well, help hasn’t arrived, so I’m just going to let you die because it’s costing me too may resources to continue caring for you, or I have a ballgame I don’t want to miss, etc.”
Don’t let abstract, unrealistic, hypothetical examples so muddle the conversation that it allows one to make categorical policy statements that bear no resemblance to reality. Pontification — like the woman you cited with the mad doctor example — is not analysis.
Take care, Phil
Katzen: By the way, when you say “I am not willing to force a rape victim to experience pregnancy and all that it entails so that the baby dependent on her as a result of the rape can survive,” I agree with you completely. I’m not willing to force a woman to do anything, even when no rape is involved. I’m simply say that the legal right to abort a child for any reason — including rape — is morally wrong.
Morality exists independent of human consensus. And that morality must be embraced willingly by a society, not forced upon it. My points regarding Joseph’s essays have been limited:
1. There is a universal, morally correct “right and wrong”.
2. Principles that guide a society should reflect this moral base.
3. If principles will allow, encourage, or not morally condemn the deliberate harming of an innocent human life, then those principles are deficient. Abstractly, they may represent correct ideals, but the expression of those principles in actual policy need to be grounded in a basic respect for all human life. That respect will, with, with proper education and the passage of time, allow immoral laws to be overturned (like slavery was, and abortion on demand will one day be).
Phil,
I have considered your arguments, but I still have some fundamental problems with them.
They have a number of premises which cannot be substantiated. First, it works on the assumption that there is a God. Now much as I, and you, may believe there is a God, the one thing I know with a 100% certainly, is that I do not KNOW that there is a God. No one knows that! They can only have ‘faith’ that there may be a God. Even the Scriptures tell us that!
So the second problem is this. Even assuming that there is a God, you seem to suggest that He created man in order to practice ‘morality’. Where do we find that? If we look at nature and the universe, we find the default setting is death, not life. When we stop killing, we die. In nature, the trick is to be the one doing the killing, not the one being killed. And if we look at the Scriptures, we find that we have life because God wanted to create an image of Himself on earth.
So I can’t see that the argument is anything more than an assertion of a conscience, albeit one that claims a divine ‘authority’.
You say that this ‘morality’ can be ‘discovered’ by “education, reason, and a debate on the moral issues”. To me, that is code for a claim that a superior intellect, more refined conscience, and greater sense of compassion, vests an authority to determine the actions of others. I always shudder when I hear an argument that people can come round to a particular way of ‘thinking’ if they could just be ‘educated’.
As I have said, however, I do in fact deal with many of these issues in the next few articles. But what this debate, so far, confirms to me is that any Principles, or ‘morality’, or ‘authority’, over and above these Ten Principles leads to conflict. And it leads to conflict because one person must necessarily claim an authority over someone else without that person’s consent – and such ‘authority’ can only be based on arguments of superior intellect, more refined conscience, or a special divine knowledge.
I look forward to revisiting this discussion after the other articles are posted.
One final question, Phil. How exactly do we differentiate between a man-made ‘right’, and a God-given ‘right’? Is it simply because someone tells us the difference or some court decides, or is there some deeper insight required?
Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com
“They have a number of premises which cannot be substantiated. First, it works on the assumption that there is a God.”
*** Again, this is part of a much longer previous discussion of this issue. I’ll just make two points here. I can’t debate whether Apollo 10 should have landed on the moon instead of Apollo 11, if the person I’m debating believes the moon landing was a fake. We have no common point of reference. Conversely, if people don’t believe in God for whatever reason, then by definition there can be no God-given morality in their view. I showed previously at length that the content of morality cannot arise from genetics, social forces, or human consensus. If the person I’m debating won’t accept God as an explanation for the source of morality, and all other “sources” are deficient, then there is no morality other than what they say is moral or not, which is realtivistic hogwash. We can’t have a meaningful conversation on that matter.
“So the second problem is this. Even assuming that there is a God, you seem to suggest that He created man in order to practice ‘morality’. Where do we find that?”
*** Joseph, people worldwide are cringing at the thought that I’ll launch into another 50,000 word answer to this question! You’ll find it all laid out in the previous essays of mine I cited.
“So I can’t see that the argument is anything more than an assertion of a conscience, albeit one that claims a divine ‘authority’. You say that this ‘morality’ can be ‘discovered’ by “education, reason, and a debate on the moral issues”. To me, that is code for a claim that a superior intellect, more refined conscience, and greater sense of compassion, vests an authority to determine the actions of others.”
*** No. I argue precisely the opposite. It’s found in the answer to a simple question I posed in my “What kind of car essay”: “If there is no objective ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ just equally valid differing opinions, then under what conditions would you say that raping and murdering a five-year old child isn’t wrong?” Again, in the spirit of not hijacking your comment section with my own work, I’ll refer you again to this and the other essays I cited.
“But what this debate, so far, confirms to me is that any Principles, or ‘morality’, or ‘authority’, over and above these Ten Principles leads to conflict.”
*** This is because you keep speaking about morality in terms of one religion’s texts, or an individual human’s opinion. This is not the claim I make — and in fact expressly reject those as sources of morality.
“One final question, Phil. How exactly do we differentiate between a man-made ‘right’, and a God-given ‘right’? Is it simply because someone tells us the difference or some court decides, or is there some deeper insight required?”
*** God instills a Universal Moral Code in us at the moment of conception, through a process I explain in my “What Kind of car” essay. The expression of this UMC is “It is immoral to deliberately harm an innocent human life”. From this, the Right to Life flows.
Contrast this with man-made rights, which are something all together different. Sometimes they simply represent wishes and desires. Other times they represent legally codified embodiments of human consensus that can change with the passage of time. I explain it this way from my essay:
Liberal Relativist thinking states emphatically that women have a Right to Choose what to do with their own body. This includes foreign bodies attached to them by a placenta.
If this right does indeed exist, then it isn’t a stretch to conclude that abortion must be a “common choice.” If not, banning abortions wouldn’t affect anything. For example, anyone can choose to kill themselves. They can use a gun, buy pills, sit in a running car in a closed garage, or jump in front of a train. The opportunities are endless, and can be exercised at will. But in America, no one has a “Right” to kill themselves. Attempting suicide is illegal in most states. The only way to beat the rap is to succeed; otherwise you end up in the custody of the state for a few days observation — or maybe a lot longer.
Both suicide and abortion deal with an individual’s choice about their own body. Moreover, neither action is said to harm another human being because abortionists don’t consider the thing they kill to be human life. And yet, the state gives “Rights” to one action, but not to the other.
Since there are no marches on Washington or other demonstrable actions that demand rights for the oppressed suicide-attempters in America, I can only conclude that it must not be a very popular choice compared to such things as the Right to Vote, the Right to Free Speech, and the Right to Kill That Thing Growing Inside Your Belly Before The Twentieth Week — all of which have strong, vocal movements behind them.
Perhaps we should look at what other strongly held “rights” exist today in America? Simply reading a newspaper or watching your neighbors go about their lives will quickly point out at least three more rights Americans hold dear: the Right to Party and Have a Good Time, the Right to Run Up Large Charge Account Bills and Then Declare Bankruptcy, and the Right to Download Music Free on The Internet.
These aren’t just options or opportunities that theoretically exist, like the option to wear slacks or shorts depending on the weather. Pass laws that limit or take away any of these “rights” and you’ll get a march on Washington that will rival Dr. King’s. People care about these rights; not just isolated individuals here and there, but millions of people throughout the country. Although these rights seem to manifest themselves most strongly among high school and college-age hormonally active human males, people of all ages and sexes seem drawn to these rights. We can all point to enough personal experiences observing overweight 50-year old men driving around town in a brand new Porsche with a 22-year old trophy wife at their side, or read the newspapers about the rise in bankruptcy filings under Republican administrations. And then there’s that song or two you asked your twelve-year old nephew to download from a share file that paid no royalties to the composer.
Attempts to “limit fun,” force people to manage their financial affairs responsibly, and/or start charging them for using the Internet have routinely met with loud, wailing, hand-wringing howls. This isn’t some isolated group we hear screaming, it’s your neighbors, friends, and even your family. And perhaps you too on occasion.
But the simple fact that one group (however large and vocal) may want to do something — and want it really badly — doesn’t mean that all people want or demand it. If it was a fundamental human need, there wouldn’t be any question about it. As vocal as these advocates might be, they need to be balanced against a larger number of people who are interested in having children and raising a family, pursuing a successful career, managing their and the country’s finances responsibly, and paying for what they want instead of scamming the system.
Like the previous examples, though, these things are no more “rights” than the right to turn on red is a “right.” They are felt strongly, and to some people may even manifest themselves as a genetic disposition (fun times and alcoholism, for example), but they are not universally shared by all mankind, which if true would elevate them to the level of a universal moral imperative.
But what about other, more serious human rights? Let’s look at the U.S. Bill of Rights. As important and deeply ingrained as the Right to Vote and Right to Free Speech are in Western society, I still can’t elevate either of these to a universal principle. Even after the collapse of Soviet communism and the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq, there are still a large number of people in these countries who reject any notion of Western-style democracy. Russians live in a quasi-capitalist thugocracy, and in Afghanistan and Iraq a lot of people still take their marching orders from the local Ayatollah.
“Rights” connected with personal freedom may tie back to certain moral principles, but it is these principles — such as a basic respect for human life — that are universal, not a free press or other rights embodied in the U.S. Constitution. A true appreciation for democracy is something that evolves with thought, debate, and cultural evolution. I have high hopes for democracy taking a firm root in the Middle East thanks to the courage and leadership of President Bush. But neither he nor I, nor maybe even my children, will live to see it work as well as I believe it can. Which means, not even the U.S. Bill of Rights has intrinsic universal appeal, because some of these concepts require a different cultural and social structure to be in place before they can truly be understood and flourish. Russia today is a perfect example of both the potential of, and cultural/historical barriers to, Western-style democracy taking hold and prospering. Afghanistan and Iraq will require decades of additional preparation to pave the way for thinking about Thomas Paine instead of “giving pain” when operating in a political environment.
Which puts the lie to any suggestion that abortion is a universal right to kill your own unborn child that all women seek. Rather, it is a means to a political objective perpetrated on the United States by a logic that gives more weight to man-made laws and the culturally-dependent notions of privacy and fairness, than it does to basic human dignity. It’s the perfect, morally-relativistic logic gone completely out of control, where the focus becomes the mother’s desires, as opposed to what is in the best interest of another human being’s life.
So I ask again. If the future of mankind is not at stake, why won’t some society, somewhere, sometime in human history, condone child rape and murder as an acceptable practice?
And if it won’t, why not?
Phil,
This exchange has been altogether thought-provoking for me.
In the example you provided, I agreed that I would care for the child. Under those specific circumstances.
In your scenario, because I was willingly on the island, leading a normal life was not an option that would weigh in favor of not taking care of the baby. In the raped pregnant woman scenario, it is. In the “mad scientist” scenario, it also is.
I understand that child-care is, in some sense, “constant.” It is not quite the same kind of “constant,” though, as pregnancy. The psychological and physiological effects are not comparable. And I submit that being pregnant while suffering from the trauma of having been raped is probably more inconvenient that your 50 sympathy pounds.
Your point about being “the only one” is a good one. However, I still suspect that there is a limit to how far you’d be willing to go. What if care entailed not nine months of your time, but nine years? People will draw the line in different places, and, while we can agree that truly short periods of time are not too much to ask, I am unwilling to say that nine months is a moral requirement. (By the way, in my scenario, since unplugging you would kill the patient, you are “the only one” who can save him).
As for the “mad scientist example” being “silly” and “unrealistic,” I fail to see the seriousness and realism in a scenario where I am dropped off on a deserted island for nine months with no way of contacting the rest of the world, only to find a baby in need of my care. At least something similar to my scenario actually does exist–there are people who steal other people’s kidney’s and sell them on the black market. Your scenario is merely a cross between Tom Hank’s “Castaway” and the opening scene of Disney’s “Jungle Book.”
By the way, about the raft…Of course I wouldn’t pick one or two people and throw them overboard. I would pick one or two people and eat them. I kid, I kid.*
Your thesis is essentially this: “But if you are the ONLY person, and walking away means certain death for that innocent life, you’ll sacrifice whatever you need to.” I think, when I’m in a situation not of my own making, that I am entitled to consider, among other things, time. Will I sacrifice a day? Of course. Will I sacrifice a week? Yes. Will I sacrifice a month? Pushing it, but probably. Will I sacrifice nine months? Pretty unlikely. Will I sacrifice nine years? No. (All this is assuming, of course, that we’re not talking about a loved one).
So I can’t agree that I would sacrifice “whatever” was necessary to save the life. I would sacrifice a good deal, to be sure. But, as with everything else, there’s a limit. I think nine months is long enough to exceed the limit, so that a person is not morally required to sacrifice the ability to live a fairly normal life for that period of time if that person is put in the position through rape, kidnapping, or some other deprivation of basic human rights. It would be morally excellent of a person to make that sacrifice. But a moral requirement? No.
In response to your post 16, let me amend my previous statement: I am not willing to morally require a rape victim to experience pregnancy and all that it entails as a result of her having been raped.
*Try googling “Jews Christian blood matzoh neocon” to see the Straussian esoteric meaning hidden within my “kidding.” Hooray for Likud!
Phil, and Commentators,
In my last Comment I see I sacrificed clarity for brevity, and may thus have perpetrated an unintentional discourtesy to you, Phil. So let me try, as briefly as possible, to rehabilitate myself.
As I understand your position, Phil (leaving aside the issue of abortion in the case of rape for the time being), you postulate a synthesis between Kant’s “moral faculty” and Schweitzer’s “reverence for life” which he derives from what he calls the “will-to-live”.
More precisely, you seem to substitute Kant’s “moral faculty” with Schweitzer’s “will-to-live”. Then, like Kant [A Critique of Practical Reason], you claim that this “will-to-live” must presuppose a Supreme Being, that is, a God. But it seems to me that you then in fact do what both Kant and Schweitzer absolutely avoided – you turn the “supposition” (ie of a God) into the ‘proof’ of your premise – the “will-to-live”, so as to derive a God given morality.
As I am sure you are aware, Kant claimed that his “moral faculty” was not “empirical”, but some kind of supra-natural impulse. That is, he claimed that we do not develop this “faculty” by assimilating what we see around us. He claimed that this “faculty” existed, so to speak, independent of man. Although Kant asserts that his “moral faculty” is not human intuition, or instinct, he says this: “There is something so singular in the unbounded esteem for the pure moral law, apart from all advantage, as it is presented for our obedience by practical reason, the VOICE of which makes even the boldest sinner tremble …etc” [Chapter III]. This “moral law”, says Kant, leads to the summum bonum, which, in turn, claims Kant, “must postulate the existence of God, as the necessary condition of the possibility of the summum bonum.” But, he admits, “I cannot prove these by my speculative reason, although neither can I refute them.”
Now, Kant doesn’t actually derive any ‘moral code’ from the “moral law”. I guess we just have to wait for “the voice” to present itself to us “for our obedience”. The only ‘morality’ Kant identifies is the ‘common-good’ and ‘self-perfecting’ – as I call it, a sort of Utilitarian Buddhism. That is why Schweitzer describes Kant’s as having dome nothing more “than put the current Utilitarian ethics under the protectorate of the Categorical Imperative. Behind a magnificent façade he constructs a block of tenements”.
You, Phil, if I understand you correctly, side-step the problem of the “moral law” by giving it a content – innocent life should never be harmed. You seem to suggest, like Kant, that this ‘reverence for life’, if I may put it like that, is also somehow independent of empirical considerations. You seem to be saying that “the voice” tells us not to harm any innocent life. And since this “voice” is ‘heard’ by people of all generations, and in all ‘civilizations’ (even when they have descended into depravity), it is ‘immutable’. Like Kant, you then assert that this must presuppose a summum bonum, and thus a Supreme Being, viz a God. But the difficulty with that is this: it is empirical in that this ‘reverence for life’ can only express itself once we have life. It is triggered by our senses. Now, I’m sure that you will argue that that is because God has programmed us, so to speak, to recognize it (or as Kant would have said, enabled us to hear “the voice”). But does that not then beg the question?
The moment we look to an empirical ‘faculty’ the question arises as to where it came from? The fact that all human beings have legs, irrespective of their generation or civilization, does not presuppose a God. Likewise, the fact that human beings have a ‘faculty’ to feel compassion for innocent life doesn’t presuppose a God either. That is why Kant was so determined to avoid any empiricism – the minute we open that door we start the argument as to where it came from. So we end up back where we started. Why do we feel compassion for innocent life, or why do we have legs? Reasonable people can differ on that. Although I, myself, do not ‘believe’ we ‘evolved’ a ‘faculty’ for compassion, or to grow legs, I recognize that reasonable and intelligent people could ‘believe’ that that is how we got those things.
Arguments based on contingency end up in the same place. The Copleston/Russell debate (www.ditext.com/russell/debate.html) of 1948 is a perfect example of this. Now I am not suggesting that you, Phil, rely on the contingency argument, but your position certainly claims elements of that argument. But that doesn’t overcome the problem.
So far as I can see, therefore, your premise (that we have compassion for innocent life) can only be based on a Schweitzer type of “will-to-live”. But Schweitzer recognized that the “will-to-live” is rooted in the senses – it is empirical. He doesn’t seek to ascribe this ‘faculty’ to any supra-natural design for the universe and human life. He specifically excludes that: “In the world we can discover nothing of any purposive evolution in which our actions can acquire meaning.” And also, says Schweitzer, “reality knows nothing about the individual being able to enter into connection with the totality of Being.”
This is Schweitzer’s “will-to-live”: “The essential nature of the will-to-live is determination to live itself to the full. It carries within it the impulse to realize itself in the highest possible perfection. In the flowering tree, in the strange forms of the medusa, in the blade of grass, in the crystal; everywhere it strives to reach the perfection with which it is endowed. In everything that exists there is at work an imaginative force, which is determined by ideals.” But he adds this: “How this striving originated within us, and how it has developed, we do not know, but it is given with our existence.”
From this “will-to-live” Schweitzer constructs his ethic of the “reverence for life”. He describes it like this: “Ethics consists, therefore, in my experiencing the compulsion to show all will-to-live the same reverence as I do to my own. There we have given us that basic principle of the moral which is a necessity of thought. It is good to maintain and encourage life; it is bad to destroy life or obstruct it.” Schweitzer says this about Reverence-for-Life-Man: “Life as such is sacred to him. He tears no leaf from a tree, plucks no flower, and takes care to crush no insect.”
Unless I have seriously misread your position, Phil, I would have thought that Schweitzer’s “reverence for life” embodies your ‘moral code’, although your emphasis is on innocent life, or more specifically, innocent children. But the difference is that Schweitzer recognized that his “will-to-live”, although ‘universal’, does not presuppose a God. In order to construct a premise which must presuppose a God, we have to find some ‘faculty’ which can exist independent of life. But, as Kant discovered, when we do that, we can’t find a ‘moral code’, because a ‘moral code’ presupposes human life. In other words, any ‘moral code’ derived in this way has to be so abstract that it can have no relevance to human life.
So it seems to me that you fall between these two stools. Your reverence for innocent life, like Schweitzer’s “will-to-live”, although ‘universal’, only manifests itself when there is life for it to react to. It is thus empirical. It could be explained in a myriad of ways, as is evident from the variety of theories as to the origin of life. I can’t see how you can claim that it must necessarily presuppose a God. We ‘feel’ it because we have life, we don’t have life because we ‘feel’ it. Likewise, we have legs because we have life, we don’t have life because we have legs. Similarly, neither can we say there must be a God because we have legs, or because we feel compassion for innocent children.
This is why Nietzsche described such ‘moral codes’ as “interpretation, not text”. Where you, quite reasonably, will ‘interpret’ the compassion human beings exhibit for human life as confirmation of a God, another will marvel, quite reasonably as well, at the magnificence of the evolutionary process. The same applies to every human facility and faculty – one person may ‘interpret’ the fact that we have legs, or eyes, or brains, as confirmation of a God, another will have a different ‘interpretation’.
But, it seems to me that you take this process one step further. You use the premise – compassion for innocent life – to presuppose a God, you then reverse that, and use the presupposed concept (God) to impose a ‘moral code’. That is what I meant when I said you use your conclusion to establish your premise. Let me put that another way: you ‘interpret’ compassion for life to mean that there must be a God, then use God to deliver the ‘moral code’ to endow human life with compassion. In that way, you ‘convert’ your ‘interpretation’ of the human faculty for compassion into a God–given moral code, thus claiming for your ‘interpretation’ a supreme ‘authority’. But if I may say so, tongue in cheek, of course, it is a slight of hand. One moment we have compassion for innocent life, the next we have a God-given moral code, one which requires the compassion that first gave rise to it.
As Schweitzer might have said, you simply put your ‘interpretation’ under the protectorate of God.
So although I applaud you for a valiant effort, and you are among esteemed company with Kant and Schweitzer, you can’t build a bridge between the two stools. Although you claim the protectorate of God for your interpretation, it does still, unfortunately, remain your ‘interpretation’. I, for one, would wish it to be otherwise, but “interpretation” cannot be converted to “text” by mobilizing God.
And that is the reason for the Principles I set out. The only thing we know is that we must have life before we can start finding any purpose for our own lives, or before we exercise compassion, or anything else. We must have life before we can ‘believe’ in God. And there is only one way to get life. But, remarkably, the very way we get life also holds the key to our obligations, and gives rise to what we recognize as ‘morality’.
PS: I see from your last Comment that you say it is pointless to discuss ‘morality’ unless the discussion is premised on a belief in God. But Phil, that is the question. It is no way to debate to insist that your ‘conclusion’ be accepted as the premise. Surely the object of the debate is to see whether we can derive a ‘morality’ that conforms to the possibility of a God, and at the same time conforms to human ‘facts’, irrespective of whether someone believes in a God.
Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com
Joseph:
I appreciate your commentary on Kant and others. As I’ve said before, I lay no claim to being well read in political philosophy. Practical policy analysis has been the focus of my education. So, I can’t really comment on how well my intuitive reasoning corresponds with another person or not.
You say at one point that “You seem to suggest, like Kant, that this ‘reverence for life’, if I may put it like that, is also somehow independent of empirical considerations. You seem to be saying that “the voice” tells us not to harm any innocent life. And since this “voice” is ‘heard’ by people of all generations, and in all ‘civilizations’ (even when they have descended into depravity), it is ‘immutable’.”
I don’t know any people who hear voices inside their head telling them what to do. But living in a household where I am the only male, I can assure you that I hear a lot of voices outside my head telling me what to do! If by “voices” you mean the thoughts everyone have as they evaluate the good/bad, morality/immorality of a situation on a sometimes conscious, and other times subconscious level, then I accept the characterization. As for a lack of empirical considerations for my premise, I thought I did a pretty thorough job in my “What kind of car” essay of showing how purely physical explanations for the universal notions of morality I identified do not explain that content — genetics, human consensus, societal influences, etc.
There are certain fundamental, universally shared beliefs about the immorality of deliberately harming innocent life, so we know these exist. Acting against it requires one to either deny the humanity of the individual (Jews are subhuman, a developing fetus is not a real human being), or deny the innocence of the individual (all Infidels deserve death) to allow the otherwise immoral act. Otherwise, the act cannot be rationalized as anything other than immoral.
It’s been my experience that most people have a problem with acknowledging God as the author and originator of a universal moral code because they look at God through the prism of a specific religion, or as a God-like human being with the same arms, legs, and other physical features we have. These opinions may be true, or they may not be; but they distract from the discussion of whether God exists. God, in His essence, is That Which Created the Universe. Whether Religion A got the details of God’s “appearance” right, or the religious teachings it espouses mirror the UMC or not, is a side issue. Because I think you’re a 75 year old bald guy who likes Beethoven, and you end up being a 30 year old man with a full head of hair who’s a Spice Girls fan, proves nothing about whether you actually exist or not.
My “reverence for life” is a direct outgrowth of the UMC that says it is immoral to deliberately harm an innocent human being. And I illustrated before why I think that humanity begins at the moment of conception. It’s really nothing more complicated than that, other than to toss in one other element. If there is no God, there can’t be any purpose to life other than simply living life. You die, and that’s it. Your existence is over. If so, there is no rational reason to avoid self-centered behavior (even at the expense of others) other than to avoid being punished for breaking man’s law. So kill, rape, rob, cheat and steal all you want as long as there’s a reasonable expectation you’ll avoid being punished by man.
Punishment is all that matters; there’s no reason to self-sacrifice for others or any higher purpose, since life is a zero-sum game. Even doing good to perpetuate your genes is illogical. Once your dead and no longer exist, what does it matter if you had children or not, or raised them to act one way or another. [Animals perpetuate their genes by instinct. But instinct is not morality. Their instinct leads them to kill other animals' cubs, "steal" land and food, etc. Animal behavior does not suggest human behavior].
But if there is a purpose to life — a purpose provided by God — and the roadmap to that purpose is found in the UMC everyone shares, then there is reason to avoid immoral acts. Part of it is to avoid punishment (though none of us really know what that specific punishment might be; it’s just a logical conclusion that if God says X is moral and you do Y, God will not be happy!). But having a UMC also allows us to do good to become good. This implies a reward of some sort; an elevation of one’s status throughout eternity. Since “No God” requires the sum total of ones existence to be lived-out entirely on earth, any post-death “reward” is meaningless. If you act morally to be thought of as a good person after you die, since you no longer exist on any level, what difference does it make. Punishment is the only real incentive/deterrent to one’s quest for self-satisfaction.
None of what I said can be proven the same way we can prove that the Universe is expanding, not contracting. But there is a logic there that speaks clearly and doesn’t require the filter of human philosophers to grasp its meaning. It was a logic recognized by the authors of the Declaration of Independence who spoke of God-given rights without naming that God “Jesus” or “Jehovah”, unlike the Islamo fascists who act only on behalf of their named-version of God, and not of God Himself.
This is why I’ve focused on grounding principles of political action in a God-based universal moral code. Our founders understood this intuitively, and I’ve simply taken it to the next level to define it more explicitly. The justification for rebellion against England was made, in part, due to the fact that God-given inalienable rights were not being respected by the current political system. I think they got this right, and even though God was not directly mentioned in the Constitution, the logic of the DOI made slavery (which was initially permitted) an ultimately unsustainable practice, just as I believe it will lead to the demise of elective abortion on demand.
One more point: You would be entirely correct in saying “You use the premise – compassion for innocent life – to presuppose a God, you then reverse that, and use the presupposed concept (God) to impose a ‘moral code’ — That is what I meant when I said you use your conclusion to establish your premise,” IF there was no universally-shared moral code. I’ve identified one, and given specific examples of how it affects policy. If the content of morality is simply the product of human consensus (the UN defines morality), or genetically-based, or the product of “civilizing influences”, then I couldn’t make the claims I have. But unless and until someone can account for the content of the shared moral code I’ve written about at length, then the premise does in fact presuppose a God.
By the way, this isn’t a challenge to continue this debate. I’d just keep referring you to things I’ve written before, and my position will need to stand or fall on what I’ve said there rather than repeat it all again. I’m just putting what you said in perspective to react to your comments.
A final note: You said “I see from your last Comment that you say it is pointless to discuss ‘morality’ unless the discussion is premised on a belief in God. But Phil, that is the question. It is no way to debate to insist that your ‘conclusion’ be accepted as the premise. Surely the object of the debate is to see whether we can derive a ‘morality’ that conforms to the possibility of a God, and at the same time conforms to human ‘facts’, irrespective of whether someone believes in a God.”
Let me restate what I said to be clear, because I wasn’t intending to lead you to this conclusion, but instead to another. My point was about discussing a “God-given” morality, not simply “morality”. Without God as the author of that morality, it’s just human consensus, which is changeable and often self-serving.
My point about discussing a God-given morality has to do with whether a common ground exists to even have a conversation about this subject. By the way, I realize from your public comments that you are not personally denying that God exists, just questioning how/if God fits into this conversation. My comments are really directed at those who don’t believe there is a God, so nothing I say about a God-given moral code would be acceptable to them.
I used the Apollo 10/Apollo 11 analogy to make this point. There’s actually a group in the US who believe that man has never landed on the moon — the whole thing was supposedly staged in the Arizona desert.
My point is that if Person A is unwilling to accept that God exists, then there is nothing I can write that will convince him that there is a God-given universal moral code. It isn’t so much that rational conversation isn’t possible, but that we have no common ground for a conversation on this point.
One personal note: I’m preparing for an 11 day road trip with limited email access, so it may take a while for me to respond to any other issues after today.
Katzen:
Let me react to one point you made: “Your thesis is essentially this: “But if you are the ONLY person, and walking away means certain death for that innocent life, you’ll sacrifice whatever you need to.” I think, when I’m in a situation not of my own making, that I am entitled to consider, among other things, time. Will I sacrifice a day? Of course. Will I sacrifice a week? Yes. Will I sacrifice a month? Pushing it, but probably. Will I sacrifice nine months? Pretty unlikely.”
There’s a great explanation of how policy is often made, contained in the phrase “incrementalism”. For example, we didn’t commit to being in Vietnam for 10 years with 500,000 troops. We sent in a couple dozen advisors. Then a few more. Then some aid, then some more troops. And so on, and so on. An initial, somewhat small commitment was made, and then other actions were taken to further it. Cumulatively, they added up to a big decision — but there was never a single decision to reach that point. And each decision to keep going was premised on the fact that resources had already been invested in the act, so abandoning it now would nullify the entire investment.
I use this to refer to your point. If you’re asked to care for the child for 9 months, you’d be inclined to say no. But if you had already cared for it for 7 months, and abandoning it meant certain death as I posited previously, you’d make this judgment: You’ve already invested 7 months, it would be pointless to abandon the commitment with 60 days left. When 9 months arrive and you’re still the ONLY one to care for the child, you’d give it a “few more days”. And so on. This is how you’d get to 2 years, and still counting.
If it was a real estate investment, or an item you were trying to purchase, etc., you might cut your losses. But once you’ve made a decision to care for a human life, and you are the only one to do it, you won’t let go and kill the child. And if the decision is “forced” on you by circumstances, you’ll stay with it until you are no longer the “only one” regardless of the time involved, because otherwise the other person will die.
Only when we introduce things like mad scientists kidnapping you off the street does the scenario become muddled enough to allow you to rip the tube out of your arms and let the other person die. But you know, even if this really did happen, once you acknowledged the other person as an innocent human being (the mad doctors did it without his knowledge or permission), I don’t think you’d be so quick to act. The rape-produced baby is aborted because the woman carrying it does not acknowledge either its innocence, or its humanity. If she acknowledges either, she’ll carry it to term. Otherwise, she’d not only live with the knowledge that she was violently assaulted, but she’d know that SHE killed an innocent human being.
One last note about: “not willing to morally require”. I wouldn’t morally “require” anything either. Morality is a choice. If a person acts immorally, but legally, I will not act to prevent it. I will try to educate them, and work to change the law, but morality in and of itself cannot be forced upon another person. My comments have only been about what is morally right or wrong, not about what the government should “require” by mandate.
The reason the incrementalist argument doesn’t apply is that in both of our scenarios and pregnancy we know, at the outset, that a nine month committment is required.
But even if it did apply, you’ll recall that eventually our patience did wear out in Vietnam. We were not willing to do “whatever” was necessary. It proves my point, rather than undermines it: We draw the line somewhere. It may be cruel, it may arbitrary, but it is necessary.
“Only when we introduce things like mad scientists kidnapping you off the street does the scenario become muddled enough to allow you to rip the tube out of your arms and let the other person die.”
But not when the mad scientists rape and impregnate you? That doesn’t muddle things just a bit?
A “morally required” action is an action one is required to take if one wishes to act morally. I know you don’t think not having an abortion is a “legally required” action (an action one is required to take if one wishes to act legally), but it is clear that you think it is morally required. The law doesn’t require carrying the pregnancy to term, Phil doesn’t require carrying the pregnancy to term, but morality, in Phil’s analysis, does require carrying the pregnancy to term. So I wasn’t accusing you of talking about “what the government should ‘require’ by mandate.”
But since you’ve brought it up, I’ll go there. Because you think that a raped woman who aborts the pregnancy resulting from the rape has not simply acted immorally, but has actually “killed an innocent human being,” it seems to me as though you should think there should be law against such abortions. Killing innocent human beings seems to me like the type of evil the law should prohibit. So, should abortion be legally forbidden as a form of murder? If so, how long should the jail sentence be? If not, why not? My goal with these questions is to see whether you’ll embrace the implications of your position.
You put the ball in play, and since I’m dribbling it, I think it’s only fair that I come clean. The discussion to this point has been one giant concession for me. I have accepted that a fetus is a person for purposes of this discussion, but in real life I don’t accept this at all. I was not nine months old when I was born. Whenever “life” begins, “personhood” begins at birth. If a fender-bender caused my mother to have a miscarriage, the guy who hit her would not have committed vehicular manslaughter. Likewise, if my mother had aborted me, she would not have committed murder (though I must say I would be very insulted). I think partial-birth abortion should be illegal, not because it is murder, but because the fetus by that stage is sufficiently like a person so that aborting it would be medically unethical. The prohibition on partial-birth abortion should, like all tenets of medical ethics, be subject to reasonable exceptions.
I have one more comment on something you said, because I think it highlights the main difference between us on the original issue.
You said: “The rape-produced baby is aborted because the woman carrying it does not acknowledge either its innocence, or its humanity.”
No. The baby is aborted because, even if the woman does acknowledge its innocence and humanity, she understanably questions why it is immoral for her not to bear the nine month responsibility for keeping it alive.
“Because you think that a raped woman who aborts the pregnancy resulting from the rape has not simply acted immorally, but has actually “killed an innocent human being,” it seems to me as though you should think there should be law against such abortions. Killing innocent human beings seems to me like the type of evil the law should prohibit. So, should abortion be legally forbidden as a form of murder? If so, how long should the jail sentence be? If not, why not? My goal with these questions is to see whether you’ll embrace the implications of your position.”
Murder is a legal judgment that involves the taking of a human life. In the US today, electively aborting a 19 week, 6 day, 23 hour and 59 second old fetus is not defined as killing a human life. At 20 weeks it is a crime, though I’m not entirely sure the law says it is “murder”, because I think that the law still equivocates on whether it’s a human being, or just a “viable tissue mass”.
So, I’ll confine my comments to killing a human life. I believe that life begins at conception, and electively aborting it means deliberately killing an innocent human life. Morally, this is wrong. And as a moral issue, it is God who decides what to do about it after we die and we have a chance to speak with Him in person. All I can say is that deliberately killing an innocent human life is wrong. I’ve never once speculated on how God will address this matter with the individual who perpetrates this immoral act, other than to conclude that when accounting for our lives in front of God, it’s obviously better to have lived according to His moral code than to have violated it.
In my preferred world, everyone would recognize that human life begins at conception. And as such, when dealing with human laws, we’d characterize the deliberate destruction of human life as a form of murder. The law recognizes different types of murder (1st degree, 2nd degree, manslaughter, etc.). I’d be more than willing to let legal minds assign an appropriate legal penalty to the act, since my goal has never been to punish anyone, but rather to help people recognize that God decides when human life begins, not man; and to educate people that the deliberate destruction of innocent human life is wrong. It’s not wrong because human consensus says it’s wrong in 2007, but okay in 1967. It’s wrong because it violates a God-given UMC.
So, when faced with an issue like pregnancy through rape, where some people focus exclusively on the horrible tragedy that has befallen the mother, I recognize that two human lives are involved. Killing an innocent child who is the product of rape is not a morally correct way to deal with this matter. It’s only morally acceptable when one denies the humanity of the developing child, or says that it is somehow not “innocent” because it was conceived one way vs. another way.
Katzen, I was aware of your previous position on when life begins. The difference between our positions is that you feel comfortable assigning humanity to an individual once certain conditions are met that seem reasonable to you. I don’t believe that man decides when other men are “human”, or “proto-human,” or “sub-human,” or just “tissue masses.” I’ve staked my judgment on the fundamental difference between a single sperm, a single egg, and a fertilized egg in a lengthy passage above. This doesn’t leave me any wiggle room to say that one fertilized egg at one stage of development is human, and arbitrarily decide that another fertilized egg at another stage isn’t.
As horrible as it would be for a raped woman to carry the child to term, I believe that morally she has no right to kill an innocent human being. Legally she does. But I’ve never insisted that she be legally prosecuted for a moral crime. All I hope is that the political system I live in will recognize that allowing immoral acts to be seen as legal (as slavery once was) will one day change and that practice will be outlawed by an educated electorate, as the practice of slavery finally was.
Phil, I know that you say that you are not inviting further debate, but I would like to add a Comment dealing specifically with your assertion of a ‘universal God-given moral code’. I think this is a crucial juncture in the debate, so it would be unfortunate to kill it just as it reaches its climax.
The reason I referred to “the voice”, and using the “conclusion” to define the premise, is that you actually mention these things in your essay What Car would Jesus Drive”.
I have read that, and your other articles, but they just don’t do what you task them to do.
I think the opening remarks of the Copleston/Russell debate sum up most of your arguments.
Here they are:
Copleston: Would you agree with me that the problem of God is a problem of great importance? For example, would you agree that if God does not exist, human beings and human history can have no other purpose than the purpose they choose to give themselves, which – in practice – is likely to mean the purpose which those impose who have the power to impose it?
Russell: Roughly speaking, yes, though I should have to place some limitation on your last clause.
Copleston: Would you agree that if there is no God – no absolute Being – there can be no absolute values? I mean, would you agree that if there is no absolute good that the relativity of values results?
Russell: No, I think these questions are logically distinct.
And so the argument went on to a dead end, as have all other such arguments.
Now, when I look for your ‘proof’ of a “universal morality” I think I find its genesis at heading 4 of your What Car article. After giving a description of mutilated children, you say that everyone would be disgusted by such an atrocity (although, you do rightly say that there are exceptions). You then go through the various ‘explanations’ for why people may experience this revulsion, and conclude that none of them explain it. I won’t consider all of them, only one – your genetics argument.
Now, ironically, by ‘dismissing’ a genetic basis for a ‘universal moral code’ you may in fact be shooting yourself in the foot. 95% of our DNA is inactive – referred to as junk DNA. No one knows exactly why it is there, but it is generally explained as a relic of the evolutionary process. That is, it is DNA which sort of burned itself out in the process. The other two things that scientists cannot explain, or haven’t yet, is how one gene activates another, and how evolution can explain man’s capacity for abstract mathematics.
Now why I say you may have shot yourself in the foot is because of this. What if it is discovered that some of this Junk DNA is not Junk, but dormant, DNA? What if one gene suddenly ‘activated’ some other gene that was supposedly ‘dead’ thus endowing man with another human characteristic? What that would mean is that someone or something must have created and placed that gene in human beings, and that some specific circumstance, or man achieving some level of development, suddenly activates it. That would clearly point to something other than evolution – a gene waiting to be activated could not be explained by reference to evolution.
So when you dismiss a genetic basis for ‘morality’, you may be depriving youself of the very ‘proof’ you are looking for to claim a God-given universal moral code.
As I explain in my first book, this may be what Adam and Eve, and the Garden of Eden, is all about. Until Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they were more like animals, acting purely on instinct, not by judging the consequences of their actions. Then something happened, portrayed by Adam and Eve eating of the Tree, which activated in them a knowledge to distinguish between good and evil, right and wrong, and determine their actions accordingly. So, it may be that a ‘morality’ gene was already present in them which only needed to be activated. I would argue, however, that it means that they acquired the power to reason (perhaps by activating some gene relevant to the brain), and the ability to apply that power to their instincts, thus enabling them to ‘judge’ their actions in terms of “good and evil”.
So our DNA may be like a match. Once it is lit, it burns from one end to the other, each bit of heat igniting the next piece of the wood. Our 95% Junk DNA could thus be the burnt out DNA that gave us our earlier human characteristics. But, if all the DNA was there from the start, just waiting to be activated by whatever it was programmed to be activated by, then we would have proof positive that someone or something must have put it there.
Now, you seek to ‘debunk’ a ‘genetic based morality’ by looking at it from the other end – asking what the consequences would be if we had such a gene. I don’t agree with your analysis, but that need not concern us now.
But what I should address is this. Even although we may not have a ‘morality’ gene, ‘morality’ can still easily be explained by our genetic make-up (I deal below with the evolutionary explanation). When we are born, our brains are only partially ‘wired’. They are wired with our primitive survival instincts. We cry for food, we recoil at pain, and so on. How we move from that ‘instinctive wiring’ to a more complex ‘wiring’ is up to us, starting with our parents. Our ‘genetics’ do not ‘dictate’ how our brains are wired further than the instinctive ‘wiring’. For example, no one is born knowing how to play the piano. We learn how to do it, and as any musician will tell us, the more we practice, the better we get. But it goes further, even ‘rehearsing’ mentally improves the ability – because we strengthen the ‘wiring’, which improves the ability. Sport is the same. Granted, some people do have a better ability than others, but that is beside the point.
So it is perfectly possible to have a genetic make-up which gives us the ability to apply reason to our basic survival instincts, which results in what we call ‘morality’. Reason enables us to ‘refine’ our primitive instincts, like protecting our offspring, to enable us to determine which actions go beyond the need to meet that instinct, and which do not. Those actions that go beyond what our reason tells us are needed would be ‘immoral’, and those which satisfy the instinct, our reason would tell us are ‘moral’.
In other words, our genes dictate the structure of the brain, making it possible to create new systems of ‘wiring’, but leaving us ‘free’ to determine how we develop that ‘wiring’. That, of course, would explain why there are people who do kill infants without remorse, yet, at the same time, for example, have great compassion for their cat, or birds. Thus, your terror example – terrorists can have great love for their own children (from their instinct to protect their offspring), yet delight in killing the children of those they perceive as their enemies. They use their ‘basic wiring’ to love their own, but their indoctrination has neglected to develop that ‘wiring’ to have compassion for the children of others. That is, their indoctrination suspends their power to apply reason to their primitive instincts.
Now, let’s look at an evolutionary explanation which you assert cannot exist.
I expect the argument would go something like this. As basic organisms began reproducing they developed an instinct to perpetuate themselves. Initially, this was by way of ‘mass-production’. That ‘mass-production’ was a way to ensure that at least some of the ‘species’ survived. As different species developed to the point where offspring were produced more intimately, less regularly, and in fewer numbers, the basic instinct to perpetuate the species developed into an instinct to protect their offspring. By the time we get to animals, we find a fierce instinct to protect their young, even to the point of a parent sacrificing its own life to protect its offspring. So far as we know, animals do not protect their young because they make any moral judgment about it, it is just instinct. But I’m sure you would agree that such an instinct is pretty much universal in the animal world. A ‘universal instinct to protect their offspring’. I’m sure you would also agree that such an instinct is not based on any ‘value judgments’ made by animals, so far as we know.
Now, we could argue that animals were created, and that is why they have that instinct, although it would be a giant leap to conclude that such an instinct ‘proves’ that there is a God. And this instinct clearly existed before man ever set foot on earth – and that is the case whether we believe a literal six day creation, or evolution. Both claim animals came first.
According to evolution, man then somehow developed capacities greater than the beasts, but slowly. So, man must have had in him the instinct to protect his own offspring as he underwent this ‘metamorphosis’. Part of this metamorphosis was that man began to reason. And man applied this developing ability to reason to all the instincts he brought with him from his animal ‘incarnation’. For example, in his animal incarnation, man’s instinct was to kill for food when he got hungry. But then man began to reason that he could store up food so he had reserves in case he couldn’t find enough food when he was hungry. So it is not illogical to assume that when man began to apply reason to his other primitive instincts, he also began to apply it to his instinct to protect his offspring (especially since that instinct appears to be strongest). Neither is it ‘inconceivable’ that as he applied this new found ability to reason, he recognized that others of his species may share his instinct to protect their young. He would also ‘reason’ that as long as he respected their instinct to protect their young, that they may accord him that same courtesy.
This developing reason could also easily include distress at seeing his offspring harmed (which is something he brought with his primitive instinct, as is so apparent with animals like elephants – they do mourn their dead). And when we see the distress caused by our own young been harmed, our reason tells us that others of the same species must suffer the same distress. Thus our instinct to protect our young, once subjected to the furnace of reason, develops a respect for the life of the offspring of all of the same species. In fact, since then, that respect for the offspring of others has even spread to animals, and indeed to most life.
In other words, our reason applied to our instinct (to protect our offspring), creates in us a compassion not only towards our own offspring, but others of our species, and then beyond to even the animal world from whence, according to evolution, we came.
If we then combine this reason conditioned instinct (to protect our young) with the ‘wiring’ of the brain and how it can be developed, we have a perfectly good explanation as to where this ‘morality’ came from – and we don’t need to invoke God to assert it.
In fact, when we look at your arguments, Phil, which seek to explain why this ‘morality’ has its exceptions, I think this analysis perfectly fits. There are simply times when man reaches such a level of rage, or indoctrination, that his primitive instincts become detached from his reason, and he then becomes able, and willing, to perpetrate the most horrendous atrocities on his fellow beings – whether they be man, woman or child – or an infant in the womb.
Now, so far as I am concerned, this analysis actually convinces me of a God, but I can perfectly understand that other intelligent, reasonable people will conclude otherwise. I see a hand in the fact that we have an instinct in the first place which was amenable to ‘refinement’ by our reason (as our reason developed). But, at the same time, I can understand that others may come to a different conclusion as to the origin of these animal and human characteristics.
But this analysis does give us a common basis for ‘morality’. When we apply reason (God-given or evolutionary) to our instinct to preserve our species, starting with our own offspring, we have the foundations of ‘morality’. That is what my Principles are all about. The fact that this ‘enhanced instinct’ can be explained equally by reference to God (my belief) or by an evolutionary process (which at some point instilled in us the initial instinct to preserve our young coupled with the development of the power of reason), is beside the point. To insist that it be ascribed to one or other is nothing more than what Alf Ross said about justice – it is just banging on the table. If everyone accepted a God based explanation, or if everyone accepted the evolutionary explanation, the fact is that it is there.
Unfortunately, our power to apply reason to our instincts can be misplaced. For example, we clearly have an instinct to enjoy pleasure, and avoid pain (but we are not ‘governed’ by that instinct as Bentham alleged). So, if we apply our reason for the predominant purpose of maximizing our pleasure, we can also use our reason to justify neglecting our offspring in order to meet that objective. Thus, if people become convinced (a sort of indoctrination) that they have some kind of ‘right’ to indulge in pleasure, they ‘reason’ that that ‘right’ entitles them to suspend the instinct to protect their offspring. In short, they consider their ‘right’ to pleasure trumps their obligation towards the life they create. This is simply a result of partially detaching our reason from our instincts.
So, the ‘universal morality’ you refer to, Phil, can be explained without reference to God, and it can be witnessed in nature, even today, in its various incarnations from simple ‘mass-production’, through a ‘blind’ instinct of animals to preserve their offspring, to our modern ‘morality’ that has applied reason to that instinct to develop it into a ‘universal’ compassion’ towards the offspring of our fellow man, and lately, even towards animals and plants.
Perhaps that was what God intended when, and if, he created the universe and life itself. Perhaps he intended us to use our ‘talents’ in order to ‘discover’ all this for ourselves, with a little help from Him by way of the Scriptures, the prophets, and His only begotten son (or a lot of help, I should say). On the other hand, perhaps it is all just one gigantic accident. No one really knows, no matter how much they bang on the table that they do.
Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com
Phil,
I think that’s basically a fair answer, though I would think that if abortion really meant killing innocent babies you would be more assertive about creating severe legal punishment for those who perform, consent to, or conspire to committ abortions.
However, you write: “The difference between our positions is that you feel comfortable assigning humanity to an individual once certain conditions are met that seem reasonable to you. I don’t believe that man decides when other men are “human”, or “proto-human,” or “sub-human,” or just “tissue masses.” I’ve staked my judgment on the fundamental difference between a single sperm, a single egg, and a fertilized egg in a lengthy passage above. This doesn’t leave me any wiggle room to say that one fertilized egg at one stage of development is human, and arbitrarily decide that another fertilized egg at another stage isn’t.”
You are also assigning humanity when certain conditions that are reasonable to you have been met (i.e. the egg is fertilized). I assign humanity after an equally clear, and distinct event (birth). I assign a medical ethics prohibition on aborting a fetus “sufficiently like a person.” What I mean by that phrase is simply a fetus that would be viable outside the womb.
But assigning significance to fertilization is no less arbitrary than assigning significance to birth, or to viability.
You said that “The reason I referred to ‘the voice’, and using the ‘conclusion’ to define the premise, is that you actually mention these things in your essay What Car would Jesus Drive”.
I just did a word search of that essay, and there is no reference to “the voice”. I’m not entirely sure what you are talking about.
In any case, to your point about genetics. If genetics and societal evolution explain moral content, as you suggest, on almost every scale the Nazis were more socially, economically, physically, even “genetically” advanced than Australian aborigines. And yet, it’s the Nazis who systematically exterminated other races, and behaved in the most barbaric manner imaginable.
If what you suggest is true, that either our basic genetic makeup or our evolving genetic makeup gives us the content of morality (defines what is “right/wrong”, “good/bad”), then the German people’s innate/evolved genetic morality should have stopped Hitler in his tracks. But it didn’t. Instead, social, economic and political forces combined that allowed people to rationalize away the God-given UMC against deliberately harming innocent human life. They did this my identifying Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, etc. as either less than human, or “not innocent” and thus deserving of their fate.
Genetics simply cannot explain why something is “good” or “bad”. It’s also why I say that if genetics could account for the content of morality (Gene X creates a moral judgment), then we must also accept that the absence of Gene X means that the person is incapable of making that moral judgment. And a person with no “moral gene” is by definition less than human, because morality is one of the key things that separates us from animals, which operate entirely on instinct.
Saying that genetics provides moral content is not the same thing as saying that Gene X can help suppress a God-given moral code. In a related example, my wife teaches autistic children. There are genetic factors that inhibit their ability to express and receive love from another human being. Love is still real, and still exists within them, but their capacity to express it is limited by genetics; just as training a young child to be a psychopathic murder is possible (look at Islamic society). These children are not genetic terrorists, but their ability to recognize and access the UMC has been deliberately manipulated by others. The fact that some of these terrorists have come to realize that their acts are morally wrong and defect shows that the inherent moral code is still there, just buried deep.
I write more about this at length in my essay, because if what you propose is correct — that some heretofore undiscovered gene actually creates morality — then there’s a big problem. There will be some people who lack this gene. Once we identify them as an infant, it will require society to lock them away forever. They cannot be taught to access their UMC because no such moral code exists. (I can’t “access” red hair if my hair is genetically brown.) So you must either let these inherently immoral people roam free, or preemptively lock them up at birth.
I say this because your explanation depends on every human being having the same morality gene that leads every human being to the same conclusion about not deliberately killing innocent human life. Not only does present-day science specifically reject the idea that genes give moral content (vs. influencing the expression of morality), there is absolutely no possibility that every single human will have all of the same genes/gene sequences needed to give that moral content. All humans share something like 98% of the same basic genes. But within this 98% there is still great variation, and that still leaves 2% or so without the same genes that the other 98% have. You may reject the conclusions I’ve drawn from this about what we need to do if such genetically-morally-deficient people actually existed. But the case I’ve made is a reasonable one. If you knew that genetically your next door neighbor was incapable of feeling any moral constraint over murder, would you leave your children alone in the house while he’s sitting on his porch watching you leave?
There is also a problem with statements you make like this to theorize a genetic basis for morality: “man must have had in him the instinct to protect his own offspring as he underwent this ‘metamorphosis’. Part of this metamorphosis was that man began to reason. And man applied this developing ability to reason to all the instincts he brought with him from his animal ‘incarnation’.”
In the US alone 50 million women have electively aborted their offspring. Add to this those who kill and/or neglect their children once born, and I find it hard to support this “genetic” claim that somehow has led to man reasoning that he must always protect his offspring. [I actually deal with this issue at length in my original paper]. “Reason” — even one supposedly based on genetic evolution — cannot account for protecting human life since the world is filled with abortion on demand and the deliberate killing or neglect of one’s own offspring. But denying the innocence or humanity of the child (developing, or developed) can. “Reason”, rather than protecting human life, has often been used to rationalize-away that protection.
Your logic fails even more dramatically, in my opinion, when you say “In other words, our reason applied to our instinct (to protect our offspring), creates in us a compassion not only towards our own offspring, but others of our species, and then beyond to even the animal world from whence, according to evolution, we came.” Human beings routinely slaughter innocent life. They bomb cities, gas whole villages, and attempt to exterminate entire races of people. The only real compassion they seem to show is towards certain animals (like puppies — ask Michael Vick! Had he been an abortion right’s advocate, he’d still be playing pro football). Other animals we eat, and despite PETA’s protests, I and millions of other people don’t question whether the chicken I’m having for lunch was humanely treated. I don’t want to see it tortured, but when it comes down to it, I don’t care if the chicken spent its entire life in a cage and was then electrocuted, or roamed free and was gently euthanized. I just care how it tastes. Animals are not “human life”, and thus the moral code does not apply. Furthermore, people are routinely killed indiscriminately — but only after their humanity or innocence is rationalized away. You really need to read the latter part of my “What kind of car” essay where I draw this link between abortion and Islamo fascism.
You say that deliberately harming innocent human life is example of when “man reaches such a level of rage, or indoctrination, that his primitive instincts become detached from his reason, and he then becomes able, and willing, to perpetrate the most horrendous atrocities on his fellow beings – whether they be man, woman or child – or an infant in the womb.” But many atrocities against other humans are conducted with cold political and economic calculation, not rage. I will agree that indoctrination plays a key role in suppressing the UMC. But it’s not an indoctrination against genetically-based reasoning. Islamo fascists are a great contemporary example. They don’t want to kill you because they are simply angry, or because some Muslim cleric has brainwashed them like the Manchurian candidate to commit an act they would otherwise not do. They have been indoctrinated to regard all Infidels as either not human (i.e. Jews are a sub species), or not innocent (Bin Laden warns the west to convert to Islam or be killed for defying God). Islamo fascists even kill other Muslims who, though considered “human”, are not “innocent” because they follow the wrong teachings of Islam and are therefore heretics.
Like I said, I lay all of this out in excruciating detail in the essays I’ve written before, so I won’t go over it again. My only point here is that your genetically-inspired “reason” analysis seems to fly in the face of actual history.
To summarize my position, I believe that there is a God-given UMC because I cannot find an alternative physical-world explanation to account for certain universally shared moral codes that transcend time. And I’ve shown that the humanity or innocence of a person must be rationalized away before a person can justify committing an immoral act. [Read the first section of The True Nature of Morality essay to see the full explanation of this.]
I think that when all is said and done, it takes more “faith” to believe that nothing created the universe (and therefore us), and that life is just a random event springing from this nothingness, and that when we die we cease to exist on any level. This then suggests that there is a God — though not necessarily a specific manifestation of God (Jesus, Allah, Jehovah, etc.). And if God created us, and there is an existence after death, life must have a purpose. The UMC is our guide to leading a purposeful life. And since genetics, human consensus, societal influences, etc can account for the UMC, I’m quite willing to accept God as a plausible explanation for its source.
Anticipating that you might ask “If God exists, why doesn’t He let us know He exists?”, let me end my comments this way.
Things would be so much simpler if God made his presence known directly and unequivocally. There would be no doubt about His existence, His power, and the consequence of living an existence apart from his teachings. So why does God “hide”?
The simple answer to this question is found in the notion of free will, which is tied to the very reason for man’s existence
If God simply handed man all the answers about life, there would be no individual struggle to improve ourselves. Much like a prisoner in a maximum security penitentiary, an ultimate authority would regulate every aspect of our life. Man could still resist, but how likely is it that an individual would rebel against a God who created the universe, and who makes his presence directly known to each person on the planet?
Even the most hardened criminal still follows the basic rules in prison to avoid punishment. If these individuals feel compelled to obey basic prison rules created by man, they would certainly fear offending a God who has directly revealed Himself to them.
Without “doubt” there is no free will. Without free will, each individual does not have an opportunity to grow. Without this personal growth (or the absence of it), there is nothing for God to judge one’s existence on Earth.
God leaves it to us to use our minds to find these answers. He leaves it to us to figure out how we should behave by looking at the totality of all his creations, and by applying the same motivating force he used to create us to our own interactions with his other creations. In short, God has presented us with all the pieces of the puzzle. It’s up to us to put them together and see the larger picture.
I’ve enjoyed the conversation. I’ve got another couple of hours if anything pops up between now and then, then I’m entirely out of pocket until Friday.
Take care, Phil
Katzen:
This will be quick, because I gotta run:
“I would think that if abortion really meant killing innocent babies you would be more assertive about creating severe legal punishment for those who perform, consent to, or conspire to commit abortions.”
*** I haven’t expressed an opinion about whether certain second degree murder charges should actually be first degree; whether 10 years for manslaughter is too much or too little, etc. You can’t draw any conclusion from this.
There are immoral actions that are legal (abortion on demand), illegal actions which have nothing to do with morality (going 60 in a 55 mph zone), and actions that are both immoral and illegal. Regardless of whether an immoral act is legal or illegal, I believe that it offends God. And it is God who will decide what to do about it, not me. Where immoral acts are also judged to be illegal, we have a system in place that assigns penalties and takes extenuating circumstances into account. I have opinions about whether certain penalties are adequate or inadequate for certain crimes, but these are just opinions. I will take those opinions into account when I vote, but I won’t force my opinion on anyone. If I think that a crime deserves a year in jail vs. the death penalty, or vice versa, I’ll express that opinion through participation in the political process. But I won’t automatically insist that a crime that also involves morality be given extra penalties. This is why I oppose hate and other thought crimes. Killing a man because he’s gay or just killing him because he had red hair makes no difference to the man killed. He’s just as dead, and the penalty should be for the action, not the intent. And when he serves his time in jail, even though his fellow man says that the slate is wiped clean, he still has God to answer to. That’s where the real consequences for his actions will be felt.
“… assigning significance to fertilization is no less arbitrary than assigning significance to birth, or to viability.”
*** Well, in one sense every assignment on ever issue is “arbitrary” (18 years old to vote, X day waiting period to buy a gun, etc.). The question is, what is the rationale behind it? I’ve stated specifically why I see a fundamental, incontrovertible difference between a single sperm, single egg, and fertilized egg. [You can take a trillion human sperm and a thousand human eggs and place them in two separate containers. As long as they do not mix, human life is impossible. But allow a single sperm and a single egg to unite inside a woman’s body, and human life has begun. One sentence, identifying the precise moment in time when the status of each constituent element fundamentally changes, is all that is needed to supplement this statement with the logic to support it. Find me the same parsimony in words to justify an elective abortion at week 19, 30, 22, 15, or any point in between, and I’ll support the wisdom of that choice instead of labeling it what it really is, a rationalization disguised as a thoughtful choice to advance a political agenda.]
I’m not casting aspersions on your motives for reaching the conclusions you have about when human life begins, but the points at which you define humanity are not fundamental dividing points. A separate sperm and egg are uniquely different from a fertilized egg, and I can pinpoint the precise millisecond this change occurs. Is there really a fundamental difference between a baby one hour, one day, one week, etc. before birth, and the moment it leaves the womb? And is this difference really enough to say that one is human, and the other is not?
In assessing humanity, I’m not willing to risk denying human status to something that can lay claim to a fundamental uniquely-changed status. Others who can point to the 20th week, the moment of birth, or whether it’s retarded or the product of rape, etc., to grant it human status, appear to me to be making entirely arbitrary decisions.
Take care,
Phil
We are given our bodies by God the creator. The soul is ours and we can choose a direction for the soul to go once the flesh passes away.
Certain obligations come with the flesh as well as individual imperfections. After the fall the universe changed and we acquired two additional forms of evil. The flesh was one with all of its temptations and desease. We of course can die from a variety of “natural” problems and of course we could also be born with a terminal malfunction. The other evil was natural evil which allows us to die from walking off a cliff or being stuck by a meteor. Both of these evils did not exist before the fall. Man is responsible for the fall and the consequences. If you look at the world and accept that we are under punishment then certain obligations due to our own fault come into play. One of these is carrying a child to term even with rape. This is understood if you consider that we as a created creature chose the fruit of the tree of good and evil. A moral choice is absolute and cannot be changed by any detail of the fallen world. One cannot place a moral absolute in any context and change it in any way. If indeed you wake up and find you are connected to a dying person with tubes that keep them alive and you did not agree to this, it does not matter. You have an obligation to stay connected. We (notice I said we) made our choice before we were born.
Back again briefly, and then on the road for a week.
I left off the ‘t in this sentence in comment 27, so “can” should be “can’t” —- “And since genetics, human consensus, societal influences, etc can [can’t] account for the UMC, I’m quite willing to accept God as a plausible explanation for its source.” But I think the actual meaning I intended came through in context. That’s the problem with typing in a hurry.
Joseph, Katzen, thanks for the challenging and intellectually-rewarding discussion. It’s always great to have both sides vigorously defend a position — even one as important as this — without having to descend into name calling. I never really expect either participant in a discussion like this to convert the other. It’s really done both to see if there are any glaring holes in our own logic, and to let those looking in on the discussion judge for themselves which side of the debate makes more sense for them personally.
Joseph, I appreciate you letting me discuss this issue again in your forum. I realize that it’s not strictly on point to your original comments, but it is a logical derivative of some of the issues you address about “authority” and the like. As someone who has seen more than his share of essays develop into discussions that have nothing at all to do with the subject I wrote about, I know how frustrating this can be to the author. This is why I’ve tried to keep my comments to a minimum. Unfortunately, as those who’ve read my essays know, my personal motto is “why say it in 10 words when 50 will do”, so my “minimum” still tends to be rather long.
I look forward to reading more of your stuff.
Phil
Phil, Katzen, and other Commentators. I have likewise enjoyed the discussion, and I appreciate that you have all taken the time to read the articles, and provide informed responses to them.
Phil, I have not replied to your penultimate Comment because we were flooded out, and had no power or line. Since you will now be away for a time, I shall not leave the Reply I had written, because I think it courteous to let you have a chance to respond if you so wish, rather than leaving the impression that mine is the last word on the matter.
But since it is likely that this or a similar debate may ensue after the remainder of the articles are posted, perhaps I can offer up some observations/questions for you to consider. I am trying to see whether there are any common premises we could agree to.
First: Do you accept that all human beings have certain instincts (let’s leave out the extreme exceptions like mental illness etc for now)? An example of such an instinct would be your initial instinct to defend your UMC when it is questioned. Another simple example would be the instinct to defend ourselves when attacked, or the instinct to jump out of the way of a car. If your answer is no, then I think we are certainly very far apart. If yes, then we can move to the next question.
Do you accept that human beings have an instinct to reproduce? I would think that the billions of human beings on this planet is testimony to that proposition. Again, if your answer is no, I think we may be talking about two different species. If yes, we can go to the next question.
Do you accept that parents (leaving aside the issue of abortion for the moment) have an instinct to protect their children? We actually see this all around us every day. The mother running to her toddler if he falls over; the father who will pick up and protect his baby if a dog charges towards it; grabbing a child if he is heading towards a busy road. I will presume that you accept that humans have such an instinct, in which case we move to the next proposition.
Do you accept that human beings have the power to reason? From what you say in your articles and Comments, you clearly do, because you regularly refer to people “rationalizing away” your UMC. So I’ll take it that you do.
The next question is then this: Do you accept that human beings can have physical reactions to things they see, hear, feel, smell, touch, or even think about? And would you accept that such physical reactions often do include things like physically throwing-up, or even fainting (losing consciousness)? Let me give some common examples. Most people who come across a serious accident where someone has been killed (like having been decapitated and having a piece of wreckage piercing one of his eyes and pinning him to the back seat of his car), would at the very least feel nauseous and even faint. If a police officer at the scene then told that person that he shouldn’t feel bad because the dead person had been drinking and speeding, the reaction to the mangled body is unlikely to change. Even if that person was told the dead person was a murderer seeking to escape justice, the horror of the sight would not disappear. That is, even if we could ‘moralize’ about that person ‘deserving it’, we would still have the physical reaction.
Another example – as any doctor or nurse will tell us, many men actually faint when they see the birth of their own child. It is not as a result of anything ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’, it is simply a reaction to what they see.
I have seen people throw-up just watching television. Even a documentary showing surgery can have that effect, especially if the initial incision is shown. It does not matter that the surgery may be saving the patient’s life; it is simply the sight of it, even on television, that produces the physical reaction.
Sounds can have the same effect. For example, there was an accident outside our front gate recently. The sound of crunching metal was stomach churning, but then screams followed. When I ran to the scene, I felt queasy. As it happens, no one was seriously injured – the screaming was a dog howling. Clearly, even the dog had a reaction to the initial sound.
Here is another example. When I was younger, a friend of mine and I were standing on a balcony at a sports club. Below us we saw one person who was obviously provoking another. He then threw a blow. The man being taunted deflected the blow, and retaliated. The fracas moved below the balcony, so we did not see what ensued, but we heard it. There was the sound of terrible blows landing on someone’s head, and the sound of thudding of a head on the ground. As I looked at my friend, he turned white, then threw-up. I caught him before he passed out. From what we had seen, it was clear that the person receiving the blows was the one who started the whole thing with his provocations and the initial blow. That made no difference. It was simply the sound of someone’s head being thumped that produced the revulsion, and the physical reaction.
Likewise, when we smell certain things we can be physically be sick. The same applies to some things we eat (and I’m not talking here about allergic reaction). Even touching can have that effect. Some people can be physically sick if they extract the innards of a chicken. There are just certain textures that make us feel squeamish.
Not everyone will necessarily react identically to the same circumstances. Cultural differences can also play a part. For example, our neighbor breeds his own livestock for his personal consumption. When visitors, who have only ever seen the cellophane-wrapped variety of meat, witness a slaughter of a pig or even chicken, they regularly become physically sick.
Yet, human beings can overcome these physical reactions, whether they be fainting, throwing-up, or feeling utter revulsion. Thus doctors and nurses in casualty departments can see a young child brought in with horrendous injuries, whether from a car accident, or a brutal assault, yet put such reactions to one side. As my father told me (he was a medical practitioner for many years, and dealt with literally thousands of serious injuries), it is a combination of becoming accustomed to the sight of such horrors and ‘rationalizing’ how to deal with them – that is, instead of running to the bathroom to throw-up, they ‘reason’ that they must conquer that reaction in order to help save the patient’s life.
But, as well as having negative reaction to certain things we see, hear, feel, taste, smell, or even think about, we also have positive reactions – the smell of baking bread, or a roast in the oven; the sound of harmonious music; the sight of a beautiful view; and even the satisfaction of a medical practitioner after having saved the life of a badly injured patient.
Now, if you accept that human beings have these specific characteristics, I expect you would argue, like me, that they were given to us by God when he created man.
Evolutionists would no doubt argue, however (and I hope I am not putting too much in their mouths), that we can see the ‘evolution’ of these characteristics from primitive organism through to humans. Thus, they may argue that we can see the ‘evolution’ of instinct from simple reaction to stimuli in primitive organisms through to the instinct to protect our offspring, and the myriad of other instincts we have. They would also no doubt point to the development of more primitive powers of reason in primates, through to the more advanced powers of reason in humans. Likewise, they would probably explain that our physical reaction to certain things we see etc can be explained by a sort of trial and error – that they are defensive mechanisms that have evolved over time.
Nevertheless, whichever explanation we subscribe to, we still have these characteristics.
Yet, if we accept that we have these characteristics, then what is also clear is that they form part of an integrated whole. Each reacts with the other in order to determine how we behave in certain circumstances, and, in that, we also take account of our previous experiences.
Now let’s take your UMC. Could this explanation not be possible: three of these elements combine together – instinct to protect our offspring, applying reason to that instinct, and the physical reaction to certain events which impact that combination of instinct and reason. Therefore, when we apply reason to our instinct to protect our offspring, we work out that certain circumstances could threaten that instinct. Even contemplating such circumstances transpiring can cause feelings of revulsion, even panic. So we apply reason to establish mechanisms to avoid those circumstances arising in the first place, so far as we are able. We see this all the time – strapping babies into car seats; teaching children the dangers of crossing a road; telling children not to speak to strangers, and so on.
Then think of those occasions when we see some parent on television whose child has disappeared, or been kidnapped, or fallen down some well. We can immediately identify with that parent, because we know the distress and utter helplessness they must be feeing. We can apply our reason by putting ourselves in their place. We sympathize with them, because we can identify with their predicament.
So, if a combination of these three elements can produce a physical reaction of revulsion, could it not be possible that if a God did create human beings, and if He did instill in them a UMC, that this is how He put it there? It would not then be something we can find by dissecting a human body and saying, oh yes, look, here it is. Neither is it in the genes in the sense that a specific gene deals with it. It only manifests itself when the various elements are combined in a certain manner. It is like a chemical reaction, or more properly, a certain mixture of instinct and reason actually produces a physical chemical reaction – revulsion. But, it would then also be possible to concoct the wrong mixture – in which case we end up with an explosive combination, and what we would call ‘evil’ – because of the reaction we have to it.
If that may be the case, then the question is this: could it not be reasonably argued, by intelligent people, that these elements have ‘evolved’, and that the reactions produced by them determine in us what we would recognize as ‘morality’. Now I am not trying to convince you, or anyone else, that these elements did evolve, only that it is not unreasonable for some people to believe that they did. I would never seek to persuade someone that God does not exist. On the other hand, I would never dismiss someone’s opinions simply because those opinions to not originate from a premise that God exists.
But what this analysis would do is set out some common ground for demonstrating that we could have a ‘morality’ which would be almost identical whether we believe that the basis of it is God-given, or a result of some gigantic accident.
As I have said, I shall not use this analysis to address your particular arguments until you return, and have an opportunity to ‘digest’ what I have outlined. I’m sure, in any event, that you can see where I’m going with this, and I do think it adequately addresses the arguments you use to support the UMC – in fact, I think it actually gives credence to your UMC, while not, at the same time, dismissing out of hand arguments which other reasonable people may believe.
Just one final matter! In your penultimate Comment you say this: “I find it hard to support this ‘genetic’ claim that somehow has led to man reasoning that he must always protect his offspring.” I have never made such a “claim”, and if that is what you read into my previous Comment, I apologize for not making my point more succinctly, and hope this piece clarifies the matter.
Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com
Hi Joseph,
On comment 31
I enjoyed your comments on instinct and the way you used logical assumptions to connect a moral code with some basic human characteristics. The way you presented the case does allow some evolutionist and some theist wiggle room to both agree with some common ground. If this is what you set out to do you may succeed with some individuals. Although your argument is logical there is an assumption that I cannot accept. This assumption is deals with the separation or connection between the body and what we call self. Some would call this their spirit. On one side the strictly Darwinist would argue that a spirit does not exist, and would tend to believe that any instinct evolved with the body and cannot be separated from the body. The Darwinist would then have an easier time accepting the idea that a moral code is a remnant of natural selection. They would also point out that instincts are proofs of that evolution since they tend to support a continuation of the species. These arguments make sense if you couple tightly the instincts with the body and ignore the spirit. I tend to separate widely the spirit and the body so your arguments lose there appeal to me.
If we look at some basic instincts like natural reflexes we can trace them down to nerve centers and some autoresponse of the body. Since we know that these happen without conscience thought we must lump them with the body. As we move towards instincts like protecting our offspring things start getting less clear. We observe in the animal world these same responses so I would tend to lump them in with the body as well. In the animal world we don’t see parents abandoning their offspring very often, but we see this in human activity. It seems that humans have a way of overriding a behavior even if appears to violate survival of the species. So I would say that one cannot couple moral codes with animal instincts. I am happy to say that most people embrace protecting their offspring.
So if the UMC is contained in the spirit then the UMC must be described in terms which lead directly to world views. I as a Christian say they come from God. An evolutionist on the other hand would argue that a UMC does not exist, and any seemingly natural morals are a byproduct of natural selection. The divide in world views is a no mans land and although I appreciate you trying to make a bridge from one side to the other your bridge has a foundation which I cannot accept.
Joseph: I have a brief opportunity to reply to your comments. Not sure what my internet access will be over the next few days.
1. “Do you accept that all human beings have certain instincts”
** Yes, broadly defined. But as I explained in my “What kind of car” essay, “content” matters.
We all automatically feel the need to wretch at the sight or sound of seeing someone vomit. This is a hold-over from our “cave man” days when tainted meat or poisonous roots or fruits were a real problem. Say a member of the clan gets a bad chunk of dinosaur meat (yes I know, they didn’t co-exist; I’m just making a point), and starts to vomit. Others in the group see or hear him and immediately feel the need to vomit too. It’s a shared genetic trait, and every single human has it. So does it allow for the possibility of a shared genetic-based morality too?
If you think the answer is yes, consider this. Al Gore and I are standing next to each other at a party talking about Global Warming. I grow quiet for a moment. He thinks I’m dazzled by the depth of his brilliance, and keeps pressing his point that we’re all going to die unless he’s elected president. Suddenly, I begin to vomit. Al sees me hurl chunks, and he feels the need to vomit too, as does everyone around us. We’re all sharing a common human moment, though one I’d rather not spend too much more time discussing.
If you think this in any way lays a foundation for a genetic-based explanation of shared moral values, you may want to ask a follow-up question. Exactly why was I vomiting? The answer is pretty simple. What made me vomit was listening to Al Gore!
So even though everyone had the same exact reaction, the stimulus wasn’t bad meat or too many funny little mushrooms. It was a thought, a belief, an opinion or a judgment I had. And even though Big Al vomited right along with me, I doubt seriously that we shared the same belief system at that moment in time.
Therefore, to prove the existence of a genetic-based morality, we need more than sweaty palms or a Global Warming lecture. Morality encompasses a belief system, and those core beliefs need to be the thing that triggers a common human reaction — like the thought of someone raping or killing an innocent child. My visual image may be a white female five years old, while yours may be a black three-year old baby or a six-year old Asian boy. It doesn’t matter. It’s the act, or a visualization of it, that triggers the common moral response. Not the fact that the kid was male or female, or black or white, or green or yellow.
2. Do you accept that human beings have an instinct to reproduce?
Most do. But at least 50 million women in the US opted to electively abort their babies. That’s 20% of the present total US population. And a significant number of other people in the US support abortion on demand as a principle. And even more people throughout the world abort children or support abortion. They do this by denying that the thing being aborted is human, or “innocent” (i.e. our discussion of rape).
3. Do you accept that parents (leaving aside the issue of abortion for the moment) have an instinct to protect their children?
*** Yes. But “leaving aside the issue of abortion” is like saying “do you believe people are honest, leaving aside those who lie, cheat and steal?
4. Do you accept that human beings have the power to reason?
*** Yes. But when they want to do something that the UMC tells them is wrong, they are quite capable of rationalizing-away the violation of the UMC. It’s not really a baby because it’s just a zygote, 19 weeks instead of 20, not able to live outside the womb yet, retarded, perfectly healthy but the product of rape, the wrong sex, the wrong race, will interfere with my standard of living (and putting it up for adoption would make me sad), a “choice” or a “right”, etc. So applying the notion of “reason” to a discussion will not always lead to a correct understanding of the matter if one side has a personal or political agenda they are trying to advance/protect.
5. The next question is then this: Do you accept that human beings can have physical reactions to things they see, hear, feel, smell, touch, or even think about? And would you accept that such physical reactions often do include things like physically throwing-up, or even fainting (losing consciousness)?
** See my Al Gore speech! Regarding your “feeling sorry for a murderer who was killed in a car accident” example, of course some people might feel sorry for him. All you know is that he is a murder. It’s an antiseptic description of a bad act. You see a dead body lying before you, but you don’t know the details of his crime (was he a black man fighting back against racists trying to lynch him; a battered wife; a poor unfortunate kid who got caught up in something bad, etc.?) You don’t see the photos of the person he killed, or see how it affected that victim’s family. This is why the Mendez Brothers jury a few years ago (in California, of course), wouldn’t convict them for killing their parents. One juror actually said she felt sorry for them because they were now “orphans”. (I’m not making this up.) There’s an obvious reason why people react the way you described when seeing a dead body. Normal people who have no “context” just see a theoretically innocent life that has been killed. People who know he’s a murderer, but are good liberals, will excuse his atrocities because this is what good liberals do (unless they know that he is a Conservative or Republican, then they will applaud!)
Regarding your other examples of watching TV, hearing sounds, etc. that produce a physical response. I certainly agree. Some of this is due to operant conditioning (remember Skinner?). Some of it is subliminal (associating a certain smell, taste, etc. with a past event, etc.) We’ve all been there. None of these involve moral judgments of “right” and “wrong”, though. There is nothing inherently moral or immoral about open heart surgery, but I might vomit if I was actually watching one. Advertising companies have relied for years on stimulus-response to sell products. That why big breasted women are used to sell cars (and just about everything else a man might buy). Again, this has nothing to do with whether a fundamental issue of “right” or “wrong” is involved in buying a Toyota instead of a Ford.
And I agree that different cultures react different ways to the same stimuli. And I agree that people can train themselves to overcome their initial reaction to that stimuli. But eating worms, putting your hand inside a horse to facilitate birth, or even lancing a boil are not moral issues. And a nurse or doctor becoming outwardly insensitive to death so they can force themselves to continue to give medical care to people you and I would recoil in horror at seeing (festering wounds, lying in their own filth), is not an example of morality — other than to say that their innate UMC-inspired desire to not do deliberate harm to an innocent human life may have helped them overcome their visceral reaction to this horrendous sight, so that they CAN render that help.
So, yes — God in creating human beings made them a certain way that gave them all of the things you described. Some are defense mechanisms, some are consciously and subsconsciously learned behaviors, some are the product of advertising and Skinnerian operant conditioning. But absolutely none of the examples you provided reflected something inherently “right/wrong” (i.e. moral). They can be used to rationalize away moral restrictions against harming innocent life, but vomiting at the sight of surgery, weeping after a TV show, etc. aren’t inherently moral issues.
This is why your argument fails, in my opinion, when you say “Now let’s take your UMC. Could this explanation not be possible: three of these elements combine together – instinct to protect our offspring, applying reason to that instinct, and the physical reaction to certain events which impact that combination of instinct and reason.” The examples you cited above, while in some cases predominant human characteristics, are by no means universal human characteristics. There are too many elective abortions and supporters of elective abortion (not to mention parents killing their children) to say that EVERY human being instinctively wants to protect their children. There is as much rationalization in human action as there is pure, abstract reason. And the fact that eating worms, watching certain TV shows, seeing an operation etc. make some people sick is irrelevant. These are not moral-content issues, and moreover, not everyone has the same reaction.
And yet, in my discussion of the UMC, which I contend every human being possesses at every stage in history, in every society, I’m still waiting for an answer to the question: “If there is no objective ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ then under what conditions would you say that raping and murdering a five-year old child isn’t wrong?”
This is why biology/genetics/society etc. cannot account for the content of morality. None of your examples contained universal content — just allegedly “common” (but not universal”) stimuli-response, some of which were culturally dependent. And even where the actions seemed common (like vomiting when you hear others wretch), I showed you how the content/reason why someone is vomiting is important, not simply the act itself.
One final point. You stressed that I misunderstood a comment you made earlier: “[Y]ou [Phil] say this: “I find it hard to support this ‘genetic’ claim that somehow has led to man reasoning that he must always protect his offspring.” I [Joseph] have never made such a “claim”.
I agree. Genetics, society, biology, etc. cannot account for the content of the God-given UMC.