Cultural Relativism Makes Social Justice Meaningless

Take any college social science class today, whether it be anthropology, sociology, criminology, or others, and you will be introduced to the worldview of postmodernism, especially it's ethical theory: Relativism. Given how deeply entrenched the worldview has become in the study of human behavior, it's no surprise that many college students today will respond to pro-life arguments in ways that reflect their post-modern education. Since many college students, high school students, and even middle school students have adopted this line of thinking(With or without knowing it) it is vitally important that the flaws associated with this worldview be addressed. I intend to do so below.

One very common way this manifests itself is the all-to-common response, "Well, you're a white male!" This is a response that is becoming much more frequent, in discussions of a whole host of social issues. However, it has deeply flawed presuppositions, given that it stems from a relativistic mode of thinking. The way it does so is that it emphasizes the role that subcultures play in our day to day interactions. Since one subculture(White, heterosexual men) may have differing values than another group(White women, for instance) the values are relative to those groups, and the individuals within them. Hence, we have culturally relative values.

Cultural relativism, known also as "Society Does Relativism"(A term coined by Greg Koukl and Francis J Beckwith; Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted In Mid-Air) is probably the most common ethical theory taught in sociology courses today, right after Marxism and Utilitarianism. The theory goes like this: "Since different societies have differing standards of what is right and what is wrong, one society has no say over the ethical issues involved in another society."

This view is very popular among intellectuals today, and is the basis for much of sociological and anthropological study. One college textbook, A New History of Asian America, is a prime example, since it assumes this view outright, by critiquing the practices of European colonial powers, from the beginnings of the modern West, all the way to the present age, while holding the position that since the European Empires tried to influence cultural and ethical customs in different cultures, various human rights abuses were bound to be the result. (Note: the book was very well-researched and argued it's case persuasively; I do recommend it for aiding further study)

It is easy to see why, today, many social issues where questions of race and gender are going to be raised, tempers will flare. I have personally been told while doing pro-life outreach on the campus that since I am a white male, my point of view is no more valid than someone of another race or gender. This is one big reason why colleges tend to set up ethnic and gender based resource centers. College students are taught to assume that varying life experience's, based on race, gender, and other factors, all hold equal weight in the major issues of today. This, again, is an example of how cultural relativism has influenced ethical though within our society.

Several Key Flaws:

There are several key flaws in this line of thinking, that I think if they are addressed, can make discourse on controversial topics much more successful in the long run. For those who wish to learn more, I highly recommend Greg Koukl and Francis Beckwith's book, Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air. I will be using many of the concepts from this work through the rest of this piece. Since the idea behind cultural relativism is that moral values are relative to the cultures they originate in, I will specifically be addressing this claim here. However, many of the same flaws also apply to individual relativism, given it's similar philosophy. "Says Who?" is the common slogan of the relativist, but if we take this line of thinking to where it will logically lead us, we will see that it is ultimately bankrupt.(As Greg Koukl has said elsewhere, we "Take The Roof Off" of the idea, and see what is left standing)

Flaw #1: Cultural Relativists cannot accuse other cultures of wrongdoing:

While this is a common objection that is raised by cultural relativists when they are examining the actions of other people groups, many times they fail to see that their line of reasoning also nullifies their own critique. For example, in my class on Asian American and Pacific Islander Communities last fall, the professor criticized the notion of Christian missionaries "imposing" their religious view on the people's in Asia and the Pacific they were encountering. The professor had remarked "Who were they to impose their cultural values on someone else?" Unfortunately, this also ends up being an example of "imposing" ones own cultural values. If a student had raised her hand and said "Professor, who are you to say that they cannot do that? Aren't you imposing your cultural values on them?" I have a hard time seeing how one can respond to this while still maintaining their relativism. If the professor had said "Well, obviously it was evil." Then she has rejected the notion that cultural values are relative, and has embraced the idea that there is at least one moral rule that transcends culture. The only consistent answer would be "Well, these are my culture's own moral preferences, but we shouldn't ask others to embrace them in place of their own values."

Flaw #2: Cultural Relativists cannot complain about social injustice: 

Since a relativist, in order to be consistent with their own view, can't accuse others of wrongdoing, they also lack the foundation by which to object to obvious acts of evil. When relativists object to the practice of colonialism, slavery, and exploitation, are they implying that these are always unjust and wrong, for all peoples, in all times and places? Was it wrong for European powers to subjugate the less powerful and enslave them? Who is the relativist to say that was wrong? Is their cultural value of diversity and respect any better? "Says Who?" As soon as they object to an obvious injustice, they are no longer immune from having their cultural values critiqued by those who hold different values, including the European cultures that college professors loathe so much

Or, more recently, in modern issues like race relations, sociologists are very quick to object when a member of a racial or gender majority seeks to encourage a minority group to adhere to the same standards as the majority. As Thomas Sowell highlights in his book, Intellectuals and Race, cultural relativists will object very quickly when minority students are held to the same standards, whether they be legal, educational, or cultural. But, yet again, "Says Who?" Who is the relativist to apply their own cultural standards(In this case, sub-cultural) of cultural relativism, and say that this is wrong to do? The majority group is just following their cultural values, so what of it? The problem should be becoming much more clear.

Flaw #3: No Group's Experience is any more valid than another 

One of the first soundbites to be stated on the campus today is that we must "Listen to and value other groups experiences the same as our own." Now, I completely agree, we shouldn't ignore someone simply because they are different than us, but why? Some cultures or subcultures do indeed have different experiences. So what?  If all groups of people have their own values, who's to say when it's wrong for one group to ignore another? "Says Who?" raises it's ugly head again. To object to this outcome is to assume that maybe there are some objective moral rules that transcend culture and experience after all...

Flaw #4: The Good Guys of History Will Uphold the Status Quo, Not Challenge It

My good friend and Christian apologist Steve Bruecker hit the nail on the head in an article he wrote a few years ago, "The Joker Is The Hero of Moral Relativism". He points out that the logical outworking of the sort of relativism that leaves values up to the individual is that there is no more basis to call a sadistic killer(Like the Joker) immoral and evil. It's simply a matter of preference.

In a similar manner, when a culture begins to decide it's own values for itself, what are we left with? Anyone who attempts to change those values would be immoral, according to that culture's standards. This may sound great on paper, but the logical conclusion ends up being ghastly. Think of someone like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, William Wilberforce, or Dr. Martin L. King. When these individuals challenged their societies to respect their fellow human beings, regardless of any differences, what should the cultural relativist make of this? Did these men try to change the values that were relative to those cultures? We praise them(and should) for their courage, but the relativist is left with nothing to praise them or curse them with, other than the cultural norms he happens to agree with. If he is from a tolerant, just, and inclusive society, he may adore these men, but if he is from a racist, oppressive, and exclusive society, the relativist is no different morally(According to relativism).

To paraphrase the Christian pastor and Theologian Tim Keller, if your worldview's premise leads to the conclusion that you know just isn't true, maybe it's time to change the premise?( Tim Keller, The Reason for God)

Flaw 5: Social Justice Becomes Meaningless

As I have titled this piece, Cultural Relativism makes the very notion of justice within society a concept with no meaning whatsoever behind it. "Social Justice" is often defended with relativism.  However, when "Says Who?" is the only logical response to a complaint about a very obvious injustice, we've got a very big problem with our logic.

Historian H.W. Crocker gives a good example of this concept, in highlighting the British Empire's outlawing of the burning of widows on their husband's funeral pyres in 19th century India. When the British acknowledged that it was a traditional Indian custom, they simply pointed out that Britain had a custom of punishing men who would do such a thing to women. Somehow the cultural relativists in the Women's Studies departments of the modern university don't have a problem with this form of "imposing one's cultural values on others". Again, it may be simply because there are, in fact, moral rules and obligations that transcend societies., such as the rule that you don't treat women in that sort of manner.

So, if cultural relativism is the correct way to think of ethics and morals(Another oxymoron if relativism is true) then we are left with the conclusion that there is no standard of justice that a society must adhere to. There is no real basis for determining whether or not a particular action or law is inherently good or evil. This is outrageous. When the culturally relative sociology student loudly insists that "I have a right to abortion" or "I have a right to marry whomever I love", they might as well be having a sneezing attack. Under relativism, you can insist on being granted certain rights as loudly as you want. All it will take is for someone else to come along and insist louder than you that those rights don't exist, or that they can be revoked for whatever reason the society deems fit.

In conclusion, it seems that cultural relativism, while making for a good classroom discussion, is not of any good for any discussion on ethics, and what truly matters in life. In fact, when life, liberty and what it means to be human are at stake, we should do better than saying "That's just your view."

How The Christian Story Gives Life, Gender, and Sexuality Meaning

This week I was able to complete the newest book by Houston Baptist University professor Nancy Peacey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality.

In her typical style, professor Pearcey takes the worldviews of the most hotly debated topics in our society today(Life ethics and sexual ethics) and relegates them in a way that is both understandable, yet still accurately conveys the philosophies behind the issues. She then goes on to argue for why the Christian worldview makes the most sense of the issues themselves(such as the importance and meaning of human life) in a way that doesn't lose the sense of urgency behind many topics.

She takes on each topic in individual chapters, where she then breaks down the topic into a number of sub-sections, each of which is jam-packed with the insight that she carries with her everywhere she goes. Starting with the issue of abortion, she takes on the underlying philosophies of many of the key thinkers on the pro-choice side of the issue; mainly, the sort of "dualism" that drives many arguments in favor of abortion: The fetal being may in fact be human, but not in the sort of sense that we are obligated to care for and protect.

This argument has been articulated by a number of thinkers in a variety of ways(Thinkers like Peter Singer, Michael Tooley, Mary Anne Warren, and others) have all argued that it is certain key functions that will give a human being value that is to be respected by society at large.

However, this view has a number of fatal flaws, the biggest and most apparent Nancy highlights in in her section on the issue: We now have no basis for fundamental human rights, and thus, human equality is a myth for the ash heap of history.

Nancy suggests an alternative that is worthy of consideration: The only grounds for affirming the most famous line from the Declaration of Independence, that "All Men Are Created Equal"(Nevermind if the founders didn't live up to this at all times. If the statement were to be rejected on that ground, we would have no standard to measure the founders life decisions up to) is best rooted in the idea of a Creator. Nancy argues that the Christian story provides not only the best explanation for human value, but for why we know humans are special kinds of beings with value in the first place.

She moves on to other topics in the later sections of the book, in particular, the implications of the sexual revolution in the West. Her chapter on the so-called "hookup culture" is particularly insightful, in that this cultural practice explains many of the biggest problems our society faces today.

Not only does professor Pearcey highlight the pain that "hooking up" for one night stands(having sex with someone that a person is not remotely interested in, other than for sexual interaction) brings to many young people, she goes on to argue for the Biblical worldview of sexual intimacy as having the most meaning when it comes to the question of sex. One segment of the chapter is a particularly insightful one: She gives an overview of the sexual ethic of the ancient Roman culture that the New Testament was written in, including the segments written regarding marriage and romance. In many circles today(Especially modern feminist circles), the Christian ethic as outlined in the New Testament by Paul and others is considered "anti-woman" and repressive.

However, as Nancy highlights, the Roman sexual ethic was not, in any way, "pro-woman", pro-child, or even pro-man. Surveying historical analysis of the time, it is noted that sexual interaction was a form of prestige, and men within society would have many sexual partners, regardless of the approval of their spouses. Women weren't even given a voice that was acceptable by the broader culture(There is a reason why many historians are astounded that the first witnesses in the Gospel accounts to the risen Jesus were women; Crafting a new religion to purposely woo the people would never have included such an embarrassing detail).

Enter in the Christian story. When Paul writes to the New Testament church that husbands should "Love their wives as Christ loves the church, and gave himself up for her"(Ephesians 5:25), he is saying something truly special: The Christian sexual ethic not only calls on men to show love to the women they are married to(Which Roman culture ignored the needs of women), but to love in a way that is self-sacrificing and other-centered. Far from a culture built on legalism, "chastity belts", and fear, the Christian sexual ethic gives the deepest purpose and meaning to the love expressed within a marriage between a husband and wife, by using marriage(and other non-romantic relationships as well) to give humankind a picture of the love behind all of reality: The love of the Creator for His creation.

In conclusion, Nancy's book couldn't be any more timely. With growing cultural tensions, and with subjects like abortion, assisted suicide, sex and homosexuality, and gender identity coming directly into the living rooms of America, there are at least three groups of people who would most benefit from her book:

1. Parents: Many Christian parents are unsure of how to instruct their children in the matters addressed in the book. With Queer Feminist theory(and the worldviews behind it) and explicit sexual material making their way into even elementary age schools, many parents are at a loss of how to give their kids a way to think about the subjects being taught. While this book is most assuredly not appropriate for younger audiences, it can help parents start teaching their children how the Christian worldview makes the most sense of our world, and the issues surrounding us.

2. Christian college students: Unfortunately, many Christian students are woefully unprepared for the constant barrage of worldviews that are thrown at them as soon as they step onto a college campus. From freshman orientation onward, worldviews such as postmodernism, Marxism, secular humanism, and sexual libertarianism are being practically(and, at some schools, even literally) shouted on street corners and from rooftops. When I first attended my school, CSU San Marcos, during the transfer student orientation, several of the women's studies professors encouraged the students to chant "Consent is Hot; Assault is Not" multiple times, and jokingly stated that even having "two or more" sex partners in bed at once was acceptable, as long as everyone agreed to be involved. These kinds of statements can make the task of not only living out one's Christian faith on campus seem daunting, but having a thriving relationship with Christ that is a public witness can seem almost impossible. I would recommend, not only read this book before the school semester starts, but master it. Detailed margin notes, highlights, and unreadable pages from underlining are a must.

3. Pro-life advocates: A popular slogan of the United States Army is to "Train how you'll fight", and pro-life work is no exception. Unfortunately, I have noticed that many pro-life advocates can end up on the "front lines" under-equipped for the worldviews they will encounter when on the streets. This book will change that. Pro-life advocates will be equipped to understand not only the viewpoints of those they will meet who are defending an abortion-choice viewpoint, but also will be ready to respond with grace, truth, and compassion when needed most.

Love Thy Body hits bookstore shelves tomorrow nationwide, and I would argue, this is the most important book for Christians to pick up in the New Year of 2018.

More of the Same Fallacies From an Abortion-Choice Advocate [Clinton Wilcox]

I was pointed to an article by Alan Levinowitz called "Why Do Pro-Life Advocates Only Seem to Care About Unborn Lives?" Of course, the real reason is because abortion-choice advocates are too lazy to do any real research into what people in the pro-life movement actually do. But that would make for a very short article.

Levinowitz starts off by saying he uses abortion as a case study in his comparative ethics course. Considering how rife with fallacy his article is, it actually does give me concern for his students. He is apparently drawing his students away from the pro-life argument not based on logic or reason (which is essential for coming to conclusions on ethical questions) but based on emotion and logical fallacies. There is a silver lining here -- Levinowitz does recognize that abortion-choice advocates can't take the "moral superiority" of their position as granted and should seek out challenging dialogue partners to discuss it further. So if Levinowitz happens across this article, please get in touch with me. I'd love to discuss this further with you. We could even set up a debate on this issue, if you'd be game for it.

Unfortunately, Levinowitz starts out with a major scientific snafu. The unborn organism is not a "fertilized egg" -- this is an unfortunate dehumanizing term for a human zygote, but as embryologist Keith L. Moore informs us, "Human development begins at fertilization, the process the during which a male gamete or sperm unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual." [1] The term "fertilized egg" is a misnomer. Once the egg is fertilized, a new embryo at the single-cell zygote stage comes into existence.

Levinowitz then goes on to say he has certain questions which make it difficult to engage in dialogue with pro-life people, but of course all of these questions are beside the point of the pro-life argument. The pro-life argument is a simple one:

P1: It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being.
P2: Abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being.
Therefore,
C: Abortion is immoral.

I teach to my beginning logic students that in order to refute an argument, you must either show it to be invalid (i.e. the conclusion does not follow logically from its premises) or it is unsound (i.e. it is invalid and/or one or both of the premises are false). So as we're going through this article, ask yourself: "How does this refute the pro-life argument Clinton has outlined above?" The reality is they don't. Now, I do intend to offer responses to Levinowitz' questions, as well. I don't want it to appear that there are no answers to them. But keep asking yourself how his questions refute the pro-life argument above. They won't, and so he hasn't even done any damage to the argument. If an abortion-choice advocate can't refute the argument above, then intellectual honesty demands they accept our argument as true, whether or not they "feel" like it is true.

Q1: Why do no signs at the March for Life mention maternity or paternity leave? Why aren't expansive parental leave policies on every pro-life website and mentioned by every pro-life politician?

Again, the pro-life argument is regarding the right to life of unborn children. Maternal and paternal leave are important questions of policy, but there is no reason to try and fight all of society's problems in order to fight to end abortion. Levinowitz might as well condemn the American Cancer Society for not trying to end AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease. The reality is we can't fight to end all of society's ills because if we try to end all problems, we won't end any of them. A better question is, why don't you work to stop people from killing their children then we can start to talk about maternal and paternal leave. But right now parents having their children killed is a much larger problem. This is just a fallacious ad hominem dismissal of our argument.

That being said, many pro-life advocates do support paternity and maternity leave. I can't speak for all politicians who consider themselves pro-life, but I'm generally pretty skeptical about politicians. Any given politician could simply be pro-life to try and win support from conservatives. I'm pretty confident that our current VP is pro-life, and I'm also very confident that Rick Santorum is pro-life, who took Barbara Boxer to the woodshed over her view that partial-birth abortion (known colloquially by the more sterile name D&X, Dilation and Excavation) is morally permissible.

Q2: Why didn't any of the speakers at the March mention contraception? Why don't pro-life people (including politicians) care about sex education?

There is a legitimate debate over the moral permissibility of contraception. But whether or not pro-life people support contraception is irrelevant to the truth of our argument, so this boils down to another fallacious ad hominem dismissal.

The reality is that not all of the speakers believe contraception to be morally permissible, myself included (note: there is likely a difference of opinion among those in LTI on the question of contraception -- this opinion is my own and should not be seen as representative of the other speakers and writers in LTI). However, I do believe that contraception should remain legal, for those who do not have a moral problem with it. It is better to prevent a child from coming into existence than it is to take a child out of existence once they are here. But there is absolutely no reason why any speaker at the March should mention contraception. In most places in the United States, condoms are as available as candy. Of course, that doesn't mean that we will want to provide contraception for anyone. People need to be responsible for their sexual choices, which includes abstaining if they can't afford contraception. This is just a lazy attempt to avoid the pro-life argument.

Q3: Why is adoption only mentioned in passing, if it is mentioned at all?

This seems to be a question pro-life people can't win on. Of course, pro-life people argue that if a woman is considering abortion, she should consider adoption instead, which is the morally right thing to do. But whenever pro-life people mention adoption, abortion-choice people dismiss that as callous to women because it's such a difficult decision. Now Levinowitz seems upset that we don't mention it enough. Again, this is a fallacious ad hominem dismissal of the pro-life argument. Our argument is that abortion is wrong because it intentionally takes the life of an innocent human child. This would be true whether or not we believed in adoption.

Q4: Why do we focus so much on the Christian God if we welcome everyone? How do we expect to win over people like Levinowitz if prayerful protest is more important than funding health care services?

I agree that there's more the pro-life movement can do to welcome those who are not Christians. But the pro-life movement has gone a long way in becoming more inclusive. In fact, Kelsey Hazzard, president of Secular Pro-Life, spoke at the March, as well. She is an atheist (and she is also a friend). There are many other non-religious pro-life organizations, such as the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians and Pro-Life Humanists. So in this case, we're dealing with a new fallacy, the hasty generalization. He's making a generalization based on his observations of speakers at the march, but ignoring the very real counterexamples from people representing organizations who were also there at the march.

Pro-life people are much more interested than abortion-choice people in health care services. However, non-socialists, like myself, do not believe in stealing money from taxpayers to give to people who have no legitimate claim on it. This is why we don't believe in funding health care services -- each individual person should be free to do with their money as they please, which includes choosing where to give their money for charitable giving. Many pro-life people do, in fact, give donations for health care services. There are at least three times as many pregnancy care centers than there are Planned Parenthoods in the United States, and unlike Planned Parenthood, these organizations do not get billions of dollars in government grants. They subsist on generous donations from financial supporters. They give prenatal services, and help pregnant women and parents of born children in need by offering parenting classes and free items like car seats and diapers. They do all of these services for free. You don't get that at Planned Parenthood.

So we don't believe in stealing money to use it for health care, but we do believe in using our money to do real good and choosing where our money would offer the most benefit. I expect to win over people like Levinowitz because I expect them to be reasonable. His entire argument is based on irrationally dismissing the pro-life argument, so I'm not impressed by his questions. They argue beside the point, and they don't even really reflect the reality of the pro-life movement.

So Levinowitz (who also quotes the misguided words of Sister Joan Chittister) believes that unless we're willing to steal money from the taxpayers for health care, we're not "really" pro-life. This is just absurd, and it shows that Levinowitz is not really as willing to understand pro-life people as he claims to be. Again, the real question is why do you believe children outside the womb should be fed and clothed, but we should kill children inside the womb just because they're unwanted? You don't get to claim the moral high-road here.

Levinowitz ends by quoting Matthew 6:5, taking it out of context (which leads me to question whether he's actually read the Gospel of Matthew, since he's just using it to make a political point). Unfortunately he seems blissfully ignorant of such other verses as Proverbs 6: 16-17 ("There are six things which the Lord hates, yes, seven which are an abomination to Him: Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood..."), Jeremiah 19: 3-5 ("'Hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: thus says the Lord of hosts, the God is Israel, "Behold I am about the bring a calamity upon this place, at which the ears of everyone that hears of it will tingle. Because they have forsaken Me and have made this an alien place and have burned sacrifices in it to other gods, that neither they nor their forefathers nor the kings of Judah had ever known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, a thing which I never commanded or spoke of, nor did it ever enter my mind..."'"), or Psalm 127: 3 ("Truly children are a gift from the Lord; the fruit of the womb is a reward").

Those on the left love to use the Bible out of context to support their views, but always try to downplay it when it can be used against them (e.g. arguing that abortion is not a "religious issue" if someone shows from Scripture why abortion is wrong).

Levinowitz' challenge, of course, is easily met. And my invitation to discuss this further with him is an honest and serious one. Unfortunately, as there really is no good justification for abortion, abortion-choice people will continue arguing beside the point to distract away from the simple logic of the pro-life position.

[1] Keith L. Moore, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th ed., Philadelphia, PA: Saunders 2003, p. 16.

Is Philosophy Useless in the Pro-Life Argument? [Clinton Wilcox]

Last week, LiveActionNews published an article from Olivier Lindor called "Four Non-Religious Reasons to be Pro-Life". In that article, Lindor made the claim that science is all you need for the pro-life argument. Philosophy is (presumably) unreliable as a source of truth. Science is the only reliable source of truth, so science should be the standard we turn to when we make public policy. He gave three other arguments, but my purpose for this article is to specifically respond to Lindor's first argument from science. To be clear, I enjoy LiveActionNews. This is not a diatribe against them, but merely my intention to respond, as a pro-life educator, to an idea that I find detrimental to the pro-life argument and worldview, in general.

Lindor is right that there is a significant non-religious portion of the pro-life movement. He is also right that we do not have to specifically present a religious argument to justify the pro-life stance. However, he does not have to throw philosophy under the bus to do so.

Lindor asserts that while personhood is an abstract concept, life is not. But this is mistaken. Life, too, is an abstract concept. After all, you can't point to life anywhere and say "there it is; that is life". You can point to living things, that is, things that instantiate the property of "alive", but you can't point to life, itself, as you can point to a human being. Life, too, is an abstract concept. It just so happens that scientists have a list of criteria that make a living thing alive, and human beings, as scientists have discovered, fit the bill from fertilization.

Second, in saying that personhood is an abstract concept but life is not, and that there is undisputed science regarding when human life begins, Lindor seems to be saying that philosophy is unreliable in giving us truth. But why believe a thing like that? Take the abstract concept "triangularity". There is no dispute that a triangle is a polygon with three sides and three angles. While there is a debate about whether or not abstract objects exist in reality (I'm a realist when it comes to abstract objects), there is no debate that any polygon with three sides and three angles is a triangle. Similarly, just because personhood, like life, is an abstract concept doesn't mean there cannot be a consensus on what personhood is. Additionally, as I have just shown, life is an abstract concept and there is scientific consensus on when human life begins. Just because there is disagreement on what personhood actually is does not mean there is no right answer, just as the fact that there is disagreement over whether or not abortion is morally permissible means there is no right answer.

Finally, another major problem with this view is that it leads to extreme pacifism. If all that is necessary in the moral equation is that they are biologically human, then we cannot justify killing anyone, even in self-defense. How does Lindor get from "this entity is biologically human" to "we cannot kill this entity"? Science is descriptive, not prescriptive. Would Lindor oppose removing a brain-dead person with no hope of recovery from life support? He would have to, given his argument. You just can't derive a system of ethics from science. That requires philosophy.

So I definitely appreciate Lindor's wanting to take a stand against abortion, and I appreciate his desire to make a non-religious case against abortion. I would just suggest he not disregard philosophy in doing so.

Responding to Bill Nye's Abortion Video

Bill Nye (AKA The Science Guy) is famous in the US for promoting science and he recently produced an ‘educational’ video where he defends abortion and claims to debunk prolife arguments against abortion.

Nye talks a lot about facts, which is strange because, last time I checked, he was a trained Mechanical Engineer and not qualified to contradict what Embryologists actually teach about when human life begins.

You can watch his video here.

So to demonstrate why Nye does not in fact present anything near a challenge to the prolife position I will go through his key statements point by point.

“Many, many, many, many more hundreds of eggs are fertilized than become humans. Eggs get fertilized and by that I mean sperm get accepted by ova a lot.”

Yes, it is true that more eggs are fertilized than grow to human maturity but it would be wrong to finish there. The fertilization process, when finished successfully produces a new, whole, distinct, and growing human life. But when the sperm and egg unite they do not always produce a viable human life. In some cases they can produce non-viable human embryos or non-human entities like hydatiform moles. What this means is that the fertilization process sometimes goes wrong. However, that does not mean that those embryos that did not implant or died shortly afterwards were not human to begin with. We were all once embryos. That stage marks the earliest of our human development because we do not develop into humans but as humans. Any Embryology textbook will tell you quite clearly that the creation of a new embryo marks the first stage of the human journey. You were once an embryo. So was I and so was Bill Nye.

Nye simply begs the question by asserting that the embryo must be in a hospitable environment to be human, one’s environment has nothing to do with what kind of being one is. As a scientist he should know that one’s environment does not determine one’s species, nevertheless, he seems undeterred in making erroneous claims. In some parts of the world new-born infants die at alarmingly high rates. Are we to assume they aren’t human? Like others before him Nye confuses the distinction between the beginning of a human life and the beginning of pregnancy which are defined differently, only the latter beginning at implantation.

“But that’s not all you need. You have to attach to the uterine wall, the inside of a womb, a woman’s womb. But if you’re going to hold that as a standard, that is to say if you’re going to say when an egg is fertilized it’s therefore has the same rights as an individual, then whom are you going to sue? Whom are you going to imprison? Every woman who’s had a fertilized egg pass through her? Every guy who’s sperm has fertilized an egg and then it didn’t become a human? Have all these people failed you? It’s just a reflection of a deep scientific lack of understanding and you literally or apparently literally don’t know what you’re talking about.”

What do rights have to do with science? Where is Nye discovering these human rights from? Are they hidden in the human ear somewhere? Nye seems to be conflating a number of issues, such as what it means to be human and what it means to have rights (natural or legal, you may ask). You’d think he would answer the scientific question before he steps into the realm of philosophy, another area I’m not sure engineers get much training in. Even the infamous Peter Singer admits that the embryo is a member of the human species, so let’s just answer the easy question first. The embryo is human. After that we can start getting into whether they possess rights or whether others have any duties towards them. Surely one only needs to be human to possess at least some human rights? Unfortunately, Nye doesn’t offer an argument on this, he merely asserts. I’m not sure anyone is sure what Nye is referring to in regards to imprisoning or suing people if we treat embryos as the humans they are. Having a miscarriage is tragic and has nothing to do with the intentional act of killing an unborn human being. The more Nye speaks, the quicker it becomes clear that he doesn’t really know what he is talking about and is just hoping that people believe him because he’s famous.

I feel I should offer a little more clarification (since Nye doesn’t). Using the term ‘fertilized egg’ is a misnomer since the egg and sperm proper no longer exist once the embryo does. Biologically speaking it’s about as accurate as referring to an infant as a fertilized egg. Let me be clear, Nye is asserting that the new embryo is not human and yet embryology textbooks consistently says stuff like this: ‘The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.’ – (Sadler, T.W. Langman’s Medical Embryology. 7th edition. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins 1995, p. 3). Of course, what does the writer of one of the world’s leading Embryology textbooks know? As Nye says he must just be reflecting a deep scientific lack of understanding.

“And so when it comes to women’s right with respect to their reproduction, I think you should leave it to women. This is really – you cannot help but notice. I’m not the first guy to observe this. You have a lot of men of European descent passing these extraordinary laws based on ignorance. Sorry you guys. I know it was written or your interpretation of a book written 5,000 years ago, 50 centuries ago, makes you think that when a man and a woman have sexual intercourse they always have a baby. That’s wrong and so to pass laws based on that belief is inconsistent with nature.”

Obviously you have to ignore the irony of a man of European descent displaying his views about abortion whilst telling men not to communicate their views an abortion. It’s also ironic that an all-male Supreme Court decided for Roe in the infamous Roe v Wade case in 1973. I hope Nye will join me in campaigning for this example of male patriarchy to be overturned!

Oh no, you didn’t! Nye seems to think that only European men who believe the Bible are against abortion. Unsurprisingly, he is mistaken. Women actually make the same prolife arguments men do because arguments don’t have genders. You also don’t need to believe the Bible to know that abortion is wrong, any more than you need to believe the Bible to know it’s wrong to strangle an infant. I think Nye should spend a few hours reading the Song of Songs. Nowhere does it say that we ought to believe that every sexual act must always produce children. I’m not sure what point Nye is trying to make because I’m not quite sure how making it illegal to intentionally kill your unborn offspring is consistent with ‘nature’. I would tell you what he means by nature but he never tells us.

“I mean it’s hard not to get frustrated with this everybody. And I know nobody likes abortion, okay. But you can’t tell somebody what to do. I mean she has rights over this, especially if she doesn’t like the guy that got her pregnant. She doesn’t want anything to do with your genes, get over it, especially if she were raped and all this. So it’s very frustrating on the outside, on the other side. We have so many more important things to be dealing with. We have so many more problems to squander resources on this argument based on bad science, on just lack of understanding.”

I must admit, like Bill, I’m struggling to not get frustrated. Why does nobody like abortion? What other ‘human rights’ are there that nobody likes? Of course you can tell someone what to do. Nye is doing it right now and our parents, colleagues, and governments do it every day. Would Nye never tell anyone it’s wrong to steal, cheat, harass, bully, or assault anyone? If something is morally wrong, we ought to encourage people not to do it (e.g. drunk driving). Once again demonstrating his question begging case against the prolife view, he simply assumes without basis that the unborn are not human. We have to remember that women don’t know they are pregnant until after implantation. So Nye’s earlier argument about the early embryo is a red herring because he has offered no argument against the later embryo or fetus not being an individual human who is a bearer of rights. He thinks it’s okay to kill the unborn if you don’t like the father. Would that be acceptable after they were born? Oh no, of course not, because infanticide is much harder to hide and much harder to use bad science to defend. For that, you just need bad philosophy.

So as you can see, it’s the prolife community who doesn’t understand science. What do prolife philosophers or embryologists know when you have mechanical engineers to show you how it is. Clearly it was too much work for Nye to engage with the arguments prolife philosophers actually make. Instead he opted to ignore the work of those like Robert P. George, Patrick Lee, Christopher Kaczor, Stephen Schwarz, Francis Beckwith or any number of others. In conclusion, Bill Nye hasn’t debunked anything, instead he has demonstrated that he doesn’t understand the prolife argument and is ignorant of the basics of modern embryology.

Happy to clarify anything and look forward to your thoughtful comments. This post was originally posted at the Failed Atheist Blog.

The Importance of Distinctions [Clinton Wilcox]

Yesterday I was having a discussion with a rather vocal pro-life advocate. He was arguing with a vegetarian, and finally he told this vegetarian that she is confused and should keep her mouth shut. Now, I am not a vegetarian and I agree with the pro-life person's point of view. However, I also believe in civil discourse and this pro-life person was not being civil. It turns out this pro-life person believes that the right to freedom of speech does not entail that people who are wrong have the right to express their views. He argued for this by saying that no one has a right to have their views respected. I agreed with him on this last point and tried to show him that a right to have your views respected and a right to express your views, even if I disagree with them, are two different things. I tried several times to explain this distinction, but he seemed incapable of grasping it.

The reality is that the First Amendment gives us the freedom not just to hold unpopular views but the freedom to express them, as well, even if I disagree with them. And the way that rights work is if I want my rights to be respected, I have an obligation to respect the rights of others, as well. There's an idea that's going around Facebook that a right to free speech doesn't entail freedom from the consequences of your views. But this is only partially right. A right to free speech does entail a freedom from being jailed for my views, or from being shouted down, or otherwise disrespected for trying to express my views. If I don't have the right to talk about my views, then speech really isn't free. However, there may be natural consequences to holding an unpopular view, such as no one listening to me.

There are many important distinctions that need to be made in the abortion issue that are often overlooked. I don't know how our culture got to a point in which people are generally incapable of making basic distinctions, but it seems we've gotten to this point. Making distinctions is absolutely critical to clear thinking. Aside from the distinction I mentioned earlier, here are two more that need to be kept in mind in our discussions about abortion:

The distinction between types of potentiality. One popular pro-choice mantra is that the unborn are not humans, they are "potential humans." The problem is this confuses active potentiality with passive potentiality. A sapling is a potential mature tree. It is also a potential desk. But these are two different kinds of potential. A sapling has the active potential to develop into a fully mature tree because it is on a self-directed path of development. It develops itself from within because its essence is treeness. However, its potential to become a desk is a passive potential. It will not become a desk on its own. It must be cut down, undergoing a substantial change, and made into a desk by an outside builder. This is a critical distinction because active potentiality is identity-preserving, and passive potentiality is not. The unborn are not "potential humans", they are actual humans with potential.

The distinction between different senses of "human". Like most words, the term "human" can have multiple definitions. The two that are usually seen as important for the abortion debate is human in a genetic sense, that the unborn are biological members of species Homo sapiens, and human in a moral sense, that the unborn are persons (i.e. members of the moral community so that it is wrong to mistreat them or take their life). I still do encounter people who don't believe that the unborn are biological members of our species, but usually when someone denies that the unborn are human, what they really mean is they are not persons. It's up to the individual to clearly present their own arguments, but if we hope to change people's minds, it helps for us to be aware of the way in which people conflate two different ideas, usually without even realizing it. If someone denies the unborn are human, usually a clarifying question is in order: "Do you mean they are not biologically human, or do you mean they are not human beings with a right to life?" This helps to avoid attacking strawmen unwittingly.

There are many more distinctions that need to be made for clarity of thought in the abortion issue. But this should help as a basic primer in how to think more clearly in the abortion issue. If we don't keep these distinctions in mind, the argument starts to get muddled and we won't be able to reliably come to the truth of the matter.

Edited the fourth paragraph for clarity.

Regarding PZ Myers' Unsophisticated Diatribe on Kristan Hawkins [Clinton Wilcox]

PZ Myers is at it again, this time ranting about pro-life apologist Kristan Hawkins, executive director of Students for Life of America. I've taken Myers to task before for his dishonest argumentation when he railed against Scott Klusendorf when Scott appeared on the Issues, Etc. podcast. Kristan gave a pro-life presentation at UMM College called "The Ugly Truth About Abortion: How it Does More than Just Kill Babies." Myers apparently attended the presentation, then decided to dismiss Kristan's entire case and write about it on his blog. You can view the article here. Let's take a look at Myers' response.

Regarding one of Kristan's arguments, Myers responded, "Setting aside the loaded word 'preborn', of course a fetus is alive. And of course its cells are taxonomically human -- but that begs the question. Is it a person? I'd say no, not yet, and that personhood is defined by a very fuzzy boundary. Which makes talking about their rights moot."

First, it doesn't beg the question. Begging the question is a specific logical fallacy. What he means is it raises the question. He at least admits that the human fetus is alive and biologically human. That's half the battle. He then asserts that personhood is defined by a very fuzzy boundary, but this is false. The best arguments show that personhood is established at fertilization, when the human comes into existence. There is nothing fuzzy about it, just because personhood is a metaphysical concept (morality and the laws of logic are also metaphysical concepts that are uncontroversial). To claim you must be able to do something before you are a person (e.g. you must be conscious or self-aware) is to put the cart before the horse, since there must be something first in order to do something. Finally, it doesn't make talking about their rights moot. What if Myers is wrong about personhood? Then we are killing human persons, which is a tragedy. Conversely, if the question of personhood is fuzzy, we have a moral obligation not to be killing them, since the benefit of the doubt should always go to life. If a construction worker is about to blow up a building, but someone may be inside, if he blows the building up without making sure, he is guilty of criminal negligence. Or if you are not sure whether the jacket in the middle of the road has a person underneath, would you drive over the jacket or swerve around it?

Myers then says, "The weird thing about her whole argument is that it applies perfectly well to tumors, as well. Cancer is growing, and alive; it has human 'parents', and its cells are human; so if Kristan Hawkins has rights, why doesn't a melanoma? We clearly do not simply give rights and privileges to collections of cells because they have human ancestry -- we have other criteria, often assumed and unstated, that we use to assign rights."

Myers is a biologist. If doctors can tell the difference between a human being and cancer, why can't Myers? I did not attend Kristan's talk, so I don't know how in-depth she went in to the arguments. But arguing that the pro-life position entails that cancers have rights is just philosophically confused and biologically inept.

A cancer does not have human parents (here Myers is guilty of equivocation on the term "parent"). Human life is an unbroken chain, from one person to the next. The parents have sex, they release sperm and eggs, which fuse and create a new, genetically distinct human being. A cancer is not produced like Myers was by his parents. According to the American Cancer Society, "cancer cell growth is different from normal cell growth. Instead of dying, cancer cells continue to grow and form new, abnormal cells. Cancer cells can also invade (grown into) other tissues, something that normal cells can't do. Growing out of control and invading other tissues are what makes a cell a cancer cell." Cancer cells are different from developing human beings, even ones who are at the early stage of human development inside the mother's womb.

Myers goes on, "She announced that the biology argument was the easiest to rebut. This is only true because being ignorant of biology makes everything simpler. She made familiar arguments: at the moment of conception, a unique whole human being comes into existence, with a unique combination of DNA. To which I say, if uniqueness is the criterion for preserving an organism, shouldn’t she be as vociferous in defending the rights of cows to live? They’re all unique, too. Shouldn’t the anti-choice picketers be out working to preserve unique habitats and endangered species?"

Myers doesn't attempt to refute Kristan's position, he just tries to argue that she is inconsistent. Maybe she is, but if so, how does this refute her position? To say nothing of the fact that many pro-life advocates do, in fact, care about animal rights. Myers is just guilty of not properly understanding his interlocutor's argument. It's not uniqueness that makes the organism valuable, per se -- the uniqueness shows that the individual human organism is a different organism from the parents. Myers picks out one word in the argument and attempts to refute her entire argument by nitpicking a term. He certainly hasn't shown how she is ignorant of biology (in fact, he agreed with her biology earlier in the talk, by agreeing that the unborn organism is alive and biologically human). Myers is just ignorant of philosophy.

Myers' entire article can be dismissed as an argument from incredulity. He doesn't make any valid points, he just tries to dismiss them because he finds them ridiculous. He goes on to say that Kristan emphasized the claim that a whole human being is created at the "instant" of conception. One argument was that she showed pictures that indicated that once the egg is fertilized, it is no longer a human egg but a human zygote (which Myers unprofessionally dismissed with incredulous flair). But this is a true fact -- once the sperm and egg fuse, the sperm and egg lose their identity, they cease to exist, and a new, genetically distinct human organism comes into existence. It's not just pro-life apologists he's disagreeing with, it's just about every modern embryology textbook on the planet.

Kristan's other argument, which is also true, is that the zygote from the beginning is a whole, individual, separate organism from the mother, only needing proper nutrition and environment to survive and thrive.

What is Myers' response? As an iron ingot is not a car, so is a zygote not a whole organism. But this is a false analogy: it confuses passive potential with active potential. Cars are artifacts. An iron ingot is not a car in the same way that sugar and flour are not a cake. They require an outside baker/builder, and once baked/built, they will lose their identity and become part of the cake/car. The sperm and the eggs are analogous to the iron ingot, not the human zygote. Human development is not like construction of an artifact.

Conversely, human beings are substances, as are all living things. The human zygote is more analogous to a Polaroid picture (an analogy that Richard Stith formulated). The human zygote is already a human being. It's true that the human zygote doesn't look like me, and hasn't developed his/her human parts. But therein lies the difference between a substance and an artifact. Artifacts find their identity in their parts. Substances are ontologically prior to their parts, which is just a fancy way of saying that they exist before they develop their parts. But everything that human being is and will develop is already written in his/her genetic code. He/she just needs time to develop these things. The capacities to develop them are already present. She has the active potential to develop these things. Active potential is a potential that she has inside herself (instead of from outside, as in the case of artifacts with passive potential) to develop, and these potentials are identity-preserving changes (instead of identity-altering, such as the sugar and flour losing their identities in the cake they become part of).

Myers also made some quip about "artificial wombs," since all that is needed is proper nutrition and environment. Perhaps Kristan did not talk about the environment (I wasn't there, so I don't know if Myers is forgetting that part), but there is more to developing an artificial womb than nutrition, although that is a problem, too (you can't just feed it a steak, after all). The environment must also be replicated, and there is the problem of how to transfer it, since it needs to be able to implant into the artificial womb. But all of this misses the point, as once the embryo implants in the womb, all you need to do is give it proper nutrition in order for the embryo to continue to grow and develop normally.

Then he continues by dwelling on something he said he wasn't going to dwell on, such as Jerome Lejeune being the Father of Modern Genetics. It's pretty strange that Myers has never heard of him, despite the fact that Lejeune discovered the cause of Down syndrome. According to the linked Wikipedia article, "In 1969, Lejeune's work earned him the William Allan Award, granted by the American Society of Human Genetics, the world's highest honor in genetics. As of 2013, he was the only Frenchman to have won it." So it's irrelevant to the truth claim of Lejeune that Myers has never heard of him.

Myers tries to assert that the only reason pro-life advocates have accepted him is because he's a Catholic and had "bought into" our doctrine. But the pro-life movement has accepted atheists as our own, such as Bernard Nathanson (who become pro-life while still an atheist, though he converted to Catholicism later in life), and A.W. Liley, the Father of Modern Fetology, who, as an atheist, was also appointed to the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of the Sciences, despite his atheism. Not to mention the modern atheists in the pro-life movement, such as Secular Pro-Life's Kelsey Hazzard, Pro-Life Humanists' Kristine Kruszelnicki, and pro-life philosopher Don Marquis.

Next he brought up the problem of animal rights. There are pro-life advocates who also believe in animal rights, so the pro-life position does not necessitate that animals don't have rights. However, it is not inconsistent to be pro-life and oppose animal rights, since all human beings are persons but animals are not persons. Being human is what matters, but it's not just belonging to our biological species; it's what being human means. Humans are intrinsically valuable because they are made in the image of their Creator, but also because they have an inherently rational nature. I don't want to dwell too much on the differences between humans and animals now, but suffice it to say if there is something intrinsically different about humans by which they are intrinsically valuable, then one can consistently hold that it is wrong to kill human beings but not intrinsically wrong (though it may sometimes be) to kill animals.

Myers also claims Kristan "dismissed" the criterion of nervous system development, but Kristan presented a good reason for doing so: if all humans are equally valuable, then their value cannot be grounded in something that comes in degrees, such as their development or their intelligence. It must be grounded in something we all have equally, and the only thing that qualifies is our common human nature.

Myers isn't convinced by Trot Out the Toddler reasoning, but it seems more accurate to say he just doesn't understand the philosophical concept of the reductio ad absurdum (which is what Trot Out the Toddler is, at is deepest level). The reason that arguing from circumstances doesn't work is because it does commit the fallacy of begging the question -- you have to assume the unborn entity is not a valuable human being in order for the argument to succeed. Suppose we were considering allowing abortion in the case of poverty. Well, we wouldn't allow a woman to kill her two-year-old child because of poverty, so if the unborn entity is a valuable human being, then we can't allow abortions in the case of poverty, either. So poverty isn't the real issue. The real issue is what is the unborn? If the unborn is not a valuable human being, then a woman could have all the abortions she wants, without needing a good reason. But if the unborn is a valuable human being, then any reason that wouldn't justify killing a born child wouldn't justify killing an unborn one.

Myers asserts, "The problem here is that we’re able to recognize that a fetus and a toddler are not equivalent: one is aware and interacting with the world, the other is grossly incomplete and in a state of total, passive dependence."

It's true that the toddler is aware and interacting with the world. But is that a good reason for allowing abortion? I was not aware nor was I interacting the world last night while I was asleep. So was it justifiable to kill me then? Of course not. If that doesn't work to justify killing someone in their sleep, in a reversible coma, or under general anesthesia, why would it work to justify killing the unborn? Also, to say the unborn organism is "incomplete" is ambiguous. Toddlers are also incomplete. A toddler is different from me because she cannot form complete sentences, she can't read this article that I'm typing, nor can she even feed herself. Yet no one would say those are grounds for toddler-cide.

Myers, again: "That’s what generates her absolutist stance: there is no difference between me, a 57 year old man, and a freshly fertilized zygote. Well gosh, since fertilized zygotes are naturally slaughtered in vast numbers all the time, and reality doesn’t seem to have any special regard for embryos, then the flip side of her conclusion must be that it’s perfectly OK to murder people."

Myers is one of the New Atheists, and considering how poorly they argue against the Bible, pulling statements out of the Bible, out of context, and using them to argue against the Bible, this doesn't surprise me. Kristan's statements need to be considered in context. Now, "philosophically" is probably not the word I would have chosen to use. I prefer to use the term "fundamentally." There is no fundamental difference between the zygote I once was and the adult I am today. There are, of course, differences -- but none fundamental, because I was numerically the same entity then as I am now. All of the changes were identity-preserving, and if you had killed me then I would not be here right now to write this article. But Myers wants to assert Kristan believes there is absolutely no difference between an adult and a zygote. That's dishonest, and ungracious.

Myers continues by railing against more of Kristan's reductios, again missing the point that these arguments show the absurd conclusions that certain pro-choice arguments lead to. He also uses another New Atheist tactic, using the word "magical" to dismiss claims he doesn't agree with. In this case, "magical" really means "metaphysical," and I'm wondering if Myers would say that the laws of mathematics don't exist, since they are metaphysical. Maybe math is just magic and mathematicians its sorcerers. Myers asserts that responses to Kristan's arguments wouldn't rest on the personhood of the fetus, but on the damage done to the fetus. But this just presents a new problem -- if it is okay to kill a fetus, why is it wrong to use Thalidomide to ease morning sickness, allowing the fetus to be born with missing limbs? Or as my friend Josh Brahm once put it, why is it okay to remove all of the fetus' future experiences, but not only some of them, like the ability to walk?

So now we get to Kristan's Ugly Truths. The first one is regarding abortion safety. Myers accuses her of giving a half-truth, but in reality, what Myers quoted only supports Kristan's point. Legalizing abortion did not make it safer -- medical advancements, such as the development of antibiotics, has made abortion safer. There is no reason to believe abortion mortalities will increase significantly if it is made illegal again.

Kristan's second Ugly Truth is that abortion harms women. Myers quoted some statistics he believes refutes Kristan's claims, but what Myers actually means is that statistics he found he agrees with "refutes" this claim. Consider the source. Myers posted an article from Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice institute in league with Planned Parenthood that has a vested interest in promoting abortion. I'm still dubious about whether or not there is such a thing as Post-Abortion Syndrome, but there is such a thing as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Since a large number of women are coerced or otherwise forced into having an abortion (whether by a parent, boyfriend/husband, or life circumstances), if her abortion is traumatic then it's entirely likely she'll develop PTSD. Ignoring this only does a disservice to women, whom pro-choice people claim to want to help.

Now regarding the breast cancer link, I've seen studies that suggest there is such a link, but I don't have them handy. I don't know which sources Kristan was using, so I won't speak to this issue.

Kristan's third Ugly Truth is regarding the money-making potential of abortion. Myers repeats the untrue "only 3% of Planned Parenthood's services are abortions" claim. For why this claim is false, see this video. I don't know what the percentage of abortions done is, but considering that there are over a million abortions every year, it has to be pretty high (though of course, Planned Parenthood isn't the only abortion provider out there). Again, check Kristan's sources. Don't just take Myers' or my word for it.

Kristan's fourth Ugly Truth is that early feminists opposed abortion and thought women's reproductive ability was beautiful and wonderful. Myers concedes this point, so moving on.

Kristan's fifth and final Ugly Truth is that abortion exploits women and enables cover-up of abuse. Incidentally, Myers doesn't contest this point. He just says "pro-choice people think this is horrible, too." That's great, we have common ground there. But the argument is that legalized abortion allows this to happen, which not even Myers disagrees with. So Kristan's argument here succeeds.

Now, Myers does say this is a non-sequitur because even if this is true, that doesn't mean abortion is wrong. He's right. The problem is he's misunderstanding the argument. There's a difference between why abortion is wrong and what's wrong with abortion. He'd have a point if Kristan's argument was "abortion allows cover-up of abuse, therefore it is wrong." But what Kristan seems to be making (based on Myers' article, since I wasn't there) is that legalized abortion allows these things to happen, so it should not be legal. That's a different argument. Myers even admitted, at the beginning of his article, that Kristan's first argument is that abortion kills a living human being, and that is a sound argument for why abortion is wrong.

Myers then gives his thoughts on some questions. He agrees the first question was best avoided as off-topic. But for the second question, Myers doesn't seem surprised that she's religious. But as I mentioned earlier, there are plenty of pro-life atheists. In fact, the only people in the abortion issue for whom religion is consistently a problem are pro-choice people.

Regarding the third question, I generally agree with Kristan's answer here, but with some caveats. Abortions need to be considered on a case-by-case basis. As it was before abortion was made illegal in 1973, the woman should be granted full immunity with an eye to bringing down the abortionist and putting him/her in jail, since that will do the most good (it will save more lives to stop an abortionist than to simply put a post-abortive woman in jail). Second, women who abort (save women who self-abort) are not guilty of murder. At worst, they'd be guilty of accessory to murder, like the wife who hires a hitman to kill her husband. Third, many women are not morally culpable for the abortion. There are women who have been lied to by society and the abortion providers into believing she's just having a "clump of cells" or "mass of tissue" removed. Plus, many women are coerced into it. Every abortion is different, and as we have different degrees of murder of people outside the womb, each abortion needs to be considered on its own.

With question number four, I don't know the circumstances surrounding it, so I have nothing to say on the matter. Question number five, there's not much to say. I've heard that women do get some counseling, but it's biased counseling -- Planned Parenthood is there to sell abortions, so if a woman doesn't want to go through with an abortion, they don't help them. I've heard stories about women who wanted to keep the child turned away and actually referred to a Pregnancy Care Center because Planned Parenthood couldn't help them. That doesn't necessarily mean it's true of every Planned Parenthood. I can't speak to that.

Finally, number six was a statement, not a question. I'm not even sure what was meant by "Roe v. Wade" changed the conversation about abortion. I'm not sure if it did or not. Myers is somewhat correct in that a couple of states did lessen their restrictions on abortion before Roe v. Wade was decided. And there were always pro-life advocates who cared about the abortion issue (though it wasn't until the late 20th century that a movement started to emerge to liberalize the United States' abortion laws). But Roe v. Wade legalizing abortion across the board did cause pro-life advocates to organize.

This was just more of what I expected from Myers, more misunderstandings of pro-life arguments, bad biology, and a confusion of philosophical ideas. It's good that pro-choice people are trying to have a discussion about this, but if we could get less vitriol and more educated arguments from their more vocal proponents, that would go a long way toward advancing the conversation.

Responding to Philosophical Arguments Against the Pro-Life Position, Part IV [Clinton Wilcox]

This will be the last in this series, as the author, Brandon Christen, has indicated this is his last part. He seems to have forgotten his desire to respond to the argument from ageism, but I guess we'll have to be content with this. You can find the first part in this series here, the second part here, and the third part here.

Christen's article, that I will be responding to, can be found at this link.

Christen does consider this to be the strongest non-religious argument against abortion. The problem is, he doesn't seem to understand the argument. He seems to assume it means that you were a human at all points in your life. That's part of it, but the argument states that you are *you* at all points in your life. You were human at all points, but the same *you* now is the same *you* then when you were a toddler, and when you were in the womb. Here's a more thorough exposition of the argument from identity.

Christen begins by restating his fallacious argument that there is no evidence for a soul -- that there is a difference between humanity and personhood. That's true, but irrelevant. The argument from identity is not a personhood argument. Christen seems blinded by the "personhood" discussion so that he can't imagine any discussion of abortion that doesn't break down to a discussion of personhood. Whether or not you talk about person, the argument is that you are identical to yourself through all points of your life.

Before continuing, I just want to counter Christen's false claim that there is no good evidence that minds can exist outside of a brain. This is just false. We may not have experience of minds existing outside of brains, but it doesn't follow from this that it is impossible. After all, if God exists, he exists disembodied but is able to think, create, etc. So if God exists, then it is false to say that a brain must be present for a mind to exist. There is also very strong evidence that the brain and mind are separate. The Law of Identity states that A=B. In other words, for anything true of A, that same thing must be true of B. Otherwise the two things would not be identical. But there are things that is true of my mind that is not true of my brain. My brain is physical, whereas my mind is not. Whenever I have thoughts "about" something, my brain does not change shape to become the thing I am thinking of. Additionally, as J.P. Moreland writes in his book Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality, "Mental events are fellings of pain, episodes of thoughts, or sensory experiences. Physical events are happenings in the brain and central nervous system that can be described exhaustively using terms from chemistry and physics." Moreland goes on, "Physical events and their properties do not have the same features as do mental events and their properties. My thoughts, feelings of pain, or sensory experiences do not have any weight; they are not located anywhere in space (my thought of lunch cannot be closer to my right ear than to my left one); they are not composed of chemicals; they do not have electrical properties. On the other hand, the brain events associated with my thoughts, etc. -- indeed, with material things in general -- do have these features."

So there is very good evidence that the brain and the mind are separate. But moving on.

Christen goes on to assert a thought experiment, that if he was struck with a virus that erased all of his memories, everything that makes him "Brandon" would be gone. But this isn't clear at all. He's confusing the memories, experiences, etc., with the experiencer of those memories, experiences, etc. What is it, exactly, that was experiencing those events? Why is he so sure that "Brandon" would be gone, instead of "Brandon" surviving without his experiences intact? In fact, with one question I can refute his thought experiment: are we then morally permitted to kill Brandon once he finds himself in that state? If not, then doesn't it seem like the experiencer is still there, even if all of his memories are gone?

Christen seems to be asserting a form of dualism here -- that Brandon is not his body, just his collection of psychological experiences. But he has not made a case for this, besides some misguided assertions that there is no brain or "soul" (he assumes there is no evidence, rather than engaging the multitude of philosophical and theological books that give evidence for a soul or that the mind is independent of the brain). In fact, Edwin C. Hui, in his book At the Beginning of Life: Dilemmas in Theological Bioethics, argues that this dualism results in the view that the physical organism can exist independently of the psychological entity, and it's the psychological entity that should be given ontological significance (in other words, the psychological entity is the one with intrinsic value, the one whose existence is important, not the physical organism). But this contradicts normal human experience. The sensations that our body experiences need the body as a subject of experiences, to experience these sensations, and the psychological component is necessary to comprehend the sensations so they can be understood as meaningful. Since the boyd and psychological components are both necessary for our experiences, then both are necessary for the "I", the person who is the subject of experiences. Since the body is a necessary component to the person, one cannot hold that the body comes to be at one time while the person comes to be at another time.

So Christen's critique here, like his other critiques, is simply misguided. He seems to want to force "personhood" arguments into these other non-personhood arguments. But this simply won't do. In fact, the argument from numerical identity argues that the fetus is identical to me, despite not having psychological continuity with who the fetus will become later. Christen fails to really engage with the argument, itself, instead just engaging with whether or not we are psychologically connected to ourselves through out our entire lives. We are not, but this is irrelevant to the argument from identity.

So Christen's statement that there are no sufficient arguments isn't surprising -- he doesn't really understand the arguments. In order to find an argument compelling, you have to understand it. But in order to adequately refute an argument, you also have to understand it. These arguments remain unscathed.

Responding to Philosophical Arguments Against the Pro-Life Position, Part III [Clinton Wilcox]

This is the third part in this five part series. For part one, go here. For part two, click here.

In blogger Brandon Christen's third part of his series, he responds to an argument from rights. The argument, as he outlines is, is that all human beings have right (such as the right to life), the unborn are human beings, therefore the unborn have rights (such as the right to life).

Christen begins by reiterating his position on personhood, but as I have argued previously (see part one), his position on personhood can be rejected because he is begging the question by dismissing the soul and he has not properly argued for why personhood is grounded in brain function. And in part two, I explained that appealing to the kind of things that are not persons (e.g. grass and rocks) is a false analogy because the unborn from fertilization and the kind of things that are persons. Grass and rocks will never be sentient, yet unborn human beings will be once they develop enough.

So his discussion about the kinds of things we grant rights to is also irrelevant. He is confusing two types of value: intrinsic (or inherent) value, and instrumental value. We only value things like grass and trees instrumentally: they are valuable only insofar as we value them for their beauty, shade, production of oxygen, etc. Conversely, humans are intrinsically valuable: they are valuable in themselves and don't derive their value from anything else.

So his entire discussion of rights is off-base, because he is comparing granting rights to rocks (which are not the kinds of things that engage in personal acts) with the unborn (which are the kinds of things that engage in personal acts). In fact, his discussion at the end regarding infanticide undermines his entire article, but I'll get there at the end.

Rights, properly understood, lay out the kinds of things that we should be legally allowed to do, and also the obligations that we also must abide by. There are two different kinds of rights: legal rights, which are rights bestowed on us by the government and come about as we mature. Examples of these are the right to drive and the right to vote (this will be important later in the article). There are also natural rights, which are rights that we have by virtue of being human beings (and don't come about by maturity). Examples of these are the right to life, the right to self-defense, the right to liberty, etc. As an aside, discussions of rights actually lead to an amusing dilemma for pro-choice people. So while a tourist does not have the right to vote in a country they are not a citizen of, they do have the right not to be killed in that country because of their natural right to life.

So his discussion about granting rocks rights is useless. It is true that rocks do not desire the right to assemble; the problem is that rocks never desire the right to assemble, so there is no point in granting it to them. I had no desire to go to church last night while I was asleep. It does not follow from that that I didn't have the right to go to church last night while I was asleep. The unborn are more like people in reversible comas than they are rocks (or even brain dead people) because they do not now but will have such a desire. Besides, infants have no desire for rights yet we grant them rights. If desires were a necessary condition for having rights, infants would have no rights.

His discussion of granting mice rights is equally as useless, for the same reasons I outlined in the previous paragraph. But now it seems like Christen's position is becoming more ad hoc. After all, mice clearly have desires; they have a desire for cheese, not to die, etc. It's true that these are merely instinctual desires, but why does that matter? Here's where Christen really runs into trouble. He is clearly defining infants out of the moral community by arguing that mice, since they do not have the abstract fear of death or future suffering that we do. Peter Singer would agree with his position, except that Singer is consistent and argues that infants are not part of the moral community.

I agree with Christen's discussion of what makes us unique over the animals. What I don't agree with is Christen pushing the unborn out of the moral community just because they can't do these things yet, and Christen has yet to give us any good reason for disqualifying the unborn.

In fact, Christen actually says that killing an embryo in its early weeks is equivalent to smashing a rock in terms of how much suffering it produces: none. But this is irrelevant to the question of moral worth. There are people like Gabby Gingras, who are born with a congenital inability to feel pain. So if you're talking about suffering from a physical standpoint, you would have to say it would be moral to kill Gabby Gingras since she would not suffer. If you mean from a psychological standpoint, you are equally in trouble because now you can justify killing someone in their sleep. They will not suffer psychologically if you kill them. Christen has no leg to stand on here.

At the end of this article, Christen involves a postscript that is even more ad hoc than we've already seen. I'll bring it down point by point:

"Note: Just so we are clear, I am not saying that nothing that cannot consciously enjoy rights should not have them."

He undermines his entire article/argument with this one line alone. How can you possibly defend infants having rights, despite not being able to consciously enjoy them, and not defend the unborn as having those same rights?

"I understand that toddlers cannot enjoy, in a sort of deeply, reflective way, the right to life. However, toddlers can experience pain and fear so it is still reasonable to extend the right to life to them."

Toddlers do not experience pain and fear in the same way that we do. At the toddler stage, you experience pain and fear in the same way that the mouse, in Christen's example above, does. So Christen should argue that it is wrong to torture toddlers but not to kill them, as per the same reasoning regarding his mouse.

"However, we still understand that toddlers do not have the right to vote and we do not mind since they do not yet have the ability to formulate cogent opinions on politics or even really care to vote at all."

And here's where my discussion on different types of rights come in to play. Of course toddlers cannot vote; but sixteen year olds can certainly care to vote and form cogent opinions, yet they must still wait until they're 18. So again, desiring rights is not a necessary condition for having them. The right to vote is a legal right, not a natural right, and is granted once sufficient maturity has been gained (and this is usually arbitrary, as some sixteen-year-olds may be perfectly mature enough to vote and some twenty-five-year-olds may not be). But the right to life is a natural right, which is granted to any human being, regardless of maturity, and was even granted to the unborn prior to 1973.

"This same principle would have us extend rights to other entities that, despite being unable to fully comprehend them, could nevertheless reasonably be said to benefit from them in a meaningful way."

Except for the unborn, he means. The unborn would reasonably benefit from having their right to life protected because they would be able to grow, mature, and flourish the same way that all human beings are meant to.

"This clarification does nothing to get anti-abortionists any closer to having reasonable grounds to extend the right to life to embryos, though, since an embryo lacks even the self-awareness necessary to reasonably consider caring if it lives or dies and thus does not have a meaningful benefit conferred to it if we go out of our way to keep it in existence."

This is just an ad hoc statement from Christen, meant to try and convince us to accept his reasoning despite the fact that it completely undermines his case. I've already explained how his reasoning fails, and there is no reason to re-hash it here.

So this is strike two, with two more articles to go. Christen has not given us any reason to reject these two pro-life arguments.

Responding to Philosophical Arguments Against the Pro-Life Position, Part II [Clinton Wilcox]

Blogger Brandon Christen is presenting a case that secular arguments for the pro-life position fail. This is the second part in this series of five, and you can find the first part here.

For Christen's second part of his series, he responds to what he calls the Argument from Future Deprivation. I am taken to understand that Marquis calls this argument the Future of Value (FoV) argument, so that's how I'll be referring to it. For more information on Marquis' argument, follow this link.

I said in the first part of this series that it's refreshing to find a blogger making a reasoned case against the pro-life position, instead of just resorting to name-calling and fear-mongering. However, he is off to a less than stellar start. In fact, I'm not even sure he properly understands Marquis' argument.

One preliminary point is that Christen takes issue with the fact that Marquis does not argue that murder is wrong in his paper; he merely assumes it, and is just attempting to showcase what it is about murder that is actually wrong. I find this not even to be worth considering and am only bringing it up because the author mentioned it. The topic of the paper was not strictly whether or not murder is wrong, but that abortion is wrong. Giving a full breakdown of the wrongness of murder would have been off topic, so it is not necessary. Additionally, why would he have to argue that murder is wrong? Shouldn't all sensible people believe that murder is wrong? Even so, this does give an account of why murder is wrong. In fact, in his first few paragraphs he does engage in a brief discussion of why murder is wrong, and then applies that to the unborn since the wrongness of murder also applies in the case of an embryo or fetus that is killed. So I fail to see the significance of raising this objection.

Christen does provide a roadmap to his article, which is helpful. His three main objections, none of which actually refute the argument, are as follows: 1) Fetuses are not entities "like you and me" (i.e. they are not persons like we are), therefore they do not have a "future like ours," 2) The loss of your future is not the worst loss you could suffer, and 3) this argument makes hedonism the default value assumption.

Let's take a look at his objections:

1) Fetuses are not entities "like you and me", therefore they do not have a "future like ours."

This point is simply irrelevant. Christen tries to force a personhood argument into the FoV argument, but this is not a personhood argument (despite his insistence to the contrary).

This is not an argument stating that if someone has a future "like mine," then we should not kill them. I am a musician, so in my future are performances, playing at weddings, playing for people's enjoyment, etc. This future is valuable to me. It does not mean it would be okay to kill someone who is an accountant and has pushing books in his future. We need to understand what Don Marquis meant by a "future of value": the loss of all of their future experiences, projects, enjoyments, etc. These are activities that are common to us all. The question of personhood is irrelevant because the mortal category here is not personhood but "having a valuable future." The fetus has a "future like ours", even if she is not presently "a person as I am."

Marquis has also stated that this argument has certain advantages because it avoids the charge of speciesism. He is not saying that humans are valuable because they are human, but that anything that has a similar future to the one all humans enjoy, whether alien races, animals, or anything else, should also be protected.

Christen goes on to say that he hopes no one denies that the fetus is a human biologically, which is good, though his definition of human being is lacking: "a clump of existence that exists as human 'stuff.'" This is just philosophical double-speak. The unborn are whole, individual organisms of the human species. All of us began life as a human zygote. It's true that "person" and "human" are not synonymous, as there are non-human persons (like God and angels, possibly extra-terrestrials, if they exist), but all humans are persons. As I explained in the introduction, Christen's argument that fetuses are not persons is question-begging because he assumes the soul doesn't exist; he doesn't argue for it. Additionally, he assumes personhood is tied into brain-functioning, but again, didn't argue for that, either. He is merely assuming it. Brain functioning is important; my memories, thoughts, emotions, etc., are important to who I am as a person, but it doesn't follow that it's all I am as a person.

His discussion of rocks, trees, plants, etc., just amounts to a false analogy. Being a person is not about the functioning you can perform now, it is about the kind of thing you are. Rocks, trees, etc., are not persons because they never can be persons. Human embryos and fetuses are persons because they are personal entities whose personal properties exist at the inherent level but will gain the present functioning in the future. Christen is just confusing matters by comparing a fetus (which is not now but will be sentient) to a rock (which will never be sentient). He may as well compare someone in a reversible coma or who is taking a nap to a rock. A fetus is more like a person who is asleep than a rock. The only difference is the person who is asleep once performed the functions we think of as personal functions, but this certainly isn't morally relevant in the question of whether or not we can kill you.

So Christen is merely confusing being a person with acting as a person. The fetus does not now have a sense of self, but neither did I last night while I was asleep.

Near the end of this section, Christen tries to shove a personhood argument into the FoV argument like a trapezoidal peg in a line-segmented hole. He argues that the kind of future we have is only one that sapient creatures have -- he says, "only things with some sort of personhood have experiences, and it is the ability to enjoy experience that gives the argument from future denial its weight." This is just a specious argument. Marquis states in his article that one of the reasons the FoV argument works is because it fits with our intuitions on the matter. We would see a child dying as a greater tragedy than an elderly person dying because the child had their whole life ahead of them, whereas the elderly person (presumably) lived a full life already. The loss of future experiences matters, and the ability to currently appreciate those experiences do not. A five year old child who is tragically killed is not able to appreciate the enjoyment of sex, falling in love, or traveling abroad, yet these would be real events in the future this child would have been robbed of. As such, a fetus does not now have to be able to appreciate these experiences in order to suffer a loss by being deprived of it.

2) The loss of one's future does not constitute the worst possible loss you can suffer.

This point is, again, irrelevant because whether or not this is the worst possible loss you can suffer, if this loss is morally relevant in the moral equation, then it doesn't matter whether or not it's the worst, only that it happens. I actually believe there are better arguments against abortion than this one, but I believe this is enough to justify the wrongness of abortion. This is a sufficient condition, not a necessary one, to ground the wrongness of killing you.

Christen even admits that Marquis (marginally) explains that this is not the case, but then goes on to dismiss it as it was only marginal. Apparently Christen believes Marquis was lying about this point. However, I did not get the impression from the article that Marquis was saying this is the worst possible loss you can suffer. If Christen did, fine. But again, it's irrelevant due to the reasons I outlined in the previous paragraph.

It is always tragic when a child will grow up in poverty, or in an abusive household, etc. But this objection does not refute the FoV. Appealing to cases of children in poverty does not negate the argument when it comes to children who will enjoy good futures. Also, we can't say for certain that a child won't enjoy his life when growing up in poverty because people have this stubborn habit of making the best of their situation. Granted, there are more severe cases of starvation overseas in Africa and other places, and that may prove a stronger counterexample to the FoV. Marquis may even concede this point (as he would concede that there are cases in which a future of value will not be had, and then it may be permissible to have the abortion, or it may be wrong for other reasons).

And one final point to this objection: the objection does not work to justify abortion because we simply can't know whether or not someone will enjoy their life if they're in a less than ideal situation. To say that we should abort children in poverty because they won't have a good life is nothing but elitism -- "someone couldn't possibly enjoy their life unless they have it as good as I do."

3) This argument assumes hedonism.

This is another irrelevant point. I believe that Peter Singer is wrong to be a utilitarian. I do not believe his views on abortion are wrong because he is a utilitarian. In fact, this is simply a classic case of the ad hominem fallacy. If you disagree with hedonism, that's fine. But if this argument assumes hedonism, that is not a refutation of the argument.

Second, I don't think this argument assumes hedonism at all. I don't know what ethical position Marquis takes, but this argument is not a hedonistic one. I am not a hedonist. I am a musician. I enjoy doing music and I would never want to stop. That doesn't make me a hedonist, and it does not make me a hedonist to say that playing music will bring me future enjoyment. Hedonism is the thought that pleasure is the primary or most important intrinsic good. I don't believe you can get that from Marquis' article.

So I really think that Christen is trying to make Marquis' argument more convoluted than it really is. The argument really just boils down to this:

1) Murder is wrong because you are robbing me of all my future experiences.
2) Abortion robs a fetus of all of its future experiences.
3) Therefore, abortion is wrong.

Marquis is not denying that there will be hardships in a person's life, or suffering. That's just a part of life. But it's still wrong to rob me of my future experiences.

Christen tries to draw hedonism out from Marquis' concession that someone near the end of life without a FoV may be justified in seeking to be euthanized, but Christen is reading something into it that is simply not there. I don't think Marquis would say that any elderly person who's bored with life is then morally justified in being euthanized. What he's really saying is that there may be cases in which a person is in such severe and constant pain that euthanizing that person may be the right thing to do since they do not have a valuable future ahead of them any longer.

So Christen has given three objections to the FoV argument, none of which succeed in refuting it:

1) Fetuses are not like you and me: this is irrelevant, because the value-giving property is "has a valuable future," not "is a person."

2) This is not the worst possible loss you can suffer: this is irrelevant, because all that needs to be shown is that it's enough to ground the wrongness of killing, even though there may be worse losses you can suffer.

3) This assumes hedonism: this objection just commits the ad hominem fallacy, and besides it's simply not true.

Next, I'll respond to his objections to the argument regarding rights.