4-19-89 Wednesday. There was an abortion debate this evening, so I stayed at school to watch it rather than go home after my office hours. (I hold office hours from three until six o’clock every Wednesday and Friday and from four until five o’clock every Monday.) The participants were Manny Davenport, a professor of philosophy whom I know and like, and a professor of engineering about whom I know nothing. Manny took the pro-choice position, while the other man took the so-called pro-life position. I hate to say it, but the debate was awful. Manny, for example, claimed that the lives of women are more valuable than the lives of fetuses, which prompted his opponent to raise the specter of Nazism. The other professor brought plastic models of fetuses with him and spent several minutes describing fetal development. Nobody asked about the relevance of this factual information to the legal and moral issues of abortion, and no explanation was given. The professor obviously assumed that if fetuses are like adults in many or most factual respects, they have the same moral and legal rights as adults. That’s precisely what the pro-choicers deny. What troubles me most about the debate, however, is that so many students saw these professors as towers of intellect. In fact, both came across as idiots (sorry, Manny) and both gave their respective movements bad names. By the way, at one point Manny pointed at me in the audience and asked a legal question about Roe v. Wade. “That’s my friend, who happens to be a lawyer”, he said. So I ended up getting involved, though not by choice.
There was a fascinating program on television this evening. Stephen Hawking, who holds the Isaac Newton chair in physics at Cambridge University, has published a book entitled A Brief History of Time. It has captured the imagination of the reading public, since Hawking is considered by his peers to be one of the foremost theoretical physicists of our time. He is currently at work trying to formulate a unified field theory (whatever that is). What astounds people, including me, is that Hawking cannot talk. His body is wracked by a disease that leaves him weak and helpless. He spends his life in a wheelchair, communicating by means of an electronic voice synthesizer and hand movements. Having a routine conversation is extremely tiring for him. But on the program, he answered a reporter’s questions, showing patience, wit, and grace. One question was whether he believed in God. After a pregnant pause during which most viewers, I’m sure, leaned forward, he said “No”. While he believes that the universe is orderly, in the sense that phenomena are governed by natural laws, he does not believe that anyone created it, much less that the creator is good and all-powerful, as theists maintain. This was bound to upset and disappoint the theists of the world, which pleases me to no end. Here is one of the smartest, most thoughtful, and most concerned scientists of our age denying that there is a god. I loved it. [His opinion is no more valuable than anyone else’s.]
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 
