Thursday, October 25, 2007

Bioethics without Christ, please

The Bioethics podcast delivers two episodes (048 and 049) which together are a lecture by Amy Laura Hall, Ph.D. titled Conservative and Liberal Bioethics. This is a lecture of which I expected a lot and eventually eluded me altogether. I can appreciate that Hall is a conservative and is not poised to represent Liberal Bioethics in an advantageous light, but I was hoping to get a little bit more information, so that I could better understand what it is and how it is different from the Conservative view.

Unfortunately, Liberal views are hardly outlined and as far as I was hoping to be introduced into the Conservative view, I am left a bit frustrated also, I wouldn't be able to repeat. It makes me think Hall was speaking for her own parish and such may explain better so, what beginning and end held the lecture together.

The beginning is that Hall complains she has to explain to liberals that there can be no ethics without a believe in God, 'till she is blue in the face'. How so, I wonder, though I can anticipate some of the thinking. I can even appreciate it, when we treat 'God' as an abstract supreme order, and not as Christ, G-d or Allah, for that matter. According to the end of the lecture, Hall's version is clearly Christ. And she utters the last sentences in the way of liturgy, in the language of worship and not of rational discourse. What I make of it is that The Crucifixion of Christ is in her opinion the most important happening in past and present and has everything to do with Bioethics. At that point, it is entirely beyond me what is talking about. How could I, I am not a member of the liturgy anyway.

I want to engage in Bio Ethics, but here I am shut out of the deal, not on the grounds of my opinions, nor my intelligence, nor my writings, but on the ground of not being a member of the club. I wonder whether this is ethical at all.

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