Pastor, Kevin DeYoung writes: “at present, one of the worst heresies is to be in the same zip code with someone who takes a firm stance on homosexuality” (see here). Heresy, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek claims, is no longer deviation from dogma or even reason, but deviation from the crowd. If holy text and universal truth go the way of the dodo, then the crowd is all that we have left. And, although no one is quite ready to burn the heretic (in this country, at least), there are many ready to silence him. But I am not yet faced with a death threat. And I am weak, fallible and prone to capitulation.…
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The Coming Consistency
Inconsistency is good. What? Surely I should be stripped of my qualifications, marched down to logic 101 and given a thorough going over! Not so fast. First, one has to ask: consistent with what? For there are two articles I have read this week that demonstrate consistency of the kind I do not want. First, Mary Elizabeth Williams writes on the anniversary of Roe v Wade (see here for the full article): “I know that throughout my own pregnancies, I never wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life inside of me. I believe that’s what a fetus is: a human life. And that…
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A Religious Tone
A Roman Catholic mental health worker is suing the British National Health Service for unfair dismissal. Apparently Margaret Forrester handed a colleague a booklet highlighting the trauma experienced by women who had had abortions. She was summoned to a meeting, challenged about her views and moved to another role. (read the full story here). I was struck by the following comment:“She was told during the disciplinary proceedings that part of the problem with the booklet was that it was “religious in tone”, according to Mrs Forrester’s legal papers.” I wonder just what tone should the booklet have taken? Is there really any way to engage in this debate without it being from a…
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A Great Evil
A recent article in The Journal of Medical Ethics argues the following: “What we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled” You can read the article here or a summary here. A baby, like a fetus, does not yet possess the properties necessary to be regarded as a person, our authors argue; Infanticide is no different from abortion (On this latter point I concur) In 1980 Mary Anne Warren wrote: “Some human beings are not people, and there may well be people who are not human beings.” Warren suggested that fetuses should not be…