Posted on 08/27/2007 3:52:53 PM PDT by wagglebee
LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide.
If being human is not what conveys moral worth, then what does? The answer to this question varies. But, as we shall see, the increased embrace of human unexceptionalism cuts across a wide array of ideologies.
Let's first look at secular bioethics, the philosophy of health care and public policy taught in our most elite universities.
The predominating view in bioethics is that being human is not what gives one value, but rather, possessing sufficient capacities to be considered a "person." Known as "personhood theory," believers argue that a being—whether human, animal, machine, or extraterrestrial—all must be measured by the same criteria, and each must earn the highest value by possessing minimal cognitive capacities, such as being "self aware over time." This means that there is such a thing in bioethics as the so-called "human non person," human beings who have not yet attained personhood—such as embryos, fetuses, and newborn infants—and those who lose it due to injury or illness that significantly impairs cognitive capacity.
It isn't safe to be a non person. Non persons, in this belief, do not possess the intrinsic right to life or bodily integrity. Thus some bioethicists argue for the moral righteousness of infanticide, cloned fetal farming, and the right to harvest organs from those diagnosed in persistent vegetative states.
Philosophical materialists also believe that being human alone is insufficient to convey moral value. In this view, since all life evolved out of the same primordial ooze, and because humans share genes with other life forms, species distinctions are fictional. This means, as novelist and journalist John Darnton put it in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2005, "We are all of us, dogs and barnacles, pigeons and crabgrass, the same in the eyes of nature, equally remarkable and equally dispensable."
The animal rights/liberation movement also seeks to knock us off the pedestal in the cause of elevating animals to equal moral worth with people. Thus, many liberationists urge that we base a being's value on, "painience," that is, the capacity to experience pain. Since a cow feels pain as well as a human, bovines are people too, and hence, ranching cattle is as evil as slavery.
Radical environmentalists and deep ecologists go even farther, claiming not only that human beings are not exceptional, but moreover, that we are a "vermin species" afflicting the living planet Gaia. Not only that, but the answer to the human infection is radical depopulation. Some believe it can be done by most of us not having children. Others yearn for a worldwide pandemic of Ebola or some other dread disease. However it is to be done—the dark implications are obvious.
Then there are the fanatical nihilists who are attracted to death and existential nothingness like metal to a magnet. Take for example the vile Church of Euthanasia, the WEB site of which has a video of the 9/11 attack with the words, "I like to see the plane coming in." The "four pillars" dogma of the C of E? "Suicide, abortion, cannibalism, and sodomy."
It should now be clear to everyone that very powerful intellectual and cultural forces are totally dedicated to convincing us that we really aren't all that important. Those who think otherwise had better answer the call to defend the intellectual ramparts. Much as at stake. Demolishing our self perception as a uniquely valuable species would have very grave consequences. As the philosopher Mortimer Adler wrote many years ago in The Difference of Man and the Difference it Makes, if we dismantle the unique moral status accorded to human beings, universal human rights become impossible to sustain philosophically:
Those who now oppose injurious discrimination on the moral ground that all human beings, being equal in their humanity, should be treated equally in all those respects that concern their common humanity, would have no solid basis in fact to support their normative principle. A social and political ideal that has operated with revolutionary force in human history would be validly dismissed as a hollow illusion that should become defunct…Why, then, should not groups of superior men be able to justify their enslavement, exploitation, or even genocide of inferior human groups, on factual and moral grounds akin to those that we now rely on to justify our treatment of the animals we harness as beasts of burden, that we butcher for food and clothing, or that we destroy as disease-bearing pests or as dangerous predators?
Why indeed? "Liberating" society from human exceptionalism will not "save the planet" nor liberate man from the supposed oppression of superstitious faith. Rather, it would open the door wide to vicious tyranny.
And this is where our society is headed based on a societal reluctance to believe in the sanctity of ALL life.
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If someone is brain dead, the person is dead, period.
This fact can be hard to accept, particularly when a patient might look very much alive to family members. Brain dead people often still have a heartbeat, and their chests may rise and fall with the help of a ventilator, sometimes giving hope to grieving families that the person may suddenly wake up.
This false hope, some experts believe, prevents people from donating organs. People fear that their organs, or those of their loved ones, might be taken before they’re actually dead. Some suspect a doctor might “pull the plug” prematurely to harvest their organs.
“It comes up all the time,” said Von Roebuck, spokesman for the California Transplant Donor Network. “It’s a dire myth. One must remember that if you’re in a critical situation, every effort is going to be made to save your life whether you’re a donor or not.”
This myth and others, such as the misconception that many religions are against donation, contribute to a deficit of about 75,000 organs in the United States. About 6,000 of the patients who wait for these organs die every year.
“The utility of using dead bodies is growing, as is the tragedy of not using them,” said Dr. Stuart Youngner, director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Case Western University.
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2001/04/42847
I don't think anyone is disputing this, but this isn't what the editorial is about.
Nahh. Human beings have the absolute right to live off of the earnings of their neighbor, to inject, inhale or ingest any substance that will give them momentary gratification; to have sex with anyone or anything that a random impulse commands; to be absolutely protected from any transitory discomfort, arduous labor, hardship, inconvenience, or unhappy or unpleasant sensation; and to live forever disease free. But the right just to LIVE? Now you’re being silly. /sarc
I do not believe in animal cruelty; however, the left has gone way over the top with “animal rights.” The FACT remains than an animal does not have a soul, human beings do.
That’s really how simple the whole thing is... To us right wing religious fanatics. Sadly for many it gets complex... which reminds me of a favorite quote:
“Moral issues are always terribly complex, for someone without principles.” G.K. Chesterton
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“Moral issues are always terribly complex, for someone without principles.” G.K. Chesterton
The leftists don't like anything that doesn't contain "nuances." Just last night, one of the culture of death FRiberals couldn't even answer a yes or no question about whether they supported euthanasia.
As an Adlerian therapist, I see the following as the key to being human and to life. This is a long article but it is nicely broken into short segments describing “social interest”.
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/HStein/qu-comm.htm
google “anti social behavior” for the antithesis of social interest.
Wesley J. Smith: Human Beings Desrve the Right to Life Because They Are Human Beings...
Unless they are on Death Row for brutally violent crimes. Then you have more right to life than an unborn child.
Just adding the liberal contradictions.
;-)
The condemned, murderous, raping pieces of sh*t on death row have more rights than Terri Schiavo did and she was never accused of anything.
I thought this article was about getting rid of the useless eaters. Then, through State managed selective breeding programs, we shall become Ubermench!
/SARC
They are following in the footsteps of Hitler and Stalin.
Terri Shiavo was accused.
She was accused of being PVS.
By her husband.
After he won a huge settlement that he swore would be used to pay for her care and rehabilitation.
Around the same time he had her jewelry melted down to make a ring for himself.
And had her cat put to sleep.
And had two children with another woman whom he was living with.
Terri Schiavo was accused, sentenced to death and slowly murdered with starvation and dehydration by those too cowardly to kill her mercifully with a knife across the throat.
But that’s just my take on the whole situation. Any one wanting to flame me for my opinion is welcome to write their comments on a piece of paper and flush it down the can. Rude insults will get the same attention there as here (ignored and unanswered).
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