Is Truth Relative? Do we have a “right” to do as we please?

This discussion is not about abortion, but let me lay it out as an example to make a point. Everyone has heard the abortion arguments before: the argument for life and the argument for choice. Is abortion wrong because the child is a human being and no one has the right to kill a child? Or should abortion be considered a valid option because it is in the right of the mother to determine whether they can or want the child? How about the right of a person to kill oneself? Do old sickly people have the right to end their own lives? Can other people assist them? Stop them? The debates continue but underlying these discussions is a much deeper battle: the battle in the validity of the sanctity of life.

Morality vs Rights?

Our current culture emphasizes tolerance and rights. The “right” of a person is held on a high pedestal, I dare say even above morality. What happens when someone chooses to say someone is wrong? They are labeled intolerant and someone not considerate of the “right” of a person to do and believe what makes them happy. We are told truth is not absolute, it is relative. It is all about what feels right to a person and the “right” for a person to hold onto his or her version of truth. Thus over time, “rights” have become a touchy subject but an issue we need to tackle when discussing the sanctity of life.

Are Humans any Different from Animals?

• Is there such a thing as the “sanctity of life” when it comes to human beings?
• Is there something innate about human beings that sets them apart?
• If so, under what basis?

Naturalism says there is nothing in life outside of what we see in nature- there is no spiritual world, there is no god, there is no supernatural. Thus from a strict naturalistic perspective, humans are no different from animals. Why is that? Naturalist have to believe that humans were born out of bunch of atoms that by chance led to who we are today. From a naturalistic perspective, the only explanation for our seemingly unique ability to reason, make decisions, or have a moral conscious, is simply determined by our chemical makeup. The very reason you are reading this article is due to chemical reactions in your body – you did not chose to read it, it was set to happen. There is no “free will” or “choice”, we just do as our chemical agents leads us to do. Thus if there is no free will, there can be no choice of doing what is right or wrong, or any extra “value” in us. Hitler did what he did due to his all the chain reactions from the beginning of time. Mother Teresa did what she did, not by choice, but due to her chemical makeup. You can’t blame one or honor the other – it’s was all determined. In this worldview, there is nothing that separates us from other animals let alone plants. There is no special “sanctity of life”.

Some might be tempted to say that one believes we are mere chemicals, but still believe humans are valuable. Most would agree to that, but again, under what basis? If we are indeed just a chance product of nature (this including our ability to reason, our emotions etc), what basis do we have any “sanctity” versus some other animal?

“It seems we demand humans to live with indignity, pain and anguish whereas we are kinder to our pets when their suffering becomes too much. It simply is not logical or mature…” – Dr. Philip Nitschke

Who is Dr. Philip Nitschke?

Dr. Philip Nischke is an Australian medical doctor and founder of pro-euthanasia group called Exit International. He has campaigned for legal euthanasia and was successful in passing a law in Australia’s Northern Territory. He helped four people end their lives before the law was overturned by Australia’s Federal government. He has also provided advice to others who ended up ending their lives. He has also been in the news for his willingness to accompany several New Zealanders to Mexico to help them purchase potentially life-ending drug Nembutal and also for presenting the idea of a “death ship” which he would take people to international waters to circumvent local laws.

Dr. Philip Nitschke’s Worldview
Nitschke’s worldview is a natural result of naturalism. Since what we see in nature is all there is to life, there is nothing innate about human beings that makes them any more valuable than a dog, a cat, or even an insect. He argues in the quote above, if we kill our own pets when they are suffering, why can’t we “dignify” people in doing the same. The question is, are humans innately different than animals? Are humans more valuable or are they the same? Is killing a dog or an insect different than killing a human being? To Dr. Nitschke, we are all the same.

Check out this article from Breakpoint regarding the Sanctity of Life:

Euthanasia & the Sanctity of Life

Regular BreakPoint listeners have heard me speak about the impact of declining birth rates around the world. One consequence is that older people comprise an increasing percentage of the population in places like Japan and Western Europe.

This increases economic pressures on these countries since an aging population requires more services while having fewer young workers to pay for them.

One doctor has come up with a way to address the imbalance between pensioners and workers—that is, fewer pensioners.

What Dr. Philip Nitschke has in mind isn’t raising the retirement age—his goal is fewer pensioners.

Nitschke is the founder of Exit International, a self-described “world-leading Voluntary Euthanasia” organization. As part of his mission, Nitschke, who is from Australia, travels to different countries teaching people “how to end their lives safely.”

One of his methods is a dose of the barbiturate Nembutal. While in Britain, he told Reuters that “almost every 75-year-old I meet now sees merit in having their own bottle of Nembutal in the cupboard as an insurance policy, in case things get bad.”

Every 75-year-old? Clearly the Kevorkian from Down Under runs with an atypical crowd. As Reuters put it, “Nitschke’s is an extreme view.” Extreme, but unfortunately not unthinkable, especially given the trajectory of our culture.

At the same time Nitschke was speaking to Reuters, Britain was awaiting new guidelines for cases involving people who help family members commit suicide. The guidelines are the result of litigation involving a woman with multiple sclerosis who plans to go to Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal. She wanted assurances that her husband wouldn’t be prosecuted for helping her kill herself. Britain’s law lords ruled that she was entitled to such assurances.

While assisted-suicide is still illegal within Britain, attitudes are changing. For example, the Royal College of Nurses has gone from being opposed to assisted-suicide to a position of neutrality. You don’t have to be an alarmist or even a pessimist to guess what the next change will be.

These changes coincide with the graying of the British population. Currently, 20 percent of Britons are over 65, and that is projected to rise to 30 percent by 2020. Pro-euthanasia advocates scoff at the idea that the elderly will be pressured to die by society, but British officials acknowledge the possibility. One told the BBC that he wouldn’t want to live in a society that pressured its elderly to kill themselves to make life easier for their families.

The government’s way of preventing that is laws that “strike a balance,” he said, between “sympathetic” cases and protecting the elderly. But you and I know where the road paved with good intentions leads. Without a bright line around the sanctity of human life, the extreme inexorably becomes the mainstream.

The so-called “right to die” can become, as one American politician suggested, a “duty to die,” especially as the costs associated with an aging population crowd out other priorities.

There is only one insurance policy against this nightmare—an unqualified commitment to the sanctity of life.

Euthanasia vs. the Sanctity of Life: It has only just begun.

Healthcare has become one of the biggest discussion topics in Congress and this issue of the sanctity of life is soon going to be a very real topic every person will have to grapple with. The large “baby boomer” population are slowing entering into the later stages of life.

How will the government deal with the limited resources available?
If an old frail 80 year old needs special treatments that will require expensive procedures and medicines, should we make them fully available? Or is it more “practical” to use those limited resources on someone younger who has more years to live and has a better quality of life?

The discussion on euthanasia and the sanctity of life has only just begun…

Where do you stand?

If one asks you..

• Do you believe a person has the right to kill oneself if they are old and sick? (By the way, let’s not sugarcoat this, it’s basically committing suicide).

If you answered yes, the next question would be,

• Does a person have a right to kill oneself even if they aren’t old and sick?
• Does the person have the “right” to do that?

It’s a slippery slope folks. If we deem it the “right” of a person to take one’s own life because they are sick (or assist someone), we will have to allow a person to kill themselves in any situation. Ultimately it comes down to this:

• Do you believe in the sanctity of life?
• Do you believe people innately have value and are set apart from animals, insects and inanimate objects? Or do you believe humans have no intrinsic value?

Intrinsic Value or No Intrinsic Value?

• If you believe in the sanctity of life, then under what basis?
• What gives people intrinsic value versus other things of nature?

If Dr. Philip Nischke is right and we are no different from animals, then he has every right to believe it is ok to kill a human being. We kill animals all the time, so why not people?

If you believe that people have intrinsic value and that life is sacred, first you need to figure out under what basis? Where does the value come from? Secondly, issues like euthanasia and abortion should be crystal clear. No one is allowed to kill any other human being under any circumstances. Nobody has the “right” to do that.

So where do you fall?
Leave your comments below.

Related posts:

1. There is Media, then there is Reality – Abortion
2. Sex Trafficking Victims – The Facts

Remembering 9/11 – Attack of the World Trade Center

An early apology for dampening your day, but I am a strong advocate for the need for all people to remember the events of September 11, 2001. This was a historical moment in history, one that will be seared in our minds forever. As hard as it is to relive the experience, I think it is important that we remember the fragility of life and how in the aftermath of this horrible tragedy, everyone had to stop their hurried life to reexamine why they do what they do. Questions about the meaning of life, why suffering exists, questions about God and afterlife all became a real issue in the eyes of those not only living in the United States but around the world.

See first the details of the event, followed by my own experience that morning.

Details of the Sept 11, 2001 Attack on WTC

Early in the morning on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, nineteen hijackers took control of four commercial airliners en route to San Francisco and Los Angeles from Boston, Newark, and Washington, D.C. (Washington Dulles International Airport). At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 was crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower, followed by United Airlines Flight 175 which hit the South Tower at 9:03 a.m. Another group of hijackers flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. A fourth flight, United Airlines Flight 93, whose ultimate target was thought to be either the United States Capitol or White House, crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania at 10:03 a.m, after the passengers on board engaged in a fight with the hijackers.

During the hijacking of the airplanes, the hijackers used weapons to stab and/or kill aircraft pilots, flight attendants and passengers. Reports from phone callers from the planes indicated that knives were used by the hijackers to stab attendants and in at least one case, a passenger, during two of the hijackings. Some passengers were able to make phone calls using the cabin airphone service and mobile phones, and provide details, including that several hijackers were aboard each plane, that mace or other form of noxious chemical spray, such as tear gas or pepper spray was used, and that some people aboard had been stabbed. The 9/11 Commission established that two of the hijackers had recently purchased Leatherman multi-function hand tools. A flight attendant on Flight 11, a passenger on Flight 175, and passengers on Flight 93 mentioned that the hijackers had bombs, but one of the passengers also mentioned he thought the bombs were fake. No traces of explosives were found at the crash sites, and the 9/11 Commission believed the bombs were probably fake.

On United Airlines Flight 93, black box recordings revealed that crew and passengers attempted to seize control of the plane from the hijackers after learning through phone calls that similarly hijacked planes had been crashed into buildings that morning. According to the transcript of Flight 93′s recorder, one of the hijackers gave the order to roll the plane once it became evident that they would lose control of the plane to the passengers.Soon afterward, the aircraft crashed into a field near Shanksville in Stonycreek Township, Somerset County, Pennsylvania, at 10:03:11 a.m. local time. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, organiser of the attacks, mentioned in a 2002 interview with Yosri Fouda, an al Jazeera journalist, that Flight 93′s target was the United States Capitol, which was given the code name “the Faculty of Law”.

The World Trade Centers Collapse

Three buildings in the World Trade Center Complex collapsed due to structural failure on the day of the attack. The south tower fell at approximately 9:59 a.m., after burning for 56 minutes in a fire caused by the impact of United Airlines Flight 175. The north tower collapsed at 10:28 a.m., after burning for approximately 102 minutes. When the north tower collapsed, debris heavily damaged the nearby 7 World Trade Center (7 WTC) building. Its structural integrity was further compromised by fires, and the building collapsed later in the day at 5:20 p.m.

Widespread Confusion, a Traffic Controller’s Nightmare

The attacks created widespread confusion among news organizations and air traffic controllers across the United States. All international civilian air traffic was banned from landing on US soil for three days. Aircraft already in flight were either turned back or redirected to airports in Canada or Mexico. News sources aired unconfirmed and often contradictory reports throughout the day. One of the most prevalent of these reported that a car bomb had been detonated at the U.S. State Department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Soon after reporting for the first time on the Pentagon crash, CNN and other media also briefly reported that a fire had broken out on the Washington Mall. Another report went out on the AP wire, claiming that a Delta Air Lines airliner—Flight 1989—had been hijacked. This report, too, turned out to be in error; the plane was briefly thought to represent a hijack risk, but it responded to controllers and landed safely in Cleveland, Ohio. [Source: Wikipedia]

Casualties of Sept 11, 2001 – The Statistics

There were a total of 2,993 deaths, including the 19 hijackers: 246 on the four planes, 2,603 in New York City in the towers and on the ground, and 125 at the Pentagon. An additional 24 people remain listed as missing. All of the deaths in the attacks were civilians except for 55 military personnel killed at the Pentagon. More than 90 countries lost citizens in the attacks on the World Trade Center. In 2007, the New York City medical examiner’s office added Felicia Dunn-Jones to the official death toll from the September 11 attacks. Dunn-Jones died five months after 9/11 from a lung condition which was linked to exposure to dust during the collapse of the World Trade Center.

NIST estimated that about 17,400 civilians were in the World Trade Center complex at the time of the attacks, while turnstile counts from the Port Authority suggest that 14,154 people were typically in the Twin Towers by 8:45 a.m. The vast majority of people below the impact zone safely evacuated the buildings, along with 18 people who were in the impact zone in the south tower. 1,366 people died who were at or above the floors of impact in the North Tower. According to the Commission Report, hundreds were killed instantly by the impact, while the rest were trapped and died after the tower collapsed. As many as 600 people were killed instantly or were trapped at or above the floors of impact in the South Tower.

At least 200 people jumped to their deaths from the burning towers, landing on the streets and rooftops of adjacent buildings hundreds of feet below. Some of the occupants of each tower above its point of impact made their way upward toward the roof in hope of helicopter rescue, but the roof access doors were locked. No plan existed for helicopter rescues, and on September 11, the thick smoke and intense heat would have prevented helicopters from conducting rescues.

A total of 411 emergency workers who responded to the scene died as they attempted to rescue people and fight fires. The New York City Fire Department (FDNY) lost 341 firefighters and 2 FDNY paramedics.The New York City Police Department lost 23 officers. The Port Authority Police Department lost 37 officers, and 8 additional EMTs and paramedics from private EMS units were killed.

Cantor Fitzgerald L.P., an investment bank on the 101st–105th floors of One World Trade Center, lost 658 employees, considerably more than any other employer. Marsh Inc., located immediately below Cantor Fitzgerald on floors 93–101 (the location of Flight 11′s impact), lost 355 employees, and 175 employees of Aon Corporation were killed. After New York, New Jersey was the hardest hit state, with the city of Hoboken sustaining the most deaths.

Weeks after the attack, the estimated death toll was over 6,000. The city was only able to identify remains for about 1,600 of the victims at the World Trade Center. The medical examiner’s office also collected “about 10,000 unidentified bone and tissue fragments that cannot be matched to the list of the dead”. [Source: Wikipedia]

The Morning of Sept 11, 2001 – Shocked & Confused

I woke up to the sound of someone talking on the radio. The sun was already beating down through the bedroom window, another beautiful day I thought. Half alert, I was wondering why my roommate had the radio on. I had planned to sleep in a bit. Then I heard over the air-waves, someone speaking of a plane crashing into a building. For a second I thought I must have misheard. Planes being run into buildings? That’s crazy. I need more sleep. Then I heard it again, a plane has hit the world trade center. I am not dreaming. Something is going on. I jumped out of bed. My roommate and I ran out to flip on the TV and there it was. The country was in utter chaos. Everyone was confused. It was surreal, you don’t ever hear such words like planes, buildings, terrorists uttered in the same sentence. Our eyes were glued to the TV, looking at the burning tower, the people screaming, the people crying. It was as if the world stopped. Are the people out? What about those on the top floors? What in the world happened? Why is no one making it clear what happened?! By now everyone was on the phone calling their own families. Then it happened, the tower collapsed. We gazed in horror as New York was engulfed in smoke. The dust smoke crawled and expanded in and between all the buildings as if it had the intent to bury all in it’s path.

The thought of the lives of 3,000 some people, gone in an instant, was something impossible to even fathom or comprehend. What about their families? How many people left that morning as if it was just another day in their lives to only have their lives transformed in a blink of an eye? I don’t know about you, but in that moment my view of life itself became very focused. What is the meaning of life? What really matters in life? What happens after life? Why is this happening? What is evil? Why is there suffering? Emotionally this day would shake the foundations of many who witnessed what we would later call 9/11.

To be honest, it is only the next year as I attended a gathering memorializing the event, when it really hit me what kind of horrible event I had just lived through. I just hope that all those questions people had then, will not be forgotten and those who dared to ask such tough questions, chose to find answers. If they did not, I think that is a tragedy in itself. Don’t let such an event not change you for the better.

• What is your memory of the Sept 11, 2001?
• Did your life change at all due to the incident?
• Did you ever grapple with questions like the meaning of life, suffering, afterlife or any other “life questions”?

Update Sept 13, 2011 – 9 11 Quotes & Statistic Infographic

Nickelback – Savin’ Me

No explanation needed. This Music Video by Nickelback called “Savin’ Me” paints a poignant picture of how life is finite. It awakes the viewers to the certainty of death and how none of us know when it will come.

Just imagine if you could see what the character can see. How would you view others if you knew the limited time you had with them? How would you live your life if you were constantly reminded of how finite your life really is? If you knew you only had a couple years left? But the more important fact is this – we CAN’T see it. We do not know when our life will end. We convenient live our lives ignoring this fact and choosing to live as if we will live forever. So how should we live then? What kind of questions should we ask and get answered before our time is up. Or do we ignore this fact just because we can’t plainly see it as the character does.

Have you thought about how short life is, and the repercussion it SHOULD have on your life and how you view things like money, career, and what is worth giving your life to?

See it for yourself.

Nickelback is an excellent band with good themes in lot of their songs. Have a listen.