I am not an academic and I have nothing to say that is original in any way - but there is currently raging a huge culture war in the US between the "
culture of life" and "
others".
The "culture of life" people refer to my position as "culture of death" -I consider it the "culture of reason" and I see my position represented NOWHERE in our media or the debate.
So even though I have nothing original to say, since no one is standing up for the culture of reason I wish to do so.
1) LIFE.
Life and death is our biggest trauma - how do we explain life, what is it ?
People such as myself now believe that it is a natural biological process but this is recent knowledge.
There is an obvious difference between a person one minute before and one minute after their death and in order to explain it our religions adopted the concept of the "soul" - something not of this world and spiritual - and it was the presence of the "soul" that was the basis of life.
This doctrine had some problems which have had to be dealt with - as both rabbits and carrots are also undoubtedly alive they must also have "souls", so this must be explained away in some way that allows them to have lesser souls than ours - perhaps not as worthy of respect and perhaps not "immortal" - indeed these non-material souls somehow vanish into non-existence at the moment of death, unlike ours.
It is only human life that is valued by the culture of life.
2) MORALITY
What we are discssing, of course, is what the basis of our morality is.
There is general, cross cultural and religious agreement upon what is moral in our daily lives.
Whether Catholic or atheist, Buddhist or Muslim we all know that stealing or harming or killing our fellow humans is wrong.
It is when we reach the outliers of moral dilemmas - such as abortion or euthanasia - that our differences become acute.
I would argue that our sense of morality is based upon our natural sense of empathy. We realize that we are dealing with another human being who has feelings much like ours, is aware of us as a person and how we treat each other, and morality is treating them the way that we would wish to be treated if we were in their situation.
I would further argue that this requires us to imagine being in their situation - in other words we are conscious of them and we are aware that they also are conscious.
In other words - it is the realization that we are dealing with other conscious beings and can empathize with them that is the basis of morality.
(This is the sense which is lacking in sociopaths)
Various formulations of the Golden Rule (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you) are attempts to formulate this.
This is where the culture of life and the culture of reason diverge.
If my morality is based upon a respect for other conscious beings, I am not morally troubled by putting a blastocyst out of its misery or allowing a body with no consciousness or hope of regaining one to expire.
On the other hand if I believe that all "souls" are equal then I might feel that both are "murder".
This formulation of morality presents dilemmas for both cultures.
For the culture of life it is difficult to justify allowing a 14-year-old rape victim to obtain an abortion if it is truly "murder".
For the culture of reason - who have largely adopted the religious "only human souls" formulation and shied away from recognizing consciousness in our fellow animals - is it truly moral to torture a calf for six months so that we might enjoy veal parmagana ?
We really need to discuss more honestly the philosophical underpinnings of the culture of life and the validity of the "soul" as a reasonable basis for our morality and our laws - and we are refusing to do so.