This article by Discovery Sr. Fellow Wesley J. Smith in The London Telegraph is worth noting on many grounds.
The topic itself is timely, especially given Smith's recent speaking trip to Ireland and England. But it also is interesting for the reactions it elicits in the comments section of the paper. Some are reasonable, but others simply attempt to answer reason with smears. E.g., Smith opposes assisted suicide. (Check.) He is a fellow of Discovery Institute. (Check.) But (here comes the whopper) Discovery is made up of religious fundamentalists, and therefore presumably should be excoriated, then ignored. (Whoa!)
This information about fundamentalists, we are assured, comes from Barbara Forrest, a professor in Louisiana who has studied Discovery Institute. But while Forrest may teach at a university, she is no expert on Discovery. She is a propagandist, an avowed atheist in other forums who seems to have as a mission the assault of people who are not. The "fundamentalist" smear is an example. There undoubtedly are fundamentalists who have ideas on science and, well, good for them. But the term is not at all fairly applicable to Discovery Institute. The term in this case actually seems to be code for anyone who belongs to a church or synagogue.
I don't propose that atheists should not express views on bioethics. Why then should they propose that people who happen to be Christians or Jews should not express their views?
Before we go on parsing the nonsense of comment ranters, however, notice the way the subject shifts from the actual topic--whether assisted suicide leads to a duty to die for the weak and vulnerable--to the supposed unfashionable religious motivations of somebody the author knows and associates with.
Thus is discourse coarsened. People who engage in this sort of thing should look in the mirror the next time they bemoan the declining prestige of what passes for bioethics.
