Are Humans More Important than Animals? Speciesism and the Gospel

Stephen C

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One of the most counter-intuitive and abhorrent, yet strangely logically airtight arguments in modern-day ethics is Peter Singer’s argument for why, if we are okay with killing and experimenting with animals, we should then be okay with experimenting on mentally handicapped humans and killing babies.

Of course killing and experimenting on infants and the disabled are absolute atrocities and I reject them out of hand, as I do their analog to slaughtering cattle, but his fleshed out argument is actually pretty solid if you accept the premises. 

  1. We don’t consider it any less atrocious to torture a dumber human being than a smarter one. What makes it atrocious is that we are applying pain to a conscious being that can feel it. 
  2. The thing that separates us from animals is our intelligence. 

Conclusion: It is no more unethical to torture or kill a human being than an animal. 

Some people might be tempted to agree offhand, fair enough, but to be clear that would require you biting the bullet of very literally equating, say, animal farms to Auschwitz (and there are some people that do indeed do that).

Some try to point to self-awareness as being the defining characteristic that makes hurting humans worse, but in response Singer points out that newborns and some cognitively disabled adults are not self-aware, so if we are okay, say, testing makeup safety by smearing it on the eyeballs of chimps we should be okay doing so with newborns and cognitively disabled humans. His arguments (which he fully develops in book-length works), basically forces us into a corner where we have to engage in “special pleading” to make the case that humans are special without recourse to some objective standard for why we are. 

And from a secular perspective I think he’s basically right. From a Judeo-Christian perspective we can always pull out an appeal to the Bible that humans are explicitly given dominion over all the other animals, and there’s something to that even if that’s not enough substance to quite get us there. However, Latter-day Saint theology has a more interwoven deus ex machina that gets us out of that corner–humans are special because we are God-creatures. In a way that is more literal and concrete than it is in other Judeo-Christian traditions, God is a literal Homo sapiens. That is not to say that other animals have their own versions of exaltation, and I think the speculative theology in that direction has something to it, but we are the only ones that are the children of Gods and can ourselves become Gods. We are, in fact, fundamentally superior, even though some chimps are smarter than some humans. And ultimately that is what justifies our own speciesism.

Comments

8 responses to “Are Humans More Important than Animals? Speciesism and the Gospel”

  1. Lily

    I know I am probably alone on this, but I do believe they are as important as we are. They have eternal spirits, just like we do and will have their own form of “eternal life”. If you’ve ever spent 10 minutes with an animal you know they are capable of great love and affection as well as sorrow. Even if you don’t think they are of the same value as humans, if God is just, we will have to answer for any mistreatment of them. Its actually the perfect test of your character: how do you treat this living thing that you have complete power over?

  2. Stephen C

    “Even if you don’t think they are of the same value as humans, if God is just, we will have to answer for any mistreatment of them. Its actually the perfect test of your character: how do you treat this living thing that you have complete power over?”
    I 100% agree with this.

  3. DaveW

    One difference between newborns and cognitively disabled humans is that newborns clearly have the capacity to become intelligent adults, whereas most cognitively disabled people do not have reasonable prospects at improvement. This could change in the future; the idea of dementia or Alzheimer’s becoming reversible is not far-fetched.

    As for mistreatment of animals, do we include them all equally? I have a bird poop problem at my house right now, and I’m spending money on efforts to just get the birds to hang out somewhere else. But when I found two dozen ants in my kitchen last week I pulled out some chemicals to kill them (and anyone who comes looking for them). I also have some animals in my house that I feed every day and keep as pets that are probably dumber than birds, but smarter than ants. (Maybe?)

    Most people are a bit all over the map on treatment of animals. I’m certainly no exception. In my home we often relocate spiders outside rather than killing them, but we also do that in the dead of winter knowing that they’re probably unlikely to survive being suddenly flung out into the freezing cold. Flies get swatted, mosquitos get squashed, cats get petted, chickens get eaten.

  4. Mark Ashurst-McGee

    For a lot of Christian folks (and possibly Jewish people?), it would not just be that God gave us dominion over other life forms but more importantly that we were created in the image of God. That sets us apart as much or more than dominion. And then of course Joseph Smith takes that to the stars (and back down to earth).

  5. Stephen C.

    @DaveW: Channeling Singer here, he argues against the idea that a newborn’s potential for consciousness should matter using the same argument you sometimes see pro-choices use, which is that there are a lot of stages of potential from the gametes up to the fetus, but it isn’t until we have the actual life birth or consciousness that it matters.

    Yes, I don’t have a fully fleshed out schema of animal treatment in my own life, and I readily admit that if I stopped and thought about the morality of factory farming I probably wouldn’t eat meat, so I just don’t think about it. I have a vague sense that insects feel less pain than “charismatic megafauna,” but I don’t know how scientifically valid that is. If insects do, say, feel the same amount of conscious pain as a chimp then I just don’t see how we can survive with all of our creature comforts while taking all of that into account. Of course some religions certainly try, and in a sense I have a certain measure of respect for devout Jains, for example, who cover their water in a cloth while they drink it so that they don’t harm any insects, although I could never go that far.

    Mark Ashurst-McGee: Good point, us being in the image of God is also a grand distinguisher, and in a way our own theology of apotheosis is that taken to the nth degree.

  6. jader3rd

    The spirits which inhabit homo-sapien bodies are children of God. The spirits which inhabit the bodies of other creatures are creations of God. That’s the difference.

  7. LHL

    What a truly rediculous thing to debate. Many, many people are struggling to make it each day, raise and protect their families as best they can; and ultimately put some kind of “food on the table”.

    This is the height of arrogance and hubris to think this is one of the most important things to contemplate. Talk about a 1st World Problem.

    Author pulls his reading glasses down onto the bridge of his nose…..huffs and puffs a bit….and then declares: “Well, I never!….”

  8. Britain Morris

    My take on the “these I will make my leaders” comment from the Lord in the Book of Abraham is that these he will make his children. All the other “non-noble and great intelligence” refers to animals etc.

    This point of view liberates us from ever considering any human as inherently lesser, or doomed to not have a chance at exaltation.

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