Personhood and DIM

A collection of letters published by The Denver Post address Colorado's ballot initiative that seeks to define a fertilized egg as a person (Amendment 48). The thee letters perfectly illustrate an idea of Leonard Peikoff: the three basic approaches to fundamental ideas are Disintegration, Misintegration, and Integration (or DIM, but I'm rearranging the terms to fit the letters).

Martin Voelker writes, "This impossibility to decide doctrinal merits is why government must remain neutral, as indeed our secular Constitution prescribes." While it is true that religions have incompatible tenets, that is not a primary consideration with respect to 48. Voelker is essentially invoking skepticism: we cannot know, so we shouldn't make laws about things about which people are bound to disagree.

Lamar Taylor writes, "Those of us who support the 'personhood' amendment are pro-life. We believe that human life begins at conception." "We believe." While obviously a fertilized egg (as well as a pre-fertilized egg) is both alive and human in the sense of containing human DNA, it is not a human person, which is the letter writer's point. The letter writer offers no argument to back up the assertion that a fertilized egg is a person; "we believe" suffices. This is a symptom of Misintegration, or building a cohesive philosophy around a fundamentally mystical focus. The only argument that has ever been put forward that a fertilized egg is a person is that God said so.

Finally (as I've noted previously), Diana Hsieh writes:

A woman's fundamental right to control her own body, including her right to terminate or sustain a pregnancy, should not depend on majority vote. This would violate that right in spades, based on the fantasy that an embryo is equal to an infant. It would force a woman to provide life support to any fertilized egg -- even at the risk of her life and health and even if ruinous to her goals and dreams. It would make actual persons -- any woman capable of bearing children, plus her husband or boyfriend -- slaves to merely potential persons. That kind of moral evil has no place in a modern society...

Hsieh accounts for the real biological differences between a fertilized egg and a person. Hsieh's invocation of rights points not to some mystical entity but to the requirements of human life and flourishing. Hsieh briefly counters the approaches of both Disintegration and Misintegration. While obviously she can only skim the surface in a short letter, Hsieh's deeper theme is that reason and reality must trump both faith and skepticism.

My Religious Background

"Dan" asked about my January 16 post, "How about a summary of your own religious background and how you came to your current thinking on religion?" Fair enough.

I would (briefly) describe my life in three main stages. Of course, it took me several years to transition from one stage to the next.

1. Deeply religious childhood. I was raised in an independent Christian Church, and I attended Bible studies and camps growing up. In addition to the Bible, I read various, more modern Christian works, including parts of Evidence that Demands a Verdict and a couple of books by C.S. Lewis. I remember distinctly in high school that one of my Christian friends invited me over to another one of his friend's house to talk about religion. The other friend was not religious. We talked for quite a while, and I argued that Christianity is demonstrated by God's works in nature and his impact on human lives.

2. Struggling atheist. I also started to read Ayn Rand in high school, and she posed serious challenges to my religious beliefs. My first lengthy paper, and my best paper of high school, attempted to reconcile the doctrines of Christianity with the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Unfortunately, I did not integrate the moral virtues as described by Rand (most of which are widely regarded as legitimate, though Rand puts her unique spin on them) into my personal behavior very well. (It can be difficult to transition from a morality of "God says so" to one based on the requirements of human life as discovered by reason.) I remained deeply rationalistic in my understanding of philosophy, and I grew deeply pragmatic in my personal life. I did some really stupid things during these years that I really regret.

3. Maturing thinker and actor. Slowly, I have learned a lot more about life, prudence, character, and philosophy. I'm still working to improve myself in various ways, but basically I consider myself to be "on track." I've been part of a stable (and fun and developing) marriage for nearly a decade. I'm older (36 now) and a bit wiser. I'm an atheist but not fundamentally an atheist -- atheism merely rules out certain beliefs; it does not define a positive philosophy. Especially over the last couple of years, I've grown to appreciate the contributions of Leonard Peikoff a lot more. In Peikoff's terms, I went from "Misintegration" to mild "Disintegration" to "Integration," which I continue to work toward.

My interest in religion, then, arises from two main sources. First, it dramatically impacted my youth and thus the rest of my life. Second, obviously religion has an enormous cultural and political influence. I think my comments, then, may be of interest to Christians as they contemplate their own beliefs, to atheists as they figure out a positive alternative to religion, and to those interested in the impact of religion on the world in which we live.