Are You A Person?

In an article published in the Journal of Medical Ethics last month two Melbourne Scientists argued that "the newborn and the fetus are morally equivalent". They are right - a baby doesn't suddenly become a person at the moment of birth. However, they proposed that a newborn is not yet a person, but merely a "potential person".

The title of the article: "After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?" And so the false boundaries that humanity creates keep getting blurred. After all, if a baby can be legally killed moments before birth, why not moments after? And if it is acceptable to kill a child moments after birth, why not days, or weeks or months after? And if it is ethical to kill a baby, why not a child with an acquired brain injury, or an adult no longer able to care for themselves?

If we accept the idea of evolution, then we accept the idea that the value of a human being comes from their physical composition. If that physical composition is flawed and the person "broken", then why should they not be disposed of (if that's what you believe)?

I don't accept evolution and I don't believe that any human being has the right to determine when another human being should die, regardless of suffering. The wonderful thing about the boundaries that God sets is that they are clear and unchanging. There are no fuzzy lines. Any confusion comes from human beings trying to reason away the ten simple rules that God has given us to live by.

So what do you believe in? A world where a baby is not an "actual person" (but an animal may be considered an "actual person")? A world where the most vulnerable of all human beings have "no moral right to life"? A world where scientists philosophize away the basic value of a human being (unless they are "capable of making any aims" according to the scientists' judgement)?

Or do you believe that a person is something beyond the mere physical? Do you believe that we have a purpose?

Unless we accept God as our Creator, the definition of an "actual person" is sure to get more and more fuzzy. Each step we take away from God is another step into a morality minefield. Few of us are likely to come out the other end alive.

Love Grows Cold

Did you hear in the news about the eight-year-old girl who died after being alone in the desert with a known, convicted pedophile?

I am shocked, horrified, and furious when I think about it. I feel like my heart is being ripped in two. If it would help, I would cry a river for that poor little girl, undefended and alone. But my tears are not enough. This story should - as should every story of another child abused or neglected - bring our entire nation to its knees in grief and remorse. But see, the cricket and the tennis are on right now. Our Australian sporting "heroes" are more "interesting" than unnamed eight-year-old little girls.

How is it that, as a nation, our love has grown so cold for others that we hide behind the wimpy excuse of "cultural differences" in refusing to interfere when children are treated like cattle? Why is it morally acceptable to us to allow "other cultures" to systematically oppress women and children?

Let's be warned as a country that our rejection of all moral absolutes is making us repugnant to God. When we refuse to defend the helpless in our midst from exploitation and annihilation - when we systematically obliterate the basic rights of the unborn, the disabled, the disadvantaged and the elderly, then we become a stench in God's nostrils. Huge sections of the Bible are devoted to warning us of the consequences of such behaviour.

We have already set the timebomb for our own destruction. The only way to stop it is to turn whole-heartedly and humbly to God.

To hear about what the Bible says about calling evil good, try watching the Beyond Today TV program, Calling Evil Good.

Medicated Morality?

I recently heard a well-known researcher, Julian Savulescu, suggest that we should use drugs or genetic modification to make us better people. Researchers have found that drugs can make people cooperate better and less prejudiced among other things.

But can drugs make us better? Drugs interact with our brains and alter chemical reactions, but when God created man in His own image, He gave us something beyond our mere chemical makeup. He gave us a mind. If altering our chemical composition to make us "better" would truly work, God would have done that from the start. He didn't because He created us to have free will, not to be robots.

A drug to make people cooperate won't make a better world. We have a very short memory if we think cooperation is always a good thing. One psycopath plus a bunch of cooperative people equals Nazi Germany and the holocaust.

It really would be better if we tried morality God's way.