Atheism and Infanticide

“It seems to me that it’s to the furnaces of Moloch that we will return". That's the shocking conclusion reached by a conservative Christian commentator examining the link between loss of Faith and the rise of abortion.

Jonathon van Maren believes that, absent a mass return to God, Western society will accept infanticide.

Jonathon argues that, as Christian values wane, the values that came from Christianity - including the sanctity of life - wane too.

While examining the arguments of various philosophers and academics on the subject, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Psychologist Steven Pinker, University of Chicago philosopher Dr. Jerry Coyne, and Peter Singer, a bioethicist at Princeton University, all of whom support infanticide, Jonathon notes that Coyne and Singer both agree that “religious superstition” is blocking the passage of pro-infanticide laws.

In Coyne’s case, he explicitly argued that the “residual effects of Christianity were holding Western civilization back,” specifically through Christian ethics, Jonathon notes.

Jonathon gives further examples that could shed light on the question, including a three-year-old Belgian study which found that most Belgian health care workers favored infanticide under certain circumstances, the backlash a Canadian doctor received after advocating for the country’s assisted suicide program to be applied to disabled infants, and the actions of politicians who have refused to pass laws defending babies that have survived abortions, as well as the murder of abortion survivors and societal attitudes surrounding abortion.

Jonathon considers an essay by agnostic philosopher Douglas Murray, published in 2014 in The Spectator. Murray argues that atheism cannot of itself defend the notion that life has any sanctity, and that the atheist has three options when confronted by this: he could embrace the fact that his view will lead to the devaluation of human life, he could attempt to replace a Christian perspective of the sanctity of life, or he could revert to faith. 

“It seems to me that it’s to the furnaces of Moloch that we will return, because I don’t see any brakes on this train at this point,” says Jonathon, commenting on Murray’s essay. “Abortion has already given us the language of infanticide. It’s given us the ethics of infanticide. And it’s led us to accept the idea that you can kill some smaller, weaker, imperfect human beings if we decide that we don’t want them.” 

“When people ask me, do I think infanticide may be legal in some form or another in the next 10 to 20 years, the first thing I would say is I think infanticide is already de facto [legal] in certain circumstances, and I don’t see any good reason why that trend wouldn’t continue,” he continues.

“I hope that we have a conscience that can be shocked into recognizing that killing babies is a horrifying thing,” he concludes. “But I will admit that I’m not optimistic on that score. And the reason I’m not optimistic is because hundreds of babies in [Canada] every single year are born alive and left to die.”

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