A rchive Date
[ 11-01-2005 ]
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[ Philosophy ]
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[ Ethics ]
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[Killing the newborn can't be justified
By Rory Leishman
September 1, 2000
Phillip E. Johnson is a marvel among contemporary academics: He has a clear understanding of the difference between right and wrong.
That's truly amazing, given Johnson's background. He is a graduate of Harvard University; earned a doctoral degree from the University of Chicago Law School; served as a law clerk for former Chief Justice Earl Warren of the United States Supreme Court; and for the past 30 years, has taught law at the University of California at Berkeley.
Among distinguished academics within the leading universities of both the U.S. and Canada, moral confusion abounds. While most professors still uphold the basic principles of morality, few can give any compelling reason to do so. They are living off the dwindling moral capital bequeathed by previous generations of scholars.
Johnson addresses this issue in his latest book, The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism. To illustrate the extent of the moral decay on campus, he cites the uproar over infanticide sparked by Stephen Pinker, an internationally renowned professor of evolutionary psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In an article published by the New York Times on Nov. 2, 1997, Pinker commented on the causes of neonaticide, the killing of a baby on the day of its birth. The issue was a matter of intense public interest at the time because of a notorious crime committed by an 18-year-old New Jersey mother who delivered her baby in a washroom stall, while attending her high school prom, left the infant to die in a trash can; and returned to the dance floor.
Pinker observed that neonaticide cannot be explained by mental illness because such behaviour, "has been practised and accepted in most cultures throughout history." In fact, he argued, mothers have acquired a genetic capacity for neonaticide as a result of evolutionary history.
According to Pinker, mothers in primitive societies often have to choose between nurturing another child and keeping their existing children alive. "If a newborn is sickly or if its survival is not promising," wrote Pinker, "they may cut their losses and favour the healthiest in the litter."
While New Jersey mothers are not living in a primitive society, that is irrelevant. Pinker holds that any mother who gives birth alone or under dangerous circumstances is susceptible to the genetic urge to commit neonaticide.
Well, that explains everything, right? Her genes made the New Jersey mother do it. Yet Pinker insisted in his article that, "killing a baby is an immoral act" and that, "to understand is not necessarily to forgive."
Why is that? If the mother had no choice but to obey her genetic disposition to kill her baby, how can she be held morally responsible for her actions?
In his best-selling book, How the Mind Works, Pinker offered an explanation: "Ethical theory requires idealizations like free, sentient, rational, equivalent agents whose behaviour is uncaused, and its conclusions can be sound and useful even though the world, as seen by science, does not really have uncaused events."
Readers who can make sense out of that tangle of contradictions might well qualify for a position in the psychology department at MIT.
What about the right to life of a human baby? Pinker scoffs: "If you believe the right to life inheres in being sentient, you must conclude that a hamburger-eater is a party to murder. If you believe it inheres in being a member of Homo sapiens, you are just a species bigot."
From such twaddle, Johnson deduces that Pinker's assertion that neonaticide is immoral, although genetically determined, is merely a pro forma disclaimer to mollify us rubes who think infanticide is abominable.
In Pinker's view, says Johnson, "what is really immoral is the 'species bigotry' that holds there is a moral difference between killing a baby and killing an unwanted kitten."
Unlike Pinker, Johnson clearly understands infanticide is wrong. He subscribes to the self-evident truth proclaimed by Thomas Jefferson in the United States Declaration of Independence that all human beings have been endowed by their creator with an inalienable right to life.
Students heading off to university would do well to take along a Bible and a copy of Johnson's The Wedge of Truth. With these books, anyone will be well-equipped to refute the irrational and immoral nonsense spouted by the Pinkers of academia.
Write Rory at The London Free Press, P.O. Box 2280, London, Ont. N6A 4G1 or fax 519-667-4528 or E-mail. Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@lfpress.com. ]
Cross-Indexed:
 How To Rethink The Analytic – Continental Dicothomy
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