Creation and animal rights

Is there any such thing as animal rights? What are they, and what are they not? To try and answer these questions I'll comment on the following article.

The Aftereffects of Evolutionism - Dominique Tassot (Online at CSSHSQJ)

Quotes and comments;

1. 'On October 30, 1991 the Environment Commission of the European Parliament adopted a resolution presented by Mr. F Amendola, Italian "ecologist" delegate, on the "universal rights of the animals."

- Animals can't have rights, they can only be given rights. What rights animals have are those given to them by God, and delineated for us in the Bible. The only 'rights' animals have is to be treated as the Law of God requires. (see note 1.) Biblical doctrine teaches that all things in the world belong to God; this then is the foundation of any Christian view of animals.
- what we see here is the imposition of 'Buddhist' (Jainist) or pantheistic ideas on the peoples of Europe. (Not all of whom accept these 'Eastern' ideas.) Apparently the only separation of 'state' and 'religion' that humanists care about is a separation from Christianity.

2. 'It is thus the most profound and the most vital concept of Christianity which a Commission of the European Parliament has agreed to reject. The listing of motives shows this well; it would be ridiculous if it were not staggering. Read only the following:
"The animal is born, it learns, it is curious, runs, eats, keeps up relations with its kind, mates ... It is neither better nor worse than we, only different.''

- Gee; I wonder if all that's a fact? You know, like evolution is a fact. I wonder if this is as true as it is that the earth orbits the sun :=)
- We see here the vacuity of Humanism; with our friend flapping his gums as stupidly as a flag flopping in the wind. (And making as much sense.) When man rejects his creator he becomes an idiot. You'll notice that there's no reference to morality in this little scenario. But then the idea animals somehow have universal rights is utterly dependent on the morality the author here ignores. So man must be moral, while animals are not; but wait, I thought they weren't better or worse. So then is being moral no better than being immoral, or amoral? That seems the obvious implication.

- the author is making a moral judgment when he says animals aren't better or worse. What then is the basis of his moral world view? How does he know his moral vision to be true? Does it reflect anything in the real world, or merely some subjective feelings he has?

- we might ask him how he knows universal laws are valid? Where does he get this idea of universality from? Universal rights imply universal duties. Universal rights imply universal law. So where does this universal law come from? And how does he know? (These are just a few of the tough questions we could ask him.)

- Man is merely different he says. (How's that for being scientific :=) If being different is no impediment to equal rights we might have to grant them to computers. While it's true they're different (and not very good to run) they do think, or some say they do; they solve problems, they have energy requirements, etc.

3. " ... suffering, joy, love, self-awareness, altruism, the sense of communication, the capacity for analysis and for problem solving or cultural heredity are not the exclusive attribute of the human species, since in certain particular cases some of these characteristics are even more present in individuals belonging to other species. These prerogatives suffice to grant the individual which has them (the animal) ... the right to have its own requirements taken into consideration on an equal level [with man]... Civilization cannot flourish unless it is closely linked with the abolition of discrimination. The dynamics which has permitted to overcome antinomies like lord-slave, aristocrat-plebeian, black-white, man-woman, healthy-handicapped, heterosexual-homosexual, has opened up, historically speaking, fundamental advances in terms of the quality of life. The recognition of rights of individuals not belonging to the human species represents a logical consequence of this tendency."

- if you ever wanted to know how idiotic man can become when he rejects his Creator you now know. Unbelievable. (I wonder if he really believes this or is just playing the crowd.) But we might ask if a creature can have a right it can't understand? And how would we know the answer to this question?

4. "some of these characteristics are even more present in individuals belonging to other species."

- Really? Too bad he didn't tell us exactly what this mythical creature is. It would have been nice to know. But I guess one of the perks of working for the State is immunity from having to back up one's statements.

- well if animals are equal with men, this clown should give up his role in government and send his cat in to do his job. (It could no doubt prowl about legislative corridors as well as he could... and might even be as talented as doing nothing and wasting time as any other gov. bureaucrat :=)

5. "The recognition of rights of individuals not belonging to the human species represents a logical consequence of this tendency.'' (i.e. this tendency toward total democracy.)

- well I guess that's true. One major problem with Humanism is that it never knows when to stop, or where to set a limit or boundary. Having rejected the god given moral law, it has no sense of right and wrong. It goes in one direction until it crashes... then goes back in the other direction until it crashes. Having rejected God it has no standard of truth. Since it doesn't know what truth is it just drifts back and worth with the winds of fad.
- of course all this talk of democracy is as phony as paper money and brass rings. To have complete democracy you'd need to get rid of government, and I don't see this life time politicians having any interest in doing themselves out of a job :=) Instead, the power of the pols gets stronger and stronger... no equality there.

- when these clowns say men and animals should be equal, they mean the average man should be treated like an animal, no better than an animal. They're in no way referring to themselves. They for sure don't imagine they (the political elite) should have the same rights as animals. So this is all a ruse; merely one more way to degrade man, to steal his dignity, to so demoralize him he can used like a tool, a mere barnyard resource.... so demoralized he won't fight back.

6. "Civilization cannot flourish unless it is closely linked with the abolition of discrimination.''

- how's that for some nice horse manure. (Not that I don't think horse manure isn't equal to any other kind of manure :=) Our secular pols are of course very big on discrimination. They discriminate endlessly (and viciously) against Christians. They endless attack property rights, and those who would defend them. They discriminate against creationists. They discriminate against private business. They discriminate in favor of the state. They discriminate against anyone who opposes them in any way. They discriminate in favor of atheism and evolution. (One could go on and on.) It's of course utter nonsense to say any society can be without discrimination. These are merely words meant to deceive the naive, and to excuse the guilty. (To legislate is to discriminate. No society can exist unless it discriminates. Our pols are unique I suppose in maintaining this pretense of neutrality.)

7. 'Now when we look for the intellectual error which underlies this manner of pretending to equality between man and the animals, we see it appear clearly in the theory of evolution. If man descends from the ape, there is nothing in man which is not also found, at least in embryonic fashion, in animals.'

- far too many Christians still imagine that the c/e debate is merely some abstract question about origins. They don't seem to have a clue how this subject affects every aspect of their lives. This poor deluded man is merely being more consistent in his thinking than most evolutionary proponents. But even he of course can't live consistently in terms of his stated world view. He'd have to be a vegetarian for one thing. But on his own world view, there is no basis for saying animals are better than plants, or even that man is better than a plant. Evolution is an acid that digests morality. The evolutionist can only be a hypocrite when he speaks of morality. If he really thought he was a mere animal he wouldn't be a politician would he? No, he'd have to disband all government and live like the animals do. (And maybe this explains the origin of some of the so called primitive jungle tribes. Maybe their original members were evolutionists who decided to live out their world view in a consistent manner, and so went back to the land as it were.)

- I notice that animals don't grant each other equal rights :=) But I guess that doesn't matter. You can blame a lot of the current silliness about animals on the fact so few people nowdays (living in concrete bunkers called cities) have any real contact with animals. (Knowing a pet is like having negative knowledge of animals.) When the average person lived on a family farm, they didn't have these 'exalted' ideas about animals.
- of course the modern nonsense about animals goes far deeper than merely talking about giving them rights. (Should they get pensions I wonder? jobs with the government? free medical care :=) These kinds of things have (till now) merely been harmless play acting for the most part. What has been pernicious has been the attempts by e. professors to draw lesson on how to live from animal behavior. (I read an article once about some poor woman who had studied lemurs and imagined human beings could learn how to construct better marriage arrangements from imitating this little fur ball. One is staggered by the stupidity of such things. One might as well try to draw moral lessons from shapes in the clouds.)

Notes;
1. I'm not exactly sure how many laws in the Bible relate to animals. They include; the right of a work animal to feed, rest, safety from mutilation, shelter? there's a law against unequal yoking, there's a law or two about bird nests, but not much more that I can recall. It's more a case of man having duties, rather than animals having rights. (Since man is a steward over God's creation, he is responsible to God for how he treats animals.)
2. To do this topic more justice we'd have to look at what is an animal? and what is a right? (Orthodox Christianity states that rights come only from God. i.e. a man cannot have a right that God doesn't give him. I assume the same rule would apply to animals.)
- I would want to say that only persons can have rights, and that animals are not persons.
3. Editor's Note: Translated and reprinted with permission from Science et Foi, No. 24, 2nd Quarter 1992, published by CESHE (Cerde Scientifique et Historique), F-02800 Vendeuji, France.
4. I could have easily chosen a similar story of more recent vintage; but I've been reading through all the issues of CSSHSQJ and happened across this article.
5. 'Genesis shows us certain kinds distinguished by God from the beginning for being associated with man; on the sixth day, "God made the wild animals according to their kind, the domestic animals according to their kind, and all the animals that move along the ground according to their kind. And God saw that it was good" (Gen. 1:25).
- the bit about domestic animals struck me as odd; I looked and don't see this in any translation I can easily find. I see translations that say cattle or even livestock, but not domestic animals. (The word for 'cattle' can be translated as domestic animals; but the context here would seem to preclude it in this case.)