Nothing as It Seems

Humanists generally agree that we ought to apply reason, free enquiry, and self-reflection when trying to figure out what is right or wrong. Most of us also think that it is unjustifiable to discriminate against someone solely on the basis of their race, sex, age, or whatever other grouping you can think of. Humanists rightly criticise religions when they defend discrimination against certain groups or individuals by means of scripture, revelation, authority, or, in some cases, tradition. Despite the fact that humanists have over time questioned and, indeed, freed themselves from many of these prejudices, is it possible, nevertheless, that many may still latch onto at least one dogmatic relic of an earlier age? Namely, the prejudice of speciesism. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations  estimates that around around 60 billion land animals are killed annually in food production— a large proportion of these come from intensive factory farms....

An version of this article was printed in Humanism Ireland , May-June, Vol. 152 (2015)   Until the second half of the twentieth century, there was little disagreement, at least within mainstream western thought, over the standard for human death. Death occurs when the heart has stopped beating and breathing has come to an end. The issue of whether or not someone is dead was generally held to be a simple question of fact. However, scientific and technological advances since the late 1950s—where the heart and breathing of patients could be artificially maintained by ventilators for weeks or months after all functions of the brain are irreversibly lost—have made the whole question more complex. As a result of this, the Harvard Brain Death Committee—which included a number of medical professionals, lawyers and theologians—was established; in their landmark 1968 report they argued that the clinical standard of diagnosing death should be when the whole brain, or brainstem...

In a recent article for the Sunday Business Post (14th Dec 2014), the science writer David Robert Grimes advises us not to be taken in by simple answers to cancer. In particular, he argues we should be highly sceptical of those who claim there’s evidence a plant based diet cures patients from the disease.  “Simplistic narratives may be alluring,” he says, “but when we seek simple answers to complex conditions like cancer, we run a serious risk of detrimental self-delusion.”  Grimes’ piece was largely in response to a new book— Stop Feeding Your Cancer —by Dr John Kelly, a Dublin based GP, who claims that the consumption of animal protein exacerbates cancer. Kelly’s evidence, according to a book review that appeared in the Irish Independent, was derived from the testimonies of over half a dozen cases—nothing, to be sure, that resembles a clinical trial. Also in response, Grimes, rightly, said that “a physician may attribute patient recovery to a special diet while u...

An edited version of this article was printed in  Humanism Ireland , November-December, Vol. 149 (2014)   E mpathy is the capacity to recognise the feelings of others in such a way that one can identify and understand the experiences of another being’s circumstances. It is where one can transfer one’s own feelings and emotions onto the subjective experiences of another.  The term ‘empathy’ has been only around for less than a century, and is a translation of a German psychologist's neologism whose exact definition is ‘feeling into’. One remarkable thing about humans is their ability to empathise with the suffering of others. The idea of empathy being a positive trait is widely accepted, since it normally stimulates motivation for moral and altruistic behaviour. As expected, many believe that if people had more empathy and moral motivation the world would be a much better place. In his book,  Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of H...

Should in vitro meat replace conventional meat production?   An edited version of this article was printed in  Humanism Ireland , Nov-Dec, Vol. 143 (2013) The first public tasting of an in vitro beef burger , made from meat grown in a laboratory, using tissue engineering, was cooked and consumed at a news conference in London yesterday (5th August 2013). The burger, m ade completely from synthetic meat at a cost of €250,000, was developed by Professor Mark Post , a specialist in tissue engineering, at Maastricht University, in the Netherlands, using stem cells. It was revealed that Sergey Brin , one of the founders of Google, invested in the project. Post and his team of scientists took cells from a cow and converted them into strips of muscle that they joined to make a patty. The way it’s produced, in a sense, has more in common with how plants grow than sentient beings. One of the tasters at the London event, Hanni Rützler ,   said: "I was expecting...

Not many ethical issues are as vigorously fought over as abortion these days.  Unsurprisingly, the standpoint of the different sides—put simply, those who are in favour of abortion and those that are against it—have not achieved much in shifting the beliefs of their opponents. Abortion was illegal in almost all western states until the late 1960s; in 1967 Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales) changed its laws to permit abortion on broad social grounds. In the  Row v Wade  1973 case, the United States Supreme Court held that women have a constitutional right to abortion in the first six months of pregnancy. Many other western nations like France and Italy have subsequently liberated their abortion laws. Ireland and Northern Ireland, however, have held out in opposition to this movement. Abortion in Ireland remains illegal under the 1861 Offences against the Person Act and in 1983 an amendment to Ireland's constitution states that an embryo, from the p...