I really dislike people. It annoys me when people treat animals like disposables. They seem to think that animals are mere annoyances to be tolerated or disposed of if the whim strikes. It doesn't matter to them that animals have feelings and experience love. People seem to think that humans are somehow superior to all other life forms and that these "others" are worthless or at least negligible. Usually they will use one of two arguments to justify their position. One is that we are superior because we are made in the image of God unlike all other beings. The other is that we are at the top of the food chain. Well, it's bullshit.
Let's take the first argument. So we're made in the image of God. How does that make us a complete image? How can we say that no other beings are made in the image of God only from a different part of God's essence? We imagine what God is like by constructing God from ourselves. We construct our understanding of God from our understanding of ourselves. But are we a complete image of God or a partial image? Are we an image of one aspect of God or the entire aspect of God? We get some ideas from the bible, but no where in the bible does it say that we are the complete image, and that other beings are not an image. It doesn't say that other parts of creation are the simple creative constructions and not images of other parts of God's essence. And why is humanity the pinnacle of God's creation? Aren't a lot of lessons we humans are supposed to learn all about humility and acknowledging that we aren't superior? And so why is it so fundamentally impossible for us to be equal to all living beings in the eyes of our Creator? And how can anyone look into the eyes of a gorilla infant and not see the same spark of life that one sees in the eyes of a human infant? Can we really say that such a spark is less miraculous than the human miracle? And if you see the joy in the eyes of a dog when it gets snuggled and played with, is it any less felt than that of a child at play? Ridiculous. God is Love. Animals experience love just as we humans do. So how can we deny the spark of God in animals?
Now the second argument. So we're at the top of the food chain, right? So why are we felled by the smallest of creatures, the virus? If we are at the top, if we disregard the rest of the chain, we'll destroy the pedestal on which we stand. And then we are destroyed. So who's on top? The top of the chain is only on top as long as the rest of the chain remains in tact.
The moment we devalue life in any form we devalue human life. That should scare the human egotists. If you can care for an animal and not give it its full value, then you lack the capacity to give people their full value.
About Me
- Shelley
- I'm a grad student in Astrophysics. I said I would never EVER do nuclear anything, but guess what I'm doing. That's right. Nuclear Astrophysics. I have three sweet but spunky children. I am married to a wonderful man who is as weird as I am, and who thinks my love of football is sexy, especially when I'm screaming profanity at the tv. Knitting gloriously takes up all of my free time (what little there is), and I am in serious need of an intervention on my yarn buying. How much yarn is too much yarn? There's no such thing as too much yarn, Silly!
7 comments:
We have been over the whole "What does in the image and likeness of God mean?" argument before. In addition, that distinction and the argument that Humans are superior does not mean that people who abuse animals are acting well. If someone abuses a living thing (that is, uses it not as intended) and then defends that action by saying that humans are surperior he is making a very poor argument.
Forget my previous two comments. I now understand the angle that you are taking with this blog post. You should be more clear, though. You are not arguing against the original ideas of "image and likeness of God" and the "food chain," but rather that using those ideas to defend mistreatment of animals is a faulty argument.
Yes, you are correct in what I was saying. I thought I was clear. But as the blog name implies, these are my ramblings, and while an accurate account of my thoughts, they may not be fully polished in execution. Well, at least not up to your philosophic debate-type standards.
Just to play devil's advocate, then why aren't you a vegetarian?
Good question. I've tried it, but I can't seem to stay healthy on a vegetarian diet, even when I get enough non-meat protein and take full spectrum supplements. And as long as the animals are raised and killed humanely, I don't have any moral qualms about it. In the wild, animals can die horrible deaths for the sake of being food for other animals. As the most intellectually advanced animal on the planet, I don't see why we can't keep and raise animals for food sources without being cruel about it. So I do buy meat, but I try to buy only from those who are known to care for the animals humanely.
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