George Carlin was on HBO last night. He was doing what he does best; making pithy but sardonic comments about various institutions. Pro-lifers were on his radar screen. He observed that since most fertilized eggs are washed away in a woman’s menses that women should, by the logic of the pro-life movement, be locked up as serial killers.
Reductio ad Absurdum
Apagogic argument makes for good comedy. It is part of political discourse, sadly passing for reason more often than is comfortable or good for the health of the American Republic. It does not make for good theology. Carlin’s rant eventually leads to a ridicule of religion. Now let me completely honest. I no longer consider myself to be a part of the Church. Nevertheless, though I have separated myself from the Church, I have respect for Christian theology. The question that Carlin, and many secular critics of the church miss, is this: what is the will of God?
Accept for a moment – just for the sake of honest argument – the premise that all life originates in God and that the continual expression of human life is the will of God. Moreover, each life is of inestimable value to this God. The conclusion to any argument that begins with this premise is that all life is valued and that all life is born of the will of God. This belief impacts suggests that the worth of life supersedes the will to abort an unborn life. If all life is born of the will of God, it is an untenable choice to terminate willingly a human life, whether by warfare, the death penalty, privation, or abortion. The will of God is pro-life, given the premise suggested above.
The difficulty, as I see it, is that we do not live in a society that allows the premise that human life is of inestimable value. Removing the metaphysics from the discussion does not change the trajectory of the argument: if the preservation of human life is the highest good then warfare, capitalism, abortion, inequitable distribution of wealth must be considered inconsistent with that position. This works well in an argument that presupposes an ethical absolute. However, how do we negotiate a middle case? Consider the debate surrounding stem cells.
In Life It Is Rare to Encounter Two Equally Valid Viewpoints
I make no claims to grasp the arcane scientific details of research into therapies that require the use of stem cells. I will assume that there is a reasonable likelihood that this research may yield a therapy to address certain diseases and thus preserve human life. The difficulty is that stem cells must be harvested from fetuses. Some life lives, other lives are terminated. Who decides the value of each? Competing expressions of the good raise difficult questions that absolute dicta cannot adequately address.
I think that the solution to this problem is to consider that there are no absolute expressions of truth. All expressions of truth fall short of that which they seek to express. As such, they must be parsed to find how competing values born of the same concern for human life can be weighed. I am not always convinced that the mother’s life is the ultimate value in consideration of whether an abortion should be performed. I am equally not convinced that every life should be given the same weight. I do know that a rule of proximity is a slippery slope.
Slip-slidin’ Away
The idea of a slippery slope suggests a causal argument that presumes a chain of events that lead to an undesirable outcome. It may or may not be a valid argument. The key is the question of causality. To say that proximate relationship is to be most highly valued suggests that human life is an individual concern and that the individual is the final arbitrator of the good. I must admit that I am motivated by proximate concerns. My daughters are the most important people in the world to me. God help anybody that I perceive to be doing harm to them. I would not hesitate to take any step that I deem necessary to protect them. They are the people in the world that are closest to me. But, and that conjunction is portentous indeed, their wellbeing may not always be consistent with the wellbeing of humanity.
This is the contradiction that must be considered: to me my children are the highest value. Were I to face the option of preserving their lives at the cost of several other lives to me the question would be clear. I would act for them. Would not the family members of those whose lives were lost also be entitled to the same argument of individual proximity?
What Happened to The Will of God?
The idea of God’s will seems to me to have been a moral arbitrator that divided between the needs of the individual and the needs of the community. It was the fulcrum upon which the balance could be struck by providing absolute and elastic dicta that would address the needs of both while retaining an ability to be redescribed in terms that met the needs of the cultural reality. In a secular society that has proudly done away with such metaphysics as God the need remains for an agreed upon fulcrum that allows individuals and communities to leverage ethical discourse.
Apagogic discourse works for George Carlin. It makes for good satire and allows a sardonic wit to force thought. And I wonder whether this does not beg the question of a tertium non datur, or the law of the excluded middle that addresses such moral disjunctions. But this is probably best debated by minds more clearly focused than mine.
At any rate, I remain simply a fool…
