Human Dignity and Bioethics

118 | Patricia S. Churchland
lives invaded and made miserable, cities sacked, and the peace overturned.
For your own good, and in the name of your own dignity, it
may be argued, you must suffer terrible pain and submit to smallpox
or Parkinson’s disease or spinal paralysis.
We have much more to fear from the moral dogmatist who brandishes
his unshakable certainty about what God supposedly wants
and intends concerning human dignity than from the calmly tolerant
person who will listen to others, and who will work toward a peaceful
compromise that is conducive to human flourishing. If someone professes
certainty regarding a fact, we can always test his claim against
the evidence. By contrast, if someone expresses certitude regarding
what God intends, it is much harder to test his claim. In any case,
it would be inconsistent with human decency to assume that feeling
certain is itself conclusive evidence of possessing the truth.