A Response to Richard Dawkins [Clinton Wilcox]

This article will be a continuation of my previous article, which you can read here. Richard Dawkins recently sent a barbaric tweet regarding his belief that it would be immoral not to abort an unborn child with Down's syndrome. He recently wrote an article to clarify his position, which you can read here. His article is entitled Abortion and Down Syndrome: An Apology for Letting Slip the Dogs of Twitterwar."

In this article, Dawkins is able to go into more detail about his position. Twitter, with its 140 character limit, is not conducive to good, in-depth dialogue. It's really not beneficial to try to engage in any meaningful conversations via that particular social medium. This is just the latest in a long list of examples that prove as much. However, in the article Dawkins repeats the fact that most mothers who are pregnant with children with Down's syndrome abort and most doctors recommend it. This may be true, but it proves nothing. If abortion is immoral, then it makes no difference whether most people do it or most experts recommend it.

Dawkins expanded his thoughts on the matter, which you can find in the linked article. His thoughts on the matter are misguided, however. He asserts that given a free choice of having an early abortion or deliberately bringing a Down child into the world, the moral and sensible choice would be to abort. But why is this? How can you possibly make this argument and not draw out the logical implications that we should kill children with Down's syndrome who are already in the world because it would be better to be dead than to have Down's syndrome? Dawkins' position is ultimately nonsensical because there is already a Down's child "in the world." She is in her mother's womb, and her mother's womb is in the world. Dawkins is arguing that this child, who obviously exists, doesn't exist until the magical moment of birth, and then for some reason it should be considered too late to do anything about the child with Down's syndrome.

Dawkins says that his morality is based on a desire to increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering, but this doesn't seem to reflect reality. Should we go to hospitals and kill all the suffering people in the hospitals? I would guess that Dawkins would say no. But why? If we have a moral obligation to reduce suffering, then we should kill all suffering people (assuming we can't end their suffering through medication and surgery). If Dawkins would say that these people should be given the choice, then his position fails because these children with Down's syndrome are not given a chance at life. And while Dawkins may be concerned about what the parents want, children with Down's rarely, if ever, want to die because of it. In fact, children with Down's syndrome are some of the happiest children you'll ever meet. Why should we let the parents play God and kill them just because the child would be an inconvenience to them?

Dawkins ends that portion with the slogan of moral relativism, "I would never dream of trying to impose my views on you or anyone else." Yet this is the same person who says that atheists should ridicule religious people "out of their faith." His claim is hollow. Plus, I think we are entirely justified in trying to force our views on others if we're trying to save lives. Should we prevent parents from abusing their born children, or should we allow them to, saying that we should not impose our views on them?

Responding briefly to Dawkins' five points:

1. The "prevailing medical opinion" is meaningless when it comes to ethical issues. The prevailing medical opinion in Nazi, Germany was that the Jews were subhuman and should be exterminated. If prevailing medical opinion calls for something immoral, it behooves us to oppose it.

2. I already responded to his misguided assertion that we should increase happiness and reduce suffering. In the tweet, he was not saying what he "personally would do." He said "it would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice." In other words, people of virtuous character would not allow their unborn child with Down's syndrome to live. This is heartless and cruel, not worthy of consideration in the life of virtue.

3. We do, indeed, have to be careful with the Holocaust analogy. The analogy being drawn is that "majority rule" does not excuse unethical behavior. You must prove that abortion is not immoral before saying that we should listen to the majority opinion.

4. Dawkins seemed to misunderstand this point. His argument actually is that we should not bring someone with Down's syndrome into the world. I agree that if you're going to make a "designer baby" (which is unethical in itself), then it would be wrong to give them Down's syndrome. But what Dawkins is talking about is killing a child already in existence with Down's syndrome. If he disagrees and tries to argue that there is no child "in existence" yet, then he is advocating eugenics, on par with someone saying that "we should not give anyone Down's syndrome," so we should kill this fetus and try again for a healthy one.

5. He asserts there is a fallacy. "The Great Beethoven Fallacy," he calls it (and yes, I have read The God Delusion -- his points on abortion really are not worth responding to). There is no fundamental difference between "we should abort this fetus now" and "you should have been aborted long ago." If you're saying that Down's syndrome fetuses should be aborted, you are actually saying "you should have been aborted." There is, however, a difference between "we should kill you now" and "we should abort this child before they are born." Some philosophers, like David Benatar, make a distinction between bringing someone into being and taking someone out of existence. Nevertheless, through all stages of pregnancy, there is a human being there. Dawkins has not made a case that one exists only when "personhood" is established. Dawkins hasn't even told us when personhood should be established. So his thoughts on the matter should be rejected as nonsensical, since you can't justify an action by treating someone who exists as if they don't.

Richard Dawkins tried for some damage control with this article, and I don't believe he has succeeded. He didn't come off quite as abrasive, but he is still espousing a barbaric position, one he doesn't seem to understand is barbaric. I have heard that scientists are closer to curing Down's syndrome, and that is great. But Down's syndrome is not a death sentence, and it does not mean a life of misery.

Richard Dawkins Has Done it Again [Clinton Wilcox]

Richard Dawkins is no stranger to controversy. From going on a tirade regarding a woman who felt uncomfortable in a situation on an elevator at an atheist conference, to stating that mild pedophilia is not morally blameworth, Richard Dawkins has consistently espoused problematic ideas. His latest is a statement regarding people with Down's syndrome, in which he stated that most women with a Down's syndrome baby do abort (which is true), but that it would be immoral to bring a child with Down's syndrome into the world if you have a choice. He later defended himself saying that he will not apologize for approaching moral philospohic [sic] questions in a logical way.

Right away this is problematic. Richard Dawkins is no friend of logic. His philosophically inept book The God Delusion makes atheist philosopher Michael Ruse ashamed to be an atheist. He's a good biologist but he is clearly out of his element when trying to do philosophy. However, Dawkins did not present a logical case for his position; quite the opposite. It's an obvious fallacy to claim that just because the majority of women abort their children with Down's syndrome means that it is right to do so. However, he is correct that the pro-choice positional logically leads to giving women the freedom to abort a child with Down's syndrome, and while you may find it detestable, it's their right (under a pro-choice paradigm). However, it does not follow from that that a woman is immoral for bringing a child with Down's syndrome into the world. So that makes his second logical error.

Additionally, Dawkins has admitted that he believes there is no such thing as right or wrong. In his book River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (Basic Books, 1995, p.133), he says "The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference." So considering Dawkins' belief about morality, he has no grounds on which to say that a woman who brings a child into the world is doing something immoral. C.S. Lewis was right when he said that no one can really live as a moral relativist (or a moral nihilist).

His statements regarding people with Down's syndrome were simply barbaric. Having Down's syndrome will present certain challenges for a child in their life, but certainly not enough to justify killing them before they are born. It's not even among the worst maladies that can inflict a person. And children with Down's syndrome are some of the sweetest children you'll ever meet, with a wonderful outlook on life. It's arrogant presumption on Dawkins' part to assume that someone would rather die than to live as "perfect" a life as he apparently does. I doubt he knows anyone with Down's syndrome.

The reality is if you argue that we should abort someone before they are born to prevent them from being in a bad situation, this is functionally no different from saying that we should kill people who are in that bad situation since they would be better off dead (but our own standards). Dawkins seems to believe that while we should abort an unborn child with Down's syndrome, but that we should not tell people with Down's syndrome that they should have been aborted before they live. But if having Down's syndrome is so bad that it would justify us killing them before they are born, it seems inconsistent to me to claim that we should leave them alive now.

Dawkins has written an article to defend his comments on Twitter. I will take a look at those in my next article as I believe it is worth responding to.