How could Richard Dawkins be so naive?

I was surprised. Perhaps I should not have been, but I was. I could understand someone who knows little of the world and has lived a sheltered life making this mistake but surely not someone like Richard Dawkins. How could he be so naive?

In this chapter, What’s wrong with religion? Why be so hostile? from The God Delusion, Dawkins rightly asserts that Christians are against abortion because of the value of human life. It is the religious insistence on the sanctity of human life.

He argues that a far better criteria or ethical framework is consequentialism with the key issue being suffering. He argues , ‘A consequentialist or utilitarian is likely to approach the abortion question in a very different way, by trying to weigh up suffering. Does the embryo suffer? ... Does the pregnant woman or her family suffer if she does not have an abortion?’

If there is no suffering, which he argues there is not for an early embryo with no developed nervous system, then abortion must be okay. He continues: ‘Early embryos that have no nervous system most certainly do not suffer. And if late-aborted embryos with nervous systems suffer – though all suffering is deplorable – it is not because they are human that they suffer. There is no general reason to suppose that human embryos at any stage suffer more than cow or sheep embryos at the same developmental stage.’ (Page 336)

So as you can see the defining issue is suffering. If the consequence is acceptable, in this case no suffering, then the action is morally justifiable. If there is not much suffering, less for any embryo than for an adult cow or sheep in a slaughterhouse as he goes onto to argue, then, likewise, the consequence is morally justifiable.

This is a little frightening as an argument. For what if our ability to measure suffering is limited? Or perhaps even morally bankrupt? Thankfully, Dawkins concedes that suffering is hard to measure but the concession is so offhanded that I’m not sure he really believes it.

But that is not the main issue that I want to focus on. The main issue is the incredible naivety of separating the issue of who or what are human beings from the issue of suffering. This is an astounding move. To quote Dawkins again, ‘One school of thought cares about whether embryos can suffer. The other cares about whether they are human.’ For him they are two completely different and separate ways to approach the moral issue that have nothing to do with each other (in which case consequentialism is the right way to approach the issue because it isn’t one that faith heads would use.)

Is Richard completely unaware that down through history untold suffering has been inflicted upon people because those in power defined them as sub human? You cannot separate the question of who or what is a human and the issue of suffering. Indeed we must not, for this takes us down a very slippery slope. What if someone is born with in imperfect nervous system? What if someone has a disease in which they don’t feel pain? What if someone has a mental illness and likes suffering? In any of these cases, their suffering might be minimal, assuming again we can measure it.

What about if we find another way to put someone to death that involves no suffering? Does this mean then that we can? It seems like it according to Dawkins’ deeply flawed logic.

Now Dawkins does recognise that some absolutism is needed, such as ‘thou shall not kill’. He concedes that naive consequentialism is dangerous. And yet, naive consequentialism is exactly what Dawkins exhibits in his separation of the issue of what defines human life and suffering.

This is not an abstract issue. Our appalling treatment of Aboriginal people in Australia was due in no small part to the influence of the Enlightenment and evolutionary ideas that saw the Aboriginal people as a dying race far inferior to the European white man. They were seen as lesser humans.

How could Richard Dawkins be so naive?