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The
Atheist Devotional: Timeless Meditations for
the Godless by M. Moore
Copyright ã 2008 M.
-Reading Number Twenty-One -
Peter Singer: Justifying Infanticide
Excerpted from: Singer, Writings on an Ethical Life*
Freedom to choose your own morality, your own ethics—that’s what atheism is all about. And the ethics that Singer chooses are definitely...well, different. He does manage to find grounds (albeit weak ones) for thinking that murdering normal adult humans is wrong. Babies, however, don’t fare so well with him...
“The way of thinking I have outlined is a form of utilitarianism.”
Utilitarianism is Singer’s ethical approach. It’s an approach that says the rightness or wrongness of an action is based on its consequences. “Right” is what promotes everyone’s interests (desires) as much as possible, and “wrong” is what doesn’t. However, Singer’s view has one tiny problem when it comes to the question of whether it’s wrong to kill someone.
“...It may be said that when a person is killed we are not left with a thwarted desire...When I am killed the desires I have for the future do not continue after my death, and I do not suffer from their nonfulfillment...”
Singer is saying that after you kill someone, that person is no longer around, so he’s not suffering anything, and he’s not experiencing any unmet desires. And since the whole point of utilitarianism is to avoid (as much as possible) suffering and unmet desires, then there’s nothing inherently wrong with killing a “person” (by which Singer means someone who is conscious of his or her own existence over time), at least nothing that makes it inherently worse than killing a non-person, like for example a clam.
“...Indirectly, however, being a person may be important for the classical utilitarian.” When a person is killed, other people are going to hear about it. That will increase their fear that they themselves will be killed. So killing a person is wrong because it increases the unhappiness of other persons.
Singer goes on to discuss whether it’s wrong to kill someone if no one else will ever hear about it, and whether there are any reasons besides being a person (since that one has no direct significance) that can be found for thinking that the life of an adult human is more important than the life of, say, a horse. He does make some suggestions that support both of those ideas, but now let’s get back to the question of the killing of babies. First let’s look at the unborn baby:
“...It is of course true that the potential rationality, self-consciousness, and so on of a fetal Homo sapiens surpasses that of a cow or pig; but it does not follow that the fetus has a stronger claim to life...” A thing is not worth as much as that which it has the potential to become. “To pull out a sprouting acorn is not the same as cutting down a venerable oak. To drop a live chicken into a pot of boiling water would be much worse than doing the same to an egg.”
Now Singer does not say why it is worse to kill an oak than to kill a sprouting acorn, except that the two are “not the same.” Or maybe it’s because the oak is “venerable”... Also, notice how he muddies the waters by talking of killing the adult chicken in a very painful way, even though the issue under discussion concerns only killing, not causing pain (otherwise people might say, “Hey, I think it’s okay to eat chickens and eggs! Neither one is ‘worse’ than the other.”). Shrewd move, Peter!
“Prince Charles is a potential king of England, but he does not now have the rights of a king.”
It is true, of course, that fetuses don’t enjoy all the same rights that adult humans enjoy. They can’t get a driver’s license, for instance. However, Singer’s example of Prince Charles may not have been the best choice on his part... Prince Charles does, after all, enjoy special protection by the British police and other special rights precisely because he is a potential king of England! So by Singer’s own analogy, the fetus should enjoy special protection as a “potential” person. Oops!
“...Now it must be admitted that these arguments apply to the newborn baby as much as to the fetus. A week-old baby is not a rational and self-conscious being...”
First he says “newborn,” then he says “week-old.” So how far, on Singer’s ethics, could we stretch this period during which a child is not a self-aware “person” and thus has no right to life?
“...It would, of course, be difficult to say at what age children begin to see themselves as distinct entities existing over time. Even when we talk with two- and three-year-old children, it is usually very difficult to elicit any coherent conception of death, or of the possibility that someone—let alone the child herself—might cease to exist.”
Singer does opine, however, that we should err on the side of caution:
“At present parents can choose to keep or destroy their disabled offspring only if the disability happens to be detected during pregnancy. There is no logical basis for restricting parents’ choice to these particular disabilities. If disabled newborn infants were not regarded as having a right to life until, say, a week or a month after birth, it would allow parents, in consultation with their doctors, to choose on the basis of far greater knowledge of the infant’s condition than is possible before birth.”
Now why does he limit parents’ right to “destroy” their offspring to cases of disabled children? Because for babies who are not disabled there is always the option of adoption, that is, there are plenty of people around who will want to adopt an unwanted but able-bodied baby. But that doesn’t mean that an able-bodied baby has a right to live. And in fact, in the case of parents who would rather see their (healthy, but unwanted) baby dead rather than being raised by someone else, there’s nothing in Singer’s ethical philosophy that says they would be wrong to kill their child. At least, they would be no more wrong than they would be to kill, say, a pig or a mouse. But even though Singer recommends that killing children should be allowed only for babies a month old or less, it’s nice to know, isn’t it, that we always have the flexibility to allow killing two- or three-year-olds, should we ever decide we need a law to that effect. By Singer’s utilitarianism, it wouldn’t be so bad. After all, it’s not like they’re persons or anything.
“If these conclusions seem too shocking to take seriously, it may be worth remembering that our present absolute protection of the lives of infants is a distinctively Christian attitude rather than a universal ethical value. Infanticide has been practiced in societies ranging from...nomadic Australian aborigines to the sophisticated urban communities of ancient Greece or mandarin China. ...both Plato and Aristotle recommended the killing of deformed infants...Perhaps it is now possible to think about these issues without assuming the Christian moral framework that has, for so long, prevented any fundamental reassessment.”
Yes, and much the same could be said about slavery and the oppression of women. I guess that means Singer would approve of both slavery and oppressing women. Or at least he would be in favor of a “reassessment” of our modern Christian disapproval of them. After all, those things have been practiced in cultures throughout history (including the most civilized, “sophisticated” and “urban” of ancient cultures). It was only in Christian-based societies that they began to be significantly opposed.
“...It is true that infants appeal to us because they are small and helpless, and there are no doubt very good evolutionary reasons why we should instinctively feel protective toward them.”
But hey, we can ignore the lessons of evolution when we feel like it—even though Singer originally claimed to derive the equality of all animals from evolution. But if we feel like it, we can ignore evolution because...well, we’re atheists, and we can do whatever we want!
“...To think that the lives of infants are of special value because infants are small and cute is on a par with thinking that a baby seal...deserves greater protection than a gorilla,” because the seal is cute and the gorilla is not. “...If we can put aside these emotionally moving, but strictly irrelevant aspects...we can see that the grounds for not killing persons do not apply to newborn infants.”
...Or to one-month-old babies...or to two- or three-year-old children...or to severely retarded adults...or even to normal adults who are killed without anyone knowing it. Let’s be rational and realistic here, not “emotional.” And the realistic truth is that with atheist ethics anything is possible, because atheist ethics have no objective foundation. Nietzsche would have laughed Singer out of the room for his concern for equality and preventing suffering for animals (and by the way for aborted babies too—abortion is fine with Singer, as long as it’s done as painlessly as possible for the aborted baby**), and his concern that the “interests” of everyone be regarded equally. And yet both Nietzsche and Singer started out from the point of view of godlessness. Yes, with atheism the possibilities are endless. From justifying racial genocide like Darwin and Wells to justifying slavery like Nietzsche to justifying infanticide like Singer, we are completely free. Free to set our own values and our own course in life. Long live atheism. - Afterword -
Removing the Mask
Okay, it’s time to take off the mask. Up to now, I have played the part of a tongue-in-cheek atheist. Now I’ll get serious. What has been the point of this whole exercise? Well, obviously to show the poverty of the atheist world view—its irrationality, its illogic and self-contradiction (atheists/agnostics/skeptics contradicting themselves and each other). Its moral bankruptcy. Of course, the fact that the writings of prominent skeptics are filled with logical contradictions and absurdities does not prove that God exists. But it serves to highlight the vacuousness of atheism as a world view. And that makes theism worth at least a second look. It might even be worthwhile to open your mind to faith in something else besides reason, rationalism, science and evolution, the fallible gods of the atheistic faith. Oh, you don’t think they’re fallible? Well, maybe for you they’re not. But they sure were for Darwin, who used Reason, science and evolution to argue that “savage” peoples are evolutionary less advanced than Caucasians; or for Bertrand Russell, who styled himself a scientific thinker, but whose own arguments were undermined by later scientific discoveries; or for Quentin Smith, who used logic to argue for absurdities; or for Peter Singer, who used evolution to argue that all species are equal, but later ignored evolution, because he couldn’t coherently build his own ethical system consistent with evolution. All I’m saying is that if you call yourself a skeptic, don’t be so selective in your skepticism. Apply that skepticism to your own anti-God beliefs. Think. Think critically. You might find that it’s actually rational to believe that a Rational Being is behind this whole universe. * “Excerpts” are paraphrased, except for “words in quotation marks and italics,” which are direct quotations from the excerpted work. ** However, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting to see Singer organizing any demonstrations against abortionists who use techniques that cause pain for the aborted babies.
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