Liberal Ethics

Ben's response to my last post--as well as a recent post on his blog about moral absolutes--started me thinking about liberal ethics.

I read the comic strip "Mallard Fillmore" every day, in part from a masochistic desire to get riled up, and in part to see how cultural conservatives think. I've been curious about their worldview in the last year, since it's a perspective that's foreign to me. Regular readers of my blog know that I'm not a fan of President Bush, but he did manage to get himself elected once or twice (depending on whom you ask), so I can't dismiss him entirely without first trying to figure out why his rhetoric was compelling to so many people.

If you read a lot of far-right conservative writing, you get the sense that wishy-washy godless liberals never think about ethics and just do anything that feels good that they can rationalize afterwards. I know that's not true. My father, an atheist well into my adulthood, is one of the most ethical people I know. He taught me that actions have consequences, and that we must always think through what we do. He taught me to always come through for the people who rely on me, and not to back away from a just conflict. He taught me to question conventional wisdom and think for myself.

I know it must be comforting to be able to draw bright moral lines: No sex before marriage. From the moment of conception, a fertilized egg is fully human. The Bible is the infallible word of God, and we must follow everything it says.

Take abortion, for example. (And yes, I'm bringing it up again, even though every time I do, I get at least one random commenter who appears to have found my blog from some search engine or other and feels compelled to tell me life begins at conception, as if I've never heard that argument before.)

In a broad sense, I'm pro-choice. In a more nuanced sense, I believe it's a situation with two competing sets of rights: those of the woman and those of the potential child. Early in the pregnancy, when the embryo or fetus is no more than a clump of cells and would not survive on its own, I believe the woman's rights are paramount. Later in the pregnancy, especially once the fetus becomes viable, the potential child's rights gain strength. This is not a bright moral line, but a gray area, and I believe that many people recognize it as such. According to Medline, "It is estimated that up to 50% of all fertilized eggs die and are lost (aborted) spontaneously, usually before the woman knows she is pregnant." If we truly thought that people were fully human at conception, we would expect women who miscarry after only a few days of knowing they're pregnant to mourn as much as mothers who had lost 10-year-olds. We would expect the fertility doctors who destroy unused embryos to have to wear bulletproof vests to work.

But admitting that this is a gray area can be deeply uncomfortable. If we are not fully human at conception, then when are we? How will we know? It is easier to draw a bright moral line--but just because it's easier doesn't mean it's right.

Because abortion is a gray area, as a matter of public policy I prefer to leave the decision up to the conscience of individual women. Women who see abortion as murder are free to make different choices. People who are not pregnant are free to provide pregnant women--or women who might become pregnant--with other alternatives.

Some people view the admission of moral gray areas as a weakness in the liberal position, but I am slowly coming to see it as a strength.

Mathematician Kurt Goedel argued in 1931 that systems can be either complete or consistent, but not both. While he was speaking in a narrow mathematical sense, the same can be applied to belief systems. A simplistic belief system can be consistent, but it will probably not be complete. If it's complete, it's probably not consistent.

A flip side of absolutist thinking is hypocrisy. Cultural conservatives say they value marriage--but conservative Christians have higher divorce rates than atheists. People have sex before marriage, but then counsel their children to wait; in the meantime, they provide their children no information about preventing pregnancy or sexually-transmitted diseases. Sometimes it seems to me that extreme cultural conservatives prefer to live in a fantasy world and refuse to discuss reality because they believe it should be different. People should wait until marriage to have sex, they say, so they refuse to discuss the fact that more than 88% of teenagers who sign abstinence pledges do not honor them (and those teenagers are also less likely to use condoms when they do have sex).

Although by nature I try to seek consensus, sometimes I become very pessimistic that the two sides of the political spectrum will ever understand each other. If you truly believe, say, that men and women's differences go far beyond reproductive capability, and that both genders are necessary so that they can become one flesh in the image of God, how can you reach common ground with someone who believes that gay marriage would benefit society? If you really believe that a clump of cells is not a person, how can you engaged in a dialogue with someone who believes that abortion is equivalent to murder?

But I know that most people fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, not at the extremes. Blogging can be a useful way of expanding the political discourse in the U.S.; when you read various blogs over time, you realize that most people's beliefs elude a simple red state/blue state dichotomy. I believe the cure for political polarization is engagement and discussion, which is why I have been pondering and writing about these issues. I don't expect all my readers to agree with my every position, but I want to articulate my perspective.

I know some liberals who are doing their best to follow in Jesus' footsteps and live humble lives in service to humanity. I know others who are atheists and follow their own consciences, or try to live by the principle of reducing suffering as much as possible. Contrary to what some people would have you believe, we are thoughtful people, leading ethical lives to the best of our ability.