http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism_(bioethics)

so contradicts Newton’s 3rd law in physics:
for every action there’s an equal opposite reaction.

depending on whoM we are talking about.

In fact my assertion implies something quite the opposite.

A leap of faith we must take because we cannot know all the possible outcomes of our actions.

Knowing that we cannot know, knowing that it is a leap of faith is hardly dogmatic.

Thinking that we can pierce that veil of future outcomes from our actions, Having the hubris to imagine that we can know results beyond the most obvious cause and effect, now THAT requires not so much dogma, but almost a child like naiveté.

Appropriate closings to this range from

“Suffer unto me the little children” to “the stupid will always be among us”.

Both are appropriate depending on who we’re talking about.

In short, I can’t wait for utilitarians to start to assign number values to a child’s life vs. a 10% increase in the Dow-Jones Industrial Average, or more simply, the pleasure of eating an ice cream cone vs. the health benefits of broccoli. How do you propose we compare these?

Having looked at more comments, I noticed that James (comment #15) has done this…How did you come by those numbers, exactly?

In the end, I have to even disagree with editec (comment #13)…While you’re argument is close to the truth, we should remember the difference between faith and dogma. Faith must be constantly renewed in the face of uncertainty. Dogma is that uncertainty made certain. For example, the faithful believer always knows that it is possible that he will turn out wrong; the dogmatic never accepts this possibility. Therefore, I would argue that most, if not all, actions are performed out of dogma; and that ethics is *always* dogma, since the study of ethics attempts to make the uncertainty of action (that the desirability of a particular action is always uncertain is a point well made by editec) certain, this is dogma as I’ve defined it, rather than in inherent uncertainty of faith.

The fact that many people confuse dogma and faith continues to erode popular discourse on religion in the West–since many people think that to be dogmatic is to be faithful (and vice versa), it appears to many (both secular and religious) that a religious life is one of dogma; thus, one of irreverence towards Others, of an unreflective life, and, combined, into a world-view that cannot bend or alter itself to incorporate others (eg. Creationism vs. Natural Selection).

Peace.