Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[BP]

The Spanish Parliament’s move to grant rights previously reserved for human beings to chimpanzees and other apes is a victory for those seeking to minimize the uniqueness of humanity, a bioethics specialist says.

An environmental committee in Spain’s legislature approved a resolution June 25 calling for the government to abide by the Great Apes Project, a 15-year-old campaign to grant the right to life, freedom and no torture to chimps, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos. The measure has the support of a majority of members of Parliament and is expected to become law, according to Reuters News Service.

The declaration, developed in 1993 by a group of primatologists, ethicists, and psychologists known as the Great Ape Project, demands “the extension of the community of equals to include all great apes.” According to the declaration, apes may not be killed except under “strictly defined circumstances,” such as self-defense. They may not be imprisoned without due legal process, and they may not be subjected to the “deliberate infliction of severe pain,” even if doing so is said to benefit others.

The Great Apes Project (GAP) is the brainchild of philosophers Peter Singer, a controversial ethics professor at Princeton University, and Paola Cavalieri, who founded it in 1993, Reuters reported.

GAP’s goal is not just to improve conditions for apes but “to demote human beings from the uniquely valuable species and into merely another animal in the forest,” Wesley Smith wrote on his weblog. Smith is a bioethicist, author and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.

“Once people accept that premise, Judeo/Christian philosophy goes to the guillotine allowing the utilitarian agenda to proceed unhindered, leading in turn to the moral value of the weak and vulnerable among us becoming archaic, resulting in their loss of the right to life and being used instrumentally for those deemed more valuable.

“In the world being born out of the ashes of the sanctity/equality of human life ethic, value will be subjective and rights temporary — depending on one’s individual capacities rather than humanity,” Smith wrote. “And we will see apes … being viewed as more important than some humans.”

Read more here.

[From the Bible]

Genesis 1:26

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

[From me]

I guess they waited for Charlton Heston to die before they tried this.  I’m not for any kind of torture.  But Animals are not equal with humans.  Did Apes create vaccines to cure diseases?  Can they participate in diplomacy?  Do they talk?  What’s next?  Roaches?  Ants?  Fleas?  When will it end?

What do you think?

[Appleton Post-Crescent]

Two goats sat in on a Lutheran service Sunday. Daisy and Duke, a family’s pet pygmy goats, joined congregants Sunday morning at Christus Church for a special service that looked more like a petting zoo than worship.

For the first time, the church invited anyone to bring four-legged creatures to its contemporary service, an event timed partly by the upcoming celebration of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals.

Read about it here?

[From me]

This is the next church growth program.  Everyone will be hiring people to start petting zoos at church.