Terri Schiavo's ordeal is part and parcel of a battle between proponents of "choice" and those who insist that every human being has a "right to life". This struggle, in its current form, goes back at least to the 1970s.
But do we, in fact, have a "right to life"?
The Declaration of Independence states that we do. Its second paragraph begins: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are [...] endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." But are these rights so self-evident and unalienable?
I'll sign off on "pursuit of Happiness" at once. After all, this does not pretend to guarantee actual happiness to anyone ― only the right to pursue it, not the right to catch it.
"Liberty" is less obvious, and should have been less obvious to the signors of the Declaration, many of whom owned ― and considered it another of their God-given unalienable rights to own ― slaves, people ("men") whose right to liberty was neither self-evident nor unalienable. In fact, if we look at the gamut of people over the range of freedom that may be available to us, we may note that we have special names for those people at the ends of that range: slaves at the one end, sociopaths at the other. After all, a person who considers his own personal "liberty" of behavior and action to be absolute is a person absolutely without regard for the rights of others. So ultimately our right to "liberty" is neither self-evident nor, in terms of our relations with those around us, unalienable.
"Right to life" in the context of the current discussion / debate / conflict is generally applied with regard to the unborn who, presumably, cannot defend themselves. It is argued that once a child has been conceived, that child has the right to live. The termination of the "life" of the unborn by uncaring parents and evil "abortion doctors" has been likened to the Holocaust that Hitler and his minions visited upon European Jewry more than half a century ago ― in fact, that very word has been used.
Is it appropriate? From figures I've seen, as many as one third of all conceptions result in spontaneous termination, a figure all the evil abortion doctors in the world working in concert would find extremely difficult to equal. So perhaps the unborn do ― and always have ― suffered from an invisible, and generally unnoticed, holocaust; but it is not people who visit this holocaust upon them, but ― to invoke the terminology used by most in the "right to life" camp ― God. In any case, it is pretty clear that the Creator of these tiniest and youngest of "all men" has not endowed them with any self-evident or unalienable right to Life.
What of those who have passed the point of birth? Among children, at least, historically ― and this was true at the time of the Declaration ― a child had no automatic right to life. As late as the early part of the twentieth century in America, and later elsewhere, a large percentage of those children who made it to birth did not make it to their first birthday, and a lot more didn't make it to their fifth; they were carried off by childhood diseases ("acts of God", if you will). These children, too, had no right to Life, though many were lucky.
What about grown people? Even if we ignore the acts of men (murders, executions, sixty-four thousand Americans and millions of southeast Asians killed in war in Viet-nam, more than a thousand Americans and untold tens of thousands of Iraqis killed in war in Iraq, genocide in Sudan) as human-induced violations of some hypothetical right to Life, how about acts of God? How many people died in last December's tsunami in the Indian Ocean? I've seen figures ranging up to a quarter of a million. What happened to these people's right to Life? It was not, apparently, unalienable.
In fact, when you look at matters more broadly, nobody has a right to Life; in the end, everybody dies. Life is not something to which you have a right; it's something that is lent to you, for a little space of time, and is then taken away. If you're lucky, you'll be able to make some use of it; if not, either you won't have the time, or you'll simply waste it. But in any event, Life is not a right. It's a privilege.
Since everybody else is writing about Terri Schiavo, I guess I'll put in my two cents' worth. I don't think she'll mind.
About 15 years ago, Terri Schiavo, who apparently suffered from bulemia, experienced a heart attack due to a potassium deficiency, and before paramedics could arrive and administer resuscitation, her oxygen-starved cerebral cortex, the seat of what we may loosely call "sentience", died. Since then, Schiavo has been in what is diagnosed as "a persistent vegetative state". For some time ― certainly long enough for him to win a malpractice suit against her doctor ― Schiavo's husband Michael kept her on life-support and undergoing various therapies. Somewhat later, he decided ― as her legal guardian ― that such draconian measures were no longer called for, and asked for her to be taken off the support that was keeping her "alive". Her parents, on the other hand, impelled perhaps by strong philosophical principles and perhaps by an unthinking parental desire to keep their daughter indefinitely on a shelf like a wax doll, fought against this. The fight has been going on for the better part of a decade, and now ― with Michael Schiavo's preferences apparently ascendant ― has again made national news, with Schiavo's "feeding tube" out for about eight days, president and Congress trying to get into the act, almost every judge approached saying "No!" to the parents, and even one attempt to solicit the murders of Schiavo and the main judge in the case.
Looking at the situation, I don't feel a lot of sympathy for anybody involved, except maybe for the hapless judges who have, as far as I can tell, tried to do their jobs. Skip quickly over President Bush, who as governor of Texas signed a bill that would allow people like Schiavo to die quickly (and otherwise, particularly with respect to convicted murderers, never showed any great feeling that life was something to be preserved under any circumstances), but who as president seemed to feel that Schiavo deserved the right to live ― in other words, he wanted to do something about his sagging ratings. Skip quickly over a Congress that wasted its time and our money sticking its nose into an affair that was none of its business in the first place. Skip over the Florida government and governor Jeb Bush, who has over the last few years gone out of his way to keep Schiavo "alive" by violating due process right and left ― and, for failing in his (to me) extralegal activities, is now being soundly denounced by Schiavo's parents, the Schindlers, and their supporters.
Let's go right to Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers. Did Schiavo really love his wife, and did she really confide in him her wish to die if she were ever to be found in her current circumstances? Well, Schiavo is now living with a "girl friend", who has given him two children. And his report of her preference not to be kept alive indefinitely came awfully late in the game; why did he not simply refuse to put her on such support in the first place? Problem here, of course, is that ― based on democratic principles ― it's very easy to believe (and probably true) that Terri Schiavo, whatever she told or did not tell her husband, would rather not continue "alive" in her current state; apparently most of the rest of us would not, either. Whatever Schiavo's motives and behavior, he has likely correctly reported ― or guessed ― his wife's probable preference.
And her parents? I may be being cynical here, but I have a feeling that if the situation were reversed, if it were Michael Schiavo lying there with a feeding tube inserted into his stomach and no higher brain functions left at all, and if it were Terri Schiavo trying to make the difficult decision of whether to keep him "alive" or turn him off, the parents would be right there urging here to send poor Michael to surcease and "get on with your life" (i.e., remarry and provide us with the grandchildren that all grandparents seem to want).
Recently they've reported that when asked her own preference, Terri Schiavo managed to voice two syllables ― "AHHH WAHHH", which they interpret as "I want to live!" Aside from the fact that one could just as easily interpret these as "I want to die!" this information, too, was dumped into the game awfully late, especially given that, from everything I've heard, nobody has ever otherwise heard Terri say anything in fifteen years. Judge Greer, who is the chief representative of the Florida judicial branch in this matter, has rightly decided to ignore this "evidence".
And my own opinion? I suspect (based on my own religious views) that the "personality" named Terri Schiavo has been dead for fifteen years. But the body lives on, and trapped somewhere in there is the nameless entity ― the thing that sometimes says to itself, "Why am I looking out of this pair of eyes and not some other?" ― for want of a better word, what we can call the "soul" ― screaming to get out. If I were making the decision, I'd say: "Let her go, to heaven or hell or the summerlands or the happy hunting ground or wherever. Pull the tube." That's the decision I'd want someone to make for me.
Some days ago, in discussing "intelligent design, I accused proponents of this philosophy of not knowing what the word "theory" meant. Upon further reflection, I have come to the conclusion that at least some of these proponents are well aware of the fact that the word "theory" has two quite different meanings ― and are more than happy to confuse the two meanings in order to confuse their listeners and push their ... well, let's call it a "theory" about the universe and its origins.
As I suggested, in ordinary parlance the word "theory" means pretty much the same as "unsupported supposition". As an example: I hear a gunshot from the street behind our house. I explain to my wife: "My theory is that the guy who lives around the corner ― I've never much cared for him; he has a shifty look to him, his eyes are too close together ― just put a bullet into his son, who, I'm pretty sure, has been dealing drugs." Later, of course, it becomes known that a completely different guy in a completely different house was cleaning his .38 when he accidentally put a bullet into the wall. (My "theory" that the son of the first guy has been dealing drugs may or may not be true, but is now irrelevant, since he just received a full scholarship to Stanford ...)
I've just used the word theory in the colloquial sense: an unsupported explanation for an observable phenomenon. Same as supposition.
To a scientist, theory has quite a different meaning. The scientist, having heard the gunshot, might hypothesize that the disliked neighbor had shot his son, but he would not dignify the hypothesis with the name theory. Instead, he would stroll around the corner to the first man's house, knock on the door, and ask: "Did you just have some problem with your gun?" To which the man might well respond: "Not I, I don't even own a gun. But I have a lawnmower that needs fixing; do you have any experience with those?" The scientist, having disclaimed any understanding of the esoterica of lawnmower motors, would then visit each house on the block until he came to the one where the owner, answering the door, says: "Yeah, I was cleaning my .38 and it went off. Now I have a bullet hole in that wall over there." At which point, the scientist would return to his wife and explain his theory (which remains a theory, since he wasn't actually present when the gun went off, and the guy could, after all, be lying): "I believe that Joe Rodriguez, back behind us, was cleaning his gun and it went off." (1)
I hope this clarifies the difference between a colloquial theory and a scientific one. The colloquial theory is nothing more than rank supposition (though in many cases it may, by simple coincidence, prove to be right); the scientific theory depends on (a) explaining an observed phenomenon, and (b) not going against any other observed facts. It should also be usable to predict future phenomena related to the original phenomenon (the scientist's prediction: Joe will not be hauled off by the police to stand trial for filicide).
Unfortunately, when a proponent of "intelligent design" says, of evolution, "it's only a theory", he is taking advantage of the fact that many, perhaps most, people don't understand the difference between these two meanings of the word "theory". Given that at least some such proponents claim scientific training, they themselves have to be aware of this difference ― which means, to me, that they are intentionally trying to muddy the waters.
Well, that's my theory, anyway.
(1) Another possibility ― given that Joe could have been lying ― is that Joe's wife, an hour earlier, had asked him why he even had a gun, given that he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with it ― even if he was in the barn. And Joe was simply trying to prove his wife wrong, by trying to hit the wall of his house from the inside. When a scientist has two possible hypotheses that explain all the facts ― a cleaning accident vs. an intentional experiment ― he often depends on something called "(William of) Occam's Razor", aka the "Law of Least Effort", to determine that the hypothesis which explains a phenomenon in the least baroque fashion is the likely one. This is, however, a philosophical idea, not a scientific one, and it can prove to be wrong. Nevertheless, a scientist would, in the absence of further evidence (eyewitness testimony), probably choose to accept the "cleaning accident" rather than the "intentional experiment" explanation. And, of course, in the absence of a body, he would never theorize that Joe shot his son.
Not only are a majority of Americans opposed to "privatizing" any part of their Social Security savings, this majority seems to be on the increase. President George W. Bush's response is to stump around the country in what appears to be an increasingly futile attempt to convince the American public that his plan ― whatever it is; I have not seen a detailed exposition of it ― is the correct "solution" to Social Security's "problems". Furthermore, in the last couple of days I have heard him say twice (once in a televised clip of a public meeting, once on his weekly radio show) that he simply will not accept a "band-aid" solution for Social Security's purported problems. "Band-aid" solutions are, apparently, quick and easy fixes such as (for instance) indexing the "cap" on taxable income to inflation ― a move that would probably take the pressure off Social Security for decades to come, since we seem to have inflation with us, always.
Which brings us to the skyrocketing price of gasoline. We probably shouldn't complain about this ― Europeans have been paying higher prices than we are now paying for a couple of decades. But perhaps we should look at the causes for the current run-up in prices. There seem to be several of these:
(1) Oil companies looking to make obscene profits. Every time gas prices take a big jump, the quarterly financials for the oil companies show a record net.
(2) Everybody wants oil. The market used to be primarily the United States and Western Europe ― a total of half a billion people wanting to gas up their cars once or twice a week. Now China and India ― two billion more people ― seem to be getting into the act. A recent National Geographic article pointed out that today the average eastern Chinese (there are roughly a billion of them) uses one barrel of oil per year; within a few years, this figure will be six barrels of oil per year. Where are those extra five billion barrels of oil per year going to come from?
(3) No matter how many people want oil, and for what purposes, the supply is essentially limited ― and we've already turned a good portion of it into water and carbon dioxide. There are various estimates of when global production is going to top out and start declining; they range from this November (the most pessimistic; I certainly hope it's wrong) to about the same time that Social Security is going to start experiencing benefit problems (the most optimistic ― except for a few oil company officials who still insist that the supply is unlimited).
President Bush's solution? The President who, from his mighty throne in Washington, refuses to accept a band-aid solution for Social Security, proposes opening the Arctic Wildlife Refuge on the north slope of Alaska to "exploration" ― read "despoiling and drilling". By the accounts I've seen, there's enough oil under the North Slope to satisfy Americans for ― how long? ― five years! (Note: I saw this figure some years before SUVs, with their relatively low-efficiency engines, became so popular on America's highways.) After five years, of course, we'd be right back where we are now, except without that North Slope oil to fall back on. Talk about band-aids!
Not that I'm irrevocably opposed to opening this area to drilling and extraction. Even the wealthier liberals who today would lay down their lives to protect the caribou from the depredations of the oil companies will, when push comes to shove, find themselves less ready to give up their SUVs. When that oil is needed, it will still be there ― and it will be taken, and for a couple of years we will be able to continue driving our cars and eating all the caribou steaks we want. The problem is, of course, that once we've used it, that oil will no longer be there.
Let's face it ― or, perhaps, let's not; some things are just too terrible to face ― if in 2042 people stop receiving their Social Security benefits, the probability is that this will not happen because the genuine crisis point has been reached in the content of the Social Security trust fund. The real probability is that this will happen because, in the chaos that ensues after America no longer has ready access to petroleum reserves that we depend on to keep our way of life going (they are, after all, in China's back yard, not ours), the government will simply have disintegrated and will no longer be there to pay out those benefits. I leave the results to your imagination, though you might find it more edifying to drive down to your local cinema and sit through Hitch twice and take your mind off this question.
Band-aid solutions will do wonders for some problems, as they often do with human beings; Social Security is one of those problems. But for other problems, as in human illnesses, extreme intervention seems to be called for; and this is just where our current president seems ready to depend on band-aids.
Even though it's a weekend, I was doing some work at the office of the Esperanto League for North America today ― "salarymen work from dawn to setting sun / but a consultant's work is never done". While I was there, I had a visitor ― Steve, a professor of biology at Amherst who is probably going to be ELNA's next vice-president, and who was in the area this weekend and wanted to visit the office. We talked a lot about ELNA, but gradually the conversation moved over to the inevitable question (which has nothing to do with Esperanto, except that our conversation was carried on in that language) ― inevitable, given that he is a biologist ― of Darwinism vs. creationism. In the process, I got to vent a few of my layman's opinions on the topic.
Maybe I shouldn't use the word "creationism" here. For some time "creationism" was rebaptized "scientific creationism". The problem with this was that it was fairly obvious that nothing about creationism was scientific; there was no science involved ― everything comes back to the Holy Bible, and particularly the Book of Genesis, which may indeed be revealed word, but has nothing whatsoever to do with scientific method. (My long-ago suggestion that, if textbooks are going to mention Biblical creation alongside evolution, they should also mention the Chinese creation myth, involving Pan-Ku the Nebula, a goddess named Nüwa, and a quarter of a million years ― well, that suggestion seems to have met with universal inattention. Except maybe in China.)
More recently, "scientific creationism" having bit the big one, so to speak, "intelligent design" has become the new buzzword. Apparently this has to do with God, who is intelligent, man having created God in his own image and so assumed that intelligence is the highest possible attribute of just about anything, a supposition that remains to be proven; but I guess we can use it as a working hypothesis.
There are two fundamental fallacies about "intelligent design" (more properly: creationism) that I'd like to address. The first one has to do with their arguments. Their claim is that Darwinistic evolution is "only a theory", which (shorn of the "only") is quite correct. The problem is that they ― and, far too often, the people they are trying to convince ― don't have the vaguest idea what a theory is, and confuse it with a "hypothesis" (or, more often, a supposition, which is what a hypothesis would be if somebody pulled it out of his rear end rather than being inspired by observations to create it as an explanation for those observations).
Just about everything in science is a "theory" (1) ― that is, an explanation for observed phenomena which serves to explain them (usually in the simplest way possible) and which has not been (yet) countered by any observations made. As an example, there is a theory of gravity. It is no more and no less of a theory than that of evolution. Yet, strangely, I feel morally certain that should those who argue that evolution is "only a theory" be asked to put on open-toed sandals, step outside, pick up a thirty-pound rock, hold it five feet above their toes and let go of it, they would refuse, despite the fact that gravity is "only a theory".
The other problem has to do with usefulness. Simply put, as far as understanding how things in the universe actually work, the Bible is useless. It may be "true" ― whatever that means ― and Darwinian evolution may be "false"; but experience shows that, if you learn something about evolution, you will be learning how to intervene in that process and maybe make the universe do something at your will. Doesn't matter if it's "true" or "false"; it's useful. On the other hand, the only thing the Bible has to teach us is that the universe, which operates on a basis of miracles, is infinitely capricious; you can't count on anything. In this sense, then, the Bible, "true" or "false", is useless. Not one of the great scientific developments of the 20th century derived from the Bible; Darwinian evolution contributed to many of them.
Some three years ago, a team of astronomers at the University of Hawai'i's Institute for Astronomy discovered what was up to that time the most distant galaxy yet discovered, HCM6A, at a distance of z=6.56 or, if I'm not mistaken, roughly 13 billion light years. The discoverers claimed that this "pushed back the dark age" of the universe (the date at which reionization occurred); though I suspect that it did not actually push it back so much as add observational constraints to an already existing "theory" that reionization occurred at a somewhat earlier epoch. In any case, this discovery helped contribute its small bit to our understanding of how the universe developed and works. And what would the promoters of "intelligent design" have to say to that? Unfortunately, their arguments lead to the inevitable conclusion that the universe was created by miraculous intervention only a bit more than 6,000 years ago (Bishop Usher's calculation based on a series of Biblical "begats"), and that the photons observed by the astronomical team were created not by star-formation thirteen billion years ago in a distant galaxy, but by divine fiat, six thousand years ago, heading for earth, and actually mean nothing at all. And true or false, dear reader, how does that help contribute to our understanding of the universe?
(1) When I was in high school, I "learned" that theories, when they are shown to be inevitably correct, advance to the status of "facts". This is not correct, as far as I now know. Theories remain theories; facts are observations that support or counter them.