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Life Arts    H4'ed 11/19/10

Is "Material Spirit" a Contradiction in Terms? No! (BOOK REVIEW)

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Thomas Farrell
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I myself favor the non-materialist (or immaterialist) philosophy. But I have a live-and-let-live attitude toward those people who embrace materialist philosophy, as the Soviet communists did, but they also famously outlawed religion. Because the Soviet communists outlawed religion, liberals today who embrace materialist philosophy (a.k.a. naturalism) would be well advised to try to avoid giving off the impression that they might prefer to see religion outlawed. Because of the tradition of freedom of religion in the United States, and because of the spirit of anticommunism in the United States due to the Soviet communists' outlawing of religion, liberals who are materialists should work mighty hard to stress that they endorse the American tradition of freedom of religion, even as they strive to insist on their own personally right to freedom from religion.

 

But religion has no place in the public square. Religious beliefs should not be allowed in civic debate. Civic debate should center on reasons advanced in support of a proposed course of action (e.g., a proposed law) and reasons in support of not taking the proposed course of action. But such public-policy debates usually involve values, and our values involve our moral conversion in Lonergan's terminology.

 

For reasons beyond my admittedly limited understanding, certain conservatives today have gotten away with styling themselves "values voters." But their self-congratulatory self-description has the unfortunate implication of suggesting that other voters are not values voters. As I say, I do not understand how those conservatives have gotten away with using this self-congratulatory self-description, because it strikes me that all voters are values voters, even though some voters may vote on the basis of different values than other voters do. Broadly speaking, conservatives vote on the basis of conservative values, as they construe them, but liberals vote on the basis of liberal values, as they construe them. Thus our civic debates about policy issues are basically debates about our values.

 

This brings me back to the discussion of materialist philosophy and non-materialist (or immaterialist) philosophy. Does the basic difference between materialist and non-materialist (or immaterialist) philosophy have any implications for any policy debate in the United States today? Yes, the difference between the two philosophic orientations does have implication for our ongoing national debate about abortion. Let me explain.

 

Non-materialist (or immaterialist) philosophy in the Catholic tradition of thought works with the body/soul distinction. Moreover, the distinctively human soul is regarded as immortal, Furthermore, the Catholic tradition of thought works with the doctrine of ensoulment. This doctrine states that each individual soul is created directly by God. But this doctrine raises the question about when ensoulment occurs.

 

For example, does ensoulment occur at the moment when an egg is fertilized with sperm? If you answer in the affirmative, then you are going to have to allow that in the course of nature many, many fertilized eggs are destroyed. But remember that you just said that each has been ensouled with an immortal soul. As is well known, the Christian tradition of thought also holds that there will be bodily resurrection. As a result, each fertilized egg that has been ensouled with an immortal soul will experience bodily resurrection at the resurrection. But these are not the only problems that arise when you hold that each fertilized egg has been ensouled with an immortal soul. By definition of the human soul, each fertilized egg represents a full human being. Moreover, the deliberate destruction of fertilized eggs through human agency (not in the natural course of events) is murder, the deliberate taking of innocent human life. By the same token, the deliberate destruction of the fertilized egg at any later stage of development is also murder. For this reason, certain people are conscientious objectors to legal abortion in the first trimester. But is this view of ensoulment occurring with each fertilized egg a reasonable one, or an unreasonable one? Furthermore, if materialists and others consider this view of the fertilized egg to be unreasonable, how are we going to debate this claim with people who consider it to be reasonable? Talk about having a debate about values!

 

As I have explained in different other pieces that I have published at OpEdNews.com, my own proposed solution suggests that we operationally define ensoulment with the distinctively human soul (i.e., life-form) as occurring when the fetus becomes viable and able to live outside the mother's womb. To be sure, up to the point of viability, there is a life-form developing, but I consider this life-form to be an infra-human life-form.

 

 

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Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book (more...)
 

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