The idea that human beings have intrinsic dignity by nature, though widely believed, is thought by some academics to be inconsistent with two dominant intellectual ideas embraced in the West: (1) Enlightement Liberalism and (2) Scientific Materialism. The former is, roughly, the view that a state that aspires to justice and fairness ought not to embrace one view of the human person as the correct view because to do so would be to violate the principles essential to liberal democracy. The second is, roughly, the view that science has shown that philosophies of the human person that affirm human dignity are not deliverances of the hard science and thus cannot be known, and therefore cannot serve as the basis on which a society may regulate research and practices of bioethical controversy, such as embryonic stem-cell research, physician-assisted suicide, abortion, or reproductive technologies. In this session I will focus my critique on a 2008 New Republic article, “The Stupidity of Dignity,” authored by Harvard University psychology professor Steven Pinker.