Barry's Blog

As Dinesh D'Souza writes in a recent posting on Christianity Today's website, his recent debate with bioethicist Peter Singer at Singer's home campus, Princeton University, serves to differentiate Singer from the other well known "new atheists," such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. While Singer tends to be a mild-mannered chap that speaks calmly, his extreme positions advocating infanticide (including fourth-trimester abortions, the killing of infants after they are born) and euthanasia, and this despite his advocacy of animal rights, is making even the New Atheists nervous.

Singer has written: "My colleague Helga Kuhse and I suggest that a period of 28 days after birth might be allowed before an infant is accepted as having the same right to life as others." Singer argues that even pigs, chickens, and fish have more signs of consciousness and rationality-and, consequently, a greater claim to rights-than do fetuses, newborn infants, and people with mental disabilities. "Rats are indisputably more aware of their surroundings, and more able to respond in purposeful and complex ways to things they like or dislike, than a fetus at 10- or even 32-weeks gestation...The calf, the pig, and the much-derided chicken come out well ahead of the fetus at any stage of pregnancy."

While D'Souza suggests that some people simply consider Singer as a provocateur who says outrageous things to garner attention, he may have a rational basis for his extreme positions. While the New Atheists like Hitchens and Dawkins argue that no one needs God in order to be good (contrary to Dostoevsky's maxim that, "If there is no God, then all things are permitted"), as D'Souza points out, such a "halfway-house" position of the New Atheists creates a problem that was laid out over a century ago by the atheist philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. When Nietzsche proclaimed the "death of God," he was suggesting that God has indeed died in the consciousness of modern man, and consequently, all the Christian values that have been a part of Western culture are in fact based on a mythical notion. In his view, while we may continue to live based on these Christian values for a while, in time there is a "shelf-life" to these values, leaving modern man with the prospect of "nihilism," what he termed "the Abyss."

And in Singer's Nietzschean worldview, where God and transcendent values are mere poppycock, there is little wonder that he sees human beings, not as creatures fashioned in the imago dei, God's vice-regents on the earth, but as nothing more than Darwinian primates. No, Singer argues, we must remove Homo sapiens from their privileged status and restore the natural order, giving more rights for animals and no special consideration for human beings. In Singer's utilitarian universe, why not extend rights to the apes, while doing away with unwanted children, people with mental disabilities, and the elderly who do not contribute to the betterment of society? Scary, but quite logical in Singer's nihilistic, secular world.

D'Souza's concluding words are instructive: " Why haven't the atheists embraced Peter Singer? I suspect it is because they fear that his unpalatable views will discredit the cause of atheism. What they haven't considered, however, is whether Singer, virtually alone among their numbers, is uncompromisingly working out the implications of living in a truly secular society, one completely purged of Christian and transcendental foundations. In Singer, we may be witnessing someone both horrifying and yet somehow refreshing: an intellectually honest atheist."