From Joe Carter at First Things:
I have a relative with Down's syndrome, and I care for quite a few patients with Down's. They are beautiful children and sweet gentle people. They are a gift to their families and to all of us.
Ninety percent of them are killed before they are born. Prenatal testing. This new eugenics-- "voluntary unconscious selection" as Darwinist and eugenicist Fredrick Osborne phrased it in the 1950's-- is the spawn of the old eugenics.
Gone are the involuntary sterilizations and the explicit hate. Now we want to expunge our own children, for their own good, you see. They must not suffer a life of imperfection, even if the imperfection is only in our minds.
There can be no more clear example of the difference the Christian and the atheist view of life. In the Christian view, a handicapped child is a gift, made in God's image, to be loved and protected. A cynic may say that it is ridiculous that God would bless such an imperfect recepticle with His image. A Christian would reply that God has always been most strongly present in our imperfections, our weakness. In fact, He blessed our weakness in the most astonishing way. He became one of us.
In the atheist view, a handicapped child is a biological mistake, evolution gone wrong. Even life unworthy of life.
Am I being unfair? Ninety percent of children with Down's syndrome are aborted. I do a lot of pre-natal counseling for parents of children with neurological handicaps. Very few of these parents bring their child to birth. Those who do are almost always serious Christians.
The atheist view of man as an evolved animal is encroaching on our culture. Our widespread embrace of abortion of handicapped children is as clear evidence as you ask for that denial of human exceptionalism-- denial of fact that man is made in God's image. When man is mere evolved animal, there's nothing wrong with culling the herd.
That is not the Christian understanding of man. That is not the truth about man. Each of us is precious and of immeasurable value, from conception to natural death. May God bless all of these gentle people with Down's syndrome, and may He forgive us for what we do to so many of them.
I have a relative with Down's syndrome, and I care for quite a few patients with Down's. They are beautiful children and sweet gentle people. They are a gift to their families and to all of us.
Ninety percent of them are killed before they are born. Prenatal testing. This new eugenics-- "voluntary unconscious selection" as Darwinist and eugenicist Fredrick Osborne phrased it in the 1950's-- is the spawn of the old eugenics.
Gone are the involuntary sterilizations and the explicit hate. Now we want to expunge our own children, for their own good, you see. They must not suffer a life of imperfection, even if the imperfection is only in our minds.
There can be no more clear example of the difference the Christian and the atheist view of life. In the Christian view, a handicapped child is a gift, made in God's image, to be loved and protected. A cynic may say that it is ridiculous that God would bless such an imperfect recepticle with His image. A Christian would reply that God has always been most strongly present in our imperfections, our weakness. In fact, He blessed our weakness in the most astonishing way. He became one of us.
In the atheist view, a handicapped child is a biological mistake, evolution gone wrong. Even life unworthy of life.
Am I being unfair? Ninety percent of children with Down's syndrome are aborted. I do a lot of pre-natal counseling for parents of children with neurological handicaps. Very few of these parents bring their child to birth. Those who do are almost always serious Christians.
The atheist view of man as an evolved animal is encroaching on our culture. Our widespread embrace of abortion of handicapped children is as clear evidence as you ask for that denial of human exceptionalism-- denial of fact that man is made in God's image. When man is mere evolved animal, there's nothing wrong with culling the herd.
That is not the Christian understanding of man. That is not the truth about man. Each of us is precious and of immeasurable value, from conception to natural death. May God bless all of these gentle people with Down's syndrome, and may He forgive us for what we do to so many of them.
a handicapped child is a gift, made in God's image
ReplyDeleteYou mean God is handicapped?
I guess chimps are also made in God’s image, just with smaller brains and more hair. Add a tail and you’ve got monkeys, little caricatures of God. Saying Down’s syndrome kids are made in your god’s image says more about your god than it does the kids.
ReplyDelete-KW
Oh look, Godwin's point. It's only the 2407th time on this blog.
ReplyDeleteOnce again Egnor paints this black or white image of his tribe and everyone else's.
ReplyDeleteYep, i'm an atheist- that MUST mean i'm all for aborting fetuses, whether they're healthy or not.
And on to that picture - the poor kids parents (if thats even a real message on there) made this kid hold up a sign for their own purpose, when he probably thinks it says how cool Elmo is or something.
@anon:
ReplyDeleteEgnor's Corollary to Godwin's law: It's not Godwin's law if the comparison is apt.
Failure to cooperate with eugenic cleansing in Germany was viewed as a serious moral deviation and even a criminal act.
And may God bless you, Doctor.
ReplyDeleteBeautifully put.
The contrast between the creationist view and that of the 'evolved animal' is very well illustrated in this post.
Feeling and facts, a rare combination in this age of 'correctness' and 'efficiency'. Nice to see a little TRUTH get out there.
Remember when they were referred to as mongoloid?
ReplyDeleteAh, thems were the days..
Yep, i'm an atheist- that MUST mean i'm all for aborting fetuses, whether they're healthy or not.
ReplyDeleteOf course. How could you eat fetuses if you didn't abort them?
@troy
ReplyDeletePeople who willfully bring children with Down's syndrome into this world, when early abortion was an option, are morally bankrupt borderline criminals.
Does this way of doing things also apply to other disabilities? Should a child or person handicapped in an accident be terminated? What’s your rationale for saying such a thing?
I’m all ears.
Godwin's law is based on the following lemma:
ReplyDeleteRepeated mention of God will make any atheist morph into a Nazi.
Godwin's law is based on the following lemma:
ReplyDeleteRepeated mention of Zeus will make any azeusist morph into a Nazi.
That's right, Pépé. Why do you hate Zeus? How can you have morality without Zeus?
Try to see this from another angle.
ReplyDeleteSuppose you have a young couple that are not religious, and suppose they don’t earn much money. Suppose it is forbidden to abort and suppose this couple is forced to have the child anyway.
What do you think Dr. Egnor, this child’s life will be like ?
Most civilised countries, including the US, consider life begins when a baby is born. If you want to believe otherwise – fine, then don’t abort yourself – but don’t shove your fundamentalism onto others.
@iko:
ReplyDeleteLife isn't a commodity, to be exchanged when a better deal comes along. You carry quite a few organs that could save many lives if they were taken from you. The people who could be saved by taking your organs would in the aggregate live longer and better lives than you.
Utilitarian arguments can backfire. What you're arguing is not about the best for the most, but about the perogative of power.
All human life warrants respect and protection, from conception onward.
Dr. Egnor, I’m curious. If you have this opinion on conception, what do you think of condoms ? Or do you also think sex should be controlled by tight religious norms ?
ReplyDelete"All human life warrants respect and protection, from conception onward."
ReplyDeleteThat's not a consensus. Ethicists continue to debate these points. Some view an embryo as a human being, but others do not. To refer to a clump of cells as a human being, you have to believe in God who endows every embryo with a soul. However, if you do not believe in God, the soul is a superstitious nonsense on a par with vis vitalis.
Michael,
ReplyDelete'Failure to cooperate with eugenic cleansing in Germany was viewed as a serious moral deviation and even a criminal act'.
Not true. Why do you persist in making such sweeping statements? The T4 'euthanasia' program was instituted in secrecy in 1939 to free up 100,000 hospital beds for the expected casualties of the German invasion of Poland. The T4 program was the only Holocaust crime for which Hitler affixed his signature, probably because he couldn't get any of his underlings to take the responsibility, and that's saying something.
It was a badly kept secret and eventually public opposition, including from Catholic bishops, stopped it.
Nazi Germany was totalitarian, but not nearly as totalitarian as Stalin's Russia. The regime was open to some extent to public opinion. People such as Viktor Klemperer were able to survive the persecution of Jews because they were married to Christians, and their spouses were able to put enough pressure on the regime to prevent 'deportation' to the death camps.
oleg said...
ReplyDelete" That's not a consensus."
Consensus huh? What a surprise! Atheist dupe believes consensus equals "fact".
Bad news for ya Olé, if its consensus it isn't science and if its science consensus has nothing to do with it.
" Ethicists continue to debate these points."
Indeed, ethicists like Peter Singer, your hero zoophilia, infanticide etc. promoter.
"To refer to a clump of cells as a human being,"
A clump of cells? Never went to school huh?
Never learn that Darwins' "clump of cells" like beliefs were absolute nonsense?
Apparently not.
" you have to believe in God who endows every embryo with a soul."
Not really, you just need to have a clue in biology.
You do not have a soul, you are a soul, you live in a body.
"However, if you do not believe in God, the soul is a superstitious nonsense on a par with vis vitalis."
More bad news for ya, truth doesn't depend on belief, nor unbelief. You are a soul whether you believe it or not.
You will find this out, eventually.
Worse, if there is no "soul" or metaphysical being alive in and animating a human body, we're back to the necessary logical conclusion that mind = brain.
If mind = brain then whatever goes on in that clump of cells is anything but "right" or "wrong", or reality.
You are nothing but a pack of neurons under atheism.
"The Astonishing Hypothesis is that 'You,' your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased: 'You're nothing but a pack of neurons.' This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people today that it can truly be called astonishing." -Francis Crick (1994) The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul
Ergo, nothing you think or believe or say is of any real value whatsoever.
You only think you're a "person", but in atheism human life is just a bag of autonomous self-deluded meat and chemistry.
Of course, as a bag of autonomous meat, things like : "rights", good, evil, truth, meaning etc., are just neurological chemistry and nothing real.
My, isn't atheist philosophy wonderful!?
But hey they probably think no one sees through their "killing in the name of no god" stance.
ReplyDeleteHURRRR DUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Gary H,
ReplyDeleteIt's hardly 'revisionist' to note that Jews such as Viktor Klemperer managed to survive in plain sight in Nazi Germany right up to the end of WWII. They survived not because they had money, but because they were married to Christians.
It's hardly 'revisionist' to note that the T4 'euthanasia' program was conducted in secrecy.
Why don't you read some histories of the Third Reich? Recommended authors include Ian Kershaw and Richard Evans.
Gary, you crack me up, buddy. Everything you say is so funny!
ReplyDeleteConsensus is not science? Who said anything about science? Ethics is not science.
Darwin and a clump of cells? You are misremembering a creationist talking point. It was supposed to be about a single cell being a blob of protoplasm, not about a bunch of cells. And by the way, that talking point is plain wrong: Darwin studied cells under a microscope and knew full well that it has internal structure.
And it's truly comical when you try to teach me biology of the soul. Biology is science. Soul is (or was) a philosophical concept. These things don't mix.
And I am a soul whether I believe in it or not? Only from your perspective as a believer. To an unbeliever such as myself, I am not a soul. Or more precisely, the concept of soul is simply outdated.
As to "human life [being] just a bag of autonomous self-deluded meat and chemistry," that isn't atheist philosophy, that's your caricature of it. That, my friend, is above you pay grade. Don't even try.
@iko:
ReplyDelete[Dr. Egnor, I’m curious. If you have this opinion on conception, what do you think of condoms ? Or do you also think sex should be controlled by tight religious norms ?]
I think contraception is a sin, and bad for all, so of course I oppose the use of condoms.
Sex is always "controlled", in the sense that it is motivated by powerful urges. I think chastity is the best course-- heterosexual sex within marriage.
The issue of legal control is another matter. Obviously some kinds of sex should be illegal (with children, prostitution, etc). One can make a case for making sodomy illegal, for public health reasons. Adultery is incredibly destructive to families, and frankly I think that it made sense to ban it under law.
I think contraception is a sin, and bad for all, so of course I oppose the use of condoms.
ReplyDeleteYou're an idiot.
So what Troy the Nazi is trying to say is that the parents of the little kid in the photo are criminals, and the child in the photo should have been executed.
I'm not Troy but I'm pretty sure that's not what he thinks.
Also, Egnor and Gary H., your obsession with the 3rd Reich is unhealthy.
Alt Numlock:
ReplyDelete"So what Troy the Nazi is trying to say is that the parents of the little kid in the photo are criminals, and the child in the photo should have been executed."
No, imbecile. Try reading for comprehension. I didn't say that children with Down's should be executed - nor am I in favor of that. I said that it's immoral to have a baby with Down's when this could have been prevented at a time when the fetus was a mindless clump of cells.
"And Troy, your comment applies to my nephew and my brother and sister and law.
So, you know: F*ck you."
Thanks and the same to you. I also have a relative with Down's, and I know first-hand how debilitating the affliction is to the person herself and her immediate family. If her mother had known, she would have had a timely abortion. Even so, the girl in question is loved by all, despite her terrible disease.
It's irrational belief like yours that causes unnecessary suffering. There's nothing like religion to make good people do bad things.
Looks like the spam filter has been eating my responses on several posts. Never mind, then...
ReplyDeleteEgnor's Corollary to Godwin's law: It's not Godwin's law if the comparison is apt.
ReplyDeleteYou don't have the heft to make a corollary to an internet law. You're a pathetic sad little man with clown makeup smeared on your face desperate for attention.
Why must everything turn into a debate about religion or moral alliance? Can't it just be a matter of having the funds or ability to support a child with this genetic disorder? Its incurable, unpreventable, and most importantly unstoppable. 1 in 800 babies are born with this disease. If one was to abort every baby with down's syndrome, 166,250 children would never be born, every year. Thats just sadness and madness abusing the disguise of religion or the lack of.
ReplyDelete