Posted on 08/21/2014 11:35:46 AM PDT by Heartlander
First, there was James Watson who came out as a eugenicist and also remarked about how "some anti-Semitism is justified" (he later apologized). Now Richard Dawkins has let out his own inner bigot by claiming that women have an ethical duty to abort Down babies. From the Telegraph story:
Richard Dawkins, the atheist writer, has claimed it is "immoral" to allow unborn babies with Down's syndrome to live. The Oxford professor posted a message on Twitter saying would-be parents who learn their child has the condition have an ethical responsibility to "abort it and try again"...
He claimed that the important question in the abortion debate is not "is it 'human'?" but "can it suffer?" and insisted that people have no right to object to abortion if they eat meat.
The last feeble defense is a non sequitur. He wants Down babies aborted because they are disabled, not because they can't suffer -- a questionable premise -- while late-term fetuses.
Dawkins's bigotry goes beyond the question of whether women should have a right to decide to abort a Down fetus. It is a claim that they are morally required to do so.
I miss our missing Down brothers and sisters. They are some of the most beautiful people on the planet. If "all you need is love," they have it in quantities to spare. It is a lamentable tragedy that so many are killed while gestating. We are all the poorer for it.
Atheists insist that they don't have to believe in God to be moral. I agree. But they do have to believe in human exceptionalism.
Otherwise, we end up dividing humanity between the fit and the unfit -- which essentially is why Dawkins pushes eugenic abortion as a moral obligation.
Photo source: Rich Johnson/Flickr.
Cross-posted at Human Exceptionalism.
If you followed Dawkins twitter, the world’s greatest antireligious crusader inadvertently crossed the religion of radical feminism recently and promptly got his rump handed to him. He didn’t exactly apologize but stopped fighting and posted a whimpering conciliatory tweet.
By this logic .. that you should abort a child that would be born with a crippling condition because it would suffer.. then you should also mercy kill some one that become crippled...
So good bye Stephen Hawkings...
In fact we will reach a point when a fetal dna test will spot dna flaws before we are born so we can be sure no more Stephen Hawking’s are born.
“Atheists insist that they don’t have to believe in God to be moral. I agree”
I disagree....a belief in a transcendent God helps anchor one’s inner man within a fixed constellation of moral values. Atheism provides no such anchor and one’s morals tend to drift relative with the situation!
If she had known he was going to be a sociopath ...
An atheist lecturing on morality. Thanks but no thanks.
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?
They have created their own religion and dogma kind of like the Communists did (little red book anybody). As if they could do better than the major religions since the Axial Age, excepting Islam. They are closer to Islam than any of the others as they will sacrifice unwanted (by them) human life to their principles.
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