In his March 29 editorial, "The Miracle of Birth," Dan Rothfarb has finally succeeded in crossing the line from the inane to the offensive. For a long time, his particular brand of atheism -- which involves not only a personal denial of God, but also a dismissal of those who do not share his belief -- has been evident. In his most recent column, however, it reaches such heights of ignorance and intolerance as to offend even a fellow non-believer such as myself.
Mr. Rothfarb's basic thesis, which seems to be a semantic one -- that what is commonly described as a "miracle" does not fit his definition -- only makes sense when situated in his greater project of belittling and patronizing those with religious convictions. (His attacks on religion were more explicit in his March 1 column, "One Nation Under God.")
There is, after all, no reason to find the term "miracle" particularly offensive; for me, as a non-religious person, it connotes something special, something extraordinary, but not necessarily something of divine origin. The term "miracle" is not merely "God-talk," as Mr. Rothfarb so callously puts it, and it signifies something more than "fascinating and impressive." To call something a miracle is to place it in a special and reverent category -- a category to which life most certainly belongs, no matter whether you ascribe to religion or not. Nietzsche, to give a notable example, held life in the highest esteem, and decried those who did not as decadent and repulsive ("Twilight of the Idols," "The Problem of Socrates"). The fact that newborns are thought of as miracles by those who have conceived them suggests that those with some experience on the matter hold a view very different from that of Mr. Rothfarb -- who, to the best of my knowledge, is not a father.
Of course, Mr. Rothfarb's column offends not only in its religion-baiting. His factual inaccuracies are also appalling. That any senior at Dartmouth College could write, "Not once have I heard someone argue that God puts souls into fetuses" suggests either that Dartmouth has failed Mr. Rothfarb, or, perhaps more likely, that he has willfully chosen to ignore the beliefs of the vast populations of the world who believe in the ensoulment of the fetus -- a belief held, for example, by members of such various groups as Hindus, Roman Catholics and ancient Pythagoreans. That he could then, with equal intellectual laziness, tack on, "global overpopulation is reaching ridiculous proportions and it's resulting in famine, child slavery and a whole mess of other problems" is more astounding. "Global" overpopulation is, of course, a difficult term, as there is clearly not overpopulation in Europe or North America -- as Mr. Rothfarb's column is read almost exclusively within the United States, the issue of overpopulation seems irrelevant.
Moreover, regional overpopulation is not demonstrably the greatest cause of famine -- after all, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan are all far more densely populated than Somalia or Ethiopia, and none of the former three countries suffers from famine (the United Nations data are available and well-organized on NationOnline.org). In the latter two countries, though droughts are largely to blame, political instability -- occasioned, in part, by a devaluation of human life -- is also a contributing factor. Judging from Mr. Rothfarb's March 1 column, in which he denounced President Bush for criticizing China's religious oppression, he no doubt feels uncomfortable examining the political causes of famine.
It would, of course, be even harder to prove that overpopulation, which would necessarily produce a glut of workers and a shortage of jobs, would result in child labor. Poverty, and its associated denigration of life, is the more likely cause, and as the Southeast Asian examples demonstrate, large or even dense population is not necessarily a cause of poverty. In the cases of both famine and child-labor, it is the disregard for human beings that allows their suffering to become a tool of economic or political gain; and one could easily extend Mr. Rothfarb's thesis to ask, "Why is human life something special at all, if we can cause it to occur in a lab or to cease with an injection? Why should a child deserve special concern, when there are so many of them and they can so easily be replaced?"
Mr. Rothfarb's biggest logical mistake, however, is assuming that his column -- perhaps intended in jest -- is somehow mandated by his strange world-view. If Mr. Rothfarb does not wish to celebrate his life, there is no one forcing him to do so, just as no one is forcing him to believe in God or find magical the process by which two cells grow into a beautiful, thinking being. It does not follow, however, that Mr. Rothfarb should feel obliged to foist his ignorance -- after all, he is not a parent and is allegedly unaware of religious beliefs concerning fetuses -- and unhappiness on the rest of us. It would indeed be a miracle if we were not subjected to another of his anti-religious rants in his column next week.
