THE DISGUSTING CONCLUSIONS OF A MAN WHO THINKS HE KNOWS IT ALL

A Leftist, of course

"While I have never considered myself a Peter Singer fan, I now consider myself a not-fan." When did I become a Peter Singer not-fan? Or, rather, when should anyone? On any of the following occassions.

When you discover he is a determined defender of abortion and infanticide at the whim of the mother.

When you read him insist that, if faced with a choice, you should save the drowning chimp rather than the drowning infant.

When you read him insist upon vegetarianism and utterly leveling and economy destroying wealth transfers from rich to poor, globally.

When you read him expressing the most complete moral skepticism, the fashionable doctrine of an "invented" morality, and then using the language of morals to urge personal whims (remember that on his own view they cannot be moral convictions), knowing and because his doing so will deceive most readers.

[My respect for moral skeptics will skyrocket to the level I normally afford total strangers when, having "discovered" morality is folderol, they stop using the language of morals to bedazzle fools who don't get it, much as particularly wicked atheists might use God to cow the unwashed into acceptable behavior - perhaps after giving us all lessons in the "emotive meaning" of theological discourse. There must be some who are too honest for "revisionism." But I don't know any. Or of any.]

When you read any of his coarse and stupid and low propaganda efforts (he has written whole books like this), undertaken in the spirit of the very bright and mannerly George Bush pere looking for boob votes with his "Read my lips. No new taxes," and his absurdities about atheists and citizenship, Americanism, or voting, or whatever low drivel it was.

Mr. Thurley expresses some displeasure at the blank Professor Singer so clearly draws when required to understand or sympathize with the intellectual bases and legitimacy of a commitment to the RC Church by a number of very high-profile and famously bright contemporary philosophers (Nick Rescher is still at Pitt). No doubt the Professor would have at least as much trouble with a star philosopher's commitment to orthodox, or even conservative, Judaism, but that is also something we have seen in living memory.

As for me, while I am always curious about the religious commitments of people whose minds I respect (I begin by being pleasantly surprised that they have any), I confess that the baffled and incredulous displeasure of a Singer confronted with religious faith is my very own reaction when confronted with any version of naturalism.

Especially, I must say, in connection with discussions of the mind-body problem, or of various key issues in ontology related intimately to epistemology. It always astonishes me when otherwise sensible and obviously bright folks look me straight in the face and insist there are no appearances, and there are not even any minds for things to appear to; there are no beliefs or desires, there are certainly no propositions, nor are there numbers, sets, or possible worlds. And so on, actually, through a sometimes (to me) shockingly long and often surprising list of things that aren't, according to them.

Follow PT's link to the World Magazine article on the "Blue State Philosopher" from Australia.

Nice quote, this. If the 21st century becomes a Singer century, we will also see legal infanticide of born children who are ill or who have ill older siblings in need of their body parts. Question: What about parents conceiving and giving birth to a child specifically to kill him, take his organs, and transplant them into their ill older children? Mr. Singer: "It's difficult to warm to parents who can take such a detached view, [but] they're not doing something really wrong in itself." Is there anything wrong with a society in which children are bred for spare parts on a massive scale? "No."

While we slide down slippery slopes, people like this are jumping off cliffs.

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