The Stupidity of Dignity

TNR.com – by Steven Pinker – The New Republic

Conservative bioethics’ latest, most dangerous ploy.

The Judeo-Christian–in some cases, explicitly biblical–arguments found in essay after essay in this volume are quite extraordinary. Yet, aside from two paragraphs in a commentary by Daniel Dennett, the volume contains no critical examination of any of its religious claims.

How did the United States, the world’s scientific powerhouse, reach a point at which it grapples with the ethical challenges of twenty-first-century biomedicine using Bible stories, Catholic doctrine, and woolly rabbinical allegory?