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This website is being renovated throughout 2008. Pages and the content of pages will continue to change until the end of the year and there may be some inconsistencies and missing links. Please do not quote from or link to specific pages (apart from the home page) without contacting the webmaster first. Life or death A rational approach to sensitive issues By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 798 words Publication date: January 22, 2006 What value should we place on human life? The question, which is not as simple as it sounds, continues to divide American society. Believers tell you that killing people is wrong because God condemns it. Ironically, such a stance is amoral – without any moral values – because it places a value not on human life itself, but on obedience to God. Atheists condemn the killing of other human beings not because God tells them to, but because it is wrong to deprive anyone of their life. It is wrong because our life is our most precious possession; when we lose it, we lose everything. Most of the time, it does not matter whether we protect lives because a mythological being tells us to or because we recognise the intrinsic value of the human condition. But there are five areas that lead to disagreement, anger and moral confusion – abortion, suicide, self-defense, euthanasia and the death penalty. The principal problem with abortion is the question whether an embryo (first three months of pregnancy) or fetus (second three months) is a human being. Although commonsense tells most of us that it is not fully human and has no independent life, others argue that it is a living individual from conception. In an ideal world, whatever our opinion, abortion would be rare. Every act of vaginal intercourse would be accompanied by contraception unless both partners agreed they wished to become parents. In the real world, however, the evidence is that criminalizing the procedure, the goal of the inaptly named “pro-life” movement, leads to more terminations than when abortion is legal. (See “Abortion in Latin America”, New York Times, January 6, 2006) Suicide and euthanasia both involve an individual’s decision to end their own life. Suicides are usually physically healthy but mentally incapable of continuing living, while those who seek euthanasia are severely disabled and / or in pain and have no prospect of recovery. Suicide is regrettable and may be devastating for the family and friends. Both individuals and society as a whole should try to prevent it by reaching out to those contemplating self-destruction, but in the end we have to respect the decision of those who kill themselves. Euthanasia allows others to help the terminally ill to die comfortably. It is the sign of a civilized society that it allows those who ask for euthanasia to receive it. It is also the sign of a civilized society that the rights of those who cannot ask for it are widely debated. Americans increasingly accept euthanasia, as the Terri Schiavo case showed. In a more recent development, the Supreme Court’s recognition of the Oregon assisted suicide law is based on a technicality but it does allow states to recognize the importance of a dignified death. In comparison, the position of the Roman Catholic church on suicide and euthanasia is absurd. It suggests that God wants us to suffer in this life even when he offers paradise after our death. In fact, the Bible itself does not condemn suicide. The arguments against self-killing come later, from the theologians Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Yet another case of the Church’s “immutable” truth evolving over the centuries. The Church redeems itself by opposing the death penalty, a practice that has died out in most democracies but still enthusiastically carried out in much of the United States, in addition to such beacons of human rights and tolerance as China and Iran. God may be hypocritical – the numbers he kills in the Old Testament are beyond counting – but our government should be held to a higher standard. If we condemn killing, we cannot ourselves kill, no matter how hideous the crime. Execution diminishes the dignity not only of those who die, but of all who enable that death, from prosecutors to state governors, from prison wardens to those who tie the victim down and administer the lethal dose. The only ethical punishment for humanity's worst crimes is life imprisonment. Options may include release no earlier than the criminal’s eightieth birthday or the voluntary death penalty – those who ask to die should be allowed to do so. Lastly, self-defense. In the last resort of course we may have to kill to preserve our own lives. Unfortunately that genuine argument has been hijacked by the gun lobby, leading to one of the highest rates of gun deaths on the planet. Other nations are aware that guns do not protect lives, they destroy them; hopefully one day the American public and its representatives will wake up to that bitter fact. I repeat, our life is our most precious possession. That gives each of us the right to dispose of it as we choose and denies all others a reason to deprive us of it. Morality is always that simple; God, as always, is irrelevant.
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If God existed, he would... admire the beauty of a universe that he did not create recognize that eternity is meaningless deny both heaven and hell disown all men and women who speak in his name denounce the harm caused by religious "morality" help the human race to thrive without him If God existed, he would be an atheist. |