Query:

Some people challenge liberty of conscience on grounds that some claims of conscience are faulty.  But shouldn’t the state bear the burden of proof if it seeks to interfere?

Reply:

It would be difficult to defend the absolute claim that the state may never, under any circumstances, compel a person to do what he considers wrong.  Some nut may say he considers it wrong to stop at red lights.  But I think you are exactly right to emphasize that if the state does seek to compel a person to do something he considers wrong, the burden of the argument should lie on the state.  The presumption should lie strongly with the individual.

This forces the state to make a moral argument in terms of precepts that are right and true for everyone and accessible to reason, something the state is loath to do because it pretends not to have a moral position.  Its pretense is aided by the way the term “autonomy” is now used.  Though the term has no single, precise meaning, it functions in two chief ways.

First, it functions to obscure the distinctions among a variety of radically different moral ideas, some of them defensible, some of them not.  For example, sometimes the term “autonomy” is used for the idea that people should have the broadest possible liberty to do what is good and right -- a liberty which Sean Murphy of the Protection of Conscience Project more adequately and accurately calls “perfective” liberty of conscience.  But others use the term "autonomy" for the idea that individual behavior should be exempt from judgments of good and evil.  Obviously these ideas are antithetical.

The solution here is to disentangle the ideas.  In each case of entanglement, instead of speaking vaguely of autonomy, we should identify the specific moral idea that the term “autonomy” is being used to promote.

Second, the term functions to conceal the moral grounds on which the state seeks to coerce someone to do something.  In such cases the term is used as a synonym for moral neutrality, which of course does not exist.  For example:  The state guarantees the freedom to have an abortion, but denies the freedom to refuse to participate in an abortion.  In defense of the first action, the state says of itself that it is not making a moral judgment, but merely protecting autonomy.  In defense of the second action, the state says of those who refuse to participate that they are enforcing their personal moral judgments, and denying the autonomy of others.  Nonsense.  The state’s actual moral judgment – unargued, because the state pretends that it isn’t a moral judgment -- is that it is morally permissible for private individuals to employ lethal violence against a certain category of unprotected persons, and that it is morally impermissible for other private individuals to refuse to help them do it.

The solution to this problem is similar to the solution of the other one.  In each case of mendacity, instead of letting the state get away with pretending to have no moral stance, we should translate the obfuscatory language that it uses into clear language that says what it means.

“Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned.”  --  Avicenna, Metaphysics

“God made man in his own image.  We are going to become one with God.  We are going to have almost as much knowledge and almost as much power as God.  Cloning and the reprogramming of DNA is the first serious step in becoming one with God.”

This remark was made by physicist and biotech entrepreneur Richard Seed, quoted on NPR Morning Edition on January 7, 1998.  See, transhumanism has been around longer than you thought.

In one sense, the atheist might believe in natural moral law; in another sense, he already believes in it; in yet a third sense, he cannot believe in it.

He might believe in it in the sense that nothing prevents him from responding “Yes, that’s true” when presented with the proposition “There is a natural moral law.”

He already believes in it in the sense that he possesses the "natural habit" of the knowledge of the first principles of practical reason.  It isn’t because of our theories that we know the moral basics; they come with being human.  Our theories come afterward and try to explain them.

But he cannot believe in it in the sense of holding premises consistent with it.  True law presupposes a lawgiver superior to the one to whom the law is given, and the atheist denies that there is such a being.  If he supposes that morality is something else, such as instinct, he misunderstands what law is.

One party, with a few exceptions, really doesn’t care much about the poor.  The other party wants to convert the poor into a permanent constituency of hopelessly dependent and utterly demoralized nonproductive consumers who vote for the hand that feeds them.  Both parties want to feel good about it.

The former party, with a few exceptions, touts an ideology which holds, in effect, that not caring much about the poor is the meaning of encouraging their moral character.  The latter party touts an equally damnable ideology which holds, in effect, that destroying their moral character is the meaning of compassion.  The latter party wins.