Animal rights and human exceptionalism: The divine dimension

Yesterday's post was kept to a strictly natural level, without regard to the dimension of man's relationship with God and the fact that the natural world and all it contains were created by God.

If animals have rights, it would only be because God endowed them with rights. The deer or cow or whatever, as such, does not appear to be a subject of rights. If God has conferred rights upon them, those rights would not be natural rights, but conferred. In contrast, man has been created to be a subject of natural rights. While I cannot necessarily point to any biological structure where rights reside, man's natural and normal ability to ponder and discuss rights, duties, ethics, justice, and so on, proves that to be human is to be a subject of rights.

A brief aside: It is not this ability that causes humans to have rights, no more than the light that fire emits causes it to be bright, because one could say it is because fire is by nature bright that causes it to emit light. Emitted light and brightness are simply different ways of looking at the same thing. The brightness of the fire proves that it emits light, just as our ability to discuss and act regarding rights proves we have rights. Therefore, if individual human beings lack this ability due to immaturity, disease, sleep, or some such thing, the disability is unnatural. In comparison, if animals lack of this ability because of the kind of thing they are, the inability is natural. It is not an unnatural "dis-ability" but a natural "in-ability." Earthworms are not blind (which implies the lack of a normal power); they simply cannot see. Given time to grow up or an effective medical treatment, a disabled human would (re)gain the natural human ability being discussed. Therefore, it is a fallacy to say that since some individual humans lack cognitive ability and yet are subjects of rights, other animals that lack that ability also have rights.

Now, if God has conferred rights upon animals, this would be an important thing for humans to consider and act on. However, there is no way for humans to know if God has done this or not through simple observation of the animals. There is no evidence in the behavior of animals that they are subjects of rights. They see, they smell, they feel, but rights are totally beyond their experience. The only way for us humans to know God has endowed animals with rights is if He reveals this fact to us. Such revelation is lacking, however.

It cannot be that animals have rights because God made animals. God also made rocks and the hydrogen that thinly permeates the far reaches of space. If all things have rights by virtue of having been made by God, then it cannot be that all things have equal rights. If a stone had equal rights to the rain, the rain would commit an injustice by wearing it down over time, or by penetrating its cracks and freezing in the winter to split it. Animals would commit an injustice to plants by eating them. Therefore, those things that are superior kinds of beings have greater rights than the inferior. So, living things have superior rights to non-living things, animals to plants, higher animals to lower (such as reptiles to insects, mammals to reptiles, dogs to rabbits). It stands to reason if we rank all created things in such a hierarchy, that one kind of thing rather than a group of different things would have superior rights over all. Since rights in this scheme come from having been made by God, it would stand to reason that the thing with the greatest rights would be the thing that God has made to be most like Himself. Since only humans have the capacity to even ponder this idea and to create, God being omniscient and omnipotent, humans clearly are the most God-like of known life forms. The rights of humans therefore supersede any rights animals might have by virtue of being made by God.

However, the fact that they are made by God does indicate that they belong to God in some way. As such, all of creation right down to the grains of sand on the seashore, should be respected by humans, and looked upon with awe and wonder. Two things need to be said about this. One is this: If we speak informally to say that rocks and trees and animals "deserve" respect, we speak only analogously. It is God Who deserves the respect we should extend to creation, and creation "deserves" it only by virtue of creation belonging to God, and our use of the word more indicates our duty, something in us, than something in creation. The other thing is this: Respect does not mean everything is sacrosanct and untouchable and unusable. If you borrow a book from me and respect the book the way it "deserves" (=the way you ought) because it is mine, that does not mean you do not read it. It means that when you do read it, you handle it carefully.

So, I do advocate the humane treatment of animals but do not advocate the notion that all human use of animals is inherently inhumane. Animals can be kept as pets, or raised to give eggs, milk, fur, leather, and meat, or hunted for food or to protect crops and livestock and people with no injustice done. It is not these things that are intrinsically unjust or disrespectful. It is how humans go about doing those sorts of things that determines whether or not it is disrespectful. Stewardship of God's creation precludes both abuse and neglect. Stewardship means using what God has made, but with respect for the fact that God made it.

And again, if animals have any rights at all, this notion of "rights" is only analogous. It speaks to our duty and points beyond the animals to God as the object of our duty and respect, rather than speaking to something in deer and rats as such that demands justice. It is an informal and colloquial way of speaking and not scientific or expository in a formal sense.

Animal rights and human exceptionalism

Over at Secondhand Smoke, a little discussion is going onconcerning animal rights and human exceptionalism. One of my first posts on my own blog was about human exceptionalism. I wish to God those who deny human exceptionalism would explain how it is that we’re not exceptional. But that's beside the point.

The question I wish to focus on now is animal rights, beginning with the nature of rights as inherent in the one who has rights as opposed to conferred by an outside agent. If all rights are conferred, then none are natural and all are subject to the power of the one conferring. If animals have rights by conferral, then it can only be we humans who confer them, and then there is no argument: If we don’t give them rights, they don’t have any.

We might want to consider here the difference between civil and natural rights. We have the natural right to self-defense, for instance, which is prior to and above every civil law and constitution. Any law or government that denies this right is unjust. We have the civil right to vote, which is conferred. We can argue by natural rights the granting of civil rights, as happened for voting rights for non-whites and for women, as a matter of justice, a justice prior to and above the law that demands the law be changed. The restriction of voting to white males denies the intrinsic equality of natural rights of all human beings and is not based on any legitimate qualification such as age, and so is unjust. The equality of civil rights is based on a higher equality of natural rights.

Now either animals have natural rights or they don’t. But if they don’t maybe we should grant them some civil rights. But if we do, it’s because of who and what WE are: We would (in this line of reasoning) be more and more perfectly human—and therefore all the more exceptional, by the way—if we did grant rights to animals. Failure to do so makes us less human. I’m not taking sides on this issue, but the reason for animal rights would be it is something WE should do, and not because animals deserve it.

But animal rights advocates say that animals have rights that our actions toward them violate. This means they believe animals have natural rights. Our laws and practices are unjust because they deny the rights of sentient beings, it is said. If this line of argumentation is valid, then animals have natural rights that inhere in them by virtue of what they are, sentient beings.

I believe, though, that the idea that animals are subjects of rights, such that justice demands humans to respect, leads to logical inconsistencies—contradictions and absurdities—that suggest the idea to be false.

First of all, if it is true that rights inhere in animals, then those rights can be recognized only by beings with the cognitive ability to understand what a right is, what kind of things have them, and what their own duty is to those with rights. That is, their rights depend upon the existence of human beings in order for them to be of any practical value. Rights cannot inhere in a thing if the value of that right depends on the existence of some other thing. In other words, we have the right to self-defense, even when we are alone. But animals would have rights only in the presence of a thing that understands the meaning rights. In the wild, with no such being around, these rights are meaningless. If a thing naturally cannot understand itself or anything else as having rights, if it naturally cannot exercise its rights responsibly while respecting the rights of others, it would suggest that it does not have rights to begin with. When animals begin asking for their rights, then I would say it’s high time to recognize them.

But let's ignore that, and consider the right to live, the very basic right that demands that humans ought not eat, wear, or hunt other animals. We’ll use hunting to stand for all of the sorts of “injustice” humans tend to do to animals. A human in theory violates a deer's rights by hunting it. A wolf does, too, because if deer have a right not to be hunted and killed, then it is universal and extends to all things that might hunt it. Humans, for instance, have the universal right to self-defense, not just the right to defend oneself against attacks by tall people, or by people of a certain race, or by humans and not animals.

So deer have a right not to be hunted by wolves. On the other hand, a wolf also cannot know what a right is or the things that have rights. Plus, the wolf’s own right to live as a carnivorous predator endows it with the right to hunt deer and other things. It nonetheless violates its prey’s right to live by killing it, even if it does not understand its acts as such. If a deer has a right not to be hunted, then the wolf commits an injustice by hunting it. But it would be unjust to deprive the wolf of its right to hunt. Since rights cannot be opposed like that—no one can have the right to self defense if someone else has the right to kill anyone he pleases—either the deer or the wolf or both of them do not have the natural right to act according to its ways. It is impossible that all animals have rights.

But let’s ignore that. Humans, unlike the wolf and the deer, and despite not being exceptional, see that the deer has inherent rights, and have the power to respect and protect those rights. Humans could and ostensibly should safeguard the deer and uphold its rights by protecting it from the wolf, just as some humans would do with respect to their fellow humans by outlawing hunting. Otherwise, we let the deer’s rights be violated by the wolf. But if we stop the wolf, we would violate the wolf's right to hunt. Since the notion of animal rights puts us into an irreconcilable conundrum, it would seem that those rights do not exist. Otherwise, if it is not unjust to the deer to permit wolves to hunt them, why is it unjust to the deer for humans to hunt them?

But let’s ignore that. Let’s just stay out of the natural food chain and let it be. But if we do that, the wolf appears to have superior rights than humans, since it can kill a deer by right but a human cannot. Yet, all animals should have equal rights, and humans, if anything, should not have inferior rights. Therefore, the wolf does not have a right to hunt although it is in its nature to be predator, nor does the deer have the right not to be hunted since we have no duty or even the right to protect it from the wolf.

But let’s ignore that. The wolf and deer both have rights, but the wolf has greater rights than the deer, since its right to hunt deer trumps the deer's right not to be hunted. This is clear from the fact that the wolf commits no crime or injustice against the deer by hunting it. Therefore, if the deer and the human have rights at all, those rights are inferior to the wolf’s. The basis of superiority of the wolf’s rights over the deer’s is the distinction between predator and prey. But humans evolved (if you ascribe to that sort of thing) as omnivorous predators, just as chimps and baboons also hunt. Therefore, humans ought to have a predator’s rights like those of the wolf. The notion of equal rights would demand it. Therefore, deer cannot have a natural right not to be hunted since it would apply only to non-predators, which is absurd.

But let’s ignore that. If humans, as evolved moral beings, ought not to eat meat, how can this be based on the right of a prey animal not to be hunted? To be a predator is non-moral for the wolf; therefore, it cannot be argued that it is immoral for a human, and if it is, then it is by virtue of what a human is and not by virtue of some imagined right of prey animals not to be prey only for humans. “Hunting is unbecoming a civilized, moral being” is a very different argument than “Animals have a right not to be hunted by humans.” Therefore, animals do not have rights.

If that is so, then using animals is not intrinsically wrong as the argument from rights suggests. Therefore, using animals becomes wrong only under certain conditions. Therefore, if using animals is always wrong, it is only because those conditions happen to be always present. The only conditions that could possibly render using animals wrong are two: The universal availability of equally good alternatives, and the impossibility that using animals be humane. But those conditions are not universal. Indeed many non-animal alternatives, as good as some may be, are not equally good by any rational assessment that considers all the factors. (Eating, for instance, is not only about nutrition: Two equally nutritious meals may be unequal in myriad respects. Tofu. Beef. You decide.) It has been suggested that all use of animals is intrinsically inhumane. That cannot be true.  If we care for our livestock well, they will have better (even if shorter) lives than left on their own. They will be better fed, protected from predators and diseases—safer, healthier, happier—while they live. I admit, the profit motive makes it tempting to treat animals badly, and that is wrong. But it’s the ill treatment only and not the ultimate use of the animals that is wrong.

But let’s ignore that. If animals have rights, then we have rights like they do. A bear is territorial. So are humans. If a bear comes into my territory, it violates my rights, just as I do if I enter its territory. Just as the bear has rights to defend its territory, often violently, and it has a right not to listen to reason and apologies, so do I have a right to defend my territory from the bear. Why should a bear have the right to free run of my property if I do not have the right to free run of its territory? Aren’t humans mere animals?

But let’s ignore that. Because of animal rights, humans have a duty to overcome their enjoyment of meat, appreciation of leather and fur, defense of themselves and their property and their families, their so-called right to clear land and grow crops and have them pollinated, their so-called right to have families and build homes. We rightly get upset when a human shoots a bear for coming into his yard and threatening his children. That family shouldn’t live in bear country and if they do then the children shouldn’t play outside. Nor can we keep the rabbits and deer and squirrels out of our vegetable gardens and farms, which we’ll depend all the more on if we don’t eat meat. Since our right to self-defense does not extend to predators preying on our very selves, how on earth can it extend to herbivores eating our mere plants? It cannot. We cannot even keep a dog to scare other animals away, unless the dog can thrive on soy burgers since we cannot provide it with meat. The funny thing is, the dog would not violate anything’s rights in itself, even if it killed a trespassing rabbit. But acting on a human’s behalf, it would. We would not be able to sic even a vegan dog on a deer or a bear if the dog was our weapon.

So, if the animal rights folks are right, that means, ultimately, that humans have to wipe themselves out. Here’s how it will happen. At first, our farms that grow our vegetables will have to be increased for two reasons. One is, more people will be eating only vegetables, so we’ll need bigger farms. The other is that since we cannot control animals that feast on our crops, we’ll need farms big enough to support them and us. But that will cause such animals to proliferate and to not seek food in the wild. We will not survive. Ultimately, we need to disappear. It’s the only way.

Either that, or animals don’t have rights.

But let’s ignore that.

On Power Outages and Bioethics

It's been almost a month since we lost power for nearly a week after that intense October snowstorm. My wife pointed out that nature is awesome and man's amazing technological prowess is so fragile in comparison. She really kept her chin up.

I wish I had her outlook on things. I was annoyed at several things. I actually was coming home with one of my kids that afternoon and couldn't get closer than a mile or two from home before I had to give up and park the car on a side street. My wife came in the other car, which has all wheel drive, to pick us up. We got a ticket for leaving the car parked on a street during a snowfall. (We're going to fight it.) I was also annoyed at the power company for its fragile system, so easily and so massively taken down. I was annoyed on that Monday, Halloween, because the trains weren't running and I lost out on a whole day of work. I'm working freelance now, so I didn't get paid.

The power company said it would be several days before power was restored, so I went out and bought a modest generator. So not only did I not get paid, I spent like $700 to keep my house and my family from freezing. The darn generator could not be hooked up to our furnace, though, so we bought a couple of space heaters that use so much wattage that the generator couldn't run more than two (and then not at their full power), along with the refrigerator. Our water is also on a well, which has an electric pump, which also could not be connected to the generator. (We'll get an electrician when the budget allows to set up a circuit to run the furnace and the water for the next time.) Luckily, I had the kids fill the bathtub ahead of the storm and I filled a half dozen empty milk jugs so we could at least flush the toilets. Cooking was interesting.

I was annoyed at all of that. But we made do. After a few days, it was beginning to get old. I replenished the tub with snow (and leaves and grass mixed in) and we refilled the jugs at my in-laws' house. Several times.

Well. It finally dawned on me. As much as we need electricity -- we humans are probably too dependent upon it, actually -- it's not by "power" that we live. Not that kind of power. We live by divine power.

And there's the bioethical connection. At least sort of. This blog, and my approach to bioethics is founded on the fact (disputed by some, but a fact nonetheless) that man is God's image. Bioethics, in order to be authentically ordered to man's true good, has to account for this fact. And the fact that man's true good is not bodily, but spiritual. As my kids began picking up on my annoyance and got annoyed themselves, I realized I couldn't persist like that. And so, finally, I was annoyed at being annoyed and losing sight.

We live by God's power. Not by electricity. Not by electro-dependent technology. We do not define ourselves. We make electricity, and nature can take it away in a heartbeat. There is a movement called trans- and post-humanism that envisions man remaking himself technologically, things like man-machine hybrids (sort of like Darth Vader and the Borg). Geesh. What would happen to such creatures when the power goes out? You want power? You want to live for ever? Then draw close to Power Itself, Life Itself. No technology of man's, now or ever in the future, will enable a person to do that.

The funny thing is, despite not having electricity for nearly a week, our electric bill for the month including that week was higher than last month. How is that possible, when we were off the grid for so long? That's a question for the power company to answer.

Well, things are back to normal for a few weeks now.

Back to forgetting, some of us, where the real power comes from.

Lesbian Parents Prove That Boys Need Fathers?

The conventional wisdom is that homosexual parents are able to parent as well as a married heterosexual couple. Yes, it's possible, I suppose.

Then take this case of two lesbians raising a boy. The kid turns out to be diagnosed with sexual identity disorder. Could be a coincidence. Could be that the boy would have ended up the same even if he were placed in a home with a mother and a father. It's something to think about and discuss. This is not a question about the women's lifestyle or their rights or anything like that. It's about what is in the best interest of the child.

I did write a lot about it and posted it. But I think I can take a more charitable approach to the topic than that post achieved. I have therefore taken it down and will revise it. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts on the matter, please let me know.

Stem Cell Awareness Day - Feast of St. Faustina

Today is apparently National Stem Cell Awareness Day. It is also the feast day of one of our newer saints, St. Maria Faustina, who promoted the devotion to the Divine Mercy.

If one is to be aware of stem cells, the single most important thing to be aware of is the difference between adult and embryonic stem cells. If you look at the website of the Stem Cell Awareness Day organizers, you would be hard pressed to find this distinction. They talk a lot about the value of stem cell research and all the wonder potential treatments that stem cells may one day offer. If you want to find out about this all important distinction, you have to go to the parent site of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine.

Embryonic stem cells are the early cells of human development, those that are formed in the first few days after fertilization. They have the power to become all of the kinds of cells in the body. We are not told however that obtaining the cells means destroying the embryo. We are not told that no proven treatments using embryonic cells have been developed. We are just left to believe that embryos are simply one source of stem cells.

Another thing we are not told is that when embryonic stem cells are used for treatments of particular diseases -- say, embryonic stem cells are implanted into the brain to treat a degenerative disease such as Parkinson's -- that many do go on to become brain cells, but that many more tend to develop into the 200 or so types of cells in the body: bone, hair, teeth, skin, muscle, you name it. That is called a teratoma, and is the result of the embryonic stem cells' inclination to develop into a whole body.

That information is also hard to find on the CIRM website, at least not in a context friendly to lay users.

Adult stem cells, on the other hand, have been used to treat dozens of diseases already. Bone marrow transplants are a commonly used procedure. Adult stem cells can be modified to act like embryonic stem cells. And their use does not result in teratomas.

So, it also happens to be the feast of St. Faustina. From St. Faustina we have the devotion known as the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and an extensive diary delineating in some detail her personal encounters with Jesus and his desire that people cultivate a devotion to the mercy of God that is evident in his Passion.

The use of embryonic stem cells is always portrayed as necessary if we are to be merciful to the people who suffer from diseases that such cells may one day perhaps possibly maybe be able to treat. Yet evidence of their potential is only in theory with little actual data suggesting any value whatsoever or even that it is possible to go from theory to practice. Meanwhile, amazing leaps and bounds and proven therapies have already been accomplished with adult stem cells.

And we have to ask, how merciful is embryonic stem cell research to the embryos?

The best supporters of embryonic stem cell research can do is say that they doubt the embryo is a human person. All the data suggest otherwise, even if they are right in saying it does not add up to proof. You try to reason with them, and they just say, "I reject your reasoning." Should a hunter shoot at something moving in the bushes if his friend says it might be a person? No. Should a demolition expert about to blow up a building carry out his task if someone says, Wait, I think a person is in there? No. Yet, supporters of embryonic stem cell research simply say that these analogies do not apply, and that ends the discussion. "I disagree -- and that gives me the right to conduct embryo destructive research."

I really do not believe it is about mercy to suffering sick people. There is something else. Perhaps research grants. The bit about finding treatments for diseases is mere lip service to the reset of us.

St. Faustina, pray for us.

Euthanasia and Suicide Now an Amusement Attraction

This sort of proves we're not on a slippery slope at all, but a well-defined and well-charted route toward barbarism masquerading as civility.

This guy got a PhD is amusement park technology ("gravitational aesthetics") and then went on to develop a suicide roller coaster. Yep. A roller coaster so intense, the g-forces deprive the rider's brain of oxygen and kill him. So, instead of hustling ol' granny to Oregon or Switzerland, you just load her in the seat. At the top of the first hill -- 1600 feet high -- she must press the Fall (and die) button. If not, one presumes that she can back slowly down the hill. If the precarious height of the hill doesn't scare her to death, that is.

He obviously thinks that he's doing the world a service. Inventing new and fun ways of killing people. Frankly, one could seriously call his invention a torture device. It's all over in less than a minute after the fall starts, about 3 minutes altogether. Still, to sit there and get pleasure out of dreaming up new and exciting ways of killing people is just plain bizarre.

Really, what separates him from a homicidal maniac? I'll tell you: The selection of victims. He has picked a group of people that ostensibly wants to die, and has gotten his jollies figuring out ways to kill them. He makes it socially acceptable by giving them a safeguard, but that's just lip service to keep people like me from calling him what he is.

Actually, he's onto something that could also solve the moral issues around the death penalty. We should pair up other homicidal maniacs with the suicidal and/or terminally ill. That way, the killer could get his thrills while doing a great service for someone suffering, and his inclination to criminal activity could be channeled into something legal, in high demand, but not very attractive to most people. That way, there would be no need for the death penalty, because all the "victims" would be willing and so not really victims of murder.

The suicide/euthanasia/murder coaster is not built, and I pray to God that it never sees any light beyond this fellow's warped mind.

(Hat-tip to my daughter who pointed this out to me!)

Oh the Irony: "Father" of the Pill

The BBC has a rather strange interview with Carl Djerassi, one of the researchers who developed the first oral contraceptive that quickly became known as the Pill.

The odd reasoning he employes to tout the superiority of IVF aside, I think it's funny that the BBC called him the "father" of the Pill. The Father of Fatherhood Prevention. Man. Gotta love that tongue-in-cheek British cheek.

(The terminology actually appears not in the page with the article and the video of the interview, but on a banner ad elsewhere on their website promoting the interview.)

As to the interview itself, he supports IVF over natural conceptions because every child conceived by IVF is "wanted" compared with only about 75% of those conceived naturally.

He is not thinking about all those children slated for "selective reduction" - which is to say abortion - in the case of twins, triplets, or more developing as a consequence of IVF.

Nor is he thinking about all those surplus embryos stuck in a frozen limbo because no one wants them.

And "IVF" properly refers to the fertilization in the lab, the union of sperm and ovum in the petri dish; we use it to include implantation of embryos and the whole thing soup to nuts. But such in vitro fertilization is also used to create embryos for research. I suppose they're wanted in some way... but still, it is not that they are wanted as children.

And all you pro-choicers out there: Djerassi talks about "children" and not about anything pre-human.