The Beginnings of Life; The Foundation of Morality

Here are tidbits from the blog of Touchstone magazine (merecomments.typepad.com).

This one they were passing along from the Wall Street Journal....

Life Begins at Conception--if You're a Panda

*** QUOTE ***

"A 13-year-old giant panda gave birth to a cub at San Diego Zoo, but a second baby died in the womb, officials said Wednesday."--Associated Press, Aug. 3

"A cancer-ravaged woman robbed of consciousness by a stroke has given birth after being kept on life support for three months to give her fetus extra time to develop."--Associated Press, Aug. 3

*** END QUOTE ***

This was an extempore talk from Pope Benedict XVI to a monastic community he visited, which the Touchstone people quoted:

On the proposal that nonbelievers should live "as if God exists":

"I made this reflection: during the period of the Enlightenment, when the faith was divided between Catholics and Protestants, it was thought that common moral values must be preserved by providing a sufficient foundation for them. The idea was: we must make moral values independent of the religious confessions, so that they would endure 'etsi Deus non daretur' [even if there were no God].

"Now we are in the opposite situation, things have been turned the other way around. There is no longer any proof for moral values. They become evident only if God exists. So I suggested that the secularists, the so-called secularists, should reflect upon whether the opposite is not true today: we must live 'quasi Deus daretur' [as if God exists]. Even if we do not have the strength to believe, we must live by this hypothesis, because otherwise the world does not work. And it seems to me that this would be a first step toward the faith. And through many forms of contact I see that, thanks to God, there is a growth of dialogue with at least a part of secularism."