How Do You Define Murder?
Today President Bush exercised his veto stamp for the first time since he took office to reject a bill which would allow federal funding for stem cell research.
President Bush believes as many other Christians and most Catholics that life begins at conception. Tony Snow took the rhetoric up a notch during a press conference yesterday when, while refering to President Bush's position, he said “The simple answer is he thinks murder is wrong.�
Many pro-lifers, I am sure were thankful that he phrased it this way. I am too, but I just couldn’t help but take the comment out of context and apply it elsewhere. It was then that so many questions came to mind.
Is it murder to execute prisoners even after we have removed them from society?
Is it murder to bomb civilian neighborhoods if we refer to the civilian casualties as “collateral damage�?
Is it murder to lay siege to a city or a country through the use of sanctions knowing that the lack of medicine and food will result in the death of thousands of children?
Is it murder to bomb water treatment plants cutting off the supply of fresh water and sanitation to civilian populations?
Is it murder to refuse to intervene in genocide?
Is it murder to allow manufacturing and power plants to pollute the air and shorten the lifespan of children who live in the shadows of the stacks?
Is it murder to send troops into a preemptive war?
I guess it all depends upon how you define murder.
Cross posted at Pax Christi Summit
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Comments
NYGaribaldi - It is when we begin to assign differing values
to life that it becomes problematic. It is this same inconsistent life ethic that is used to justify capital punishment and war, including the preemptive war in Iraq and the disproportionate response in Lebanon. Either all life is precious or it is not. Just as, I think we agree, the abortion abolitionist should not choose to protect only innocent life we too should examine whether we can choose to protect only those who fit our definition of "human beings".
YOu can't reason away someone's faith.
If a person believes that life begins at conception, it does not matter to them if the embryo is implanted or not. Your argument has the same effect as if an atheist were to give you all the scientific reasons for why God does not exist. Reason can be used to discuss how people apply their faith to real world circumstances and the contradictions between their beliefs and their actions. You can't use reason to explain away faith.
reason is required for public discourse
Kathy,
I agree that you can't reason away someone's faith. Faith requires us to go beyond reason, to accept that which can not be reasoned. I do believe though that when you bring your faith-inspired policy positions into the public discourse that there must be rationale provided that anyone, regardless of their faith or lack of faith, can understand and debate.
The Truth
Kathy, adding to Sthepen's observations, what you see as "the truth" differs from person to person, and in our case, from Catholic to Catholic. I'm just pointing out that a subjective vision of the truth should not control the majority--as is the case with many embryonic stem cell opponents. In fact, because of the argument I've laid out--including my sources of authority--even within the Church what passes as truth in the greyer areas can change.
Having faith does not mean to stop thinking independently. If anyting, it means that we should delve deeper into what our respective faiths require of us. For me that is what separates progressively religious people from the more authoritarian-minded. After all, by speaking to us in parable, didn't Jesus challenge us to to think more and blindly obey less?
And still I hold to my presumption that a Jewish Jesus and an Opus Dei Cardinal could very well disagree on the issue embryonic stem cell research. Many of the Abrhamic faiths believe it is a sin not to do this research; a postition with which I agree.
What is with the quotes?
I never said anything about the truth, objective or subjective. I was talking about faith, belief and reason. I agree in order to be in the public arena we must use reason not necessarily to defend or explain our faith but to apply it to find just solutions for society's problems. I argue that this requires that we apply our faith consistently to all life issues. This is where President Bush's policies fail miserably. If you take his position on stem cell research alone it is fraught with contradictions. If it is "murder" to perform research on embryos, then it should also be "murder" to destroy them simply because the parents no longer want or need them. If an embryo is actually a human life and the process of invitro fertilization necessarily creates excess embryos that creates a moral and ethical problem with the process. So if you are in the public arena and are against stem cell research because it is destroying human life, you should also be against destroying embryos and invitro fertilization itself. The hypocrisy combined with the political convenience of pandering to "pro-life" causes makes the President's policy and his statements appear completely disingenuous.
If you want to see that argument in greater
detail you can refer to this post at my website http://paxsummit.blogspot.com/2006/07/can-you-follow-logic.html
You may have a point
As Robert Anton Wilson said once: "The Believer believes THEN the Prover proves."
Kathy O, I'm Not So Sure
You say, "You can't use reason to explain away faith." Yet isn't that what St. Tomas Aquinas was doing in Summa Teologica as well as Maimonides in Mishnah Torah or Guide For the Preplexed? My position about an embryo not being the equivilent a human being has support in both Aquinas and Maimonides.
Perhaps you are correct that I cannot change someone's belief, but I can (as I believe I did) demonstrate that there is a good faith dissagreement as well as good religious authority for my postision as well--something many opponents of embryonic stem cell research are not even aware of.
By the way, some sort of life is present at conception. I just do not believe that all "human life" is the equivilent of a human being capable of existing outside of the womb. And this is found in Torah, the book Jesus lived by. This in turn raises a presumption that Jesus would accept this research--or at least ambiguity about the theological soundess of the research opponents' position.
Kathy, St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Teologica & an embryo
Kathy O & NY Garibaldi,
Thank you both for your insightful & thought provoking posts. I am struck by your observations.
As a Catholic myself, some of what you both write resonates with me...
I am consistantly frustrated that the conversation of "life", present in the mainstream deals so narrowly with the topic of abortion and now the embryo involved in stem cell research.
If we are truly pro-life, then shouldn't we be in support of the life of the born human being-- post conception?
Something which, as you point out Kathy, is strikingly absent in most of this administrations policies...
Personhood
It seems to me that the question isn't "Is it human?". It obviously is (if not, then what is it?). THe question is:"Is it a human person?". That's a question that can't be decided by science, but by religion/philosophy. It requires us to ask: "What is necessary to make something human a person?"
question
Is it murder to discard the unused embyos at an invitro fertilization clinic?
Could be.
If destroying embryos for research is murder, then it would follow that destroying them for no reason at all is too. Did you happen to catch Meet the Press this morning? Tim Russert was suggesting just that as he pointed out the extreme hypocrisy of the position of the Bush administration.
What hESC Opponents Conveniently Leave Out
An embryo is no more a human being than an acorn is a full grown oak tree--perhaps even less so.
You see, many embryos outside the the mother are usually far from being individualized. A single embryo often splits into multiple embryos or can merge with another embryo to become a single embryo. The defining event of individuality is attachment to the uterine wall.
More importantly, a significant part of the embryo will never evolve into a human being. The outer wall becomes the placenta, something that no religion I know of equates with human personhood.
NYGaribaldi making stuff happen on the Kos
Frank has become the prominent poster between the daily kos, crossleft and talk2action.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/7/20/212244/778
I Got A Definition
When a president vetoes legislation that might enable cures and treatments for the dying and disabled.
That's murder.