Morality, Religion & Philosophy: November 2004 Archives

The Daily Kfnork points to an article about moves in Holland to legalize killing babies that cannot survive on their own. As most of my readers know, I'm just about as against abortion and such as it's possible to be, but I'm not as outraged by this practice as DeoDuce. Why? The answer is near the end of the article itself:

However, experts acknowledge that doctors euthanize routinely in the United States but that such practice is hidden.

"Measures that might marginally extend a child's life by minutes or hours or days or weeks are stopped. This happens routinely, namely, every day," said Lance Stell, professor of medical ethics at Davidson College and staff ethicist at Carolinas Medical Center in the United States. "Everybody knows that it happens, but there's a lot of hypocrisy. Instead, people talk about things they're not going to do."

Even before hospitals and doctors existed, one of the most fundamental and difficult duties of a midwife was to kill babies that could not survive on their own. After birth the mother was in too much shock to know what was going on -- and the fathers were kept out of the birthing rooms partly for just this reason -- and if the baby was severely deformed or injured the midwife would kill him or her and tell the parents that the child died while being born. That's how it's been for thousands of years. Mercy killings are, in my opinion, far different than abortions or killings done for the sake of convenience.

Under what circumstances are these killings performed?

Examples include extremely premature births, where children suffer brain damage from bleeding and convulsions; and diseases where a child could only survive on life support for the rest of its life such as spina bifida and epidermosis bullosa, a blistering illness.

Some of these, like spina bifida, are not fatal and can be treated (even with in utero surgery). Epidermolysis bullosa is eventually fatal, but people born with it can live into their 30s...

Imagine...

...a child with painful wounds similar to burns covering most of his or her body.
...having to wrap each tiny little infant finger with Vaseline gauze and then cover it with gauze to prevent the hand from webbing and contracting.
...never being able to hold your child tight because if you did, their skin would blister or shear off.
...a child who will never know what it’s like to run, skip or jump, or to play games with other children because even the slightest physical contact will injure his or her skin.
...a child who screams out each time it is bathed because the water touching its open wounds creates incredible pain.
...a diet of only liquids or soft foods because blistering and scarring occur in the esophagus.
...an active baby with his knees soaked in blood from the normal act of crawling.
...a teenager with stumps for hands, the affected fingers long gone.

This is the nightmare of life with Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB)

In other cases, babies simply can't survive without life support, and even with it they won't live very long. So do we have a moral duty to spend thousands of dollars to extend the life of a doomed baby from one month to three months? Thousands of dollars that could be spent treating other patients with curable maladies? I don't know. Is it worth the health risk for a mother to carry and deliver such a baby even when his or her condition is known far in advance?

Even thinking about the problem makes me ill, and I pray that I'm never faced with such a decision. However, as with battlefield mercy killings and adult euthansia, I don't think the solution is as simple as "never under any circumstances".

Update:
It's been pointed out to me, from another article, that the final decision wouldn't fall to the parents but to the doctors, which I think is ridiculous. It's one thing to allow the next-of-kin to make life decisions based on what's best for their loved one, but it's another to allow a council of government doctors to make decisions based on what's best for the socialist health care system.

With regard to conservatives' distaste for the recent movie about Alfred Kinsey, John Hiscock and James Burleigh quote writer and director Bill Condon:

Bill Condon, writer and director, said protesters wanted to "pretend that the last 50 years didn't happen"[.]

No, it's not that we want to pretend the past didn't happen, it's that we can clearly see the damage caused by some of the choices made by our predecessors and we'd like to undo it. As for Dr. Kinsey, it's clear that the experiments he performed on children in the 1940s and 1950s would be considered sexual abuse by modern standards. The Kinsey Institute denies that his research and data were based on child abuse, but rather on anecdotal evidence (so it's not science at all?).

The only pretenders are those who think the decades-long experiment of unrestrained sexuality has been anything but a monumental disaster.

The Jewish Traveler's Prayer:

"May it be Your will, Lord, My God and God of my ancestors, to lead me, to direct my steps, and to support me in peace. Lead me in life, tranquil and serene, until I arrive at where I am going. Deliver me from every enemy, ambush and hurt that I might encounter on the way and from all afflictions that visit and trouble the world. Bless the work of my hands. Let me receive divine grace and those loving acts of kindness and mercy in Your eyes and in the eyes of all those I encounter. Listen to the voice of my appeal, for you are a God who responds to prayerful supplication. Praised are you, Lord, who responds to prayer."

Very suitable for the times in which we live, particularly if you have friends or family serving abroad. Via Austin Bay.

SDB also has a poll up about robot girls. I'm not that into anime, but I gather that robot slave girls are a common theme. Kinda the ultimate objectification of women, right? I mean, oh, it's ok -- they're not people, just robots! Sure, they look and act like people, but they're just sophisticated things. Eh. There are enough men who see real women in that same way that the concept of robot girls makes me uncomfortable.

Not that I don't understand the allure. Love is addictive, and a robot girl you could completely control would love you and never do anything to hurt you... but it's a misshaped fantasy. Such love would be just an illusion, no matter how real it felt. Falling into a trap like that would be no different than a heroin addict's permanent ecstatic torpor. The concept is a sort of emotional pornography (other forms of which are all around us).

Isn't the point of love that someone chooses to be with you?

Update:
A connection to Islamofascism.

If we're not supposed to eat animals, why are they made out of meat? Sure, it sounds logical, but now we're not even supposed to eat fish! Not even fish tacos.

Called the Fish Empathy Project, the campaign reflects a strategy shift by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as it challenges a diet component widely viewed as nutritious and uncontroversial.

"No one would ever put a hook through a dog's or cat's mouth," said Bruce Friedrich, PETA's director of vegan outreach. "Once people start to understand that fish, although they come in different packaging, are just as intelligent, they'll stop eating them."

Don't care. I'd eat dogs and cats if they tasted good.

"Fish are so misunderstood because they're so far removed from our daily lives," said Karin Robertson, 24, the Empathy Project manager and daughter of an Indiana fisheries biologist. "They're such interesting, fascinating individuals, yet they're so incredibly abused."

I don't misunderstand fish or any other animals -- I just like to eat them. After all, a cow is just dinner wrapped in shoes.

Actually, PETA might be able to do civilization a valuable service (and advance their own agenda) if they're willing to target their message primarily at fat people. They're the ones who eat the most animals, and they're the ones that could improve their health the most by obeying PETA's proclamations.

I'm not intimately familiar with the dynamics of a battle field, but killing an unarmed enemy who may still be dangerous seems like a non-issue to me.

On the video, as the camera moved into the mosque during the Saturday incident, a Marine can be heard shouting obscenities in the background, yelling that one of the men was only pretending to be dead.

"He's (expletive) faking he's dead!"

"Yeah, he's breathing," another Marine is heard saying.

"He's faking he's (expletive) dead!" the first Marine says.

The video then showed a Marine raising his rifle toward a prisoner lying on the floor of the mosque. The video shown by NBC and provided to the network pool was blacked out at that point and did not show the bullet hitting the man. But a rifle shot could be heard.

"He's dead now," a Marine is heard saying.

The shooting is shown so quickly that it is impossible to tell whether the body was moving before the shot. The only movement which can be seen is the body flinching at the moment the bullet hits.

If someone is faking being dead, it's probably because they're trying to surprise you.

Charles Heyman, a senior defense analyst with Jane's Consultancy Group in Britain, defended the Marine's actions, saying it was possible the wounded man was concealing a firearm or grenade.

"You can hear the tension in those Marines' voices. One is [shouting], 'He's faking it. He's faking it,'" Heyman said. "In a combat infantry soldier's training, he is always taught that his enemy is at his most dangerous when he is severely wounded."

If the injured man makes even the slightest move, "in my estimation they would be justified in shooting him."

That about sums it up.

When you fight a war, you fight to win and to minimize your own casualties. That means you kill the enemy, and on the battlefield you can't afford to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes you make a wrong choice -- as this Marine may have -- but that's the way it goes. Investigate, that's fine, but this is hardly a huge scandal.

Islam prohibits euthanasia?

Islamic scholars have generally prohibited the discontinuation of life support machines, since the Koran advises: "Don't throw yourself into death." Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian foreign minister, reacted violently to press reports yesterday that Palestinian officials had arrived in Paris to "pull the plug" on Arafat.

"We don't accept euthanasia," he said, Arafat "is in the hands of God."

How ironic. Apparently strapping on a bomb and blowing up a pizzaria isn't "throwing yourself into death" or taking life out of "the hands of God".

Abortion is a tough issue to take personally, considering the fact that if you're reading this you haven't been aborted and are in no danger of facing such a prospect. Abortion is the ultimate "it only affects other people" debate, since the only victims are unborn children. Because of this distance, the idea of abortion is repugnant to far more people that would be willing to ban it. Consider Australia:

Peter Costello said Monday laws governing abortions should be determined by state and territory governments, and tried to calm the waters by asking politicians speaking on the issue of abortion to do so with "care and understanding."

The issue arose recently when the federal health minister, deputy prime minister and other senior coalition members of parliament called for a reduction in the number of abortions, particularly late terminations.

The Australian Broadcasting Corp., said even the governor general made a rare political statement during the weekend, saying too many abortions are carried out in Australia and he would like to see the number reduced to zero.

Yeah, you know, it'd sure be nice if we could somehow reduce the number of babies murdered. No hurry though; it's not really an urgent matter since it doesn't affect us.

"The vague and tenuous hope that God is too kind to punish the ungodly has become a deadly opiate for the consciences of millions." -- A. W. Tozer

It's interesting that very often the people who most stridently insist that humans are nothing more than animals are also the people who purposefully blind themselves to the lessons that nature teaches. Specifically, every type of mammal uses physical violence against their own kind to establish and maintain social and physical dominance. Not only is this behavior universal, but it's also essential to mammalian social structure. It's impossible for creatures to work together as a group without establishing a hierarchy, and physical force is the ultimate arbiter of authority.

Wolves are incapable of reasoning with each other, so the way they settle disputes is through (generally non-lethal) combat. The winner dominates the pack, and the loser submits or leaves. Similarly, adult humans cannot reason with children, because until the early to middle teenage years humans are incapable of concrete reasoning. It's pointless to try explain to a 5-year-old why he shouldn't throw the baseball in the house or how it hurts his sister's feelings when he refuses to share. He may appear to understand, but he doesn't. Words will make an impact for a few seconds, but the behavior will quickly return. One thing that will leave a lasting impression, however, is a good smack on the butt.

Physical punishment is important for children, but it should also be used sparingly and in love, not in anger. Spanking isn't a way for a parent to take out aggression or relieve frustration, it's a way to teach a child an important lesson that they may not be able to learn any other way. As with everything, balance is key. I've worked with children for a long time, and the worst ones are those who are never physically punished. They don't understand their place in the social order, they don't respect adults, and they don't obey because they never experience any negative consequences for disobedience. Our brains are wired to learn from pain for a reason.

Proverbs 13:24
He who spares the rod hates his son,
but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.

Hebrews 12:5-11
5 And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons:
"My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline,
and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
6 because the Lord disciplines those he loves,
and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son."
7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? 8 If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. 9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! 10 Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

One of the things I've learned is that pursuing the truth often isn't worth it. For instance, if I have two friends and A tells me one story and B tells me a different story, one of them must be lying. My natural instinct is to talk with A and B individually to try to discern who is telling the truth and who is lying. Generally, such probing questions make the questionee suspicious -- to some degree -- and both A and B find out that they've been telling different stories. And I get caught in the middle.

Therefore, my new policy is that I segregate information and don't try to discover the truth for its own sake. If the issue at hand is itself important then I'll try to figure out what's really going on, but if it doesn't involve me and (therefore) isn't important, I'll just let it slide. I'll think about how the stories may reconcile and try to figure out what the real truth is, but I won't rock the boat by probing. It's just not worth it. Plus, it's gossip.