Irrelevant Characteristics

Date March 21, 2007 Posted by Amy Hall

The following is an argument against slavery given in a sermon by Jonathan Edwards, Jr. in 1791:

Should we be willing, that the Africans or any other nation should purchase us, our wives and children, transport us into Africa and there sell us into perpetual and absolute slavery?  Should we be willing that they by large bribes and offers of a gainful traffic should entice our neighbors to kidnap and sell us to them, and that they should hold, in perpetual and cruel bondage, not only ourselves, but our posterity through all generations?  Yet why is it not as right for them to treat us in this manner, as it for us to treat them in the same manner?  Their colour indeed is different from ours.  But does this give us the right to enslave them?  The nations of Germany to Guinea have complexions of every shade from the fairest white, to the jetty black:  and if a black complexion subject a nation or an individual to slavery; where shall slavery begin?  Or where shall it end? 

 

(Quoted in A God Entranced Vision of All Things, p. 158.  You can read the entire sermon, Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave Trade and of the Slavery of Africans, here.)

Edwards does an excellent job here of showing that the color of your skin is irrelevant to your personhood.  Choosing the point on the scale of colors after which a person would lose his rights as a human being would be a completely subjective and arbitrary enterprise.  Would someone on the other side of that arbitrary line suddenly become a non-human without rights?  Why?  If the characteristic of color is truly relevant, then anyone with lighter skin is more deserving of rights than someone with darker skin.  Am I more human than someone with a tan?  The notion is ridiculous.

In the same way, those who advocate abortion rights often cite similar irrelevant characteristics such as size (the fetus is so small!) or level of development (the fetus can’t do everything I can!) to disqualify the unborn child as deserving of rights.  (I’m indebted to STR for their clarification of this in the SLED Test.)  But if those characteristics were relevant to our rights and humanness, why should the line be arbitrarily drawn at birth?  If they’re relevant, then Andrew Jones (“Tall Skinny Kiwi“) should have more rights than I, and I should have more rights than a young child who has not yet learned to walk.

The truth is that, as with slavery, our culture is defensively protecting its sin with some very weak arguments about irrelevant characteristics.

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  3. Judge Declares Marriage Definition Unconstitutional
  4. Another Response from Richard Mouw
  5. Playing Politics With Same-Sex Marriage And Undermining A Free Society
  6. Interview with Stephen Wagner, Part 1

Category Posted in Amy's Posts, Apologetics, Ethics, Main Page

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