Religion-bashing #978
Here’s one reason we don’t want to pretend that morality and the meaning of life are the work of religion and only religion – the bishops.
The Archbishop of Canterbury will lead the opposition in the House of Lords this week to a bill that aims to allow voluntary euthanasia…The bishops of Oxford, Portsmouth and St Albans are among senior figures who will back the archbishop in the debate.
Senior. Meaning what. They’re old? Or they have some kind of elevated standing? But elevated standing in and on what? The Anglican church – which has no special expertise in the subject, and is in some ways handicapped for discussing it or thinking about it sensibly, by the fact that it takes orders from a supernatural being who probably isn’t there.
The Catholic Church in England has been campaigning against the bill and has urged members to write to MPs and peers expressing their opposition to voluntary euthanasia.
Thus making Peter Fosl’s point for him.
Like other ideologies, religion instructs and even commands people about what they should value and how they should conduct themselves…Many clerics actually tell their congregations how to vote. It’s simply not acceptable for a participant to enter public debate, have such a powerful effect upon it, and then claim immunity from the sort of treatment to which other participants are subject.
It’s simply not acceptable, and yet it is exactly how things are. Religion gets special protection and immunity, and it is casually granted monopoly rights over all sorts of fundamentally important questions which concern everyone and which religion often makes a mess of. Bad situation.
Lord Joffe says the campaign has turned nasty. He has received bags of hate mail including letters accusing him of being a Nazi and comparing his euthanasia bill to actions during the Holocaust. “Malice and aggression pervades (some of) these letters without any wish by the authors to debate,” he said. “It is a matter of faith but there is no Christian compassion and plenty of blind hatred.”
Matters of faith are all too susceptible to this vice of blind hatred. Hence the need to be cautious about ‘faith’.
I think you are confusing an argument about voluntary euthanasia with an argument about the desirability of affording special treatment to religion.
You can oppose voluntary euthanasis, for reasons I will briefly set out below, whilst believing that you need not afford special or privileged treatment to religion.
The current law, in prohibiting euthanasia, acts to protect the elderly, sick and disabled from doctors and relatives. Too many doctors have a utilitarian view of the value of the sick and elderly and voluntary euthanasia would significantly reduce that protection.
I am glad that Christians are speaking out to protect the weak, and although Joel Joffe is a good man, without malign intentions, I agree that to permit voluntary euthanasia is too redolent of the behaviour of the Nazi state . I recommend Michael Burleigh’s ‘A New History of the Third Reich’ or his work, with Wippermann ‘The Racial State; Germany 1933 to 1945’ for a shocking glimpse of where a view that life is unworthy can take you.
It’s bad enough to be old and infirm in Britain without bringing a new fear to the elderly.
No, I’m not confusing the two arguments. You’ll notice that I don’t say anything substantive about the arguments for or against euthanasia. I simply question the relevance of bishops to the subject, and note the problem of their political power combined with their immunity.
And if I may add something substantive about euthanasia, in response to Jeffrey…
You apparently missed the word “voluntary.” You typed out the word, but then you talked about doctors and relatives instead of focusing on the choices available (or denied) to suffering people – and not necessarily just the elderly. (I will simply ignore your instant degeneration into Nazi comparisons, which in reasoned argument is always the first resort of a scoundrel.) Have you actually read anything about the specific proposed law? Or are you opposing it on general principle and your vague suspicions about doctors’ and relatives’ nefarious “utilitarian” motives? Because the actual bill being proposed by Joffe is very clear about specifics like multiple explicit consent decrees, and has a mental health clause as well. The proposed law makes euthanasia genuinely voluntary, and a nearly identical law has worked very well in Oregon with absolutely NO evidence of any of the horrible consequences that slippery-slopers always predict (with confidence inversely proportional to their actual evidence).
In fact, Oregon ranks very high (if not highest) among U.S. states in terms of number and quality of palliative care facilities, the very opposite of what opponents to voluntary euthanasia always predict. The failure of euthanasia opponents’ slippery slope scenarios is unsuprising, because their fears about life becoming “de-valued” are predicated on a warped view of what constitutes valuing life in the first place. To value life simply is to think that no one should suffer needlessly, and to think that everyone has a basic right to self-determination (among other things). To insist that valuing life requires the preservation of life no matter what – without regard to the choices of the person whose life it is, without regard to their suffering – ignores freedom and happiness, which are surely chief amongst those things which give human life value. Such a view fetishizes mere metabolism, reduces the value of life to the continued ticking of the body’s workings.
As for the fears of the elderly… If you think the elderly don’t fear wasting away in agony and/or in a humiliating fashion, then you haven’t spoken to that many elderly people about this subject. I’m not particularly elderly myself, and I fear that sort of death. Having watched my father waste away in agony over the course of several slow months as cancer consumed him, it is a very well-grounded and rational sort of fear at that.
On the more practical/legal side of the argument, the anti-euthanasia case is even worse. There is no law in the UK or the US against suicide as such, but the law prevents those who would willingly and with clear mind make that choice for themselves from carrying out their wishes in the best fashion by denying them medical help. By denying patients that right, current law actually makes it easier for non-voluntary euthanasia to be carried out by those utilitarian doctors you implicate. You are no doubt correct in your suspicion (implied) that some doctors, using overprescription of opiates and similar covert methods, do what they (or the patient’s relatives) think is best – with or without the active voluntary consent of the patient: Since a majority (or at least a significant minority) of people of good will support a patient’s right to choose an end to his or her own suffering, but the law forbids a physician to aid the patient to that end, there is a very natural tendency to assume that a terminally ill patient who dies suddenly chose death of his or her own free will – but that no one (doctors, relatives) can say so without running afoul of the law. In the face of this very commonly made assumption, the absence of any evidence against voluntary consent is taken blindly as evidence for voluntary consent – a gross logical error, of course, but a common (and emotionally easy) error to make in this situation. A law that allows physician-assisted suicide only under conditions of very explicit consent undermines this pernicious assumption, ensuring that every case of euthanasia is genuinely voluntary – and encouraging investigation into sudden deaths where euthanasia has not been explicitly requested.
‘because their fears about life becoming “de-valued” are predicated on a warped view of what constitutes valuing life in the first place…Such a view fetishizes mere metabolism, reduces the value of life to the continued ticking of the body’s workings.’
Damn, G, you’re an elegant writer.
Actually I’m very tempted to help myself to that whole thing (come to think of it, there’s a stipulation on here that says I can do just that) and post it in another Comment.
Thanks, OB. I do try. And crafting a mini-essay on euthanasia makes a fine break from grading.
I don’t know whether that says more about just how big a philosophy geek I am or just how much I loathe grading.
Two more papers for tonight, and I’m done til tomorrow.
Grading – ranks right up there with proof-reading for sheer fun. I’ve just been proof-reading.
Anyway, thanks for devoting break to crafting mini-essay. That sucker’s going in a Comment.
Jeffrey Mushens wrote: “Too many doctors have a utilitarian view of the value of the sick and elderly and voluntary euthanasia would significantly reduce that protection.”
In fact, medical associations routinely OPPOSE legislation of this type, which is odd if “too many” doctors have this “utilitarian” view.
Jeffrey Mushens wrote: “I recommend Michael Burleigh’s ‘A New History of the Third Reich’ or his work, with Wippermann ‘The Racial State; Germany 1933 to 1945’ for a shocking glimpse of where a view that life is unworthy can take you.”
The old “Nazi” argument! I find it difficult to take anyone seriously after they play it.
No-one is suggesting that “life is unworthy”. On the contrary, we are arguing that the person living the life (if competent) is in the best position to judge the worth, or value, of that life.
More specifically, they are in the best position to judge whether what they are getting from life is worth what it is costing them.
Actually, I would say that many doctors (in my experience) do take a utilitarian view that is quite paternalistic – hence the prevalence of ‘do not resuscitate’ orders and rather spurious assertions of confidence in ‘brain death’ on pretty weak evidence.
Not sure I understand, PM, are you suggesting that doctors decide to DNR? I always thought it was patients’ prerogative. Though certainly there have been test-cases where parents’ right to have their children resuscitated in the case of severe impairment have been challenged in the courts.
I certainly am saying that doctors decide DNR orders without consulting patients – it is widespread. Most common when it comes to the elderly, but you also get it in palliative care settings.
So our dear Archbishop of Canterbury had his compassion tested to its limits tending his terminally ill mother.
How nice for him. How did she feel about the situation?
and did the Dear Archbishop not feel that her suffering was a WONDERFUL opportunity for personal growth (for himself, of course) and understanding the workings of the Divine Mind?
Hear it straight from the horses’ mouth here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/
(scroll down to 8:10, Dr Rowan Williams…Cardinal Cormac Murphy o’Connor…)(Don’t know how long this is available) Be thrilled as the interviewer gently tries to corner them by asking what relevance their views on various substantive issues are if their base position is that our lives belong to god and it is wrong for us to interfere. Be amazed as they counter this by saying ‘It’s not just about philosophy’ and ‘we know not everyone believes in clerical superstition’.
Become depressed as you realise that these very strange and confused men can vote on our legislation.