Joel Kontinen
Animal rights seem to count more than human wrongs in a world where belief in molecules-to-man evolution has caused a devaluation of our place among all other living beings.
The rise of the culture of death, as seen in abortion and euthanasia, serves to diminish human worth.
At the very same time, activists want to free animals from “cruel psychological experiments,” which they see as demeaning as torture and child abuse.
Recently, Science reported on how the activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) had sent letters to people living near the homes of
“U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins and NIH researcher Stephen Suomi, revealing their home addresses and phone numbers and urging their neighbors to call and visit them. The tactic is the latest attempt by the animal rights group to shut down monkey behavioral experiments at Suomi’s Poolesville, Maryland, laboratory.”
An activist said that the bad treatment of monkeys was comparable to “having a sexual predator in your neighborhood.”
While we should certainly not mistreat animals, activists seem to think that animals (like a lion called Cecil) are more important than humans.
Many, for instance, Peter Singer, would want to re-define animals as persons.
However, in doing so, they diminish human worth. At least part of their struggle is against biblical ethics that start with the unique place we have in the created order.
Only humans were created in God’s image. Only humans can sin, and Christ died for humans, not animals, on the cross, redeeming us from sin.
Source:
Grimm, David. 2015. Animal rights group targets NIH director’s home. Science (18 November).
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