THE QUESTION OF A BAYLOR BEAR

“Let’s just say, heaven forbid, that on the way home this evening you were involved in some sort of a car accident and you went into a coma. It’s a reversible coma and you’re going to be in that coma for months, if not years. In the process of being in that coma fortunately your brain is repairing itself. Eventually, you’re going to come out of the coma. When you do, you’re not going to have any memories. You’re not going to know how to read or write or speak. You’re going to have to be taught to do all of those things. Do I have a right to kill you while you’re in the coma?”

Baylor professor Beckwith proposed this question in a book he wrote and another professor asked a variation of it to a college student in a public Q/A session on the campus of Oregon State University. The answer a student gave was scary.

I know you've figured out that the professor who posed the question had just finished speaking from an anti-abortion and pro-life presentation to an on-campus audience. The question he asked is a good one because it describes a human baby in the womb--his brain is being fearfully and wonderfully made; at his birth he'll have no memories, will be illiterate; he'll have to learn to sit, crawl, read, write, add, subtract, divide, multiply, crawl, walk, and eventually run. Loving parents will have to teach him to do an uncountable number of things.

SIX "SO's"

So, college student, "Do I have a right to kill you while you're in a reversible coma?" It's a simple "Yes" or "No" question, but the student doesn't answer that way. The reason she doesn't say, "Yes" or "No" is because, of the worldview which her education and the media have pounded into her. To have said either "Yes" or "No" would have implied that there is absolute truth in the universe. Her matriculation through the groves of academe`, her watching all those movies, all that television, and reading all those newspapers and magazines have taught her to be a thorough-going relativist, one who lives in a world in which absolute truth doesn't exist. (Or so she thinks.)

So, what was her answer? Are you ready? She said, "Not necessarily." Wait. What? It was a "Yes" or No" question. But she couldn't answer with one of those two. The reason she said, "Not necessarily" is because she's been indoctrinated to believe that things don't have an intrinsic value because of what they are, say, like a human being. Her brain has been washed to believe that things only have value if someone assigns a value to them. Therefore, if you want to have an abortion, be my guest; if you don't, then don't have one and let's move on; no harm, no foul. This is how relativism works its dangerous and lethal thought process.

So, what do we see in this exchange? We see a student, most likely in the 18-22 age range, whose name is legion, so soul-scarred that her commitment to relativism is more dear to her than life itself. Even her own life must be sacrificed on the altar of moral relativism. Hardened at 18 or 22? Yes, hardened; the media, the culture, and the academy have been at work and they've done a thorough job.

So, we see that when a society abandons absolute truth, it produces barbarians without regard for human life and all who aren't assigned value are fair game. A Russian author was right on: Dostoyevsky said: If God is dead, then everything is permitted.

So, we wonder, have she and those like her been taught to think? Have she they been taught to see the consequences of the warped worldview of moral relativism? Has she not understood that one day, her government might legally declare her to have no value for not being productive enough to pay taxes, then arrest and execute her? If God is dead, she has no rights intrinsic to being a human being. She only has value if someone (the state, in this case) assigns value to her.

So if God is dead, then her arrest and execution are permitted. And she, according to the way she thinks, would have to agree. She would reject the blindfold and the cigarette. She would take a bullet for relativism.