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Writings and Publications by Joseph B. H. McMillan
The Ten Principles of Freedom: Principle 5 and the Purpose of Life
(An extract from The Ten Principles of Freedom: A Presentation of the Ten Principles to the Founding Fathers …)
by
Joseph BH McMillan
Joseph BH McMillan (JBH): “Gentlemen, I concluded the last part of my presentation with a rather bold assertion that the only discernable purpose of life which could attract universal consent has in fact been staring us in the face from the beginning of time. I suppose I should now deliver?”
Founding Fathers (FFs): “Indeed, you should!”
JBH: “Before I do, permit me to make some clarifications. First, when I refer to universal consent, I don’t mean ‘enthusiastically embrace’, but simply something which cannot be refuted on any rational grounds. Secondly, when I talk about a purpose of human life, we should distinguish that from whatever purpose each person may ascribe to his or her own life, while they have life. Thirdly, the purpose of life must necessarily give rise to obligations, and those obligations should be the foundation of all other obligations. Fourthly, the purpose of human life, and the obligations that emerge from it, must give rise to that which we human beings would recognize as ‘morality’. And finally, the purpose of life should hold true whether any particular person believes in God or not. In other words, the purpose of life must be the only discernable purpose of life irrespective of any person’s belief.”
Thomas Jefferson (TJ): “That is a very, very ambitious undertaking. But do continue.”
JBH: “Let me start off with what you, Mr Jefferson, would perhaps call a ‘self-evident truth.’ If there were no human life on earth, then there could be no purpose to human life on earth. Right?”
TJ: “That is obvious!”
JBH: “Therefore, in order for human life to have some purpose on earth, we first need to have human life. Another no-brainer, I’m sure you would agree?”
FFs: “We would!”
JBH: “Now, whether human beings were created by God, evolved from the primordial swamp, are the product of some alien experiment, or simply dropped out of the sky (the falling from the sky theory, called ‘panspermia’, being the latest attempt by scientists to explain the origins of life without having to admit the possibility of a God), we know that in order to perpetuate human life, new human life has to be continually created. Once we stop creating human life, it will simply die out again, and there can be no purpose to something which does not exist. So far, so good?”
FFs: “So far, we follow you!”
JBH: “And no doubt you would agree that every human being on this planet today only has life because successive generations throughout history have created and perpetuated human life?”
FFs: “Yes, we would!”
JBH: “Now, the strange thing about human beings is that from the beginning of time, they have been obsessed with the end of time. And that is in spite of the fact that any rational person knows that he or she will die, and more likely than not, die well before the end of time. If we were told that our planet and all life on it will be destroyed by an asteroid, with 100% certainty, exactly 150 years from now, there would be panic. And that is in spite of the fact that every single person alive today, who could rationalize that event, would be dead by then. So why should they care?”
FFs: “For the survival of the human species!”
JBH: “Precisely! And imagine another scenario; a virus that renders every human being sterile by disabling whatever gene activates the first stages of cell division in reproduction. We would witness a ‘slow-motion’ extinction of the human species. But we can be sure that people across the world would demand that their governments use every available resource to eradicate the virus, even though each of those human beings would still only die when they would have died anyway.”
FFs: “That is why we mention ‘Posterity’ in the preamble of the Constitution. Preserving the species is fundamental to human life.”
JBH: “And you would agree, I expect, that even those who do not believe in a God have this fundamental motivation. These days the latest scare to the survival of the species comes from so-called global warming, and many, I’d even say a majority, of the global warming activists are not exactly God-fearing people – they’re what we call today environmentalists. But when you ask why we should care if the earth warms and the climate changes dramatically, they’ll tell you that it is because global warming threatens the survival of the human species. These same sort of people even get worked up about some obscure species of frog, or butterfly, or insect, becoming extinct. And again, when they are pushed to explain why we should care, they tell us that such extinctions could affect the delicate balance of nature, and thus ultimately threaten the human species itself.
FFs: “We would agree with that. Human beings have a survival instinct not just for themselves, but for the human species.”
JBH: “Yes! That is why any loving parent would give their life for their child.
“So let me come to the first part of the only discernable purpose of life. The only discernable purpose of life that everyone could agree on is the perpetuation of human life itself. Because, whatever else any individual, or group of individuals, wants to do with their own life, they need to have life in the first place. Would you agree with that?”
FFs: “Yes, in so far as it goes. But we don’t see how a system of obligations and morality could be derived from the purpose of life being simply the perpetuation of life.”
JBH: “Well, that is where the second part of the purpose of life comes in. In order to perpetuate life, a man and a woman must join together in a union to create new life. That is how life has been perpetuated up to the present time, and that is how it will continue to be perpetuated for the foreseeable future. Even the life that scientists claim to ‘create’ in a laboratory is only a recreation, at enormous expense and complexity, of what a man and a woman can do in the ordinary way on the back seat of a car, or in the thick of some tropical jungle. Scientists simply use the building blocks of life that have been passed down through the generations, then apply the natural process of cell fusion and division, to create an embryo. But even once they achieve that, they still have to implant the embryo into a woman’s womb for it to grow. I would be more impressed with scientists’ claims to create life if I could dump on them a bucket of sand containing the basic elements of human life, together with a bucket of water, and then watch as they produce a human infant within 9 months. But I suspect that day is very far off, or indeed, unattainable.
“So let’s now put together the purpose of human life, which will also become the cornerstone of the next Principle, Principle 5 of the Ten Principles of Freedom. It is this: the only discernable purpose of human life is the perpetuation of human life through the union of a man and a woman to create new life.
“Now, what is important about this Principle is that the creation of new life is not only new life in the image of the human species, but also in the image of the man and the woman who create that individual new life. Would you agree?”
FFs: “We can see that, but again, we are finding difficulty imagining how all obligations and morality flow from that Principle.”
Obligations arising from a Common
JBH: “Well then, let’s go back to an observation I made earlier, which I think we all agreed on. When two people join together in a common enterprise, we agreed that obligations would attach to each, for the simple reason that no rational person would agree to join in an enterprise if he was obliged to fulfill his obligations, while the other party was free to ignore his. We still agree on that, I presume?”
FFs: “We do!”
JBH: “Now let me turn that on its head. Would you agree that the greatest sin, or should we say crime, that a human being can commit is the taking of another person’s life without some cause, like defending himself from an attack on his life?”
FFs: “Every sane person would agree with that.”
JBH: “But before a life can be taken, it must first be created. So, since the greatest sin is the taking of a human life, it must follow that human life is the most important and fundamental element of human life itself. Correct?”
FFs: “We would agree with that as well!”
JBH: “It must also then follow
that the creation of human life is the most important ‘enterprise’ any human
being can undertake. Even the arch-Utilitarian, a certain John Stuart Mill,
said this about the creation of life: ‘the
family, in its direct influence on human happiness, [is] more important than
all the other [obligations of man] taken together.’ And on having children,
Mill is even more strident. ‘The fact
itself,” he said ‘of causing the
existence of a human being, is one of the most responsible actions in the range
of human life. To undertake this responsibility - to bestow a life which may be
either a curse or a blessing - unless the being on whom it is bestowed will
have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime against
that being.’ Now I would say that ‘causing
the existence of a human being’ is not just ‘one of the most responsible actions’, but by far the most responsible action a human being
can undertake; just as the taking of a human life is the most heinous act any human being can commit. Would you agree?”
FFs: “Certainly!”
JBH: “So we can agree that the
most important undertaking any two human beings can undertake is the creation
of new life; new life in the image of the species, and in the image of those
who create it. That is simply the inverse of the most heinous sin any person or
group of people can commit - the taking of an innocent life!”
FFs: “We can agree on that –
and we are now getting an inkling of where you’re going with this; but do
continue.”
JBH: “Now, since we agree that
any joint undertaking attaches obligations on the parties to that undertaking,
and since we also agree that the creation of life is the most important
undertaking any two human beings can engage in, it must follow that the
creation of life also attaches the most fundamental and important obligations
to those human beings who create a new life. But what obligations exactly
attach to those who create new life?”
George Washington (GW): “The
picture is now coming into focus. Nevertheless, why don’t you outline what
obligations you think arise out of the creation of life? But what I am
particularly interested to see is whether any such obligations could stand
alone, rather than being rooted in religion.”
JBH: “I’m pleased you raised
that at this point, Mr
GW: “Indeed, I am!”
JBH: “In that case, we need to
go to the very first chapter of the Scriptures, at Genesis. This is what we
find when it says that God came to create man on the sixth day: ‘And God said, Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and
over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over
every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He
him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto
them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it.” That,
as you will know Gentlemen, is Genesis 1:26 to 28. The important words are
those which God spoke directly to the male and female He had just created – “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the
earth.” There we have the first part of Principle 5 – the perpetuation of
human life on earth. We then come to Genesis Chapter 2:24. It says this: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and
mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” And
there is the second part of Principle 5; the way we perpetuate human life on
earth – the union of a man and a woman to create new life. And in respect of
the issue we are now considering - the obligations that attach to human beings
when they create new human life - we should note this: everything God created
in the first five days of creation, He created unilaterally: “And God said, …” Yet, when He comes to
create man, we find the plural – “Let us
make man in our image, after our likeness.” That immediately implies a
joint enterprise, and as I have said, a joint enterprise attaches obligations.
And the Scriptures record, over and over again, through the prophets, the
establishment of
FFs: “Of course it is! It’s the
Scriptures!”
JBH: “Quite! Now, why God wanted to create and perpetuate an image of Himself on earth, I suspect we will never know, and the Scriptures themselves, in fact, tell us it is none of our business: “Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? Or thy work, He hath no hands. Woe unto him that saith unto his father, What begettest thou? Or to the woman, What hast thou brought forth?” [Isaiah 25:9-10]
“Philo Judaeus of
“That said, let’s get back to
the obligations that attach to those who create human life. I suppose we could
classify them generally like this: first, there are the individual and joint
obligations they have towards the life they create; secondly, there are the
obligations they have towards each other, both by virtue of the joint
enterprise itself, and by virtue of the effect the fulfillment of their joint
obligations will have toward the life they create; and thirdly, there are the
obligations they have towards the fulfillment of the purpose and objective of
the joint enterprise, obligations which arise not just when the joint
enterprise begins, but obligations which predate the joint enterprise, and are
a necessary component of the contemplation of the creation of life as being the
fulfillment of the purpose of life – these are obligations towards the life
that will be created, and towards those with whom that life will be created.
“But before we get into the
specific obligations arising from Principle 5, which will also set the
foundations for the next 5 Principles, we should consider the effect of the
first 4 Principles on the purpose of life as we have defined it. But that will
have to wait for the next part of my presentation.”
NEXT: The Ten Principles of Freedom: Principle 5, and the Equal Freedom Principles.
Copyright © Joseph B.H. McMillan 2005 All Rights Reserved
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