Philosopher's Haze

As I promised yesterday, here is my post regarding the Forty Days For Life protesters in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; this post will give an overview, as well as my thoughts regarding, the conversations I had with these protesters. Before I get into any of the specifics, I would like to first make sure we all understand what I mean by Forty Days For Life. Below is a news segment from Sun TV in Ottawa:

 In this video, a spokesperson for the Forty Days For Life (FDFL), Jack Fonseca, indicates that the ‘vigil’ is organized by Campaign Life Coalition, and has events in cities across Canada, the United States, Western Europe and a handful in South America (a complete list is available here) – bringing the total number of events to 301. It runs from September 28 – November 6, holding daily ‘vigil’ outside ‘abortion mills’. Fonseca indicates that activities during this “focused campaign” include: prayer and fasting; peaceful, constant vigil; and, community outreach. When asked by the host, Brian Lilley, if this was at all concerned with attempting to persuade women to change their minds about having abortions, or stopping them from having them, to which Fonseca responded:

“No, this is very peaceful. …This is not a protest, this is a prayer vigil; it’s a peaceful vigil. People are literally on their knees outside these abortion facilities and hospitals where abortions are performed, praying…All sorts of people praying, perhaps holding a sign. …If the prayer volunteers have an opportunity to interact with the women coming in for abortions, if they do have that opportunity to interact, its an offer of speaking to them, doing some sidewalk counselling, offering them information about the humanity of the unborn child that they carry in their womb and talking to them about pregnancy crisis centers…and we’re that after as well. Many of these women decide to go ahead with abortion despite our prayerful witness and we are there with information about post-abortion healing afterwards as well.

Fonseca goes on to discuss the success of the campaign across North America since its inception: so far, they have had more than four thousand of what they call “turn-arounds”; women who arrive for an abortion, change their minds because of the FDFL campaign “vigil” and leave. In Toronto alone, he claims, about thirty-six women have been ‘documented’ as turn-arounds - aka successes. The FDFL Ottawa website summarizes the purpose an activities of the FDFL campaign:

40 Days for Life is an international campaign of prayer and peaceful witness outside of the world’s abortion mills to highlight and defeat the scourge of abortion in our time. There have now been five coordinated 40 Days for Life campaigns in Ottawa, beginning in the Autumn of  2008 until now.  These efforts have mobilized people of faith and conscience in 240 cities across all 50 of the United States, five Canadian provinces, plus locations in Europe and Australia. Tens of thousands of lives have been saved!  After so many years of legalized abortion, many people of faith are experiencing a renewed sense of HOPE!

FDFL members pride themselves on the “tens of thousands of lives that have been saved,” by people not only of faith but of “conscience” as well. They also really seem to enjoy pointing to pictures of aborted fetuses, in attempts to revile their target, like the guy above who walks around with one tied to his chest. But more on that below. Bottom line is, these are vigils. Remember that. Remember the contradictions that are already creeping to the surface.

*      *      *      *      *

Now I would like to share with you my encounter with the Ottawa chapter of the FDFL campaign. I showed up at their place of vigil, across the street from the Morgentaler Clinic, both Wednesday and Thursday, though on Wednesday it was entirely unplanned. I was going home Wednesday night on the bus and had to make a transfer, but when I got on my transfer the bus didn’t move for another few minutes, during which time, in my peripheral, is a sandwich board telling people that they must be “born again” and other christianity-inspired propaganda.

So this puts me into a very cantankerous mood with respect to religion. Then the bus finally starts rolling. About four minutes into the ride the bus stops at a red light and outside to my right in a bunch of people participating in the FDFL vigil. So I got off the bus and walked by the group a couple of times, repeating the statement “Women’s right to choose!” Then I was going to leave, but decided instead to approach them and ask them a few questions about what they are doing and why. And this is a valid reason. They are engaging in what many consider to be not only a protest, but also something that is ethically questionable. And because of this, the fact that I disagree with them, and the fact that if they are going to be engaging in these activities, they should be able to explain why they are doing what they are doing, as well as why they are convinced that what they are doing is right.

When I approached them I began asking why they were out protesting women having abortions. No one answered initially, but finally, one young woman spoke up who informed me that what they are doing is praying, not protesting. And granted, her and some of the people she was with were holding rosaries. I asked her if they were just praying or hoping to be able to change the minds of women going in for abortion procedures. She insisted they were there to pray. Then behind me I notice the man featured in the top image, whom I have decided to refer to as the main protester, as he was there both on Wednesday and Thursday. And on his chest is the sign that reads “Abortion is Murder,” complete with a picture of an aborted fetus (you can find a picture of him with this sign at the end of the post). I don’t care what your rationale for being at these events is on paper, what I care about is how you actually comport yourself. And when you are walking around with a sign like that, you have moved from praying to preying on the emotions of women.

What I wish I had asked her, forgetting the non-prayer for a minute, was is she could pray at home. If she answered yes, I was going to ask her if her god hears her better outside or when she is closer to the thing that is being prayed for. Do prayers weaken in efficacy the further one is from the thing or person being prayed for? If yes, this could point to a real shortcoming of this fairy-tale deity. But if there is no short-coming on the part of this deity, then prayers do not weaken in efficacy as the praying person moves further away from that which is being prayed for. Therefore, praying for whatever it is specifically each of them is praying for, would be just as effective if they prayed at home or somewhere else where they were removed from the site of the clinic. But the fact that they are there, means they are necessarily attempting to do more than merely pray.

But back to the main protester. At a couple of times during my exchange with them, he pointed to the image on his chest as though it were supposed to have the power to render me immediately and entirely incapable of withstanding their unsound lines of ‘reasoning’ (and that term is used VERY lightly). It is also intended to discourage pregnant women from entering the clinics and having abortions. The idea is that seeing an aborted fetus is supposed to make one feel ‘wrong’ about having an abortion. This is similar to the procedure already enacted in some US states I believe, that requires women first see the fetus on a sonogram before allowing them to have the abortion. And while it may deter women from entering – at least while they might possibly have to walk past him – it does not mean the women are deterred because it is a picture of an aborted fetus.  It could very well point only to the fact that a lot of people, when they see blood, even images of it (especially when the images are high quality) will want to get away from it.

Then the main protester starts to ask me if I agree the fetus is a human, and I answered I did. He said that I should agree it is wrong then. I argued that the fetus is without any of the prerequisites for personhood. For a discussion on this subject, which would take us well beyond the scope of this post and would result in my not getting any sleep tonight, I encourage you to consult the paper I wrote below on the ethics of embryonic stem cell research.

The funny/not-so-funny thing about this is that he kept referring to the science demonstrating that I am wrong, but never did anything but suggest I consult a still unnamed National Geographic video. Yes ladies and gentlemen, you consult a National Geographic video and you will have all of your answers. Then you can go out in public and let yourself sound arrogantly ignorant.

When I asked them why they were doing this when no one was making them have an abortion, the young woman who spoke up earlier. No one really had anything to say about this. One or two shrugged.

The main protester again got onto the human/person issue and tried to get me to contradict myself by asking me if I felt there was something ethically wrong with removing life support from someone if they so indicated that doing so was what they desired. I answered that, no, I do not. He disagreed with me, and that was about it.

I was even more irked at this point that I had been at any point previously in the day, so as I was walking away, I yelled nonsense four times. When I got home I vowed I was going to write about it then and there, but my lovely woman suggested I might want to get some pictures and whatnot. So I decided to go down again on Thursday, take some pictures, and maybe approach these people again.

Ergo, on my way home today, camera in hand I got off the bus and found two people protesting: the main protester and another older man. I started snapping pictures of them, then moved to take the picture of the signage hanging from a tree, shown above. I got into another discussion with the main protester, who had a fresh assault ready. He raised the issue of objective values – that abortion is wrong regardless whether any one of us thinks this or not. The source of these values is, according to them, a deity. Very William Lane Craig of him. But let us not forget that Kant developed an ethic that was objective in evaluating the rightness or wrongness of any particular action – the Categorical Imperative. To insist on a non-testable and purely baseless deity as the source of objective values, is not only incredibly foolish, it is also to prima facie deny the possibility of something like the Categorical Imperative (please do not take this as an endorsement on my part of the Categorical Imperative). It also denies such realities as our mirror neurons which regulate in a large way how we respond to others and other entities.

He told me that, with respect to the role that evidence revealed by the scientific method plays in the formation of my understanding of the world, including such concepts as humanity and personhood, I have actually run astray. Science actually belongs under the guidance of religion, he told me, and it was science under the careful lead of religion that brought us out of the Middle Ages and into the Enlightenment, not what many think happened: a decrease in the ability of religion to influence the thoughts and actions of individuals and greater ease in challenging religious ideals after Luther and King Henry. We failed to agree on this point.

He even brought up the Rare Earth hypothesis to demonstrate how unique and special we are as a species. What this main protester is doing is assuming that life must require oxygen and water, while also being carbon based. This is a huge assumption. It rules out other types of life willy-nilly, even though we have evidence that there may be non-carbon based life right here on this big old rock called earth. Such evidence includes what appears to be an arsenic-based life form found at Mono Lake and being studies by NASA (click here). To make these assumptions is to have an unsubstantiated belief that you are special and not alone, which is nothing new for christians.

What is more, we seem to be put together in an ordered fashion ourselves, and so does this universe. That means the universe requires something which is capable of creating it and all of its order, but which did not need to be created itself. But, again, there is not a shred of actually valid justification for this position, because it actually solves nothing. The issues they are trying to quell by introducing their god end up also applying to the notion of their god: what created their god. And if god doesn’t exist for them, then it seems as if the universe came into being out of nothingness. And as I have alluded to in other posts, there is no such thing as nothing: not even conceptually. Energy has always existed in form or another – energy vibrating at different frequencies and grouping in different ways accounts for all physical ‘stuff’. So even if there was nothing visible, there was still energy. We are also aware that even in a vacuum, which is apparently empty, quantum fluctuations continuously bring particles into and out of being. This in itself could be how everything came to be.

And I was actually called a Nazi by this main protester, when I continued to deny that a fetus is a person. And just to make sure I understood him correctly I asked him to clarify if he meant a Nazi like Hitler or if he meant something else. He clarified that, yes, he meant like Hitler. But for starters, I am not even christian, which already makes him and I very different. Lets also not forget that it wasn’t necessary for the Führer to go any further than the good book, the bible, to start compiling heavenly justification for genocide.

Then a family joined the group in protesting, including their very young children. Their daughter, who looked to be the oldest, did not appear to be any older than eight. I asked the man if his children were fully aware of the significance of the event in which they are partaking, at which point his daughter walked up and stood in front of me and he responded only by stating that his kids made their signs themselves, which does not answer my question at all. It only tells me that his kids are capable of making signs, not that they understand the content of those signs; it also does not demonstrate that they are participating freely or that they actually came to think that abortion is wrong on their own instead of being told that it is wrong.

A lot of the issues I discussed with this new person I had already discussed before, so there is not a lot of new information to contribute from this man. Though, in discussing science and the world and his god, that ultimately it requires a leap of faith. Not reason, faith.

I also want to add that I was told a number of times, by the main protester, that he hoped I would be able to forgive myself. I asked him for what. He said that we all need to be forgiven for something. But this seems to imply there is something, like his god, that watches everything is is slighted every time someone is harmed or wronged in some way. However, unlike people who by-and-large are able to get passed their harms, his god seems to be incapable of getting over things like we are. But there is no god substantiated in any way by any valid evidence.  This forgiveness card is designed to help make people feel guilty and easier to control: one of the catholic church’s tools of choice.

*      *      *      *      *

I think it is safe to say at this point that the FDFL extends beyond a prayer and vigil group and is, despite what they may say, a protest, aimed at making certain people feel too bad, ashamed or guilty to go through with abortions, making them feel horrible after the fact, and generally being full of more nonsense than a science textbook from Tennessee.

*      *      *      *      *

One more thing: When I was leaving I noticed I had occupied this family the entire time they were there, except for the wife a bit and the children who just walked around like zombies, and the main protester. So if nothing else, I helped distract them for a while…and hopefully also wrote a post you enjoyed and found informative.

Pictures

 

 

Related articles

• One step closer to quantum computers (zdnet.com)
• 40 Days of Life: Time to Protest the Protesters (philosophershaze.com)
• DAY 30: “They pray rather than shout” (deaconforlife.blogspot.com)
• DAY 29: Clinic closed for the day (deaconjohnspace.wordpress.com)
• Clinic workers laugh as ambulance transports woman injured in botched abortion (hotair.com)
• Support vigils to stop abortion (deaconjohnspace.wordpress.com)
• The Quantum Universe and the Uncertainty Principle (witnessthis.wordpress.com)
• Rice physicists move 1 step closer to quantum computer (eurekalert.org)
• Gravity wave detector gets more sensitive (go.theregister.com)
• DAY 30: “They pray rather than shout” (deaconjohnspace.wordpress.com)
• Don’t Get Too Worked Up Over Quantum’s Earnings (fool.com)
• Taking a Personal Inventory (nicolemaschke1.wordpress.com)
• DAY 28: Divine providence (deaconjohnspace.wordpress.com)
• NIST Achieves Record-Low Error Rate for Quantum Information Processing with One Qubit (scienceblog.com)
• Even More Atheist Folly! (borne.wordpress.com)
• A hidden order unraveled (eurekalert.org)