Q&A: What Do You Say to the "Keep Your Religion to Yourself!" Objection? (Jay Watts)

This past weekend I was speaking to a group at Northwestern University from Students for Life of Illinois as part of that organization’s annual summit. I made the case for life appealing to the three-step strategy that I generally outline:

1)   Simplify the issue by focusing on the single most important question concerning the right or wrong of abortion, what are the unborn?

2)   Argue our case using science and philosophy. The science of embryology tells us that from the moment of fertilization the unborn are a whole, distinct, and living human organism. Philosophy tells us that there is no essential difference from the embryo or fetus that we once were and the more mature human we are today. Differences of size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependence do not do sufficient philosophical work to explain why it was ok to kill us then, indeed it was a Constitutionally protected right, but that if someone did the same thing to us at this stage in our life it would be the worst moral offense one human being could commit against another human being.

3)  Argue well, in a way that aims to win people with good arguments and not merely to beat people down with information.

During Q&A, a young woman asked the following question: What do you do when someone says this all just your religious view and shouldn’t be pushed onto others that do not share your religion?

My answer:

As I understand that objection, it claims that the belief that all human beings share a common intrinsic dignity by virtue of what we and are owed basic duties and obligations, not the least of which is to refrain from killing them, is by its nature a religious argument. My response has three parts.

First, it isn’t clear that this is true. None of the arguments that I provided are religious by nature. There are atheists that would reject the suggestion that objective moral values require a theistic worldview. Sam Harris appeals to objective morality when he condemns the practice of female genital mutilation in certain Muslim cultures. He isn’t arguing that those cultures violate a western cultural norm, but that the practice itself is objectively wrong for all cultures. Atheists like Sam Harris and Michael Martin have worked hard to ground objective moral values in a non-theistic worldview precisely because they acknowledge the existence of those values. Whether I believe that they can succeed in doing so is irrelevant to this point. It can be accepted that an appeal to objective morality is not religious by its nature.

This leads me to my second point; I never mentioned my faith or personal beliefs as part of my argument. It is true that I am passionately and unapologetically Christian and that my faith informs every area of my life. So what? I never said abortion is wrong because God said so. People objecting to our case need to address the science and philosophy, not my faith. This argument commits either the Genetic Fallacy (the pro-life argument was birthed out of religious communities) or amounts to a plain old Ad Hominem attack (Jay is religious therefore he is wrong). Objectors have a responsibility to interact with the arguments presented regardless of who is presenting them or what motivation I may have for putting forth the arguments.

Dr. Condic presented the case for the identification of early human life as a new independent organism from fertilization. (Maureen Condic was also at this event. See her article here). I presented the philosophical case that the best explanation of our experience of a shared universal human dignity that transcends cultures and subjective interests is that our dignity and value are grounded in our humanity. Replying with, “Yeah, but religion..” hardly addresses either of those arguments. Put them back on the hot seat and make them answer the question, “What are the unborn?”

Finally, why do they get to decide without argument what considerations are allowed into the marketplace of ideas? Who empowered them to declare that secular humanist reasons and materialistic naturalistic reasons can be publically advocated, but so-called religious reasons cannot? I have the right to advocate for my beliefs and try to convince others that my views offer the best explanations and solutions to the questions we experience in our world. If they want to argue that their worldview is superior then they need to make that case, but they don’t have the right to make it in a vacuum where other competing worldviews have been shut out of consideration. 

In truth, they are inconsistent in their objection to religious reasons informing advocacy. Where is the handwringing when Bono dedicates his considerable influence to acquiring help for people in Africa suffering from Aids and poverty? He clearly states that his desire to help is born out of his Christian faith, and yet he is applauded for those efforts. When HBO’s documentary program VICE ran a story about George W. Bush committing U.S. aid to help Bono establish programs that transformed the manner that some African countries fought Aids, no one cried foul when Bush stated his and Bono’s shared Christian values were his motivation for action. It is only when we stand up against one of the sacred pets of the progressive culture like abortion that they suddenly demand a litmus test for having a public voice on issues.

In a nutshell, I will talk about what I want, when I want, wherever I want, and they better come with more than “Shut up because you are religious!” if they wish to stop me. They had better be ready to make their case, because I won’t be deterred from making ours.

(Note: This is the answer as I gave it. It was heavily informed and influenced by the works of Hadley Arkes, Robert George, Greg Koukl, and Scott Klusendorf. All credit where credit is due.)

Q & A: What Bad Arguments Do You Hear the Most? [Jay Watts]

*The following is a duplication of a discussion I had after receiving a question through personal email/message. I thought it might be worth sharing and mildly edited it for posting. The dialogues are reflective of actual conversations that I have had and relate my personal experience talking to people about this issue over the years.*

Question: In terms of arguments appealing to pity, ad hominem and so forth. Which would you say is the most popular you have heard, and how do you normally respond?

Answer: Hey _______, I would say that you hear them all about as often as you talk to someone about important moral issues. What I mean by that is that most people don't have a clearly thought out position on moral issues, especially abortion. Every once in a while I talk to someone with a sophisticated defense of the pro-choice position, but that isn't the norm. Most people that I talk to generally have a point of view on which they haven't reflected too deeply. When that point of view is challenged, they can be initially more interested in beating back the challenge than examining the basis of their beliefs. When it comes to beating back a challenge, it seems that any stick will do.

They may start with presupposing the truth of their position:

Objector: Abortion must remain legal to protect privacy rights.

Me: But would you think that your neighbor must be free to abuse his 2 year old daughter in the privacy of his home? If not, then why not?

Obj: Of course not! My neighbor's child is a living human being that should be protected from abuse.

Me: So if the unborn are human in the same way, then privacy is not a justification for their abuse either. You assumed that they were not in your appeal to privacy, but that is exactly what you have the burden to demonstrate through argument.

Then they may move to ad hominem:

Obj: Well you shouldn't be allowed to talk about this anyway. You are a man and can't ever get pregnant. (or as I heard at one university, my arguments are white and Western.)

Me: I would like to respectfully point out that I argued through the science of embryology that the unborn are an independent human organism from fertilization and argued from philosophy that all humans share a common substantial nature that carries with it intrinsic value. Neither of those points is impacted by my gender, race, or geographical location. Arguments are right or wrong, valid or invalid, supported by evidence or refutable, but they are not male or female, caucasian or other, or subject to defeat by the compass rose. They have no gender or race. When you appeal to those things you are attacking me, not the arguments I offered in support of my beliefs and that is universally understood to be a fallacy, a mistake in reasoning. We have enjoyed a respectful conversation to this point, so please let's continue to try and focus on the issues and not me.

Then often I get the appeal to misery/begging the question combo:

Obj: Well if we make abortion illegal then women will die in dangerous back alley abortions again. It must remain safe and legal.

Resp: First of all, for whom is the abortion safe? Every successful abortion necessarily destroys a nascent human life. When we ignore their lives in this discussion we make the same mistake you made with the privacy issue. If women were determined through desperation to take action that resulted in the deaths of two year-old children it would be considered terribly wrong to protect those women as they did so. Even if we recognized they were legitimately troubled and driven through understandable stress, we couldn't make it safer to kill two year-olds and call ourselves a moral society. The burden is still on you to demonstrate that the unborn are different from you, me, or two year-olds in some morally relevant way. If they are valuable human life, you are arguing that we ought to protect a few from the tragic consequences of their wrong actions at the expense of more than a million other human lives a year in the United States alone.

Now, let's look at the evidence of the numbers of women that died every year from unsafe abortion prior to 1973. Any single death is inarguably a tragedy, but you will find that the numbers were wildly exaggerated to create a powerful argument from misery and by-pass ever having to consider, as a culture, the truth of what was being asked for in a right to abort our unborn children. (See here and here and here)

The best defenses are a strong familiarity with the arguments and the ability to patiently narrate the conversation. Point out the mistakes our objectors are making in an effort to clear their thinking; not to merely prove that you are right. They will marshall their every resource to beat back a challenge, and the overwhelming majority of those resources may be nonsense. Help them to see that. Our goal is to unsettle them in their views, not necessarily to win the moment. My experience is that if you are willing to help clear out the weeds and weather the initial storm most people can be reasonable and respectful in this discussion.

Take a hostile person and move them to the modest position of seeing our arguments as more reasonable than they previously thought. Take a neutral person and move them toward a position that recognizes the equal value of all human life including the lives of the unborn. Take a person who shares your beliefs but lacks any accompanying action and inspire them to do something. Take the advocate beaten down by years of abuse and perceived lack of impact and reenergize them and equip them to carry on.

The Argument from Overpopulation - Blog Q&A [Daniel]

This is the first of a regular feature on the LTI blog where we will  respond to questions asked on our LTI Facebook page. If you have a question you would like to ask please leave a comment in the thread there and we will pick one regularly to respond to on here. This week’s question was about overpopulation as a justification for abortion.

The Argument from Overpopulation

  In the western world it's especially common to hear that the overpopulation of the world provides justification for abortion. After-all if we can’t adequately live in the world as it is right now why should we burden the world with even more human beings?


 Before I explore this argument in any depth it’s important to address the assumption that the world is in fact overpopulated. For a further exploration into the claim that the world is already vastly overpopulated Danny Dorling’s book Population 10 Billion is worth investing in to deal with a number of misunderstandings and falsehoods in this area. It's not at all clear that the world is in fact overpopulated and there remains debate amongst the scientific community to when or if this will happen. However, what is clear is that the failure of countries and individuals to take responsibility for how they live and how they use the world’s resources of which they are meant to be stewards of will continue to take its toll. Christians must take responsibility for how they live as good stewards and acknowledge that how they choose to live can and does affect other people. The world’s population will continue to increase but is abortion a morally permissible way of solving it?

  I think it would be fair to describe this argument as eugenic; it’s the idea that certain people within our society should be encouraged to limit how many children they should have (or whether they should have any children at all). Abortion therefore functions as a means of population control. This argument is primarily directed at those in poverty it essentially encourages the poor to procure abortions so that what space is left can be used by those with more desirable traits, and who aren’t poor. So rather than responding to the factors that lead to poverty or investment in the better use of our resources it is argued that abortion should be encouraged to help the rest of us. It should be pointed out however that if this is ‘solving’ the problem of overpopulation then it is only a euphemism for eliminating those who are seen as the problem. This approach is the moral equivalent of throwing a grenade at a mouse.

  The argument leaves us with what really appears to be a false dilemma; either abortion or overpopulation that results in global poverty. It may be true that many people’s preferred standard of living could be affected by an increasing population but selfish motives for a particular standard of living alone do not justify abortion. Life is far more than the sum of how many nice cars one has or how many nice restaurants one can frequent. To put one's pleasure above human life is morally impermissible. However, this is the one consistency with all arguments for abortion; they are always for the benefit of someone other than the preborn.

  This false dilemma also leads to a number of other morally problematic conclusions. For instance if an infant, disabled, irreversibly sick, or elderly human being is a burden in an already allegedly overpopulated world shouldn’t killing them also be justified? From a consequentialist view they cannot yet or never will contribute to society in any materially meaningful way which means they are currently burdens taking rather than giving. From this perspective if the world were in fact overpopulated their killing should also be justified on the basis of its better consequences for those who can contribute. It could be argued that the infant will one day contribute in a material sense but the same argument would work for the preborn so the advocate of an already overpopulated world cannot accept this. This leaves the advocate of the argument from overpopulation in a moral quandary, because most of those who advocate this argument rightly don’t support the killing of infants, disabled, irreversibly sick or elderly human beings. Yet their view supports the logic in for it; unless, that is, they are assuming something about preborn human beings. This exposes the question begging nature of the whole argument, there is a hidden assumption that there is something about preborn human beings that provides moral justification for their killing.

  Like all arguments in support of abortion the argument hinges on the moral status of the preborn. If the preborn aren’t fully human and the subject of personal rights, especially the right not to be intentionally killed for the benefit of another, killing them should be permissible if the preborn are not of sufficient moral value. In this instance the argument must be supported by a defence of the assumption that there is a morally relevant difference between preborn human beings and those that have been born before it can be accepted.

  If the person who uses this argument cannot do so then they must explain why the argument from overpopulation does not also equally support the killing of infants, disabled, irreversibly sick or the elderly if resources are so scant in this overpopulated world. As Francis Beckwith has said ‘if the unborn are fully human, then this is also a good argument for infanticide and the killing of all humans we find to be financially burdensome or emotionally taxing.’.

In summary the problems with the argument for abortion from overpopulation are;

1. Current assumptions on overpopulation are unfounded or unproven.
2. It promotes a eugenic view of human life.
3. It singles out families in poverty.
4. It equates ‘solving’ the problem of overpopulation with eliminating the most vulnerable human beings in our society.
5. It promotes a false dilemma by suggesting that we must choose between overpopulation and abortion.
6. It promotes a standard of living above human life.
7. It suggests that the poor must make space for the rich.
8. If followed to its logical conclusions it suggests that the killing of infants, disabled, irreversibly sick and the elderly can be justified.
9. Killing those who cannot or won’t contribute to an overpopulated society could be morally permissible.
10. The argument is guilty of begging the question by making an assumption about preborn human beings that makes killing them morally permissible.
11. The whole argument hinges on whether the preborn are fully human beings and a subject of rights, it assumes not without any justification.
12. The questioner must explain why their argument does not equally apply to infants, disabled, irreversibly sick and the elderly.
13. It leads to absurd moral conclusions.
14. Even if true it does not support the pro-choice conclusion that abortion is a fundamental right that can be exercised for any reason throughout pregnancy.

DJR