Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Buchanan on Human Enhancement

In coming years, government and religion will have to come to terms with new biomedical technologies that greatly enhance human capacity. The state will need to address the potential for vastly increased life spans – a nice problem, but an issue for entitlements, if nothing else — as well as possible distributive inequalities. Religions will face questions about traditional ethics, particularly in respect of human reproduction, and may even face deeper doubts about theologies that teach the need for transcending the human condition. Why would we need divine grace if we could correct our flaws ourselves?

I’m skeptical that we are on the brink of a “post-humanity,” myself, or that religion is about to become obsolete. Utopians always promise that we are only a breakthrough or two away from a Bright Tomorrow in which we will control our own destiny, and the “Singularity” sounds like another futurist fantasy to me. Still, it’s worth thinking about technologies that do seem likely. Allen Buchanan (Duke) has written a new book, Better Than Human (Oxford), that addresses the subject. The publisher’s description follows.

Is it right to use biomedical technologies to make us better than well or even perhaps better than human? Should we view our biology as fixed or should we try to improve on it? College students are already taking cognitive enhancement drugs. The U.S. army is already working to develop drugs and technologies to produce “super soldiers.” Scientists already know how to use genetic engineering techniques to enhance the strength and memories of mice and the application of such technologies to humans is on the horizon.

In Better Than Human, philosopher-bioethicist Allen Buchanan grapples with the ethical dilemmas of the biomedical enhancement revolution. Biomedical enhancements can make us smarter, have better memories, be stronger, quicker, have more stamina, live much longer, avoid the frailties of aging, and enjoy richer emotional lives. In spite of the benefits that biomedical enhancements may bring, many people instinctively reject them. Some worry that we will lose something important-our appreciation Read more

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

“Providence” Will Have To Go, Too

The Christmas Wars are really heating up, and December’s only just started. From Rhode Island, the setting of the Supreme Court’s first Christmas display case, Lynch v. Donnelly (1984), a new controversy over what to call the 17-foot blue spruce that decorates the statehouse. Governor Lincoln Chafee insists on referring to it as the state “Holiday Tree” rather than “Christmas Tree,” a decision that has exposed him to some ridicule, with critics accusing him of triviality and political correctness. The governor argues that “Holiday Tree” is more consistent with Rhode Island’s long tradition of separating religion and government. No word yet whether the governor will also seek to change the name of the state capital, Providence (est. 1636), so that it too conforms to state tradition.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Who’s Sick Now?

Here is an interesting story at the intersection of geo-politics, economics, and religion, about Turkey’s increasing skepticism about becoming part of the EU.  From the story:

A century ago when the Ottoman Empire was crumbling, Turkey acquired the unwelcome nickname “the sick man of Europe.” Now many Turks cannot help but gloat that Turkey’s economy is forecast to grow at a 7.5 percent rate this year while Europe is sputtering.

“Those who called us ‘sick’ in the past are now ‘sick’ themselves,” Zafer Caglayan, Turkey’s minister of economy, said recently. “May God grant them recovery.”

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami · 11 Comments

Conscience v. Conscience?

Here is a view in the Guardian that is representative of a growing swell of opinion against the policy wisdom of granting exemptions for conscience reasons to religious institutions.  I want to ask a question about one feature of the argument which one frequently hears in these discussions:

“Why should the conscience of an employer trump a woman’s conscience?” Illinois Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky asked in a statement. “Why should an employer decide for a woman whether she can access healthcare services that she and her doctor decide are necessary? Why are we talking about allowing some employers to put up a barrier to access at a time when women are struggling afford and access healthcare?”

Indeed, what Rep Schakowsky asks is of vital importance. This isn’t just an issue of separating church and state, or of being forced to define what constitutes religious affiliation, doctor-patient privacy or a public health matter. If President Obama sides with the Catholic leaders demanding the exemption, his decision would directly impact the lives of millions of poor Americans already struggling in the recession.

It seems to me that this argument is confused, even if extremely popular and demagogically effective.  The right question is not whether the religious institution’s conscience should “trump” the individual’s conscience.  If the health care law contains an exemption for religious employers, the individual woman is not being prevented from obtaining contraceptive services.  She is only losing the power to compel her religious employer (for whom, one should expect, she agreed to work voluntarily) to pay for her contraceptive services.  On the other hand, if there is no exemption, the religious employer is being compelled to provide contraceptive services, in direct violation of its beliefs.  What is of “vital importance” is the failure of so many people to recognize this distinction.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

More on the Egyptian Election

From the excellent FaithWorld news source, it looks like the Salafi bloc may have won as much as 30% of the vote.  A bit:

The Salafi movement wants to model Egypt’s future on Islam’s past. If the first results of the country’s parliamentary elections are anything to go by, many Egyptians agree with them.

Ultra-conservative Islamists may have won 20 to 30 percent of the vote in the first leg of Egypt’s three-stage parliamentary vote, an outcome that has surprised and alarmed many Egyptians. They are worried about what this might mean for freedoms and tolerance in the Arab world’s most populous nation.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Grote & Roder eds., “Constitutionalism in Islamic Countries”

Here is a very substantial and extremely timely book edited by Rainer Grote and Tilmann Röder (both of the Max Planck Institute), Constitutionalism in Islamic Countries: Between Upheaval and Continuity (OUP 2011).  The publisher’s description follows.

Constitutionalism in Islamic Countries: Between Upheaval and Continuity examines the question of whether something similar to an “Islamic constitutionalism” has emerged out of the political and constitutional upheaval witnessed in many parts of North Africa, the Middle East, and Central and Southern Asia. In order to identify its defining features and to assess the challenges that Islamic constitutionalism poses to established concepts of constitutionalism, this book offers an integrated analysis of the complex frameworks in Islamic countries, drawing on the methods and insights of comparative constitutional law, Islamic law, international law and legal history. European and North American experiences are used as points of reference against which the peculiar challenges, and the specific answers given to those challenges in the countries surveyed, can be assessed. The book also examines ways in which the key concepts of constitutionalism, including fundamental rights, separation of powers, democracy and rule of law, may be adapted to an Islamic context, thus providing valuable new insights on the prospects for a genuine renaissance of constitutionalism in the Islamic world in the wake of the “Arab spring.”

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Inazu, “Liberty’s Refuge”

My friend John Inazu (Washington University St. Louis) has published Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly (Yale 2011).  Warm congratulations to John for this wonderful work on a (before his book) understudied but vitally important liberty, which sometimes is teamed with religious liberty in constitutional cases.  The publisher’s description follows.

This original and provocative book looks at an important constitutional freedom that today is largely forgotten: the right of assembly. While this right lay at the heart of some of the most important social movements in American history—abolitionism, women’s suffrage, the labor and civil rights movements—courts now prefer to speak about the freedoms of association and speech. But the right of “expressive association” undermines protections for groups whose purposes are demonstrable not by speech or expression but through ways of being. John D. Inazu demonstrates that the forgetting of assembly and the embrace of association lose sight of important dimensions of our constitutional tradition.

UPDATE: John kindly informs me that he has made the entire text of his book available here for free.  You now have no excuse not to read it!

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Ekelund & Tollison, “Economic Origins of Roman Christianity”

It isn’t often that law and economics and law and religion meet up, but this book, Economic Origins of Roman Christianity (U. Chicago Press 2011), by Robert B. Ekelund, Jr. and Robert D. Tollison, looks to be an exception.  The book is itself an example of how Americans believe that the tools of economics and the market can be fruitfully applied to understand all sorts of social phenomena — indeed, how the metaphor of the market is a natural fit for understanding religious experience.  Definitely worth a look, though I am not familiar with the designation, “Roman Christianity” (I’m sure the authors explain why they chose it).  The publisher’s description follows.

In the global marketplace of ideas, few realms spark as much conflict as religion. For millions of people, it is an integral part of everyday life, reflected by a widely divergent supply of practices and philosophical perspectives. Yet, historically, the marketplace has not always been competitive. While the early Common Era saw competition between Christianity, Judaism, and the many pagan cults, Roman Christianity came eventually to dominate Western Europe.
 
Using basic concepts of economic theory, Robert B. Ekelund Jr. and Robert D. Tollison explain the origin and subsequent spread of Roman Christianity, showing first how the standard concepts of risk, cost, and benefit can account for the demand for religion. Then, drawing on the economics of networking, entrepreneurship, and industrial organization, the book explains Christianity’s rapid ascent. Like a business, the church developed sound business strategies that increased its market share to a near monopoly in the medieval period. This book offers a fascinating look at the dynamics of Christianity’s rise, as well as how aspects the church’s structure—developed over the first millennium—illuminate a number of critical problems faced by the Church today. 
Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Banzhaf Complaint Against CUA Same-Sex Dorm Policy Dismissed

Here is the order of dismissal. The DCOHR did not reach CUA’s and President Garvey’s RFRA claims, relying instead on an interpretation of the DCHRA.  One important reason, in the DCOHR’s view, for dismissing the complaint was that to do otherwise would lead to absurd results, such as compulsory unisex bathrooms and compulsory unisex locker rooms.  Better to hold all of these practices outside the ken of the DCHRA.

I applaud the decision.  At the same time, I think it is extraordinary that in the current legal landscape, we are reduced to depending on the absurdity of forcing everyone, even if against their will, to accept unisex bathrooms, in order to conclude that a private religious institution like CUA can have men and women sleep in separate dorms.  The toilet: our safety-net of common sense. 

Onto the next Banzhaf complaint against CUA alleging discrimination against Muslims, to which not a single Muslim student has put his or her name.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Wendel on Christian Legal Ethics

W. Bradley Wendel (Cornell) has posted Lawyering in the Christian Colony: Some Hauerwasian Themes, Reflections, and Questions on SSRN. The abstract follows.

This paper was prepared for a conference on Stanley Hauerwas and the Law, held at Duke University in September 2011. One who shared Hauerwas’s theological commitments might find it difficult to serve as a lawyer, given that the principles of legal ethics are grounded in the kind of political liberalism that Hauerwas finds repellent. For example, Stephen Pepper’s well known liberal defense of the standard conception of legal ethics pretty much pushes all of the buttons that set off Hauerwas. Pepper argues that while the law necessarily imposes restrictions on what we may do, but no one else is empowered to place restrictions on our autonomy. In a complex, highly legalistic society, however, citizens are necessarily required in some cases to seek advice from legally trained professionals to determine whether their proposed course of conduct may violate the law, or to employ mechanisms provided for by the legal system (such as contrasts, wills and trusts, and business entities) to achieve their goals. In providing this assistance, lawyers should not impose their own views about the morality of their clients’ conduct; rather, they should assist their clients in implementing their own plans, providing technical assistance but not moral suasion. As any reader of Hauerwas knows, this is an aspect of the modernist anomie he warns about, in which the autonomy to decide for oneself is exalted into the first principle of ethics, with the result that individuals are cut off from the resources they need (traditions, communities, stories) to construct meaningful lives for themselves. This kind of alienation can be cured only by associating oneself with a community — for Hauerwas this is the church — and sharing in the ongoing development of its history. Thus, one may ask whether a Christian lawyer can follow some version of the standard conception, at least on Hauerwas’s conception of Christian social ethics.

With considerable hesitation, given the size and complexity of the corpus of Hauerwas’s scholarship, this paper attempts to offer an engaged Christian legal ethics in which the primary obligation of lawyers, acting in their Read more