Pardon the Interruption: The Worst Argument in the World

Okay, that's it - I've had it up to here. On matters such as abortion, legalized euthanasia, birth control, and general sexual ethics, I've heard non-believing and, sadly, believing liberals (who really should know better) use the exact same stupid argument just one time too many, and it's time said argument die a swift death. What is this silly rhetorical tactic, you may ask? It follows thus:

No religion should be allowed to force its beliefs on the general populace.

These are code words; accurately translated, they mean, "No Christian should be allowed to force his beliefs on the general populace." Liberals, you notice, tend to avoid criticizing other faiths. In majority Muslim nations, Sharia law legalizes the murder of dissenters and perceived "sinners" - but too few liberals squeal like stuck pigs over this blatant violation of human rights. No - instead, liberals accommodate Muslims, allowing Muslim nations to use international diplomatic bodies to impose limits on the freedom of speech and thought enjoyed by the Western world - then turn around and focus their ire on the mythical "Christian Taliban."

If the Church were in fact eager to impose its religious beliefs on the U.S., I would heartily agree with the above oft-expressed sentiment. By no means do I wish for the U.S. governments - local, state or federal - to mandate church attendance or legislate belief in any of the mysteries of the Catholic faith, such as the Trinity, Christ's presence in the Holy Eucharist, or anything else that is inaccessible to human reason unaided by Revelation. I don't want the state authorities to be granted the power to punish heretics or apostates; regrettably, that has happened sometimes in the Church's history, but the Church, in Her wisdom, has officially recognized that such intertwining of state and Church was a mistake.

Neither I nor Mother Church advocates for theocracy; Church documents are very clear that each person has a God-given right to his freedom of conscience. In fact, it was Jesus himself who counseled Christians to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's," a teaching that has had a profound impact on Western society. The Western nations are now the freest in the world, and though secular liberals would like to purloin the concept of the separation of Church and state and claim a twisted form of the idea as their own, they really have Christianity to thank for their political liberty.

When liberals deploy the above outlined argument within the context of the debates over moral issues, they are performing a bit of dishonest intellectual judo. They are trying to force Christians to concede that their socially conservative beliefs are solely faith-based - that human reason doesn't factor into the equation. We Christians should not accept this characterization of our position. Though our faith certainly bolsters our confidence when it comes to speaking out, our beliefs are reasonable first and foremost, as is evidenced by all the non-Christians, agnostics and atheists who have adopted similar positions.

Consider, for example, abortion. The Church teaches that the human person has a God-given right to life from the moment of conception. This argument is supported by biology as well as faith. When human sperm meets human ovum, the resulting organism instantly possesses a human genome; this embryo is not going to somehow develop into a fish, or a cat, or an elephant. True, many of these embryonic humans die natural deaths due to genetic abnormalities, but this does not give us license to deliberately kill them. People naturally die in floods and mudslides; does this mean we have a right to deliberately precipitate such disasters? Of course not. What is natural should not be conflated with what is right.

To adopt the pro-abortion position is to accept a set of crazy, unreasonable, and potentially dangerous philosophical principles. Those who are pro-abortion argue that the embryo is wholly dependent upon his or her mother to sustain his or her life and therefore shouldn't be granted the same rights as other human beings. But born human infants are also wholly dependent upon their parents for survival; does this mean that these born humans should be denied the right to life? Peter Singer says yes, and for that, I owe him a debt of gratitude; his writings are insane and morally reprehensible, but at least he's illustrated for us the logical conclusion of the argument from independence: infanticide.

Others who are pro-abortion argue that the status of the human embryo is uncertain; President Obama, for example, famously said that making a declaration on the humanity of the embryo was "above my pay-grade." But even if we were to concede that the embryo's status is indeed uncertain (something we should not concede, by the way), shouldn't we err on the side of life? We give alleged criminals the benefit of the doubt; why don't we do the same for defenseless unborn human beings?

I could go on. Suffice it to say that not once in my statements above did I invoke the Bible to defend the Church's position, nor did I argue that it is God's will that unborn babies should be granted the same rights as born persons. Doing so is completely unnecessary; the Church's position on abortion is entirely accessible to human reason. And the same is true for many other controversial positions the Church holds on moral issues. Right now, if you ask, I can present an argument defending the Church on any topic you can name without once consulting Revelation. You may disagree with the arguments presented, but they are not unreasonable, nor are they an imposition of the Christian religion upon society.