From the Spring 1981 edition of
The Vegan:
By now it would be plain to many sensitive people that few in our
religious and scientific establishments have faced up coherently to the
problem of animal pain. And few of them realise that it is shameful on
the part of those who aspire to lead us. What they have been able to
offer consists of incoherent platitudes with a few notable exceptions. A
few sample instances will enable us to see how things stand.
Last year a few hundred whales were trapped by fishermen off the
coast of Japan and were intended for slaughter on the grounds that they
compete with them for fish stocks. Several wildlife organisations
pleaded for their release for reasons including that they, the whales,
had brains resembling in development those of human beings. An American
cut some nets and freed some whales and was in turn charged in a
Japanese court of law. An Australian scientist appeared before the court
and stated that the whales had a highly sophisticated nervous system and
hence should be treated in the manner of human beings. An indignant
Japanese judge replied that he should first go back to his country and
stop the slaughter of cattle.
A theologian talking about Zen Buddhism in Oxford was asked by a lady
in the audience whether Christianity had anything to say regarding the
eating of flesh. The theologian was taken aback. After some hesitation
he referred to St. Peter's dream in the Acts of the Apostles (which was
intended to convey something very different).
A scientist from Temple University came on Radio 4's "Science Now"
programme to put forward a theory that human affections are determined
by the presence of morphine-like substances in the brain. The
experiments which suggested this to him involved the creation of
distress by separating baby animals from their mothers and reuniting
them. If animals are so like human beings to provide information about
humans, to say that they do not possess similar rights becomes very
tenuous.
Recently a Spaniard arrived at Fishguard by ferry from Ireland with a
van containing foxhounds. Some of the dogs had died through neglect. The
English, ever willing to shed moral indignation on a foreigner, had a
special magistrate's court convened to try the Spaniard for cruelty. It
hasn't occurred to anyone to have similar proceedings to try those who
do worse things in laboratories and get knighthoods and peerages for
them.
Anyone regularly attending an Anglican church would have noticed at
services of Thanksgiving for God's provision, all references are to "ploughing
the fields" or to the "fruits of the earth". No allusion is made to the
fruits of the slaughterhouse. Perhaps they really know what to hide from
God.
The foregoing gives us a picture of the prevailing confusion. Anyone
who wants his moral and intellectual integrity taken seriously must face
up to this. The question when does someone have rights elicits a Babel
of answers from the possession of an immortal soul (which for some
reason animals cannot have) to the size and complexity of the brain or
nervous system. And most often an arbitrary answer depending on the
purpose at hand. Without going into the problems these various answers
arouse, it could be seen that they leave the basis of human dignity and
human rights on a very shaky foundation.
I believe that Christianity has the answer - which has become
obscured through Christian practice. An individual possesses value not
for what it is but only because God loves it despite what it is -
despite its fallen state. Because the Church did not stand up to the
full consequences of this message, a group of Humanists, about 200 years
ago, attempted to take the message of Christianity out of the Church and
secularise it. It is hardly surprising that many of them, including
Voltaire, Bentham and Paine, though principally social philosophers, had
much to say, and passionately, about animal rights. We know that this
secularisation has failed. One must hope that it will once more become
fashionable to seek answers to the questions of Being in a religious
context and that this time we will be honest about it.
Reproduced with Thanks to The Vegan Society http://www.vegansociety.com/.
