Secularism and Aged Care

My buddy John Dickson writes a provocative piece in the SMH that an increasingly secular culture and an increasingly aged population are disastrous. It will lead to a decline in aged care for those with intensive needs like dementia because secularism has no capacity to assign value to the mentally ill. He writes:

Yale’s great philosopher-theologian Nicholas Wolterstorff goes further in his book Justice: Rights and Wrongs. He argues that a rational justification for treating humans as ”inestimably precious”, regardless of capacities, can only be found in a theistic framework. Only if the abandoned infant on the hills of ancient Rome or the estranged resident in a Sydney dementia unit is created in the image of God, can we secure an intellectual basis for treating both individuals with the same dignity we afford society’s most able.