Animal Rights
...no good either. I just have a hard time believing that animals and humans share the same inherent value. I believe that people have souls and free wills and that is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Even the least conscious and most mentally disabled person has a soul that is separate from his brain and his emotions. I suppose to go along with that reasoning one must believe that man was created in God’s image and that there is even a God for that matter. And that man was created to commune with God and to enjoy the goodness created before him. God didn’t create nonhuman animals to commune or with a soul. There are others, mind you that do not agree with me even in the least. Peter Singer for one says that many of us are living examples of speciesism just as the Ku Klux Klan’s members are racists. That we pre judge animals based on the fact that they are animals, just like they prejudged blacks based on their skin color and so on. Peter Singer charges that we as humans must consider the interests of nonhuman animals, just as we would humans, and do so equally. Well, why would one do this and what does it really mean? The why is the possibility of experiencing pain. Animals feel pain and feeling pain is the grounds for ones interest to be considered. In general one should not cause another pain if it can be avoided. “Having pain brought upon one, or having one’s pain not addressed by the other is a moral call upon us”, claims Singer. Thus to be a “speciesist” is to consider the interests of one’s own species as more important than the interest of another species merely on the grounds of membership in the species. Singer is not saying that all interests are identical. However, in relation to the question of suffering pain, he holds that the pain of an animal is just as important as the pain of a human. Suppose there is only room for one being to enter a shelter built to protect from a storm. There are ten candidates. Obviously, nine will have to be eliminated. Say one is a cow. Can the cow automatically be eliminated if the others are humans? Singer says no. That would be a violation of his principle of equality. Obviously, the nine left out of the shelter would suffer and perhaps die. And according to Singer the cow has as much right to the space in the shelter as you or I, because we are all to be treated equally. My question is who will let the cow out when the storm is over. Obviously, not one whose place he took. So...