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Applying Worldviews to Bioethics, Part 1: Dealing with Dichotomies
Bioethics has been a hot-button issue for a while now. In the first article of his new four-part series on this developing technology, David J. Hill discusses the heart of the matter — fragmented worldviews.
The Gridlock: Technology and Ethics
Fifty years ago, the 21st century held such promise. NASA's space program was taking the first baby steps toward reaching the final frontier. Science fiction movies and classic cartoons projected that robots, motorized walkways, and flying cars would all be commonplace. It was the beginning stages of our society's love affair with technology — a love affair that now fuels the global economy. Science was going to provide every convenience we needed for a lifestyle of luxury, recreation, and health.
Fast forward to today, and the world doesn't quite look like we thought it would.
Though science and technology have drastically affected culture, problems have emerged as a direct result of this progress. Headlines showcasing these problems show up in the news everyday: "Overuse of antibiotics promotes bacterial resistance"; "Burning fossil fuels continues to generate dangerous greenhouse gas levels"; "Technology allows for cheaper food, but at the price of quality."
On top of this, there are the more complex issues that have people sparring with sound bites: the environment, animal rights, abortion, stem cell research, euthanasia, genetic profiling, cloning, and so on. Debate over the rights and wrongs of each of these issues has become a significant portion of our national chatter. Although technology has brought us convenience, it has also ushered in controversy and conflict.
Why Controversy and Conflict? Blame It on Dichotomies
So, why the controversy and conflict? Shouldn't we have progressed in our knowledge to definitively address these issues? If science is ultimately the search for truth, why is the truth not clearer?
There is one word that captures the source of the dilemma: dichotomy. We live in a dichotomous reality. That is not to say that we live in a compartmentalized reality where we live a different life on Sunday morning than the rest of the week. Reality for humans is dichotomous because our nature is two-fold (we have a body and a soul), and our mental faculties are multiple — that is, we can think both rationally and non-rationally.
These dichotomies are familiar. On one hand, we have the God vs. Nature paradox; on the other, we have Reason vs. Aesthetics. Our failure to resolve bioethical issues is due to an imbalance in our worldview, which causes us to lean too far in one direction or the other within these dichotomies.
Created, Yet Eternal
Humans are created things, and in that sense, we are really not that different from animals, plants, or even bacteria. In fact, human biology at the cellular level shows remarkable similarity to that of many other organisms. It may even seem that we're much more like animals than we are like God, who is not a created thing. In that case, it is easy to see why some people argue so staunchly for animal rights — we humans have rights, and if animals are no different than us, shouldn't they have equal rights? In our created-ness, we seem so different from God. Because of this, some find it hard to relate to or even imagine a God who has always existed, without beginning or end.
On the other hand, Genesis 2:7 says, "The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being" (NIV). This verse implies that humans are somehow different from other living things. Many point to this Scripture as the basis for the soul. By breathing life into us, God placed in us something eternal. It is this component of our beings that we have in common with God, and also separates us from the rest of creation.
So, we are left with a dichotomy: we are both created and eternal. The Christian worldview demands that we not lean too far in either direction in our theology. We are called to abide in the paradox.
The Rational vs. the Non-rational
Another dichotomy that complicates the Christian life is maintaining a balance between our obligation to reason and rational thinking on one side, and the emotional-spiritual sense with which we interpret the aesthetic part of reality.
For instance, we can look at the world around us and appreciate the physical laws that make life possible. But we also see beauty and sentimental value in even seemingly insignificant things, like a favorite tree in your back yard.
This is true of our views on God as well. We can try to read Scripture at a deeper level to understand the meaning behind the words of Jesus. But if we only analyze what Jesus said and never experience His love, have we not missed something? Likewise, if we only focus on how God makes us feel, will we not have a shallow understanding of His Word, and be more likely to misinterpret it?
Again we are trapped in a dichotomy between reason and aesthetics. We must abide in the middle. Being polarized, in either direction, gives us the wrong view of the world, of God, and of ourselves.
A Worldview Grid
In light of all of this, how is the average person supposed to formulate an informed opinion on these issues? The answer, unfortunately, is not clear. What is clear, however, is that we lack a good map to navigate through 21st century issues. As a populace, we are also ill-equipped for the level of critical thinking necessary to even discuss these topics, let alone vote on them.
Simple answers are too often an easy escape from wrestling with the issues. Unless we step up to the challenge that these issues demand, we will forever be ping-ponged between opposing "expert-opinions" on talk shows. What we really need is not a list of "positions" from others telling us what to think, but an approach that shows us how to think about the issues.
Enter: the grid.
The following grid shows how the God/Nature dichotomy and the Reason/Aesthetics dichotomy interact, with man in the middle:
Notice the circle in the middle? This is where a properly balanced Christian worldview should be. Abiding in the paradox means being in proper, balanced relationships with God and with nature. It also means that our thinking is balanced between a rational approach and an appreciation of the aesthetic.
The Four Quadrants
Each of the four quadrants represents what happens when we don't abide in the middle. It reflects a general philosophical foundation that we adopt, sometimes even without realizing it.
Platonism. We can lean too far on the side of spirituality — that is, living as if the natural things of the world are unimportant. And we can become too married to rational thinking alone. This is a realm in which our status as created things is minimized and can eventually be denied. This can also manifest as an attitude that nature is somehow lower and tainted (evil, even), while heaven is somehow higher and pure. Also, if we try to reject the body by using the power of the mind alone, we dangerously meander into this quadrant. A clear-cut example of this might be Scientology, but it lingers in Christian thought as well. For lack of a better word to describe this quadrant, let's call it platonism.1
Mysticism. When a worldview is too far in the direction of the spiritual as well as the aesthetic, we find mysticism. In its extreme, mysticism lends itself to a faith that is dependent on the experience of God alone. In this case, to know God, you must actively seek ways to experience Him. Operating out of this quadrant, one can argue that any inner voice or subtle sign is God communicating a course of action. And this is not wrong in and of itself, if we believe that God speaks to people. But if that message is neither weighed against His message to everyone (that is, Scripture) nor compared with what is known of the physical world, then mysticism can lead to a relativistic worldview, one that ultimately erodes the corporate element of Christianity.
Pantheism. Aesthetics clearly are an important aspect of life. But if we move away from recognizing that things like beauty and love derive from attributes of God, and attribute them instead to the physical world alone, we can find ourselves right in the middle of pantheism. Fundamentally, pantheism states that there is no distinction between the natural world and our sense of God. In other words, when we feel that there must be something bigger out there beyond ourselves, some good and loving entity, what we are really connecting with is just the universe as a whole. God, then, is just nature's bigness.
For example, some would argue that the healing power of prayer (which has been shown to help hospital patients recover) has nothing to do with begging God for help, but instead is the result of the concentration of positive energy. It is a worldview that converts all spiritual things into natural phenomena.
Naturalism. Finally, if we neglect the aesthetic element of nature and adopt the rationalistic thinking present in the sciences alone, we can embrace naturalism. This is a worldview that embraces the idea that, as Carl Sagan once said, "The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be."2 We can attribute all things, from the wind to human emotion, to varying degrees of complexity within a set of physical laws.
Some Christian scholars have even argued that all the miracles of the Jews' exodus from Egypt can be explained as natural phenomena, such as a really strong wind causing the Red Sea to part. But this denies what our sense of what a miracle is. And it also denies that God is God and He can pretty much do whatever He wants.
Finding the Middle
C O F F E E S H O PSo, how do we stay in the circle? How do we achieve a balanced worldview, between God and nature, reason and aesthetics? Furthermore, how can we practically use this information to think about issues in bioethics? Check out part two of this series to find out.
- I use "platonism" here slightly differently than it would be used in a philosophical context. The Random House Unabridged Dictionary (Random House, Inc. 2006) defines platonism as the belief that "physical objects are impermanent representations of unchanging Ideas, and that the Ideas alone give true knowledge as they are known by the mind." This is what I mean when I use the term. Back^
- Carl Sagan, Cosmos, produced by PBS affiliate KCET in Los Angeles, 1980. Back^
David J. Hill is a freelance writer in science education and a copyeditor in medical education. His interests include cultural and Christian perspectives on science and technology. In his spare time, he can be found obsessing about why the Book of Job is not talked about more on Sunday mornings and whether or not he should start a book on the lives of 18th-century scientists entitled, Alchemy Rules!: When Turning Stuff into Gold Was the Topic at the Water Cooler. He attended graduate school in chemistry at the University of Illinois and did his undergraduate work at Point Loma Nazarene University. He and his wife, Angel, have three children.
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