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Wesley J. Smith appeared on the Three Whisky Happy Hour Podcast to discuss the threat to human exceptionalism and dignity posed by assisted suicide and the nature rights movement. Smith speaks about how he became involved in advocating against assisted suicide in the 1990s and how his work has expanded to include bioethics. The conversation also includes topics such as voluntary stopping eating and drinking, medical conscience, how organ procurement is becoming an incentive for pushing assisted suicide, the acceptance of infanticide, and more. Read Smith’s piece, “The Whispers of Strangers,” published at Newsweek in 1993.

Religious freedom — the ability to live and act according to one’s faith — is one of our most fundamental human rights. But as Western society has secularized, religious freedom seems to have been eclipsed by other concerns. Indeed, freedom of religion is too often devalued in the public square, and in some places in the world, is under direct Read More ›

Anthropic is anthropomorphizing its AI program known as “Claude,” with the apparent intention of convincing us that powerful computer programs are — or can become — conscious “persons” with “feelings.” And, they think, Claude should one day be treated as such, to the point they have held meetings with religious leaders to discuss the moral concepts that might apply.

From the New York Times story:

Mr. [Christopher] Olah leads the Anthropic team responsible for understanding why A.I. systems like Claude act the way they do. All day, he had worked to convince his guests that A.I. models could display human behavior and even expressions that resemble feelings like anger and love.

Yet as the dinner courses came, the rabbi noticed that Mr. Olah and his colleagues were suggesting something far more significant. Anthropic’s leaders were talking about Claude as if it were not mere software.

“They’re relating to it like a conscious being,” realized Rabbi Navon, a former computer engineer who wrote his dissertation on the ethics of machine consciousness.

It appeared to Rabbi Navon that Mr. Olah and his team believed that Claude had what philosophers call “moral status” on par with a person — that it was a being with similar inherent rights to dignity or respect.

How early can a baby be born and survive? And what happens when whether that baby receives lifesaving care depends on which hospital the mother walks into? The edge of viability is moving. Babies born at 22 weeks are surviving and thriving, and there are now documented survivors born at just 21 weeks. But outcomes can vary dramatically depending on where a baby is born, whether active treatment is attempted, and the experience of the medical team. In this episode of Bioethics Babe, I sit down with neonatologist Dr. Robin Pierucci, who spent nearly 25 years caring for critically ill and extremely premature babies, including 17 years as medical director of a Level III NICU. We discuss: If the edge Read More ›

Are we our bodies? Or are our bodies simply something we have, something we can control, alter, suppress, or even redesign to conform to who we believe ourselves to be? Nearly half a century ago, St. John Paul II began delivering the 129 lectures that would become known as the Theology of the Body. But far from being simply a Catholic teaching about sex and marriage, Theology of the Body offers a sweeping vision of what it means to be human, and it may be more relevant now than ever. In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. John Grabowski, Professor of Moral Theology and Ethics at The Catholic University of America, to explore St. John Paul II’s understanding of the Read More ›

Panama has proposed that the U.N. General Assembly negotiate and adopt a “Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature.” From the press release:

In a historic development, the Government of Panama and For Nature have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly advance the adoption of a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature before the United Nations General Assembly, marking a significant milestone in the growing global movement to recognize ecosystems and species as rights-bearing entities.

The initiative is being funded in full by the Alfred Kobacker and Elizabeth Trimbach Fund (AKET Fund) in partnership with the National Geographic Society, reflecting a commitment to accelerate this emerging global framework at a moment when it is most urgently needed.

The nature rights movement is now thoroughly ensconced within the establishment and among the ruling elite. This agenda is being funded by the National Geographic Society. The AKET Fund is also pushing it. It doesn’t get more mainstream than that, which means that millions are going to be spent in the coming years promoting the idea of granting nature — which is everything that exists — the rights “to exist, persist, regenerate, and be restored,” among other liberties. Rivers, for example, are to be given the “right to flow.”

“Harm reduction” programs often cause terrible harm. But sometimes they also are beyond absurd. Like this example: Canadian prisons are going to distribute paper straws to inmates for use while snorting drugs. From the National Post story: The Correctional Service of Canada has confirmed that paper straws will soon be distributed in federal prisons to facilitate safe snorting of drugs. This week a social media post included photos of a memo distributed to Corrections staff stating that paper straws were being newly “introduced” for “safer snorting” and “intended for inhaling substances in powdered form or inhaling vapor from heated substances.” Don’t take drugs while imprisoned, but if you do, use a paper straw! Good grief. How will paper straws reduce harm exactly? Read More ›

Medical conscience is under sustained assault as doctors are being threatened with societal punishment or professional discipline for refusing to provide controversial but legal interventions such as abortion, euthanasia, and gender transition against their religious or moral beliefs. Now, a British Columbia doctor has been fined $28,100 for refusing to administer puberty blockers to a child based on his religious and moral objections. From the CBC story:

The decision describes Child Q, the 14-year-old at the centre at the decision, as a “brave, sensitive, kind transgender girl.”

It says in late 2020, she came out as transgender and struggled with her mental health as she entered puberty. Ajaero referred her to the B.C. Gender Clinic, where an endocrinologist prescribed Lupron, a medication that pauses puberty.

According to the decision, Child Q describes the day she started the medication as “one of the best days of my life.”

Lupron needs to be injected every three to four weeks. It can be injected at home, but according to the decision, Child Q and her family preferred to have it done by a doctor.

Her first appointment to get an injection at her family doctor’s was March 5.

The decision said when Ajaero learned that the shot was Lupron, he told Child Q’s mother he would not be administering it.

“He explained this was for religious and cultural reasons, and he hoped that was OK. Mother Q said it was not OK.”

Ajaero’s charting notes from the appointment said: “I noticed that the injection is for gender re-assignment as patient is already in the waiting room with [her] mother. I called mother into the room and explained to her that I would not be able to give the injection. Based on my religious belief and cultural background.”

Environmentalism continues its radical shift from reasonable conservationism to environmentalist earth religion. This growing faith was most recently preached in an op-ed published by the New York Times that quite literally proselytizes for nature animism.

Robert Moor, a self-described “Thoreauvian” nature writer and the author of In Trees, describes moving from New York City to the forests of British Columbia. He has not had the sylvan experience for which he hoped. After about a week of smoky air caused by annually recurring forest fires, the once “bone deep atheist” experiences a “baptism by wildfire,” a “religious conversion” into a neo-pagan faith called “scientific animism.” From “Our Forests Are Demanding a Sacrifice“:

In these moments, I stop seeing the sky as a blank backdrop. I see it as a living thing, and an angry one. I see the spirit of the forest rising up, rageful and trickstery, to hurl down thunderbolts and sicken us while we sleep. Put differently, I feel myself drawn away from scientific atheism, and toward a creed that philosophers call “scientific animism.”

Animism, put very simply, is the belief that the natural world is inhabited by spirits who can either punish us or bestow favors. Scientific animism applies this ancient lens to modern science, showing how forces in the natural world (plants, rivers, entire planets) are self-organized, self-perpetuating and self-willed. In this view, nature is not an inert, passive backdrop to human progress. It actively responds to our actions — though not always in the way we would predict.

Is talking to animals really AI’s “next ethical minefield,” as Bloomberg reports? At the center of the concern is University of Leon (Spain) investigator Vittorio Baglione, who studies European carrion crows, considered to be among the smartest birds. He attached tiny microphones to the tail feathers of 43 birds. Years later, he and his wife and research partner, Daniela Canestrari, ended up with about 150,000 hours of taped bird calls. For the massive job of sorting and interpreting the calls, they turned to a machine learning model from Earth Species Project that could distinguish individual bird calls and other sources of noise. The results were illuminating: Baglione’s favorite call was the soft burst of sound the crows would make when their nest Read More ›