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Closed File Formats and Christian Ethics
Professor Vern Sheridan Poythress, a Presbyterian seminary professor, has a great website where he has made a huge portion of his lifetime writings available completely free. On his site, he has published an article discussing the ethical implications of closed file formats.
Poythress roots his discussion primarily in justice for people in the Third World who cannot obtain copies of proprietary software to open files saved in proprietary formats. This is an important point for the church, where communication with people in other countries has been strongly facilitated by the Internet, but I would like to extend his argument somewhat. When one is in the position to choose between software which interoperates with free and open formats and software which does not, one is, in part, making a choice to obligate the future users of one’s work to use particular software.
It’s important to note at this point that none of this discussion necessarily points to using freedom software. If Microsoft, for example, produces a version of Word that fully interoperates with the OpenDocument format, the ethical question of file formats goes away. You might choose to use costly proprietary software to create your document, but the recipient is not obligated do to likewise because the file format is open and anyone can write a program to work with it. Hence, the ethical question of file formats is not even whether the file format is open or closed. Instead, the question is whether or not there exists freely available software for reading and fully manipulating that document down the road. As long as that software exists and is readily available, you can choose whatever software you like.
There are plenty of good reasons to choose freedom software over proprietary software in many instances. Freedom software almost always uses open file formats, so interoperability is guaranteed.
Ultimately, the ethics of file formats is about control. It is irresponsible of the church to give control over access to data or choice of software away unnecessarily.
Christian Ethics and the Right to Vote
The issues of abortion, euthanasia, the war, and political and economic justice place myself and many other people in a trap between the two major political parties in the United States. Often times people like me have been derided as “single issue voters,” though that has never been true for me. The choices involved, presented from a Roman Catholic perspective but holding universal application, are well presented in this article from the First Things blog.
Certainly, a Catholic elected to public office must make prudential judgments on how to best advance the rights and the dignity of the human person. There are many issues, in fact most issues, where Catholic politicians may disagree and adopt different policy positions—a just immigration policy, for example, or public-assistance programs for the poor, or health-care policy, or military engagement, or taxation policies.
At the same time, there are circumstances where to support a particular policy involves approval of an intrinsic evil.
On arbitrary definitions of human life
The definition of human life is not without controversy, and especially with the arguments surrounding the proposed Constitutional Amendment 2 in Missouri, it’s important to examine.
Definitions of human life or personhood proposed in this debate can be categorized into particular deadlines (e.g. implantation, a certain fetal age, fetal viability outside the womb), collectively Time, particular circumstances (e.g. actually living outside the womb or not), collectively Location, or particular abilities (e.g. ability to breath without assistance, ability to have a heart beat), collectively Abilities. All of these definitions suffer from one fallacy: arbitrariness.
First, time. Impassioned arguments can be made for personhood beginning at conception, beginning within a few weeks with the beginning of embryonic heart or brain activity, at the point where the fetus is viable, at the moment of birth). But if personhood is based upon (always someone else’s) standard of time, what abuses do we see? We see late term abortion, where healthy, viable babies are delivered halfway, then murdered with scissors before they take their first breath. We see euthanasia, where families sue each other to decide whether an elderly family member should live or die. Time is an arbitrary standard, always defined chiefly in terms of someone else’s convenience.
Next, circumstances. What can be more arbitrary than the location of the baby? If a baby is partly in the womb when it is killed, it is legal abortion, but if the baby is completely out of the womb, it is illegal murder. Mere inches – and absolutely nothing else – span the gap between one and the other.
Finally, and most sinister, is the standard of abilities. What abilities make a person? Who gets to decide? What happens when someone grows old and doesn’t have the same abilities – whether that is being able to clean their house or being able to breath without assistance? One of the first eugenics programs run by the Nazis used this standard to justify killing the insane, the chronically ill, and the elderly. Unfortunately this story isn’t often told. For more information, I recommend the book Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation by former President Ronald Reagan (interestingly, this book is the only book ever published by a US President while in office).
I am strongly pro-life based upon two standards. First, the Christian view of life is that all human life is created in God’s image, and therefore all human life is to be protected. Second, I think the most responsible response to the arbitrariness of the foregoing standards is to err on the side of the protection of life (the “principle of maximal life”). If there is any doubt as to the reliability of any standard, be it Time, Location, Ability, or anything else, then the most responsible choice is to choose the version of each standard which protects life the most. Therefore, we should treat human life as sacred, no matter how young or old, no matter where it is (in uterus or in hospice), no matter what it can do (breath or cry or feed itself).
The greatest risk that arbitrary standards for personhood run is that there will be a time when human life deserving personhood will not be given dignity and justice. Whether or not you agree that human life is created imago Dei (in the image of God), the priniciple of maximal life is still the principle most likely to grant personhood to everything which is actually a person, and therefore it is the most just standard we can ever apply.
Copyright 2006-2010 Ted Carnahan. Except where noted, the content of this site is licensed under CC-SA-BY.