Free Republic

Eugenic Darwinism by: Wendy Cook, June 04, 2007 Charles Darwin is partly to blame for eugenics, according to Discovery Institute senior fellow John West. Merriam-Webster’s defines eugenics as “a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed.” Darwin said that because of our sense of compassion we couldn’t simply follow the dictates of reason and get rid of the unfit, “but he certainly provided the logical basis for why we should do so and later the eugenicists quoted this passage and they weren’t quoting it out of context,...

Here are some outrageous and racist comments by environmentalists. These are compiled and documented in my book Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health. John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club: Muir said American Indians are “mostly ugly, and some of them altogether hideous.” They “seemed to have no right place in the landscape,” he continued. Muir is still honored without qualification on the Sierra Club web site, which proclaims, “John Muir is as relevant today as he was over 100 years ago.” Paul Ehrlich, influential “overpopulation” guru and professor of population studies at Stanford University: In his best-selling book,...

Every generation has a few atheists who seem eager to tell the world how much smarter they are than everybody else.  The fact that such individuals still exist, and that they are still producing popular tracts in defense of their disbelief, is no surprise.  Nevertheless, because ideas have consequences, one cannot ignore the recent push by big-name skeptics to persuade Americans that there is no God and that we should therefore adopt a new set of ethical standards.  In previous times, most people had a solid enough understanding of moral truth that they were not easily persuaded by atheist...

What Should a Billionaire Give – and What Should You? By PETER SINGER [snip] Gates may have given away nearly $30 billion, but that still leaves him sitting at the top of the Forbes list of the richest Americans, with $53 billion. His 66,000-square-foot high-tech lakeside estate near Seattle is reportedly worth more than $100 million. Property taxes are about $1 million. [snip] Has Bill Gates done enough? [snip] Paul Allen (Microsoft). Allen, who left the company in 1983, has given, over his lifetime, more than $800 million to philanthropic causes. [snip] Allen....owns the Seattle Seahawks, the Portland Trailblazers, a...

November 30, 2006, 0:00 a.m. The Animal House Falls ApartPeter Singer shocks with monkeys. By Wesley J. Smith Is the animal-rights movement beginning to fracture? The evidence definitely points in that direction. Liberationists have been engaged recently in some nasty infighting over basic issues of ideology and the propriety of violent and intimidating protest tactics. Indeed, the antipathy among the various factions seems to have grown so intense that the animal-rights movement could soon segregate into antagonistic camps. A shattering blow accelerating this potential disintegration may have just been struck — ironically, by Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer, who is...

How Green Was My Campus Most colleges and universities seem to be in a race with each other to see who can be the most environmental. An incident at Florida Gulf Coast University shows what you can get by winning the race to have the greenest campus—a lawsuit. “A Florida Gulf Coast University student who was chased down by a wild boar on campus is suing the school for more than $15,000,” Juan Ogles reported in the Fort Meyers News-Press on August 15th. “Donna Rodriguez, 52, filed a lawsuit in circuit court Monday that claims the school knew wild boars...

'Animal-rights' promoter asserts actual birth makes no difference An internationally known Princeton "bioethicist" and animal-rights activist says he'd kill disabled babies if it were in the "best interests" of the family, because he sees no distinction in the child's life whether it is born or not, and the world already allows abortion. The comments come from Peter Singer, a controversial bioethics professor, who responded to a series of questions in the UK Independent this week. Earlier, WND reported that Singer believes the next few decades will see a massive upheaval in the concept of life and rights, with only "a...

Princeton University philosophy professor Peter Singer came under international condemnation when he announced he favors killing disabled babies via infanticide. Though he was blasted from both sides of the political spectrum, the so-called ethicist still holds to the position. In an interview with The Independent newspaper in England, Singer said he would definitely kill a disabled newborn baby. He indicated he would do so "if that was in the best interests of the baby and of the family as a whole." Singer said he found it surprising that abortion advocates would disagree with his views. "Many people find this shocking,...

PRINCETON, September 12, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In a question and answer article published in the UK's Independent today, controversial Princeton University Professor Peter Singer repeats his notorious stand on the killing of disabled newborns.  Asked, "Would you kill a disabled baby?", Singer responded, "Yes, if that was in the best interests of the baby and of the family as a whole."People who oppose Singer's position have maintained that Singer is the logical extension of the culture of death and that society will eventually embrace his stance if there is no shift to the culture of life.  Alex Scadenberg, Executive...

<p>VINALHAVEN, Maine - Idyllic here, with long lazy days by the sea. Sophia, 6, and Lila, 4, splash in the plastic pool in front of the house. Their parents are going for a row. I am the presiding grandmother in this faraway place of peace and beauty, so protected from the gathering storm of world events.</p>

Commentators at the Chicago Tribune and NPR have pointedly questioned why President Bush signed into law S. 3504, the “Fetus Farming Prohibition Act of 2006,” saying that the law deals only with a hypothetical situation because “scientists say [it] is not happening.” Unfortunately, fetal farming, a la artificial wombs, is already underway in Tokyo and in the U.S. Furthermore, the press has failed to expound upon the problem scientists are having experimenting on one- or two-week-old embryos. These embryos fail to develop properly and become useful for embryonic stem cell therapies.Of course, this isn’t the only instance where language...

Philosophers of all stripes agree that the essence of ethics is that they are universal. For example, the Golden Rule grants other people the same ethical status that you give yourself. Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative is similar. In 'Practical Ethics' Peter Singer claims that his version of utilitarianism does a better job of capturing the universal nature of ethics than these other approaches. His reasoning begins with the observation that ethics demands considering more than one's own self-interest. Therefore a truly universal system of ethics demands that we give equal consideration to everyone's interests. This principle of equal consideration of...

In the March 29 edition of The Age there appeared an article by Peter Singer entitled "Why we should ignore the Catholic Church on stem cells". In it he took the Catholic Church in general, and Archbishop Hart in particular, to task for speaking out on the stem cell debate. The gist of the article contained these two themes: 1) The Catholic Church has no right to speak out on the stem cell debate; and 2) embryos are not persons and have no inherent right to exist. Concerning the first proposition, Singer argues that the Catholic Church depends on the...

Drive to give 'human' rights to apes leaves Spanish divided By David Rennie (Filed: 10/06/2006) Spain could soon become the first country in the world to give chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and other great apes some of the fundamental rights granted to human beings under a law being proposed by members of the ruling Socialist coalition. The law would eliminate the concept of "ownership" for great apes, instead placing them under the "moral guardianship" of the state, much as is the case for children in care, the severely handicapped and those in comas, said the MP behind the project, Francisco Garrido....

JILL CARROLL, the 28-year-old freelance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor who has been held by kidnappers in Iraq since Jan. 7, appeared on a video last week. "Please just do whatever they want," she said. "Give them whatever they want as quickly as possible. There is a very short time. Please do it fast. That's all." What the kidnappers want is for the United States to free the female prisoners it is holding in Iraq, and they have made it clear that if the U.S. does not do so, Carroll will be killed. Given that other captives have been...

Is religion necessary for morality? Many people consider it outrageous, even blasphemous, to deny the divine origin of morality. Either some Divine Being crafted our moral sense, or we picked it up from the teachings of organized religion. Either way, we need religion to curb nature's vices. Paraphrasing Katherine Hepburn in the movie The African Queen, religion allows us to rise above wicked old Mother Nature, handing us a moral compass. Yet problems abound for the view that morality comes from God. One problem is that we cannot, without lapsing into tautology, simultaneously say that God is good, and that...

PRINCETON, December 2, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Infamous advocate of infanticide and the man often credited as the founder of the modern radical animal rights movement, Dr. Peter Singer, was featured in the National Post this week predicting that the traditional ethics of western civilization would shortly be abolished. Singer’s comments appeared first in the September/October edition of the journal Foreign Policy as a speculation on what cherished social institutions would still exist in 35 years. Singer, a strict utilitarian and the man the New York Times called the “greatest living philosopher,” says, “By 2040, it may be that only a...

PRINCETON, December 2, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Infamous advocate of infanticide and the man often credited as the founder of the modern radical animal rights movement, Dr. Peter Singer, was featured in the National Post this week predicting that the traditional ethics of western civilization would shortly be abolished. Singer?s comments appeared first in the September/October edition of the journal Foreign Policy as a speculation on what cherished social institutions would still exist in 35 years. Singer, a strict utilitarian and the man the New York Times called the ?greatest living philosopher,? says, ?By 2040, it may be that only a...

The sanctity of life By Peter Singer During the next 35 years, the traditional view of the sanctity of human life will collapse under pressure from scientific, technological and demographic developments. By 2040, it may be that only a rump of hard-core, know-nothing religious fundamentalists will defend the view that every human life, from conception to death, is sacrosanct.

Family members are investigating what they consider to be suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of a nursing home patient at the center of a life and death tug-of-war reminiscent of the Terri Schiavo tragedy. Seventy-nine-year-old Jimmy Chambers died in the early morning hours of Oct. 24 after the tracheotomy tubes that deliver oxygen from a ventilator to a hole in his neck became unhooked. Family members were told Chambers, a resident of the Anne Maria Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in North Augusta, S.C., apparently pulled the interlocking tubes apart. "We're having it investigated. We're just incredulous," Chambers' daughter, Deanna Potter,...