Marvin Olasky interviewed Princeton philosopher of bioethics, Peter Singer. The New Yorker has called him the most influential philosopher alive. Influence means that one’s ideas have a way of shaping other people’s ideas. So what are Singer’s ideas you ask? When asked about the morality of necrophilia (having sexual relations with a corpse) Singer said, “There’s no moral problem with that.” What about bestiality? Is it morally acceptable to have sex with animals so long as they seem willing to do so? Singer’s answer: “I would ask, ‘What’s holding you back from a more fulfilling relationship?’ (but) it’s not wrong inherently in a moral sense.” Translation: I must say that you’d have to be pretty desperate, but your business is your business.
When asked if it was morally acceptable for parents to conceive and give birth to a child specifically to kill him, take his organs and transplant them into their ill older children Singer answered, “It’s difficult to warm to parents who can take such a detached view, (but) they’re not doing something really wrong in itself.” When asked if there was anything wrong with a society in which children are bred for spare parts on a massive scale he said “No.” I have to wonder why it’s hard to warm to such parents if there is nothing wrong with their choice to treat the unborn as human junk-yards. If their choice to harvest their children for their body parts has no more moral significance than brushing their hair, he should have no problem warming up to them.
He also affirms that it is ethically permissible to kill 1-year-olds with physical or mental disabilities, although ideally the question of infanticide would be “raised as soon as possible after birth.” What’s so scary is that this guy is a bioethicist! You would think a bioethicist would value human life and have some ethics. Not Singer. And he’s not alone. There are other philosophers occupying liberal bioethics chairs in liberal universities that advance similar idea.
If this guy is the most influential philosopher alive, we’ve got serious problems coming our way! What starts in the academy will end up as the common view on the street within 20 or so years. If we don’t do our job as the church today, to combat such moral nonsense with an arsenal of good theology and good reason, we will lose the future generation.
You can read the rest of the interview at Townhall.
May 11, 2009 at 4:52 am
Surely this is no surprise though. For society as a whole has progressed to the “if it doesn’t harm anyone, then its fine” which allows the necrophilia and beastiality parts in.
On the harvesting babies, that’s a natural development from abortion, and so the more the church gives, the more the world takes.
The church and every moral person needs to wake up to the decline in moral standards of the world an make a stand!
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May 11, 2009 at 11:39 am
Yes, our libertarian view of morality is the floodgate to all sorts of moral evils being accepted in society.
I don’t think abortion is to blame for harvesting. I think there are several things that got us here, one of the more prominent of which is embryonic stem cell research.
Yes, we do need to take a stand, and we need to make a rational, well-reasoned defense of our positions in the public square.
Jason
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November 21, 2012 at 7:53 am
[…] would think the choice between having an advocate of infanticide and bestiality or a pro-life and traditional marriage speaker come to your campus would be an easy decision in […]
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April 30, 2014 at 3:58 am
Is this supposed to be a philosophical article? In that case we should probably look at WHY he believes what he believes and let us evaluate his arguments, instead of assuming without any investigation that they don’t hold up because they tell us things that we find disconcerting. You seem to be doing the latter, which is to refuse to engage on a philosophical level from the start.
Like you, I have some serious worries about Singer’s moral philosophy… but if we want to convince people that they need to think differently we need to do better than this.
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April 30, 2014 at 9:20 am
No, it wasn’t meant as a philosophical article. It is merely a report. In a blog, you can’t make every post an argument. Sometimes it’s just reporting.
Jason
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June 6, 2014 at 1:25 am
It’s too bad Singers parents did not realize he was sic minded and abort him. Maybe he will get dementia in time to be euthanized in our new society that he is mentoring to condone murder.
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January 9, 2016 at 1:22 pm
“What starts in the academy will end up as the common view on the street within 20 or so years.”
Yeah… because the “common view on the street” accepts Kant’s categorical imperative and believes in Plato’s realm of forms, right?
That is not only patently false, it’s borderline stupid. We really don’t have to fear bestiality becoming socially acceptable just because Singer doesn’t condemn it.
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January 19, 2016 at 7:56 am
Sean, obviously ideas and perspectives change and therefore one wouldn’t necessarily expect very old ideas to be common on the street. And obviously not every idea that begins in the academy becomes embedded in a society. But if that idea becomes pervasive in the academy, and the common people attend the academy, within a generation it will become dominant in the culture. People tend to agree with what they are taught.
Who would have thought 30 years ago that the majority of Americans would think that homosexuality was morally acceptable, or that marriage could involve same-sex couples? The ideas trickle down to the people and are promoted in both the academy and the media. That’s all it takes. Will most Americans think bestiality is morally acceptable within 30 years? It’s hard to say. It depends on how far this idea spreads in the academy and whether or not the media promotes it. But it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. Cultures in the past allowed it. And given the ideas about the nature of humanity, our connectedness to all life, and a liberal sexual ethic, I think all one has to do is connect the dots. That doesn’t mean the majority of our society would ever engage in it (just like the majority does not engage in homosexuality). It just means they no longer would think it immoral, and would permit those who wanted to do it without moral and legal condemnation.
Jason
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August 9, 2020 at 9:20 pm
I don’t really see any issues with the bestiality and necrophilia portions of his ideas, honestly. Necrophilia can run into issues if there are other relatives or loved ones that don’t agree to the idea, but if there isn’t anyone to “speak for” the corpse so to speak, there shouldn’t be anything wrong with it. As for bestiality, it’s important that the animal isn’t harmed or in distress, but if it’s willing or initiating it itself? Why would that be morally wrong, exactly? (typically, this means I view anything where a human penetrates an animal as less acceptable)
The baby-harvesting is a little weird and doesn’t sit right with me, but on the other hand, I have no issues with abortion. The way I see it, if it’s finally born into the world, it should at least have an opportunity to try and survive life. If you can salvage something from an aborted fetus, then that’s perfectly fine, but otherwise why don’t you stick to stem-cell stuff instead of going through the absolute hassle of becoming pregnant/carrying a child/birthing it?
And it’s not discussed in the interview, but another comment briefly referenced euthanasia in a sarcastic comment, but there really isn’t an issue with euthanasia either, so long as the person being euthanized is wanting it. In a certain perspective, euthanasia is no different than the act of smoking (or consuming products that are proven to be very detrimental to health and lead to death)… Or maybe those who view euthanasia as morally wrong also view the consumption of harmful products as morally wrong?
(And going off other replies, if this was supposed to just be a “report” about the interview, it’s not really doing a very good job of objectively relaying the information discussed in the article. An argument is being made by the poster by bringing up the church and “what needs to be done.” Also, it’s not up to the church to guide all of humanity, just the people who follow that religion. Other people have other ways of life and differing morals. This moral righteousness that many western religions push is frankly a little overbearing; I don’t think the world is necessarily in a moral decline. Those who have certain moral standards may view it as a decline, but I really don’t think much has changed in the many many years of human civilization, honestly)
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April 22, 2023 at 1:13 pm
[…] wrong.(Dulle, J. (2009) Peter Singer, bestiality, and infanticide. Retrieved on 02.03.2023 from: https://thinkingtobelieve.com/2009/05/08/peter-singer-bestiality-and-infanticide/)“’Humans and animals can have mutually satisfying sexual relationships.’”.• Peter […]
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May 12, 2023 at 9:17 am
[…] Peter Singer who is the founder of the animal rights movement in the Western world, and a well-renowned atheist moral philosopher has defended bestiality, as well as necrophilia, and incest. […]
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