Gary Peterson wrote:
> Yes, there are questions asked that are outside the realm
> of science and science doesn't have answers to all the questions people
> might ask. Does religion have answers? What kind and of what quality?
Nicely put. It's depressing how often challenges to religious dogma are
answered simply with "But science doesn't have all the answers", with the
clear implication that _implies_ that therefore religion DOES have those
answers. It's as though the fact that
- scientists have no idea how many craters there are on the moon
makes the answer I got (11) by throwing darts at a dartboard into a
perfectly good answer.
When science fails to provide an answer, I'm more inclined to conclude that
either (1) no-one has any idea what the answer is (for example, to the
question "why is there something rather than nothing?"), or (2) the question
isn't a well-formed one in the first place (for example, "is a zygote a
human being?").
The ethics of abortion have been clouded by essentialist attempts to make
the humanity of the aborted entity into the turning point. Deb Brihl gives
us an alternative when she writes:
"I have had the chance to read an interesting book by Sheri Tepper called 6
Moon Dance. In the book, humanity has been
redefined as not necessarily species, but rather based on actions -
intelligence, ethics, etc. So, some species were elevated to human level and
certain groups of people were removed from the definition of human.
Just another bit to the definition of human being".
I personally believe that we have ethical responsibilities towards entities
that have experiences (people, cats, and probably late-term fetuses), and no
such responsibilities towards entities that do not have experiences (rocks,
most insects, and fertilized human eggs). That's where I feel the line
should be drawn, but make no mistake - there's no scientific support for
that purely ethical/values-based decision. But it's surely a dramatically
better decision than one based on untruths about the ability of science to
find evidence for something that is really just a definition ("humanity").
There is nothing to be gained by claiming to have "the right" definition of
"human", and the sooner we drop that nonsense, the sooner we can start
making some ethical progress wrt these medical ethics issues.
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
