Science emerged in Christendom because God was transcendent, not pantheistic. Now materialism reigns as a hidden theology – Epstein-funded, preached by ambiguous atheists.
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There is possibly more than one correct answer to the question of why science emerged in Western Christendom, rather than appearing first in one of the many Eastern societies with formidable technology, or within the fold of Greco-Roman paganism.
The Benedictine epistemologist Stanley Jaki offers a detailed answer that is intrinsic to Christianity: as we read in Christ and Science, the distinguishing factor is that Christians are not prone to falling into pantheism. Among Greco-Roman pagans, the cosmos was called “only-begotten” – a title later assumed by Jesus in Christianity, and only in Christianity. In the world of Aristotle, Western Christendom’s favorite pagan, bodies move of their own volition (fire seeks to rise, earth seeks to sink, etc.), and the Prime Mover is part of nature rather than transcending it. In Judaism and Islam, figures such as Spinoza (beloved in the 20th century by Einstein and Sagan, and in the 21st by Sam Harris) and Averroes (with his universal intellect) demonstrate how easily God can be conflated with nature itself. It was in medieval Christendom that the world came to be conceived as a vast clock with inanimate parts adjusted by an intelligent Creator, whose laws we must discover. This way of thinking about the universe, which we associate today with Newton, is medieval. And this worldview, specific to Christendom, is what made the invention of science possible.
Here in this SCF column, I once ventured a more modest answer of a cultural nature. I wrote that the West has been rationalist since before it was Christian; and this fosters not only the emergence of science but also the willingness to uphold it in the event of a conflict with faith. Sunnis, who constitute the majority of Muslims, saw a form of Quranic literalism put an end to the spectacular flourishing of the sciences during the Middle Ages. Jews, who devoted themselves to the exegesis of religious texts, only became scientists following emancipation and secularization. This cultural characteristic helps explain why science emerged in Western Christendom rather than in the East, given that both the Roman and Greek Churches shared the belief in the only-begotten Jesus. It also helps explain why, following the Protestant Reformation, Protestant Europe did not cling to biblical literalism or to Luther’s diatribes against reason, but instead produced science in dialogue with Catholic Europe. This ultimately shifted the locus of Truth from religion (where each group held its own version) to science (to be accepted by all), paving the way for that recent Western invention known as scientism.
Now, an idea intrinsic to Christianity that I wish to highlight is its absolute intolerance of relativism regarding knowledge. In the pagan world, philosophy and religion were disconnected matters. Plato reflected on the good, the beautiful, and the just without investigating Olympus. Cicero, as a philosopher, wrote against the public soothsayers of the Roman religion; yet, as a politician, he showed no intention of altering state religious practices or inventing secularism. Even Aristotle, who wrote on every conceivable discipline, did not write about Zeus, Hera, or Athena. He did create a “theology,” but it referred not to the gods, but rather to the Prime Mover. Zeus, Hera, and Athena were not the objects of any discipline.
It was during the Middle Ages that the Catholic Church invented the university with the aim of studying the universum – that is, everything: metaphysics, physics, politics, theology… Knowledge was organized cohesively, based on the presumption of an objective reality. Thus, physics could not teach something that contradicted theology, and vice versa. (Although the Galileo affair stemmed from the Aristotelianism embraced by the Church through Thomas Aquinas, rather than from a literal reading of the Bible.) This cohesion might seem obvious, yet today the discipline of physics claims that glass is a liquid, while the discipline of chemistry claims that glass is a solid. And that is not even the greatest problem: who would dare ask a university for an unequivocal definition of “man” or “human”? In practice, relativism reigns in the university – and did so even before the postmodernists took over everything.
This fragmentation of knowledge originated in the scientific model that emerged during the Renaissance. Outside the universities, humanists sought out ancient texts that medieval Catholics had discarded, such as De rerum natura by the materialist and Epicurean Lucretius. Since antiquity conferred authority in those days, the occult tradition formed by the fusion of Hermeticism and Kabbalah enjoyed particular credibility among the learned class. Hermeticism derives from Hermes Trismegistus, whom Renaissance thinkers believed to be the teacher of Moses, Plato, and Pythagoras, though in reality, he was a fictional figure dating from slightly after the time of Christ. An etymological trace of Hermeticism’s importance to science is the adjective “hermetic,” used by alchemists to describe their tightly sealed vessels. As for Kabbalah, it stems from a religion that predated Christianity – which is enough for it to be regarded as ancient, even though its principal text, the Zohar, originated in medieval Spain. As I have argued in greater detail here, Renaissance occultism influenced modern science and is responsible for its utilitarian bias. If individual disciplines decide that a certain concept “works,” contradictions between them pose no problem; what matters is not knowledge itself, but practical utility. It is a science inspired by the methods of the sorcerer, who consults ancient books and tests spells to see which ones work.
Thus, the status quo of knowledge within universities is one of practical relativism, resulting from the institution’s lack of a unified vision. On an individual level, however, it is humanly impossible to conduct science without a coherent worldview – even if that worldview is constructed a posteriori based on the “spells” that proved effective, much like the alchemists of the Renaissance. Today, it is quite clear that the scientific mainstream is atheist, but that tells us little. It would be more accurate to say that the mainstream is materialist.
The nineteenth century was the century in which materialism became consolidated within science. It was the century of Darwin’s triumph – Darwin being the first (and perhaps only) great scientist in history that was unequivocally atheist. Before Darwin, the prevailing worldview was the medieval one of God as the “watchmaker,” or of nature as a book written by God in the language of mathematics (to use Galileo’s metaphor). Alternative worldviews began to emerge during the Renaissance. By the Enlightenment, this movement had taken the forms of deism and materialism – concepts that are not mutually exclusive. Deism is the idea that God exists but is indifferent to humanity. This is a very vague notion, as it encompasses the possibilities that: (1) God is a distant architect (as for Voltaire, a “creationist” and admirer of Newton); (2) God is matter itself, or the universe itself (pantheism); or (3) gods exist but are made of atoms, just like the rest of nature – a view found in De Rerum Natura that results in practical atheism. Since this conception of God is psychologically difficult to sustain, it is hardly surprising that, by the nineteenth century, the public face of materialism had become that of atheism.
Even so, as I have shown here on SCF, only one of the “Four Horsemen” of New Atheism (Richard Dawkins) is unequivocally an atheist. The other three (Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens) are adherents of either a psychedelic New Age philosophy, Judaism, or both. Sagan was another atheist with this ambiguous profile.
I believe, then, that it is useful to distinguish between these two opposing scientific worldviews: one, which gave rise to science, is that of the transcendent God who acts as the cosmos’s engineer; then there is the materialist view, according to which everything that exists is matter moving randomly, generating at times chaos and at others order. Within this latter framework, one can be an unequivocal atheist – like Dawkins today or Baron d’Holbach in the 18th century – or a New Age type like Sam Harris. Matter itself can also be divinized by crystal-obsessed wine moms and potheads. An ambiguous figure is none other than Epstein; this patron was a Jew religious enough to want to create a GMO kosher pig so he could eat bacon, yet he simultaneously funded Sam Harris’s atheist club. As I have shown here, Epstein was such a committed materialist that he sought to identify the specific part of the brain corresponding to the soul.
One final intrinsic trait of Christianity worth mentioning is its exotericism – that is, its public, non-initiate nature. This characteristic is reflected in universities and libraries: the entire repository of knowledge is open to anyone wishing to study. In the case of materialism, England has maintained a solid tradition of private and secretive scientific societies, often with commercial aims, dating back to the 18th-century Lunar Society. This aligns with the esotericism of the Renaissance. Furthermore, in the 21st century, the Epstein files brought to light discreet societies of materialists, such as the one involving Sam Harris that was funded by the pedophile.
Given that the pedophile also funded university research, it is plausible that this materialism – bordering on both pantheism and atheism – constitutes a hidden “theology”: one that is always presupposed in contemporary science yet never made explicit to the uninitiated.
Britain’s biggest employers set bold diversity targets – but has anyone checked the maths? Actuary Peter Crowley runs the numbers and finds the arithmetic rather less accommodating than the slogans.
The post Diversity Targets: Has Anyone Done the Maths? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
A ciência nasceu do Deus engenheiro cristão. Hoje, o materialismo ateu domina as universidades, mas mantém sociedades secretas e ambíguas.
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Possivelmente, há mais de uma resposta correta à pergunta de por que a ciência surgiu na cristandade ocidental, em vez de ter aparecido primeiro numa das muitas sociedades orientais com tecnologia formidável, ou no seio do paganismo greco-romano.
O epistemólogo beneditino Stanley Jaki tem uma resposta detalhista e intrínseca ao próprio cristianismo: segundo lemos em Christ and Science, o diferencial é os cristãos não serem propensos a cair no panteísmo. Entre os pagãos greco-romanos, o cosmos era chamado de “unigênito”, título assumido depois por Jesus no cristianismo, e somente no cristianismo. No mundo de Aristóteles, o pagão predileto da cristandade ocidental, os corpos se movem por vontade própria (o fogo quer subir, a terra quer afundar etc.), e o Primeiro Motor é parte da natureza, em vez de transcendê-la. No judaísmo e no islamismo, as figuras de Spinoza (amado no s. XX por Einstein e Sagan, e no XXI por Sam Harris) e de Averróis (com seu intelecto universal) mostram que é fácil confundir Deus com a própria natureza. É na cristandade medieval que o mundo passa a ser concebido à maneira de um grande relógio com as peças inanimadas ajustadas por um Criador inteligente, cujas leis devemos descobrir. Esse estilo de pensar o universo, que hoje associamos a Newton, é medieval. E essa cosmovisão, específica da cristandade, é o que possibilitou a invenção da ciência.
Aqui nesta SCF, cheguei a aventar uma resposta mais modesta, de natureza cultural. Escrevi que Ocidente é racionalista desde antes de ser cristão; e isso favorece não só o surgimento da ciência, como a disposição para mantê-la em caso de conflito com a fé. Os sunitas, que são a maioria dos muçulmanos, viram uma espécie de literalismo corânico acabar com o espetacular florescimento das ciências na Idade Média. Já os judeus, que se entregavam à exegese de textos religiosos, só se tornaram cientistas com a emancipação e a laicização. Essa característica cultural ajuda a explicar por que a Ciência surgiu na cristandade ocidental, em vez da oriental, já que tanto a Igreja Romana quanto a Grega compartilham a crença no unigênito Jesus. Isso também ajuda a explicar por que, quando a Reforma protestante aconteceu, a Europa protestante não se apegou ao literalismo bíblico, nem às invectivas de Lutero contra a razão, e produziu ciência em diálogo com a Europa católica. Isso acabou deslocando a Verdade da religião (que cada uma tinha a sua) para a ciência (a ser aceita por todos), criando terreno para essa invenção recente ocidental chamada cientificismo.
Agora, uma ideia intrínseca ao cristianismo que eu queria apontar é a absoluta intolerância ao relativismo no conhecimento. No mundo pagão, filosofia e religião eram assuntos desconectados. Platão refletia sobre o bom, o belo e o justo sem investigar o Olimpo. Cícero, enquanto filósofo, escrevia contra os adivinhos públicos da religião romana; mas, enquanto político, não esboçava nenhuma intenção de alterar as práticas da religião de Estado, nem de inventar o laicismo. Nem mesmo Aristóteles, que escrevia sobre todas as disciplinas concebíveis, escrevia sobre Zeus, Hera ou Atena. Ele até criou uma “teologia”, mas não se referia aos deuses e sim ao Primeiro Motor. Zeus, Hera e Atena não eram objeto de uma disciplina.
Foi na Idade Média que a Igreja Católica inventou a universidade com a intenção de estudar o universum, isto é, tudo: metafísica, física, política, teologia… O conhecimento estava ordenado de modo coeso, presumindo uma realidade objetiva. Assim, a física não podia ensinar uma coisa que estivesse em contradição com a teologia, e vice-versa. (Embora o problema de Galilei se deva ao aristotelismo abraçado pela Igreja via Tomás de Aquino, e não a uma leitura literal da Bíblia.) Essa coesão pode parecer óbvia, mas nos dias de hoje a disciplina “física” diz que o vidro é líquido, enquanto a disciplina “química” diz que o vidro é sólido. E esse nem é o maior dos problemas: quem se atreveria a pedir uma definição unívoca de “homem” ou “humano” a uma universidade? Na prática, o relativismo impera na universidade mesmo antes de os pós-modernos tomarem conta de tudo.
Essa fragmentação do conhecimento teve origem no modelo de ciência surgido na Renascença. Fora das universidades, os humanistas buscavam os textos antigos que os católicos medievais haviam descartado, como o De rerum natura, do materialista e epicurista Lucrécio. Como naquela época a antiguidade conferia autoridade, o ocultismo formado pela fusão entre o hermetismo e a cabala gozou de especial credibilidade entre os letrados de modo geral. O hermetismo vem de Hermes Trismegistos, que os renascentistas acreditavam ser o professor de Moisés, Platão e Pitágoras – mas na verdade era uma ficção um pouco mais nova que Cristo. Um vestígio etimológico da importância do hermetismo para a ciência é o adjetivo “hermético”, usado pelos alquimistas com seus potes muito bem fechados. Quanto à cabala, ela vem da religião que precedeu o cristianismo e isso basta para ser entendida como muito antiga – mesmo que seu principal texto, o Zohar, seja da Espanha medieval. Conforme argumentei em maior detalhe aqui, o ocultismo da Renascença influenciou a ciência moderna, e é responsável pelo seu viés utilitarista. Se cada disciplina decidir que um determinado conceito “funciona” e houver contradição entre elas, não há problema, pois o que interessa não é o conhecimento, mas sim o caráter prático. É uma ciência inspirada no procedimento do feiticeiro, que fica consultando livros antigos e testando feitiços para descobrir se funcionam.
Digamos então que o status quo do conhecimento nas universidades é um relativismo prático decorrente da falta de uma visão unitária por parte da instituição. No âmbito individual, porém, é humanamente impossível fazer ciência sem uma cosmovisão coerente – nem que seja uma elaborada a posteriori com base nos “feitiços” que funcionaram, à maneira dos alquimistas na Renascença. Hoje, está muito claro que o mainstream científico é ateu, mas isso é pouco informativo. Seria mais preciso dizer que o mainstream é materialista.
O século XIX é o século da consolidação do materialismo na ciência. É o século do triunfo de Darwin, o primeiro (e talvez único) grande cientista inequivocamente ateu da História. Antes de Darwin, predominava a cosmovisão medieval do Deus relojoeiro, ou da natureza como o livro escrito em linguagem matemática por Deus (para usar a metáfora de Galileu). Na Renascença, vão despontando cosmovisões alternativas. No Iluminismo, essa movimentação ganha as formas do deísmo e do materialismo, que não são mutuamente excludentes. O deísmo é a ideia de que Deus existe, porém não se importa com a humanidade. Essa é uma ideia muito vaga, pois compreende as possibilidades de (1) Deus ser um arquiteto distante (como para Voltaire, um “criacionista” entusiasta de Newton); (2) Deus ser a própria matéria, ou o próprio universo (panteísmo); (3) os deuses existirem e serem feitos de átomo como o resto da natureza – opinião que consta no De rerum natura e resulta num ateísmo prático. Como esta concepção de Deus é psicologicamente difícil de sustentar, não é de admirar que, no século XIX, a feição pública do materialismo já tenha sido a do ateísmo.
Ainda assim, como mostrei aqui na SCF, só um dos “quatro cavaleiros” do neoateísmo (Richard Dawkins) é inequivocamente ateu. Os outros três (Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett e Christopher Hitchens) são adeptos ou de um New Age lisérgico, ou do judaísmo, ou das duas coisas. Sagan era outro ateu com esse perfil ambíguo.
Creio então ser útil discriminar essas duas cosmovisões científicas opostas: uma, originadora da ciência, é a do Deus transcendente engenheiro do cosmos; outra, a do materialismo, segundo o qual tudo o que existe é matéria a movimentar-se de maneira aleatória, gerando ora caos, ora ordem. É possível, dentro desta última, ser um ateu inequívoco como Dawkins hoje ou Barão d’Holbach no XVIII; e é possível também ser um New Age como Sam Harris. A matéria é, também ela, divinizável por parte de peruas dos cristais e maconheiros. E uma figura ambígua é ninguém menos do que Epstein, já que esse mecenas era um judeu religioso o bastante para querer criar um porco kosher GMO a fim de comer bacon, mas ao mesmo tempo financiava o clube de ateus de Sam Harris. Tal como mostrei aqui, Epstein era adepto do materialismo a ponto de querer identificar a parte do cérebro que corresponde à alma.
Um último traço intrínseco do cristianismo que vale mencionar é o seu exoterismo, isto é, o seu caráter público e não iniciático. Essa característica se reflete na universidade e nas bibliotecas: todo o repositório de conhecimento está público para aquele que quiser estudar. No caso do materialismo, desde o XVIII a Inglaterra tem na Lunar Society uma tradição sólida de sociedades científicas privadas e secretas, amiúde com finalidade comercial. Isso também está de acordo com o esoterismo da Renascença. E no século XXI, os Arquivos Epstein trouxeram à tona sociedades discretas de materialistas, tais como a de Sam Harris financiada pelo pedófilo.
Dado que o pedófilo também financiava pesquisas na universidade, é plausível que esse materialismo limítrofe entre o panteísmo e o ateísmo seja uma “teologia” oculta, sempre presumida na ciência atual, porém nunca explicitada para os não iniciados.
When people think about what ChatGPT or other large language models are doing behind the scenes, it’s common to reach for the language of computing. You might assume there is a database, or a logical series of steps being executed, in order to provide a response to your query. Picturing AI responses as akin to […]
The post Mind games: AI behaves more like a brain than a database appeared first on Asia Times.
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In the previous article, I discussed general aspects of the political testament left by the greatest science communicator of the 20th century: Carl Sagan (1934–1996). I showed that his Epicurean worldview leads him to portray life on Earth as the result of an extremely ephemeral convergence of causes, that humanity must artificially sustain to prevent our species from going extinct. This maintenance requires a global pact governed by scientists. Scientists are special beings because they are, supposedly, the only ones who strive to foresee catastrophes. Sagan artificially divides humanity into two groups: Enlightenment atheists who embrace science, and religious obscurantists who reject it. Therefore, for the species to survive, the former must prevail over the latter.
In his political testament, Billions and Billions (1997), the causes he champions are environmentalism and abortion. Today, I aim to show that these two causes are, in fact, one and the same: Neo-Malthusianism.
It is easy to prove that Carl Sagan was a Neo-Malthusian. Here is what he says in the chapter “The Persian Chessboard”: “Exponentials are also the central idea behind the world population crisis. […] As the English clergyman Thomas Malthus pointed out in 1798, a population increasing exponentially— Malthus described it as a geometrical progression— will outstrip any conceivable increase in food supply. No Green Revolution, no hydroponics, no making the deserts bloom can beat an exponential population growth. There is also no extraterrestrial solution to this problem. […] Even if it were possible to ship everybody on Earth off to planets of distant stars on ships that travel faster than light, almost nothing would be changed— all the habitable planets in the Milky Way galaxy would be full up in a millennium or so.”
There is no caveat regarding the error of Malthus’s prophecy, nor any consideration of the inhumanity of his recommendations. Malthus is portrayed as a scientific hero. And, with surprising dogmatism, Sagan dismisses—without argument—the idea that technological improvements could solve the food problem. Mind you: Sagan takes it for granted that, even on different planets, humans would continue to procreate exponentially, when fertility rates historically differ even between rural areas and the urban middle class! And a thousand years is far too short a timeframe for humanity, with all its astronomical development, to solve a problem!
Instead of openly proposing that the poor be denied charity, like old Malthus, Sagan proposes birth control and technological apartheid. Instead of helping the poor, then, we must prevent them from being born and deprive them of technology—except for birth control technology, which, it seems, is entirely immune to causing unforeseen environmental damage. Moreover, while old Malthus had England’s poor in mind, Sagan broadens his scope to include the world’s poor nations—nations that keep growing and adopting technology, something supposedly responsible for significant environmental damage.
Were he to state these things explicitly, he would clearly appear as a villain. Thus, in the same chapter, the issue of birth control is wrapped in the language of humanitarianism and feminism: “There is a well-documented worldwide correlation between poverty and high birthrates. In little countries and big countries […] in almost all these cases, exponential population growth slows down or stops when grirfcling poverty disappears. This is called the demographic transition. It is in the urgent long-term interest of the human species that every place on Earth achieves this demographic transition. […] One of the central issues in the world population crisis is poverty.”
Correlation does not imply causation, yet Sagan argues as if it did. People are not poor because they have children; rather, they have children because the cost of raising them is low and is offset by the utility of their labor: in an underdeveloped setting, all farmers need to provide their children is food—which the land itself yields—and within a few years, the child begins to assist the family with work. A sterile couple would not become wealthy simply by virtue of having no children; they would merely save on food that might well otherwise rot, while failing to multiply their workforce. If matters stood as Sagan claims, sterility would be a blessing in agrarian societies, yet reality demonstrates the opposite.
He continues: “The exceptions to the demographic transition are interesting. Some nations [which he does not name] with high per capita incomes still have high birthrates. But in them, contraceptives are sparsely available, and/or women lack any effective political power. It is not hard to understand the connection.” At no point in the book does he explain what criteria must be met to say that women possess real political power within a society. This is regrettable, given his assertion that women held such power during the Pleistocene (!!) but do not today. Thus, since Sagan cites no sources for this information, one can only conclude that he is fabricating a series of pretexts to advocate for contraception, tailored to whatever reality the reader faces: if women enjoy favorable material conditions yet continue to bear children, we cannot simply leave them be; this is framed as a symptom of a lack of political power—a power women supposedly possessed in prehistory while dancing in circles on full-moon nights under the influence of hallucinogens.
In “The Environment: Where Does Prudence Lie?”, after discussing the unexpected consequences of CFCs, he laments: “The inhibitions placed on the irresponsible use of technology are weak, often half-hearted, and almost always, worldwide, subordinated to short-term national or corporate interest. We are now able, intentionally or inadvertently, to alter the global environment. […] Maybe the products of science are simply too powerful, too dangerous for us. Maybe we’re not grown-up enough to be given them. Would it be wise to give a handgun as a present to an infant in the crib?” After comparing the weapon to science, he adds “one further complication: Imagine that when you pull the trigger on a handgun, it takes decades before either the victim or the assailant recognizes that someone’s been hit.”
The implication throughout is that CFC-based refrigeration, including for food, should not have been made available to the world’s population, even though it greatly improves human quality of life. It is an essentially peaceful technology. Yet, shortly thereafter, he once again advocates for birth control, as if millions of pills containing artificial hormones were, with absolute certainty,incapable of causing environmental harm in the long run. What Sagan tacitly proposes has a name: technological apartheid.
Observe how he concerns himself not only with the population growth of the Third World but also with its access to technology, in the chapter “Escape from Ambush”: “The biggest CO2 emitter on the planet is the United States. The next biggest CO2 emitter is Russia and the other republics of the former Soviet Union. The third biggest, if we combine them, is all the developing countries together. That’s a very important fact: This isn’t just a problem for the highly technological nations— through slash-and-burn agriculture, burning firewood, and so on, developing countries are also making a major contribution to global warming. And the developing countries have the world’s largest population growth rate. Even if they don’t succeed in achieving something like the standard of living of […] the West, these nations will constitute a steadily increasing part of the problem.”
The Third World is in the wrong if it doesn’t use much technology, and it is in the wrong if it grows food. A single country, the USA, leads the problem that needs to be tackled, yet it is the Third World, taken as a whole, that must be controlled through a reduction in birth rates. Why not curb consumerism in the United States instead of forcing the Chinese and Indians to have fewer children? Sagan offers no answer, nor does he ever address the issue of consumerism—a topic any serious environmentalist ought to tackle.
The path Sagan proposes to avert CO2-induced global warming is to gradually abandon fossil fuels and… live off solar panels and wind power, because Chernobyl supposedly “proved” that nuclear energy is unsafe, and because its technology could be converted for weapons production. It is as if the manufacture of solar panels caused no environmental damage, and as if those panels lasted forever without ever becoming waste. The impact of wind farms on bird populations is not considered either. It is as if the sun and wind generated energy with no environmental cost to the humans seeking to harness it. By 1996, Sagan was already an electric car enthusiast; he predicted they should be the preferred choice—not for their engine power or top speed (which he assumed were lower than those of gasoline cars), but to save the human species.
So, humanity must generate less energy and, especially in the Third World, reproduce less, magically becoming wealthier in the process; yet, it must not have access to technology—save for solar panels, windmills, and contraceptives, which supposedly cause no harm to the environment. Is it too bold to assume that the campaign to abandon reliable energy in favor of intermittent sources like solar and wind stems precisely from the fact that they are intermittent—thereby compromising access to technology and increasing mortality? All to save the human species.
This subject naturally leads to the most drastic method of birth control: abortion. In the United States, the issue has been framed since Roe v. Wade (1973) in terms of “pro-choice” and “pro-life,” with positions falling along a spectrum: the pro-choice extreme advocated for elective abortion up until the moments before birth, while the pro-life extreme advocated for the criminalization of abortion in all cases. With Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court compelled U.S. states to legalize abortion prior to “fetal viability”—that is, before the fetus is capable of surviving outside the mother’s body.
In the piece “Abortion: Is It Possible to Be Both ‘Pro-Life’ and ‘Pro-Choice’?”, first published in 1990, Sagan offered a “scientific” defense of Roe v. Wade. According to Gallup, 1996 was precisely the year when the extreme pro-choice position declined. Sagan begins his argument by stating that “a newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth.” However, throughout the text, he promotes the literal dehumanization of embryos and fetuses, as for him, what matters is whether the being differs from an irrational animal. To Sagan, the fact that lungs are ready or a heart is beating does not justify banning abortion, because we kill animals with these characteristics without it constituting murder. Thus, the point at which a baby is considered human is precisely when it acquires the specific human characteristic: thought. He believes thought likely emerges during the third trimester of pregnancy, implying that Roe v. Wade is sound.
Even so, the fact remains that, at least in practice, the ruling permitted abortion right up to the moment of birth; indeed, this remains the case in Alaska to this day, even after the ruling was overturned. Regarding this, Sagan states—without citing sources—that “as a practical matter, this isn’t very important: Less than 1 percent of all tabulated abortions in the United States are listed in the last three months of pregnancy (and, on closer investigation, most such reports turn out to be due to miscarriage or miscalculation).” Was this reversal of the extremist trend in the interest of the abortion-rights agenda, serving to forestall a backlash?
Yet, in the very same paragraph where he offers this reassuring statement for the average U.S. reader, he also asserts that “perhaps there is thought in the womb. It’s hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth.” Perhaps there isn’t thought in the womb — and perhaps newborn babies do not think, nor are full persons. That is essentially Peter Singer’s line of reasoning in defense of infanticide. Sagan defends the prevailing U.S. position with a very poor argument, one that leaves the door open to the institutionalization of infanticide should scientists present “proof” that babies do not think, or that they think less than an adult dog.
Let us consider the dehumanization involved. Through comic-book-style illustrations of pregnancy stages, we read that at three weeks the human embryo “looks a little like a segmented worm”; at the fifth week, “the face, seen here in profile, has a distinctly reptilian aspect”; at the seventh, “the face is mammalian but somewhat piglike”; at the eighth, “the face resembles that of a primate but is still not quite human.” Could all this really be the sincere opinion of a serious scientist?
Well, much of Sagan’s sophistry stems from confusing “human” as a noun with “human” as an adjective. Human cells are human, but they are not human individuals—human persons. HeLa cells (named for Henrietta Lacks, not Helen Lane as stated in the book) are human cells, but they are not a person. The adjective “human” applies even to feces.
The question should not be whether a human embryo is human, but whether a human embryo is a person. If an embryo is a living being, how can one deny that a person’s life begins at its formation—that is, at conception?
Sagan knew this. In his final text, written on the verge of death, he lamented not being able to “meet unconceived grandchildren.” His grandchildren would never be worms, reptiles, or piglike.
For decades, one of the best-known stories in science was told like a movie. In 1953, at the age of 23, James Watson visited Maurice Wilkins’s laboratory at King’s College London. There, Wilkins showed him a photograph of DNA taken by Rosalind Franklin, and Watson had an epiphany. “The instant I saw the picture my mouth fell open and my pulse began to race,” Watson wrote in The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA, the book in which he recounted, 15 years later, how he and Francis Crick unraveled the structure of DNA.
© Photo 12 (Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Climate alarmism propaganda about the collapse of the Gulf Stream has made it into the Telegraph thanks to the new owners recycling the work of Politico's Zia Weise. Is this a sign of things to come, asks Ben Pile.
The post Climate Alarmist Propaganda Comes to the Telegraph appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
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