FIRST THINGS Thread on Importance of Equality in Cultural Debates, Continued

Thanks to all who have commented about my FT blog entry on the importance of equality in the cultural arguments we face. That thread has continued over at First Things, including a good exchange between Villanova Law School professor Robert T. Miller and me.

This is how I characterized the issue of equality as it relates to the embryonic stem cell issue: “For example, the belief in equality has forced those who wish to instrumentalize some humans into making absurd and scientifically unsupportable assertions. Thus, in the embryonic stem cell debate, scientists make the ridiculous assertion that human embryos are not really human. Well, they aren’t Martians! Some even assert that embryos are not human because they don’t have arms and legs and noses. This is nonsense, of course. And it is easy to rebut merely by resorting to any embryology textbook.

“So the situation becomes highly ironic. Those charged by the mainstream media as being purely ideological argue from valid science, and the supposedly objective scientists are forced into making purely emotional and sophistic appeals. The media doesn’t report it this way, of course, but because of the widespread belief in equality, those who seek to deny its application are forced onto very thin intellectual ice. Indeed, the issue of the moral value of the embryo remains a cogent issue, at least in part because people do understand that embryos are human organisms, and that this scientific fact matters morally.”

There’s more, of course. Check it all out, here.