Religious Crackpot of the Month, March 2008: ...But I Bet You Reckon Something

So many people are worried about the future ... but I think that a fundamental concern of all of our people at this present time and one which we ourselves as Christians must take very seriously is that concerning the future of human life itself.

Oh, shit! What’s happened?

This text is taken from Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s Easter sermon this year. I’ve copy-pasted most of the sermon into this blog-post: I encourage you merely to skim it.

The beliefs which we have previously held, and the standards by which we have lived throughout our lives and by which Christians have lived for the past 2000 years are being challenged at this present time in ways in which they have never been challenged before!

This is getting less and less scary by the sentence.

The norm has always been that children have been born as the result of the love of man and woman in the unity of a marriage. That belief has of course long been challenged. However I believe that a greater challenge than that even faces us ’“ the possibility now facing our country is that animal-human embryos be produced with the excuse that perhaps certain diseases might find a cure from these resulting embryos.

“Excuse”? He says that as if scientists basically just love nothing more than fucking about with genetics to create monkeys with four asses, and just use the possibility of curing disease, saving lives and generally improving humanity’s lot as an “excuse”.

No matter how hard some Catholics try to hide the anti-science rhetoric, they never seem to quite manage it, do they?

What I am speaking of is the process whereby scientists create an embryo containing a mixture of animal and human genetic material. If I were preaching this homily in France, Germany, Italy, Canada or Australia I would be commending the government for rightly banning such grotesque procedures. However here in Great Britain I am forced to condemn our government for not only permitting but encouraging such hideous practices.

Any moment now, he’s going to tell us what’s wrong with the idea, rather than just emoting about it…

Our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has given the Government’s support to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. It is difficult to imagine a single piece of legislation which, more comprehensively, attacks the sanctity and dignity of human life than this particular Bill.

“Sanctity”? Ah, then it’s just an ideological objection to research that could save lives and advance human understanding of ourselves? That doesn’t count as a reason, and that right there is why he won this month’s award.

With full might of government endorsement, Gordon Brown is promoting a Bill that will allow the creation of animal-human hybrid embryos. He is promoting a Bill which will add to the 2.2 million human embryos already destroyed or experimented upon. He is promoting a Bill allowing scientists to create babies whose sole purpose will be to provide, without consent of anyone, parts of their organs or tissues.

Not babies, embryos. Do please get this right, or else you have no credibility at all. After all, why listen to his opinion if he doesn’t understand the science behind it? We’re talking about cell cultures, here, not fully-formed human beings.

Edit: the Bill also allows for the creation of “saviour siblings”, however, since the cells taken from these children to save their siblings are from the umbilical cord which is cut off anyway, I can’t imagine what his objection to that could be.

He is promoting a Bill which will sanction the raiding of dead people's tissue to manufacture yet more embryos for experimentation. He is promoting a Bill which denies that a child has a biological father, allows tampering with birth certificates, removing biological parents, and inserting someone altogether different. And this Bill will indeed be used to further extend the abortion laws.

I can’t imagine that any of this is correct, but since the only news coverage this Bill has had has centred around the whining of scientifically and legally unqualified clergymen, it’s really hard to be sure. Certainly “the raiding of dead people’s tissue” is illegal under at least two different Acts, one of which is very recent (I have a donor card and it would still be illegal to use my tissues for research without my prior consent) so I can’t for a second believe that this provision really extends to anyone who hasn’t consented. And “tampering with birth certificates” is almost by definition illegal. Perhaps this Bill will allow people to alter the details on them in some pre-approved way, and perhaps O’Brien thinks that that’s too much and constitutes “tampering”, but without explaining what the Bill actually allows that he objects to, he might as well be just making things up.

Further it seems that Labour MPs are not to be allowed a free vote on this Bill and consequently are denied the right to vote according to their conscience ’“ a right which all other political parties have allowed. This Bill represents a monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life.

You know, I’m not at all sure that it does. The cardinal never bothers to explain precisely what this attack is – possibly this is because he’s preaching to a group of Catholics, so he knows they’ll all support whatever he says because they have deferred their opinion-forming to a group of bigots in Italy, but even so he must have known (indeed, intended) that it would end up in the newspapers, or else he’d have talked about this “Pascal Mystery” nonsense that Christians are usually so keen that we discuss this time of year – but it’s clearly rubbish.

I think it was in A Devil’s Chaplain that I heard this argument explained best, but I can’t remember so here’s my attempt. I’ve used a different visual metaphor, so it’s not plagiarism (this is what they tell me at uni).

If you had enough paper, you could construct a really giant family tree which includes everything which as ever lived (on Earth, at least). Clearly people have certain rights, and grapes do not, but on this tree there would be an unbroken chain of links between the Pope and the grapes crushed to make his communion wine. The very concepts of “human” rights, “human” dignity and “human” life are nonsense when we realise this, because it implies that somewhere on that family tree you could draw a line and say “these are human; these are not” – but wherever you draw that line, there will be almost no difference between the last generation excluded and the first included. The intermediate stages have died out since, so we are left with a clear gap between “humans” and “animals”, and anywhere we choose to draw the line in that gap is effectively the same. This is very convenient for religious types who believe in “the sanctity of human life” and that God gave “humans” dominion over “animals”, that “animals” can be killed for meat but “humans” cannot even if they want to. The Bible is very clear on this, not least because it was written by people who didn’t know about evolution. (I am assuming for the sake of argument that everyone involved in this discussion accepts evolution. Anyone who doesn’t shouldn’t be allowed a say because they’re too ignorant to have a meaningful opinion.) When people start making animal-human hybrids, this gap will start to fill up with new creatures and we will be forced to reassess the situation.

This is, of course, a good thing: right now Christians (including former Presidential candidate Duncan Hunter) are using this ridiculous line drawn on a family tree to say that a single fertilised egg cell is “human” and therefore has full rights, whereas a primate (er, the monkey kind of primate) is an animal and doesn’t count. That’s clearly moronic, and so this arbitrary “line on a family tree” method of doling out rights clearly isn’t sufficient. There is (and/or has been) a continuum of different beings on Earth, and we need a method for granting rights and protection that reflects that. We already have it, to some extent: toddlers aren’t allowed to buy alcohol, 14-year-olds aren’t allowed to have sex, vote, or buy a house. The mentally ill have their rights curtailed for their own good. And equally, we allow you to be needlessly cruel to bacteria, insects and plants, but not to mammals or reptiles. Some people who claim to be vegetarians eat fish – so apparently fish are deemed insufficiently self-aware to get any rights, whereas cows are smart enough that they should be left alone. Clearly we do accept that some creatures have more rights than others and that it isn’t a simple, binary “human or not” question. Except, of course, when it’s convenient for the Church that we do not.

In some other European countries one could be jailed for doing what we intend to make legal.

Well, yes, but loads of countries have different laws than us. In Germany, there’s surprisingly little free speech when it comes to the Nazi regime (which seems almost perverse but I imagine they know what they’re doing). In Greece, Tetris is illegal if you play it in a cybercafé. And if you count Turkey as part of Europe, then there’s even stranger examples.

In some other European countries, France say, it would (quite rightly) be illegal to run a Catholic school. Hasn’t mentioned that one yet, has he?

I can say that the government has no mandate for these changes: they were not in any election manifesto, nor do they enjoy widespread public support. The opposite has indeed taken place ’“ the time allowed for debate in Parliament and indeed in the country at large has been shockingly short.

Maybe that’s because it basically isn’t all that important in real life?

One might say that in our country we are about to have a public government endorsement of experiments of Frankenstein proportion ’“ without many people really being aware of what is going on. Many excuses are being made for this present legislation, particularly that cures will soon be found for various diseases which afflict mankind through this legislation. Rather the opposite seems to be the case when cells required for ongoing investigation into cures through medical science can take place through cells obtained in other ways from human bodies and certainly not through the creation of animal-human embryos.

I cannot refute this lase sentence as I cannot make any sense of it.

I contend that matters of such concern to the peoples of our countries should not be left quite simply to a vote by members of Parliament. Along with my colleagues in England and Wales and my brother Bishops here in Scotland I would maintain that the establishment of a single permanent statutory national bioethics commission is something which would indeed bring considerable benefits. As I indicated recently in a letter to the Prime Minister: ‘This would appear to be the only way that the issues raised by the swiftly developing biotechnology industry can be adequately discussed and weighed up in a body which engages with public concerns and informs the government and parliament on matters which will continue to raise such unimagined and complex ethical questions’.

I quite agree that it raises complex ethical questions, however I would add the following:

Of course, “the establishment of a single permanent statutory national bioethics commission” might be a good idea (as long as we’re spelling “establishment” with a small ‘e’), but it depends on how much money it would take compared to how much it would cost for Parliament and the existing ethics commissions to do it (and the comparative results thereof) – and I can’t imagine cardinals have any useful information to base that call on.

Our voice must be heard and that voice must be listened to especially by the members of Parliament who will soon vote on this issue in the House of Commons.

As best I can figure, “our” in this sentence appears to refer to a group of bishops, a group who already have far too much say in Parliament.

Sadly many members of Parliament do not seem concerned ’“ or rather are in a certain ignorance of what is going to happen.

Spot the hypocrisy. Go on. Have a go.

In January of this year our Catholic Parliamentary Office wrote to all of Scotland’s 59 members of Parliament asking them how they intended to vote. As of today only 9 have bothered to reply. Over three weeks ago Bishop Philip Tartaglia of Paisley wrote to Gordon Brown urging him to allow all his MPs a free vote ’“ as of today he has not even had an acknowledgement!
Our Church, and I personally, have, I think, done all the ’˜right things’. We have responded to the consultation document; we have sent letters to all of Scotland’s Members of Parliament; we have written to the Prime Minister; we are speaking publicly about what is going on in our name and in our country. Further, I recently signed a letter with other Church Leaders which concluded: ‘This Bill goes against what most people, Christian or not, reckon is common sense. The idea of mixing human and animal genes is not just evil. It’s crazy!’.

I’ve noticed that while the word “reckon” appears in that quote, the word “because” does not.

Until that sentence, there was always a chance I would forgive him. But come on. “The idea of mixing human and animal genes is … evil” – why? Why is it evil? What is even remotely evil about it? Who gets hurt? What possible Bad Thing will happen as a result? Ah, you see, but that’s not what “Evil” means if you’re religious. If you’re a Christian, then Good is Whatever God Decides Good Is, and Evil is Everything Else. And “the idea of mixing human and animal genes is … crazy!”? Well, surely you have to actually understand the reasons (note: not excuses) for doing it before you get to decide whether or not it’s a crazy thing to do?

I would have said that persecuting homosexuals was evil. I would have said that blocking attempts to introduce life-saving contraception into Africa to promote your (very profitable) religion was evil. I would have said that believing that what is very obviously just a little disc of bread was, in strict point of fact, the literal body of a 2000-year-dead man was crazy. I would have said that talking to an invisible wizard who doesn’t exist and expecting a reply was crazy.

If you want to tell me genetics research is “evil” and “crazy” then you’re going to have to provide some kind of an argument. Especially if you’re going to preach this way to the general public and then demand a vote. You’re effectively trying to dictate policy.

Today as we celebrate in the resurrection the triumph of life over death I urge you to ensure that life continues to triumph over these deathly proposals. I know that many of you have already made your views known to your members of Parliament. I ask you to continue to do that.

No! Do some sodding research, and then you can make your views heard. Has it occurred to you that perhaps the reason there hasn’t been a vote is that it would be a waste of time? Personally, I think the idea of an elected government (rather than simply having a referendum on everything) is so that we can have a number of trusted people, with expert advisers, making informed decisions instead of an angry, illiterate mob making lowest-common-denominator, religiously motivated, knee-jerk, tabloid, reactionary arbitration on everything from science to the economy. Guess what? It turns out the world is actually quite complicated, and you can’t govern justly by applying a bunch of rules from a book or “what [you] reckon is common sense”! Common sense doesn’t apply to complex situations. If it did, there would be no universities.