Saturday, November 17, 2007

The Secular Case for Life

I first began posting in discussion forums on at the Secular Web in the later part of the year 2000. Watch me defend the existence of God and the truth of Christianity here for instance. It took about 5 years of study and debate for my view to change. I went back to the Sec Web discussion forums and let people know that I had changed my view here.

There are lots of obnoxious trolls in these forums. But there is also a lot that can be learned. One guy is a person that has 5 years of post graduate study in logic. He goes by the name bd-from-kg. He was one of those people that I learned a lot from.

I was stunned to watch him defend an objective case for morality against a gaggle of skeptics, and do so in a way that was just as persuasive, if not more so, than any Christian I had read. A good example is found here.

This made me suspicious of his views on abortion. Yes, I knew that some skeptics were pro-life, but I don't think I had met one in the discussion forums themselves. Sure enough I discovered that he was pro-life as well.

His arguments were presented in a way that was more persuasive than any I had seen before, and I had read Francis Beckwith's book. This was quite surprising to me. It may not be rational, but I believe that bd's efforts on abortion were instrumental in paving the way for me to come out of Christianity. I was so firmly convinced that abortion was wrong, that I thought if your worldview couldn't account for that, your worldview would have to be wrong.

Beckwith's book doesn't rely on the truth of Christianity to make its case, or the existence of God. But since I hadn't seen a skeptic make a persuasive case against abortion, in the back of my mind I kind of thought the reasoning required to refute abortion demanded theism. After reading bd I realized that wasn't true.

Had I not realized this as I considered leaving Christianity, I might not have gone through with it. If leaving Christianity also met becoming pro-choice, mentally I'm afraid that just may have been too high of a hurdle.

For this reason I want to make a few posts presenting some of bd's arguments as he made them. He writes better than I ever will.

2 comments:

HispanicPundit said...

Yes, definitely do so. I just read his abortion comments, and I agree - they were great! Really looking forward to his discussion on the death penalty and objective morality, among others.

Anonymous said...

Don Marquis wrote an essay called "Why Abortion is Immoral." It's a pretty good utilitarian argument against abortion.