The Death of Humanity: and the Case for Life

by Richard Weikart

Overview

A book to challenge the status quo, spark a debate, and get people talking about the issues and questions we face as a country!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781621575627
Publisher:	Skyhorse Publishing
Publication date:	04/04/2016
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

The list of Regnery authors reads like a "who's who" of conservative thought, action, and history.

Read an Excerpt

On February 10, 1996, humanity suffered a debilitating stroke, when a machine defeated the reigning world chess champion for the first time. Garry Kasparov was shaken up after losing the first game of a six-game match with the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue. However, he recovered sufficiently to win the match, putting machines back in their place. But not for long. The following year humanity died, when Deep Blue defeated Kasparov, who was able to win only one game out of six, while the machine won two. Many commentators drew the seemingly obvious conclusion: The human mind is nothing more than a complex machine, and now we can make machines capable of doing just about anything that we can do.

On the other hand, perhaps—as Mark Twain quipped when told about widely-circulating rumors about his own death—the demise of humanity has been greatly exaggerated. The machine that beat Kasparov by analyzing millions of chess moves per second was the product of human intelligence. Rather than demoting or burying humanity, it could be seen as the triumph of human ingenuity. It took the collaboration of many people, including computer experts and chess masters—not to mention the millions of innovations preceding it—to design and program Deep Blue. Rather than a death blow to humanity, its ability to play brilliant chess is a tribute to humanity. It demonstrates the power and creativity of human intelligence. Also Deep Blue was designed for a purpose; it was not a mindless, purposeless accident.

The notion that humans are just sophisticated, complex machines is by no means new. We can trace the basic idea back at least to the ancient Greeks. However, in modern times it received considerable impetus from two seventeenth-century rationalist philosophers: René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza. Descartes provided a mechanistic explanation for all physical phenomena, including the anatomy and physiology of animals and humans. However, he remained staunchly committed to body-soul dualism, so he refused to apply this mechanistic view to the human mind. Not all of his followers were so restrained. Indeed, Spinoza, though adopting Descartes’ rationalistic method of gaining knowledge, abandoned body-soul dualism, insisting on the unity of the physical and mental. Spinoza rejected the notion that humans have free will, because he believed that even the human mind is completely subject to natural causation. This means that humans would not be independent agents making real decisions. Rather, human behavior is allegedly determined entirely by the concatenation of events preceding an individual’s "decision."

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1: Man the Machine
Chapter 2: Created from Animals: Humans Going Ape
Chapter 3: My Genes Made Me Do It: Biological Determinism
Chapter 4: My Upbringing Made Me Do It: Environmental Determinism
Chapter 5: The Love of Pleasure
Chapter 6: Superman’s Contempt for Humanity: The Dehumanizing Impact of Existentialism and Postmodernism
Chapter 7: A Matter of Life and Death: Suicide, Euthanasia, Infanticide, and Abortion
Chapter 8: The Future of Humanity: Utopias, Dystopias, and Transhumanism

Editorial Reviews

"'Many prominent Western intellectuals have dispensed with the view that humans are created in the image of God and thus have immeasurable value and inalienable rights,' writes Professor Weikart. In my four decades of speaking in university open forums, I have witnessed the logical consequences of this belief that humanity is a cosmic accident: wherever I go I meet student after student troubled by haunting questions of meaning and purpose. Weikart demonstrates the impoverishment of philosophies that reject the Judeo-Christian worldview—but 'still retain some of the vestiges of the Judeo-Christian morality that they claim to spurn'—and shows how Christianity uniquely makes sense of our questions of meaning, purpose, morality, and dignity. His book will sober and challenge you."

—Ravi Zacharias, Speaker and Author of Why Jesus? Rediscovering His Truth in an Age of Mass Marketed Spirituality and other books

" The Death of Humanity is both an eye-opening and sobering book. Weikart tackles some of the most important and pressing worldview challenges related to the devaluing of human life that come from Secularism, Darwinism, transhumanism and more. And yet he provides some critical insights for how to restore the value of human life in a way that is faithful to the teachings of Jesus."

—Sean McDowell, speaker, Biola University professor, and author of over fifteen books, including A New Kind of Apologist

"It is impossible to respond effectively to the moral and legal revolutions of the past few decades—the legalization of abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, same-sex marriage—without knowing their history: How did these practices take root in the modern west and how did they develop? As a professional historian, Richard Weikart is an excellent guide in identifying their intellectual sources. He pins down their philosophical origins and offers a critical evaluation that will give much-needed historical depth to contemporary debates."

—Nancy Pearcey, Professor of Apologetics & Scholar in Residence, Houston Baptist University, and author of Total Truth and Finding Truth

"Richard Weikart's work effectively draws out the clear implications of humans abandoning the biblical God, who is the very basis of their dignity and rights. This is no mere theoretical discussion, however; Weikart's meticulous historical research shows—in this book as in previous ones—the devastating results of God-defying ideologies that predictably turn into dehumanizing ones as well. Highly recommended!"

—Paul Copan, Professor and Pledger Family Chair of Philosophy and Ethics, Palm Beach Atlantic University, and co-author of An Introduction to Biblical Ethics

"In The Death of Humanity , historian Richard Weikart systematically demonstrates that the worst evils of the last one hundred years came about when those with power rejected the intrinsic equal dignity and moral worth of all human life. . . . [W]hether one is religious or secular, we ignore Weikart's prophetic warnings at the very great risk to our own—and more particularly, our posterity’s—liberty and flourishing."

—Wesley J. Smith, Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism and Author of Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine

"Richard Weikart's book The Death of Humanity is a very well-written, cogently argued work that makes an important contribution to contemporary discussions about bioethics and the value of humans. I endorse it wholeheartedly."

—Jennifer Lahl, President of the Center for Bioethics and Culture and Producer of the documentaries Eggsploitation and Breeders: A Subclass of Women?

"So often I have heard the question, 'How did we ever become so muddled in this twenty-first century? What happened?' This is a question for a historian, who can weave a single coherent story about a great many sources of confusion. Richard Weikart is that historian, and I will be recommending his sane and lucid book often."

—J. Budziszewski, Professor of Government and Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin, and Author of What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

From the Publisher