I was watching a video today by Hemant Mehta, who goes by the moniker "Friendly Atheist" on his blog. The gist of his video is whether or not one can be pro-life and atheist. I've heard many atheists claim that one can't be pro-life and be an atheist, and when Kristine Kruszelnicki of Pro-Life Humanists wrote an article for Mehta's blog last month, atheists went bananas in the comments section, offended at the very idea one could be an atheist and pro-life. How do atheists expect me to believe that atheism isn't a religion or a belief system if they keep adding rules for atheism? I thought the only thing one needed to be an atheist was to not believe in God or gods.
It's not my intention to respond to all of Mehta's video, but to respond to one key point. He mentions that he doesn't care if an atheist is pro-life as long as they don't act on their convictions. He says it's okay if you try to dissuade other people, but don't vote for legislation that would restrict abortion. There's something very wrong with that. He's essentially saying that if you believe children are being slaughtered in our country, don't do anything to actually try to end the slaughter.
He made a comparison to animal rights. But if someone claims to believe that animals deserve rights and that it's wrong to kill them, but doesn't actively try and stop the killing, I'll tell them point blank "I don't believe you." If you really think it's murder then you would do something to try and stop the killing. If someone claims to be pro-life, if they claim to believe that abortion kills an innocent human child but don't even lift a finger to help stop the killing, how on earth can I take them seriously?
Being pro-life requires action. If you truly believe that the unborn are innocent human children, since they are being legally and brutally slaughtered in our country, we must do something to end the slaughter of these children. And as far as I'm concerned, all are welcome in the pro-life movement, whether or not we agree on religious or metaphysical views.
In my life I met a great variety of pro-lifers. I've yet to meet one who was truly both pro-life and atheist. I've met some who claim to be, but when you push them on their views, you find out they're either not really atheist, or not really pro-life. I hear you saying, "Oh they exist! I know so-and-so or here's this web site for them". Even if you do claim pro-life atheists exist, you have to concede that they are a very small minority in atheism. Why is this?
ReplyDeleteTo be pro-life, you have to have some sort of belief that pregnancy is a gift from God, and is healthy and normal for a woman. Our "pro-choice" opponents simply do not share this belief. We can't simply keep pretending that the abortion-movement hasn't gone hand-in-hand with feminism and secularism.
I do know pro-life atheists exist, and I can point you to several websites for them. You can't just assert they don't exist, they definitely do, and ignoring them doesn't do anybody any good. I think it's true that atheism cannot ultimately ground the existence of morality or the laws of logic, but this is irrelevant because one can use a tool without knowing where that tool came from. Pro-life atheists *are* a minority because atheists seem to have this idea that one cannot be a pro-life atheist, but this is inconsistent if they want to believe that atheism also is not a religion. They may be a minority among the atheist community, but most atheists now would not agree with slavery. If abortion were made illegal again, it's entirely possible that pro-life would become the majority opinion among atheists.
DeleteThere is only one way that abortion will ever become illegal again: A complete counter-revolution to feminism of the 1960s. (Or secondly, birth control technology becomes so advanced as to make abortion moot.) Without addressing feminism, abortion will remain the law of the land, and any pro-life victories will be limited to only minor restrictions and regulations of abortions, prohibiting only the extreme cases.
DeleteWomen are not barefoot and pregnant in Ireland. It outranks the U.S. and most of Europe in the World Economic Forum Gender Gap Index. It also had a female president. Yet Ireland managed to stay abortion-free for three decades.
DeleteIf Hemant is also comfortable with a situation in which someone had a gun pointed at him ready to pull the trigger and a cop walks by and doesn't act on the conviction that murder is wrong - because you don't get moral imperatives in an atheistic worldview - then he would be consistent.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think the way some people responded to Kristine's essay reflects very poorly on atheists. Being an atheist should not require adhering to any belief system beyond simply not believing in God.
ReplyDeleteAre you familiar with the "Atheism Plus" movement? I think that is where a lot of these efforts to push an entire social agenda with atheism come from.
I'm not familiar with Atheism Plus, but it sounds like they might fall under what is often referred to as New Atheism.
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