Oh, that old chestnut, Martin Ibn Warriq.

>>About ultimate convictions: God or no-God? Do you understand that in the way you're trying to use the word dogma you hide from yourself your own commitment to a secularist dogma: the first article of which has to be taken on faith that "there is no God".<<

The first premise, requiring no faith of any kind, is that "there is no evidence for God".

In the same way that there is no evidence for the Loch Ness monster (I was getting a little tired of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny). It would clearly be a misrepresentation to insist that "it is necessary to take on faith that there is no Loch Ness monster". The absence of evidence is sufficient to draw a conclusion that such a creature does not exist.

At the same time, there are many thousands of people who believe that Nessie is indeed real.

Just hiding.

I have no problem with that, but know that their commitment to that belief can only be supported by faith, not evidence. In a strange way, I admire them, for their ability to stick to their guns, each time a new, more sophisticated search reveals... nothing.

Now, if those folk were to insist that the existence of Nessie be taught in schools, alongside the long history of searches that come up empty, on the basis that people wouldn't have been talking about it for centuries if there wasn't *something* there... I would object.

And if some Nessie-lovers were to invent some pseudo-science to boost their cause, I would object to that, too.

*Funny enough most pushing ethics classes refuse to think for a moment when it comes to killing the unborn.*

Not so runner. But a little less bible thumping and a bit better
understanding of biology, could do people like you a world of
good, so that you actually understand the difference between a
being and a person.

Pericles, while you are objecting, please allow me to join you.

The author and others seem to assume that working out the best way to behave in a given difficult situation (as rehearsed in ethics classes) will necessarily come up with a conclusion in conflict with religious teaching. Sometimes it will; often it won't. When it does, it will usually be because the nature of the moral dilemma is such that there is no religious rule exactly suited to solving it because the men (and women?) who wrote the religious rules did not anticipate that situation. Today's humans confront many moral dilemmas that would have been unthinkable to the ethicists of two thousand years ago because they arise from technical and other situations that could not have existed then. If religious rules were adequate guidance to behaviour in all situations in a contemporary world, why would hospitals, universities and research establishments need to have ethics committees? For many people, aborting foetuses is a stomach churning thing to do. For others, who understand that literally thousands of foetuses abort naturally every day and that very often the women who lose babies did not even know they were pregnant, the horror of abortion can seem less. It is understandable that some religions regard every human induced abortion as a monstrous disaster. Others might wonder why, if abortion is so monstrous, God, or nature, or chance, or whatever it is, seems to cause so many more of them than humans are responsible for. To make and impose a single, ineluctable moral judgment on every human who sanctions an abortion because of some religious belief seems unrealistically harsh. Sometimes, moral dilemmas are best solved by people skilled in making ethical judgments rather than by unthinkingly applied religious rules. Ethics classes seem much more likely to produce people with these skills than scripture classes.

What a confused article, one in a string of sloppy articles we have here lately with no backbone, beginning, end, logic, introspection or rational evaluation.

Are you experimenting with the latest essay-writing robot, Graham?

It's getting closer, but still wouldn't pass the Turing test.

GlenC, you may wish to inform yourself a little better. Most spontaneous abortions (miscarriages) occur when the child is still an embryo. It would be very unusual for a woman to miscarry a foetus and not know she was pregnant. Furthermore, the example given in the article was of a 32-week-old premature baby. He ceased to be a foetus when he exited the womb during a caesarean section. He wasn’t even particularly premature – most babies at this age won’t even require intensive care.

As for ethics classes, I studied Ethics and Philosophy under Peter Singer and wasn’t particularly impressed with his conclusions. I will grant, however, that he was very rational, and I do agree with him that to be logically consistent anyone who advocates abortion cannot object to infanticide because birth does not mark some transformation into human or person.

In theory, ethics classes and religious instruction are not only compatible but intricately linked. You cannot teach ethics without teaching the principles of ethical behaviour, and most of the principles we adhere to in the Western world are based on Judeo-Christian commandments such as “thou shalt not murder” or “thou shalt not steal” or “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Without moral principles, rational thinking and ethical judgement have no starting point.