In this episode Trent sits down with atheist Youtuber Shannon Q to talk about the issue of abortion and whether a fetus is a person.
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Want more from Trent Horn?
- Made This Way: How to Prepare Kids to Face Today’s Tough Moral Issues
- Why We’re Catholic: Our Reasons for Faith, Hope, And Love
- Persuasive Pro-Life: How to Talk About Our Culture’s Toughest Issue
- Answering Atheism: How to Make the Case for God with Logic and Charity
Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
And welcome to another episode of the Council of Trent Podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker Trent Horn. Before we get started today, just a reminder, I am collecting questions from our premium subscribers at TrentHornPodcast.com for a pro-life Q and A that will take place probably in a week or two around the commemoration of Roe versus Wade. So if you want to get on that, if you have a pro-life question, you’ve always wondered what my thoughts are or opinions are on the matter, well if you are a subscriber TrentHornPodcast.com you can submit your questions there. So I hope you will take advantage of that and support our podcast at TrentHornPodcast.com. At the very least, if you could leave a review or a rating at iTunes or Google Play, that’s always helpful for people to see the podcast as a worthwhile endeavor, something that they want to share with other people.
And I’d be getting great feedback from people I meet at events or going out in different places. Even people who recognize the logo on my laptop. And even people who are not very religious or not even Catholic have become interested in it. So thank you guys so much and I hope your support will keep growing and reaching and helping a lot more people.
So what I wanted to do in today’s episode was kind of do a debrief of the dialogue that I had with Shannon Q. So there’s not a lot to debrief in that. I thought it was a really good dialogue. I was really happy with that, but I want to continue this tradition where I will do these dialogues with people who are not Catholic.
And by the way, if you know non-Catholics that you think would be great to have a dialogue with, so I’m talking about people like look at the examples we’ve had with Shannon, with Anthony Magnabasco, people that are just kind and they’re thoughtful and they want to have a real conversation with another person. If you know people like that, whoever they may be and may represent, maybe they’re Christian but not Catholic, maybe they’re belong to another religion like Islam or Mormonism, I’m trying to reach out right now to find people who represent those faiths to come on the show, maybe they’re not religious at all. If you know someone who fits that criteria, because that’s what I want to do here. I mean I’ll probably do debates from time and time. There’s a few people that I want to engage who maybe a dialogue would not be the best format for them, having the structure of a formal debate might be better for us to get at the truth with one another.
So I’ll still debate people, but dialogue with people who I can actually just sit down and talk with, that’s something I find to be truly enjoyable. And I think it’s what you find enjoyable because often … I want to do this podcast to be a way to teach others how to explain and share the Catholic faith and I think the best way to do that is to model doing that in real life, in unscripted conversations. In fact, I’m hoping soon just to kind of go out like what Anthony does with street epistemology, just go out with a GoPro and talk to people about being Catholic. And maybe I’ll go out with St. Paul street evangelization, get my GoPro and show people because that’s what we need to do. And I think modeling it in a real unscripted conversation is the way to do it. But if you know people that are good representatives of a non-Catholic view for these kinds of dialogues, be sure to recommend them to me. So I want to keep doing these dialogues, but also what I want to do is do these debriefs so we can sometimes go into more detail about the topic that we’ve been talking about and just address some other points that have come up.
So one thing that kind of stuck in my mind after I posted this dialogue on YouTube and Facebook and Twitter, and it’s been kind of getting out a little bit, is not so much the dialogue itself, though I do have observations on that, but it just got me thinking about some of the attitudes that I’ve seen from a very small minority of people that I think represent a very bad attitude when it comes to evangelization. So these are people who … and they’ve given me criticisms on social media or in comments. And fortunately it is a very small minority of, they’re Catholic, of Catholics that I engage with both off the internet and even on the internet. But there’s this attitude that having civil dialogue and talking to people about where we disagree and trying to lead them to the truth through or kind of progressive dialogue that they take umbrage at, they’re very angry about it.
I’ll give you an example. So I posted the dialogue about Shannon Q and I think one of the comments someone left on it was, this is probably Twitter or something like that. It was someone who said, “Oh, it’s so great we can sit around and commonly talk about babies being murdered. When I talk to people, I get into a rage in a second about this.” And so on the one hand I see where he’s coming from. And whenever I disagree with someone, I try to get into their head and see where they’re coming from.
There was a Catholic Answers Live episode, sorry my Siri is listening in on me, doesn’t that freak you out sometimes? I just noticed my phone was starting to transcribe what I was saying and it’s on airplane mode right now, but it’s like, what is Siri really listening to sometimes? I’m going to become one of those conspiracy theorists that keeps … Edward Snowden, I’m going to put my phone in a microwave when I get home and my wife like sets a timer. I’m like, no, don’t turn the microwave on. Anyways.
So I understand where they’re coming from. I remember I was on Catholic Answers Live several months ago and I left my phone on silent, just sometimes, now I really try to put it on airplane mode, but sometimes I still get a text message and some good friends of ours were experiencing a miscarriage. And I got that news right as I was talking to someone on the show who was saying the unborn are parasites and just clumps of cells. And I got grumpy, not with them, I waited until they were off and then I kind of laid into their view and a little bit into them when they were off the call and I was upset and people even commented like, “Wow, it was the first time we’ve ever seen Trent really get like emotional about something.” It’s like I’m a human being. I have emotions. My family can attest that I can get emotional sometimes, but there it’s like, I have friends who are suffering. I mean, we’ve experienced the loss of miscarriage and to denigrate the unborn in such a callous way, when it’s such a real pain for people, it makes you angry. It makes you want to yell at people, but and so it’s okay to have these feelings.
But here’s the thing, you go back to ancient Greek philosophy like Aristotle and Plato, and they said, look, your passions are like the horses of a chariot. Like our emotions, our passions are like the horses of the chariot. The horse is not supposed to drive the chariot. The charioteer drives the chariot. The horses pull it along. Our emotions are like the gasoline that make the car go. Like if we have to just get something done sometimes, we power through that. Whether it’s a chore or work or doing something with kids or family, whatever it may be, our emotions are helpful to get us through situations and to experience them in a deep and enriching way. But the problem is if we let our emotions control us, we get emotional with other people and people can think that we’re hysterical or that we’re jerks and that we have nothing worthwhile to say.
So this guy wrote under it and I tried to dialogue with him, I said, “Do you think it’s helpful to people if you rage out at them, is that going to help them change their mind?” And he just said, “I think that a man who isn’t angry about abortion is effeminate.” Well I am angry about abortion, but there’s a difference between feeling anger and being angry at someone to the hindrance of a conversation with them. And then he said something that was very insulting to Shannon. And then Shannon and I just left the conversation because I’m like, “Nope, I’m not wasting my time on Twitter. That’s something I vowed not to do in 2020.” And Shannon just left a wonderful little reply, like a video of her and she just was like, “What?” And I feel like that just, that said it all.
And so when that happens, and thankfully of all the Catholics I encounter, those who have this particular attitude that’s almost, they wouldn’t say it’s anti-evangelism, I think they have this attitude of, yeah, we’ll evangelize and we tell people, “This is the truth. You either agree with it or you don’t. And if you don’t agree with it, guess what? You’re going to hell. There’s no salvation outside the church. You’re damned. And you either accept this or not.” Or just being very blunt and even advocating things like violence. Not necessarily violence towards persons, but violence towards property.
I know we had that issue, I think it was last week in Brazil, a judge ordered Netflix to take down the show. It was like about a gay Jesus or something like that and is a Netflix original series. And some people there went and they threw Molotov cocktails at the studio that produced this and it’s blasphemy, absolutely, but they threw Molotov cocktails at the studio that was producing this. I believe that is not a proper Christian response for us to have. What if somebody had been in there working late at night? Thankfully nobody was hurt. But what if somebody was in there and had gotten killed? Or what if the fire had spread from that building to another building and an innocent person was killed? The point is that if … I mean people see that they’re going to think that, well, Christians are just like a mob that wants to enforce their beliefs on other people. To literally impose their beliefs. Or people will say to me, “You just want to impose your beliefs on everybody.” I say, “Well, no, I want to propose my beliefs to people.” And I recognize in a democratic republic I have to propose my beliefs.
For example, I’m fully in favor of imposing the law of not killing unborn beings through abortion, imposing that view through the law. I’m totally okay with imposing laws on people, but I realize in the world where we live in order to get that law passed, I can’t impose that law. We live in a democratic republic. If a majority of people don’t want the law, the law is going to go away. That’s how it works. So in order to get that imposition of morality that all laws are, all laws are imposition of morality, in order to get that imposing, I have to do proposing. I’ve got to get a majority of people to agree the unborn deserve legal protection, and then the law will have a better chance of changing and of staying.
So that’s why when I see these attitudes online, on the one hand, yes, I agree, it is so patently bizarre I have to sit down with someone and we were having a conversation about whether a human being has a right to live or not. I mean that’s totally bizarre and it does make me angry a little bit, but at the same time, what’s the alternative? And I just will say, “This is a baby. This is a person. You’re wrong, you’re stupid. And if you don’t get it, I don’t understand it.” What’s that going to accomplish? Maybe I let off a little bit of steam, but this other person is going to raise their shields up even higher or they’re going to respond in force.
They’re going to say, “What’s the matter? What’s the matter with you?” I don’t know why this person I’m talking to is Italian now. “What’s the matter with you? It’s not a person. It’s a bunch of cells. You’re saying that’s more valuable than a woman, eh.” I apologize to any of my Italian listeners or those of Italian descent, that’s probably somewhat offensive. But they’ll say, “What’s the matter with you?” You think this, those who disagree with us on, let’s say something like abortion or homosexuality, do you think they’ve got a lot of pent up emotion and frustration? Absolutely. They’re going to put their walls up and not want to hear the truth. That’s why I firmly believe that dialogue, dialogue can be misused when it’s used as an end in and of itself.
So when you dialogue and the only purpose is just to talk, yeah, that’s a misuse of dialogue. But dialogue is the perfect tool that we ought to be using to get people to the truth and getting people to change their minds is a process and it takes time. So when dialogue is a means to the end of discovering truth, it’s absolutely essential. Look at scripture. Isaiah 1:8, the prophet says, “Come let us reason together. Though your sins may be like scarlet, they may be made as white as snow.” Saint Paul debated people in the synagogue, Apollos debated people and it said that he reasoned with them and he was unable to be confounded or refuted and that the other side, what they ended up resorting to when they couldn’t refute Paul, when they couldn’t use argument or civil exchange, they tried to have Paul executed with stoning. They threw people out of the synagogues. The other side, when you look in Scripture, when people are opposing the Christian message, they were using the mob tactics like those people in Brazil that threw Molotov cocktails. Do we want to be like that? No, we should not be like that.
I mean, think about this. How do you feel if you’re a listener, you’re probably Catholic, Christian or something like that or whatever you may be, you probably aren’t Muslim. Maybe I have a Muslim listener if you’re listening here. Great. Thank you. I’m glad you’re listening, but if you’re listening, you’re probably not Muslim. So here I would ask you this, what do you think is going to, what would help you become Muslim? Would it be a Muslim friend who asks you questions about the Bible and why you believe in Jesus and explains the Koran to you and is patient and walks you through this process? Or do you think someone’s likely to help you become Muslim by going into, by they threw a Molotov cocktail at a Christian bookstore that sells a book revealing historical truths about Mohammed. Or I mean and that analogy to compare with the integralist, like imagine there were Christians who, and there have been, there have been Christians who satirise and say false things about Mohammed, for example, or treat Islam in a disrespectful way. They don’t treat it in a fair way.
Now I believe that there are many concerning things about Islam and about how Islam functions in the modern world. I mean, I was looking at CNN a few years ago and there was an article on there about, it said a violent year for religion. It had a map of the world and different points where there was violence and I remember the headline, it was a violent year for religion, but I clicked on every one of those points and it was the perpetrators were Muslims. Now what people will say in response to this is that well, Islam isn’t the problem. Most victims of religious violence are Muslim. And that’s true. It’s a intramural dispute in Islam between Sunni and Shiite that happened, but still things that are concerning.
But my point is imagine if Muslims went and you don’t have to imagine, it happens all the time, they throw Molotov cocktails at a Christian studio for making a film that insults the prophet Muhammad. Even if you don’t agree with the Christian studio, what they’re doing, you would probably feel like scared and concerned. Like, oh my gosh, why are these Muslims doing this? What’s going on? And you’re probably not going to be very open to hearing the arguments or evidences for their position. I contend, or especially if someone from another religion is abrasive to online or says, imagine if someone said “Allah is the one God, he does not have a son. You’re a blasphemer to say Allah has a son. You will burn in hell for blaspheming Allah.” Are you likely to consider Islam? Probably not. But if someone asked you, “Well who do you think God is? How should we, what does the Bible say God is?” And I’ve seen Muslims who are actually good at the Socratic approach, that’s more effective.
So I just put on our thinking caps and think what would not be effective when directed towards us and if that’s the case, this brazen approach like I’ve had people say to me when I went to Taylor Seminary by Skype, I hope to go back there in person to dialogue with Protestants. They said, “I won’t have respect for you unless you just go in there and tell them they’re heretics and you just say that to them and say they should convert.” Right? That’s going to help these seminarians become Catholic? Or I can answer their questions and give them my book, Why We’re Catholic and many of them start to read it and reconsider things.
So honestly, the thing that disturbed me most about this exchange was seeing once again, a very small minority of people who were opposed to dialogue and evangelism and just believe we need to give people hard truths. And if they don’t like it, that’s their problem. I just remember Colossians 4:6, St. Paul says, “Let your speech always be seasoned with salt. Always be gracious so that you may know how to answer anyone.” That’s what we are all called to do.
And so that’s why, and I know this is debrief, like what are you going to get into the dialogue? Yes, I will. But that’s the thing that I took away from this because, yeah, I did, I’m hoping that Shannon reconsidered a few things, but when I do these public dialogues, especially with someone who’s firmly entrenched in their position, it’s really more for the people who are listening. I want to plant a seed in the people who are listening who might be on the fence to say, “Hey wait, that may not make a lot of sense what Shannon was proposing.” And I’m glad that we had a narrow exchange because going into this, I had said to her, and I’m grateful by the way, the reason I got Shannon was because people recommended her to me on social media. So once again I’ll probably post more stuff on there, you know good people, recommend them.
I’m really glad I didn’t know what I was walking into because I just said we’re going to talk about abortion and I didn’t know what we were going to talk about when it came to abortion. I have no idea. And so it was really refreshing that Shannon wanted to get to the meat of the bones of the matter, the meat of the bones, the bone of the meat, the meat and potatoes, which is what are the unborn. Because when I have these conversations, I always tell Catholics or pro-lifers, “Always say, what are the unborn? If the unborn is a human being then we ought to treat them humanely.” So Shannon said, “Well, it depends. It’s not so much whether they’re a human being, it’s whether they are a person. We need to figure out if the unborn is a person, then they have a right to life.”
And I asked her at one point, “So if they’re a person, you’d be against abortion.” And she said, “Yeah.” But then she brought up that bodily autonomy argument later, which I thought, well wait, you said earlier, if it is a person, then you’d be against abortion. It sounds like you’re, and there’s nothing wrong with having multiple arguments to defend one’s position, but I thought like, well, wait, where did you actually stand on that?
Now, once again, another criticism I’ve heard of from pro lifers is some have told me don’t argue personhood stuff. Just say human beings have rights. All human beings have rights. The unborn is a human being and that’s all that matters. And I think for some people that is a perfectly valid way to explain the issue. Say well the declaration of independence, all men are created equal. Just stick to being human beings. But some people who think philosophically may think, okay, but why do human beings matter? And so you can have a discussion there about maybe humans are created in the image of God who is goodness itself and bestows value on human beings. And so that’s something you can talk about.
But philosophically is just saying the right to life is about being a human being, that’s not a super strong philosophical argument. In fact, some of the best philosophers I know who are pro-life, they don’t use it. What they will say is that humans are a member of a kind that we call person. It’s like for me, I don’t see think human being and person are synonymous in the sense that they both refer only to one kind of thing, humans. I mean it’s obvious as Catholics, we believe angels are persons. They’re persons, but they’re not human beings. So that’s a clear example from a Catholic, you can know, hey, there are persons that are not humans and it’s possible there are extra terrestrials that are persons but are not humans.
But conceding the idea of someone being, because here’s what’s hard from a philosophical perspective, people will say, “Why is being human a person? Why is having human DNA matter?” I mean they think to themselves like if Superman were real, if Spock were real, I would totally think they’re a person, but they don’t have human DNA. So that’s why I said in the debate or dialogue that a person is an individual member of irrational kind. Personhood is not something that is based on your functional ability. It’s based on what you are. You’re either a member of that kind or you’re not a member of that kind. They’re like, “Well, why should I believe that?” And I would say, “Well, I just think that it’s just kind of a basic belief that just makes sense.” I also think that it makes sense or a good evidence for it is because personhood, we see as a property that does not come in degrees.
Like we think it’s bigotry to say some humans are more of a person than other persons. Some humans, like the idea that African Americans in the compromise relate to the Civil War, the three-fifths compromise like, oh, African-Americans are three-fifths of a person at one point in our history. We now consider that to be bigoted. But if personhood is based on a gradual property like consciousness, which is what Shannon brought up in our dialogue, consciousness comes in degrees. Whether it’s intelligence, awareness, a toddler is more aware and intelligent than a newborn and an adult is more intelligent and aware than a toddler. But that doesn’t mean they have different basic rights or basic value. So all human beings, we can’t say human beings are equal if we pick a property that gives us value, that itself is not equal among us. To say we’re all equal means there’s something about us that gives us value that is truly equal about us. And I would say only our human nature can explain that.
So when these conversations come up, I really was trying to pin Shannon down to see that what she was doing, now, she knows science very well and that that became clear in our discussion talking about the cortex and about brain development, but this is not purely a scientific question. You can pick a moment in our human development and have vast scientific knowledge about it, but you also need the philosophical inference. You have to make a philosophical judgment that that point in scientific development is morally relevant or that it matters.
So when she was talking and when you hear this, and we will talk about the cortex, brain development, what I would say once again is, “Why does that matter?” When you pick a biological trait like the size of the brain, you’re doing that because there is a property that you already considered to be valuable. Because I think she would say that’s, I should have asked her this, even if someone had a cortex like that but was not conscious and would never be conscious in the future, I don’t know if she or others would, many people on the other side of this issue would not consider that being a person. Even if they had the right brain, if you can never be conscious, they may deny that that’s a person.
It seemed clear the property that she’s picking is consciousness or sentience and I’m trying to pin the person down and when you talk in conversations, really get them to see, wait, what are you referring to? Sentience traditionally is the ability to feel pleasure or pain, to sense things. Sentience. You can see, touch, taste, hear and smell. You have senses, light, dark, heat, cold, bitter, sweet. You can sense these kinds of things. But sentience, there’s tons of animals that are sentient. Rats and pigeons are sentient. Pigs are sentience. Someone online said I should have put a pig out there because pigs are really intelligent, but most people think that they’re not persons. And we eat pig. We eat little piggies. So that’s why that’s sentience, if you put the bar there, then if you say that’s what makes someone a person, then why not rats, pigeons, all these other things?
Now Shannon said, “The rejoinder is, well rats don’t have an emotional, you put them in an MRI, they don’t have emotional centers. Newborns have emotional centers.” But here’s the thing, by picking the brain and saying a newborn infant has value because it has these biological structures that will allow it to do distinctly human things later in life, if that’s your argument, I can make the counter argument and say an embryo or fetus is a person because they have a biological structure, i.e. DNA that will allow them to do distinctly human things later. If it’s this distinctly human behavior, then you’re going to lose infants. Infants are not going to count in your discussion because they can’t act in distinctly human ways.
So Shannon just said, “Well I just pick infants because they are human.” But I think anyone watching could see, wait, that’s a total ad hoc construction there. That’s totally arbitrary. Then I would say, “Fine, we should also pick fetuses and embryos because they’re human too.” Or I gave the example that that reasoning, I pick humans because I belong to humans, that’s the same as a man saying I pick men as having rights because I’m a man or a white person saying white people have rights because I’m white. It’s just, it’s a self-serving kind of description to try to get around the fact.
Now if someone just said, “Yeah I think that killing a rat is murder. People who kill rats should go to prison just like people who kill newborns.” I would respect that because it’d be consistent. But most people are not going to hold to that position because they don’t really think that sentience, mere sentience, is what gives us value. They think that a person is someone who’s conscious, who has rational thought, but they think that infants should be included anyways because they’ll have rational thought later. And if that’s the case, then if newborns are put in for that reason, then it follows that unborn embryos, fetuses, unborn humans should be included as well.
I will wrap by the way, because a great refutation of this argument that Shannon kind of put forward, the cortical argument or cortical criteria saying person, the argument goes like this, what makes humans different than other animals is that we possess a cortex. We possess a particular brain structure they don’t possess. And so that’s what makes us valuable. And it follows from that that embryos and fetuses don’t have this, therefore they’re not persons. Now, the quick rebuttal to that is, okay, there’s lots of things different between us and other animals. We have unique DNA, different than other animals. Why not pick the unique DNA? We have a unique gestation cycle, a nine month gestation cycle for pregnancies or 9, 10 months. Is that what gives us value? So just because you picked something as different, you have to have an additional reason why that thing matters.
And so this argument, actually there’s a book called The Facts of Life by Morowitz and Trefil, Harold Morowitz and James Trefil, The Facts of Life, Science and the Abortion Controversy. And they try to say that you can prove abortion is morally acceptable and that they try to say that science shows our humanness is determined by having that cortex that doesn’t develop until like the third trimester of pregnancy. But a great rebuttal to what Shannon was arguing that really is the Morowitz Trefil thesis from the book, The Facts of Life, ironically, a great reputation of that is in a book called A Defense of Abortion by David Boonin. Boonin is probably the best pro-choice advocate out there. Hands down. We’ve had one formal debate. I’m hoping maybe I can have a dialogue with him on this stuff in the future, like kind of more of a low key dialogue about the issue of abortion. So let’s just see if we can get that set up in the future. But Boonin’s book A Defense of Abortion, probably one of the best pro-choice argument out there, hands down and in the book he actually refutes a lot of other pro-choice arguments that are bad. So he refutes Morowitz and Trefil’s cortical criteria.
I’m going to read, it’s kind of an extended read but it’s good because Boonin’s a super smart guy. I really like him. I really respect, I disagree with him, but respect him. This is what he says about this cortical Morowitz Trefil argument. If humanness is taken to be a value neutral category as Morowitz and Trefil insisted that be taken, the idea that what makes us valuable is humanness, this passage of them, their defense about what makes us different is one long non-sequitur. He says this would be like arguing that since a parrot’s ability to mimic words is what most clearly distinguishes parrots from other species of bird, it follows that the rights of a parrot who has developed this ability trump those of a parent who has not yet developed it. And whatever moral status one thinks that parrots are entitled to, this claim is hardly obviously true and almost certainly false.
So if you say, what makes humans valuable is that they have this particular cortex brain development, okay, therefore, people who have developed it are more valuable than people who have not, that doesn’t follow any more than what makes parrots special is that they can mimic human voices. But that doesn’t mean a parrot that can mimic voices is more of a parrot or has more rights than a parrot who hasn’t learned that ability yet. And still what really makes human beings different from other animals is our functional abilities. But the other side is going to say that even if you haven’t developed those functional abilities like rational thought, you’re just as valuable because you’re a member of that kind.
And so he goes on to talk about this argument and here’s what he says, that the assumptions behind this argument, even if this argument worked, they do suffice to establish that having organized electrical activity in the cerebral cortex is necessary for having special moral standing. But they say they don’t show that it’s sufficient. I need to have organized electrical activity in my cortex to balance my checkbook, but it does not follow that every human being that has such activity in their brain is able to do this, nor for that matter can an infant or even a toddler. So if we acquire a right to life only when we reach the point that we can actually do things such as reason and make tools, it will turn out infants and toddlers lack this right as well. So that’s just a bit of a breeze through their Defense of Abortion by David Boonin. But even he sees that this particular argument that tries to say, okay, what makes humans biologically different is when they have their cortex, develop cerebral cortex therefore, if you don’t have that yet, you’re not a person, it’s an invalid argument. It doesn’t work.
There’s lots of things that make us different from other animals. We could pick our DNA and embryos and fetuses have that, but moreso what the objector is picking is the certain function. If the functional abilities are what matters to this person, reasoning for example, making tools, having language, if the abilities are what matter, guess what, infants and toddlers aren’t persons. If they say, well, no, you don’t have to have the abilities you just need the biological framework that makes those abilities possible, like the brain developing a sufficiently large cerebral cortex, well then why can’t I say you need just a previous biological feature, having the DNA itself.
So these kinds of functional arguments, once again, they fail because they either set the bar too high and they disqualify infants or they set the bar too low and say that rats and pigeons and other sentience creatures that are not conscious, but are sentience are equally valuable to us. Or, and even worse, if you pick a value that a property that comes in degrees, you can’t have human equality. You need a property that we all share in equally and that would be our human nature.
So I hope this has been helpful for you guys. Thank you so much and definitely I’ll probably put on social media call out requests for more dialogue partners. If you know people, feel free to tag me on Twitter or on Facebook to send me an idea. Or you can send a direct message to me at TrentHornPodcast.com if you’re a subscriber there. If you’re not, you can also contact me at TrentHorn.com, I’ve got a contact form there. You guys have been wonderful. Thank you so much and I hope you have a very blessed day.
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