An Infant's Rights

Part 1

In speaking with Maribel Navarro on the topic of fetus’ rights, she pointed out some very interesting issues. The following is the result of our conversation, coalesced and honed into a more precise discourse.

Many people are anti-abortion. Such people believe that the fetus is a living thing, and should have protection under our laws. This child-to-be, this future person, should have its liberties and life protected. These are compelling arguments. The protection of sentient life is a noble endeavor, indeed. I am not here to argue against this position. This is not an essay on the merits or demerits of abortion. What this essay is about will be revealed shortly.

Let’s take a look at some anti-abortion precepts.

1. An unborn child is a person, despite still being in the womb.

2. As a person, an unborn child has rights.

3. An unborn child, as a person, should have their life and body protected against harm.

4. A parent does not have the right to harm their child, even if that child is unborn.

If you read numbers 1-4 above and agreed with them wholeheartedly, I have a question for you: Are you a supporter of child circumcision*? If so, how can you reconcile those two beliefs? How can you believe that a child, even an unborn one, has an amount of autonomy and protection under the law and yet support a practice where parents may permanently alter their child’s genitals without the child’s consent?

*Note: I am referring to any circumcision practice in this essay, whether male or female, sanctioned or banned. Any permanent altering of an individual’s genitals falls into this description.

Hypothetically speaking, if I had a child, do I have the right to surgically and permanently remove their eyebrows shortly after birth? They don’t really need them, and they won’t suffer any serious medical issues if they don’t’ have eyebrows. I think my child’s ears are too wide, so I’d like to give the child a permanent alteration to its ears after birth, shaping them how I want them.

If, at the age of 5, my parents held me down and shaved off all the hair on my body while I screamed and cried, they’d be locked away. If my parents forced me, at the age of 3, to have reconstructive surgery performed on my nose because they didn’t like it’s shape, it would be criminal.

To be frank, I don’t wish to tackle the issues of circumcision at this time. I simply wish to point out an amount of hypocrisy and contradiction I have encountered in my investigations. How can someone say “God wants me to protect the life of unborn children” and then turn around and also claim that “God wants me to mutilate all male children at birth”. Does not compute!

Part 2

I wrote Part 1 about one week ago. Since that time, I have done some further reflection on the subject of circumcision. I have read some articles and heard some discourse claiming that the practice of circumcision is sacred, and to outlaw its practice would be an attack on religion (specifically, the Abrahamic religions, namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). This claim is inappropriate. When discussing public policy, in a nation where it is most specifically laid out that the government shall not endorse any one faith, it is not relevant that a particular religion holds a specific practice sacred. I will elaborate on this further.

In the eyes of the government, all faiths must be considered equally false. This is not to say that they are false, but that the government must take a completely neutral approach to them all, otherwise favoritism and bias emerge. It is not possible to assume that all faiths are true, so we must assume that they are all false, at least as it comes to public policy. In this manner, equality can be maintained – no one faith is considered any better than another, and the issues of religious doctrine becomes irrelevant. Again, this is not to say that the faiths are false, just that we must assume so as far as governmental issues are concerned. People have the right to believe said beliefs, that is for certain, but public policy cannot revolve around the myriad and incongruent beliefs of the faithful. It doesn’t matter that Fundamentalist Mormons believe that polygamy is sacred, we have deemed the practice itself unlawful.

The practice of circumcision, as we practice it today in the United States, has its roots in the Old Testament. It signifies a covenant made between Abraham and his god. Why the God of Abraham dislikes foreskin so much is beyond me, but that is a topic for another day. My point here being that this practice is religious first and medical second. There are some medical benefits to circumcision, and some medical drawbacks. It is important to note that this is an elective surgery, in that it is in no manner life saving or life improving, at least not in any significant way. If we divorce ourselves from the belief that mutilating infants’ genitals pleases an ancient Semitic sky deity, then maybe we can see what this practice really is: barbarism.

Side Rant: The God of Abraham demands we do a lot of things. A brief flip through my copy of the King James Bible also informs me that we should: Hunt witches, stone apostates to death, beat and kill our children, make blood sacrifices, and murder homosexuals. The mutilation of infant genitalia seems to fit right in among those directives.

Guest Blog: Maribel on Gypsy Wedding Traditions

(By Maribel)

Bear with me on the beginning of this one, I promise; it has to do with more than gypsy weddings. 

Thanks to the very helpful and convenient Internet, I’ve become acquainted with traditional British Gypsy weddings. Recently, TLC’s Say Yes to the Dress made a post on Facebook about these gypsy weddings and, as might be expected, a lot of women commented. There were lots of comments deeming the culture tacky and repulsive as well as responses damning those judging comments as ignorant. I decided to take a look for myself, so I searched YouTube for anything on this new show revolving around Gypsies. 

Initially, I wrote it off as a gaudy culture with very backwards and overly-fantastical bridal fashion. I was very put off by the extravagance of the weddings and the sheer impracticality of the dresses. They were layer upon layer of sparkling, glittery fabric sewn into revealing, 70-pound-plus gowns that, literally, got stuck in doorways and had to be kicked while walking.  The bride, who is on average sixteen years old, is covered in heavy make up, lots of “bling” and given a healthy dose of hair extensions to curl up around an equally “blingy” tiara.  

 

The more I watched of this documentary-style show the more I was… dismayed (to put it lightly). Now, whether or not I care for this display of extravagance bears no weight or relevance to the subject and it is not what I will be basing my arguments on. My problem is not with the wedding or the dress or what they deem as acceptable formal clothing. Instead, the problem is with the ideas and ideals this wedding sums up. What I saw was another display of ignorance running rampant in modern times. Why are the unjust practices of this culture being defended by women? 

Women of the gypsy culture have very limited personal freedom, they do not get an education past the age of eleven, and they are groomed and indoctrinated from a very young age to look forward to marriage and only marriage. After marriage, the bride is completely dependent on her husband. One of the women interviewed on the show openly admitted that girls hope marrying will give them more personal freedom. It is no wonder, then, that the wedding is an excessively gaudy event. There’s nothing else a girl has to look forward to; no high school or college graduation, or starting a career, etc. This is the event of their entire lives, and it comes at age 16. That was enough to raise flags in my mind. 

To broaden the subject, the oppression can be extended to their people as a whole. It is criminal that their culture openly condones the act of suppressing education and intellectual development among their entire population. They breed their women to be housewives and men to be laborers. The Gypsy culture rejects, even demonizes mainstream British society, deeming it a breeding ground of violence and other vices.  But they themselves have been refused by event centers because Gypsy weddings and other social events often lead to violent or destructive behavior.  Any stigma surrounding their culture is purely their own doing.  

Their culture is not necessarily without merit; they do value things like chastity (for women specifically) and strong familial and community ties. But these are values not unique to their culture, nor do young men and women need to have their intellectual development stunted in order to achieve them. The gypsies pride themselves on preserving their cultural traditions. However, I’d like to clear up that the oppression does not count as a tradition.  The style and exaggerated nature of the weddings is a tradition, the size of the dress is a tradition, a couple not living together before marriage is a tradition, the ceremonies are traditions. Telling men and women to stay away from the "evil" mainstream culture is not a tradition; it’s a social impediment, keeping them uneducated is not a tradition, it’s an impediment; limiting the rights of women and reducing their role to homemaker and baby-maker is not a tradition, either, it’s oppression. Generally, as Americans, we don’t allow it in our own culture, and we definitely don’t find it acceptable when Muslim countries oppress their people, more specifically women,  so  why are these modern women I spoke of earlier, allowing it in the gypsy culture?  Why are they overlooking this aspect of the culture, judging those who point it out as "ignorant"?

 I re-read the comments posted under the link on Facebook. It is obvious people consider it ignorant to openly oppose and dislike a culture that isn’t our own, but it is imperative to analyze all cultures, no matter how peaceful, with a discerning eye to weed out what customs and traditions are detrimental. 

In my opinion, the first and foremost impediment to this solution is the fact that humanity relates to each other in terms of culture. We create a distance between ourselves using the notion of culture as part of our instinctual attempts to categorize and classify our surroundings.  However, that keeps us from determining when something is wrong in another culture like that of the Gypsies.  If, instead, humanity saw itself as human beings first, and as distinct cultures second, it would be easier to spot the slightest degree of impediment to social progress.  This leads me to a second point.  I asked earlier why the oppression in the gypsy culture was being overlooked.  It might be too simple an answer, but it makes a great difference: 1) it’s not overtly violent and does not call too much attention to that aspect of the culture.  People accept it because there is a level of willingness on behalf of the people. They aren’t subjugated the way people are in some Muslim and African countries and so, to some people there is no hurry in changing the gypsy “tradition” of keeping their people slightly oppressed.  2) Gypsies are Catholic, a doctrine widely accepted around the world as “good.” And 3) they’re “white”.  They speak English and have light colored skin, to put it less colloquially. 

The second impediment is that there is a stigma associated with applying our views to those of other cultures. The stigma usually has undertones of imperialism and capitalism tacked onto it. In the past, whenever a developed country has tried to “Americanize” or make more European another culture in the name of progress, it usually involved changing every aspect of that culture forcibly, and today it also involves setting up a McDonald’s or Wal-Mart wherever there is room.  It’s easy to see where the hesitation to scrutinize a different culture comes from, let alone apply our standards to them.  However, it’s important to note that applying universal concepts of rights and freedoms is completely different from the way in which is has claimed to be done before (if it has been done at all). 

But what are these freedoms I’m talking about? For starters, the freedom to be independent via developing personal and intellectual potential; the idea that every individual has the same opportunity as the next; living free of the fear of violence brought on by certain beliefs, creeds or opinions; That each person has the sole, exclusive rights over his or her own body and mind. These are rights that should be accepted by everyone, regardless of tradition or culture.  I doubt that female circumcision is a practice cherished by the women of Africa. Granted, that is a drastic example compared to the limited freedom the gypsy women have so I'll pose this question: what woman wouldn't want to be able to decide what's best for herself. Better yet, what person doesn't automatically deserve the right to decide for him or herself? What person likes living with prejudices (either holding them or having them held against them?).  How can we justify, in any culture, some people having some rights, but not others? These are the types of questions we should be asking ourselves in regard to other cultures, like that of the British Gypsies, as well as in regard to our own culture here in America. 

I was asked, by one of the women who commented on the link, who was I to deem a culture's traditions and customs as harmful? But in light of all my previous arguments I ask, who are they not to challenge the disproportionate treatment in the gypsy culture? Who are the gypsies to think their limiting norms count as traditions and are therefore correct? There is something very askew when one human decides it's alright that another should be complacent with the shortcomings of their culture simply because they are miles away and speak a different language or have different customs.  

To answer the question I was asked, I am a person that sees the people of the world as human beings first (perhaps, only as human beings) and who believes in the equal treatment of all human beings, regardless of culture and so should you.

Lanoitakude’s Closing Comments

Thank you, Maribel, for contributing to my blog! I very much agree with her words. I see the issue as Relativism run amok. We have to be “culturally sensitive” when it comes to criticizing the practices of other cultures, lest we be deemed ignorant or closed-minded. Here’s the rub, folks: not every belief is as good as the next. Not every culture treats its citizens as well as others. The practice of personal autonomy is much better than the practice of infanticide, honor killings, and subjugation. The belief that young women should receive equal education and opportunities as their male counterparts is better than the belief that young women must remain uneducated and permanently bound to their husband, whom they married at age 16, for the remainder of their lives. This isn’t a “relative belief”. This is a fact. Thanks for reading, and I hope to have Maribel Guest Blog again sometime soon!

Seeing is Not Believing

It is common for people to assume that Atheists adhere to the principle of “seeing is believing”. I would like to argue that this is not the case, at least as far as Reason is concerned.

What the Atheist really should be adhering to is the scientific method, or simply, “no belief without proof”. There seems to be a connection that people draw between witnessing something and proving something. I argue that witnessing something is not a form of proof, not by a large margin.

Knowledge, or as close as we can get to it, is never derived directly from sense experience, let alone an individual’s sense experience. We know that the Earth is round. This is counter to what our senses might tell us. It is only through the application of a more thorough and trustworthy system (scientific method) that we are able to determine the truth.

This issue generally occurs when discussing matters such as ghosts, the soul, and divine beings. A Christian may say to me, “I have experienced God directly, I have felt Him.” I cannot discredit this statement. I cannot say that this person is mistaken or never actually had this experience. To attempt to is a fool’s errand. Our sense experiences are so intimate and vivid to us that I can never hope to dispel them. However, the above Christian has not proven to me that the God of Abraham exists, just as someone who informs me they saw a ghost has not proven to me that ghosts exist. Our limited and error-prone senses do not dictate the laws of reality. It is only through iteration, repeatability, and testability that we can arrive at knowledge.

I have been asked on multiple occasions: “What would you do if you saw a ghost?” This phrasing, of course, begs the question. A better phrasing would be “What would you do if you saw a transparent person who resembles what others have described as a ghost?” They assume that, once seeing it for myself, I will believe in its existence. I do not think this would be the case. I am more likely to assume that there is something wrong with me than I am to assume that ghosts exist. Will I be frightened? Assuredly. Will I think it proof of the existence of ghosts? No. Will it make me call my doctor and order a brain scan? Maybe. [for more information about Ghosts, see my previous post on that subject].

This very stream-of-consciousness essay is dancing around my overall point: I am not the arbiter of reality. The laws that govern nature are not dictated by me in any manner. My finite and erroneous senses can never derive knowledge on their own. At their best, my senses can point me in the direction of further inquiry. At their worst, they provide patently false data. I trust my reason far more than I trust my eyes.

Reducteo Trap

This is a brief explanation of a form of argumentation I will call "The Reducteo Trap".

There are few things more gratifying than the Reducteo Trap. The Reducteo Trap is a variation of Reducteo ad Absurdum (or just Reducteo, as I’ll call it), and was one of the primary weapons in Socrates’ arsenal. The Reducteo technique is where you assume the truth of your opponent’s position and demonstrate how it leads to absurd, contradictory, or undesirable conclusions. Reducteo is very effective against opponent’s who hold broad or uncompromising positions, as these sorts of positions often do not leave “wiggle room” for outlier examples and situations.

Here’s an example of Reducteo ad Absurdum:

Person A: I believe that God instantiates the soul at the time of conception.

Person B: Okay, if that’s true, then what happens with natural spontaneous abortions? Does God kill the soul when this occurs? Or what about chimeras? Does God create a second soul when the embryo splits, or does the soul divide into two souls?

In the above example, Person A held a very strong belief. Person B assumed they were correct, and demonstrated absurd conclusions or questions we must then ask if we assume as such.

The Reducteo Trap is where you attempt to lead the opponent toward their own absurd or contradictory conclusions, or simply be forced to accept your own position. The goal of the Reducteo Trap is to eventually arrive at the Reducteo ad Absurdum situation, by way of getting your opponent to admit several small, seemingly innocuous premises. Put simply, you force your opponent to build the premises of your own argument. The primary difference between normal Reducteo ad Absurdum and the Reducteo Trap is who actually makes the argument. The Reducteo Trap involves the opponent admitting to their own contradictions or absurdity, instead of you pointing it out to them. This makes it significantly more powerful.

I certainly did not create this technique. This is taken directly from the methods of Socrates. He would simply ask so called experts about their positions and beliefs, and eventually get them to accept absurd or contradictory conclusions. He did not do this by brow beating or inflammatory language – he simply guided the ‘expert’ in the construction of their own position in such a manner as to allow it to be easily toppled.

Another way to explain this is to make reference to a common fallacy – The Strawman. With the Reducteo Trap, you attempt to lure your opponent into “Strawmanning” themselves. Basically, you lead them along so that they present their own position in an manner that is easy for you to defeat.

For those of you that have held discussions and debates with me, you have probably experienced the Reducteo Trap first hand. It is definitely my preferred method of argumentation.

Do any of you have a preferred method of argumentation? If so, I’d love to hear about it!

The Man and the Dog

This is something I wrote over a year ago. It has been a slow week for me, philosophically speaking, so I'm tapping into my previous works. Hope you all enjoy it, regardless!

Let us imagine a man owns a pit bull. This man takes the pit bull to a park where small children are playing. The man procedes to release the pit bull from his leash and leave the dog to his own devices. This dog does not have to harm anyone, but it definately has the power within itself to do so. If the dog harms no one, we would still say that the man was acting irresponsibly. If the dog does attack a child, possibly killing it, we would hold the man responsible, and charge him with criminal negligance, for he knew the dog had the capacity to commit evil and allowed for the possibility to play out. So it is with God. God created man, placed him within the world, and released him from the leash (gave him free-will). Man then prcoeded to harm and commit evil, which God knew could potentially happen (and, depending on our interpretation of omniscience, God knew it would happen). If we believe that the man with the pit bull was wrong and his actions criminal, we must then think the same about God's actions.

Possible objections:

1) God did not know that man would commit evil.
2) The dog's life (and man's) is better without the leash, and we must accept the evil to enjoy the freedom of choice.
3) A dog's sense of morality differs from that of a human. A dog does not act with relation to morality, it only acts on instinct, and is therefore not responsible for its own actions. A human, however, is capable of moral decisions, and is therefore responsible for its own actions, not God. The human has free choice and is therefore responsible for its actions.

Replies to possible objections:

1) This would deny God's omniscience. For even if he did not have explicit knowledge of the future, God's intellect is definately vast enough to appreciate the likelyhood of evil.
2) Dostoevsky's arguments in The Rebellion. The greater good, the divine order, is not worth the suffering of others. To say that others must suffer so that I can enjoy good is selfish and wrong.
3) Man's ability to commit evil through moral choice makes him far more cruel than a beast, as Dostoevsky says in Rebellion. Because of this, God is even more responsible, knowing full well what man would do with this will, knowing full well what would happen when he released the dog that is man into the world.

Even if we say that there is no causal connection between God's creating of the agent and the agent's actions (possibly like Chisholm), we still can blame God. Let us assume that the man did not train the dog to behave in any way whatsoever, nor did the man breed the dog or any such thing, but the man still brought the dog to the park. We don't care if the man trained the dog to kill or not to kill, bringing the animal there created that negligent risk for which we would still blame him. It is this way with God; even if God does not influence our actions in any way at all, it was still God's actions that brought us into existence and allowed us to commit the evil that he surely would have known about.