A severely disabled boy will be born in seven months’ time. He will not be able to walk nor talk. He will need constant help for the rest of his life, and he will not be the next Stephen Hawking. Why should this boy not be aborted? His survival is antithetical to that of the species. The sanctity of life cannot be proven, because man-made philosophies’ persuasiveness will always depend on the political climate, among other things. Just as torture is considered in the wake of 9/11, our morals are subject to change. We are unprincipled without the concept of absolute truth.
The claim that philosophy begins where religion ends is simply false. Seven hundred years before Hume’s discovery that causation is a mental construct (we could never KNOW if a fallen tree made a sound, unless we were looking), the Islamic theologian, Al-Ghazzali, was making the same point.
Further, religion is not static: scriptures are always subject to competing interpretations. A religion can modernise when it needs to, as we discover new things. That is the very nature of wisdom. And being a slave to wisdom is no bad thing.
As regards sexual slavery, there is a reason why things like homosexuality are prohibited. It is anti-survivalistic. And a Catholic paedophile’s existence does not impugn religion, it supports it. His act is sinful and if his belief in God were pure, he would not have acted as he did. Such a priest in fact illustrates that a belief in God does NOT take away your individuality, your free will.
A belief in God literally saves your indivuality when others would wish to take it away. It structures your thoughts in a way that is beneficial to you and the species.