Kevin Moses

I was asked to give a lecture next week at a church in Minnesota on what I see as the most pressing issues facing Christians. Here's my rundown I'm working on for my lecture. — The beginning of life: Reproduction and human dignity. — The manufacture of life: Genetic engineering and designer children. — The simulation of life: Artificial intelligence and digital personhood. — The enhancement of life: Transhumanism and human augmentation. — The embodiment of life: Biological sex and bodily identity. — The commodification of life: Surrogacy and reproductive markets. — The manipulation of life: Surveillance, algorithms, and human agency. — The extension of life: Longevity and the pursuit of immortality. — The quality of life: Disability, dependency, and the meaning of dignity. — The end of life: Assisted suicide and euthanasia. In a word: bioethics. The central moral question of our age is increasingly whether human nature is a gift to be received, enhanced beyond our native capacities, or a problem to be solved. Christians need to be prepared to answer it. I am confident that our doctrine of the imago Dei, coupled with the Christian natural law tradition, provides a sufficient basis and bulwark to guide civilization, if civilization will entertain them.

No July 4th celebration is complete without this video.

Disagree with Justice Barrett's jurisprudence all you want—that's your prerogative. But discrediting her reasoning by appeal to her sex or her status as an adoptive mother—as some on the populist right now do—is a category error. It's also textbook Bulverism, C.S. Lewis's name for the trick of explaining why someone is wrong without first showing that they are wrong: "you only think that because you're a woman." A legal argument is sound or unsound on its own terms. The sex of the one making it has no bearing on whether it tracks with the truth—the intellect's apprehension of reality is not indexed by sex. And the human intellect, male or female, is equally capable of apprehending truth. Truth corresponds to human nature's fittedness to reality as such, not truth qua sex. That sex carries real teleological weight for vocation and embodiment is true and beside the point here. The adoptive-mother line is worse because it isn't even about her reasoning. It infers bias from biography. A judge's conclusions stand or fall on the law's construction (for good or for ill), not on the shape of her family. Attack the argument, or concede you don't have one. I'm no expert on the Constitution and immigration. Justice Barrett could be wrong—if so, make that argument on the basis of text and history—not sex. Doing so on the basis of sex denies the ontological and epistemological equality of the sexes as made in God's image.