Weeeee'rrre Baaaack!!! After an extended hiatus, Church Potluck has returned! In this episode (recorded a few months ago), brace yourself for a journey through the ethical labyrinth of modern science with Dr. Michael Bailey and Dr. Michael Papazian as our guides, discussing Christian and philosophical perspectives on the latest biotechnological marvel: human embryos created with neither sperm nor eggs.
Our conversation probes the ethical minefields of new reproductive technology and its threat to philosophical liberalism. We also address the Catholic Church's teachings on the sanctity of sexual intimacy and procreation and reflect on how the separation of sex from procreation has led to a cascade of societal shifts.
And of course, we toss in a few games and lots of laughs!
Join us in this thought-provoking episode that is as rich and varied as a Church Potluck, and prepare to engage with questions that will stir your soul and nourish your mind.
Note: We've marked this episode "explicit" only because of our discussions on sexuality, which include a few colorful descriptions!
The views expressed on Church Potluck are solely those of the participants and do not represent any organization.
Weeeee'rrre Baaaack!!! After an extended hiatus, Church Potluck has returned! In this episode (recorded a few months ago), brace yourself for a journey through the ethical labyrinth of modern science with Dr. Michael Bailey and Dr. Michael Papazian as our guides, discussing Christian and philosophical perspectives on the latest biotechnological marvel: human embryos created with neither sperm nor eggs.
Our conversation probes the ethical minefields of new reproductive technology and its threat to philosophical liberalism. We also address the Catholic Church's teachings on the sanctity of sexual intimacy and procreation and reflect on how the separation of sex from procreation has led to a cascade of societal shifts.
And of course, we toss in a few games and lots of laughs!
Join us in this thought-provoking episode that is as rich and varied as a Church Potluck, and prepare to engage with questions that will stir your soul and nourish your mind.
Note: We've marked this episode "explicit" only because of our discussions on sexuality, which include a few colorful descriptions!
The views expressed on Church Potluck are solely those of the participants and do not represent any organization.
We're recording, and Michael Baylis is usually where you jump in and say something All right, dr Papasian, so you are done with your grading.
Speaker 2:Yes, although I haven't entered all the grades in all right. So yeah, many my students are still in suspense. I have no idea.
Speaker 1:Well, that's good. My grading comes tonight, and so we'll see if I can get it all done that that is the goal for sure.
Speaker 3:My grading was supposed to be returned this afternoon and I Failed my students. I gave them. I gave them one assignment back, but it wasn't the assignment they're looking for, weighted very heavily. But you know, I Did what I could at the time and my students show mercy on me. So there you go.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, this is a new crop of students, obviously for the beginning of the semester, and I have told them multiple times my goal is to get it back to you within a week. Yeah right, but I'm not promising, but I think. I think I'll get it done tonight. So Welcome everyone to church potluck, where we are serving up a smorgasbord of Christian curiosity. I'm your host, dale McConkey, sociology professor and United Methodist pastor, and you know there are two keys to a good church potluck plenty of variety and engaging Conversation. And this is exactly what we are trying to do here on church potluck. We're sitting down with friends and sharing our ideas on a variety of topics from a variety of academic disciplines and a variety of Christian traditions, and we have a small stable of guests today, but we have a quality stable. Yes, if by quality you mean the number of times that they've come on, the podcast also.
Speaker 3:Just the quality of our name, both being Michaels.
Speaker 1:That's right and good enough to confuse everybody, but typically I don't always succeed. But typically I call you Mike on the podcast, mike Bailey, and I call you Michael.
Speaker 3:My high school friends used to always call me Mike B because there were so many mics of the generation of generavers and carons.
Speaker 2:I'm right, yeah, so many. We were the top name back back in the day year after year.
Speaker 3:Yeah right, as it should be those are national things. No, because the generation you know. Eruption of the. I'm joking right.
Speaker 1:My nephew who watches this or listens to this podcast from time to time. His name is Ethan, and, and when my brother and sister-in-law at the time told me that they were gonna name him Ethan, I said where in the world did that came from? Nobody names their children Ethan, and then, by the time he was about nine or ten years old, that was the number one name for a while. Super amazing how it rotates, because when we were kids we were all in the same general ballpark of age. It seemed like Michael and James and Robert, david. David was a big one for sure. There's a fair number of yeah. Yeah, we weren't very creative back in the day, at least not in the neighborhood that I was living in. Well, what are we gonna talk about? Well, first of all, let's do introductions formally, even though we haven't got it done there. We will start with our most frequent guest thus far. On church potluck. We have dr Michael Bailey.
Speaker 3:Greetings podcast world. I'm really glad to be here today. Very often I don't have an expertise on what we're talking about, but that doesn't stop me. Probably this time it really should stop me, because I speak here from almost perfect ignorance about our topic today. But part of the reason we're doing this is because I feel like you know, all sorts of folks and Christians and others have to Cope with the world that's changing and new and novel, and you have to figure out how to respond to it in real time. So that's my excuse for being on here now, given the topic.
Speaker 1:Well, we are very glad that you are here indeed. And that brings us to our next guest also, mike Michael. Dr Michael papasian and you were not a super frequent guest early on in the life of church potluck but, man, when the summer came you just yeah, we just grabbed you in the hallways. Come into a podcast with us. That not quite like that. But we were very glad that you have picked up your appearance because we are definitely a valued contributor for sure I'm glad to be part of it.
Speaker 1:Well, wonderful, well, this is kind of an interesting topic for us to be addressing for, especially for Mike Bailey's. Already he's the one who came up with the idea and he's already confessed perfect ignorance. And I would say that is true for me and then some. And then I forget what you said when you walked in as well, saying I Read, I read the article.
Speaker 2:Oh, you said you skin the article, but you're article, so that Mike sent and yeah. So I really don't understand. I mean, I have an idea, but yeah so we are.
Speaker 1:What we are doing right here Is we are just setting the standards in the bar very low for the listening audience.
Speaker 2:I don't know anything about what we're talking about.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:We could be very socratic actually sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1:I have just lots of questions, so usually there's those Socrates in the room that can can lead it or to direct in the in the proper direction. Well, what is it that we're talking about today? You're having my baby.
Speaker 3:You're the woman I love and I love what it's doing to you.
Speaker 1:Having my baby. All right, we could just listen to Paul Anka here for a little while.
Speaker 3:We're not stalling one bit so.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure if that was meant to be a double entendre or not, but anyway, From the article that Mike Bailey shared with us from the religious news service that was submitted just a couple days ago. Scientists have created a human embryo without the use of sperm or an egg a true test to baby. Such embryos cannot yet develop into full-grown human beings, and even if transplanted into a uterus, the specimen could never Attach to the uterine wall. Yet what we have here, the author say, is still a human embryo. I'll buy it, disabled, without Parents. This is an article by Charles C Comosi and Joe Vakov I'm not familiar from pronouncing their names correctly, but this is quite the innovation, quite the breakthrough, I would say, if you can have a child with absolutely no trace of any parentage. And so, michael Bailey, you were the one who started us thinking about this, and so why don't you go ahead and Tell us a little bit more about what you were thinking about, why we should have this conversation?
Speaker 3:Well, I just came across this article, more or less randomly, and, as Dale pointed out, the scientists of the Weitzman Institute of Israel had created what they described as an embryo model and apparently a human embryo model, which Apparently is very important for the scientists to be distinguished between an actual Human embryo. Apparently it looks like a human embryo and it behaves like a human embryo and it quacks like a human embryo, but they claim that it is. There is a distinction between this human embryo and a human embryo, as we know, and apparently there's legal reasons why that distinction is important. It originated from stem cells, probably taken from a spine, so it didn't come from an egg. There was no use of a womb, there was no use of sperm, so it was generally kind of this manufactured Quasi human being.
Speaker 3:And the reason they did this in part they have reasons for that.
Speaker 3:They think there's pharmaceutical reasons that this is important, that they can, since these are not technically legal human beings, they feel like it is actually an ethical advance so they can make Experiments on these non human lookalikes right for the better, understand how fetuses develop in those first 10 days, that they can do testing, pharmaceutical testing on Fetal development.
Speaker 3:They claim that they can learn the causes of miscarriage, that they'll learn what kind of drugs will work better for pregnant women, and it might be also a method in the future for developing Organ. So the justification behind it is not just that we're mad scientists, and the justification is not just that they're trying to pursue knowledge, although they are. Their claim is that this is a more ethical approach to dealing with some problems, because there's you can learn about embryo development, like with using mice embryos, but you can't do it with human embryos. Most nations have laws against us. This is a way sort of evading it, and they made clear that at this particular moment they're not identical to human embryos, but they sure look like. In fact, they set off a positive pregnancy test when they did get.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness yeah so the reason that's interesting because this is we're talking about very, very small embryos, but they're still enough there to trigger.
Speaker 3:Very small cluster of cells that are just now beginning to differentiate and I have an abstract from the article of Nature that it came from. I don't want to read it because I'm going to mispronounce every single biological term in there, but there is. It also sounds very boring to read an abstract on yeah, it was, but there's. The differentiation of parts of the body is mirroring what you would have in a normal embryo developed, created in the normal, ordinary way. The reason I thought this is even worth talking about it because my initial reaction was ick, this is no good, this cannot be a good development and I, admittedly, am a Luddite and I and the authors from the Religious News Service article kind of started off with you're going to feel ick about this.
Speaker 3:So they predicted your reaction perfectly, that's right Now. That was my initial reaction, also with Dolly, the Clone Sheep back in the late 90s, early aughts, right, and I think people are getting used to it. For those who aren't familiar with Dolly, what's the? Dolly was the first cloned sheep with again created just essentially in a Petri dish, right without again, I think it was. I think it took, they took the DNA from a sheep, they replicated it, inserted it into an egg and actually created that identical genetic sheep from its parent, which was itself and my initial reaction.
Speaker 1:A perfectly cloned sheep yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So my initial reaction at the time was ick, this is not so good either.
Speaker 1:And that was. You were not enticed by the idea of having a perfectly cloned Bailey the opportunity for a perfect Another. You would be out there.
Speaker 3:It's funny that you would say that this may have to be censored, but this came. This happened when I was teaching at what is now Texas State University and I asked my students it's a class of about 115 students and I just said I just want to know your absolute gut level intuition about this. Is this a good thing or is this a bad thing? And again, there are about 115 students in the class and 114 of them said immediately this is bad. And the hands went up and one guy raised his hand. He thought it was a good thing, and so I just was curious. I probably shouldn't have put him in the spot and I said well, why is this? And he said well, maybe we could clone the supermodel Jenny McCarthy. And I said so you could be turned down twice now. So, but I would say his reaction is probably more common now. We're just used to it.
Speaker 3:So I was beginning to wonder is this idea of this manufactured person, if that's what we're going to get to eventually, is this something that we're going to get used to? Because my initial reaction is it's bad. And I begin to wonder is there, do we have the moral reserves within the ordinary discourse of liberalism in our country, liberal, democratic, you know rights and individual autonomy and all that good stuff that we're used to in America. Is there anything in that kind of language that could help inform why we should resist it? Or is it, as I actually suspect, the development of this and the ongoing development and exploration of it comes precisely from our principles. We believe in technology, we believe in advancement of knowledge, we believe in the pursuit of freedom. Our number one sort of unit of society is the individual, not the group, and it's not clear who's actually being harmed in this. And so I thought do we have the kind of vocabulary or moral tradition within liberalism to put a break on this?
Speaker 1:And I'm not so sure that we do All right, and Michael Wapasi and maybe Dr Bailey just answered it for us. But what would be your thought on this? So, looking around the table, slightly truncated table, only three of us today. No natural scientists to explain the science behind this, no women to weigh in on the reproductive issues that are being discussed here. What in the world are we three guys in the liberal arts, social sciences, what are we to speak on this? What insights might we have? Oh yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1:I think maybe we're asking the same question why are we doing this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, why are we doing this Right? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe we do have insights. I mean we study Mike was talking about either political philosophy or political thoughts so we're aware of the liberal tradition and its limitations and its problems. Some of us study moral philosophy, and that should have some bearing on what we think is proper use of technology and what isn't. So, at the very least, I think we have something to offer.
Speaker 1:You know I thought about when we decided to do this podcast, and all three of us were very close to. Dr Peter Lawler departed way too soon from this earth, but he actually served on President Bush's the W Bush's bioethics committee yeah, kind of a big deal. So I was wondering you know how and what way he would have waited on this. I was also thinking whether he would be a good podcast guest or not. Oh, he would be amazing. Well, the thing was, would he be so amazing that the rest of us would just kind of sit?
Speaker 2:here and it'd be an hour on conversation. Right, it would be his own podcast, yeah exactly he would take over.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:We could ask things like could you?
Speaker 1:explain that again. That's right Well let me.
Speaker 3:This is just descriptive. There's no good or bad about the following, but this was. I'm just taking a quote from one of the articles I read I think this is from the BBC explaining the process and again, this is not a good or bad thing, it's just how it works. But, it said, the researchers use chemical additives to coax the stem cells, those original cells, into forming the tissue and embryos, placentes and other living structures. The scientists combined 120 of these cells in a precise ratio, mixed them in a shaker.
Speaker 1:Sorry, that doesn't sound very scientific, it didn't sound scientific.
Speaker 3:I was thinking of like a martini mix.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:And then watch us see what happened and soon an embryo like structure Also wait a second.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, I keep on interrupting. Watch us see what happened also sounds a little less than scientific. Well, isn't that what scientists?
Speaker 2:do I guess. I guess let's do this and see what happens.
Speaker 1:They need to say that in much more scientific terms yeah, yeah, yeah. Systematically observed.
Speaker 3:Well, I had prefaces by saying I was being neutral, and you immediately caught me, which is what your reaction is, more or less what I was hoping you would have, which is that, yeah, they're just shaking up things, watching what will see happen. It says that this embryo, like structure, formed and they're using the stem cells because they said they can be using me easily and in high numbers. So one of the questions and there's lots and lots of questions, you know should we be concerned at this precise moment when the scientists and I have no reason to doubt them are saying that there may be a distinction between this embryo model and an actual embryo? And I have no reason to think that there isn't a distinction, I don't know. But on the other hand, it does seem as if we're coming pairlessly close to thinking of these embryos, of our manufactured, essentially as a kind of natural resource that we're mining and exploiting and using for our own personal good and maybe for really good ends, like dementia.
Speaker 1:I thought of this on a much, much smaller scale, to the matrix, right when all the embryos were being batteries, right, and so you know we could manufacture it, you know, embryos for all kinds of human purposes. That didn't seem very smart to me.
Speaker 2:Well, was there any explanation as to why they're embryo, why they consider them models as opposed to actually? What is the distinction? Is it just a semantic thing so that they can, you know, bypass the laws and so on? These are not really embryos.
Speaker 3:My response to this is just going to be essentially fabricated, but we're going to continue. I think one of the things they said is that none of these could be actually, as they are attached to a uterus and then continue to grow is that they had some of the external sort of visual appearances of an embryo, but apparently there was some structural limits why they wouldn't think at this particular point they'd continue to grow beyond 10 or 12 or 14 days. I guess in England and it might be in Israel as well is that there is a limit on doing research on embryos over 14 days, and so that is one thing. Is, as they get better at this and create more and more embryo models that actually are more viable and survivable, do they have to change the laws? Will they honor the laws? And there is a representative from a Francis Crick Institute in England who I think was in England who was excited about this development. So this is really promising. You have a lot of different kinds of research that you can extract from this, but did say that it really warrants the change in the law of what counts as an embryo, and apparently in most nations what counts as an embryo is a function of its origin, how it came from. This is a type of being that came from a sperm and an egg, and apparently what they're suggesting is that we might have to change the notion of what a legal embryo is to the kinds of being that it will develop into. And if they were to do that, I guess, as if you just simply have an embryo that comes from a biological egg and a sperm, then this is not an embryo. You could do whatever you want to it, but if what you're concerned about is the end product, then you might put limits on it, but it's opening up a can of mind.
Speaker 3:The way my mind works is. I don't know whether this is a good or bad thing. Now I'm open to the possibility that this is okay for the research that they're trying to conduct. What I'm thinking about is, in the future, what they make advance is what if we're able just to manufacture, design, designer babies and we can just sort of create them however we want to are babies? I don't know.
Speaker 3:My sense is that something about the way we are as human persons, as opposed to just generic persons or robotic persons that were human persons, and what we're used to is being able to trace our origin to a father and mother. Is that fair to create beings because we just wanted to scientifically and deny them having an origin of a father and mother that they could trace back, at least in principle? My own sense is, yeah, that's really bad, but I don't think that. Again, I don't think that there is a kind of moral resources within our normal moral language of rights and autonomy and freedom and harmed individuals that will be able to stop it. I think it's going to require a notion of what a human being is in the cosmos.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. I mean, go ahead. No, you go ahead, michael. No, I was just saying that you talk about sort of the right to have parents, right, but I mean you could even I'm what if they were adopted? Like, in other words, there are people who want to have kids they're incapable of biologically and there's this manufactured embryo and then they adopt it. There they, you have parents. Is it that everyone has the right to biological parents?
Speaker 1:But I could actually see that serving a purpose if, like the father, can't donate sperm. I don't want Joe being the donor.
Speaker 1:I don't want this either either this person I know or this anonymous donor out there who might have claimed a parentage. You know, if I could just have this completely manufactured sperm that does the trick, or whatever that creates the child, that I don't have to worry about anyone else having any claim whatsoever on parentage? I could see where that would be attractive, and some people would even argue that that might be a moral yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean you can always say that well, we have enough kids right now that need to be adopted, that this is, this shouldn't be done, but on the other hand, you might say that you know using your argument, you know talking about your argument. Do do you know? Full fledged persons have to have biological parents.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I mean, and this is, I think, leading to a question of is there a difference between a philosophically full fledged person, we can get into a discussion of what counts as a person. I think that's really interesting, but is it if you are a human person? Is that word human? Is it actually kind of a qualifier to person? In other words, are persons all simply a kind of generic type of creature, or does the humanness of us specify that we have certain kinds of limits and understandings and obligations that are unique to this particular kind of person? And I might say that, in my opinion, there's a distinction between, in my opinion, between saying you have caretakers, which would be your foster parents, your adopted parents, and, of course, we want everyone to have caretakers.
Speaker 3:But the rest of us, apart from Adam and Eve, right, the rest of us? Part of what it means to be a human being is that we trace ourselves with continuity back to thousands of years, or millions of years actually, back to, you know, the first creatures here on earth to say that you're this new kind of thing that was manufactured, really, probably in design, because some person just want you to be that way. You're a new kind of creature. You may have the same sort of skill set, but you don't fit in or belong in the same way, and my own instinct is we should. My own thing is that we're robbing someone of something that's really important for us as human beings.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, and you know, it's just interesting. Getting back to your point about the resources of liberalism, it seems like this is like the liberal dream. You're completely detached from history and tradition. Right, you don't have to worry about it being part of a family. That's really good point. So, and isn't that what you know, ultimately, taken to its extreme? Isn't that what liberalism wants? Cutting us off from tradition.
Speaker 3:My own sense is that the ongoing development of this which I assume we haven't heard the last of it and I assume that we're going to develop technology is not cutting against our culture or our cross purposes. But, exactly said, is really going with the grain of what we are as liberals, is that we think of ourselves as autonomous creatures, we see ourselves as self-defining. Now, whether or not we can define other people, that's a kind of different kind of question. But liberals in general doesn't have, I think, a way of connecting our own autonomous cells with a broader sense of limits and responsibilities to a greater whole. So I'll just give you this little example of this things I'm in favor of. So I just want to put on the record here so it's not too controversial, or maybe controversial, but no, I'm on the side of controversy as well.
Speaker 3:I think birth control is a very good thing, right, but I think with that cut, that caught me off guard I'm sorry, so once upon a time this is gonna be kind of a crazy thought, but sex was once associated with a kind of possibility, right, but almost not inevitability, but a real likelihood of possibility of procreation. And what birth control did is it severed reproduction from the act of sex and essentially made sex in enjoyable friction. You can go push the application, you can go push the applause, and I think you can make it an argument, and I'm not prepared to make it in a full. But I would suggest is that that might arguably be the single most important social event in all of human history, because it changed not only just our own control and autonomy to change everything. Once you, I think, allow and accept the idea that sex essentially isn't inherently connected to reproduction, but it's really simply a function of consensual pleasure, there really is, in my opinion, no principal reason whatsoever to not have same sex marriage. It seems like same sex marriage to me followed inevitably, just in next, necessarily, from birth control. And once we separate marriage from differences of genders and it seems to me that the gender that we have also becomes distinguished from any sort of biological necessity as well is that also, I think, much more tenuously, but also flows from the idea of birth control, and all of that fits into the idea that we're self creating creatures who can pursue whoever we want to be.
Speaker 3:And I just don't see and for large part that's good what is what is liberalism given us? Is giving us democracy, is giving us freedom, is giving us prosperity, is giving us tremendous amount of security. It's been pretty much a winning way of organizing our social relations. But at the same time there's all these traditional notions that we think probably served us some good the idea that place matters, that the earth matters, that our relationships, that there's family matters, that you know certain kinds of associations of people have as much claim as individuals, but we don't know how to count for it. And liberals and I would just argue that I don't know, apart from, like, the claims of religion, how you would be able to resist this idea that we just get to make, manufacture little babies and I want to come to the religion question.
Speaker 1:But it just occurred to me that some of our listeners might not be totally familiar with the way that you are using terms, and so liberalism you're not meaning progressive, democratic politics I'm not talking about biden or obama or hillary.
Speaker 3:If those people fall under liberal, they are liberals, but so would be someone like ronald reagan and gingrich. I need to update some of my names. You think I would as a political scientist, but essentially is anyone who is part of the american tradition of you celebrate freedom, you think. If you think we're born free and equal and get to pursue our own individual lives of happiness and that we as human beings are, as persons, are protected by rights and that we're sort of the fundamental unit of society, then you're liberal and people on the left and right for the most part are liberals, and I think it's a really persuasive, successful political project. I don't know if it really explains in full what it means to be a human being because I think.
Speaker 3:Probably we are social creatures or group creatures. We don't choose at birth our language. We don't choose our place. We don't choose at birth our nationality, our habits. At beginning, you choose our own religion. We are, in other words, entered into a world not of our own making. That is who we are, and I think that's supposed to be so. There's a balance between freedom on the one hand and our social nature. Both of those have a kind of tug that I think are important for us, but I think we only know how to argue in one direction without sounding frankly authoritarian and because the name of the podcast is not government potluck but church potluck, oh goodness, let's you know.
Speaker 1:I don't. I did not have time to see what the specific catholic response or if there has been a catholic response to this, but you know everything you were saying earlier. You know about the separation of sex and procreation and those are not necessarily as intertwined. I make the same kind of argument in my classes. I think I made it in my book that I wrote a couple years ago that this seems to be a very big change and I think the catholic church says this is not a good change. Right that I think the very formal doctrine policy of the catholic church is that every sex act should be open to the possibility of procreation. You're shaking your head up and down, which is a very bad podcast technique.
Speaker 3:I want on record that was papazian shaking his head up and I'm just trying to affirm what you're saying you're going to talk and get all the glory not me
Speaker 1:yeah, alright, so thank you very much. I don't I'm not looking for glory, but it is interesting how to have separate and now procreation in some ways is either further separated from the sex act and to the point where there's not even any biological, any biology connected to it, necessarily, possibly in the future. We're not there yet, but it sure seems like if they've reached this level of competency, that probably wouldn't be too long before this happens I think you know it's clear that I think, related to this, right it's, there's a whole lot of unplanned pregnancies, right?
Speaker 3:that's just the way it works, is that? What is it that you know gives rise to reproduction? Be like, you know, sexual friction, I think, is kind of one of the it's. Really it's pretty important. It turns out we don't always plan and want to have a child, but I think we are kind of trained into thinking, for the reason that you said is that when you have sex, there is this possibility it could be a significant one or could be an outside one. Your life is going to change. You're going to have a responsibility. You're going to be, at least at the very minimum, in shape, face with a kind of extraordinarily difficult choice do you adopt, do you abort, do you have a? Do you put all of your dreams on hold? And so it's an act of, you know, kind of tremendous import.
Speaker 3:And then the question is if scientists get to just make these children, what do we owe these creatures? I mean, I really don't know what we owe them especially, and I shouldn't necessarily go out. This is not in politics. I'm pretty much like bill quitton's view when it comes to abortion and this is, I think, related which is I want it to be rare, I want it to be safe and I want it to be legal. I don't actually know if you can have all three, but this is what sort I think that we ought to strive for as a society.
Speaker 3:But if that's a case and we have legal abortion, what would be wrong really if you think abortion is acceptable, legal of actually creating these embryos, having them go not 14 days, but eight weeks, or two months or three months, learning about the species, learning about development, maybe saving lots of lives, getting rid of dementia, addressing cancer? If abortion is okay, why would it not be okay to use these creatures who have no parents, who don't have a commitment to it, for the sake of exploitation? I just don't know what reason why we wouldn't do that, especially if we had reason to think that they weren't being harmed. They're not necessarily be extracted from a womb. They could be euthanized, probably much more easily. They're in a bag and then in the womb. It wouldn't even involve a female at this point.
Speaker 1:So I think there's all sorts of problems that arise from this well, given that and what you're saying sounds very similar to other issues that we've addressed in the past and we've fretted about and worried about, and so with this, let's go ahead and let's have a game show, and I'm gonna give you both the choice. Do you want a game show that's very broad, historically speaking, or one that's a little bit more narrow? Well, one is just science in general and ones on reproduction analogy. I would go more general but I'll defer to mike.
Speaker 3:Well, I've had three dollars, I want to go reproduction. This let's go with, let's go with broad.
Speaker 1:Alright, we'll start off with broad. Okay, so I typed in the chat gpt, the authoritative source, and everything. That's right. That's not true, but anyway, what are some biological breakthroughs throughout history that were once controversial but now are mostly accepted? So biological breakthroughs. And now you're supposed to list them and you get a point if that includes like medical technology to medical biology, yeah evolution is awful, not important alright, evolution is the first one.
Speaker 1:I was thinking more like anesthesia, you know, like in surgery right, I don't have the, I don't have the urn, but in, but I'll just verbally do urn. That's not on here. That's a good one.
Speaker 3:That's not on here how about the idea that thought emerges from the brain, rather than say from the harder gut?
Speaker 1:that's not on here's either circulation blood.
Speaker 3:The cell theory would be perhaps controversial as it sells DNA double helix genetics.
Speaker 1:You know what? I don't think genetics are on here keep on going.
Speaker 3:Rejection of the four humors or person come a little bit more specific.
Speaker 1:You're in the broad, a little bit more modern. Let's go. I tell you what let's do. I think let's do germ theory and after germ theory, that is right there was a big cause for it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so after germ theory.
Speaker 1:I think the rest of these are definitely in the twenty twenty first century, maybe late 19th, but I think all the rest of these are in 20th century or later.
Speaker 3:Let's see, controversy is dealing with 20th century biological discoveries and you're saying double helix is not one idea that homosexuality is not a mental disorder.
Speaker 1:It would be that's a good one, but not on here that you're coming up with good ones, that just. I think maybe all are smarter than chat gpt. This is say that I'm gonna start every time you get one. That you know. Right. If you agree with chat gpt, that's great. If you come up with your own, that's not also I will.
Speaker 3:I'll give you a very personal one that I don't know where they got this, but for if you say anything about friction it's really for a long time.
Speaker 3:For a long time, if you notice, in track and field. Women did not do the pole vault and I think my father, who was born in 1925, was the pinion. Oh yeah, this would be terrible for their reproduction, is it that the you know their system can't handle the pole vault, so that's probably not a massive medical discovery that I think about like marathon running to like, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, it's a capabilities you know in many of my classes I show what the world records in marathon running were in 1925. It was an hour and ten minute gap and then, once title nine comes, just plummet some. What? Now we're down 1111 11, 11.
Speaker 3:So the general equality of IQ between men and women that's a good one.
Speaker 1:That's not on here, but that's a good one, all right. So now I'm just gonna read. I'm gonna read these let's go.
Speaker 2:You have to say, you have to guess the chat gpt is wrong.
Speaker 1:All right, you can criticize, but I'm gonna read these off and you're gonna tell me whether or not chat gpt said these. Okay, yeah, all right, vaccination.
Speaker 3:Of course it's controversial stem cell research.
Speaker 1:Of course it's gonna genetically modified organisms yeah, of course. The crisper cast nine gene editing, which is something I'm not very familiar with at all. The human genome project I did not remember, I don't remember the details behind that of why it was controversial.
Speaker 3:Yes, it was such as in frances, collins was a christian who helped. That was a big deal, you know.
Speaker 1:I thought he'd be an awesome guest to.
Speaker 2:Oh, I thought it was gonna be a pocket I never pushed it.
Speaker 1:Will that be even more well? Maybe not even more awesome. Maybe he's listening.
Speaker 3:That's right. That's right. Almost certainly we can assume you've got. The england is one of your we know what.
Speaker 1:Let's take a little break here for a second, for an announcement. Just minutes seriously minutes before we started this podcast, we surpassed 5000 downloads, all yep. So 5000 downloads over, that means 65 listeners.
Speaker 2:How long has this been going? When did you start this podcast?
Speaker 1:I don't remember now that november of last year. So we've just actually I didn't make a big deal at the beginning of the episode either that this is actually Our 40th episode you know, with my theme of friction we might double that. So actually one of the one of the notes I wrote to myself to ask you at the end, we'll just go ahead and cover it now. Does this get an explicit Warning on it or not? So far, michael for a moment.
Speaker 2:I was gonna say, yes, that was a while ago friction is.
Speaker 3:That's vague. I mean, it's actually I don't know if it's a good or not, but I don't know.
Speaker 1:All right well that I just did all this in the middle of a game show. Some of the other two that jet chat dp listed and do some be a dick theory and epigenetics.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't know epigenetics was controversial either, but yeah I'll look into that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so don't trust everything you type into.
Speaker 2:So most of the time I read I don't consider controversial.
Speaker 1:But that's just me, yeah so anyway, thank you for playing. Was that your?
Speaker 3:broad game show. Can we do the narrow?
Speaker 2:one or is?
Speaker 3:it alright, let's do reproduction alright, so Alright.
Speaker 1:Another game show. Yeah, what medical fertility or infertility procedures were once controversial but are now widely accepted. You know what ain't on here and that's a big miss. Iud, whatever, that is a swing and a miss by chat GPT, so repeat this Any sort of.
Speaker 3:I did say medical but Read the question again if you don't mind.
Speaker 1:What medical fertility and or infertility procedures were once controversial, but are now widely accepted In vitro?
Speaker 3:fertilization. This shows how blessed my family's been with us. We just, you know, my wife is like a petri dish, you know, and so I should not have said that that needs to be cut. The point is she's very fertile right, so we don't have to go through it.
Speaker 2:OK, it's getting worse.
Speaker 1:You've just confirmed the explicit rating at least.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, you know, I don't know the procedures to have to go through is my point. Yes, any others, I'm going to stop talking, all right. And now it's very rude, dr Papese, if you say something like that. Yeah, I know, sorry, ok.
Speaker 1:Agansperm donation, surrogacy, pre-implementation, genetic testing, frozen embryo transfer, oblation stimulating medications and I'm not going to be able to even say this one all the way through Gamete intrafalopian transfer and zygote intrafalopian transfer.
Speaker 3:You didn't give us enough time to guess because I was an intrafalopian.
Speaker 2:I know, because that was just what.
Speaker 1:I was going to say Once again, thank you. All right, so we got a little silly there. But the point I wanted to make from all those is that so often our first reaction is like this article predicted. We would react yeah, this is terrible, this is awful, and many of these things, especially the religious communities, would very often Christian communities would very often say this isn't natural. Right, this is, look at this, it's a slippery slope. And maybe this new procedure without any human involvement whatsoever maybe they're right now.
Speaker 1:This is a slippery slope, but I would say that for the most part, you would ask most Christians, we would embrace all of these and say what a wonderful thing and what this has helped. Parents have children and this has been so, so wonderful. And my ingrid did not have any of these procedures, but she was certainly helped by medical innovations. We had trouble with conceiving early on. So the fact that so many medical innovations have actually helped in this and we were initially worried and concerned what are the implications of this? And we've come around to mostly saying these are good things.
Speaker 3:Real blessings, blessings, that's a good word.
Speaker 2:Give it a good word, I mean it's natural for people to have that response to anything new Does that?
Speaker 1:mean that we are kind of naturally conservative.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think so I mean yeah, there's no doubt about it, but it can be. Yeah, I mean, maybe there are some things that we find yucky, that we should, and other things that are not, but it's not really a good guide to what's good or bad.
Speaker 3:And, on the other hand, I'd say a lack of it just on account of familiarity isn't the final word either about whether something is disturbing or not, or even if it's not disturbing, whether it's something that really doesn't warrant our approval, even if we're OK with it.
Speaker 1:I wonder about that. Just getting off this topic, I wonder about that. In a lot of my own life and decisions I said if I were to be doing whatever it is Calvinist of the 16th century would just be blasting me right now for this. And then is it just because we are so comfortable in this that we don't think of it as morally objectionable. And so, as one who goes back into history quite often, for pazing, do you find yourself questioning things in that way, comparing your behavior now to the morality of centuries past?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, definitely yeah. So I do a lot of work on the early Christian fathers, especially the desert fathers, and when you read them I mean they're kind of severe on some things. But then you wonder, they would be very critical of my lifestyle, I guess, and they probably would think I'm too materialistic and also and they're right, they're probably right about that. But then, on the other hand, there are a lot of things that people in past ages would criticize about us, that they're wrong about. So it doesn't mean that we have to just accept whatever the people in past ages thought, but we should listen to them, because they may see something that is in our blind spot, that we're not aware of, as being something that's problematic.
Speaker 3:I think that's well said. Thank you. I was reading that in the late 90s I heard a different number that was actually higher in the early aughts. But I was reading in the late 90s that in the United States the average number of hours per day of watching television was six hours and then I heard that in the early aughts it was closer to seven or eight hours. I don't know, I like television just fine, but I mean I think it would require a really nimble clever imagination to say this is good for who we are to spend that much time sort of in front of a box looking at a piece of furniture and consider that to be living well. But obviously if that's the average number for Americans, that means we're all doing it or a whole lot of people are doing it. So again, just because something is comfortable and relaxed and puts it at ease doesn't mean necessarily, when we think about it, reflect upon it. This is we've chosen well.
Speaker 1:I want to go back to this concept that things that were once controversial we kind of want to come to accept eventually, and usually we think of this as a good and positive thing. Do you think that there's controversy now around cloning around Dolly the sheep, and I guess there still is around human cloning that we still have kind of drawn a pretty solid line, Although I've heard some people say they're out there already?
Speaker 2:The clones are out there.
Speaker 1:The clones are out there already and we just don't know about it. But somebody is. In other words, humans can't resist the restraints. If we can do it, we're going to do it. And so there are clones out there already. Is the theory, the conspiracy theory, out there at least? Do we care about Dolly anymore? I mean, there's been plenty of cloned animals. Yes, that's true. Yeah, and we don't. I rarely think about Dolly anymore.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I remember reading how Dolly, I think, had maybe a very uncomfortable, painful early death.
Speaker 1:I think that was the case.
Speaker 3:And so I think there is always that ethical question. If you're creating creatures that are so in some sense flawed that they're consigned to suffering, that's a sentient creature, and you should take into account that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, to that point and you kind of touched on this earlier, mike Bailey but what about parentage of these embryo-less, spermless creations that we now seem to possibly have the potential to create? Is it only when people I don't want to well, we'll use this language. Is it kind of we just go up and order a child and then, when it's created for us, but since we ordered it we've taken responsibility and it was kind of crafted for us and we didn't really get into it.
Speaker 3:But you talked about designer babies and I mean I think that's just too much power for people to have is to. I mean, I would feel uncomfortable forcing any of my three daughters to choose their major, literally their academic major, but I feel like that's not my job to direct their life, and if a major is way less, say, important than for me to direct, and because I'm a good Western individualist, I wouldn't want to choose who their spouse is either, although I know that lots of cultures do that and they tend to have success.
Speaker 1:Oh, I thought you were about to say, although my daughter you know, Zach, you know? Ah, I know that is not the case whatsoever.
Speaker 3:So because of that, I feel like that's their life, and the idea that I would choose a whole array of possible talents and limitations without just I would think that makes me feel more like God than it should be. And one real problem with that is what might be valued at any given time is a function of our fashion. So it might be. I watch, you know, Novak Djokovic and I think, my goodness, you know, tennis is a way to go. I'm going to design someone who is spectacular at that and maybe tennis would go by the wayside. That's a silly example, but what may be valued in terms of our appearances or set of traits or attributes may not be what's called for later. And here I've consigned them to, you know, that particular set of traits, Whereas if it's just random, it's, and it's also a product, not just to myself, but it's a generation, a random sort of tumble of genetics from a partner. That seems to be very different.
Speaker 1:I am not willing to go down this road, but the standard of what counted as beautiful when we were children and the standard of what is considered beautiful now, there's been quite a big shift, even in just one generation.
Speaker 2:What about if it could prevent genetic diseases? You know thin, using the technology to produce embryos that don't have certain that we can do it better than God. Well, we do that anyway, right? I mean, in other words, we're constantly taking care of ourselves in ways in which we're inventing medicines and antibiotics to prevent diseases that are natural, that are part of the natural world. So medicine is basically doing that already. This is just taking it at a different level. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, my initial reaction right? Is that? My honest initial reaction is that this is bad. But then you point out that once you're born, we actually do try to remedy problems, we try to get rid of suffering, we try to cure sicknesses, and why would we just not do that? Genetically, I guess, my initial reaction is I can't explain why I have this feeling, but I do. But my follow-up to that would be is that we have always politicized some sorts of behaviors as pathological or psychotic or criminal, that clearly just reflect the time, so ensuring that someone isn't set, you know, attracted to the same sex or, you know, we sure might be able to impose other kinds of views that later on we regret.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good point. That's a very good point, yeah.
Speaker 2:I agree, I mean the. I guess the issue is can we draw that line between purely medical physical disease and, I guess, psychiatric conditions? That you know where that changes and it's kind of subjective whether something is a Psychiatric disease or not.
Speaker 3:I mean, life is it's also. It's so enormously complicated to To say, okay, someone is subject to anxiety or someone to subject to Depression, and so therefore, we're going to try to wire this person so that they always have a cheerful, optimistic outlook. You just got rid of Lincoln. Oh, yeah, sure, if you did that.
Speaker 2:You know a lot of us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right. Well, that's yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's one thing to try to get rid of cystic fibrosis or sickle cell anemia, it's another to get rid of anxious people, because I think you'd get rid of me.
Speaker 1:Seems to be a common theme in many of our episodes just our Anxiety and our worry over where the technology is taking us. Sometimes we talk about it in a very broad way. Sometimes, in this case, we're talking about a very specific procedure that hasn't even been perfected yet, but just out there on the horizon. Is it? Is there something about Religiosity in particular that makes us worried about the future? Or is just? Is this just the human condition, with the pace of change that's going on in our post-industrial society, that that we just fear what's coming down the pike? I mean, what a great question.
Speaker 2:You want to remember. Well, I don't necessarily see religiosity as necessarily always conservative. It often is right, but on the other hand it can be revolutionary. I mean, I think Christ was.
Speaker 1:I think that's a very good point, and one that we probably need to have a podcast to offset some of the right.
Speaker 2:I mean it's true you often associate religions with conservative traditionalism and all, but just think about how religions upset Tradition, right? I mean, in other words, you know it's not just Christianity, but that's a great example of a religion that really Transforms the world in many real, very real ways. So I think that if you get the broader picture of the history of Religions, you'll see that it's not. In some sense there is that tradition that's carried over generations, but it's also causing us to change and to think about the world in different ways.
Speaker 1:And that fits in very clearly with the notion that God is making us a new creation. Right that I've really liked it when hear people say God just was not the creator, but God is always in the process of creating, and so that there is always something new and the idea of the Holy Spirit transforming us as well. Yeah, it's forming us so there's very much that idea that the change in ourselves and change in the world can be good and positive and we're made in the image of God, so we're creators too.
Speaker 2:In other words, our task, or the gift that God has given us, is that we also continue in that creation.
Speaker 1:Fantastic point. Does this mean that we're only scared when it's technology that's taking us into the future?
Speaker 3:No, of course, not me. I think there's all scared of everything. We're scared differences, we're scared of new kinds of people who've never seen before. You know, yeah, I think that I very. I think I'll say that I'm responsible for being the person who brings this theme in, because it is an Important theme to me of the way in which the human predicament, I think, changes on account of technology, and Not to go into, I really will try not to belabor the point but my own sense is that Christianity, and maybe even ancient understandings, that non-Christian pagan understandings of the human condition or the human predicament, was that we were all faced with inexorable, really non-negotiable Limits, and so, therefore, our task is to deal with grace and thoughtfully with those limits, and so elaborate real quickly what you mean by we're faced with limits.
Speaker 3:A lot of life is hard, a lot of life is painful, and then we almost all die before we would have it up to ourselves to die, and our children are going to be suffering through this, and so when we give birth to kids, we know that they're actually faced with the same horrible types of Prospects that we are going to, and that is very painful, and so the consolation of religion is One that it's still worth it because love is transcendent.
Speaker 3:And it's still worth it because we are part of a Cosmic project of which we have Value and, even though it's marked by pain and suffering, is it is redemptive in some sort of way that even points to eternity.
Speaker 3:And I think that philosophy would suggest that, yes, we're limited, but we should attach ourselves as much as possible to that which is permanent, which is probably reason or truth, and what that also means is we have to sort of face reality for what it is, and so, like stoicism and other types of ancient beliefs would say that what we're called to do is to accept those limits and again to live with some Honor, nobility and grace within them.
Speaker 3:And I think the modern project is one where, essentially, what we're trying to do is become like God and we're trying to control our lives and perfectly to control nature, to and to see other human beings and to see animals and to see the earth as a resource for our own control, our own happiness and our own Mastery. And I think in the last two centuries, since the industrial revolution, and what we've really done is we've become beings really who Understand their lives. Even we don't understand our lives been puts wholly into the service of Continuing technology, and I think that we are means to an end rather than an end in itself. So, yeah, I'm worried about it because I think it's changed the human predicament.
Speaker 1:Michael Paisley, I was gonna give you the last word, but I would say that was pretty. I thought that was an eloquent ending for us. I agree lengthy but eloquent. Thank you guys. So much. Turn out bigger conversation?
Speaker 3:No, you think yeah, yeah, maybe a few moments regrettable perhaps.
Speaker 1:Nothing that a little editing can't fix. Let's say that we'll see. Well, I want to thank our audience for sitting around the table with us today. I hope that we have provided you with some food for thought and giving you something to chew on. But we aren't done yet. After we finish the music, we always have some leftovers for you to enjoy, some additional thoughts we share with one another after we wrap up. So feel free to continue listening and we appreciate your support. All five thousand downloads we appreciate. As part of that support, please consider subscribing, rating and reviewing church potluck wherever you are downloading it, until we gather around the table next time this has been church potluck. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that one, I mean one point that I didn't I'm struggling to Express, is it? And I've talked about a little bit for here and potluck is. I do find the interesting question of just how do we know what a person is and what is the person? What is a? What are sort of the, the, the moral, ethical values and Special status that you have on account of being a person. Let me stop you, right there.
Speaker 1:I didn't, I didn't press you. Would these folks be people, persons in your in your course.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's there's no doubt that they'd be persons. What? What I'm, what I'm beginning to, never really wondered before, though, is whether I've always thought of persons as sort of like an end in themselves, and and once you know that a person, the a being is, a person is, they have a certain set of traits. Yeah, I mean, philosophers disagree, but, like usually, like imagination, a sense of your own that you control your own life, you have a choice that you can make, ethical choices, reason, language, will, volition, all sorts of things like that, but what I've never really thought about is is being a human being, that is, in the form that we are, with our biology and with our limits, and being born here on this planet in the normal way that we're born. Do those human elements genuinely qualify the nature of what it means to be a person?
Speaker 3:In other words, there is a person, a person, a person, whether you're an angel at artificial intelligence, a dolphin or a human, and I think what religion tells you, or Christianity in particular says, is it really matters that you are a certain type of creature, that you are a human being, and human beings in the past have Always been able to say they're part of a race that they can trace back to Adam and Eve, or you can just trace back, but are we going to see ourselves? What does it mean to a person to think that, no, you're basically the same thing as that computer. That was you were made and yet you can do your own thing. But you start from. You started fresh in 2023 and you aren't connected to these other people. You have the human race. Yes, you were Identical in appearance, but you don't share this one really important thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow you know, what that kind of Touches upon. Westworld Y'all are just looking at me, young, much about with the HBO. Oh, dude, if you haven't watched Westworld, we got to find a way for you to watch Westworld, especially the first season, first two seasons. I don't think I even watched the third season, but it would hit on these issues for you so hard. They're the robots Okay, yeah, but a robot to do everything Human. And they start realizing that and they realize that they are separate and different from oh, interesting, it's, it's, it's, yeah yeah just deals with these issues in a very big way.
Speaker 2:I was actually just gonna take this Just a brief tangent. But this might also be a problem for the doctrine of original sin you mentioned like that. Oh, you know, these embryos are not children of Adam and so at least according to Augustinian and Western understanding of original sin, they would be exempt from Original sin. Now, not all Christians accept that doctrine, but it just seems like that could be an interesting Issue to pursue Theologically here. Yeah, I'll stop there.
Speaker 1:No, that's, that's. That's very intriguing. Yeah, I mean, I don't where did these, where did this come from? Again we, or do we have a good sense? Even?
Speaker 3:No no.
Speaker 1:No, these, these cells, these embryos, I mean, if it's not sperm, if it's not some cells and I'm not a stem cell- expert. But okay, so, but stem cells are still coming from humans.
Speaker 2:They are, yeah yeah, all right, so it still is.
Speaker 1:It is originally human tissue, then right, all right, so I didn't catch that. So what it have the DNA of? That's a great question. Yeah, these cells.
Speaker 2:It should have the DNA of those cells right as far as I know, but there's no. It's not like a. It's not the sperm and the egg coming together and forming a zygote right. That's not happening in these cases.
Speaker 1:But it still is human, material that's creating this being.
Speaker 2:It's still human material, and I'm assuming they have the full genetic component of a human being, which is what we're kind of saying is a sufficient condition, I believe, like for personhood, if not a necessary condition, and so they would be humans and persons too, on that view. But they're not the result of sexual friction.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they'd be.
Speaker 2:And according to Augustine, then they're exempt from. I believe you know they'd be exempt from original sin in that case. I mean that's why Jesus is exempt. Right, because you didn't have a human father. Right Because the sin comes through the father.
Speaker 3:So they're humans 2.0. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:So this could be a great science fiction theological novel.
Speaker 1:I'm working.
Speaker 2:I should work on this.
Speaker 1:There you go. I think this is a very good next big project for you, sir.
Speaker 3:I have a good friend who is also a professor, but he'll listen to me kind of just go on and on about some sort of philosophical question or conundrum and you know everyone's wanted to say. You know, if you just watched science fiction you would have encountered this a long time ago. So it's sort of the same. You know, these science fiction authors do contemplate all sorts of alternative realities.
Speaker 1:And I've never been a big science fiction person until a student will come up to me and say, oh, that reminds me of this and this and this show, and I say I forget just how much literature, and science fiction in particular, deals with the human condition just in very creative ways, and then just sort of be on my creative horizon.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think some people might say these embryos are not persons, right, because I mean even within the Christian tradition, right, it wasn't Aquinas claim that. You know, it wasn't until the what was? I think there was a gender difference, right, that male fetuses become and sold in the third month, or something like that, and females in the fifth month, very specific.
Speaker 2:So there yeah, yeah, yeah, but I don't know if that's exactly true. I mean, I'd have to look. I don't believe that's true at all, but I'm not sure exactly if that's what Aquinas said. But this idea that you're not in soul, you're not a person until you have a soul, and there was this understanding that that might happen later than what we define as the moment of conception.
Speaker 1:That's interesting, because you don't hear that ever coming up. You don't hear any of the ancient theologians ever coming up in the abortion debate. You know that. Oh, aquinas said that there's no soul in there until you know.
Speaker 3:X month. All of that is. I mean, there's just, it's just endlessly, I think, complicated and tricky to know to what extent. To what extent is your moral status depend upon your capacity and what extent is it?
Speaker 1:and that's sort of like even just saying it that way just gives you a little bit of a feeling of discomfort, right yeah?
Speaker 3:right. So if you have dementia, do you have all the rights that?
Speaker 2:you did before. Yeah, that's the problem with defining personhood, that's right, and so we'd like to.
Speaker 3:I tend to think of it as you're part of a being, a type of creature, a type of being that that type of creature characteristically is, you know, characteristically has the marks of, say, reason and will and so on. But why, I mean, why do you personally not have to be one of those? And I know that. You know, biologists don't even like the idea of beings, they like that populations. So you just have these breeding populations. You're not part of the breeding population, you're a different species. But they don't like to think about the essence of a type of creature, because they're always evolving and changing and there's no like essence of dog. There's just these creatures that reproduce, you know. And if they don't reproduce, then you know you don't fall into the dog family. That somehow fit together, all my mind.
Speaker 2:But my, my yeah, I get.
Speaker 3:My point is that there's a whole lot of people who, I would say, absolutely deserve our moral regard and respect and attention, who have it not because they have other capabilities that we think of as associated with personhood, like agency and imagination, a way of planning out their life and all the rest of it, but they're connected to, biologically, a family of creatures that does, but I don't know a reason within liberalism to do that. I mean, I think that's much more of a spiritual Christian perspective. It doesn't have to be Christian, but the idea that you were made human. Some you're going to have different traits, but you're just equally human.
Speaker 1:I don't think we resolved anything, but that's not the purpose of the of the show.
Speaker 3:So I didn't resolve anything, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I guess it should be taken as a challenge by liberal philosophers to try to address this, because liberalism have the resources to perhaps recognize something like personhood in a secular way. And I guess the question is I mean, you know, you're skeptical, mike, you're saying is you don't think that it's possible? I don't know.
Speaker 3:I mean some sort of Turing test.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, are you reason like us? Do you act like us? Can we tell you that? Can we tell that you were?
Speaker 2:a lot of different ways, but the question I guess the challenge for the liberal is to is to try to come up with a way that you can have some of the benefits of the religious beliefs without being religious.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean there's so much about liberalism that I mean again going back to the idea of just. We're born free and equal. We're not. No one has the sort of born with the right to rule over others. Everyone is accorded justice that notion of rights and associated with democracy and freedom and all that good jazz. I love that stuff, I really do. But you know, is it, is it complete? Is it a sufficient ethical framework to explain everything?
Speaker 2:And I don't think it is. It's not.
Speaker 3:No, I don't think it is, and I think it's taken to a limit.
Speaker 2:It's just as scary and bad as almost any other incomplete, bad, ethical you know, and the answer might be to have some hybrid kind of system where you have, you know, liberalism to a certain extent, but then you have these anti-liberal institutions right in your society. Now the question is whether what are the foundations for those institutions? Yeah right, can liberalism prop those things up? But I mean to a large extent and you know we talked about Peter Lawler earlier, but I think if you were here you would mention institutions like the church, like religious institutions, but also colleges and universities, like Barry too, are serving as we in some way. In some sense we're elitists, right, so we're anti-liberal in a way, and we are teaching the tradition, you know, in our classes.
Speaker 1:I'd say number one in value and number one in undergraduate teaching is very elitist. That's the college in the world.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, very elite, but that's good. We want that right Because liberalism cuts everything down to size and doesn't care about traditions. Here at a college, even though we are, you know, losing ground perhaps to liberalism, and you know the whole idea of, you know, being a place to get a job, we should be more than that right. We're also, as scholars, as professors and as students, you know, continuing and carrying on and passing on this great tradition that transcends liberalism. Liberalism allows us to, you know, be free and to recognize each other's rights, but, on the other hand, we also need to feel part of this great tradition as well, or?
Speaker 3:traditions. Problem with liberalism, I mean, is almost like you know, lincoln said, you know, a house divided cannot stand. I mean, liberalism just takes over everything. Yeah, that's the answer. I mean the market takes over everything. Just that notion. I mean it is just, and I think you could argue maybe not with Hobbes, but you could argue with this. John Locke, who was one of the first really smart persons to articulate some of these principles way back in the 17th century, is that I think you could maybe read him as suggesting that these liberal principles really are most applicable to politics. So, but they don't work quite as well as talking about the family. Actually, he does do a little bit of that as well. He does, he does, but I mean, I think you could argue he opens the door to this.
Speaker 3:You know he does. But I think you can argue that liberalism is really thus far the best-invented set of beliefs to deal with making government decent. But we wouldn't necessarily want to apply it to other institutions. And how do you do this kind of hybrid thing? I don't think we've figured this out. Oh no, no.
Speaker 1:So a little churchillian liberalism is the worst political system. Well, I think it's a really Except for all the others.
Speaker 3:I think it's a great political system. I'm not so sure that democracy and liberalism is a really great way of organizing the church or organizing academics or maybe even organizing the family or even other kinds of groups where we want to sacrifice for the group. We want to see the group as, first and foremost, that we might be comfortable with divisions, labor that are sort of traditional.
Speaker 1:So I think Don't look at another podcast for another day.
Speaker 3:Yeah, maybe no.
Speaker 1:I think so.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think so.
Speaker 3:Well, I didn't figure it out.
Speaker 2:I thought we, yeah, we didn't, I thought by now we would have solved all these problems.
Speaker 3:You know it was like 45, 50 minutes of talking about this and we didn't resolve it. I mean what? At least we know what the problem is. Yeah, we know what the problem is now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we've done 40 podcasts, but I've no, no, no, no, no closer to having the wisdom of the world than when I started. So but I'm having fun. I'm having fun, yeah, lots of good questions, and folks that are listening seem to be enjoying it as well, which is cool.
Speaker 3:That's good 5,000 times.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, thank you all very much, Thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you.