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(LifeSiteNews) — On this week’s solo episode of The Van Maren Show, Jonathon considers questions as to whether or not Western society will accept infanticide.

Jonathon examines the question in light of a waning “Judeo-Christian culture,” observing that “we are seeing evidence that the sanctity of human life was harnessed to our Judeo-Christian heritage,” and that as cultural values become divorced from our Judeo-Christian heritage, “those values begin to slip.”

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.

Throughout the episode, 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.

Later in the episode, Jonathon commented on the opinion of agnostic philosopher Douglas Murray, someone who has appeared on his show in the past. In a 2014 essay Murray published in The Spectator, he 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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