Hello and welcome to the Speak Live Podcast. My name is Glenn Scrivener. Thank you so much for downloading this podcast. Let me ask you a question: Are all lives equally valuable? What is the worth of a human life? Well, very naturally, we want to say that lives have near infinite value and dignity. And we want to say that all lives are to be equally valued. But as we'll see in this episode, that kind of view is an entirely Christian view built upon the Bible, built upon a view of reality that sees things through the lens of Jesus Christ. And that is a unique and peculiar view. It is not a universal human experience that we value all lives the same. No, it is a unique feature of Christian civilization. And somebody who became a crupper for challenging that view was Lord Jonathan Sumption. In the last few days, he has made statements about human lives, some of them being more valuable and some of them being less valuable. What on earth did he mean? And why did he draw down the ire of so many? First, there was the righteous indignation of Nikki Campbell, which was expressed on BBC One's program called The Big Questions, and then he was invited onto Piers Morgan's show on ITV, Good Morning Britain, where Piers Morgan played the role of a fiery Old Testament prophet who was outraged that Lord Sumption could ever say that different lives are valued differently. But what did Lord Sumption mean? He actually made the distinction that in the eyes of God we are equally valuable. But he said when it comes to difficult economic calculations, there sometimes does need to be a value placed on a human life. So how on earth do we square those two ideas? The vertical level, where before God we have infinite and eternal value, and the horizontal value, where we have to consider um scarce resources and how to ration them. Well, we try to have an adult and grown-up conversation here at Speak Life, and we want to try to think about these things from both perspectives. Both the vertical perspective and the horizontal perspective. But before we get on into the program, I would love you if uh you could actually make sure you're subscribed to this podcast. Could you please go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify? Or wherever you get your podcast from? And could you make sure that you're subscribed to us? And please, if you like us, could you give us a five-star rating and review? That really helps us to get seen. And uh why not tell a friend on social media about the Speak Life podcast? It is fun to share the wealth. But uh, without further ado, we're gonna get into uh the the video that uh I made earlier in this week, a response to both Piers Morgan and Lord Jonathan Sumption, and it was entitled, They Are Both Wrong. Are all lives equally valuable? That's the question we're gonna look at today, and we're gonna see that uh Lord Jonathan Sumption does not think so, and we're gonna see that Piers Morgan does not think so either, but just for slightly different reasons. Hello, my name's Glenn Scrivener, and uh you are with us uh here on the Speak Life Media channel. Do give us a subscribe and click the bell down below, and you'll get more and more content like this because we're always talking about these sorts of issues, about human value, how it is derived, how it is assessed, and how we can go on being humanists in a world that has walked away from the Christian story, which gave us humanism. And spoiler alert, I don't think you can cling on to humanism when you walk away from the story about God the human. God the human earths our humanism. And without that Christian story, I think our humanism becomes a thinner and thinner gruel that actually has no purchase, no substance to it anymore. We're gonna see that as we go. So, where did this uh whole um controversy come from? Well, Lord Jonathan Sumption, who was a Supreme Court judge here in the UK, he appeared on a television program on BBC One on Sunday that's called uh The Big Questions, that's what it's called, and they were discussing lockdown and whether lockdown is a disproportionate response to the threat of COVID. Lord Jonathan Sumption has been a skeptic of lockdown really from the beginning. And one of the points that he was wanting to make on the show is that since COVID disproportionately affects the elderly, then it is unjust to have a lockdown that disproportionately affects the young. And in the midst of saying that, uh, he then made this comment about all lives. Let's have a look.
SPEAKER_01I don't accept uh that all lives are of equal value. My children's and my grandchildren's life is worth much more than mine because they've got a lot more of it ahead.
SPEAKER_03So in saying this, he's saying something that is absolutely bog standard in uh pretty much every human civilization. Uh, you go back to something like the Hammurabi Code, and uh while um among social strata, um, it's an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and there is reciprocity if you're in the same class as somebody else, um if somebody else is in a different social strata to you, um, then watch out, because if they're above you, then they they are um they are more valuable than you are. This this is just a common, it's a it's a human universal all around the world. Um nobody thinks that all lives are equally valuable, uh, apart from Christians and the kind of revolution that Christians have fostered, um, especially in the West. So the idea that all lives are equally valuable is not in any way universal or basic or intuitive or obvious. Um is just nuts. You go back to the Hammurabi code, you go back to Greek understandings of the world, Plato and Aristotle thought that absolutely there was a there was a massive ontological difference uh between the king and the slave, right? In in the same in the same um kingdom. Obvious. And it was obvious that some people uh are born to be slaves, some people are born to be living tools, and some people are born to rule over them because some people can't get their acts together and they need that different class of person, that better kind of person to order them around. That was obvious, and it was written into reality, okay? Um, the visions of reality that this world has had are of a vertiginously steep hierarchy of being with the king at the top and the serfs and the slaves at the bottom. And that's that's just natural. That's a human universal. Or, you know, we we thought of Babylonian, we thought of sort of you know the Greco-Roman understanding of things. Let's think of uh the Muslim understanding of things. I mean, unapologetically, in Surah 98, verse 6, um it says that um those disbelievers from among the polytheists and the people of the book, um, their place is the fire, and they are the worst of creatures. And and it just very comfortably talks in terms of um there are creatures who are better than other creatures, and some people are the worst of creatures. Um it is obvious to everyone that actually um human beings are on a spectrum. They're on a spectrum, and and some people are further towards the good end and some people are further towards the bad end, or some people are further towards the useful end, and some people are further towards the the non-useful end. Think of um classic paganism. You know, there's a film that came out a couple of years ago in midsummer um that was about a neo-pagan cult in which they resurrected the rituals of the ancient sort of Nordic cultures, in which, when you got to the age of um, in the case of this film, when you got to the age of 72, you had to jump off a cliff. And because the resources were needed by the young, don't be so selfish. You know, you're not entitled to more than 72 years on this planet. So when you get to you know the age of 72, you've got to climb this cliff and jump off. And if the fool doesn't kill you, then um the other neo-pagans will in that film anyway. And uh, yeah, it's a quite brutal watch. Um, but we look at that, and interestingly, um, the the sort of the one of the main characters in that film is somebody called Christian, who comes into this pagan understanding of the world and is outraged eventually. You know, they're seduced by it actually in in lots of different ways, but they are eventually outraged by that vision of the world because it is a Christian vision of the world that says, you know what, there might be a hierarchy in terms of well, God's above us, isn't he? And and there are angels, and and that there is there is a hierarchy of being in one sense, but when it comes to humanity, all people are in in the image of gods, right? There on page one of the Bible, all people are in the image of God, and it's an incredibly democratizing kind of thing. In the ancient Near East, um certain kings were sometimes said to be in the image of God. They were god-like creatures, like kings, aren't they? Um, but on page one of the Bible, you've got all people, male and female, together are in the image of God. And so, in the eyes of God, there is not a vertiginously steep hierarchy that's like that. In the eyes of God, we're all like this. And in fact, we at the bottom of the hierarchy, because God's at the top, um, what happens in the Bible is as you keep on reading through, um, God the Son descends down to the very bottom of that hierarchy in order to be one with us. It's like it's like the king becoming one with the serf and the slave, okay? And the Bible even talks about that in Philippians chapter two. It says, He who was in the image of God took the very nature of a slave. It's talking about Christ, you know, though he is in the form of God, took the form of a slave, made himself nothing, and humbled himself even to the death of the cross. Um, therefore, God exalted him to the highest place because it's this this it's the last who should be first. You know, the first became last, so that the last could be first. And so, in a sense, Christianity doesn't obliterate hierarchy, but it tells a story about hierarchy. A story in which the prince becomes a pauper to raise us up to his royalty. Okay, that that's the that's the story that Christianity tells. It's a story that's embedded itself in our civilization such that now we take it as obvious that we are well, we want we might not say we're all in the image of God, but we'll secularize that and we'll say that we all have equal human rights, equal human dignity. We are all persons. And it doesn't matter whether you are the CEO of a billion-dollar corporation, it doesn't matter if you are uh a disabled, um, poor black, whatever, whatever minority you can think of, it doesn't matter. You are as equal in the eyes of God as Jeff Bezos. You are, and that's true, isn't it? And and that that has gripped us. The reason it's gripped us is because we've told a story. We've told a story in which um the the great philanthropist, out of great um benevolence, has expended himself for the weak, the poor, the marginalized, so much that he became the weak, the poor, the marginalized, that we might be uh invited into his riches and his wealth and his eternity, his future. So Christians have inhabited this story, and the civilization that that has given rise to us has been soaking in this story in which it in which how dare Lord Sumption say that how dare he say that some lives are more valuable than others? God went out to the rubbish tip, that's where he was crucified. Golgotha, you know, it's it's it's where they threw the rubbish and he became a piece of rubbish, he became the scum of the earth to obliterate though those kinds of judgments. Who does he think he is? That some people are more valuable and some people are less valuable. You know, every bit of ire and frustration and and anger that is directed at Lord Jonathan Sumption is Christian anger. We've just forgotten the Bible references, okay? We are hurling, we are hurling scriptural truths at Lord Sumption. Um, we've just forgotten where they come from. But they do not come from the Babylonians, they don't come from the Romans or the Greeks or the Persians or the Muslims or the pagan society. They come from Jesus Christ and the revolution that has built your world, okay? So just bear that in mind as we're talking about the the revolution that Jesus Christ has brought to this world. It is through Jesus' eyes that Lord Sumption's words appear as outrageous as they are. Let's keep going.
SPEAKER_01The whole concept of quality life years ahead is absolutely fundamental if one's going to look at the value of these things.
SPEAKER_03And this is kind of what he means. You know, the the the whole concept of quality of life years ahead of you is important when making, you know, public policy uh about scarce resources. You see, and and this is this is what Lord Sumption kind of means. He's he's meaning value in a quite limited sense, but inexplicably, when he's asked, you know, about that use of the word value, he he refuses to choose a different word. He should choose a different word. He should he should say that yes, um uh we have all equal value, but when we are making uh quite, you know, when we're talking about um scarce resources that need to be uh attributed, and some people will miss out and some people won't, um then you know we you can talk in different languages. Don't use the language of value there, um, because um it treads across every Christian instinct that we have, even if we don't call ourselves Christians. And everyone who got very, very upset at Lord Jonathan Assumption on the big questions, and everyone that got very upset with Lord Jonathan Assumption on um ITV's program, they they were getting upset with him for Christian reasons. And really, he he he needs to change his language, lest he be mistaken for those pagans, right? Who just say, When you're 72, that's it, shuck them off a cliff, okay? Because they're just taking up hospital beds or they're just taking up our resources, okay. But okay, so let's steel man Sumption, okay? Let's let's steel man it. What do you what is he trying to say? He's he's trying to say that in a world of scarce resources, resources, you have to make tough choices. You really do. And of course, you take into account a person's age. Everybody does this. Don't get outraged at Lord Sumption if this is what he means. And I think I think you know, charitably, this is what he means. Don't get outraged at him for saying that when tough choices are to be made and when resources are scarce, then age comes into it. We know that age comes into it. As we're rolling out the vaccines, there aren't enough for everyone to have one right now. There are not enough to go around. And so we are rationing them. Okay, well, on what basis are we rationing them? Age. Are you saying age matters in how valuable somebody is? No, we're we're just saying that with scarce resources, as you're rationing things, because you value life so much, you need to take into account the age of people so that you might preserve more lives. Okay. We already, we already treat people differently according to their age. We already do that, okay? And you might say, ah, yeah, but but with the case of the vaccine, we're actually positively um blessing those who are older. Yeah, we are, we are. Well, that's a very Christian thing, too, isn't it? It's a very Christian thing to protect those who are weaker, right? That's that's the Christian kind of impulse. Um, but to but to imagine that because all people are equally valuable, therefore all people equally should have access to the vaccine. Well, that would be stupid, wouldn't it? That then, okay, well, how do you how do you then roll out the three and a half million vaccines that you know that have been the shots that have been given so far? Like how would you how would you roll those out if you didn't take age into account? I guess it would just be a lottery. And you get a heck of a lot of like five-year-olds getting vaccine shots who really don't need them. Okay. You need to be able to target things. You have to, and this is what Court Assumption is saying. You need to be able to target things. And the way that people do things is quality of life years, which is useful for all kinds of things in health and safety. Um, you don't want to um impose on yourselves ever more expensive health and safety measures if they're not going to save lives. Okay, and so you need to trade off the cost of a certain health and safety feature with the the benefits of having that safety feature. Now, in order to trade, like for like, at some point you've got to put a price on a human life, and people do it all the time. If you're if you're working in things like health and safety, you need you need to say, okay, well, let's say that a human life is it's it's worth a million pounds, and we would pay a million pounds not to have that person fall off the railing and fall to their death. And you might think, a million pounds, that's too small. Okay, well, let's say a billion pounds. But it's at some point somebody's got a price, okay. And at some point, you're not going to spend three trillion pounds to save one life, okay? But you might have a budget of, I don't know, a couple of billion. And you need to save as many lives as possible. And so, how do you make these trade-offs? You you've got to, you know, you for all that you might say all lives are equal, at some point you do have to put a price on a life. And look, and exactly as as I say that, everyone is kind of getting fidgety. And and you know what that fidgetiness is, that's your Christianity. Whether you go to church or not, that's your Christianity talking, okay? Because within Christianity, you've got a vertical dimension in which, in the eyes of God, you are worth more than a trillion dollars, right? But when there are scarce resources, you cannot expect the community to pay a trillion dollars for you. You you can't, okay. On that horizontal level, it's different to the vertical level. Now, here's one problem we've got. One problem we've got is that we have secularized the imagodei, the image of God. We've secularized it to the point where there is no vertical dimension anymore. Everything is now horizontal, and if we've all got the same rights, then everybody has the same right to that expensive hospital treatment. We don't have enough money for everyone to have that expensive hospital treatment. What should we do about rationing that expensive hospital treatment? Should we give the 90-year-old or the nine-year-old that expensive hospital treatment that will save their lives? What should we do? Um at this stage, Lord Sumption comes along and says, you know what to do, don't you? Don't don't let don't let this knee-jerk self-righteous, I believe all lives are equal. Don't, don't let that instinct blind you to the realities of what you need to do at the horizontal level. Because everyone needs to make those tough choices at the horizontal level. And health and safety is one example. Or think about think about like security issues. Think about um how much money should we spend to ensure that there is not another 9-11? Or how much money should we spend to ensure that there is not a terrorist on any of these flights? And that costs money to have armed um security people on like how many different flights are there? Like since 2001, how many, how many different um security personnel with who have been armed have been on planes to, you know, and that's costly, right? And and and the whole security um drama that you've got to go through when you get to the airports, that's costly. And you've got to weigh up. Okay, what are the risks of people dying and what are the costs of trying to prevent it? And at some stage, you've got to put a price on human life. You've got to. So it's in health and safety, it's in security issues, it's in road, road traffic issues, you know, like how many uh how many crashes are there every year? Of course there are crashes every year. We could save lives by shutting down every single motorway in the country. We could save lives by limiting the speed limit to 20 miles an hour. It would have massive impact, it would have a massive cost economically. How would we do transport from then on? How would we get around? It would be a massive imposition. It would lock us down, it would lock our cars down. Um, but it would save life. It would definitely save lives. And you say, well, that's ridiculous. It would only save, you know, who knows, a thousand lives a year. It would only save a thousand lives. Well, okay, so you've got a you've got a price. You've got a limit. Everybody's got a limit. At some stage, on the horizontal level, we've got to. Make these judgment calls. And then you say, Well, you're just sounding like a utilitarian. And I say, Well, what if I am sounding like a utilitarian? Is that a dirty word? You sound like a consequentialist, Glenn. Okay, let me let me take you through um these uh schools of um of moral philosophy. Okay, there tend to be three different ways of conceiving of a moral life. There's the deontological uh view of of ethics, there is the consequentialist view of ethics, the utilitarian view of ethics, and there is virtue ethics. And basically the the deontological view, um, most associated perhaps with Kant, um, is that there is a duty, okay? There is a will, deontology, because it comes from the word for will. There, there is a divine will, or at least a uh there if if even if it's secularized entirely, um, you would talk about this categorical imperative. You would talk about that there is an imperative written in there is a law, right? There is law that you must obey. And the good life is obeying that which ought to be obeyed. Okay? So there are standards, there is law. So that's what the deontologist is thinking in terms of. And then the consequentialist is thinking of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the greatest well-being of the greatest number. And you add up um, you know, what would the outcome be if we did this act versus the outcome if we did this act? If this leads to greater happiness than that, then that is the moral course of action. That's the utilitarian thing. And then virtue ethics is um asking the question: what sort of person ought I to be? Not so much what should I do, but who? Who is the sort of person I want to be and ought to be? And and really those are the three schools of moral philosophy, because um, in any moral act, you've got to have an agent who is aiming at a consequence and acts according to some kind of principle. Um, it is it is just inescapable that you would have these three schools of moral philosophy, because some will really focus on the moral agents, and those are the virtue ethicists, some will really focus on the laws up above, and those are the deontologists, and then some people are really gonna focus on the outcome. Okay, what's gonna guarantee the greatest happiness, greatest number? And those are the utilitarians. And when it comes to the horizontal level, I see no problem in being to some degree a utilitarian. If you've got a healthcare budget, and you cannot keep everybody alive alive all the time, and you cannot pay for every new cancer treatment because the praise God, there are more and more cancer treatments coming out all the time. But they're often very, very expensive, and you cannot pay for all of them. And so you have to, at that macro level, make all sorts of difficult decisions, and you have to you have to weigh things up, and you have to do what Lord Jonathan Sumption said is you have to calculate quality of life years ahead of somebody. So that it makes all the sense in the world, if there are life-saving operations that can be given to the nine-year-old and the 90-year-old, it makes all the sense in the world if you prioritize the nine-year-old. Okay, if you are if you are just an official within the National Health Service and you have to apportion the budget in one way or another, it's not personal. Okay, it's not it's not throwing the 90-year-old off a cliff. It is allocating the scarce resources that you have in a way that honors life. See, if that's what Lord Jonathan Sumton is talking about, then that's that is what is honoring life. Okay, that you want to spend your budget, you want to have your health and safety, you want to have your your security measures, you want to have your road traffic issues, you want to have um your healthcare budget spent according to maximizing life. Okay? So from that point of view, Jonathan Sumption is saying something that actually ought to maximize life. Okay, let's let that that's us steel manning him, but let's see where the conversation goes. So here on Good Morning Britain, um Lord Sumption was asked to clarify what he meant when on the big questions he said that not all lives are equally valuable. And this is what he said to clarify.
SPEAKER_01I was making a perfectly simple point, as the context quite clearly shows. Every policymaker has got to make difficult choices. Sometimes that involves putting a value on human life. It's a standard concept in health economics, quality-adjusted life years. That's what I was talking about. Policymakers have to do that, because otherwise they cannot weigh up the consequences of different policy choices. It doesn't mean that people are morally worth less, it doesn't mean that they're worth less in the eyes of God or in the eyes of their fellow citizens. But sometimes policymakers have to say some lives are worth uh less than others simply because you hear that, do you hear that?
SPEAKER_03Um he just made the most obvious statements, but then he married it to the language of some lives are worth more than others. And do you hear the yeah, so Christian, like it's so good. Are you a pagan? Are you wanting to throw 72-year-olds off cliffs and it's sort of rising up? And what what is the problem? The problem is he's saying, look, in the eyes of God, we're all equal. Okay, there is that vertical dimension, but can we get serious about the horizontal for a minute and can we stop pretending that we have infinite resources? Steel mad Lord Sumption. That's that's what he's kind of saying. But well, Piers Morgan is righteously indignant, and and you can understand why. I mean, Lord Sumption's language is it's it's as though he's forgotten the last 2,000 years, okay? It's he's it is pre-Christian language, and it and he shouldn't be talking in terms of lives being more valuable, okay, or humans being more valuable. Um we have now such an entrenched sense that all lives matter, right? We're back to this, we're back to the whole all lives matter debate. You thought 2020 was full of that. Well, 2021, here it comes. But we have this entrenched Christian sense that all lives matter, which Hitler transgressed in the Second World War, and then in him transgressing it, and the horror of concentration camps and the Holocaust is that he saw that there were some people who were worthless and and they could be cast off so that society as a whole can thrive. And we decided that Hitler is the embodiment of Satan. We decided that he was the embodiment of all that is antichrist, and he is now very obviously, you know, the devil. And and therefore, you know, I heard uh Alex um Alex Ryrie, um, who is a lecturer for Gresham College, and uh he says you can sort of tell the history of the West as um everything up until the 20th century, um, Jesus was our great model in ethics as the positive example. And then from the 20th century onwards, Hitler is our great model in ethics as the negative example. Okay. Um, and Tom Holland, the historian, will say, you know, the reason why we fought Hitler was for profoundly Christian reasons. And now, since um, since Hitler, we haven't really needed Christian concepts anymore because we've come up with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And that's a very secular document, isn't it? Uh, except it inspired Christian thoroughly through and through and used the personalism kind of um Catholic moral philosophy um as as its foundation. And what it did was point to Hitler and some point to the the horrors of the first half of the 20th century and say, um, that what what whatever is goodness, that's evil, right? And so everyone said, yeah, no, that's evil. And and that's why Lord Sumption he reminds me, he reminds me. Is he is he another Hitler? Is he is he another Hitler? Is this like like we're we're constantly scared that there are other Hitlers out there because that's that's the only kind of kind of evil that we're attuned to. And there are historical reasons for that. But you know, notice, notice the righteous indignation that we have um for Lord Sumption and him saying that you know lives are not equally valuable. But then watch, watch as Piers Morgans digs a pit and then falls into it.
SPEAKER_02Here's my problem with it putting a valuation on individual life, regardless of their age or condition or whatever. And I've heard this argument a lot a lot from the anti-lockdown uh brigade, is that they they they seem quite dismissive that older people, vulnerable people should all just be either you know put away or we should not overlook the fact they would have died anyway. Uh, let me give you a hypothetical, and I'd like you just to respond to this, um, given your eminent background. But let's take the example of a 98-year-old man who has a very bad fall and ends up in hospital with multiple fractures and is feeling so bad and feels like he's dying that he personally signs a do not resuscitate notice and puts it on his door. Now, would you say that that person in that circumstance has basically reached the end of his value in terms of his life?
SPEAKER_03He's laying the trap, he's laying the trap, he's digging the pit and he's wanting Lord Sumption to fall into it. Uh, but let's see who actually ends up falling in.
SPEAKER_01Listen, it depends what you mean by value. Uh, if you are making a policy choice, for example, in the National Health Service, suppose that resources are limited and you cannot uh devote resources to both that man uh and a 25-year-old who's come in in a serious road accident, then obviously you have to take account of the fact that the quality uh uh years ahead of the man of 25 are much greater.
SPEAKER_03Eminent lawyer, he didn't fall for the trap either. He did he did quite well to sidestep that. But if Lord Samson really believes that it depends what you mean by value, then it is really incumbent on him to distinguish these senses and not to constantly use this language of value as though people are of different human values. If he really thinks that it's important to figure out what I mean by value, well, can you please make it more distinct by actually maybe like not using the word value when what you really mean is this horizontal utilitarian calculation?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Let me just explain to you why I gave you that example in terms of the value of somebody's life. That that person I'm talking about, L Sumption, if I may, that person that you I was talking about was Captain Sir Tom Moore. Captain Sir Tom Moore was the man lying on a hospital bed, age 98, who had multiple fractures. He thinks he's got his man. Peters thinks he's got his man. Not want to be resuscitated and felt like his life was over. By your yardstick, his value was far less than that of somebody in their 20s. And yet I would say to you that the great value that we got out of Captain Sir Tom Moore came after that. When he What?
unknownWhat?
SPEAKER_03Okay, for those who don't know who Captain Tom Moore is an army veteran who raised 40 million pounds um during lockdown one. And he's an incredible inspirational kind of tale of someone who I think was 99 years old when he did that. Um okay, but but here's the trap. He's like, he's like when he was 98, it was the end of his rope and he didn't want to live anymore. But then, when he was 99, then he had value, right, Pierce? Right? Then he raised 40 million pounds, right? So Pierce is not making the arguments that it doesn't matter, like it doesn't matter how economically util you know useful you are in the economy. All he's not making an all lives matter case at all. He's like, some lives matter, and you don't know, so maybe keep the 98-year-old alive in case he becomes valuable. That that's Piers Morgan's argument. This is why I say that both Lord Sumption and Piers Morgan are essentially that they're actually on the same page. It's just Piers Morgan is just filled with an inappropriate um Christian self-confidence that is belied by pagan thinking. This and this is what always gets me about like the whole aren't old people great? Old people are great when they do what young people do. Like, like there's like it's it happens all over the media, like like on your Facebook feeds or on Good Morning Britain, um, they'll do these inspirational tales of what old people are capable of, right? And so you'll you'll you'll hear these stories, and peers will celebrate these stories about the 70-year-old who runs the marathon, or the you know, the uh 80-year-old who's you know involved in speed dating or something, and and she's just like and and the whole propaganda is aren't old people great, right? And the subtext is when they act like young people, right? And isn't Sir Tom great, you know, when he's able to do a whole bunch of stuff, you know. Piers' argument is not about the utility of all people. His argument is not about the equal dignity and value of all people at all. At all. He's just like, yeah, but some people could really surprise you. I know, I know they don't look very useful for 98 years of their life, but they might turn it around, okay? But he's still he's still using this this um very pagan standard.
SPEAKER_02And was one of the superstars of the entire pandemic. How can you possibly say that he at 98 has less value as a person, as a human being, given what we know he then did at 99? And that where does his value come from?
SPEAKER_03Right? Okay, you take a you take away the vertical dimension, you take away the image of God, where does his value come from? And Piers is like, it comes from, well, eventually getting his act together. Finally, finally. I mean, the guy's a war hero, but never mind. But when he was 99, um, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Piers, you're not listening to what I'm saying. I haven't said he has I have not said that he has less value as a person.
SPEAKER_02What I have said You literally said yesterday, sorry, to put sorry to pick you up on this, but I'm quoting your own words. You literally reiterated several times yesterday, I watched it. You reiterated that you believed older people have less value. That was your words, not mine. I'm not I'm not putting words in your mouth.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's true. He's not putting words in Lord Sumption's mouth, which and and he is meant to be a lot better at words and definitions and distinctions um than he has proved himself to be in these last couple of days. So um, you know, more for you, Lord Sumption, for not making your points clearer, um, and for handing to Piers this apparent high ground. Piers Morgan does not have the high ground, and we'll see. But you've handed him the apparent high ground, you've handed a lot of people the apparent high ground with some extremely infelicitous uh turns of phrase.
SPEAKER_01What you are doing is taking part of my words and throwing them back at me as if they were the whole. And that, as you know perfectly well, Piers, is a grossly unfair way of approaching a difficult issue. Now, I made my position perfectly clear if you look at the at the clip as a whole and at the debate as a whole. This is a tool for policymakers, it's not a way of valuing individuals like Captain Tom Moore.
SPEAKER_03I Right, right. There is there is a vertical value that is equal for all people, and there is a horizontal tool that you need when resources are scarce and you need to rationale. Um that's can we just say, isn't that obvious? Like and and maybe the the the nature of our discourse is such that we have to get someone quite curmudgeonly and belligerent, like Lord Sumption on, to represent that side of things because we won't listen to more reasoned voices, and then we have to have the peers morgans of this world to rise up in self-righteous indignation and slam them down. And and that's dumb. It's just dumb. Can't we all agree that on the vertical level before God we have an inherent dignity and value? And when it comes to difficult policy decisions about scarce resources, then you have to take particular factors in in mind. You have to, you just have to, right? That's what we've done with the vaccine. We haven't just randomly assigned 3.5 billion doses to random UK citizens. We've we've we've said that that particular life stations are important in those decisions. And if we can say that with that public health decision, then perhaps we can say that with other public health decisions. And it's an ongoing conversation, but quit the outrage, peers.
SPEAKER_01I quite agree with what you said about Captain Tom Moore. But one thing that policymakers can't do is say, well, we will look at the life history of every patient in hospital, and we will work out whether they have contributed more to society and so on. Policymakers can't operate like that. They have to operate on metrics, and they do all the time.
SPEAKER_02What caused offense? I'm sorry again to put your own words back at you, but what caused the offense was your use of the word value. Right. But somehow some people are just less valuable because they get older. And bear in mind, Lord Commissioner.
SPEAKER_00And you seem to imply in that television debate that that life was of less value. Did you mean to direct that to someone, the mother with young children? Um, because that's how it felt to those watching.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but that that was just the big questions setting him up. And and in in the same way, the guy from Cambridge there um was the setup for Lord Sumter this time. You you know, you have you have someone who um you know is at the at the rough end of these you know big decisions.
SPEAKER_01Uh listen, uh I was not intending to make any comment at all about Deborah James's personal position. I've made that perfectly clear to her since uh we have had a friendly exchange on the point, and I regard this matter as closed. I am not going to say any more on this subject. You invited me onto the program to comment on a poll. Uh if you wish to do that, I'm very happy to comment on it. If you don't wish to do it, then I'm off.
SPEAKER_02Okay, well, no, before you go off, let me just remind you, Lord Sumption, it is you that use the word value. It's not me, it's not the program. You yourself said that elderly people have less value. And I gave you an example of somebody whose real value to his country came in his 99th year.
SPEAKER_03His real value came in his 99th year. Forget him being a war hero. That was before ITV, and that was before television, and before Piers Morgan could use him as a prop for his own self-righteousness. But he proved his value in his 99th year. Okay, Piers is pagan. Gotta get back to Jesus, gotta get back to Jesus. Um, and and this is like I get this all the time, like standing up for the rights of the unborn and saying they too are members of the human family. And if we're not going to cast off the elderly, let's not cast off the very young either. And there are all sorts of debates that happen about selective abortion. And and people kind of say, um, oh, don't eliminate people according to various conditions like Down syndrome. Please don't do that. Because and but then then they say, Because did you know that those with Down syndrome report that they are 98% happy, which is a higher happiness rate than any other kind of human being on the planet? See, they therefore are valuable, right? Or or they say, you know, don't abort those with Down syndrome because look, look at what all that they can achieve. Don't abort those with Down syndrome because look, look, look how cute this person is, and that person is and that person is. Don't abort those with Down syndrome because look at look at the valuable contribution they can make, X, Y, and Z. No, no, no, no, don't kill them because they're us, and that's it. That's it. That's that's the Christian position. Don't kill them because they are us. Don't kill them because they are human. It's not don't kill them because actually they quite enjoy life. Well, what if they didn't? Don't kill them because they can be economically useful. Well, what if they weren't? Like they still just don't how I I I know a rule, just don't kill them. Right? And it's it's the same thing with Piers Morgan. He's just like how dare you, how dare you say that the elderly can be cast off? I can find an example of one who actually proved himself to be extremely economically useful to the culture. Uh give it a rest. Anyway, that's all I've got for you guys. Um uh it's possible to have two truths and not just one in mind, okay? It's possible to believe in the equal value of every human being when we are dealing with the with the vertical. And it is very possible for that principle to then inform horizontal policy decisions that we have to make about scarce resources. Um, but we don't forget about the particularity of different people and the particularity of subsections of the population when we're making those difficult utilitarian choices. And it's okay to make difficult utilitarian choices so long as the goal is to is to maximize life and to honor life. These are difficult things and uh they are not made better by um uh very poor word choices by Lord Sumption, and they are not made better by unjustified self-righteousness on the part of Piers Morgan. But um, there you go. That's all I got to say on this matter. Um, do hit the subscribe button and uh click that bell and uh stay tuned for all sorts of stuff that we have uh here at Speak Life. And uh there should be appearing now a video all about human rights, human equality, and humanism. I think that'll be a great follow-up to this video. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll catch you next time. Well, that'll do us on the Speak Life Podcast for this week. I hope you've enjoyed that episode. And if you have any questions or comments or feedback, please email us at infospeaklife.org.uk. We would love to interact with you and do join the lively conversation on Facebook. That is facebook.com slash speaklifeuk. That is our page name on Facebook, Speak Life UK. Give us a like and a follow, and we'd love to interact with you there. We really hope that you've been helped by our ministry at Speak Life. All that we do is supported by the generosity of listeners like you. So if you have been blessed by us, uh please, if you could financially support us, we would be absolutely thrilled. There are ways of doing that either as a one-off or on a monthly basis, just by heading over to speaklife.org.uk slash give. We are so grateful to those who have already given to our ministry and to those who pray for us. You can find out our prayer needs by signing up to our emails at speaklife.org.uk slash sign up. But as I say, if you're able to partner with us financially at whatever level, we would be so grateful. You can head over now to speaklife.org.uk slash give. Well, that'll do us for this episode. See you next time on the Speak Life Podcast.