Today is the birthday of Jeremy Bentham, rich, eccentric, English philosopher and founder of the philosophical ideas called utilitarianism. He was fond of the phrase “the greatest good fro the greatest number,” postulating that all human choices were based on self-interestand so all morality should be formulated to yield the greatest pleasure and the least pain to the most people possible. In answer to this philosophy, Christianity says that it’s not all about maximizing happiness and minimizing pain; rather, it’s about glorifying God as his creation and about joy– a very different thing from superficial happiness. God is not in the business of applying some mathematical formula to produce the greatest good for the greatest number. He relates to people as individuals to recreate in each of his children the life of His Son. Sometimes this sanctification involves suffering. I would rather suffer here momentarily in order to attain eternal joy than have all the happiness this life has to offer. Peter Singer, the infamous professor of bioethics at Princeton University, believes in what he calls “preference utilitarianism.” This philosophy leads him to write that “in my view the secret killing of a normal happy infant by parents unwilling to be burdened with its upbringing would be no greater a moral wrong than that done by parents who abstain from conceiving a child for the same reasons.. Since he goes on to say that he doesn’t really believe that abortion is wrong since a fetus can have no “preference” for or against life, he is really saying that abortion and infanticide are morally equivalent and that neither is wrong. I can agree that the two acts are morally equivalent, but the idea that either is morally justifiable is in direct contradiction to all the Bible teaches.
However, getting back to Mr. Bentham, he was a rather interesting character. According to this website,
“Bentham was the quintessential English eccentric. He was particularly fond of inventing new words with tangled Greek and Latin roots rather than just using their humble English equivalents. Some of his lexical constructions have caught on, e.g. “international”, “maximize” and “codification”. Others, like “post-prandial vibrations” (after-dinner walks) remained confined to Mr. Jeremy’s circle. ”
Bentham also left instructions that his body was to be enbalmed after his death and placed on display in a glass case in the hallway of University College London, a college he founded. His body is still there today and is wheeled in to preside over meetings of the college’s administrators.
Cute, isn’t he?