bearing the image by julie borg (world magazine, 9.17.2016)
does a person's view of what it means to be human infuence his ethical decision making?
john evans, a sociologist at the university of california, san diego, analyzed survey data from 3500 US adults in order to find out.
the results....shocked him:
those who believed humans bear the image of God held more hmumanitarian attitudes than those who do not.
evans' survey first asked participants whether they believed humans were defined by
being made in the image of God,
by having higher intelligence, or
simply by being biological creatures determined by DNA.
he followed with ethical questions:
should soldiers' lives be risked to stop genocide in a foreign country?
should people be allowed to buy kidneys from the poor?
should terminally ill patients commit suicide to save money?
is it OK to take blood from prisoners without their consent?
should terror suspects be tortured to potentially save lives?
(note: not included, should a living baby in the womb be burned alive with chemicals, cut up
with their mother's consent?)
the more that respondents agreed with the purely biological definition of a human, the less likely they were to view people as special.
they were less willing to stop genocide and more likely to accept the ideas of buying kidneys, suicide to save money and taking blood from prisoners.
by comparison, those who believed humans are made in the image of God were less likely to agree with money-saving suicide or nonconsensual blood donation.
the biological view of humans can lead us to see them as being like objects, evens concluded, discussing the research from his book What Is a Human? in the aug 6 issue of new scientist.
the magazine's editors added, 'if this preliminary result is upheld by further research, it will come as an unwelcome shock to scientific materialists. (note - why?)
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