{"id":3768,"date":"2024-06-25T09:15:56","date_gmt":"2024-06-25T13:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3768"},"modified":"2024-06-25T09:15:56","modified_gmt":"2024-06-25T13:15:56","slug":"worthy-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/25\/worthy-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Worthy of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

Some people are inspired by Peter Singer.\u00a0

Others think he is the most dangerous intellectual in America.

Everyone at least agrees on this:\u00a0The Australian-born Princeton University emeritus professor is never boring.

Singer is a bioethicist.\u00a0He specializes in how scientific principles should lead human beings to think and behave.\u00a0

He wrote the main article concerning ethics for the Encyclopedia Britannica<\/em>. If you were born after 1990, that is a large set of books that used to be displayed on your grandparents\u2019 living room shelves, which were excellent for pressing prom flowers.

Singer is an atheist who describes himself as a hedonistic utilitarian.\u00a0That means he believes that seeking \u201cthe greatest pleasure for the greatest number of people\u201d is the surest guide to making wise decisions.

Singer would include a great many animals in that ethical formulation.\u00a0As one of the world\u2019s most eloquent defenders of animal rights, he has given up eating mussels and oysters.\u00a0\u201cThey probably don\u2019t suffer,\u201d he says, \u201cbut you never know.\u201d

Singer\u2019s detractors aren\u2019t particularly up in arms about the rights of oysters.\u00a0But they are powerfully provoked by his perspectives on human rights.

Is all of human life sacred and worthy of respect?\u00a0Singer says no.\u00a0He believes the concept of the sanctity of human life is outdated and unscientific.

He asserts that personhood, and thus the right to exist, is tied to a being\u2019s capacity to have preferences and make choices.\u00a0That means that defective infants and some older adults don\u2019t really qualify as persons.\u00a0

Singer suggests that if parents don\u2019t want to raise a developmentally disabled child, they should have the right to end its existence.\u00a0\u201cKilling a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, a being who wants to go on living.\u201d Just because an embryo is a living human being (something he clearly affirms), doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s a person<\/em> worthy of protection and honor. \u00a0\u00a0

Likewise, older people who have lost the capacity to make meaningful choices may be euthanized.\u00a0

He is sympathetic to the vision of bioengineering \u201cheadless clones\u201d \u2013 carbon copies of ourselves (minus brains), kept alive by machines, that might be available as living repositories of spare parts.

As a utilitarian, Singer is committed to ethical choices that work in the real world. It\u2019s worth noting, therefore, what happened when his own mother showed signs of dementia.\u00a0

Despite the fact that he had previously affirmed his openness to ending his mother\u2019s life when she became infirm, he continued to provide her with financial support.

\u201cI think this has made me see how the issues of someone with these kinds of problems are really very difficult,\u201d he admitted.\u00a0\u201cPerhaps it is more difficult than I thought before, because it\u2019s different when it\u2019s your mother.\u201d

This is when we must ask Peter Singer, with gentleness:\u00a0If there is no ultimate value to human life, why should anything be different when it\u2019s your mother?<\/em>

The irony is that Singer\u2019s Jewish parents, who grew up in Austria, barely escaped Hitler\u2019s purges in 1938 by emigrating to Australia.\u00a0Grandparents on both sides of his family died in Nazi extermination camps. The Third Reich systematically eliminated not only Jews, gypsies, pastors, homosexuals, and political rivals, but those who were mentally and physically challenged \u2013 individuals whom Hitler declared to be \u201cunworthy of life.\u201d

If God is God, and human beings are made in God\u2019s image, then all human beings are worthy of life \u2013 especially those among us who are the most vulnerable.

The ultimate scriptural vindication of that high view of human existence emerges in David\u2019s words in Psalm 139:13-16:

For you [O Lord] created my inmost being;<\/em>
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0you knit me together\u00a0in my mother\u2019s womb.<\/em>
\u00a0I praise you\u00a0because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0your works are wonderful,
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0when I was made\u00a0in the secret place,
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0when I was woven together\u00a0in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0all the days ordained\u00a0for me were written in your book
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0before one of them came to be.<\/em>

The lives of the unborn, newborns, physically and mentally challenged, and old and infirm all matter eternally.

Not because we have found them to be \u201cuseful,\u201d helpful, or worth keeping around.

But just because they are eternally loved.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Some people are inspired by Peter Singer.\u00a0 Others think he is the most dangerous intellectual in America. Everyone at least agrees on this:\u00a0The Australian-born Princeton University emeritus professor is never boring. Singer is a bioethicist.\u00a0He specializes in how scientific principles should lead human beings to think and behave.\u00a0 He wrote the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3769,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[756,379,343,755],"class_list":["post-3768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bioethics","tag-human-rights","tag-image-of-god","tag-psalm-139"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3770,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3768\/revisions\/3770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}