From the December 27, 1987 Los Angeles Times
CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND - The 20th Century has witnessed an unprecedented
expansion of scientific knowledge. It has also seen episodes of
human- rights abuse unparalleled both in magnitude and cruelty.
Even as the double-helix discovery, the quantum theory and the
development of a polio vaccine have manifested some of man's most
ennobling capabilities, the gulags and gas chambers have demonstrated
with equal force that scientific prowess alone does not confirm
the existence of civilization--if civilization is to be measured
by a commitment to protecting human rights.
Indeed, in a great many places during the 20th Century, human
rights have been an imperiled commodity. Yet in every situation,
the protections accorded human rights have reflected what cultures
and governments think about the value and dignity of man. The
scientific disciplines, which have increasingly helped to define
our century's view of mankind, have indirectly played an important
role in the discussion of human rights, precisely because man's
idea of man ultimately decides the respect such rights receive.
Human rights might be defined as the legal and political manifestation
of a culture's perception of human dignity. Yet cultures do not
create human dignity any more than governments create human rights;
at best, societies will acknowledge dignity by preserving rights.
Former Harvard law professor Harold J. Berman has detected this
assumption at the heart of American constitutionalism. In the
United States, he notes, "the fundamental rights of individual
persons exist independently of the state." Under Soviet Marxism,
by contrast, "all rights are granted by the state and are
inevitably subordinate to (its) power."
But which way should it be? Do human rights have validity apart
from government decree or are they merely granted by it?
In the Western tradition, human rights have been said to exist
independently of the state because they have been based upon human
dignity. The American Bill of Rights, for example, offers what
Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. has called "a
sublime oration on the dignity of man." The word dignity
comes from the Latin dignitas, meaning "glory." Historically,
Western society has derived its belief in the dignity of man from
its Judeo-Christian belief that man is the glory of God, made
in his image. According to this view, human rights depend upon
the Creator who made man with dignity, not upon the state. In
the American formulation, "men . . . are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable rights."
Many educated citizens in the West, however, have abandoned the
traditional view of man and replaced it with a more contemporary
scientific view--one that promulgates a less exalted view of man.
In purely material, scientific terms, human beings are insignificant
oddities cast up by chance in an immense and impersonal universe.
As British philosopher Bertrand Russell concluded, "Man is
the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were
achieving" and which, in turn, predestine him "to extinction
in the vast death of the solar system." Such pessimism has
persisted despite the spectacular advances that have occurred
in science during the 20th Century. Though Einsteinian and quantum
concepts have revolutionized accepted ideas of matter, space and
time, science has discovered nothing to elevate the modern view
of man. In this modern scientific view, only man's material complexity
distinguishes him from the other biological structures that inhabit
the universe.
This loss of what is distinctively human will in time require
either promoting animals to the human estate, or more likely,
relegating man to the level of animals. UC Berkeley biologist
Thomas H. Jukes has declared that in a few years we will hear
of "the rights of bacteria," since all that differentiates
bacteria from humanity is a "disparity in the length and
sequence of DNA molecules."
Such predictions are not merely theoretical. Dolphin experiments
prompted John Lilly to say that "the day that communication
is established the (dolphin) becomes a legal, ethical, moral and
social problem." The dolphin will have qualified for "human
rights." A court case in California about a great ape that
learned sign language further illustrates the point. With research
funds exhausted, the ape's teachers claimed that because the ape
had learned language, it qualified for legal protection and that
to return it to the zoo would be "dehumanizing."
While some researchers have "personified" their apes,
others have mechanized their concept of man. One Carnegie-Mellon
robotics researcher has suggested that those who deny the "consciousness"
of his mobile robots display a gross chauvinism in favor of their
own form of mental machinery. A conference at Yale last year on
artificial intelligence produced several informal discussions
about the problem of defining the political rights of "thinking"
machines. In his widely read article in Science, "The New
Biology: What Price Relieving Man's Estate?" Leon R. Kass
of the University of Chicago wrote "we are witnessing the
erosion, perhaps the final erosion, of the idea of man as something
splendid or divine, and its replacement with a view that sees
man, no less than nature, as simply more raw material for manipulation
and homogenization. Hence our peculiar moral crisis."
In the face of this situation, Western nations have signed the
U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. Most all still abide by its
provisions. Without the concept of "the distinctively human,"
however, governments are inevitably playing a global game of "let's
pretend." The most impassioned appeals for human rights by
politicians and scientists will mean nothing if they have abandoned
belief in the distinctive dignity of man. Without this conviction
there is no logical ground for supporting human rights in the
West or in the Soviet Union; there is no logical ground for human
rights at all. In such a context, those who advocate human rights
practice species chauvinism.
In response to such absurd but seemingly inescapable conclusions,
some have hoped that merely reiterating the Judeo-Christian doctrine
of creation will restore the grounds for preserving human dignity.
But no doctrine can give man dignity, let alone one that is no
longer believed. No "useful fiction" can rescue man
from his current moral dilemma; for fictions remain useful only
as long as they are not regarded as such. Even so, Judaism and
Christianity do not teach that the doctrine of man's creation
in the Divine image establishes his dignity. They teach that the
fact of man's creation has established human dignity. Only if
man is (in fact) a product of special Divine purposes can his
claim to distinctive or intrinsic dignity be sustained. Indeed,
if dignity is built into man by his Creator, then certain rights
are "inalienable." Moreover it follows that if man's
dignity is a fact of his origin, human rights are independent
of his religious or philosophical convictions, just as they are
independent of the state. In short, if the traditional view of
man's origin is correct, people have human rights whether they
believe they do or not.
Voltaire said that madness is to have erroneous perceptions and
to reason correctly from them. Historically, from the standpoint
of human rights, madness has prevailed in the Eastern Bloc under
Soviet domination. Moreover, the Soviet madness adheres to the
pattern Voltaire described: Soviet indifference to human rights
is reasoned correctly from an erroneous perception of man called
Marxism--a materialist perception that Karl Marx himself held
to be scientific.
Yet we in the West with our own scientific view of man have created
a curious situation. The orthodoxy of Judaism and Christianity
contends that man has dignity because he has been created in the
image of God. If the orthodox view is false, as is now widely
assumed in the academic and legal professions, then one wonders
how long it will be until we in the West reason correctly from
a strictly scientific perception of human nature.
As renewed Soviet-American dialogue again raises the question
of human rights, we might well remember that neither the edifice
of Western technical sophistication nor the "science"
of Marx can provide any firm ground for asserting these rights.
Instead, productive proclamations of human rights depend upon
a shared conviction that man's dignity is inherent--safe from
any political expedient--as our Western religious heritage once
asserted.
Public, and especially political, references to this heritage
can doubtless offend the sensibilities of a secular age. Yet if
the traditional understanding of man is correct, if it is not
only doctrinal but factual, then governments can derive human
rights from a dignity that actually exists. But if the traditional
view is false and the modern scientific view prevails, then there
is no dignity and human rights are a delusion, not only in Moscow
but here in the West as well.
Charles B. Thaxton, who holds a doctorate
in chemistry, was a postdoctoral Harvard Fellow in history and
philosophy of science; he is co-author of "The Mystery of
Life's Origin"; (Philosophical Library).
Stephen C. Meyer recently received a master's degree in the history
and philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge; he
has worked as a geophysicist; with Atlantic Richfield Co. and
directs Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science
& Culture.
Copyright © 1987 Stephen C. Meyer and
Charles Thaxton. All rights reserved. International copyright
secured.
File Date: 12.29.98