By Walker Larson, Intellectual Takeout

Yuval Noah Harari, apparently quoting himself, recently wrote this horrifying Tweet:

From a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behavior, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition.

On its face, this comment is so brazenly idiotic that it’s easy to dismiss it. But because of the danger it presents, we shouldn’t. Ideas have real-world results, especially when those ideas come from a man who is advisor to the powerful Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Harari’s confused notions don’t just float around in cyberspace—they can become policies of potent organizations like the WEF.

In addition, we shouldn’t ignore the horror of Harari’s thought because it represents the logical conclusion of a long tradition of mechanism, with roots in the Scientific Revolution, now embraced by much of the modern world.

An easy test will show the falsehood of Harari’s statement. We can simplify his argument to this: If something can be done, it is natural; whatever is natural shouldn’t be prohibited; therefore, anything that can be done should not be prohibited. To disprove the claim, all we have to do is imagine an extreme situation where this principle is applied.

For example, suppose a newspaper delivery man decided that instead of delivering people the news, he would kill them (he wanted to get on the front page of the paper he delivered, maybe). That’s possible. According to Harari, it is therefore natural and shouldn’t be prohibited. This is obviously not true—common sense shows us that, and virtually all of humanity would agree that killing everyone on your paper route should be prohibited, so Harari’s statement fails this simple test.

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