The human relationship to animals. [View All]

[Philostopher]

Just read an interesting Op-Ed piece by a bioethicist author named Peter Singer in the Oct/Nov '04 issue of Free Inquiry (it's the official publication of the Secular Humanism Organization). It's not online at their web site, so I'll throw in a few relevant paragraphs shortly -- the gist of the piece is that Mr. Singer believes many humanists, for all they don't believe in a higher power or use the bible as any kind of guiding text, still buy into the Christian belief that man has dominion over -- and commensurately less responsibility to -- less intellectually complex beings (i.e., animals) because ... well, just because, apparently, in our case. The bible gives believers in it an out on this -- the world is theirs to care for or destroy, if they want to believe that it is, because the bible kind of says so in a lot of ways.

I know not all Christians buy into the Paulist attitude about animals. I never did, when I was, and many in my family didn't either, at least to the point of their treatment of the domestic animals in their homes.

Some subset of Christians believe this because it's in the bible; his question is why non-Christians believe roughly the same thing, or at least behave roughly the same way, when nothing directs or guides those who don't believe in the bible to believe or act this way.

Quotes from article (Taking Humanism Beyond Speciesism):

During nearly two millenia of European history in which Christian dogmas could not be questioned, many prejudices put down deep roots. Humanists are, rightly, critical of Christians who have not freed themselves of these prejudices -- for example, against the equality of women, or against nonreproductive sex. It is curious, therefore, that despite many individual exceptions, humanists have on the whole been unable to free themselves from one of the most central of these Christian dogmas: the prejudice of speciesism.

--snip--

{...} According to the dominant Western tradition, the natural world exists for the benefit of human beings. God gave human beings dominion over the natural world, and God does not care how we treat it. Human beings are the only morally important members of this world. Nature itself is of no intrinsic value, and the destruction of plants and animals cannot be sinful, unless it leads us to harm human beings.

--snip--

{...} as humanists, we should scorn a religion that honors a man like Paul, who -- along with his prejudices against women and homoesxuals -- could ask "Doth God care for oxen?" as if it were obvious that the answer must be negative. Paul's question led Christians to disregard those passages in the Hebrew scriptures that did suggest some compassion for animals. {this view dominated thinking} right up to the middle of the nineteenth century, when Pope Pius IX refused to allow a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to be established in Rome on the grounds that to permit it would imply the false belief that humans have duties toward animals.

--end of snippage--

Now, I'm not looking to start a battle over anything, here -- not between vegetarians/vegans and omnivores, nor between Christians who don't buy into the dominionism Singer mentions and humanists/atheists/agnostics here. I'm really more curious about the personal attitudes and experiences of my fellow non-believers here and how they came to hold them.

Personally, I agree with much of what Singer said in the article -- I see no compelling reason, as a non-believer, to assume the general intellectual superiority of the human being gives me an excuse, as an individual, to abuse animals. Among other things, practical experience over the course of my life has taught me that hitting a cat is as likely to result in its shitting on your pillow as behaving itself the way you want it to. A frightened dog, even though it will probably mind you in the particular instance for which you hit it, will exhibit other neurotic behaviors if it's disciplined with pain rather than reward. Even if I could make no moral/ethical case for treating animals well, in other words, I could certainly make a strong case for finding alternative methods for disciplining (or not) the domestic companions who share our homes purely on the rational basis that abusing them doesn't result in their behaving better.

The issue of food animals is more complex. The way corporate/factory meat producers treat animals is wrong, I don't think I'll find much argument here. Personally, we've stopped buying meat we can't source -- the problem is, the FDA has perverted the rules for labeling things 'organic' or 'cruelty-free' to the point that label really means squat when you purchase a package of meat at the store. This happened because the corporate farms were, of course, afraid it would hurt their bottom lines. They want to be able to abuse animals because it's cheaper than to treat them well, and they don't want those who take the time and expense to treat their food animals well before they become food to have a market advantage. So they buy politicians who water down the labeling laws, and everything goes back to the way it was.

I know that simply not buying and eating meat is one alternative, but that's not likely to happen here. Even if the humans in the household stopped, I have four cats and a dog here who require a certain amount of protein in their diets, and the healthiest way to provide it for them is to provide it in some form or other through using meat, whether it's through a diet I provide for them or through prepackaged animal food. We don't eat as much of it as we used to, around here, and we never waste food if we can help it. It seems like the least we can do, if we're not going to forego it entirely.

Having been a Christian at one time, I recall what the bible said about the (superior) relationship of humans to animals -- I disagreed with it then, largely, because it didn't make sense to me to think that way, and I guess I always had a more Buddhist or Taoist attitude about most things even when I thought I was Christian. I couldn't believe humans were going to get a pass for mistreating animals, no matter what the bible said about it. The massive suffering imposed on fellow mammals who can think, who feel pain and respond to it in various ways, and the thought that it's 'our right to cause them suffering because God says so' was objectionable to me, to say the least. I know I'm not alone in this -- many Christians don't accept this 'dirty little secret' of Paulists and others, that we can destroy everything because 'God said so.'

So, I guess I'm just asking -- where do you stand on this, and why? Have you ever really thought about it? What do you do to reduce the impact of suffering on the four-leggers? Is doing a little enough -- like volunteering at an animal shelter, rescuing animals from the street, refusing to eat meat or being careful where your meat is sourced, just generally being a good custodian of the environment? I know there are many organizations that lobby for things like greenspace and wetlands preservation -- are any of them really effective, or are we fighting a losing battle against greed on these issues?

Just curious, I guess -- does the general superiority of human intelligence give us the right to be callous about 'lower' animals, or should we really be more conscious of our behavior and do what we can (especially since we have no religious text telling us the earth we inhabit is ours to turn into a midden heap)? And how much is enough to do?