Pigs who have greater right to live than certain humans - acc to Peter Singer

SHOULD WE LIVE WITH CONTRADICTION? PETER SINGER'S IMMORAL, INCOHERENT WORLDVIEW

http://www.albertmohler.com/2017/02/03/briefing-02-03-2017/ http://www.albertmohler.com/2017/02/03/briefing-02-03-2017/  

Eric Kaplan is both writer and executive producer on the CBS sitcom “The Big Bang Theory.” He also holds an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Harvard College; presumably that’s at least in part why the New York Times ran an article by him on a deeply philosophical issue. The headline is this,

“Can We Live With Contradiction?”

Now that’s an interesting question, and it gets to the coherence of worldview and our faithfulness in worldview. Because one of our responsibilities as Christians is not only to recognize that we have a worldview and to seek to make certain that that worldview is based upon Christian truth, it’s also to make certain that our worldview is consistent with that truth. One of the tests of a worldview is whether or not it is consistently held. Do we think as Christians on issues that are economic and political as well as say military and relational? Our worldview requires us to be consistent across all issues. Now, given our human fallibility and the reality of sin, we’re going to find in others, and if were honest quite regularly in ourselves, contradictory modes of thinking, inconsistencies that we need to correct. But the point being made by Eric Kaplan is that sometimes perhaps we shouldn’t resolve the contradictions. Now if you think that’s a problem, I assure you it really is, and the way Kaplan makes his points actually affirms this very, very clearly. He writes,

“The philosopher Peter Singer was once attacked for contradicting himself. Singer advanced an ethical theory in which the most worthwhile thing was complex conscious life and feeling, and did not shy away from the logical consequence that the life of a severely mentally impaired human was worth less than that of a chicken. Journalists then discovered that Singer’s mother had Alzheimer’s and that he chose to spend his money taking care of her rather than helping chickens.”

A writer in The New Republic said that Singer is then a hypocrite and that was joined by other voices.

“The New Republic even ran a cover with a picture of an addled old woman,” says the writer. “with a walker and the headline ‘Other People’s Mothers.’”

Then Kaplan asked,

“So, how bad is contradicting yourself?”

He points to the fact that when people on the street are asked if it’s wrong to live with the contradiction, they will almost immediately say yes. But the point Kaplan is making is that many of us are jumbles of contradictions. Now here’s the problem from a Christian worldview. Kaplan’s absolutely right to understand that often we hold contradictory or inconsistent positions, but the Christian worldview reminds us that truth is paramount and so is our Christian responsibility as thinkers. That is to say, we’re not to live with the contradictions, we are to correct them. We are to seek to move towards an ever more mature and faithful Christian worldview in which we correct those inconsistencies that we find. But it’s the opening illustration in this article that’s actually far more important than the article itself when Kaplan points to Peter Singer.

I’ve often mentioned Peter Singer, who is now a professor of bioethics at Princeton University, because he is by any sane Christian estimation one of the most dangerous thinkers in the world today. You should’ve noted that already with the fact that Kaplan describes the fact that Singer holds to the idea that what is valuable is complex conscious life and feeling, and thus a human being who is no longer capable or perhaps was even never capable of what he defines as complex conscious life thus has a dignity and a sanctity of life that is less than that of a chicken. He makes that argument openly.

In other writings, Peter Singer has made very clear that there are some highly intelligent pigs that have a greater right to live than some as he defines it as less intelligent human beings, in particular, children who might have severe mental deficiencies. He argues that it would be more moral to save the life of the pig than the life of the child under that circumstance.

As you might expect, Peter Singer is celebrated as one of the founders of the modern animal rights movement and in an article that the New Yorker published back in 1999 by Michael Specter, it was revealed to many Americans who had previously not known of Peter Singer that he held to such radical ideas. The reason for the article back in 1999 was the fact that Princeton University had hired Singer as the first holder of its endowed chair in bioethics. Specter wrote about Singer,

“Singer has written with great severity on subjects ranging from what people should put on their dinner plates each night to how they should spend their money or assess the value of human life. He’s always relevant,” says Specter, “but what he has to say often seems outrageous.”

That’s an understatement. He goes on to say,

“Singer believes, for example, that a humans life is not necessarily more sacred than a dogs and that it might be more compassionate to carry out medical experiments on hopelessly disabled unconscious orphans than on perfectly healthy rats.”

Now perhaps now you understand why I say the illustration in Kaplan’s article is far more important and far more alarming than Kaplan’s article itself. What we’re looking at here is the outrage that someone like Peter Singer would teach in any university, much less holding a chair of bioethics at Princeton University. And of course, there is a deeper story here that has roots all the way back in the Fall but has a particular sinister root in the 20th century, and about that we will say more in just a moment.

The article back in 1999 in the New Yorker made very clear that Peter Singer was considered scandalous at the time because of the arguments he was making—not so scandalous, we should note, that Princeton University did not hire him. But scandalous still in the sense that even the liberal readers of the New Yorker would presumably not go so far as to suggest that it might be more moral to do medical experiments on mentally disabled orphans rather than on healthy rats.

Specter is also right back in 1999 when he pointed to the underlying worldview that produces a Peter Singer, that worldview is described as utilitarianism and that too has philosophical roots. Utilitarianism basically says that the moral choice that is right is the one that will lead to the greatest result for the greatest number of people. We should simply note that all kinds of horrifying things have been done throughout human history by the very people who said they were doing these things in the name of utilitarianism or a similar kind of argument. Those were the very kind of arguments used to supposedly justify the horrors of the Soviet Union and of the Third Reich in Germany. Let me now quote Peter Singer himself,

“When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore,” he writes, “if killing the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others it would according to the total view be right to kill him.”

Now notice this language is written right out in candid English so that we can by no means misunderstand it. Peter Singer is arguing that there are human lives that simply aren’t worth living and therefore the right thing to do, according to his worldview, would be to kill those people to increase the happiness of those who would remain. The same worldview also leads Peter Singer to privilege animals over human life when in his judgment the animal experiences a greater happiness than the human being. He has argued for the morality not only of abortion, but also of infanticide, arguing that if the mother has not had time to develop a relationship with the child and if the child has not developed the capacity for relating in consciousness, including the sense of memory, then it is not actually murder to kill even a child, suggesting that that child could be as old as about two years old.

Thankfully the pushback to Peter Singer has often been very forceful and very clear. Diane Coleman, an activist for the disabled and the group “Not Dead Yet,” told the New Yorker that Singer “was a public advocate of genocide and the most dangerous man on earth.”

Now, if it sounds unusual to call a professor at an Ivy League university the most dangerous man on earth, just consider what we’re looking at here. This man has now taught for well over a decade at one of America’s most influential and powerful institutions of higher learning. He has had the opportunity to use that platform for the dissemination of this kind of ideology and worldview. And the other thing we need to note is that even though Peter Singer’s appointment in 1999 was quite controversial, the fact that he is there today has largely escaped all public notice. That’s what makes Eric Kaplan’s article in the New York Times so interesting when he uses Peter Singer as his opening illustration about the potential of intellectual contradiction. And he points to the fact that it’s actually quite real and was pointed out years ago that Peter Singer has violated his own worldview by paying for the medical care that kept his mother with Alzheimer’s alive. That’s only one of the many contradictions of Peter Singer’s worldview and actual life practice; another has to do with the use of his funds for other purposes. But the important thing here to note is that Peter Singer apparently is very glad to teach his students that other people’s mothers should be killed, but not his own.

"THE WRITING IS ON