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Here is one of the (to my mind) greatest philosophers produced by England in the last century, telling people-especially other philosophers-that sometimes it is better to walk away than to argue. Why? Because a person's conscience can become so corrupt, and lead to such equally corrupt rationalizations, that to engage them in serious argument about those rationalizations is both pointless-being unlikely to have the slightest impact on their thinking-and, what is worse, dangerous-bringing the thinker of good will into serious danger of having his own conscience perverted by the sophistries of the other. |
The Condemnation of the Unrighteous
1:28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God,51 God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what should not be done.52 1:29 They are filled53 with every kind of unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, malice. They are rife with54 envy, murder, strife, deceit, hostility. They are gossips, 1:30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, contrivers of all sorts of evil, disobedient to parents, 1:31 senseless, covenant-breakers,55 heartless, ruthless. 1:32 Although they fully know56 God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die,57 they not only do them but also approve of those who practice them.58
3:1 But understand this, that in the last days difficult1 times will come. 3:2 For people2 will be lovers of themselves,3 lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3:3 unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, savage, opposed to what is good, 3:4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, loving pleasure rather than loving God. 3:5 They will maintain the outward appearance4 of religion but will have repudiated its power. So avoid people like these.
The unstated premise of those who have adopted this strategy is that the Justices do not understand the nature of abortion, and that if they are forced to confront the scientific and medical facts about the conception and development of the unborn child, they will be compelled to reconsider Roe v. Wade and hold that the unborn child is a constitutional person. To speak in spiritual terms, the critics assume that the problem lies in the intellect rather than the will. That premise is mistaken. Every member of the Court understands what an abortion is. If there was any doubt about this before, the Court's decision in Stenberg v. Carhart two years ago, striking down Nebraska's partial-birth abortion law, should have laid that doubt to rest. The majority opinion's cold and clinical description of various abortion methods betrays no ignorance of the nature of abortion. The Court understands that the purpose and effect of an abortion is to kill an unborn (and, in some instances, a partially born) child. Whatever reservations some members of the Carhart majority may have about the morality of abortion in general or the partial-birth technique in particular, those reservations have not affected their collective judgment that women need abortion to be legal in order for them to be full and equal members of American society. It is that judgment, and not any misunderstanding of what happens in an abortion, that is the source of our present predicament, as even a casual perusal of the Court's opinion in Casey reaffirming Roe v. Wade would disclose. FIRST THINGS November 2002
If he thinks that "most" pro-lifers are opposed to contraception, then he's not living in the same reality as the rest of us, and his observations pertaining to the reality in which he resides have no bearing on this one.
Brilliant.
It started back in the Garden of Eden and has been gaining momentum ever since. The only cure is Christ.
Red herring. I respect his religious views on abortion, they are completely healthy. But I don't share them.