MandM

MandM featured on Vote No

noreply@blogger.com (Madeleine) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 04:27:00 +0000

The Vote No blog will be linking to some of our posts as the referendum on the illegality of smacking draws nearer.

The first one, published today, was my "No Defences Permitted For The Accused," which is already drawing comments - feel free to jump in.

Others slated for publication on Vote No are Matt's fisks of the Rev Dr Margaret Mayman's flawed moral theology and Dr Ian Hassall's arbitrary ethical reasoning on the smacking referendum.

(I'll update this post with direct links to Vote No as each article goes live.)

Senator Jim Demint on the Proposed Hate Crimes Amendment

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 02:20:00 +0000

Wintery Knight has posted the video below from a debate of Senator Jim Demint speaking on the proposed hate crimes amendment currently before the US Senate.

I do not agree with all of the Senator's arguments; the Senator seems to oppose the idea that some crimes or assaults are worse than others; however, having distinctions between manslaughter and murder, having defences such as provocation and permitting discretion in sentences, and so on, is premised on the fact that some crimes are more severe than others. I also contest his notion that determining the severity of the crime does not depend on the status of the victim; surely a person beats to death a little child has done something worse than a person who beats to death a person of equal strength in a pub brawl?

However, where I think his argument is poignant is when he notes that the proposed hate crimes amendment will take into account a person's political and religious beliefs in determining the severity of the crime. In other words, a person can be prosecuted for what they believe, provided they engage in a criminal activity. The Senator rightly highlights the proposed wording that no one shall be prosecuted "solely" on the basis of their religious beliefs; this seems to imply that one might be able to be prosecuted partly on the basis of their religious beliefs. I also agree with his questioning why, if the bill is simply about criminal activity, this amendment even needs to be there especially in light of the First Amendment of the US Constitution?

Anyway watch the video. If nothing else you'll enjoy the refreshing change of a watching a politician speak in the house, using arguments to support his claims and those in opposition are not screaming abuse and insults in the background or being ejected!

Top 10 NZ Christian Blogs - May 09

noreply@blogger.com (Madeleine) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 23:29:00 +0000

The Top 10 New Zealand Christian Blogs for May 09 are as follows:

[1.] NZ Conservative 14.5 (7 - 22 )
[3.] MacDoctor Moments 19.5 (22 - 17)
[2.] MandM 20 (5 - 35)
[4.] Something Should Go Here, Maybe Later (HalfDone) 25.5 (20 - 31)
[5.] Keeping Stock 32.5 (29 - 36)
[6.] Say Hello to my Little Friend (Beretta Blog) 37 (33 - 41)
[5.] Being Frank 38 (38 - 43)
[8.] The Humanitarian Chronicle 45.5 (28 - 63)
[9.] The Briefing Room 46.5 (44 - 49)
[N.] Sustain:If:Able Kiwi 61 (74 - 48)

Rank. [previous top 10 rank] Blog MandM (Half Done - Tumeke)

To obtain our stats we run searches on Half Done's May 09 NZ stats and Tumeke's May 09 NZ stats for openly Christian blogs then we average those blogs scores to obtain their overall scores. If you think your blog should make our rankings make sure you are listed on both Tumeke and HalfDone's rankings as an identifiably Christian blog.

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong on God, Morality and Arbitrariness

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 10:14:00 +0000

Is morality independent of religion? One common argument for this position is that denying it makes God’s commands arbitrary.

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues,

Let’s assume that God commanded us not to rape. Did God have any reason to command this? If not, his command was arbitrary, and then it can’t make anything morally wrong. On the other hand, if God did have a reason to command us not to rape, then that reason is what makes rape morally wrong. The command itself is superfluous. Either way, morality cannot depend on God’s commands.[1]

The conclusion of this argument is that morality cannot “depend” upon God, and that, God’s commands cannot “make” anything morally wrong. It is clear from what Armstrong says earlier in the same paper that he has in mind a relationship of constitution,[2] his target is the claim that moral obligations depend on divine commands in a manner analogous to the way the property of being water depends upon the property of being H20. His conclusion is that morality, which in this context refers to deontic properties such as being prohibited, being permitted or being required, is not constituted by divine commands.[3]

The premises of the argument can be summarised as follows,

[1] Either, (i) there is a reason, r, why God prohibits rape; or, (ii) there is no reason, r, why God prohibits rape.

[2] If there is no reason, r, why God prohibits rape then Gods commands are arbitrary.

[3] If there is a reason, r, why God prohibits rape then, r, is what constitutes the wrongness of rape.

The point is that either a person must admit that God’s commands are arbitrary or deny that his commands constitute moral obligation.

I think this argument is problematic; the problem is that the word “reason” is ambiguous. William Wrainwright notes that the word reason can be used in two different senses. The first is a constitutive sense; one affirms that the reason water has certain phenomenological properties is because it is H20. In this sense, the use of the word “reason” denotes a special kind of ontological relationship. The second sense is a motivational reason; as in, when I state that the reason I feed my daughter is because I love her. This sense is more psychological or epistemological.[4]

It is important to note that these two senses are not the same as the following illustration demonstrates. Noah fills a glass with water. If we ask what the constitutive reason was for his action, the answer would be that he filled the glass with water because he filled the glass with H20. If we ask what the motivational reason was for his action, the answer would be that he wanted a drink. Yet, his wanting a drink does not constitute water, likewise water being H20 is not the motivational reason he wants the drink.

When Armstrong states, “Let’s assume that God commanded us not to rape. Did God have any reason to command this?” he could be asking if there is a motivating reason as to why God prohibits rape or he could be asking if there is a constitutive reason as to why God prohibits rape. Either way, however, his argument fails.

Turning to the first option, if Armstrong means to ask, did God have a motivating reason for prohibiting rape? then r refers to a motivating reason and premise [2] is correct. If God has no motivational reasons for prohibiting rape then God's commands are arbitrary. To avoid the conclusion that God’s commands are arbitrary one would have to concede that God has motivating reasons for issuing them.

The problem is that on this sense of “reason,” premise [3] is false. If r refers to a motivating reason then it does not follow that because r exists, r constitutes the wrongness of rape. I noted this in the example I gave above; the fact that Noah has a motivating reason to pour water into a glass does not mean that these motivations constitute him pouring water into the glass. What constitutes water are H20 molecules, not his motivations.

Armstrong could avoid this by denying that he means r to refer to a motivating reason, that he meant r to refer to some kind of constitutive reason. This might enable him to affirm that [3] is true. The problem is that if this is what is meant by r then [2] is false. Even if God does not have constitutive reasons for prohibiting rape, he could still have motivating reasons and if he does then [2] is false. If God has motivational reasons, such as concern for the welfare of others for issuing the commands he does, then God's commands are not arbitrary.

Armstrong’s argument therefore commits the fallacy of equivocation.

[1] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics eds Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 108.
[2] Ibid 106.
[3] Ibid 105; where he turns to the question of whether Theism is an adequate foundation for objective moral duties.
[4] William Wrainwright Religion and Morality (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd, 2005) 91.

Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 04:33:00 +0000

In Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part I, I noted that a defender of the permissibility of feticide, who does not also want to endorse infanticide and who defends the sentience criterion, must “identify a reason for holding that the potential of a human brain is morally relevant after” the fetus acquires sentience “but is not morally relevant before that point.” I also noted that this reason must be “not itself merely an ad hoc device for reaching the conclusion the defender of [sentience criterion] wishes to reach.” I sketched David Boonin's position; Boonin has offered an justification of the sentience criterion which he claims achieves this. Boonin claims that he can account for the wrongness of killing in various cases in a manner that is (a) more parsimonious than Marquis’s account; and, (b) more salient. In addition to explaining why it is wrong to kill in these cases in a superior manner, he argues, (c) Marquis account is subject to counter examples that his account is not subject to. I will now address these arguments.

Parsimonious
Boonin argues that his account can explain the wrongness of killing in various cases in a manner that is more parsimonious than that suggested by Marquis. He argues as follows,

[i] His own account appeals to only to one property of an individual to explain the wrongness of killing;
[ii] Marquis account however appeals to two properties; and,
[iii] Appealing to one property is more parsimonious than appealing to two.

Premises [i] and [iii] are correct, Boonin appeals to only one property—that of having an ideal desire to live. Moreover, it is correct that appealing to one property to explain something is more parsimonious than appealing to two. The crucial premise here is [ii], Boonin states that Marquis’s account appeals to two properties to explain the wrongness of killing. Boonin characterises Marquis as holding to the following proposition.

If an individual P has a future-like-ours F and if either (a) P now desires that F be preserved, or (b) P will later desire to continue having the experiences contained in F (if P is not killed), then P is an individual with the same right to life as you or I.23

Unfortunately, Boonin provides little justification for this interpretation of Marquis. His claim relies on two citations from Marquis’s work. The first comes from Marquis’s paper, “Why Abortion is Immoral,” where Marquis states,

When I am killed, I am deprived both of what I now value which would have been part of my personal future, but also of what I would have come to value, Therefore when I die I am deprived of all the value of my future.24

On the face of it, this citation suggests Marquis does understand a future of value in the way Boonin suggests. He understands a future of value to consist of both what one presently values and what one will come to value. The problem with this interpretation is that, as Boonin himself notes, later in the same essay Marquis explicitly repudiates this understanding. He states, “we desire life because we value the goods of this life, The goodness of life is not secondary to our desire for it.”25 Marquis concludes, “It is strictly speaking, the value of a human’s future [rather than the human’s future valuing of it] which makes killing wrong on this theory.”26 At best then, the evidence from Marquis is ambiguous, and at worst, he explicitly rejects the position Boonin attributes to him.

Boonin’s second citation of Marquis is from a more recent paper, “Reply to Shirley.”27 In this paper Marquis had previously been challenged to “produce an account of what it would mean to say that an individual’s future is of value to him.”28 Here Marquis’s answer is:

Consider some class of individuals at t1. Consider the hypotheses that those human individuals have a future of value of them at t2. Verify this by asking those individuals at t2 whether they believe their lives are worth living at t2 . Those who answer in the affirmative have a future of value at t1.29

Boonin takes this citation as offering support for his interpretation of Marquis. He seems to think that Marquis suggests here that what constitutes a future of value is either that one now desires it or will come to desire it. This is dubious. Nowhere in this quote does Marquis say anything about a present desire and a future desire; it states merely that a person has a valuable future if they would at a future time consider their life worth living. Moreover, it is unclear whether Marquis considers this to constitute what a future of value is or whether it confirms that someone has one. In a later article, Marquis suggests that the former is correct as follows,

How does killing victimize them? It harms them. Killing harms its victims by depriving them of all of the goods of life that they otherwise would have experienced. In other words, killing them deprives them of their futures of value. Their futures of value consist of whatever they will or would regard as making their lives worth living.30

Here Marquis construes a future of value in terms of what a person will, in the future, regard as worth living. Boonin then rests [i] on insufficient evidence.

Interestingly in his most recent article, Marquis makes it clear that he does not hold to the conjunctive account Boonin attributes to him. He states that his account,

[M]akes reference only to the value of one’s future, not to the value of one’s present or past. Accordingly, the lack of parsimony that Boonin find in the future of value account is really a function only of Boonin’s statement of that account of the wrongness of killing, not the account itself. Because there is no good reason to include present desires in the statement of the future of value account, other than for the purpose of rejecting the account on grounds of parsimony, I shall discard the unwieldy locution of present or future desires and refer the to the account Boonin rejects as a future of value account.31

Boonin’s argument here appears to attack a straw man. Premise [ii] is false and without [ii] Boonin’s parsimonious argument is unsound. Both Boonin and Marquis appeal to a single property.

Salience
Boonin’s second argument is that his account is more “salient.”32 By this he means that “it enables us to account for the prima facie wrongness of killing by understanding killing as one instance of a more general category of acts that are prima facie wrong: acts that frustrate the desires of others.”33 In support of this, Boonin cites a case of Hans who “has been dumped by his girlfriend and has plunged into a deep depression. He can think about nothing else and has no desire to go on living.”34 Boonin suggests that his account makes sense of this case in a straightforward manner. Hans would desire to live if he thought about his future rationally with full information in the absence of distorting influences like depression. On the other hand, he suggests that Marquis’s future of value account does not account for the case of Hans in a straightforward manner: “on [Marquis’s] account, the wrongness of killing is not explained by appealing to a feature that accounts for the wrongness of a more general class of wrongful actions. The wrongness of killing however becomes an anomaly.”35

This objection, like the previous one, appears to be based on a misinterpretation of Marquis’s position, as Marquis points out:

The future of value account makes killing Hans wrong for the same reason it is wrong to kill almost all other human beings. To kill Hans is to make him worse off than he otherwise would have been. To make him worse off than he otherwise would have been is to harm him.
On the future of value account the wrongness of killing is based on the harm of killing. A present action cannot affect one’s past. Strictly speaking, a present act of harming does not make another worse off in the present either, for the present is instantaneous and harm, involving, as it does, causation, requires at least a small temporal interval for its effect to occur. A present act of harm affects the victim’s future. It makes someone worse off in the future. To make someone worse off is to reduce that person’s welfare, to reduce the quantity or quality of the goods in his future that she would otherwise have possessed. On the future of value account killing is wrong because it harms a victim.36

Marquis’s account, then, “enables us to account for the prima facie wrongness of killing by understanding killing as one instance of a more general category of acts that are prima facie wrong,”37 that is, the category of acts that harm others. Moreover, I am inclined to think Marquis’s account provides a more plausible category of acts than that of Boonin’s. It seems to me far more obvious that killing is wrong because it harms another than that it is wrong because it prevents someone from doing something in the future that they presently desire to do.

However, there is a way of reading Boonin that leads to the conclusion that both he and Marquis understand killing as a subclass of the duty not to harm others. It is common in the literature to define an individual’s welfare in terms of what they would ‘ideally desire’. Philosophers such as Richard M. Hare and Richard Brandt for example have defined welfare in this way. Consider Marquis’s claim, “To make someone worse off is to reduce that person’s welfare, to reduce the quantity or quality of the goods in his future that she would otherwise have possessed.” If Boonin is understood as adopting an ideal account of welfare, then to reduce a person’s desires is to frustrate their ideal desires. On this reading, both accounts are equally salient. Both understand killing as harming a person and reducing his or her welfare, they simply disagree as to how welfare is defined.

Counter-examples
Boonin’s third argument is that his account “is able to account for a counter example that Marquis’s version is unable to account for.”38

[C]onsider, the case of Hans’ even more depressed brother, Franz. Like Hans, Franz does not currently value his personal future even though, as also in the case of Hans, his personal future contains many of the sorts of experiences that we take to be distinctively valuable. Due to a permanent and irreversible chemical imbalance in his brain, however, Franz is, and will always remain, completely unable to value the experiences that he has. Although he has a future-like-ours, he has no actual occurent desire to preserve it and he never will have such a desire.39

Regarding this case Boonin suggests three things:

[i] That it would be wrong to kill such an individual;
[ii] That Marquis’s account entails that it is not wrong to kill such a person; and,
[iii] That his own account, the ideal desire account, entails it is wrong to kill such a person.

Curiously, in his most recent article Marquis concedes [ii]; he grants that his account does have this implication but he suggests that [i] is false.40 I think this move is unnecessary on Marquis’s part. By citing this as a counter example, Boonin assumes that Marquis holds that possession of a future of value is a necessary condition for possessing a right to life. This assumption is false. In Why Abortion is Immoral, Marquis made it clear that he was contending that a possession of a future of value was only a sufficient condition for possessing a right to life. Given this, it is simply false to claim that it is permissible to kill a person who lacks a future of value. All it affirms is that it is wrong to kill those who have such a future.

Elsewhere, Marquis has argued there can be good reasons for extending the rule against homicide to cover those who do not have futures of value.41 While it may be true that an individual act of killing a person does not harm them, deprive them of a future of value, social endorsement and acceptance of a rule allowing such killing will harm people and, hence, for this reason, a rule against killing in situations like this is justified.

Boonin does have a possible reply to this response, while Marquis’s account does not entail it is permissible to kill Franz, it fails to account for the wrongness of killing Franz and needs to be supplemented in order to succeed. Hence, if Boonin’s account can explain killing in this context, his account is better. The crucial question then is whether [iii] is correct. Is it the case that Boonin’s account does entail that it is wrong to kill Franz? Boonin argues that it does.

[O]n the “present ideal dispositional desire” version of the future like ours principle, things look very different. For surely Franz’s desires about his personal future would include the desire that it be preserved if his desires were formed in the absence of the chemical imbalance that prevents him from having this desire. Although he has no actual desire to go on living, that is, it does make sense to attribute this desire to him as an ideal desire. And given this, my version of the principle implies that Franz does have the same right to life as you or I. . . . [M]y version of the future-like-ours principle is superior to Marquis’s.42

Here I think Boonin conflates two separate questions. The first is the question of what Franz’s ideally rational self would choose for itself (i.e., the ideally rational Franz), and what Franz’s ideally rational self would choose for Franz’s actual self (i.e., his non-ideally rational self).43 If one asks the former question, then Boonin is correct; Franz would not choose to die. Franz’s ideally rational self would not suffer from depression and so would not desire to die.

The answer to the second question is not so clear. Here we ask what an ideally rational self would choose if it knew that it would in fact have a future filled with miserable suffering and depression and be unable to enjoy any of the experiences that lie ahead. It is certainly not obvious that an ideally rational person would value a future made up of such circumstances.44

The question then arises as to which of these two questions is the appropriate one to ask. Carson argues that is the latter and not the former that is pertinent.

Suppose I have an irrational fear of dogs. A friend asks me to take care of his dogs while he is away on vacation. My ideally rational self would not fear the dogs and would not hesitate to look after them. Given my intense fear of dogs, however, things are likely to turn out badly if I look after the dogs. Why should I care that my ideal self wouldn’t be afraid of dogs? Wouldn’t it still be foolish for my actual self (with all of its phobias) to take care of the dogs? I might be incapable of adequately caring for them.45

Carson’s point is that something in a person’s future is not valuable to them if it is something their ideal self would choose for their ideal self; many such choices would be harmful to them. Only if ideal desires are understood in the latter sense can it be plausibly maintained that what a person ideally desires is valuable to them. On the face of it, then, it appears that Marquis’s account does not entail this counter example whereas Boonin’s account does, that is, at least if he intends his account to lay down both necessary and sufficient conditions needed for a right to life.46

At this point the defender of Boonin could make the following reply. Suppose one grants Marquis’s claim that there are good reasons for extending the rule against homicide to cover those who do not have futures of value. Presumably, a fully informed person would be aware of these reasons and, hence, Franz would, if fully informed, refuse to endorse a rule that allowed him to be killed. Franz would accept that his own future lacked value and was going to be miserable but he would also note that other people would be harmed if a rule allowing him to be killed were accepted and, hence, Franz would have an ideal desire not to be killed. If this response is cogent, then, one again, Boonin and Marquis’s accounts appear to be on par. Neither by themselves provide a reason for why it would be wrong to kill Franz and both can account for the wrongness of killing Franz when supplemented with Marquis’s other arguments on the topic.

Boonin’s contention that his account provides a better explanation of the wrongness of killing appears mistaken. Both Boonin and Marquis’s accounts explain various paradigms of unlawful killing. Both appeal to a single property in doing so, “possession of a future of value.” Both explain killing in terms of reducing a person’s welfare and hence harming them. Both, by themselves, do not provide an explanation of why it is wrong to kill Franz and both can explain this when supplemented with the same further argument. The main difference between Boonin and Marquis is how they construe a ‘future of value’. Boonin understands this in terms of a future one has, a present ideal desire to preserve one’s future. Marquis understands this in terms of a future one will come to actually value in the future. The only other differences between them, at least on the factors Boonin cites, is that one entails that a fetus is human and the other does not. If one is to prefer one to another on the grounds Boonin provides, one can do so only by appealing to one’s beliefs about feticide. It seems, then, that Boonin has failed to provide a reason that is not itself “merely an ad hoc device for reaching the conclusion the defender of [sentience criterion] wishes to reach.”

Boonin’s Conclusion
A precisely analogous problem occurs when Boonin applies the modified FLO to the issue of feticide. Suppose, for the sake of argument, I grant that the modified FLO account provides necessary and sufficient conditions an organism must meet to posses a right to life. Why does it follow that a fetus does not posses a right to life? While it is true that fetuses lack actual desires to preserve their FLO’s, it is not at all clear that fetuses lack an ideal desire to do so. Marquis plausibly suggests that “If a fetus were rational and fully informed, it would desire to live” and concludes, “It follows that fetuses have an ideal desire to live.”47 Boonin takes exactly this line with infants. While infants lack the cognitive capacity to have any actual desire to exist, they have a right to life because they would have such desires if they were fully rational and able to engage in higher cognitive activities. Why can the same not be said of pre-sentient fetuses?

Boonin’s response is to define ideal desires a particular way. He states that “ideal desires . . . are simply the content of actual desires corrected to account for the distorting influences of imperfect circumstances.” 48 Once this definition is granted, it follows that only beings with actual desires can have ideal desires. And hence only a sentient fetus can have a right to life. This is however precisely where the problem arises. There are rival definitions of ideal desires proposed in the literature and, as Marquis points out,49 Boonin gives little or no argument for adopting this particular definition. Moreover, nothing in his arguments for the modified FLO account requires this particular definition of ideal desires to be adopted. This last point is important. Boonin makes use of ‘ideal desires’ to avoid various counter-examples to the desire account of the wrongness of killing, and he argues for the modified FLO account on the basis of its ability to plausibly explain certain paradigms of wrongful killing. However, nothing in this line of argument requires Boonin to adopt one definition of ideal desire over another. Almost any definition of ideal desires on offer will get around the counter examples aforementioned and most such accounts will explain the paradigms Boonin appeals to. Consequently, Boonin’s argument appears arbitrary. He recommends his account on the grounds that it explains various cases better than a rival account which he assumes is the best available.

However, there are other versions of the modified FLO account available which utilize other definitions of ideal desires, these accounts explain the cases equally as well as Boonin’s does. Some of these other versions entail that a fetus does have ideal desires. In the absence of some reason for preferring Boonin’s account over the others, the only factor that seems pertinent in deciding which version is correct is the accounts’ implications for feticide. It seems then that person’s beliefs about feticide will do most if not all the work in deciding which version to adopt. Once again, it appears that Boonin has failed to provide a reason that is not itself “merely an ad hoc device for reaching the conclusion the defender of [sentience criterion] wishes to reach.”

Conclusion
In my first section, I noted that a defender of the permissibility of feticide who does not also want to endorse infanticide and who defends the sentience criterion must “identify a reason for holding that the potential of a human brain is morally relevant after” the fetus acquires sentience “but is not morally relevant before that point.” I also noted that this reason must be “not itself merely an ad hoc device for reaching the conclusion the defender of [sentience criterion] wishes to reach.”50 It appears this challenge has not been met. Boonin’s argument for the modified FLO and his application of it to the issue of feticide appears arbitrary. His account is plausible only if one grants that feticide is not homicide from the outset.51

24 Marquis, “Why Abortion is Immoral,” 345.
25 Ibid., 350.
26 Ibid.
27 Don Marquis, “Fetuses, Futures, and Values: A Reply to Shirley,” in Southwest Philosophy Review 6.2 (1995): 263-265.
28 Boonin, Defense of Abortion, 60.
29 Marquis, “Fetuses, Futures, and Values,” 263-265.
30 Don Marquis, “Abortion and the Beginning and End of Human Life,” The Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics 34.1 (2006): 23.
31 Don Marquis, “Abortion Revisited,” 410
32 Boonin, A Defense of Abortion, 67.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid., 70.
35 Ibid., 76.
36 Marquis, “Abortion Revisited,” 411
37 Boonin, A Defense of Abortion, 74.
38 Boonin, A Defense of Abortion, 76.
39 Ibid., 76.
40 Marquis, “Abortion Revisited,” 413.
41 Don Marquis, “The Weakness of the Case for Legalizing Physician Assisted Suicide,” in Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate, ed. Margaret P. Battin, Rosamond Rhodes and Anita Silvers (New York: Routledge, 1998), 267-278.
42 Boonin, A Defense of Abortion, 76-77.
43 This distinction comes from Carson, Value and the Good Life, 226.
44 This is particularly the case when one considers that as Boonin defines ideal desires they are “simply the content of actual desires corrected to account for the distorting influences of imperfect circumstances.” It seems that there are plenty of actual people who when informed they will live for the rest of their lives in misery decide they do not want to continue living. Note the question here is not whether it is morally right to kill people with such desires, it is whether people with such desires exist.
45 Carson, Value and the Good Life, 226.
46 There is some ambiguity as to whether Boonin is proposing the modified future of value account as a sufficient or a necessary condition for possession of a right to life. In the earlier sections of A Defense of Abortion, Boonin appears to be proposing only the former. Boonin introduces his account on p. 64 where he states, “If an individual P has a future-like-ours and if P now desires that F be preserved, then P is an individual with the same right to life as you or I.” However, this states that the present possession of ideal dispositional desires is a sufficient condition of a right to life, not that they are a necessary condition.
Moreover, Boonin appears to confirm this interpretation later on p. 84 where he states, “On the account I have been defending, then, all that is required for the newborn infant to satisfy the conditions sufficient for having the same right to life as you or I is that he has a future like ours and that he have actual conscious desires”. This only states that the account is intended to lay down a sufficient and not a necessary condition.
Similarly, the argument Boonin provides for his account supports only a sufficient and necessary condition. His argument consists of providing an explanation of why it is wrong to kill in certain paradigm cases. He does not attempt to show that it explains why it is permissible to kill in paradigmatic cases of licit killing. No such cases are even mentioned.
He spells his method out on p. 57: “Identify the property that most plausibly accounts for the wrongness of killing in cases B-E, and then determine whether that property is possessed by the individual in case A. If it is, then the best account of the wrongness of killing in general provides a sufficient reason to conclude that the fetus has the same right to life as you or I. If it is not, then the best account of the wrongness of killing provides no such reason (though this will still leave open the possibility that killing the fetus is wrong for reasons other than the reasons that best explain why killing you or me is wrong).”
Boonin accepts if the “property” that “most plausibly accounts for the wrongness of killing” is not possessed by a fetus this “will still leave open the possibility that killing the fetus is wrong” for other reasons. However, when Boonin returns to this account 37 pages later he states that a fetus does not have a right to life because it lacks such desires. This is a fallacious inference. Such a conclusion follows only if Boonin is offering a necessary condition. Boonin has, it appears, committed the fallacy of denying the antecedent. The only charitable way to escape this conclusion is to understand Boonin as offering both a necessary and sufficient condition.
47 Marquis “Singer on Abortion and Infanticide,” Singer under Fire, ed., Jeffrey A. Schaler (Chicago: Open Court Publishing, forthcoming 2009).
48 Boonin, “A Defense of Abortion.”
49 In “Abortion Revisited,” 413-414
50 Boonin, A Defense of Abortion, 122.
51 I thank Don Marquis for his assistance in writing this paper.

This two-part series was originally published as: Matthew Flannagan “Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique” Ethics and Medicine - An International Journal of Bioethics Vol 25:2 (Summer 2009) 95-106. It is reproduced on this blog with permission.

RELATED POSTS:
Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part I
Some Thoughts on Human Embryonic Stem-cell Research
Is Abortion Liberal? Part 1
Is Abortion Liberal? Part 2
Sentience Part 1
Sentience Part 2
Viability
Abortion and Brain Death: A Response to Farrar
Abortion and Capital Punishment: No Contradiction
Imposing You Beliefs Onto Others: A Defence

Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 22:00:00 +0000

This two-part series was originally published as: Matthew Flannagan “Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique” Ethics and Medicine - An International Journal of Bioethics Vol 25:2 (Summer 2009) 95-106. It is reproduced on this blog with permission.

Abstract
Defenders of the permissibility of feticide commonly argue that killing an organism is not homicide unless the organism’s brain has developed enough for it to acquire sentience: the capacity for consciousness and the ability to perceive pleasure and pain. In this paper I critique one of the more sophisticated versions of this argument, proposed by David Boonin in A Defense of Abortion. First, I sketch some prima facie problems faced by any appeal to sentience. Second, I examine Boonin’s attempt to defend an appeal to sentience against these problems by contructing a modified future like ours (FLO) account of the wrongness of killing. I argue that Boonin’s modified FLO defence of sentience fails. Both his argument for the modified FLO account and his application of this account to feticide rest on ad hoc arbitrary manoeuvres, manoeuvres which mean that the modified FLO account is a plausible criteria for the right to life only if one already grants that feticide is not homicide.

Common in literature defending the permissibility of feticide is the contention that killing an organism is not homicide unless the organism’s brain has developed enough for it to acquire sentience: the capacity for consciousness and the ability to perceive pleasure and pain. In this paper I criticise perhaps the most sophisticated version of this claim—that proposed by David Boonin. I first sketch some prima facie problems faced by any appeal to sentience, followed by an examination of Boonin’s attempt to defend an appeal to sentience against these problems. I argue that his defense fails.

Some terminological issues need to be noted. I use the term fetus in a technical sense to refer to the product of human conception from eight weeks gestation until separation from the mother at birth. From birth, I refer to this organism as an infant. Prior to becoming a fetus at eight weeks gestation, I use the term embryo. Feticide means the killing of a fetus, infanticide the killing of an infant. Finally, when I talk of a fetus as a human being, by ‘human being’ I mean a being, the killing of which constitutes homicide. The term ‘human’ is ambiguous and has different definitions in different contexts, whether biological, legal, sociological or moral. When I discuss the moral question of whether feticide is unjustified homicide, I am not interested in whether a fetus falls into any given biological or sociological definition of human. I want to know whether it is one of the beings that the rules against homicide, or the rules allowing homicide in various circumstances, covers.

The Appeal to Sentience: Some Initial Problems
Common in the literature on feticide is the argument that killing an organism is not homicide unless the organism’s brain has developed enough for it to acquire sentience, the capacity for consciousness and the ability to perceive pleasure and pain. Despite its pervasive appeal, there are some prima facie problems with such an account. In chapter 3 of A Defense of Abortion, Boonin reviews various accounts and notes that they all fail for similar reasons. Boonin notes that those who attempt to ground humanity in the amount of brain development an organism has undergone face a dilemma: “Any appeal to what a brain can do at various stages of development would seem to have to appeal to what the brain can already do. Or to what the brain has the potential to do in the future.”1

Either option leads to problems for a defender of the permissibility of feticide who does not also want to endorse infanticide. This is because “by any plausible measure dogs, and cats, cows and pigs, chickens and ducks are more intellectually developed than a new born infant.”2 Suppose, then, one takes the first horn and appeals to what the brain can already do. However, unless one wishes to affirm that cats, dogs and chickens are human beings, “appeals to what the brain can already do” will “be unable to account for the presumed wrongness of killing toddlers or infants.”3

Suppose, then, one takes up the second horn of the dilemma and appeals to “what the brain has the potential to do in the future.”4 Boonin notes that this will entail that feticide is homicide. “If [such an account] allows appeals to what the brain has the potential to do in the future, then it will have to include fetuses as soon as their brains begin to emerge, during the first few weeks of gestation.”5

The challenge for a person who wants to limit homicide to include only sentient beings is:

[T]o identify a reason for holding that the potential of a human brain is morally relevant after the fetus has organized electrical activity in its cerebral cortex [when a fetus begins to acquire sentience] but is not morally relevant before that point, a reason that is not itself merely an ad hoc device for reaching the conclusion the defender of [the sentience criterion] wishes to reach.6

To include infants and toddlers but not fetuses, the defender of feticide must ground the right to life in an actual psychological capacity that the former possesses and the latter lacks. Sentience seems to be the only plausible candidate. To rule out animals such as cats and dogs, an appeal to sentience must also include appeal to the potential an organism has to things such as self-awareness, rationality, and the like. However, in order for this to avoid attributing a right to life to fetuses, such potential must become morally relevant after the fetus is sentient and not before. Moreover, there must be reasons for this, reasons that are not just an “ad hoc device for reaching the [desired] conclusion.”

Boonin’s Defence of Sentience
In A Defense of Abortion, Boonin attempts to circumvent the above difficulty by making two distinctions. The first is between an occurrent and dispositional desire, “A desire of yours is occurrent if it is one you are consciously entertaining.”7 Boonin gives an example: “If this discussion is striking you as tedious, for example, then you may right now be experiencing an occurrent desire to put this book down.”8 A dispositional desire is “a desire you do have right now even if you are not thinking about it right at this moment.” He states, “I suspect, for example, that when you began to read this sentence you really did want to live beyond tomorrow evening, even though it is unlikely that you were entertaining just that desire consciously as you began to read this sentence.”9

The second distinction is between an actual and an ideal desire. An actual desire is one “that you in fact have.”10 Boonin notes that a person’s actual desires can be formed under conditions where they “lack accurate information”11 or “under duress”12 or while they are “upset”13 and “not reflecting on the situation calmly.”14 Ideal desires are the desires we would have had were we not subject to various distorting influences of this sort; the desires we would have had were we calm, rational and accurately informed.

These two distinctions avoid the common counter-examples. An unconscious person does not have an actual desire, but he or she has a dispositional ideal, a desire to live. Similarly, an infant, while lacking an actual desire to live, would desire to live if it were rational and fully informed.

Understanding desires as ideal dispositional desires as opposed to actual occurent desires, Boonin goes on to suggest, “Killing people like us is the severe wrong that it is not just because it thwarts a desire that we have, but because it thwarts a particularly important desire that we have; the desire to preserve a future like ours.”15 This understanding of what makes killing wrong leads him to give the following account of a right to life: “If an individual P has a future-like-ours and if P now desires that F be preserved, then P is an individual with the same right to life as you or I.”16

By ‘a future like ours’ (FLO), Boonin means a future existence like that of a typical human person such as you or I. FLO constitutes the “experiences which lie ahead of a typical human being.”17 Boonin refers to this as “the modified future like ours account,” which he uses to argue that a fetus does not have a right to life and hence killing a fetus is morally permissible. A pre-sentient fetus, Boonin maintains, lacks ideal desires to preserve FLO and consequently lacks a right to life. If one adds that the rule against homicide protects only beings with a right to life, a position Boonin appears to affirm, it follows that killing a pre-sentient fetus is not homicide.

Much could be said about Boonin’s reasoning here,18 so I will limit myself to one line of criticism. Boonin himself acknowledges that any attempt to ground a right to life in sentience must “identify a reason” for holding this position. Further, this reason must not be “merely an ad hoc device for reaching the [desired] conclusion,” hence, the first question one must ask is what reasons Boonin gives for adopting the modified FLO account. Below I argue that he does not provide such reasons and under examination, his position does appear to be an “ad hoc device for reaching the [desired] conclusion.”

Boonin’s Argument for the Modified FLO account
Boonin develops his argument for the modified FLO account as part of a critique of Don Marquis’s widely anthologised essay, “Why Abortion is Immoral.”19 In this article Marquis contends that “the best explanation for the wrongness of killing is that killing deprives us of our futures of value.”20 Where a future of value consists “of all of the goods of life we would have experienced had we not been killed.”21 Marquis’s account has the implication that feticide is homicide. “Fetuses have futures like ours, for their futures contain all that ours contain and more. Therefore, (given some defensible assumptions and qualifications) abortion is seriously wrong on almost all occasions.”22

Boonin’s approach is to sketch an account of the wrongness of homicide that both explains the wrongness of killing human beings in a series of cases better than Marquis’s account does and that, according to Boonin, entails that feticide is not homicide. Before criticising this argument, it is worth noting at the outset that even if it is substantially correct, it would not provide grounds for accepting Boonin’s position. The fact (if it is a fact) that his account is better than Marquis’s account does not show that Boonin’s account is correct or that it is the best theoretical account of the wrongness of killing. It merely shows it is better than one other account, that of Don Marquis. The fact that it is better than one account does not mean it is better than all accounts.

Boonin’s argument provides an opponent of feticide with reasons for opposing feticide only if the proponent accepts Marquis’s account. If one argues against feticide without embracing such an account, his argument has little or no cogency. Despite this, it is worth examining whether Boonin is successful in showing his account is better than that of Marquis. Boonin contends it is because it can account for the wrongness of killing in various cases in a manner that is (a) more parsimonious than Marquis’s account; and, (b) more salient. In addition to explaining why it is wrong to kill in these cases in a superior manner, he argues, (c) Marquis account is subject to counter examples that his account is not subject to. In Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part II, I will examine each of these three contentions.

1 David Boonin, A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 125.
2 Boonin, A Defense of Abortion, 121.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., 122.
7 Ibid., 122.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid., 123.
11 Ibid., 71.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., 72.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., 126.
16 Ibid., 64.
17 Ibid., 56.
18 For example, Boonin’s claim that a fetus lacks ideal desires follows only because he chooses to define ideal desires as “simply the content of actual desires corrected to account for the distorting influences of imperfect circumstances.” However, Thomas Carson in Value and the Good Life (Notre Dame IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2000), 222-239, has offered powerful criticisms against defining ideal desires in this fashion.
19 Don Marquis, “Why Abortion is Immoral,” in The Abortion Controversy: 25 Years after Roe v Wade, A Reader, ed. Francis Beckwith & Louis Pojman (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1998), 339-355.
20 Don Marquis, “Abortion Revisited,” Oxford Handbook of Bioethics, ed. Bonnie Steinbock, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 399.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Boonin, A Defense of Abortion, 63.
RELATED POSTS:

Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part II
Some Thoughts on Human Embryonic Stem-cell Research
Is Abortion Liberal? Part 1
Is Abortion Liberal? Part 2
Sentience Part 1
Sentience Part 2
Viability
Abortion and Brain Death: A Response to Farrar
Abortion and Capital Punishment: No Contradiction
Imposing You Beliefs Onto Others: A Defence

See William Lane Craig and Christopher Hitchens debate: Does God Exist?

noreply@blogger.com (Madeleine) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:48:00 +0000

You are invited to a Thinking Matters Auckland, God, Morality and Society, DVD screening:

What: William Lane Craig v Christopher Hitchens debating Does God Exist?
When: Tuesday 21 July – 7:00pm
Where: Lecture Room 2, Laidlaw College, 80 Central Park Drive, Henderson, West Auckland
Format: DVD followed by discussion.
Cost: Free - donations appreciated.

If you were not one of the 4,000 people who got to see it live in April this year at Biola University's Talbot School of Theology and you do not own a copy of the DVD, this is your chance.

Atheist commentator, Christopher Hitchens, author of the best-selling God is Not Great and Christian Philosopher and Theologian, Dr William Lane Craig, author of too many things to list here, who packed Auckland University during his debate with Dr Bill Cooke last year, debate the topic: Does God Exist?

Do not miss this screening - you cannot rent this debate at your video store and this debate is not available online so organise your friends, bring your youth group but most of all be there!

Thinking Matters' resident Philosopher of Religion and Theologian, Dr Matthew Flannagan, will be available for Q&A and discussion after the video.

Living Philosophers of Religion

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:43:00 +0000

Over at Common Sense Atheism, Lukeprog has compiled an impressively comprehensive list of 100+ Living Philosophers of Religion and Their Best Work. Lukeprog identifies his list of philosophers of religion as those who have "published at least one influential work in the field" offering "analytic arguments over the truth of theism vs. atheism."

What I find interesting about this list are the following features.

The ratio of theists to atheists is significantly stacked in favour of theism. Now the numbers of people who believe something do not determine the truth or falsity of the thing but what it suggests is that those who specialise in the actual subject that studies whether or not belief in God is rational, defensible, etc. the majority believe that it is. This of course is extremely hard to reconcile with the common popular level atheist claims that the case for theism is so obviously ridiculous that no sane, thinking person would believe in it. It also tends to call into question the claim that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of any merit at all for the existence of God.

Equally interesting is who did not make the list. Noticeably absent are the popularly cited "authorities in the field," Sam Harris, John Loftus, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens. Also absent is Daniel Dennett who, despite being a very good philosopher of mind, is not a philosopher of religion.

Sunday Study: Christ on The Prohibition on Homicide Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 06:30:00 +0000

This morning I preached a sermon at Riverhead Presbyterian Church on Christ’s exposition of the 6th Commandment, the prohibition on homicide, contained in the Sermon on the Mount. This Sunday Study series is essentially a transcript of today’s sermon.

Christ states,

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca, ' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell. "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift. "Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny. (Matthew 5: 21-26)

This passage is the first of a series where Jesus contrasts what his listeners “have heard that it was said to the people long ago” with his own teachings. In v27 he contrasts, “You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery’” with his own teaching to not look at another person’s spouse lustfully. In v31 he contrasts, “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce,’” with his own teaching that divorce is unacceptable except for adultery. In v34 he contrasts, “you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath,’” with his own teaching about keeping one’s word. The rest of chapter five continues in this manner.

One way these contrasts are commonly understood is to see Christ as repudiating and rejecting the teaching of the Old Testament and replacing it with his own teaching. The problem is that this goes against the context and genre of the text.

In the verses immediately prior to these, Christ tells his readers not to interpret his comments as a rejection of Old Testament commands; in v17 he states emphatically “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them.” In v19 he states, “Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” The contrast Christ draws in v 20 is not between The Torah and his own teaching but between faithful obedience and the obedience of the scribes and Pharisees. This suggests that Christ is contradicting, not The Torah per se but a particular interpretation of it; he is correcting the interpretation.

Daube provides confirmation of this. Daube notes the contrast in this pericope between “you have heard it said” and “I say to you”. This, Daube points out, was a common way of setting out rabbinic teaching. The rabbi would contrast an excessively formalistic interpretation of the torah that people had “heard” with a fuller correct one that the rabbi himself expounded. This observation fits precisely other parts of the Sermon on the Mount where the same formula is used.[1] The relevant pericope then can be usefully analysed in three parts. First, “You have heard that it was said,” the excessively formalistic interpretation. Second, “I say to you,” which is Christ’s authoritative interpretation. Finally, Christ draws two applications of the interpretation he has expounded. I will turn to each of these features in turn over a two-part series.

You have heard that it was said
What Jesus’ hearers “heard said to the people long ago” was, “'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.” The word “judgment” (greek krisis) used here refers to legal proceedings.[2] Jesus was succinctly summarising some of The Torah’s explicit teachings regarding homicide. An overview of these teachings follows.

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. "But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man. "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man. As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it." (Genesis 9: 1-7)

This passage occurs at the end of the flood story in the proto-history of Genesis 1-11. It outlines a covenant God made with Noah “and his descendants” and with “every living creature … the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals.” Two things are relevant for our discussion here, murder is implicitly condemned and human beings are commanded to ensure that those who are murdered are brought to justice.

The same teachings are expounded upon in the law of Moses. The 6th commandment of the Decalogue, which occurs in Exodus 20 and also Deuteronomy 5, states, “you shall not man-slay;” this passage teaches that the killing of one human being by another is prima facie condemned.

Other sections of The Torah outline duties that the community of Israel have towards people who engage in homicide;

Anyone who strikes a man and kills him shall surely be put to death. However, if he does not do it intentionally, but God lets it happen, he is to flee to a place I will designate. But if a man schemes and kills another man deliberately, take him away from my altar and put him to death. (Exodus 21:12-14)

The cultural back-drop to this was the ancient near-eastern custom of blood vengeance; the cultural mores of the time dictated that the kin of anyone killed by another were honour-bound to avenge the death of their kinsman by killing the killer. In such a culture anyone who killed another would flee to an altar for sanctuary.

In this context, the universal pre-Sinai law of Genesis 9 was given a specific application in ancient Israel. If a person killed another then the community had three responsibilities. First they were to determine whether the person’s actions were premeditated and deliberate or whether they were an accident. Second, if they were accidental, the community was to provide institutions that would protect them (the reference to “an altar” and a “place they can flee” to refer to ancient practices of sanctuary). Third, if the killing was pre-meditated they were to execute the offender, that is, bringing the offender to justice.

After the settlement of Canaan this law was expounded on in Deuteronomy 19 and Numbers 35; the Israelites were commanded to establish a series of cities of refuge, defined as, “places of refuge from the avenger, so that a person accused of murder may not die before he stands trial before the assembly.”

While an exposition of all the aspects of these institutions are beyond the scope of this post, behind them are the same three requirements I mentioned above. First, if a killing occurred the community was required to determine whether the killer acted with pre-meditation or whether there was some mitigation or accident. This is seen in the laws relating to trials, corroboration by witnesses, perjury, etc that are laid down in The Torah. Second, if the person was not guilty of pre-meditated homicide, the community was to provide the person with protection; this is the very basis of the cities of refuge. Third, if the person was guilty of pre-meditated homicide, they were to execute him. In fact, Numbers 35 goes so far as to state, “‘Do not accept a ransom for the life of a murderer, who deserves to die. He must surely be put to death.’”

In common with other ancient near-eastern laws, several crimes in The Torah ostensibly called for the death penalty. JJ Finkelstein notes that the capital sanctions that occur in ancient near-eastern legal texts, “Were not meant to be complied with literally even when they were first drawn up, [But rather they] serve an admonitory function”[3] Raymond Westbrook notes that such sanctions typically, “reflect the scribal compilers’ concern for perfect symmetry and delicious irony rather than the pragmatic experience of the law courts.”[4] As I argued in my series, Capital Punishment in the Old Testament, in practice such punishments were substituted for monetary compensation. Numbers 35 tells us that pre-mediated homicide constitutes an exception, in this situation the law must be applied literally.

Interestingly, Deuteronomy suggests that failure by the leaders of the community to establish institutions that protect the innocent from being violently attacked or a failure to execute those guilty of murder, makes those communities (or at least their leaders) complicit in the crime. The reason they are to build cities of refuge is, “so that innocent blood will not be shed in your land, which the LORD your God is giving you as your inheritance, and so that you will not be guilty of bloodshed.” (Deuteronomy 19:10) Further, the murderer must be brought to justice to “purge from Israel the guilt of shedding innocent blood, so that it may go well with you.” (Deuteronomy 19: 13)

Jesus’ summary, then, of, “Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment,” is an accurate rendition of what The Torah taught. Murder was condemned and a community that failed to respond justly to murder by protecting the innocent from it and condemning those guilty of it violated the command.

The problem is that this is not all the Old Testament said. In the book of Leviticus it is affirmed that,

'You shall not go about as a slanderer among your people, and you are not to act against the life of your neighbor; I am the LORD. 'You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. ‘You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD. (Leviticus 19:16-20)

Here there is a command to “not act against the life of your neighbour;” literally, to stand by the blood of your neighbour, that is to not refuse to protect or assist a person from danger when one is reasonably able to. Not that alongside it is a condemnation of “hating your neighbour in your heart,” bearing a grudge and lashing out with slander. In other words, The Torah requires not just that one refrain from killing and protect others from being killed, it required an absence of malice and these kinds of expression of it.

In my next Sunday Study I will conclude this series by looking at Christ’s authoritative interpretation, “I say to you,” and the application of the interpretation he expounded.

[1] David Daube The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism (London: Athlone Press, 1956) 256.
[2] Don Carson "Matthew" in The Expositors Bible Commentary Volume 8, ed Frank E Gaebelein ( Grand Rapids MI: Zondervan, 1984) 148.
[3] J. J. Finkelstein The Ox that Gored (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1981) 34-35.
[4] Raymond Westbrook, “The Character of Ancient Near Eastern Law,” in A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law, Vol. 1, ed. Raymond Westbrook (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2003) 74.

Published: Boonin's Defense of the Sentience Criteria - A Critique

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 03:40:00 +0000

We just discovered that if you go to Ethics and Medicine - An International Journal of Bioethics and click on "current issue" (VOLUME 25:2 SUMMER 2009) you will see that my article "Boonin's Defense of the Sentience Criteria - A Critique" is now in print. It is always nice to finally see a publication in print as it can take along time from submission to acceptance til publication.

I have written to the editor and asked if I can put a copy of the article on this blog. Until I hear back I will leave you with the abstract and encourage you buy a copy of the journal or locate it at your library.

Defenders of the permissibility of feticide commonly argue that killing an organism is not homicide unless the organism’s brain has developed enough for it to acquire sentience: the capacity for consciousness and the ability to perceive pleasure and pain. In this paper I will critique one of the more sophisticated versions of this argument that proposed by David Boonin in A Defense of Abortion. In I I will sketch some prima facie problems faced by any appeal to sentience. In section II I will examine Boonin’s attempt to defend an appeal to sentience against these problems by contructing a modified future like ours (FLO) account of the wrongness of killing. I will argue that Boonin’s modified future like ours (FLO) defence of sentience fails. Both his argument for the modified FLO account and his application of this account to feticide rest on ad hoc arbitrary manoeuvres, manoeuvres which mean that the modified FLO account is a plausible criteria for the right to life only if one already grants that feticide is not homicide.

Christian Blog Ranking Report for May 09 – Tumeke

noreply@blogger.com (Madeleine) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 03:40:00 +0000

Here are the top 10 NZ Christian blogs based on Tumeke's NZ blog stats for May; these stats are used in the calculations for the MandM top 10 NZ Christian Blog rankings for May 09:

NZ Conservative 22
Something Should Go Here, Maybe Later (HalfDone) 31
Being Frank 33
MandM 35
Keeping Stock 36
Say Hello to my Little Friend (Beretta Blog) 41
Sustain:If:Able Kiwi 48
The Briefing Room 49
The Humanitarian Chronicle 63
Contra Celsum 74

Top 10 Tumeke. name of blog Tumeke rank

Of Note:

No change in the number 1 spot - well done NZ Conservative!
Welcome to the top 10 Being Frank and Sustain:If:Able Kiwi.
The top 8 are all in the top 50 blogs in New Zealand - when we first began running this report only 2-3 Christian blogs ever featured in the top 50 so well done everyone!
Christian News New Zealand, Samuel Dennis, Kiwi Polemicist, Star Studded Super Step all made the top 100 despite being outside the top 10.

Note: This list only includes Christian blogs that openly identify as Christian blogs on Tumeke's ranking descriptions. If you think your blog should be included contact Tim Selwyn of Tumeke and ask him to change your blog description to include something identifiably Christian on his rankings. (*hint hint* MacDoctor Moments who is identifiably Christian on HalfDone but not on Tumeke)

Now that Tumeke's May stats are out we will compare them with the HalfDone May report and publish the overall MandM top 10 NZ Christian Blog rankings for May 09 shortly.

Fisking Ian Hassall: The Arbitrary Ethical Reasoning on the Smacking Referendum

noreply@blogger.com (Madeleine) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:12:00 +0000

Recently Dr Ian Hassall gave a presentation, on the upcoming referendum on section 59 of the Crimes Act 1961, entitled: How did we come to have a law that supported hitting children? This presentation defends the thesis that mild physical punishment (smacking) is wrong and should remain illegal in New Zealand. In this post I will critically evaluate Hassall's arguments and demonstrate why they fail.

Much of Hassall's article discusses the evolutionary, legal and religious origins of corporal punishment and while I disagree with much of his analysis, and I am sure Paul Moon would have a few things to say about his historical claims regarding early Maori not engaging in violence against children, for the sake of space, I will forgo addressing this. I will also put to one side Hassall's caricatured picture of 'evangelical views' on the doctrine of original sin which does not include a teaching on the necessity of inflicting pain repeatedly on children (I intend to do a Sunday Study on the biblical teachings surrounding this issue in the near future). Strictly speaking, the origins of the practice is irrelevant; the real issue is: now that it is here, is it wrong, is corporal punishment morally permissible and should it be illegal? These are questions of morality and ethics. My critique will focus on these aspects.

Evidence Shows Smacking Does Not Harm
Hassall begins his discussion of the ethical questions by conceding, contrary to the standard assertions from opponents of corporal punishment, that “a considerable body of research” shows “no detectable harm to children who have been mildly physically punished when compared with children who have had no such punishment.” This concession raises an immediate question; if mild corporal punishment is no more harmful than other forms of discipline, which are legal and considered morally unproblematic, why then is corporal punishment singled out for censure and prohibition? Hassall puts up several arguments, I will address the most significant ones.

Equality before the Law
Hassall argues against mild forms of corporal punishment by noting that the same acts would undoubtedly constitute a crime if done to an adult;

The main argument against legally sanctioned assaults on children has never been a question of whether or not it does harm, as can be seen by applying the same argument to assaults on adults.

The law that makes it a criminal offence to assault an adult does not rely for its justification on whether or not it does harm. If evidence was lacking for any ill effects from a certain level of assault by a man on his wife, for example, it would still not be acceptable. ... The central issue is not whether or not harm is done but whether or not one person is entitled to assault another.

The implicit assumption behind these appeals is that, if it is a crime to do something to an adult then it must also be a crime to do the same thing to a child. This kind of reasoning seems pervasive in the arguments of those who criticise corporal punishment. The problem is that the assumption is false.

It is a criminal offence (theft) for a man to confiscate his wife’s property without her consent; similarly, it would be a criminal offence (false imprisonment) for a man to prevent his wife from leaving her room or her house. Yet no sensible person thinks that it ought to be a crime for parents to ground their child or confiscate property when their child is acting out.

Corporal punishment does not seem different from other forms of parental discipline in this respect. Both corporal punishment, like smacking and non-corporal punishments, like groundings and confiscations, are such that if one adult did them to another they would be illegal.

The Right to Physical Integrity
A second argument Hassall raises is that children have a right to physical integrity, "the right of children to physical integrity is recognised by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Twenty-three countries have recognised this right in their law." Now the argument that we should adopt a policy on something just because twenty-three other countries have done so is not compelling in and of itself.

Now, I accept that children have a right to physical integrity. The obvious problem, however, is that not all forms of corporal punishment damage a person's physical integrity. Some forms, like those that inflict injuries upon their victims, clearly do but the fact that some forms of corporal punishment violate a right does not entail that all do - anymore so than the fact that some forms of non-corporal punishment, such as locking a child up in a cage without food or water, mean that all forms of non-corporal punishment are unjust. Again there appears no reason for concluding that corporal punishment is wrong or unjust by this argument.

Feeling Guilty
Hassall notes that parents sometimes feel guilty when they engage in corporal punishment. "It feels wrong and when we reflect, we know in our hearts it is wrong. What ordinary parent can recall without remorse the look of fear on the child’s face when they raised their arm to strike?" The problem again is that this is not unique to corporal punishment. What parent does not feel upset, for example, when they see their child crying hysterically as a result of being sent to their room or not being allowed to watch a TV show or missing out on an event they were looking forward to due to their misbehaviour? Once again this argument gives us no reason for singling out mild corporal punishment as wrong but not other forms of non-corporal punishment. The argument applies equally to all forms of punishment that make parents feel bad when administering them.

Normalisation of Hitting
Hassall pulls out another common argument against corporal punishment, that it sends the message that “hitting people is normal.” He notes, “if as parents we have become inured to the fear and pain we cause by hitting our children, what have we become? And if our children over the years become used to us hitting them and regard it as normal, what have they become?”

It is evident from this comment that Hassall's conclusion is decided aprori and read into the evidence instead of being inferred from it. In the previous paragraph I noted his claim that if parents feel bad about corporal punishment then this shows it is bad, here he suggests if they do not feel this way then this also shows it is bad. In other words, no matter what the facts are, he draws the same conclusion. But more importantly, if Hassall's argument is sound then an analogous argument shows that non-corporal punishments are unjustifiable.

If smacking children teaches them that hitting others is normal then wouldn’t grounding them teach that restricting others liberty is normal? Wouldn’t confiscating their property teach that taking others property without their consent is normal? All punishment by its nature involves subjecting someone to something unpleasant, usually without their consent, which in normal circumstances it would be wrong to do; consider incarceration or periodic detention. Given that one of the functions of punishment is deterrence, all forms of punishment involves some degree of threatening others and scaring them away from wrongdoing. Not only is this an argument against smacking, it is also an argument against our justice system.

Degradation and Indirect Harm
Hassall offers two final arguments against the legality of mild corporal punishment. The first is that mild corporal punishment causes indirect harm to children and the second is that it is degrading.

Turning to first of these arguments, Hassall notes,

The old law propped up a sense of entitlement to strike children. This sense of entitlement, in an angry person with limited self control, can be the beginning of a beating. Surveys of adults found guilty of abuse of children have revealed that usually the episode of abuse began with the intention to punish and escalated.

This is a very bad argument. Essentially Hassall is arguing that mild corporal punishment is wrong because if people with limited self-control engage in it then it will escalate into a beating. He also notes that often beatings come about as a result of such escalation. The problem here is that these facts are true of many legal and perfectly permissible activities. Spousal abuse often results following escalation of a marital argument. If a person with limited self-control argues with his or her spouse he or she may lose control and commit assault. However, it does not follow that it is wrong to argue with one's spouse nor does it follow that such arguments should be illegal. Likewise, if people with limited self-control drink alcohol they may drink excessively, get in a car and kill someone. Many criminal offences result from an escalation of drinking; does it follow that any consumption of alcohol should be illegal?

Hassall's main and most important argument, however, is the claim that mild corporal punishment is “dehumanising” he notes that,

Women, servants and soldiers, once subject to legally sanctioned corporal punishment are deemed in modern times to have the right to be free from assault and the threat of assault and from the oppression and dehumanisation that accompanies the entitlement of others to inflict pain upon them.

Here Hassall singles out a feature that he contends mild corporal punishment possesses that other punishments do not. In modern times, adults can be subject to legally sanctioned punishments, like fines and incarceration but they cannot be subject to corporal punishment and this is because the latter (not the former) is “dehumanising” in a way that the others are not. This, he thinks, is the reason smacking should remain illegal.

The problem with this argument is the central claim behind it, that mild corporal punishment is demeaning in a way that other forms are not. David Benatar makes the point well;

Here it is noteworthy that there are other forms of punishment that lower people's standing even more than corporal punishment, and yet are not subject to similar condemnation. Consider, for example, various indignities attendant upon imprisonment, including severe invasions of privacy (such as strip-searches and ablution facilities that require relieving oneself in full view of others) as well as imposed subservience to prison wardens, guards, and even to more powerful fellow inmates. My intuitions suggest that this lowering of people's standing surpasses that implicit in corporal punishment per se, even though it is obviously the case that corporal punishment could be meted out in a manner in which it were aggravated… Therefore, if we think that current practices in prison life are not wrong on grounds of degradation, then we cannot consistently say that all corporal punishment is wrong on these grounds.[1]

Benatar’s point is that one cannot claim that corporal punishment is less dehumanising than current legal punishments which “in modern times” are legally sanctioned against adults. Once this is realised, the central premise behind Hassall's objection collapses; he has not singled out a property that is unique to corporal punishment that does not equally apply to any other form of punishment.

I began this post noting that Hassall concedes that mild corporal punishment causes no more harm than many punishments which are both permissible and legal. I conclude, by noting that mild corporal punishment does not differ in any of the other features Hassall mentions either. All punishments done to children would be crimes if done by one private adult to another. If any punishment sends the message that one can mistreat another then all do. There are numerous perfectly acceptable practices which, when engaged in by people who lack self control, escalate into crime. Having to inflict any punishment is something loving parents find unpleasant and corporal punishment is no more dehumanising than many other punishments.

Far, from showing that mild corporal punishment, such as smacking, should be singled out for prohibition, Hassall's argument suggests that it is no more problematic than many other forms of discipline, which good parents can and do permissibly utilise. Hassall's moral case against mild corporal punishment then is arbitrary and appears to have little rational basis.

[1] David Benatar “Corporal Punishment” Social Theory & Practice, Summer 1998, Vol 24, Issue 2, accessed July 3 2009.

RELATED POSTS:
Fisking Margaret Mayman: The Flawed Moral Theology on the Smacking Referendum
We're Confused about the Anti-Smacking Referendum Question
No Defences Permitted for the Accused

(This post was authored by Matt and was accidentally posted under Madeleine's account.)

Mount Maunganui Adventures

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:22:00 +0000

Yesterday I took my youngest two kids for a walk around The Mount (as Mt Maunganui is referred to by locals) as we are staying about a 2 minute walk from it at the moment.

As we left I told them that when I was younger and I had done this walk with my parents we had once seen an orca (killer whale) swimming offshore. Brittany and Noah at once wanted to know how many orcas I thought we'd see on our walk and I had to tell them that despite the hundreds of times I had done the walk I had only every seen an orca in the harbour once so it was highly unlikely we'd see any today.

They didn't believe me and began eagerly discussing how many orcas they expected to see. It turned out I should have listened to them as right between Matakana Island, the long dark island with the long white beach towards the top of the picture and the Mount itself, were two orcas swimming in the harbour!

I didn't have a camera with me so here is a pic that the Herald took when one of their reporters spotted orca's at the Mount.

Today we are climbing The Mount so hopefully they will still be hanging around and we can take some of our own pics.

Weight Watchers and the Historical Atrocities Argument

noreply@blogger.com (Madeleine) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:12:00 +0000

We've all heard the slogan that atheism is superior to theism because of all the atrocities committed in the name of religion. If you flick through the pages of the new-atheist publications by the likes of Dawkins, Hitchens, Loftus, Harris, et al you'll probably find some version of this assertion in each.

Setting aside the dubious factual claims, I could list a stack of atheist atrocities that could outnumber the theist ones just from the last century alone, last night at Thinking Matters Tauranga, I heard another way of addressing the slogan. Rodney Lake simply said well if a person joined Weight Watchers, got the points book, the pamphlets explaining how the program works and began attending weekly meetings to fellowship with others on the same journey but instead of following the instructions began to bend the rules, invent new ones and ignore others and as a result began to gain weight, could that person justifiably claim that Weight Watchers made them fat? That Weight Watchers should be rejected as a weight-loss program, in fact, attempting to lose weight in and of itself is a bad thing, because this person gained weight whilst ostensibly being a follower of the program?

If you can see how ridiculous it would be to blame Weight Watchers and to abandon the pursuit of weight loss because someone who cheated on the program had a bad outcome then why can't you see it when the same reasoning is applied to atrocities committed in the 'name of' Christianity?

BOP Bloggers Drinks - Tonight!

noreply@blogger.com (Madeleine) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 01:51:00 +0000

Ozy Mandias, Matt and I will be meeting up at Latitude 37, in Mount Maunganui tonight at 7.30pm. Any other Bay of Plenty bloggers or readers are most welcome.

Fisking Margaret Mayman: The Flawed Moral Theology on the Smacking Referendum

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:00:00 +0000

In “A Christian Perspective on the Child Discipline Referendum,” Rev Dr Margaret Mayman presents a theological justification for retaining the amended section 59 of the Crimes Act 1961, which has criminalised force used against a child for the purposes of parental correction.

Mayman began by offering three standard arguments for repealing the old section 59, the defence of reasonable force for the purposes of parental correction. The first is that, “Prior to the law change, there had been terrible cases of child abuse that had not resulted in an assault conviction because of the use of this defence.” The second is that, “New Zealand has appalling rates of lethal and non-lethal child abuse and there is strong evidence that abuse often occurs as an escalation of physical punishment.” The third is that, “The law needed to be changed to ensure that the children received equal protection.” Despite their popularity and repetition in the media, these arguments are seriously flawed.

Some Accuseds Get Off
Turning to the first, it may be true that the existence of the defence of reasonable force meant that some child abusers escaped conviction. What Mayman fails to note is that this is true of any defence in Criminal Law. Section 48 of the Crimes Act allows a person to use reasonable force in defence of oneself or another from assault. Undoubtedly some serious assaults have not resulted in criminal prosecution as a result of the existence of this defence. Similarly, the law allows those accused of rape to mount a defence that the victim consented; this defence undoubtedly has lead to serious rapes not resulting in conviction. In fact, the very existence of a requirement for the prosecution to prove an assault has occurred, beyond reasonable doubt, has resulted in untold number of serious criminal actions not resulting in criminal convictions. Hence, if the mere fact that the former s59 occasionally resulted in criminals not being convicted entails that it should remain abolished then all defences should be abolished; clearly this is an absurd conclusion.

Criminalisation Because of Escalation
The second argument fares no better. Mayman asserts that, “abuse often occurs as an escalation of physical punishment.” This may be true. It is also true that spousal abuse often occurs as an escalation from a verbal argument between spouses. Does it follow that we should criminalise verbal arguments with one’s spouse.

Equal Protection
Mayman’s third argument, that children must receive “equal protection” under the law, is also problematic. It is true that the law does not allow a parent to smack an adult. However, it is also true that the law does not allow an adult to prevent another adult from leaving the house; to do this would be to commit false imprisonment. The law also does not allow an adult to confiscate the property of another adult; this is the crime commonly known as theft. Nor does the law allow an adult to subject another adult to medical treatment without their consent; this would be both a form of assault and a violation of the Bill of Rights’ protection of life and security of the person.

If we were to truly give children equal protection under the law then it should be illegal for parents to send their children to their room, to ground them, to confiscate their property or keep their immunisations up to date. Clearly no sensible person advocates this because no sensible person really believes that children should receive equal protection under the law.

After presenting these ill-thought out arguments, Mayman offers a theological case for her position. Mayman cited Jesus, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs. And he laid his hands upon them and went on his way” (Matthew 19: 13-15). She also cited, “Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven. … So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.” (Matthew 18:10, 14). Mayman then drew two conclusions from these passages. First, these passages call us to a “radical respect for the personhood, and therefore the bodily integrity of children.” Second, that Mayman finds, “no justification for physical punishment, let alone any directive for it.”

Personhood and Bodily Integrity
Turning to the first, I agree that we should respect the personhood and bodily integrity of children. I also think (as I am sure Mayman does) that we should also respect the personhood of adults. Mayman assumes, without argument, that the use of force for correction is always incompatible with respecting someone’s personhood or their bodily integrity. This claim is clearly false. Certain forms of physical punishment that cause injury or harm can damage a person’s personhood or bodily integrity but not all forms do. Moreover, if correction by force always contradicts our duty to respect personhood or bodily integrity then Mayman would have to conclude that criminal punishment of child abusers themselves is unjustified. Such criminals often do not voluntarily go to jail; they have to be forced to. The fact that Mayman supports laws against child abuse shows that she does not believe her own argument; she accepts that sometimes physical force for correction is justified (for adults anyway).

No Directive for Physical Punishment
Her second argument is equally problematic. Mayman states she finds, “no justification for physical punishment, let alone any directive for it.” Here she is correct; nothing in the passages she cited provides any justification for physical punishment or any directive for it. Nor, for that matter, do these particular passages provide any justification for refraining from rape, kidnapping, adultery or theft. That is because these particular passages do not address these issues; they have nothing to say about them at all. Whether such things are justified or not depends on other passages or arguments that are actually about those things. Hence, appealing to them in this context is irrelevant.

Interestingly, immediately after citing these passages, Mayman notes that another passage in scripture does seem to imply the permissibility of corporal punishment. She provides four responses to this, none of which hold any weight.

First she notes that people have historically appealed to the book of Proverbs, “Those who spare the rod hate their children, but those who love them are diligent to discipline them”, to justify “physical violence and assaults.” This may be true but only in the same way that historically people have appealed to notions of equality to murder millions of people in Gulags. Does it follow that all appeals to equality are wrong (and should be criminalised)? Incorrect use or application of an idea tells us nothing about whether the idea itself is true.

Second Mayman states this passage needs to interpreted in light of the “knowledge about child development and of the damage caused by physical punishment” that we have acquired since “the scriptures were written.” I agree that one should take into account relevant empirical facts when interpreting scripture. The problem is that Mayman simply assumes that it is an empirical fact that “physical punishment” causes damage; the problem is that this is far from obvious. In “Corporal Punishment,” Professor David Benatar surveys several studies and notes,

Although there is evidence that excessive corporal punishment can significantly increase the chances of such psychological harm, most of the psychological data are woefully inadequate to the task of demonstrating that mild and infrequent corporal punishment has such consequences.[1]

Moreover, he goes on to note that, “even the data suggesting that very rare instances of mild corporal punishment do have some negative effects also suggest that the effects are not substantial.” In fact, the empirical data is nowhere near as conclusive as Mayman suggests; several studies found little or no adverse effects of physical correction once the difference between severe and abusive types of physical punishment was distinguished from other, milder forms. Theologians should take into account empirical data; they should not, however, uncritically accept unsubstantiated empirical claims about what science allegedly shows.

Literal Interpretation
Mayman also attacks the idea that one should take the Bible literally. She backs this up by citing Deuteronomy 21: 18-21. Mayman claims that this verse teaches that parents are required, “to put to death the persistently disobedient youth.” In fact, Mayman’s interpretation of this verse is flawed. As Christopher Wright notes, in the Ancient Near East it was common for fathers to have rights of life and death over their adult children. Deuteronomy 21, in this context, actually subverts this by taking these decisions out of the hands of fathers. The passage probably refers to adult sons, not children as it describes the sons and gluttonous drunks. Moreover, many scholars have provided evidence that penal sanctions, like those recorded in this passage, serve a rhetorical function of denouncing the action and are not intended to be taken literally.

Even if one ignores these problems, Mayman’s position remains erroneous. Mayman assumes that if one should not take Deuteronomy 21 literally it follows that one should not take any other part of Scripture literally. This is mistaken. Such a conclusion would follow, only if, one assumed that either every statement in Scripture is to be taken literally or none is. Almost any piece of writing will contain a mixture of metaphor, figures of speech, hyperbole and so on, alongside literal comments. In any event, Mayman seems to want it both ways, in several places in her article she takes the teachings of Jesus literally in an attempt to substantiate her view on corporal punishment!

Similar contradictions inflict the rest of Mayman’s exegesis. She dismisses the Epistle to the Hebrews on the grounds that “Nowhere does the author invoke the teaching of Jesus to confirm his beliefs.” She then immediately cites Paul’s commands to “provoke your children, or they may lose heart,” despite the fact that Paul does not, in this verse, “invoke the teaching of Jesus” to confirm this instruction. Even if Mayman’s exegesis were coherent (which it is not) the claim to not provoke one’s children is not the same as the claim to never physically correct them.

Slavery
Mayman finally asserts “that Paul accepted the institution of slavery” but that “Nineteenth century Christians realised that to take seriously the teaching of Jesus about the dignity of all people, required that slavery be ended.” Even if Mayman’s exegesis of Paul and her historical claims about abolitionists were correct (which scholar’s dispute) it again proves nothing at all. Even if Paul was mistaken on one issue, it does not mean he was mistaken on all issues nor does it mean he is mistaken on this issue (Mayman authoritatively quotes Paul elsewhere herself). To show Paul is mistaken on this matter requires an actual argument.

Slogans About Violence
After the above dubious moral theology Mayman turns to a series of slogans. She suggests that physical punishment constitutes violence, she insinuates that violence is always wrong and that violence begets violence. In fact, none of these claims are true.

The Oxford Shorter Dictionary defines violence as “the use of physical force so as to inflict injury on others or cause damage to property.” However, not all force inflicts injury or damages property. Further, violence does not always beget violence; sometimes violence stops violence. The existence of the police force, army, armed offenders squad, courts and prisons show that even civilised societies recognise that violence and force can be justly used against others and are necessary to stop and deter further violence. Therefore, while it is correct to suggest that force and violence are often unjustified, sometimes they are not, and a sensible and just social policy will recognise the difference.

[1] David Benatar “Corporal Punishment” in Social Theory & Practice (Summer 1998) Vol 24, Issue 2, 237.

RELATED POSTS:
Fisking Ian Hassall: The Arbitrary Ethical Reasoning on the Smacking Referendum
We're Confused about the Anti-Smacking Referendum Question
No Defences Permitted for the Accused

Live Blogging from the Mount

noreply@blogger.com (Madeleine) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:18:00 +0000

We are off to Mount Maunganui for a few days so we'll be blogging from there instead of Auckland this week!

We'll have to have a Bay of Plenty bloggers drinks.

Sunday Study: Does the Bible Teach that a Rape Victim has to Marry her Rapist?

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 11:08:00 +0000

In our recent discussion on the Bible's teachings on slavery John Loftus asked Madeleine, "if you were raped you should marry your rapist? Get real. ... Would you want to be treated the way the Bible says women and slaves should be treated?" Loftus then dedicated a post on Debunking Christianity to Madeleine's "stupidity" for her answer where he elaborated on his interpretation of various verses on the treatment of women in the comments section.

Loftus is not alone in contending that the Bible teaches that rape victims had to marry their rapists. Michael Martin states that,

when rape is condemned in the Old Testament the woman's rights and her psychological welfare are ignored.[15] For example: "If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father fifty skelels of silver, and she shall be his wife, and he may not put her away all of his days (Deut:22; 28-29)." Here the victim of rape is as treated the property of the father. Since the rapist has despoiled the father's property he must pay a bridal fee. The women apparently has no say in the matter and is forced to marry the person who raped her. Notice also if they are not discovered, no negative judgment is forthcoming. The implicit message seems to be that if you rape an unbetrothed virgin, be sure not to get caught.[1] [sic]

Martin is not alone is making this claim, I often hear this claim brought up in dialogues and discussions with those skeptical of the Christian faith. Not long ago a correspondent cited that most medieval commentators taught, on the basis of Deut 22:28-29, that a woman who had been raped was commanded by God to marry her rapist. In particular he referred me to Maimonides who wrote, “by this prohibition a man is forbidden to divorce a woman whom he has raped.”[2]

In this post I want to address this line of argument. My response is two-fold, first I will argue that Martin’s translation of Deuteronomy is mistaken, second, I will suggest that the medieval commentators my correspondent referred to actually utilised a different definition of rape to that used today. My conclusion will be that this law does not command a woman to marry her rapist; it rather commands men who have sex with women to follow their sexual advances up with marital commitment, and teaches that failure to do so is forbidden by God.

Martin’s Translation of Deuteronomy 22:28-29
Martin cites Deut 22:28-29 as dealing with a situation where “a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her.” He immediately states, without argument, that this refers to acts of rape. Although he does not say, it appears this conclusion is based on the verb “seizes” in the English version he cites. Martin imports into this word the connotation of violent, coercive, abduction so that the sexual intercourse that follows is a rape. There are several problems with this claim.

First, and most obvious, the English word “seizes” is not in The Torah. The word in The Torah is tabas; in Hebrew, tabas “does not in itself indicate anything about the use of force.”[3] While the word can refer to the capture of a city,[4] it is also used for “handling” the harp and flute,[5] the sword,[6] a sickle,[7] a shield,[8] oars or a bow,[9] “taking” God’s name[10] or dealing with the law of God.[11] The word simply means to “lay hold of,” “to take hold of something” or to “grasp it in hand.” The more formal King James translation interprets the passage as, “If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her and lie with her.”

Second, there are good reasons in this context for interpreting the word in a manner where it does not have a connotation of force or violence. Here I will mention three.

The first reason is that the context strongly suggests it. Had the author intended to refer to rape then he would have used the word chazak which does carry the connotations Martin plays on. This is reinforced by the fact that three verses earlier the author does refer to a rape. The law immediately preceding this one begins, "But if a man finds a betrothed young woman in the countryside, and the man forces her and lies with her …” here the word used is chazak, which suggests a violent seizure is used. Bahsen notes, “Just three verses later (Deut. 25:28), the verb is changed to simply ‘take hold of’ her – indicating an action less intense and violent than the action dealt with in verse 25:25 (viz., rape).”[12]

The second reason is that Deut 22:28-29 actually repeats a law which has already been laid down in the book of Exodus. When one examines this law it is clear it does not refer to rape. The word “Deuteronomy” in Greek means “second law;” throughout the book of Deuteronomy, Moses repeats laws already laid down in the book of Exodus, sometimes expanding on them. The Decalogue, for example, which was delivered on Sinai in Exodus 20, is repeated again in Deuteronomy 5. The laws about releasing an ebed (or indentured servant) in Exodus 21:1 are repeated and expanded on in Deuteronomy 15:12-18. The same occurs with the law under discussion. Gordon Wenham points out that that Deut 22:28-29 is a repetition of a law spelled out in Exodus 22:15, which states "If a man seduces a virgin who is not pledged to be married and sleeps with her, he must pay the bride-price, and she shall be his wife.”[13] Here, the penalty for sleeping with an unbethrothed virgin is that the man must marry the woman which is why the man must pay the mohar or “bride-price” to the bride's father. A mohar was security money (50 shekels) that the groom paid to the bride's father. It was held in trust for the woman in case the man later abandoned her or divorced her without just cause.[14] Such money protected women from the poverty that could occur if they were abandoned with children. What is important, however, is that we are left in no doubt that in Exodus 22:15 the case deals, not with rape, but with what was traditionally called seduction.

The third reason is that, to interpret the law in Deut 21:28-29 as a rape is to make God the commander of a morally heinous command. Martin is correct, given what we know about the psychological harm that rape inflicts upon its victims to command that a woman marry her rapist is cruel and hence clashes with strong moral intuitions. Elsewhere I have defended the claim that if one interpretation of divine commands coheres better with our moral intuitions than another then that fact constitutes evidence for the former interpretation. All else being equal, an interpretation that coheres with our pre-theoretical moral intuitions is always preferable. This hermeneutical principle applies here.

The passage then does not refer to a rape. The Hebrew word does not, by itself, indicate rape and interpreting it this way both ignores the context where the word chazak is used to designate a rape. It also makes the second law inconsistent with the exposition of the same law in Exodus 22:15 and also with our prior moral discernment about what is right and wrong. Seduction, however, is consistent with the meaning of tabas, the context it is used in, the original law it was derived from and it coheres with our moral intuitions. These factors, to me, provide decisive reasons for rejecting Martin’s interpretation.

It is worth noting that the fact that this passage refers to a seduction and not rape is really not news. Bahnsen notes that, “one will find that many competent authorities in Biblical interpretation understand Deuteronomy 22:28-29 to apply to cases of seduction, not forcible rape;”[15] he lists several,

Meredith Kline: “The seducer of an unbetrothed virgin was obliged to take her as wife, paying the customary bride price and forfeiting the right of divorce” (Treaty of the Great King: The Covenant Structure of Deuteronomy, p. 111).

Matthew Henry: “. . . if he and the damsel did consent, he should be bound to marry her, and never to divorce her, how much soever she was below him and how unpleasing soever she might afterwards be to him” (Commentary on the Whole Bible, ad loc.).

J. A. Thompson: “Seduction of a young girl. Where the girl was not betrothed and no legal obligations had been entered into, the man was forced to pay the normal bride-price and marry the girl. He was not allowed, subsequently, to send her away (Deuteronomy: Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Series, p. 237).
In Israel’s Laws and legal Precedents (1907), Charles Foster Kent (professor of Biblical Literature at Yale University) clearly distinguished between the law pertaining to rape in Dt. 22:25-27 and the law pertaining to seduction in Dt. 22:28-29 (pp. 117-118).

Keil and Delitzsch classify Deuteronomy 22:28-29 under the category of “Seduction of a virgin,” comment that the crime involved was ‘their deed” – implying consent of the part of both parties – and liken this law to that found in Exodus 22:16-17 (Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, vol. 3, p. 412).

John Calvin: “The remedy is, that he who has corrupted the girl should be compelled to marry her, and also to give her a dowry from his own property, lest, if he should afterwards cast her off, she should go away from her bed penniless” (Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony, vol. 3, pp. 83-84.

J. C. Connell: “Although she consented, it was still his responsibility to protect her from lifelong shame resulting from the sin of the moment by marrying her, not without payment of the regular dowry” (“Exodus,” New bible Commentary, ed. F. Davidson, p. 122).

Adam Clarke: “This was an exceedingly wise and humane law, and must have operated powerfully against seduction and fornication; because the person who might feel inclined to take advantage of a young woman knew that he must marry her, and give her a dowry, if her parents consented” (The Holy Bible . . . with a Commentary and Critical Notes, vol. 1, p. 414).

Alan Cole: “If a man seduces a virgin: . . . he must acknowledge her as his wife, unless her father refuses” (Exodus: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Series, p. 173).

James Jordan: “the punishment for the seducer is that he must marry the girl, unless her father objects, and that he may never divorce her (according to Dt. 22:29)” (The Law of the Covenant, p. 148).

Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.: “Exodus 22:16-17 takes up the problem of the seduction of a maiden who was not engaged . . .. Here the seducer must pay the ‘bride-price’ and agree to marry her” (Toward Old Testament Ethics, p. 107).[16]

Hence a skeptic who was interested in what the passage actually says could easily have discovered what I have noted by consulting a commentary.

Medieval Commentators
If many post enlightenment and modern commentators realise that this passage is about a seduction and not a rape how does one explain the fact, alluded to above, that many medieval commentators apparently interpreted the passage to refer to rape? Here one needs to be attentive to the fact that words change their meaning over time. Medieval writers utilised a wider definition of rape than modern people do. In the middle ages the word ‘rape’ could include not only what we call rape today but also what was called “seduction,” where a man seduces a virgin he is not married to with her consent.

Isidore De Seville, for example, stated “seduction [stuprum], or rape, properly speaking, is unlawful intercourse, and takes its name from its causing corruption: wherefore he that is guilty of rape is a seducer.”[17] Similarly, Thomas Aquinas wrote,

They [rape and seduction] coincide when a man employs force in order unlawfully to violate a virgin. This force is employed sometimes both towards the virgin and towards her father; and sometimes towards the father and not to the virgin, for instance if she allows herself to be taken away by force from her father’s house. Again, the force employed in rape differs in another way, because sometimes a maid is taken away by force from her parents’ house, and is forcibly violated: while sometimes, though taken away by force, she is not forcibly violated, but of her own consent, whether by act of fornication or by the act of marriage: for the conditions of rape remain no matter how force is employed.[18]

Hence it is not entirely accurate to read the word “rape” in Medieval commentaries as we understand it today.

In conclusion then, it is very doubtful that Deut 22:28-29 commands women who have been raped to marry their rapists.

[1] Michael Martin “Theism, Atheism and Rape.”
[2] Moses Maimonides The Negative Commandments 358 translated by Charles B Chavel 324.
[3] Greg Bahnsen “Pre-Marital Sexual Relations: What is the Moral Obligation When Repeated Incidents are Confessed?”
[4] Deut 20:19.
[5] Gen 4:21.
[6] Ezek 21:11; 30:21.
[7] Jer 50:16.
[8] Jer 46:9.
[9] Amos 2:15.
[10] Prov 30:9.
[11] Jer 2:8.
[12] Bahnsen “Pre-Marital Sexual Relations.”
[13] Gordon Wenham “Bethulah: A Girl of Marriageable Age” Vetus Testamentum 22 (1972) 326-348.
[14] See the discussion in David Instone Brewer Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).
[15] Bahnsen “Pre-Marital Sexual Relations.”
[16] Ibid.
[17] Quoted in Summa Theologica II-II Question 15, Article 7, Objection 1.
[18] Summa Theologica II-II Question 15, Article 7, Objection 4.

The Theology of the Declaration of Independence

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 07:15:00 +0000

As I write this it is probably just beginning to be the 4th of July in the United States now, though its been 4th July for some time here in New Zealand.

The 4th of July is, of course, Independence Day. Typically in New Zealand, those members of the secular blogosphere, who consider themselves to be classical liberals, have an annual rave on the 4th of July about the Declaration of Independence, praising the philosophy expounded in this document.

Not PC, for example, states that it is “With the exception of just a few words, the words could hardly be bettered today;” the declaration is, “A wonderful, wonderful anthem to freedom that rings down through the years. If only the real meaning of those words could be heard and understood.” A few years ago David Farrar made similar claims, he stated he would often “marvel at those marvellous words, written in the heat of oppression…Marvellous, absolutely marvellous.” I agree. I would simply point out to my secular, liberal, country-men what the words in this document actually say, and some of the philosophical ideas they expound.

First, the declaration refers to God; it does so four times. Maverick Philosopher has an excellent analysis of the theological content;

In the initial paragraph, we find the phrase “...Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God....” This phrase rules out pantheism: God is distinct from Nature. In the second paragraph, there is the phrase, “...endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights....” Putting these two references together, we may infer that the God being referred to is not merely a deistic initiator of the temporally first segment of the physical universe, but a being involved in the creation of the human race. For if God endowed human beings with rights, this endowment had to occur at the time of the creation of human beings, which of course occurred later than the beginning of the physical universe. In traditional jargon, God is a creator continuans rather than a mere creator originans. He is not a mere cosmic starter-upper, but a being who is continuously involved in maintaining the universe in existence.
…
The other two references are in the final paragraph. There we find the phrase, “...Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions....” near the beginning of the paragraph, and near the end, “...a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence....” Now if God is the Supreme Judge, then he is more than a mere metaphysical cause responsible for the universe’s beginning to exist; he is also the supreme moral arbiter. And since he endows human beings with rights, as opposed to being merely a judge of rights antecedently possessed, then it seems we may infer that God is the source of moral distinctions (as opposed to a mere judge of them).

The reference to divine providence is further evidence that the conception of God in the Declaration is non-deistic. For if God provides and protects, then God has an ongoing involvement with the world and its inhabitants such as would be ruled out by a deistic view. It should also be obvious that talk of providence (from the Latin, pro-videre) implies divine foreknowledge which implies intelligence and perhaps omniscience on the part of the deity. The God of the Declaration is not a blind metaphysical cause posited to explain why the universe began to exist, but a being with such attributes as moral goodness and intelligence…. So if by 'deism' is meant the doctrine that God is a mere metaphysical cause of the universe's beginning to exist who is thereafter uninvolved in its continuing to exist, then the God of the Declaration is non-deistic.

Second, the declaration claims that belief in a creator is self-evident; that is, it is a properly basic belief, which is rationally acceptable to hold in the absence of any proof.

Third, the declaration makes political pronouncements about public policy on the basis of these theological claims and expects these pronouncements to be taken seriously.

Fourth, the declaration says that various rights, such as the right to life and liberty, are unalienable. That is, a person cannot alienate one’s life or freedom as they can legally alienate a piece of property. You can’t take my property if I do not consent to you having it but if I do consent, you can take it; property is alienable, life and liberty are not. The argument of the declaration reflects John Locke’s argument in the Second Treatise of Civil Government;

TO understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.[1]

…

But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence: though man in that state have an uncontroulable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another's pleasure[2]

...

This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man's preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his preservation and life together: for a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away his life, when he pleases. No body can give more power than he has himself; and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it.[3]

The point here is that because your right to life and liberty are from God, no one can legitimately enslave or kill you, even if you consent to it. This was not a mere incidental addendum idea, it was central to Lockean political philosophy, which maintained (as the declaration does) that the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed. If a person can consent to be killed or enslaved then they can consent to the government enslaving them also to having the arbitrary power to kill them and hence tyranny can be legitimate. The reason tyranny is illegitimate is because, “No body can give more power than he has himself; and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it.”

The declaration then makes a metaphysical claim: God exists. It makes an epistemological claim about faith and reason: that belief in God is rational independent of proof. It makes an implicit claim of political philosophy: religion is not a private thing that should not influence public life but rather, theological claims should influence public life. Finally it makes a moral claim; that consenting adults do not have a right to do whatever they like with their own bodies, rather there are “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” that bind all human beings, that they are compelled to follow even if all parties consent otherwise. Governments are legitimate to the extent in which they respect these laws.

I agree with PC, it is hard to improve on this philosophy; I have defended it in several places on this blog.

Ironically, however, the militant secular liberals in NZ who parrot the declaration seem committed to attacking these ideas and rejecting them on every point. They argue that belief in God is irrational because it cannot be empirically proven, they claim that the public square should be secular, that religion should be private and not influence public policy and they argue that liberty means consenting adults can do whatever they like with their own bodies and lives. Far from being unalienable, a person’s life and freedom is his property to alienate as that person sees fit.

It is also hard to disagree with PC’s sentiments that the declaration is “A wonderful, wonderful anthem to freedom that rings down through the years. If only the real meaning of those words could be heard and understood.” Indeed, if only.

[1] John Locke Second Treatise of Civil Government Section II 4.
[2] Ibid II6.
[3] Ibid IV 23.

Guest Post: Why doesn't the Bible address X?

noreply@blogger.com (MandM) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:00:00 +0000

The following is authored by Bethyada of True Paradigm, it is particularly apt given recent comments left on this blog. Bethyada writes:

A not infrequent complaint raised by theism sceptics is that the Bible does not address many issues the sceptics think it should address; if indeed the Bible is a divine book and not merely a human one.

There are several problems with this demand

It assumes the critic's concerns are the same as God's
It assumes the Bible is written for the sceptical
It assumes that God should dictate Scripture rather than use his servants to author it
It ignores that Scripture was written into a culture
It ignores what is contained within Scripture
It ignores that the issues may be addressed indirectly
It places an unreasonable burden on the size of the resultant text
It suggests that if such was included the sceptic would be convinced of the truth of the Bible

Whose concern is important?
To ask that the Bible address X, Y, or Z assumes that these are the things God is most interested in recording for his people. The Bible is diverse, though there are several common themes. A major theme is right relationship with God. There is a large amount of material discussing individuals and nations in right and wrong relationship with God and the consequences of such. God is forever calling people to himself and rebuking them for going their own way. The Bible suggests that the biggest problem in men following God is not evidential, rather wilful. All Jericho were in fear of Yahweh after reports of his exploits, yet only Rahab submitted to him.

Related to this theme is reconciliation, especially the focus on God coming to earth as a man to teach us God's way, to receive our punishment and to establish a kingdom. Thus, much of Scripture builds up to this event, describes this event and discusses the consequences of this event.

Who was the Bible written for?
The Bible has information that can be used to defend the truth of God and to rebuke the mocker; that is, it does have apologetic value. However the intended audience includes and is probably predominantly, those who belong to God's kingdom. At the time of the Old Testament that was Israel (though admittedly this included apostate Israel). In the New Testament the gospel of Luke (and Acts) are addressed to Theophilus (Friend of God). The letters are all addressed to individual Christians or churches. The biblical "inadequacies" as claimed by the sceptical may be of less concern to believers.

The Bible was written by God's servants
Scripture, in the main, is not dictated by God. Thus there is freedom for the authors to write in their own style. Christians believe God had the authors include what God wanted recorded. Many also claim that God prevented them from writing error. This at least allows for difficulties in reconciling parallel passages, none of which contain exhaustive information.

The Bible was written into specific cultures
This fact has been misused to limit the scope biblical injunctions. Nevertheless, the authors were writing to the people who lived and thought a common culture. They addressed issues that were pertinent to the people around them. This includes who they perceived as their friends and enemies at the time. Laws related (in part) to their way of life, the types of houses they lived in, the foods they ate. The Israelites were an agrarian society. Many of the specific issues we face in the 21st century were non-existent in ancient Israel and some of them would have been barely comprehensible. However, most issues faced by diverse nationalities have some degree of commonality. Truly new concepts, such as intellectual property, are not that common. To request the Bible address specifically, issues that post-date its completion is anachronistic. The Bible may do so if God wishes but to complain of these types of deficiencies is unreasonable.

What does the Bible discuss?
The fact is, the Bible does discuss a wide range of issues. There may be questions we have that it is difficult to clearly answer from biblical considerations but what of that which the Bible does tell us? It tells us a lot about God, a lot about us. It tells us we are broken. It tells us our relationship with God is broken and better, how to fix it. It tells us how to treat others. It teaches about relationships with one's spouse and with one's children. It tells us about honesty in business relationships. It tells us to concern ourselves with the less fortunate.

There is much we are shown about in the Bible. Is the concern about what is lacking actually about us not liking what is not lacking?

The indirect teaching of Scripture
It is not that difficult to apply what the Bible says within an ancient culture to our modern one. Is it really that hard? to go from "build a parapet around the edge of your [flat] roof" to "build a fence around your swimming pool." Does one really think that if God opposes getting intoxicated with wine that he approves of getting intoxicated with marijuana? Many of the questions we have in our modern technological age are addressed indirectly through Scripture.

How big do we want our Bible?
It is difficult for a finite text to cover all the questions that man is capable of asking. The amount of information now known to man is vast, too much for any one person to know. Yet there are questions I can ask (that are intrinsically answerable) and not one man on earth currently knows the answer. If the Bible addressed in detail the specific answer, along with an underlying explanation of the assumptions of the questioner, of every question raised by a bibliosceptic its size would be enormous, not to mention unsustainable for the ancient scribes. For a hand-written book, the Bible is already pretty large. And even many Christians have not read it thru. How does one gain the overall themes of a book that would take a lifetime to read thru once?

Would a different text alter the sceptic's position?
My considered view is that the complaint of biblical deficiencies is an empty one. Inclusion of specific issues would only mean that different deficiencies would be raised.

As mentioned above, the problem, as the Bible sees it, is not one of knowledge; rather it is one of the will. Rahab chose to worship Yahweh. Many of those who would be willing to submit to Christ have enough information to evaluate him. If someone has a real stumbling block then it is worth addressing it with him. But there is enough clarity in Scripture for those whose hearts are good soil and there is enough concealment for the mocker to remain sceptical.

The Foreshore and Seabed Repeal: The Inconvenience of Due Process

noreply@blogger.com (Madeleine) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:09:00 +0000

That the state is not above the law but also subject to it is surely one of the foundational concepts of any just and free society. This notion has found its place in the writings of many influential philosophers, jurists and theologians, it can be found in the constitutions and bills of rights of most nations. Citizens trust their governments to wield their power accordingly and when our governments do not, when they abuse that trust, even if they wield their power against some small group whose cause we are not that into, we need to care about it and hold them to account.

In 2004 the New Zealand Labour Government passed the Foreshore and Seabed Act. At the time both Matt and I were absolutely opposed to its passage but we felt like lone voices in the wilderness in our own community and that saddened us. Christians will happily protest laws that affront issues like marriage, sex, drugs, alcohol and parenting but on issues like freedom and civil liberty our voice is all often too quiet.

Part of this is that we are not as educated a culture as we once were, we don’t know our history or properly understand our theology, we don’t value our freedom or understand how it works or why it is important to defend it even when we don’t feel like it is us under attack but we need to.

A lot of people don’t even understand Foreshore and Seabed issue; they think it was about who owns the beaches and that the law was necessary to protect our beaches, our kiwi way of life. In Any Requests? Anonymous asked, “Why should the government potentially allow access to the beach denied to all New Zealanders?” The Ministerial Review Panel found that this concern was not limited to our anonymous commenter:

Three key issues emerge from our review of submissions to the Select Committee which considered the Bill in 2004: public ownership, access and navigation, and protection of Māori customary interests in the foreshore and seabed. In our view, these issues remain at the very heart of ongoing concerns about the legislation.[1] [Emphasis added]

In all the submissions the amount that focused of the real problem were so negligible the panel didn’t list them. The majority missed the fact that this Act was passed to prevent a group of New Zealand citizens from taking a case to court, instead they wrote submissions about how that would affect them. The Act was and remains, a blatant breach of due process.

Nevertheless, the passage of this Act had widespread support. Although the National party (then in opposition) voted against it, they ran a campaign promising to keep the beaches for all New Zealanders. Within the media and amongst society, debate about the Act was focused on the merits of the court case; totally missing the point that legislative denial of due process is wrong regardless of the merits of the case being brought.

At this point a brief history is necessary due to the widespread misunderstanding about the case itself. In June 2003 the Court of Appeal handed down its decision in Attorney-General v Ngāti Apa [2003] 3 NZLR 643. Public interest in this case was triggered by the reaction of the government to its decision and the way the media reported its significance.[2]

Eight Maori tribes claimed that the foreshore (the land between the high and low-water marks) and the seabed (the land below the low-water mark) of the Marlborough Sounds in the South Island of New Zealand, was "Maori customary land" (a Maori jurisprudence concept which is not the same concept as our western notion of fee simple ownership.) The tribes were not sure if the Maori Land Court, which is the court set up to hear historical Maori land claims against the government, had the jurisdiction to hear their case. There was dispute as to the effect of statutes regarding land and Common Law confusion over land ownership where that land is covered by water. The tribes went to the High Court to ask if they could take the case to the Maori Land Court and the case worked its way up to the Court of Appeal.[3]

In summary, the Court ruled that:
the Crown was wrong to contend that certain statutes affecting the foreshore and seabed had had the effect of extinguishing such Māori customary title as might exist; and
the Māori Land Court has jurisdiction, under Te Ture Whenua Māori/Māori Land Act 1993, to determine whether any part of the foreshore and seabed is still Māori customary land.
While the decision gave rise to uncertainty regarding the “ownership” status of the foreshore and seabed, it also confirmed that this could be tested in the Māori Land Court. However, rather than let that process run its course, the government decided to legislate. The Act vested in the Crown title to all foreshore and seabed land not already in private ownership. It also made some provision for Māori customary interests to be recognised in limited circumstances.[4]

This case was about whether or not the Maori Land Court had the jurisdiction to hear a case. The case was not a ruling on whether the foreshore and seabed belonged to Maori or the Crown. This was a key issue that the media, the politicians and the public missed at the time.

The ex-dean of the University of Waikato's Law School, Margaret Wilson, was the Attorney-General at the time the Court of Appeal was deliberating. She had advised the government that there was no way the Court of Appeal would rule in favour of the appellants, she was not alone in that view, the majority in the legal profession thought that. She was wrong.

When the government realised the error they realised there was a risk that ownership and access to the beach in the Marlborough Sounds area might be able to be handed to Ngati Apa, if the Maori Land Court heard the case and ruled that way. The political fallout from this was not something they wanted. New Zealanders love the beach. We are a small island with a lot of beautiful coastline; we all have summer memories that involve our coastline. The backlash against the government could be disastrous, the opposition could have a field-day, they may lose the next election... So they played on that fear and also on the impatience many have towards historical Maori land claims, the 'gravy-train' mentality, and they rammed through legislation that prevented the case ever being heard.

The problem is that the right to due process trumps the right of the general public to enjoy the beach and the right for a government to not have negative media. If, in fact, Ngati Apa did have a legitimate claim to ownership then as much as we love the beach, the beach ain’t ours.

Usually at this point in a discussion on the issue I am asked if I am Maori to which I throw my hands up. No, I am not Maori. It is just that I get the fact that just because I like something and enjoy it, it doesn’t make it mine and it doesn’t mean I can keep it when it is brought to my attention that it might belong to someone else. We can apply this to other spheres of life, we need to be willing to apply it even to big issues like this one.

Another point to keep in mind is that Ngati Apa never got their day in court. It is not clear that they would have won. Many legal scholars felt they did not have a case – as we keep trying to point out in the smacking debate the mere fact someone can raise a legal issue does not mean they will always succeed - but they should have been allowed to try.

“Public ownership, access and navigation and protection of Maori customary interests in the foreshore and seabed” are all implications of what might have been at stake had the case proceeded. Due process for Ngati Apa and the other tribes was taken by the passage of this Act.

Fast forward to 2008. A new National government was elected, a confidence and supply agreement was drawn up between National and Maori Party (a party formed in protest to the Foreshore and Seabed Act). Policy concessions included National offering a review of the Foreshore and Seabed Act. At the time we were very pleased by this fact but less so by the detail and blogged to that effect; “It is a shame to see that National has not framed the issue in terms of the affront to due process and instead is talking about all New Zealander's being able to access the beach, as if that is somehow more important than human rights.”

Our fears were not unfounded, in addition to the claims made by some commentators that the specially created Ministerial Review Panel was stacked and directed as to which outcome to arrive at, the terms of reference were utterly wrong:

a) What were the nature and extent of the mana whenua and public interests in the coastal marine area prior to Attorney-General v Ngāti Apa [2003] 3 NZLR 643

b) What options were available to the government to respond to the Court of Appeal decision in Attorney-General v Ngāti Apa [2003] 3 NZLR 643

c) Whether the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 effectively recognises and provides for customary or aboriginal title and public interests (including Māori, local government and business) in the coastal marine area and maintains and allows for the enhancement of mana whenua

d) If the Panel has reservations that the Foreshore and Seabed Act does not provide for the above, outline options on what could be the most workable and efficient methods by which both customary and public interests in the coastal marine area could be recognised and provided for; and in particular, how processes of recognising and providing for such interests could be streamlined
The Panel will also need to consider how these processes will integrate with legislation that regulates the coastal marine area.

Effectively the panel is acting in the place of the Waitangi Tribunal, the appropriate, already existing, independant investigative tribunal that examines the evidence and makes recommendations. The government is expected by everyone to and has already indicated it probably will follow the recommendations being made by the Ministerial Review Panel as it would be 'too costly for it to go back to court.'

Basically the government looks set to settle this case, out of court, on our behalf, when it is not clear that the government are guilty and not that long ago they denied a case existed on the part of Ngati Apa and many legal scholars agreed with them. Historical Maori land ownership claims are very difficult to prove. There were no deeds or titles issued in pre-european New Zealand and records consist of tribal stories, songs, carvings and so on. To succeed in an historical claim, even if a tribe could establish which part of land their ancestors had used and no other tribe was prepared to offer a counter claim to the land, the land in question has to have been in continual use by the tribe making the claim from at least 1840 through to the present day (unless it was unjustly dispossessed). Not only is it very possible Ngati Apa may not have succeeded, there would not be a huge risk of floodgates because each tribe would need to be able to establish this long chain of use and ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the area their ancestors historically lived.

Regardless of which party is in power, the New Zealand government seems to be happy to have the land of its citizens taken without due process as long as it furthers their political popularity. The former government was willing to suspend due process of one group of citizens and unilaterally declare that the land in question belonged to a second group of citizens. The current government is willing to unilaterally declare that the land in question belongs to the first group of citizens and not the second group and again it seems they will not going to allow a court to hear the evidence.

The Ministerial Review Panel said sending the case back to court would be "protracted, laborious, and expensive" and the politicians appear to agree. It's funny how selectively that card has been played of late, it wasn't too expensive to create a special Ministerial Review Panel that duplicated the services of the existing Waitangi Tribunal and the Maori Land Court but apparently now everyone is concerned with cost. Due process is too expensive apparently; tell that to the authors of the Magna Carta who wrote:

"No man of what state or condition he be, shall be put out of his lands or tenements nor taken, nor disinherited, nor put to death, without he be brought to answer by due process of law."

Due process is a concept enshrined in constitutions around the world - the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution states, "No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ...." and in New Zealand: the Treaty of Waitangi, the Bill of Rights Act 1990 and the body of Common Law arising from the Magna Carta itself gives us the same legal rights.

The government does not have the right to settle land disputes, where that land is held in trust for its citizens, without due process being observed. It was wrong when Labour did it and it will be wrong if National proceeds to do it.

Send the case back to court. Sell the state owned television company if you need to fund it - a society where I can get 'free' entertainment but it is too expensive to uphold justice is a society with its priorities backwards.

[1] Summary Report of the Ministerial Review Panel on the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004, 4.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Attorney-General v Ngāti Apa [2003] 3 NZLR 643.
[4] Ibid.

Christian Blog Ranking Report for June 09 – HalfDone

noreply@blogger.com (Madeleine) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:25:00 +0000

Here are the top 10 NZ Christian blogs based on HalfDone's NZ blog stats for June; these stats make up part of the calculations for the MandM top 10 NZ Christian Blog rankings for June 09:

MandM 5
NZ Conservative 7
Something Should Go Here, Maybe Later (HalfDone) 15
MacDoctor Moments 21
The Humanitarian Chronicle 25
Keeping Stock 28
Say Hello to my Little Friend (Beretta) 29
Being Frank 40
Sustain:If:Able Kiwi 50
Samuel Dennis 52

Top 10. name of blog HalfDone Rank

Of Note:

Not much change but Sustain:If:Able Kiwi made the top 10
The following Christian blogs all made the top 100 but were outside the top 10 Contra Celsum, Christian News, Brad Heap, Semper Vita, Prodigal Kiwi, Put up Thy Sword, s59 blog, Kiwi Polemicist.
An additional 16 Christian blogs made the top 300.

Note: This list only includes Christian blogs that are openly identified as Christian blogs on HalfDone's ranking list.

When Tumeke's June stats are out we will compare them with HalfDone's and publish the overall MandM top 10 NZ Christian Blog rankings for June 09 later in the month.

John Loftus on Madeleine Flannagan and Women and Other Red Herrings

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:11:00 +0000

A few days ago I posted, Sunday Study: Slavery, John Locke and the Bible; in this post I defended an argument proposed by John Locke that the Bible does not support slavery. In that article I quoted from John Loftus’ book “Why I Became an Atheist” as an example of what is typically meant by slavery when sceptics claim the Bible supports slavery. John Loftus runs the blog Debunking Christianity, is a former preacher and student of William Lane Craig, turned new-atheist. On page 231 of his book, Loftus cites an eyewitness description of a malicious, brutal and bloodthirsty whipping of a female slave that took place in the antebellum south. Immediately after this he asks, “Why didn’t the Christian God ever explicitly and clearly condemn slavery?”

Now by juxtaposing this question next to the description of the beating, Loftus insinuates, that the scriptures explicitly or implicitly condone these sorts of practices. In his book, Loftus reinforces this by noting that,

the Bible was still used by Christians to justify the brutal slavery in the American South. Distinguished Princeton professor Charles Hodge defended American slavery in a 40 page essay written in 1860, just prior to the Civil War.

Here Loftus suggests that Hodge supported the “brutal slavery in the American south” which he had just described, on the same page only a few lines earlier, with his graphic account of a female slave being beaten. In the same paragraph Loftus also refers to the book Slavery Sabbath and War, which summarises various pro-slavery theological arguments to the same effect and then he states, “The Catholic Church didn’t condemn slavery until the year 1888, after the Civil War and after ever other Christian nation had abolished it.” This again suggests that the writers in Slavery Sabbath and War, along with the Catholic Church, all condoned and failed to condemn the practices he refers to.

Now in my post I pointed out that Loftus’ claim that the Bible does not explicitly condemn the kind of practices he describes is mistaken. In the comments thread I also noted his suggestion that Hodge did is also mistaken. Hodge did defend the existence of slavery an as institution, but on page 831 of Cotton is King, the book Loftus himself referred me to, Hodge states that if the bible is used to argue that “slavery as it occurs among us [in the US south]” is sinful, then “he has no objection.” Hodge only objects to the idea that all forms of slavery, including the ebed in scripture, are unjust. On the same page, he states that laws allowing people to beat, harm, kill and starve their slaves are condemned by scripture. A point, Loftus conveniently missed. On the next page, page 832, Hodge again states that it is very plain that the institution which existed in the US was condemned by scripture.

The same is true if one looks at Slavery Sabbath and War. Many of the pro-slavery theologians Loftus referred to, in fact, criticised the abuses that were occurring in their day and suggested these should be condemned.

It is also worth noting, at this juncture, that Loftus’ claim about the Catholic Church has been shown to be false by Rodney Stark. Stark notes that “[the Catholic Church repeatedly condemned slavery] … beginning in 1435 and culminating in three major pronouncements against slavery by Pope Paul III in 1537.” He notes that Pope Eugene IV (1431-1447), Pope Pius II (1458-1464), Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484), Pope Paul III (1534-1549), Pope Urban VIII (1623-1644) issued bulls against slavery; in addition, the Roman Inquisition condemned slavery on 20 March 1686. These condemnations were largely motivated by concerns about new world slavery.

In addition to weighing into the comments, Loftus responded with a post on his own site, Nitpickers Have Started to Attack; this response led with aspersions about my education and intelligence concluding that my comments were “nitpicking” and did not address the real issue. This lead to a response by Glenn Peoples, Skeptics and the annoyance of the little things…. like facts. Glenn noted.

Apparently it’s just in poor taste and really just skirts around the edges to point out that contrary to the claims that some skeptics love to make, the Old Testament does not endorse what we call slavery. But I daresay that annoyance has clouded John’s vision, for what has been shown is that in fact God did condemn kidnapping and/or mistreating people, the very things that Loftus is concerned about and which he is calling “slavery.” it may be irritating to have the rug ripped out from under your argument, but getting annoyed and demanding that people deal with the “main” argument by pretending that the rug is still there (for the sake of your argument and nothing else) is a bit of an ask, don’t you think? Why not just graciously thank the other person for their helpful explanation and remove the argument from your repertoire?

Glenn wasn’t the only person to ask Loftus to respond to the main argument and address the factual claims I had called him on. Loftus’s response to this pressure was to single out the only woman who’d criticised him along the same grounds, Madeleine. He dedicated a post to her, Madeleine Flannagan is Happy to be Treated as Women Were in the Bible!, publicly ridiculing her as “backward thinking,” “incredibly ignorant” quoted her out of context and finished with an aspersion on our marriage:

Here's exhibit "A" of the backward thinking of some Christians. This is incredibly ignorant:
"So yes, I...am happy to be treated the same way women were in the Bible." Link
How much more ignorant can someone be? Although, her husband probably likes it! ;-)

Of course in the actual comment Madeleine qualified her statement (as the “So yes” will tell any observant reader) and of course Loftus pasted it without this qualification into his own contextual understanding which assumes that his take on the Bible and on its teachings on gender is correct and is what Madeleine meant.

I write this post to demonstrate how some people who pass themselves off as free-thinkers or rationalists are often dogmatic proponents of a secular party-line who will happily ridicule and attack other people personally who question the orthodoxy that they expound even if the facts get in the way.

Madeleine asks that even though Loftus hefted a stone at our marriage that commenters refrain from doing the same in turn.

Evolution should not be taught in State Schools: A Defence of Plantinga Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 04:23:00 +0000

In Evolution should not be taught in State Schools: A Defence of Plantinga Part I, I articulated and defended Alvin Plantinga’s proposal that evolution should not be taught as “the sober truth” in state schools. In this post I will address what should be taught in state schools and look at Robert Pennock's objections to this argument.

Part II. Plantinga’s Proposal: What should be taught in State Schools?
After drawing the above conclusion, Plantinga asks what should be taught regarding origins in state schools? He suggests two answers; the first is to teach nothing on matters of origins,

One answer is to say: in a pluralistic society like ours, there is no fair way to teach anything about origins; hence public schools ought not to teach anything on that subject. They should instead stick to subjects where there isn't disagreement at the level of religious or comprehensive beliefs. This would be just a reflection of a more general difficulty in having public schools of our sort in a pluralistic society. Perhaps, when the citizens get together to found a system of education, what they discover is that there is too much diversity of opinion to make it feasible.[1]

The second, and perhaps more interesting answer, is to teach both evolution and creationism “conditionally,” Plantinga labels this as his “modest proposal.”[2] To explain this idea of teaching conditionally Plantinga introduces the technical notion of an epistemic base, “for each person P there is an epistemic base, EBP, with respect to which the probability or acceptability of proposed beliefs is to be evaluated.”[3] A person’s epistemic base contains at least four things. First it contains their “current beliefs;”[4] second, as “some beliefs are held more strongly than others,” it includes, “an index of degree of belief.”[5] Third, an epistemic base will include, “prescriptions as to how to conduct inquiry,” how to learn about world, revise beliefs, etc.[6] Fourth, it will include their comprehensive beliefs.[7] Plantinga emphasises that a persons epistemic base is not set in stone but revisable in light of argument.

Plantinga notes that science, as currently practiced, respects a procedure known as methodological naturalism, “the policy of avoiding hypotheses that mention or refer to God or special acts on the part of God, or other supernatural phenomena, or hypotheses whose only support is the Bible, or some other alleged divine revelation.”[8] While there is dispute over whether science should do this, as currently practised, science does involve commitment to methodological naturalism.[9] This means that science operates with a particular epistemic base; while the epistemic base of science will include things such as logic, mathematics, various common-sense beliefs, there will be certain beliefs that will not go into the epistemic base for science (EBS) at least as currently practised, “Among these would be the belief that there is such a person as God, that God has created the world, and that God has created certain forms of life specially--human beings, perhaps, or the original forms of life, or for that matter sparrows and horses.”[10]

Plantinga’s claim that evolution be taught conditionally then amounts to this: Evolution can be taught as the most probable theory relative to the current scientific epistemic base. This, he thinks, is uncontroversial and not likely to contradict anyone’s comprehensive beliefs; even a creationist, for example, can grant that, if one brackets various theological claims and operates on methodological naturalism then evolution is likely. What schools cannot do is teach that any particular epistemic base is the correct one to start from or that what follows from a particular epistemic base is true. Plantinga thinks that creationism could be taught in a similar conditional way in state schools.

Pennock’s Critique of Plantinga
Robert Pennock offers a critique of Plantinga’s position. Pennock contends that a rational person would not grant parents do not have the sort of prima facie rights Plantinga attributes to them. Instead, a rational person would advocate that evolution be taught as true and creationism or any other theological view be excluded from being taught in state schools.[11] He offers two arguments for this conclusion; the first is that,

we all know parents who are bigots or ideologues and others who are simply narrow-minded or ignorant. … A good education may be a child’s only window to a clear picture of the world and to an open future. To agree to a basic right would be to close that window. This would be a serious harm for the children of such parents.[12]

This is a bad argument; it is true that some parents are narrow minded. It is also true that some parents do not feed their children or neglect to clothe them or give them poor medical care; however, it would be grossly unjust to infer from this that no parent has even a prima facie right to clothe and feed their child or make medical decisions for them. Moreover, a parallel line of argument would entail that teachers, schools and governments cannot make education choices either. We are all familiar with teachers and government officials who are bigoted, corrupt and abuse their power. Taken consistently, Pennock’s views would entail that no one could make educational choices for children.

The second and more substantial argument is that accepting parental rights would “gut the curriculum of state schools.”[13]Pennock notes,

… there are thousands of special interests groups that would use such a right to prohibit the teaching of specific facts or even whole subjects they objected to. One does not have to look far to find parents who would object to teaching about racial equality, the facts of reproductive health, or that even that the earth is round. Only the utterly trivial could have a chance of escaping the gag of basic rights. No rational person would agree to such a policy.[14]

Pennock here suggests Plantinga’s position would prevent anything being taught at state schools and he takes this as a reductio ad absurdum of the claim that parents have the kind of rights Plantinga contends they do. Three points can be made in response to this.[15]

First, Pennock misconstrues Plantinga’s position. Plantinga’s view is that, “it is improper, unfair, to teach either creationism or evolution in the schools--that is so, at any rate for areas where a substantial proportion of the parents hold religious or comprehensive beliefs incompatible with either.” [Emphasis added][16] Consequently, it applies locally not globally. In a Native Indian reserve, for example, it would be unjust for state teaching of things that were contrary to the comprehensive beliefs of Native Indians.[17] It would not follow, however, that one could not teach these things in a school in New York, for example, where there are hardly any Native Indians who continue to believe these cultural practices.[18] Hence, the fact that almost everything is incompatible with someone's comprehensive beliefs is irrelevant. Schools do not have to accommodate the views of everyone; they only need to accommodate the views in their area.

Second, Plantinga stresses that parental rights are prima facie rights not absolute rights; they can be overridden in certain circumstances. Interestingly Plantinga alludes to one such circumstance in the very paper Pennock critiques,

Of course a basic right is a prima facie right… The majority might also insist on teaching the denial of certain comprehensive views, Nazism, for example, in which case the fair thing to do would be to exclude the Nazis from the contract (and also exclude them from the tax liability).[19]

Here Plantinga considers the very examples Pennock raised; situations where a minority has bizarre or repugnant views which the majority feel compelled to warn their own children about and it is clear that in such situations one does not need to adopt a gag rule for all state schools. One simply establishes a state school based on the views of the majority in the area in question and grants the minority freedom to opt out of these schools and an exemption from education taxation.

Third, suppose that Pennock is correct and there is too much disagreement over comprehensive views to have a state school system and also respect the rights Plantinga attributes to parents, does it follow that we should not respect parental rights? Not at all, an alternative is to not have state schools; Plantinga notes, “Perhaps, when the citizens get together to found a system of education, what they discover is that there is too much diversity of opinion to make it feasible.”[20] An alternative could be to establish a network of private schools where parents could choose which school meets the needs of their children, basing their decisions in part on their comprehensive beliefs.[21] Some private schools could teach evolution and others could choose not to and parents could choose which ones to send their children to.

In other words, if it is true that it is impossible to have a centralised state education system and accord parents prima facie rights of the sort Plantinga suggests, then that is an argument against having a centralised state education system. It is not, as Pennock suggests, a compelling argument against parental rights.

Conclusion
I conclude then that Plantinga’s position is defensible. Regardless of whether evolution is true or empirically founded it is unjust to teach the children of parents who have theological objections to evolution that it is true. State schools which have a sizeable clientele who hold such views should teach it only conditionally or not at all. Alternatively, the government should allow these people to opt out of state education and grant them a tax rebate.

[1] Alvin Plantinga “Creation and Evolution: A Modest Proposal” in Robert Pennock Ed Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological and Scientific Perspectives (Cambridge, The MIT Press - Bradford Books, 2001) 787.
[2] Ibid 789.
[3] Ibid 787.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid, 788.
[9] Alvin Plantinga “Methodological Naturalism?” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith49 (1997) 143-154; M Ruse “Methodological Naturalism Under Fire” South African Journal of Philosophy 24(1)(2005) 44-60.
[10] Plantinga “Creation and Evolution: A Modest Proposal” 788.
[11] Robert Pennock “Should Creationism Be Taught in Public Schools?” Science & Education 11(2) (2002) 111-133.
[12] Ibid 129.
[13] Ibid 128.
[14] Ibid 127.
[15] I am grateful to Alvin Plantinga for his helpful comments here.
[16] Plantinga “Creation and Evolution: A Modest Proposal” 786.
[17] Ibid 782.
[18] Alvin Plantinga suggested this example in correspondence
[19] Plantinga “Creation and Evolution: A Modest Proposal” 782.
[20] Ibid 787.
[21] Here again I am grateful to Alvin Plantinga for confirming this suggestion.

RELATED POSTS:
Evolution should not be taught in State Schools: A Defence of Plantinga Part I

Evolution should not be taught in State Schools: A Defence of Plantinga Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:19:00 +0000

In this two-part series I will sketch and defend Alvin Plantinga’s proposal that evolution should not be taught as “the sober truth” in state schools. In Part I, I will sketch Plantinga’s position and the arguments he provides for it; in Part II, I will look at what should be taught and then I’ll defend this position against the most significant critique offered of it by Robert Pennock. I have developed this position partly out of reading and reflecting on the published debate between these two men but also through correspondence with Alvin Plantinga over the issue.

Part I. The Argument against Teaching Evolution in State Schools
Arguably the most sophisticated argument against teaching evolution in state schools has been made by Alvin Plantinga. Plantinga begins by offering a couple of qualifications; first, Plantinga’s inquiry is limited to whether evolution should be taught in the state schools of countries that display significant pluralism and diversity of opinion.[1] This would include, not just Plantinga’s own country, the United States of America but also New Zealand. Second, Plantinga limits his inquiry to whether “evolution should be taught as the sober truth of the matter” [Emphasis mine][2] as opposed to “the best current scientific hypothesis, or what accords best or is most probable (epistemically probable) with respect to the appropriate scientific evidence base.”[3] Plantinga’s conclusion is that it is unjust to teach evolution in this way. His argument proceeds in three stages.

First Plantinga notes that American (and the same is true of New Zealand) society is “radically pluralistic; and here I am thinking in particular of the plurality of religious and quasi-religious views.”[4] Following John Rawls, he calls these religious and quasi-religious views “'comprehensive' beliefs... deep ways of understanding ourselves and our world, other deep ways of interpreting ourselves and our world to ourselves.”[5]

Second, Plantinga suggests that with state schools, “It is as if we are all party to a sort of implicit contract: we recognize the need to train and educate our children, but don't have the time or competence to do it individually. We therefore get together to hire teachers to help instruct and educate our children, and together we pay for this service by way of tax money.”[6] However, given that “[for] most citizens, these comprehensive beliefs are of enormous importance… some even thinking that one’s eternal welfare is tied up with accepting them, parents will typically want their children to be educated into what they take to be the true and correct comprehensive beliefs;”[7] This, however, raises an immediate question of fairness,

It would clearly be unfair, unjust, for the school, which we all support, to teach one set of religious beliefs as opposed to another--to teach that evangelical Christianity, for example, is the truth. This would be unfair to those citizens who are party to the contract and whose comprehensive beliefs--Judaism, naturalism, Islam, whatever--are incompatible with evangelical Christianity.[8]

From these points Plantinga argues that parents possess what he calls a basic right that, “each of the citizen’s party to the contract has the right to not have comprehensive beliefs taught to their children that contradict their own comprehensive beliefs.”[9] A basic right expresses a prima facie right not an absolute right; that is, it is a right which can be overridden by other considerations. Teaching evolution clearly violates a basic right; a significant proportion of people hold comprehensive religious views, views that contradict evolution. Hence, their rights are being violated if evolution is taught as true in state schools. It follows then, that in the absence of other considerations, teaching evolution in state schools is unjust.

The final step in Plantinga’s argument is to contend that, in the case of evolution, there are no other considerations that override this prima facie right. Commenting on a defence of the teaching of evolution made by Robert Pennock, Plantinga identifies two considerations made in favour of teaching evolution. The first is that evolutionary theory is true; the second is that it is an empirically supported theory, the best supported theory of origins in the biological sciences.

In response to the first consideration Plantinga notes that even if evolution is true, it does not follow that it is just to teach it as true in a pluralistic society.

Suppose Christianity is in fact true, as indeed I believe it is, would that mean that it is fair to teach it in public schools where most of the citizens, citizens who support those schools, are not Christians and reject Christian comprehensive beliefs? I should think not; that would clearly be unfair, and the fact that the system of beliefs in question is true would not override the unfairness.[10]

Plantinga’s response to the second consideration is more nuanced. Plantinga has not claimed that evolution cannot be taught as “the best current scientific hypothesis, or what accords best or is most probable (epistemically probable) with respect to the appropriate scientific evidence base,”[11] his claim is that it should not be taught as true. The fact that evolution is the best scientific theory does not, by itself, entail that it is true. To get the conclusion that evolution is true one needs to conjoin the claim that evolution is the best scientific theory of origins with an epistemological claim that Plantinga labels PC,

(PC) The right way to answer questions of empirical fact--for example questions about the origin of life, the age of the earth, whether human beings have evolved from earlier forms of life--is by way of science, or scientific method.[12]

Plantinga notes that PC is not an empirical or scientific claim; it is rather a claim of philosophy or epistemology. Second, PC is a claim that contradicts the comprehensive beliefs of many parents. Hence, to justify teaching evolution as true, as opposed to just the best scientific hypothesis, educators would have to go beyond the mere scientific empirical evidence and teach substantive philosophical views that contradict the comprehensive views of parents.[13]

Plantinga concludes that the considerations put forward to override the prima facie rights of parents do not override these rights, hence, “is that it is improper, unfair, to teach either creationism or evolution in the schools--that is so, at any rate for areas where a substantial proportion of the parents hold religious or comprehensive beliefs incompatible with either.”[14]

In my next post, Evolution should not be taught in State Schools: A Defence of Plantinga Part II, I will look at what should be taught in state schools and I'll address Robert Pennock's criticisms of the position.

[1] Alvin Plantinga “Creation and Evolution: A Modest Proposal” in Robert Pennock Ed Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological and Scientific Perspectives (Cambridge, The MIT Press - Bradford Books, 2001) 779.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid 780.
[5] Ibid; John Rawls Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)
[6] Ibid, 781.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid, 780.
[10] Ibid, 784.
[11] Ibid, 779.
[12] Ibid, 786.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.

<RELATED POSTS:
Evolution should not be taught in State Schools: A Defence of Plantinga Part II