Why don't we make ourselves the last generation on earth?
What kind of people are we, to bring children into a world so full of frustration and suffering?
Why would we fill the earth more full of children, who will then struggle with all the results of an environment we have made hostile to us, not to mention more directly sinful acts?
Is it not cruel and wanton, to subject new life to this?
So asks Peter Stringer, notorious 'bioethicist'.
So, before him, might Adam have asked Eve.
So, what's the answer? Colin Hansen reports and offers Biblical reflection here.
(And yes, it would effectively be racial euthanasia. An entire race killing its future generation.)
3 comments:
Very interesting article.
Wow. Thanks for the link. I'd like to see a bit more developed reflection than "what did God say to Adam & Eve"?
Surely Ecclesiastes 3 resonates with the grief or futility of Singer here, as does Genesis 6:3-8 and 8:21... or many of the themes of exile/the futility of the womb
cursed be the day I was born...
i will build you a house...
sons are a heritage from the LORD...
in sin was I conceived...
Rejoice O Barren woman...
John Gray, grieves in much the same way in Straw Dogs:
A high tech Green utopia, in which a few humans live happily in balance with the rest of life, is scientifically feasible; but it is humanly unimaginable. If anything like it ever comes about, it will not be through the will of homo rapiens…in any future we can realistically foresee, there will be many such conflicts…
and yet, he says...
And yet…What if a shift in our place in the world were to come about without anyone planning it? What if our designs for the future were moves in a game in which we are only passing players? (184-5)
Hasn't that got something of Hebrews 2 about it? The rumour of resurrection and new creation, a new kind of human, in Christ - a rumour in whose breeze all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling?
Thanks, Chris, for developing the reflections further. I think you're being harsh on Colin Hansen, though, infering that he had no sympathy with Singer. Hansen picked up on those themes you raise - just very concisely. He refers to original sin, and that, 'We groan along with a creation subjected to futility, currently awaiting redemption (Rom. 8:19-23).' Reading the summary Singer's views reminded me of Straw Dogs, too.
My pastor has just started a series in Ecclesiastes, and brought out how we must engage with the futility of life - that all mankind is summed up in Cain (life-taking) and Abel (a breath, vanity!) He mentioned Bohemian Rhapsody as a reflection of this running through history - boy has that got me thinking!
I love the imagery of your last sentence - I can picture, hear and feel that concept :)
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