Wesley J. Smith

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Wesley J. Smith

Wesley Smith, occasional commentator on AOI blog published the is article on To the Source. Visit Smith’s blog Second Hand Smoke.

When Aldous Huxley wrote his prophetic 1932 novel Brave New World, he envisioned a dystopian future in which mankind would become, in the words of bioethicist Leon Kass, “so dehumanized that he doesn’t even realize what has been lost.”

Huxley believed we would evolve into a society steeped in radical hedonism—where drugs would be used to erase every negative emotion and promiscuity would be not just the norm, but the expected. He also saw our future as becoming profoundly utilitarian and eugenic, depicted in his novel by genetically engineered babies being decanted through a cloning-type process rather than being born, a society without families, without the old and sick—who are done away with rather than being cared for—and without real purpose other than experiencing transitory pleasure. It is a world in which human life has been objectified and thereby made less than human.

Looking around, can there be any doubt of Huxley’s prescience across the board? Continue reading →

Our culture is at a crossroad about the value of human life, argues author and human rights activist Wesley J. Smith in an interview with Kevin Allen on the “Illumined Heart” podcast (Ancient Faith Radio). Do we value human life simply because it is human, or do we value it based on notions and definitions of “personhood” including such characteristics as sentience, awareness, stages of biological development and others factors? The former allows for a universal definition of human rights. The latter reduces human beings to “subjects” that are bound to shifting and often capricious standards that determine who lives and who dies.

Listen here:

widget here (43:38)

It’s a heated battle (one that even spills over into the comments of this blog on occasion). Often, the the level of vituperation in the attacks against religious defenders of human life arise because the utilitarians understand their view allows for no coherent defense of any human rights, Smith says. “They try to avoid thy weight of their own ideas by diverting [the argument] into, ‘Well, it’s just a matter of religion.'” Yet, “They are the ones obsessed with religion…” Continue reading →

Keep the Human in Humane

Wesley J. Smith: Orthodox Advocate for Human “Exceptionalism”