This rather unsurprising admission has given vjtorley at Uncommon Descent the idea for what I think is a brilliant challenge. After identifying the twenty five most influential living atheists he poses this series of questions to them:
(a) Do you believe that a newborn baby is fully human?He poses these questions, and invites those twenty five most influential atheists to respond because, he says, the world has a right to know the practical consequences of atheism.
(b) Do you believe that a newborn baby is a person?
(c) Do you believe that a newborn baby has a right to life?
(d) Do you believe that every human person has a duty towards newborn babies, to refrain from killing them?
(e) Do you believe that killing a newborn baby is just as wrong as killing an adult?
Indeed. I don't know how many of them will take up the challenge (There are more details at the link, including a clever set of responses he offers in anticipation of questions people are likely to have), but I doubt many of them will. As atheists the answers they would give if they were honest would appall most people. Of course, as atheists, nothing obligates them to be honest.
Anyway, the value of vjtorley's challenge is that it gets the atheist's cards out on the table. The quality of an idea is judged, at least in part, by the fruit it bears. Let's see what most atheists think about whether it's okay to kill newborn babies and then, if there's a trend, let's see if we can discern a correlation between the trend and the philosophical assumptions of atheism.
Read the rest of vjtorley's proposal and see if you agree with his prediction of the answers that most atheists will give to his questions.
