Thu Nov 9, 2023 – 2:33 pm EST
(LifeSiteNews) — Whenever a truly reprehensible idea that manages to offend even the dulled moral sensibilities of the Western public is advocated, it is nearly always an ethicist doing it. To those unfamiliar with the academic field of ethics, this might seem counterintuitive. When most people hear the term “ethical,” they think of striving to do the morally right thing, of scrupulosity and honesty. Some of our most prominent ethicists, however, use “ethics” as a way of breaking down moral norms and advocating practices that are overtly evil and not infrequently vile.
For example, as I noted in a lengthy essay earlier this year, the decades-long campaign by some ethicists to advocate for the moral permissibility of infanticide is beginning to pay off. Infanticide advocacy is not the purview of obscure crackpots. Dr. Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago has stated that, as Christianity fades, the “euthanasia of newborns” will be permitted; MIT psychologist Steven Pinker believes that laws against infanticide are difficult to defend; philosopher Michael Tooley stated that infanticide “should be legal up to the time an organism [baby] learned how to use certain expression.”
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