Friday, October 28, 2011

Never Ever Bludgeon Babies? You'll Get an Argument from Peter Singer and Michael Tooley

This links to a paper by Scott Klusendorf on the pro-infanticide positions of Tooley and Singer. Interestingly enough William Lane Craig has debated Tooley on the existence of God.

11 comments:

Crude said...

And, of course, Dawkins absolutely, positively refused to debate Singer on this position. Right?

Oops, wait. Nope. He gave him a cheery little interview and praised him.

Every decent, modern, enlightened and moral person knows you should never, ever bludgeon babies*.

(* Unless the parents or mother would rather not deal with them.)

Anonymous said...

How is killing an extremely sick infant in any way comparable to genocide? One is morally permissible (perhaps obligatory) whereas the other is not!

Crude said...

How is killing an extremely sick infant in any way comparable to genocide?

Who said anything about genocide? We're talking here about infanticide. And it's not a question limited to "extremely sick infants".

Ilíon said...

"And, of course, Dawkins absolutely, positively refused to debate Singer on this position. Right?

Oops, wait. Nope. He gave him a cheery little interview and praised him.
"

Which is to say, "Dawkins absolutely, positively refused to debate Singer on this position" ... for, who debates against that with which he agrees?

Emanuel Goldstein said...

Singer has even proposed denying "personhood" to a newborn until the newborn is at least 30 days old.

Just another example of Militant Atheism in action.

finney said...

This should suffice to end the abortion debate.

Victor Reppert said...

I don't know if it resolves the important question of whether or not there is a morally relevant difference between fetuses and infants. But if there is no difference, then you can't go pro-choice/no infanticide. You either have to go pro-life, or accept infanticide.

Steven Carr said...

Christians are in no position to criticise Peter Singer.

All they can do is say that Singer should wait until he gets the OK from Yahweh before advocating that severely disabled babies should be killed.

And then it would be morally obligatory.

CRAIG
Rather, since our moral duties are determined by God’s commands, it is commanding someone to do something which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been murder.

.....

On divine command theory, then, God has the right to command an act, which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been sin, but which is now morally obligatory in virtue of that command.

JSA said...

@Carr - You're not making any sense. If Craig and other defenders of DCT believe that only God can override his own prohibition on murder and authorize killing of infants, then they are morally obligated to condemn Singer for suggesting otherwise. The fact that Singer doesn't appeal to divine command for killing of infants means that people who believe in DCT are, indeed, in a position to criticize Singer.

Ilíon said...

"Christians are in no position to criticise Peter Singer. ..."

As always. Mr Carr, you're a fool -- you're intellectually dishonest, and you *refuse* to understand what you like to pretend you're criticizing.

You can shed your obvious crocodile tears for the Amalekites, or, like VR, you can be so overwhelmed by it that you refuse to believe that God ordered it. But, in the end, you are not God, and God no more answers to you for ordering the destruction of the Amalekites than Churchill answers to you for allowing the destruction of Coventry, or than Roosevelt and Truman answer to you for ordering the destructions of Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

BenYachov said...

>All they can do is say that Singer should wait until he gets the OK from Yahweh before advocating that severely disabled babies should be killed.

That will never come since the death of the last Apostle all public revelation ceased till the Second Coming.

So if there is no God it will never happen & if there is a God it still won't happen.

So why are you bitching Steve?