How could Dawkins suggest such a thing?! Some people really annoy me.

So here we are again. Another day, another Richard Dawkins Twitter outrage. This time it's about the morality involved in knowingly choosing to have a child with Down syndrome. Dawkins had the audacity to state his view in reply to a question that the moral thing to do would be to abort and try again. Naturally this being Twitter, one does not have the luxury of expounding on philosophical points of view; however, even before Dawkins' apology and explanation (you can read it here), it ought to have been a matter of a two second consideration to be able to imagine the line of thinking. I’ll put forward mine quickly before moving on to the main point of this post.

                                                                             

At the point at which a mother would discover through testing that her offspring has Down syndrome, the offspring would not be remotely close to the blurry lines of personhood. Even if it was one's determination to attribute personhood at this stage, it's hardly important beyond the realm of religiously conjured ethics anyway, and if that’s your case then your problems go deeper than what’s addressed here. What matters in the real world is suffering. At the time of an abortion, a foetus would not have the capacity to suffer. It would not have a conception of suffering even if it could. It would have no historicity to protect. And it would have no capacity for any preference on the matter whatsoever. For that reason, when a mother learns that her offspring has the incorrect number of chromosomes (in this case, 21), from that point in time she has a choice. Assuming she wants a baby, should she bring a new life into the world with severe disabilities, or should she bring a new life into the world without disabilities? Remember, the starting point of the dilemma is at the point of knowing the diagnosis, assuming the matter of concern is the welfare of the potential child. The investment made either physically or emotionally before that point is irrelevant to that concern and only has a part to play in the case of total selfishness in the agenda of the mother, e.g. “I want a child now”. Again, the choice is simple, should she choose to have disabled baby, or choose to have a fully able baby? If one accept that the more moral action is to give her offspring the best possible chance at a long and healthy life to the fullest of human potential, then one also would have to accept that the more moral choice would be to abort. The extent of the likely scale of disability that comes with Down syndrome is not the determining factor; it merely amplifies the extent of the moral case. For the same reason, the fact that some people with Down syndrome lead relatively able lives (Hu Yizhou from the China Disabled Peoples Performing Art Troupe, being one example) ought not to be a factor in the decision. This is not about accepting or valuing disabled people, this is about not actively choosing to create disability in the first place.

With that two second thought process out of the way, it is clear that if one’s morality is based on causing the least amount of suffering, then the tweet from Richard Dawkins would indeed qualify as true (in fact, I don't believe there is such a thing as a true moral statement, but that’s a discussion for another time). Thankfully, for those of us who would rather less suffering, it would appear that most women in that situation would make a similar judgement because they do indeed tend to abort and try again, thus causing less suffering than they would be likely to otherwise. 

Now on to the irritating point of all this.

What then proceeded to occur on Twitter and, of course, on Facebook, was the customary hysteria. In Dawkins' apology, he categorised the main types of responses and their motivations (I advise you to double check what they were so I don't have to repeat them) but there is one group that he appeared to leave out - explicitly at least - and it is the one group that I seem to notice crawling out from their intellectually dingy holes every time something of this nature happens. First we get the statement of fact or reasonable judgement from Dawkins (this includes the cause of the last outrage when the swine had the raw nerve to suggest that saying one thing is worse than another thing within a category does not mean that one condones either), then we get the outrage from those who suddenly find themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to deal with reality, and then, as certain as day-break, we get the enemies of reason, in their vast hordes, leaping up excitedly, ready to re-grind their axes, exclaiming, "See! I told you Dawkins is a bastard (therefore everything he says is void, evidence or not)!" These people don't care whether or not the statement is true, whether it's supported by reason, whether there's an array of evidence behind it, all they care about is scoring a propaganda point for their cause. Their cause is nearly always irrational, frequently religious, and very often sinister. 

Those people, together with the groups identified by Dawkins, make up the vast majority of the internet outrage. They are all expected. They are an irritation, but even they are not what concerns me most. I am concerned more by those who claim to happen to agree with Dawkins, but then align against him and even the point at hand, because they believe they will score some brownie points by criticising the directness of his method. If you agree with the statement but then join in with the ad hominem against it, then you are an intellectual coward. By saying that you're an atheist, for example, but that you don't support the behaviour of atheists who don't capitulate to religious censorship, then you're an intellectual coward. You do not get any points for trying to present an image of yourself to others as someone special because you have the decency to keep your thoughts to yourself, truth be damned. You certainly do not get any points for desiring to be so liberal that you will avoid facts and reason, and even seek to socially censor both, just in case it steps on the toes of one group or another that doesn't happen to react kindly to facts and reason. That makes you... no, not a nicer person... an intellectual coward. Furthermore, that is also precisely what you become when you claim that someone ought to keep their mouth shut on an issue with which you assume they have no personal experience. It is censorship, it’s fallacious, and it's the product of a weak and feeble mind.  

Christopher Hitchens - A Call to Arms

I did not know Christopher Hitchens personally, much to my eternal disappointment, but he shall always remain a personal hero. He was one of our species' greatest friends. Inspiring millions, he was one of the big guns in the fight for rationality and intellectual honesty. By now there will be hundreds of websites online telling you all about the specific great work he did, so I won't drift too far down that road; just do a Google search. What I will say is how important his place in the world was and what we should do next.

Hitchens, along with people like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and James Randi (there are of course others – I personally like Tim Minchin!) represent the line in the sand in the battle for reason. For the majority of human history, we have been slaves to the superstitions of others (even of our own) and this has caused suffering on an unbelievable scale. Not only has it led to countless wars and persecutions, the slaughter of innocents, the murder and abuse of women and children, and the theft of property, it has dramatically held back the advancement of knowledge and learning. You don’t even have to look to history for the evidence; the modern day Middle East will serve just as well. Whilst we in the UK have come a long way in comparison to the intellectual, cultural, and technological stagnation of faith based societies, they are not alone in their ambition to drag the rest of the world back to their level.  The United States of America, the most powerful nation in the world, is dominated by superstition and its politicians (like Rick Perry) compete to out-God each other, in an attempt to win over the dangerously irrational majority of voters. Given half a chance, these increasingly fundamentalist characters would waste no time in embarking on an agenda of intellectual regression, much like that of the Middle East. Americans are lucky though, because they have been given protection from their beliefs, by the foresight of the secularist Founding Fathers. The United States, whilst dangerously faith dominated in many ways, is actually not faith based, but derives from the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment was one of humanity’s finer moments in history. It marks the fight back of reason over superstition. This was when the species finally began to wake up. Hard fought intellectual battles took place against religion, but it is still ongoing even today. The simple fact of the matter is that it has taken a high degree of effort on the part of individuals to stand up for the truth and rationality, and every time there is a relaxing of that effort, the enemies of reason take ground (Hitchens was one of these people, and I aspire to eventually be one too). There are more people than ever before, now willing to stand up and admit they do not believe in God and/or do not follow any religion, but far too many of them also say that it is not for us to tell other people what they should or should not think. This is a view that is fundamentally flawed, because by not doing so, they contribute to the potential loss of the freedom to hold and express that view. It is those who do fight faith that have won the degree of freedom we currently have. Those who claim to be an atheist because they have arrived at that conclusion through reason, but who then say those like Hitchens or Dawkins are wrong to push it so forcefully, are like the conscientious objectors to a war who are more than happy to languish in the freedoms and protections that others have worked for, fought for and died for. But make no mistake, without that effort, we would face persecution for free thought, science would halt, women would be enslaved, and children would be abused physically and mentally on a far larger scale.

Christopher Hitchens’ passing then should not result in a day of tweets and then business as usual. A huge gap has been left in rational society, and our task now is to fill it. It is our duty to plug and reinforce humanity’s defences. Rather than simply say how sad it is that we have lost a great man, we need to collectively pick up the flag of reason and charge en masse. What could be a more fitting tribute than to collectively continue his work? We now need a mass movement, to step out from the virtual world and with one voice, ‘Hitch Slap’ every irrational, superstitious, faith-monger in a position of responsibility, be they priests, imams, politicians, or popular personalities. It is up to us to instigate the next Enlightenment, and Christopher Hitchens has showed us the way. This is a call to arms.