What defines human dignity?  

“My understanding of human dignity, as a Christian is, human dignity is grounded in our being made in the image and likeness of God.”

“Because we’ve been made in His image and likeness, and every human being has been made in His image and likeness, there are certain moral obligations or ethical obligations I have to others.”

Moral philosophy professor and bioethics expert Dr. Ben Mitchell highlights the importance of a right understanding of human dignity.  and reviews the moral compass in today’s culture.

“Human dignity has been the ground that we typically have appealed to for any notion of human rights, for instance; the right to privacy, the right to make decisions for oneself or self-determination, the right not to be discriminated against.

“Racism is a violation of human rights, and a violation of the notion of human dignity and you can just go down the line.”

Dr. Mitchell explains a shift in how our culture as it relates to and defines human dignity.

“What I think is instructive and in some ways very frightening to me is that the very notion of human dignity is now under assault.”

“For instance, the philosopher Ruth Macklin, who is at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine wrote in a British medical journal just a few years ago that, ‘Dignity is a useless concept.’”

He shares another example from Steven Pinker, a famous neuropsychologist at Harvard University.

“Steven Pinker, during the previous president’s administration said, ‘The problem is that dignity is a squishy subjective notion, hardly up to the heavy weight moral demands assigned to it,’ which is another way of saying that the notion of human dignity is something which is so difficult to define. In Pinker’s view that makes it meaningless.”

Dr. Mitchell shares his personal opinion on this viewpoint,

“It is a profound statement to say that something which is has found its way into nearly every statement of human rights and human protection, including; the universal declaration of human rights in 1948, that notion of human dignity as an inherent human value, is now under assault in our culture.”

“It’s just another example of the fact that our moral compass is off course. We no longer can agree on even the most basic, ethical principles.”

Highlight: Human dignity

Bioethics and the church