More newspaper logic from Reginald Stackhouse

I don’t want to do a series on strange news stories, but I couldn’t resist this one. This one is from the opinion section of the Globe & Mail, featuring former MP Reginald Stackhouse. Mr Stackhouse is an Anglican priest, principal emeritus of Wycliffe College, and a member of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Wow.

The topic of the article is embryonic stem research, which Mr. Stackhouse supports. One would expect some thoughtful discussion from him. Instead, his whole article basically hangs on one statement, which he uses to counter the “sanctity of life” argument (in other words, a embryo is a person, and therefore we should not be selling them for parts).

Here’s what he says: Although an embryo contains all that will become a human person, that does not make it a person. That’s it. That’s his argument. And most people on both sides would agree with him.

What Mr. Stackhouse apparently fails to realize is that by the same logic, he himself is not a person! Think about it. He also contains all the ingredients of a human person (the only difference is that no one would say he will “become” a person, but that’s not important in his argument). My printer contains all the parts needed to make a printer. Does that mean it’s not a printer?

All he’s doing is taking a really ridiculous argument (would anyone opposed to stem cell research really use this as an argument??) and knocking it down. Nice work. Now can we get to some of the real issues?

But he never does. He hangs everything else on his now “proven” supposition that an embryo obviously isn’t a person, and forges blindly ahead. So much for thoughtful discussion.

You can read the article online now. Another example of something that sounds impressive, unless you actually think about it.