I'm going to keep whuppin' on Sam Harris for a few more posts. I mean, goodness, my church is going to be paying for this book out of my study allowance, so I may as well give 'em their money's worth.
Having established his radically dualistic battle of the worldviews, Harris proceeds to level attack after attack against faith...or, at least, attack after attack against what he perceives as the impact of faith on the world. One central thrust of his assault follows the stem-cell/abortion thread. He mounts a vigorous and aggressive campaign against the qualms many Christians have about abortion and the destruction of human embryos for research.
Here, he makes a series of solid points about the reality of what is occurring
in utero. His observations about the insensate nature of blastocysts are accurate, as is his assertion that there is no potential for causing suffering a mass of human cells that has no neurons or nerve cells.
Science and a
majority of the scriptures that speak directly to life
in utero support that position. When he argues that refusing to ameliorate the suffering of those who stem cell research might help is immoral, we have to take that argument seriously.
However, Harris manages to then stumble badly over his own rhetoric. In what appears to be an effort to be humorous, he proclaims that weeping over the soul lost when a blastocyst is destroyed is like crying over the cells that are destroyed when you pick your nose. Every one of those cells has the genetic data required to form a human, he crows. You...nose pickin' possible-baby killers! Having flicked that little snot-covered gem at his opponents, he goes off snickering with all the other Slytherins.
Coming from a purported defender of reason and science, this argument shows a pretty substantial lack of insight and reflection. As one of the three people in the continental United States who takes a nuanced view of abortion and stem cell research, I think the challenge abortion and stem cell research pose does not lie in the suffering of very early stage embryonic tissue. It's an issue of the fundamental and radical uniqueness of each embryo...even at the blastocyst stage.
The cells in my nose contain my genetic material. Any human made from them would be a clone of me, identical in every physical respect. But embryonic material contains a unique recombination of two contributed sets of genetic data. It isn't just a potential human. It's a potentially unique human. Let's imagine for a moment that my wife was through some odd mutation able to gestate children in 12 hours. If she and I managed to pop out a new kid every single day, not only would we be
really freakin' tired, but we'd have a different child every time. If we kept at it over the entire span of our lives, we wouldn't exhaust the possibilities, because while the variability in the way that our genetic material recombines is not infinite, it's pretty dang close.
That loss of human uniqueness should give pause to anyone who is even halfway sentient. Even from a secular humanist perspective, this is a complex ethical problem. That Harris is willing to blithely cavort through an issue that both religious and secular ethicists recognize is deeply challenging is just another indicator of the intellectual weakness of this book.
Comments (9)
Well said.
The presence of genetic material in the mucus membrane of the nose, while quite remarkable, is not the same thing as a living, developing child within the womb.
I thought of that when I first read the comic. I guess he should made a distinguish between theists that are consistent with science and theists that don't care about science because they can answer the question so easily by just say "God made it way" and its variations. You could still answer as simply yourself and you wouldn't be "wrong".
nifty.
Hey; come by my site...I have an issue that I'd like your input on .
You sound like me on the abortion issue. I am an anti-woman conservative to my friends and peers and a liberal baby-killer to my family and background.
And I agree completely. But here's where I'm having problems with the forgiveness thing.
Say person A has an inapropriate relationship with a minor. Say they get caught, convicted, and serve time. So they pay their civic penalty and they, by the Government standards, are free to join the ranks of free society (though with the caviats of registering as a sex offender...the venerable scarlett letter of today's society.)
person A comes back and wants to join the Church again. Now, I am a man of a good deal of common sense...this doesn't MAKE SENSE to allow someone whom you would think to be a threat into the church. HOWEVER....
I wonder how the early Church looked upon Paul. He killed Christians. He was a threat to their very existence...and yet God chose to not only forgive him of this...but to use him as an instrument of change to the entire world. Could it be that Person A had an incredible encounter with God...and as such was called to ministry....or to something?
What is our responsibility in this? My post originally began with Church Discipline...wondering just what the good in it was, and if God (though he says he answers prayers) takes the prayers of those who are condeming their former bretheren to hardship and puts the individual in situations where they will have to choose to remain on one path...or look to God for a change. Perhaps tolerance and apathy are the worst things that we can do.
I don't know...all I know is that I have seen changes in two peoples lives...in two weeks. These people went through hard times, and were renewed through suffering. They are different people (though the cynic in me says...give it time) now. But from that focus on Discipline...I came to forgiveness.
Can we truly forgive? Is it in our nature? The more I ponder it, the more I am wholly convenced that we as humans have an inability to truly forgive. As you said...you wouldn't put an embezzler in charge of the money; (but I'd personally put a fat person in charge of the potlucks.) But is it possible to say "from this moment on," Your sins have been forgiven through the Grace given to man through Jesus' sacrifice; you are no longer your own?"
I have been following along with your posts about this book. Don't you think that these guys are reacting to what they see as a dangerous trend in peoples thinking - especially Americans? Except they don't do well at finding the cause and in many cases have almost the same rational response as the fundies. Both of them try and make a logical approach and totally miss the point. Also I don't see the great distress these rational men have with Krishna for example; it's this Christ they have a problem with and yet they don't know him.
It was a great ride btw.. thanks - 50 miles almost all dirt.. we got this bike in August and I have been constantly working on it.. by next summer it will be perfect. I hope to find another one just like it this winter so me and the boy can ride together. I took the BMW to Tennessee a month ago.. that was a good trip - I learned to fly fish.
I found your church on the net.. don't be suprised if a dude wheels in there next spring on a red bike.
I do love the continued review.
Yeah they surely do miss the point crimthann86.
On the second point, to be fair they def would have a problem with 'Krishna' if they'd come out of a subcontinental context. Indian ideological and cultural politics in the last 200 years is rife with debates over secularization, Modernism, Socialism, multiculturalism, etc. Consider, too, the recent clashes over (and sparked by) the Bharathya Janatha Party. The authors may be 'politically correct' but really I don't think they care about forms of Hinduism.
Chicken_Pax I never considered India's turmoil over religion. I guess I am just as stuck in my subcontinental context as anybody else; heck sometimes I can't even think past Pennsylvania context. I think your right. I just never ran into an Indian rationalist bemoaning eastern religion. I picked on Krishna because my kids brought back a book from the Warp tour this summer about Krishna that was given to them by a Hindu evangelist. (Am I mixing up words and culture here?) As I consider the 50th anniversary of Atlas Shrugged - godless rational man rejects the very best things that all religions offer. I just happen to think that those enlightened authors also have a religion because I find their logic similar to the fundamentalists they are attacking. I have not read Dawkins book or the book that Bel. Spear is reviewing but I have a copy of my favorite agnostic Carl Sagan's (rip) book "The Dragon's of Eden" here that I read many years ago and it is very much all the same stuff. Back in the day it was Jerry Falwell that made me wince to tell people I was a Christian - the names change but the rhetoric on both sides is very much the same.
I am sure your right and it's like that in Far East too. Thanks for making me think a little further out of the box!