Is Life Sacred? Sanctity of Life Arguments by Dr Yaser Mirdamadi

This presentation outlines the religious, specifically the Muslim, background of the sanctity of life argument (SLA) in bioethics and its recent secular versions. It suggests a path towards the future of SLA by taking into account a widely neglected theological position in bioethics in general and specifically in SLA: negative theology. It further probes whether SLA is fundamentally a cataphatic (positive) theological position or whether an apophatic (negative) version of SLA is also possible.