The Church Opposes Science: The Myth of Catholic Irrationality - by Christopher Kaczor

In CERC 

 

"Christopher Kaczor is one of our finest young Catholic philosophers. In The Seven Big Myths about the Catholic Church, he shows that he is also one of our finest defenders of the Catholic faith. Essential reading for the new evangelization." - Most Reverend Jose H. Gomez, Archbishop of Los Angeles

Many people believe that faith and reason, or religion and science, are locked in an irreconcilable war of attrition against one another. One must choose to be a person of learning, science, and reason, or choose to embrace religion, dogma, and faith alone. On this view, the Church opposes science, and if one embraces science, then one ought to reject the Church. 

 

The scientific method looks to evidence to settle questions, so perhaps it would be fair to look at evidence to answer the question whether the Catholic Church is opposed to science and reason. If the Catholic Church were opposed to science, we would expect to find no or very few Catholic scientists, no sponsorship of scientific research by Catholic institutions, and an explicit distrust of reason in general and scientific reasoning in particular taught in official Catholic teaching. In fact, we find none of these things.

Historically, Catholics are numbered among the most important scientists of all time, including René Descartes, who discovered analytic geometry and the laws of refraction; Blaise Pascal, inventor of the adding machine, hydraulic press, and the mathematical theory of probabilities; Augustinian priest Gregor Mendel, who founded modern genetics; Louis Pasteur, founder of microbiology and creator of the first vaccine for rabies and anthrax; and cleric Nicolaus Copernicus, who first developed scientifically the view that the earth rotated around the sun. Jesuit priests in particular have a long history of scientific achievement; they

contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity. They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the colored bands on Jupiter's surface, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn's rings. They theorized about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon affected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light. Star maps of the southern hemisphere, symbolic logic, flood-control measures on the Po and Adige rivers, introducing plus and minus signs into Italian mathematics — all were typical Jesuit achievements, and scientists as influential as Fermat, Huygens, Leibniz and Newton were not alone in counting Jesuits among their most prized correspondents. [1]

The scientist credited with proposing in the 1930s what came to be known as the "Big Bang theory" of the origin of the universe was Georges Lemaître, a Belgian physicist and Roman Catholic priest. Alexander Fleming, the inventor of penicillin, shared his faith. More recently, Catholics constitute a good number of Nobel Laureates in Physics, Medicine, and Physiology, including Erwin Schrödinger, John Eccles, and Alexis Carrel. How can the achievements of so many Catholics in science be reconciled with the idea that the Catholic Church opposes scientific knowledge and progress? 

One might try to explain such distinguished Catholic scientists as rare individuals who dared to rebel against the institutional Church, which opposes science. However, the Catholic Church as an institution funds, sponsors, and supports scientific research in the Pontifical Academy of Science and in the departments of science found in every Catholic university across the world, including those governed by Roman Catholic bishops, such as The Catholic University of America. This financial and institutional support of science by the Church began at the very birth of science in seventeenth-century Europe and continues today. Even Church buildings themselves were not only used for religious purposes but designed in part to foster scientific knowledge. As Thomas Woods notes:

Cathedrals in Bologna, Florence, Paris, and Rome were designed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to function as world-class solar observatories. Nowhere in the world were there more precise instruments for the study of the sun. Each such cathedral contained holes through which sunlight could enter and time lines (or meridian lines) on the floor. It was by observing the path traced out by the sunlight on these lines that researchers could obtain accurate measurements of time and predict equinoxes. [2]

In the words of J. L. Heilbron of the University of California, Berkeley, the "Roman Catholic Church gave more financial aid and social support to the study of astronomy over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and probably, all other institutions." [3] This financial and social support extended also to other branches of scientific inquiry. 

Such support is not only consistent with official Catholic teaching but is enthusiastically endorsed. On the Church's view, science and faith are complementary to each other and mutually beneficial. In 1988, Pope John Paul II addressed a letter to the Director of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory, noting, "Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish." [4] As Nobel Laureate Joseph Murray notes, "Is the Church inimical to science? Growing up as a Catholic and a scientist — I don't see it. One truth is revealed truth, the other is scientific truth. If you really believe that creation is good, there can be no harm in studying science. The more we learn about creation — the way it emerged — it just adds to the glory of God. Personally, I've never seen a conflict." [5] In order to understand the complementarity of faith and science, indeed faith and reason more broadly, it is important to consider their relationship in greater depth.

A sign hung in Albert Einstein's office at Princeton University that read: "Not everything that can be counted counts; not everything that counts can be counted." Faith cannot be quantified and counted, like forces in physics or elements in chemistry, but that does not mean that faith is insignificant. Faith helps us to answer some of the most important questions facing mankind. As important as scientific discoveries can be, such discoveries do not touch on all of the inevitable questions facing us: What should I do? Whom should I love? What can I hope for? To answer questions such as these, science alone is not enough because science alone cannot answer questions that fall outside its empirical method. Rather, we need faith and reason operating together to answer such questions and to build a truly human community.

One reason that people view faith and science as in opposition is that they often view faith and reason more generally as in opposition. Our culture often pits faith against reason, as if the more faith-filled you are, the less reasonable you are. Faith and reason in the minds of so many people are polar opposites, never to be combined, and never to be reconciled. In this way, our culture often offers us false alternatives: live either by faith or by reason. To be religious is to reject reason; to be reasonable is to reject religion. But like other false alternatives, e.g., "Did you stop beating your wife this week, or last week?" such thinking artificially limits our freedom. Rather than choosing between faith and reason, the Church invites us to harmonize our faith and our reason because both are vitally important to human well-being.

Developing a long tradition of Catholic reflection on the compatibility of faith and reason, Pope Benedict XVI seeks to unite what has so often become divided, by championing the full breadth of reason (including but not limited to scientific reasoning) combined with an adult faith. Rather than pitting faith against reason, the pope is calling for a reasonable faith and a faithful reason. From a Catholic perspective, the truths of faith and the truths of reason (including science) cannot in principle ever be opposed, because God is the ultimate Author of the book of Grace (revelation) as well as the book of Nature (philosophy and science). One ought not, therefore, choose between faith on the one hand and reason on the other, but rather one should seek to bring both faith and reason into a more fruitful collaboration.

In a Catholic view, since faith and reason are compatible, science — one particular kind of reasoning — and the Catholic religion are also compatible. Nevertheless, it is a commonly held view that one must choose between science and faith. Why is this? There are several core issues that drive this misunderstanding. First, Genesis claims that God created the world in seven days, but science indicates that the universe, including the earth, developed over billions of years. Secondly, Genesis talks about the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve, being created by God, as well as all the animals being created by God. Science indicates that all life — including human life — evolved over millions of years. Third, Bible stories are rife with miracles, but science has shown that miracles are impossible. Fourth, and most famously, the Catholic Church condemned Galileo. Finally, the Church's opposition to stem cell research is seen as anti-science. Each of these objections is commonly used to justify the claim that the Church opposes science.

First, let's consider the claim that in Genesis God created the world in seven days but science indicates that the universe, including the earth, developed over billions of years. In the Catholic tradition, the creation accounts in Genesis have been interpreted in a wide variety of ways. Both literal and figurative readings of Genesis are theologically acceptable for Catholics. Some theologians, such as Saint Ambrose, understood the Genesis account of creation in a literal way. But for the most part, Catholic theologians, including Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Blessed John Henry Newman, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI, have interpreted Genesis as teaching the truth about creation in a nonliteral, nonscientific way. [6] Pope John Paul II puts the point as follows:

The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of the universe and its make-up, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise, but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe. Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer. [7]

Dr. Scott Hahn has pointed out that we might misunderstand the point of the seven days spoken about in Genesis, if we do not understand that the ancient Hebrew word for seven is the same word used for "making a covenant". So, when it is said that God created the world in seven days, the text is communicating to its original readers that God has created the world in a covenantal relationship with the Divine. [8] Indeed, it was this idea — that the world is an orderly creation from an intelligent God — that led to the beginnings of science. For if the world is not intelligible and orderly, there would be no point in trying to understand its laws of operation, the laws of nature which scientific investigation seeks to discover. 

Secondly, the incompatibility of Genesis and the evolution of species causes some people to think that religious belief is incompatible with science. If the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve, were created by God, as well as all the animals, then all life — including human life — did not evolve over millions of years. If all life evolved over millions of years, then there could not be a first man, Adam, a first woman, Eve, or a creation of animals directly by God. As noted, the Catholic Church does not generally require that individual Scripture verses be interpreted in one sense rather than another. Individual believers and theologians may come to different understandings of a particular passage but remain Catholics in good standing. So, one could believe with Saint Ambrose that Genesis provides a play-by-play account of exactly how God did things over seven 24-hour days. Or, one could believe with Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Blessed John Henry Newman, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI that Genesis is not properly interpreted in this literalistic way. If one interprets Genesis in the ways suggested by the nonliteral view, then there is no contradiction in believing both in Genesis and in evolution as a way for accounting for the physical development of man provided one believes in a first man and first woman, from whom mankind descended and inherited original sin (see Humani Generis, no. 27). [9] Of course, the Catholic Church does not require that Catholics believe in evolution or any other view taught by any given scientist. However, if one believes in evolution, then one can also — as did Pope John Paul II — remain a faithful Catholic. [10] 

A third problem that gives rise to difficulties for some people is that miracles are found in the Bible, but science is incompatible with belief in miracles. By miracle, I mean a supernatural intervention by God into the normal course of events. Is belief in miracles incompatible with science? To answer this question, it is important to distinguish science or the scientific method from what is called philosophical naturalism. The scientific method looks for natural causes to explain things that have happened. Philosophical naturalism, a philosophical theory, not a scientifically justified view, holds that there are only natural causes and no supernatural (divine) causes. Scientists can conduct their scientific investigations with or without a belief in philosophical naturalism. If God the Creator exists, then naturalism is false because a Creator God is a supernatural cause. If there is a Creator with power over the entire universe, then miracles are possible, for God could intervene in his creation. Indeed, science could only prove that miracles cannot happen, if it proved that there is no God. But science has not and cannot prove such a claim, since the realm of science is limited to the empirically verifiable, and God — at least as understood by most believers — is not a material being but a spiritual being.

Fourth, and most famously, many people believe that the Catholic Church is antagonistic to science because of the condemnation of Galileo Galilei. This notorious and complicated conflict — the subject of many scholarly books — is partially based on scientific disputes but also has much to do with the conflicts of personality, politics, and theology of the time. Galileo's view that the earth rotated around the sun was not the central issue. Heliocentrism was held by many people of the time, including Jesuit priests in good standing. More central to the Galileo controversy was whether Galileo broke agreements he had made about in what manner to teach his views. Through his polemical writings, Galileo alienated one-time friends and gave rivals an opportunity to undermine him. His work Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was widely understood to mock the pope, a onetime friend and sponsor. Galileo did not limit himself to scientific claims on the basis of a view at the time lacking conclusive proof, but also insisted on challenging the dominant interpretations of Scripture at the time, which held that the sun rotated around the earth. [11] Thus, both influential theologians as well as scientists turned against Galileo. If Galileo had presented his views with greater modesty about his claims, it is likely that there would have been no condemnation.

Nevertheless, it is true that ecclesial authorities wrongly condemned Galileo's heliocentricism, which was in 1633 not yet scientifically demonstrated. Galileo's view was condemned because of an overly literal interpretation of a certain passage in Scripture. This erroneous condemnation could have been avoided if the theologians involved had remembered the methods of biblical interpretation propounded by Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, who recognized that Scripture often speaks the truth about creation in a nonliteral, nonscientific way. Pope John Paul II wrote:

Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture. [12]

Indeed, even today people still speak, as does Scripture, about "the sun rising", even though strictly speaking it is not the sun that rises but the earth that turns, causing it to appear that the sun rises. 

In any case, Pope John Paul II acknowledged that the ecclesial judicial authorities in the trial of Galileo were wrong. These errors of a disciplinary and judicial nature were not a formal part of Catholic teaching. Then, as now, Church officials can and do make errors — unfortunately sometimes serious errors — in terms of discipline and order within the Church community. Church infallibility only applies to official teachings of faith and morals, not to assigning the best bishop to a particular place, nor to making wise decisions about political matters, nor to determining who can and ought to teach certain topics. The condemnation of Galileo was an erroneous decision in a matter of judicial order in the Christian community, but it does not have to do with official teaching of faith and morals.

One final controversy is the alleged opposition to science seen by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins writes, "He [Pope Benedict] is an enemy of science, obstructing vital stem cell research, on grounds not of morality but of pre-scientific superstition." [13] In other words, the Church opposes science because she opposes embryonic stem cell research that involves destroying human embryos. Stem cell research is viewed as a promising means of fighting disease and promoting human well-being, but the Church, in Dawkins' view, stands in the way of this progress.

It is important to begin responding to Dawkins' accusation with the common ground shared by all people of good will. Indeed, everyone agrees, including Dawkins, that we should not kill innocent people, even if killing them might benefit other people or bring about an advance in scientific knowledge. The Tuskegee experiment in which African-American males were research subjects without their consent and to their detriment is universally condemned. Similarly, the research done by Dr. Josef Mengele on various human patients, or rather victims, in Auschwitz cannot be justified regardless of the scientific progress that was an alleged goal of the experiments. It is a basic principle of ethics that persons should not be harmed without their consent in scientific research in order potentially to benefit other people. 

It is this principle, together with modern science, that has led the Catholic Church to oppose embryo research that kills human embryos. If human embryos have basic human rights as do other human persons, then embryonic research that involves killing human embryos is wrong. It was actually science overcoming "pre-scientific superstition" that brought the Catholic Church to the defense of human life from conception. In ancient times, Aristotle taught that the human person arose only 40 to 90 days after the union of the man and the woman in sexual intercourse. Aristotle thought, and this view was a common one until the nineteenth century, that the menses of the woman was "worked on" by the fluid ejaculated by the man to form a human being, some 40 days after the sexual union in the case of a male and 90 days in the case of a female.

Contemporary biology has shown that this understanding of how human reproduction takes place is radically mistaken. Sperm and egg are the gametes of sexual reproduction, not the menses and the entire ejaculated fluid. There is not a different time period for the formation of male and female children, nor does the seminal fluid continue to work for weeks and weeks to inform the menses. Rather, egg and sperm unite so as to create a new, individual, living, whole human person which passes through various stages — zygotic, fetal, infant, toddler, adolescent, adult — of human development.

Is there any reason to think that the human embryo is alive? To live is to have self-generated activities. The activities of proportionate growth and increase of specialization of cells contributing to the good of the whole organism indicate that the embryo is a living being. Further, it is clear that the embryo can die, but only living things can die, so the embryo must be living.

Is the living embryo also human? Since the embryo arises from a human mother and a human father, what species could it be other than human? Coming as it does from a human mother and a human father, made of human genetic tissues organized as a living being, and progressing along the trajectory of human development, the newly conceived human embryo is biologically and genetically one of us. This new living, growing being is a member of the species homo sapiens, a member of the human family. This human being is genetically new, that is, distinct from both mother and father. The embryo is not a part of the mother (as is obvious when the embryo is in a petri dish and not in utero), but rather is made from part of the mother (her ovum) and part of the father (his sperm). This new person is an individual whose genetic makeup and very existence is not the same as the mother's or father's or anyone else's. There is nothing "pre-scientific" about the Church's view that the human embryo is a human being; indeed, this view is confirmed by the findings of science which overturned the long-accepted prescientific views of Aristotle on reproduction. 

Now, should very young human persons, including human embryos, be protected by law and welcomed in life? This is a moral question, not a scientific question. Science attempts to discover what is the case; ethics attempts to discover what should be the case in terms of human choices. Should the human embryo be protected as are human persons at later stages of development? I have explored this question at great length in a book called The Ethics of Abortion: Women's Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice. Looking at every single pro-choice objection of which I was aware, I found that there is no rational justification for not according every human — including those in the embryonic stage of development — equal basic rights, including the right not to be intentionally killed in the hopes of benefiting other people's health. By contrast, defenders of abortion and lethal embryonic stem cell research hold that it is permissible to kill some human beings in order to benefit others. However, neither view is "scientific". Science qua science cannot settle the question of which human beings should be accorded human rights and welcomed into the human community.

Dawkins is also mistaken that the Church obstructs vital stem cell research. The Church opposes research — stem cell or otherwise — that involves the intentional killing of human embryos. Stem cell research that does not involve killing embryos is not only permitted by the Church but even funded by the Church, which has held at least two international conferences on stem cell research and has also funded research on adult stem cells undertaken at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. This research, using stem cells from adults or umbilical cords, has actually been developed into treatments that have already saved human lives. To date, despite billions of dollars, embryonic stem cell research has not led to one cure or a single effective treatment. The Church does not oppose stem cell research as such, but only opposes any kind of research that involves killing humans.

At this point, we are in a position to come to a prima facie judgment about the question of whether the Church opposes science. On the one hand, we have the many Catholic scientists of distinction, from the beginning of the use of the scientific method until now, who argue that there is no conflict between their faith and their pursuit of science. We have the institutional Church sponsoring scientific endeavors of all kinds, at Catholic universities around the world, in the construction of cathedrals, and at the Vatican itself. We also have the explicit Catholic teaching that faith and reason are not opposed but rather complementary, and that scientific reasoning and faith are mutually enriching. On the other hand, we have the trial and condemnation of Galileo. The Galileo case appears, against the larger background of Catholic teaching and practice, as an unfortunate aberration from the norm. However, both Galileo himself — who remained a faithful Catholic all his life — and those involved in his trial, such as Saint Robert Bellarmine, agreed that there can never be a true conflict between science and faith. Apparent but not real conflicts can arise through a mistaken interpretation of faith (as was made by those who condemned Galileo), a misunderstanding of science (e.g., that science requires denying miracles), or both. It is therefore a myth — albeit a persistent myth — that the Church opposes science.

Notes

1. Jonathan Wright, The Jesuits: Missions, Myths, and Histories (London: HarperCollins, 2004), p. 189; quoted in Thomas Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2005), p. 100.
2. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, p. 112.
3. J. L. Heilbron, Annual Invitation Lecture to the Scientific Instrument Society, Royal Institution, London, December 6, I995; quoted in ibid., p. 113.
4. Letter of His Holiness John Paul II to the Reverend George V Coyne, S.J, Director of the Vatican Observatory, June 1, I988.
5. As quoted by Gabriel Meyer, "Pontifical Science Academy Banks on Stellar Cast", National Catholic Register, December 1-7, 1996, as cited here.
6. On Pope Benedict's view on this topic (at least the views he expressed prior to his election as pope), see Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, In the Beginning... : A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, trans. Boniface Ramsey (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, I995).
7. Pope John Paul II, to the Pontifical Academy of Science, "Cosmology and Fundamental Physics", October 3, 1981.
8. Scott Hahn, A Father Who Keeps His Promises: God's Covenant Love in Scripture (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Charis Books, 1998), pp. 140-44.
9. Pope John Paul II, "Truth Cannot Contradict Truth", Address of Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (October 22, 1996).
10. Ibid.
11. As noted by Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, pp.71-72.
12. Pope John Paul II, "Fidei Depositum", L'Osservatore Romano, no. 44 (1264), November 4, 1992, as cited by Daniel N. Robinson, Gladys M. Sweeney, Richard Gill, Human Nature in Its Wholeness: A Roman Catholic Perspective (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006), p. 169.
13. Richard Dawkins, "Ratzinger Is an Enemy of Humanity", September 22, 2010, (accessed December 8, 2010).

The Importance of Dignity: A Reply to Steven Pinker - by Christopher Kaczor

In The Public Discourse

From its ancient Stoic origins to its modern Kantian formulations, human dignity is an important concept for sound ethical thinking. We must distinguish dignity as attributed, dignity as intrinsic worth, and dignity as flourishing.

Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist, is well known for his 2008 article in the New Republic titled “The Stupidity of Dignity.” The President’s Council on Bioethics, in its Human Dignity and Bioethics, had underscored the importance of dignity in contemporary ethical discussion, and Pinker wanted to reject it wholesale. Pinker criticizes the use of dignity for a variety of reasons and holds that we should replace “dignity” with “autonomy” in bioethics discussions. His arguments still enjoy great purchase in our intellectual culture today, but they are fallacious and inconsistent in a variety of ways. And it is important for us to see how they fail and to understand why dignity matters.

So, what argument does Pinker give against making use of dignity in discussing issues of bioethics? He writes,

First, dignity is relative. One doesn’t have to be a scientific or moral relativist to notice that ascriptions of dignity vary radically with the time, place, and beholder. In olden days, a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking. We chuckle at the photographs of Victorians in starched collars and wool suits hiking in the woods on a sweltering day, or at the Brahmins and patriarchs of countless societies who consider it beneath their dignity to pick up a dish or play with a child.

Pinker fails to realize that autonomy is also relative. Kant, the originator of the contemporary emphasis on autonomy, considered it always contrary to autonomy, the self-given universal law of practical reason, to commit suicide or to have sexual activity of any kind outside of a marriage between one man and one woman. Contemporary advocates of using autonomy as the basis for ethics reject these positions with scorn. Now autonomy is used to attempt to justify physician-assisted suicide as well as freedom of “sexual expression.” So, if dignity cannot be used in bioethics because it has been understood in various ways over the ages, this standard likewise excludes appealing to autonomy in bioethical disputes.

Second, Pinker notes that dignity is fungible:

The [President’s] Council and [the] Vatican treat dignity as a sacred value, never to be compromised. In fact, every one of us voluntarily and repeatedly relinquishes dignity for other goods in life. Getting out of a small car is undignified. Having sex is undignified. Doffing your belt and spread-eagling to allow a security guard to slide a wand up your crotch is undignified.

But Pinker’s premise also renders autonomy problematic, since autonomy too is fungible. Soldiers give up autonomy when they enlist for military service. Employees give up autonomy when they sign contracts agreeing to perform certain services and refrain from doing other activities that constitute a conflict of interest. Police officers, FBI agents, and politicians relinquish autonomy when they swear to enforce the laws of our nation. Lawyers and psychologists give up autonomy in speech in preserving client or patient confidentiality. Do the actions of these people reveal that autonomy is a trivial value, well worth trading off for money, public order, confidentiality, the good of raising children, or health?

Third, Pinker argues that dignity can be harmful. He writes,

In her comments on the Dignity volume, Jean Bethke Elshtain rhetorically asked, “Has anything good ever come from denying or constricting human dignity?” The answer is an emphatic “yes.” Every sashed and be-medaled despot reviewing his troops from a lofty platform seeks to command respect through ostentatious displays of dignity. Political and religious repressions are often rationalized as a defense of the dignity of a state, leader, or creed: Just think of the Salman Rushdie fatwa, the Danish cartoon riots, or the British schoolteacher in Sudan who faced flogging and a lynch mob because her class named a teddy bear Mohammed. Indeed, totalitarianism is often the imposition of a leader’s conception of dignity on a population, such as the identical uniforms in Maoist China or the burqas of the Taliban.

However, it is even more obvious that autonomy can be harmful. Consider the case of Desmond Hatchett who, before the age of thirty, exercised his sexual autonomy by fathering twenty-one children with eleven different women. Exercising her reproductive autonomy in similarly irresponsible fashion, Nadya Suleman, unemployed and unmarried, used in vitro fertilization to add eight more babies to join her other six young children at home. Drug abusers exercise their autonomy in harming themselves physically and mentally, often to the point where they become a drain on society. Politicians regularly exercise their autonomy in such a way as to cause unreasonable taxes, unfair laws, and unjust wars for their own political gain. Indeed, misuse of autonomy causes more harm, arguably much more harm, than misuse of dignity.

A fourth and unoriginal argument from Pinker for abandoning dignity echoes Ruth Macklin, who highlights the ambiguous ways in which the term “dignity” has been used in bioethics. The ambiguity of the term is an important issue that deserves serious consideration, something that Pinker himself fails to offer. He also fails to notice that “autonomy” is used in a variety of ways, so the difficulty of ambiguous terms is not unique to the term “dignity.” Does “autonomy” mean anything actually desired by the agent, even if the agent is brainwashed or under the influence of drugs? Does autonomy mean “informed consent” (which itself is a term used in various ways)? Does autonomy means rational, self-given law, so that an irrational request cannot be considered autonomous? Indeed, there is no term that cannot be used ambiguously. Admittedly, “dignity,” in the contemporary discussion, is even more prone to ambiguous usage than “autonomy,” but this is hardly ground for dismissing it entirely or for prejudicially abandoning attempts at disambiguation.

Disambiguation of the term dignity is done quite well by Daniel P. Sulmasy, in the very book Pinker criticizes. Sulmasy distinguishes dignity as attributed, dignity as intrinsic worth, and dignity as flourishing. Dignity as attributed is the worth human beings confer on others or on themselves. Attributed dignity comes in degrees and is at issue in some of the examples raised by Pinker in his argument that dignity can be harmful. Dignity as intrinsic worth is understood by Sulmasy as “the value that human beings have simply by virtue of the fact that they are human beings” rather than in virtue of performance, health, wealth, location, or social status. Dignity as flourishing is understood as the excellence of a human life consistent with, and expressive of, intrinsic dignity.

This simple disambiguation removes the alleged contradictions seen by Pinker. Slavery and degradation are morally wrong because they take away someone’s dignity as flourishing. Nothing you can do to a person, including enslaving or degrading him, can take his intrinsic dignity away. Dignity as attributed reflects excellence, striving, and conscience, so that only some people achieve it by dint of effort and character. Everyone, no matter how lazy, evil, or mentally impaired, has intrinsic dignity in full measure, but not dignity as flourishing or as attributed.

Even if we can successfully disambiguate the term, why is dignity important? The concept of dignity does a better job than autonomy in describing and accounting for the intrinsic value of every human being. We are valuable not simply because of our choices, and still less do we have value only while we are exercising our autonomy. We have value even when we are not choosing or cannot choose. In his 2009 Tanner Lectures at UC Berkeley, “Dignity, Rank, and Rights,” Jeremy Waldron pointed out that in ancient times dignity was accorded in particular to persons regarded as royalty or nobility. Noble persons were accorded rights, privileges, and immunities that accorded with their elevated rank. Contemporary society at its best does not reduce the noble but elevates the commoner, making every single human person equal in rank to the Duke or Lady. Although these ideals are often imperfectly realized in our society, still Waldron has a point when he writes, “we are not like a society which has eschewed all talk of caste; we are like a caste society with just one caste (and a very high caste at that): every man a Brahmin. Every man a duke, every woman a queen, everyone entitled to the sort of deference and consideration, everyone’s person and body sacrosanct, in the way that nobles were entitled to deference or in the way that an assault upon the body or the person of a king was regarded as a sacrilege.” The term dignity better captures than most, if not all, other terms the elevated status of the human person.

Do we have any reason for ascribing to all human beings such intrinsic dignity? In an earlier essay, I suggested that there are a number of ways to argue for the proposition that all human beings are endowed with intrinsic dignity and certain inalienable rights. The first is that our dignity should be based on who we are, the kind of being that we are, rather than on how we are functioning in the moment. Dignity should be based on our membership in the human family, rather than on any particular performative activity in which we could engage. Our functioning, whether it be understood in terms of our ability to experience pleasure and pain, or our consciousness, or our intelligence, comes in many degrees. If we think that our value as persons is based on a degreed characteristic, an accident in terms of Aristotelian metaphysics, then we cannot secure equal basic dignity and equal basic rights for all persons. We should therefore base our fundamental ethical judgments on the substantial identity of who we are rather than on any accidental degreed quality. Since all human beings are endowed with the same nature, members of the same kind—homo sapiens—they all share equally basic rights and dignity.

Christopher Kaczor is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University and the author of The Ethics of Abortion: Women’s Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice (Routledge 2011). This piece is adapted from his remarks delivered at the conference “Radical Emancipation” sponsored by the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture on the campus of the University of Notre Dame on November 10-12, 2011, and an article in the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly.

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Pro-Life Aristotle - Taking both sides of the abortion debate seriously.

In NRO

A professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Christopher Kaczor is the author of the new book The Ethics of Abortion: Women’s Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice. He talks to National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez about life, death, justice, and the Star Trek transporter.

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: You write that The Ethics of Abortion: Women’s Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice “provides reasoned justification for the view that all intentional abortions are morally wrong and that doctors and nurses who object should not be forced to act against their consciences.” What right do you, a man, have to make such a case? And why shouldn’t they be forced to act against their consciences? Abortion, you might recall, is legal in the United States. Don’t doctors and nurses have a moral obligation to provide access?

CHRISTOPHER KACZOR: You’ve asked three important questions, the first of which concerns the right to speak about abortion. Legally speaking, everyone has a right to free speech, including speech about abortion. Morally speaking, every person of good will has the right and obligation to speak out in defense of the defenseless and in favor of a just social order. The question “What right do you, a man, have to make a case against abortion?” seems to presuppose that abortion is simply and solely about women, but this is a false supposition. The majority of abortionists are men — more men than women describe themselves as “pro-choice” — and in the United States, men pay for abortions with their tax dollars. Aside from these considerations, every abortion involves the pregnant woman, the expectant father, the one who is aborted, and the society that allows it.

Secondly, although abortion is currently legal in the United States, it is also currently illegal to force any doctor to perform an abortion. The Church amendment, passed shortly after Roe v. Wade, protects pro-life doctors and institutions from being forced to carry out abortions. Doctors and nurses, as mentioned, have no legal obligation to provide access to abortion, nor do they have a moral obligation. Indeed, the Hippocratic Oath says, “I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.” A doctor’s proper role is to heal patients and promote health, not to injure and destroy human life. I develop this case extensively in my book as well as elsewhere online.

LOPEZ: It’s all nice and good to engage in academic exercises about the ethics of abortion, but no book will eradicate the fact that there are women who will feel the need to abort their unborn children and doctors who will provide the service. It was the case before it was legal and it will be after. Desperation doesn’t always take a break for an academic debate before further action.

KACZOR: I think you are right that abortions took place prior to legalization and abortions would continue if abortion were made illegal. The same point can be made for theft, child abuse, and assault, which have always happened in human history and which will always happen. Indeed, if people never did the act in question, making a law about it would be superfluous. In any case, before anyone actually chooses abortion, that person first considers the possibility and endorses it as choiceworthy. I hope that my book can prompt people to reconsider the issue, to reconsider whether abortion is choiceworthy. Furthermore, thoughtful people, those concerned with justice and the promotion of authentic human flourishing, have a serious obligation to help all people, especially women in crisis-pregnancy situations, to find a way to provide concrete service and aid to everyone involved.

LOPEZ: What’s the most compelling argument advocates of legal abortion make?

KACZOR: The most compelling argument for abortion is made by David Boonin of the University of Colorado-Boulder in his book A Defense of Abortion. Boonin is a very smart philosopher and uses all his ingenuity to deny the fetal right to live until 25 to 28 weeks into pregnancy. His argument is that until a being has an actual desire of some kind, that being does not have a right to live.

Boonin’s view faces several difficulties. The first is that it opens to the door to infanticide, the killing of newborn infants, since many premature babies are born prior to 25 weeks, and so do not have a right to live in Boonin’s view. Secondly, it is implausible to hold that human beings only 25 weeks old really have desires, since desires involve judgments that something is lacking and that this something is worth having. Immature human beings do have pleasant and unpleasant sensations, but I doubt that they make judgments, and therefore they do not really have desires. If this is true, then infanticide becomes permissible according to the standard Boonin proposes until much later in human development, a year or two after birth.

LOPEZ: What’s the least compelling argument supporters of legal abortion make?

KACZOR: “It is my body, it is my choice.” This is really more a slogan than an argument, but as an argument it is not a good one. In abortion, there are two bodies involved, the body of the pregnant woman and the body of the human being in utero. We know there are two bodies involved because these two bodies can be of different blood types and different races, and it can happen that one of them dies and the other lives and vice versa. If there were only one body involved, then absurdities follow such as that a pregnant woman has two heads, four arms, and, if she is carrying a boy, also a penis. Further, “choice” is a euphemism disguising the reality. Everyone supports good choices that are just and promote human welfare. The question is whether abortion is such a choice.

LOPEZ: What’s different about your book and your argument?

KACZOR: I’ve tried to write a comprehensive, up-to-date, and clear account of why abortion, the choice to intentionally kill a human being prior to birth, is always morally wrong. The book is comprehensive in that it deals with all the major arguments given by philosophers over the last 40 years to justify abortion. It is up-to-date in that I took into account the latest research in an area of ongoing philosophical dispute and inquiry. Finally, I tried to write it in such a way that both regular people and professional philosophers could read it with profit.

My argument is not faith-based, but rather based on reason and evidence. There is no appeal to theological authority; there are no Scripture citations to justify conclusions, and no premises that come from ecclesial authority. The case against abortion is made to all persons of good will, regardless of their faith or lack thereof.

LOPEZ: What’s justice got to do with it?

KACZOR: Aristotle understood justice as giving to each what is due. Abortion is clearly a justice issue. If defenders of abortion are right, then critics of abortion are doing something unjust in trying to curtail and criticize the legitimate actions of women who are terminating their pregnancies. If pro-life advocates are right, then those who perform, obtain, or defend abortions are doing something that is unjust, depriving innocent human beings of their lives. Whatever your view of abortion, justice is involved.

LOPEZ: Is it just to tell a teen she’s got to have a kid when we, culturally, and specifically in some classrooms — sometimes by mandate (see Mike Bloomberg’s sex-ed mandate in New York City schools) — provide no coherent view of the dignity of the human person, and a moral education, which would give a boy and a girl reason to wait?

KACZOR: Of course, no one should ever be forced to become pregnant, but a pregnant woman already “has a kid.” She is an expectant mother with an existing relationship to her own child, who is developing in utero. After pregnancy has begun, the question is not, “Do we force her to have a kid?” but rather “Will we support this expectant mother and her child?” People of good will should answer “yes” to their latter question with their actions. I do think that we do young people a disservice when we do not give them a sound moral education. If we promote an “anything goes” policy with respect to sexual behavior, we can hardly be surprised when unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections arise.

LOPEZ: What does Aristotle have to do with the poor mom who feels as if she has no alternatives when she realizes she is pregnant? The desperate teenager? The single professional who can’t both do her job and have this child?

KACZOR: I believe that everyone, including the poor mom, the desperate teenager, and the single professional, desires to find true happiness. I also believe that Aristotle, and even more fully Thomas Aquinas, showed that the way to true happiness consists in activity in accordance with virtue. There can be, therefore, no authentic happiness found in activity that is unjust. Aristotle’s perspective has found a powerful analogue in the findings of contemporary positive psychology, which emphasizes the concept of flow in activity, strong relationships with others, and forgiveness.

I know that many women face unbelievably difficult circumstances in their pregnancy. For this reason, I think that all people of good will have an obligation to help them, to celebrate their heroism when they choose life, and to love them even when they do not. I can think of one case in particular: a young student, not yet finished with her education, who found herself pregnant with a man she did not know well. With so many responsibilities, both to her extended family and to her studies, she felt desperate, alone, and trapped. It was truly an act of heroism for that woman to decide to place that child for adoption. I know the woman in the story very well. She is my birth mother. I feel such an enormous debt of gratitude to her. Even though her choice was unbelievably difficult, I know and she knows that she made the right decision not to end my life. I don’t think there is any woman who in the long term regrets, even in the most difficult of circumstances, making the choice for life. But I know there are many thousands of women who still remember and mourn, even decades later, the date that their baby would have been born.

LOPEZ: You teach at a Catholic school. Can a thorough case truly be made about the ethics of abortion without involving religion or religious principle on some level?

KACZOR: A case against abortion can be made, and has been made not only by me but by many other philosophers, that does not appeal to religion or principles of revelation. In all the reviews I’ve read of my book, they have taken note that this is a secular, not a religious, treatment of the ethics of abortion.

LOPEZ: Are there myths about abortion you’d like to use this book to shoot down?

KACZOR: There are many myths surrounding abortion. One, just mentioned, is that all opposition to abortion is based on religious faith. A second myth is that there is a debate about “when life begins.” In fact, informed parties, both those opposed to and those in favor of abortion, acknowledge that the human fetus is a living organism, growing, developing, and maintaining homeostasis. These are characteristics of living creatures. Only living things can die, and clearly the human fetus can die, so it is alive. A third myth is that the debate is about whether the “fetus is a human being.” Informed participants in this discussion, regardless of their views about abortion, understand that the living organism within the woman is a member of the species homo sapiens. With a human mother and a human father, with human DNA and a human path of development, the progeny is a human being. The real question in the debate is: Should all human beings be respected and protected, or just some? I favor the inclusive view in part because every single time in human history that we’ve chosen the exclusive view, we’ve made a horrible mistake.

LOPEZ: What the heck does the Star Trek transporter have to do with the ethics of abortion?

KACZOR: In this debate, many colorful and striking images and analogies are used — talking kittens, kidnapping space aliens, waking up hooked up to a violinist. For the most part, I avoid these bizarre analogies, but you’ve mentioned one bizarre analogy that I did not resist. My point was fairly simple that if you and I were fused into one — say via a machine like a Star Trek transporter gone amuck — that would not mean that you and I aren’t still individual, independent persons. So too, if human embryos fuse in utero, this does not mean that there weren’t two independent, individual embryos prior to fusion.

LOPEZ: What is the sum of all personhood debates? And why does it matter?

KACZOR: The debate about “personhood” is really the debate about who will be included in the human community, who will be respected, and who will receive legal protection. This debate goes back over the centuries, throughout which various classes of human beings were excluded from the human family. Those excluded tend to change over time but have been at various points Native Americans, Africans, Catholics in Protestant-dominated countries, Protestants in Catholic-dominated countries, non-Muslims, Jews, the handicapped, and women. Every single time we’ve said, this or that class of human beings does not merit protection and respect, I think we’ve made a terrible mistake. Today, I believe we’re making another terrible mistake in excluding from full protection and respect human beings prior to birth.

LOPEZ: Do advocates of legal abortion and opponents of legal abortion have more in common than is ever portrayed?

KACZOR: At Princeton University a year ago, I participated in a conference called “Open Hearts, OpenMinds and Fair Minded Words.” It brought together some of the most prominent leaders of both sides of the debate, people like Peter Singer, John Finnis, Frances Kissling, and Helen Alvare. I think that (almost) all the participants in the discussion were civil, and most attempted to be reasonable and consistent in their views. Obviously, there are huge disagreements, but there is also a shared commitment by at least some “on the other side” to fairness. Peter Singer, not once but twice, chided the defenders of abortion for misrepresenting the pro-life view. Although many people defending the pro-life view are Catholic, they are not appealing to the pope or any religious presupposition to defend their view. Although I strongly disagree with Singer’s views on most matters, he showed a great deal of consideration and fairness in these remarks.

LOPEZ: Is abortion ever ethical?

KACZOR: No, at least if you mean by “abortion” the intentional killing of a human being prior to birth. There are some abortions, sometimes called “indirect abortions,” in which a legitimate medical procedure is performed to save the life of the mother and as a side effect, unintentionally the life of the unborn is lost. Take, for instance, the case of a gravid cancerous uterus. The cancerous organ can be removed even if there is a pre-viable fetus within it. This is morally permissible, but properly speaking it is not an abortion, even though as a side effect, fetal demise takes place.

LOPEZ: So what if a mother’s life is in danger? What if she has cancer? What if she will likely die if she is not treated? And what if when she is treated, the child might very well die?

KACZOR: As mentioned, any legitimate medical procedure that is needed to save the woman’s life — whether or not she is pregnant — may be performed, so long as the death of the unborn child is not sought as a means or as an end. Of course, a pregnant woman may choose, if she wishes, to decline such interventions in order to preserve the life developing within her. These cases are governed by what is called the principle of double effect or double-effect reasoning. So long as the death of the unborn child is not sought as a means or as an end, and the procedure is necessary in order to save the life of the mother, it may be done even if it brings about the bad effect of fetal death. In a similar way, the death of the mother may not be sought as an end or as a means, yet she may choose to accept her own death as a side effect of protecting the life of her child. Innocent human life is worthy of respect and protection, but in some tragic situations, life will be lost whatever is chosen.

LOPEZ: You write about rape: “It turns out that most women who actually conceive a child do not choose to have an abortion.” How can that possibly matter?

KACZOR: Morally, it is irrelevant whether all women who get pregnant via rape get an abortion or give birth. My point was simply that even though people may think that women who get pregnant in this way all want to get abortions, this is simply not true.

LOPEZ: Congresswoman Jackie Speier made headlines this year when she emotionally talked about her abortion on the House floor, supposedly having the rhetorical effect of shutting down pro-life congressman Christopher Smith? Can you bring some ethical clarity to that episode?

KACZOR: After hearing Christopher Smith describe the gruesome reality of an abortion procedure, Congresswoman Speier said, “I really planned to speak about something else, but the gentleman from New Jersey just put my stomach in knots, because I’m one of those women he spoke about just now. I had a procedure at 17 weeks pregnant with a child who moved from the vagina into the cervix.” She continued, “I lost a baby,” she said, pausing again. “But for you to stand on this floor and suggest, as you have, that somehow this is a procedure that is either welcomed or done cavalierly or done without any thought is preposterous.” I’m not sure that Congressman Smith claimed that this was welcomed or done without thought. I also don’t think that Congresswoman Speier can generalize from her own case and say that all abortions are similar to hers. But what is at issue is not whether abortion is done thoughtfully or cavalierly, but whether what is done is intentionally taking the life of a human being prior to birth. The implicit and fallacious argument of Congresswoman Speier seems to be, “Abortion isn’t bad because I did it.” She is confusing a judgment about persons — this person is bad — with a judgment about actions — this act is wrong. We can and should refrain from judging people who have had abortions, since we do not know their mind and heart. We cannot judge their culpability for their actions. But at the same time, we can and must judge whether particular actions are just or unjust.

LOPEZ: How about the ethics of this: Do pro-lifers do enough to promote adoption? To make it easier both for people who want to adopt and for people who want/need to offer their child to adoptive parents?

KACZOR: I think pro-life people do a lot to promote adoptions, but I don’t think the same thing is true of “pro-choice” people. If they are really in favor of choice, I would expect them to be big proponents of adoption. I may be mistaken but I don’t think Planned Parenthood spends much if any money promoting this choice. By contrast, pro-life people run crisis-pregnancy centers from coast to coast. Of course, more can be done, but I’ve been impressed by the continuous and courageous efforts of so many people to promote adoption. As mentioned, I am a huge beneficiary of these efforts.

LOPEZ: You are optimistic about the prospect of artificial wombs bringing an end to the abortion debate. But that could be a tad fantastical, couldn’t it? Friendly human-like aliens who want to adopt children might end the abortion debate too. I’m sure there are awesome pro-life sci-fi movies to be made, but we don’t live in The Twilight Zone.

KACZOR: I’m not especially optimistic about this prospect on the practical level. First, I think it would be fantastically expensive, at least at first. Secondly, I think that many women who seek abortions would choose to end the life within them rather than choose an early adoption through artificial wombs.

LOPEZ: Can the abortion debate end without artificial wombs?

KACZOR: I don’t see any end to the debate for some time, but of course something radical could happen that changes everything. For example, if the very existence of the human race were threatened, I can imagine people thinking very differently about abortion. But this is rather sci-fi.

LOPEZ: How do you hope pro-lifers use your book?

KACZOR: I hope that this book can be of use to many students who encounter justifications for abortion in the classroom. It could be used to train pro-life speakers and advocates. I know it is already being used in classrooms at Georgetown University and Catholic University on the East Coast and Biola University on the West Coast.

LOPEZ: Pro-choicers?

KACZOR: The book has already been reviewed by many who favor abortion, and I was happy to see that they seem to be respecting the position the book takes even if they do not agree with it. For example, David Boonin said, “This is one of the very best book-length defenses of the claim that abortion is morally impermissible. It is clear, thorough, thoughtful and carefully argued. I would strongly encourage anyone who is interested in the subject to read it and to study it.” In a prominent journal in philosophy called Ethics, another defender of abortion, David DeGrazia, said, “In my estimation, the greatest success of the book is that it suggests to any fair-minded reader that the pro-life view remains standing as a reasonable position, notwithstanding some very powerful arguments from defenders of abortion.”

LOPEZ: What’s the most important point made in it?

KACZOR: The most important point is that all human beings regardless of race, sentience, gender, viability, class, or birth have intrinsic dignity and a right to life.

LOPEZ: If there can be only one take-away from your book for anyone, what would you hope it would be?

KACZOR: I would hope that after reading my book, someone would either come to the conclusion or be strengthened in their belief that abortion is wrong. This idea was so well articulated by the late Richard John Neuhaus, “We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until every unborn child is protected in law and welcomed in life.”

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online.