I recently saw a news story about the growing trend (especially in the south) of teaching creationism or, as some call it, creation "science," in the public schools as an alternative to, or even in place of, the principles of evolution. Creationism is the belief that the world was created in seven literal days as is stated in the book of Genesis. In recent years, a new movement called "creation science" has emerged which purports to use modern scientific methods to prove the case that the world was created in exactly the way the ancient writers of the Bible said it was in seven literal days, rather than evolving over billions of years as modern science teaches us. This is simply the latest development in a century long debate between evolutionists and creationists.
Most of us learned in school of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 when a 24-year-old school teacher, named John Scopes, was put on trial for teaching the theory of evolution to his students in Dayton, Tennessee. Scopes had violated a state law that prohibited the teaching of anything in the Tennessee Public schools that might appear to contradict the Bible.
On the surface, this creationist/evolutionist debate seems to be about the conflict many see between science and religion. And it is partly about that. But I see something else going on in this struggle as well. When I was in high school, our history club performed the play Inherit the Wind which is based upon the Scopes Monkey Trial. I vividly recall that the character of William Jennings Bryan, a fundamentalist and the chief lawyer for the prosecution, was appalled by the suggestion that he had descended from apes. "My ancestors didn't swing from the trees by their tails!" he cried in outrage, and this is what I believe is at the heart of this 100-year controversy.
Throughout the course of human history, we have felt a need to separate ourselves from others, to distinguish ourselves. But this separation isn't enough. We seem to need to be superior to others as if we are somehow threatened or diminished by embracing others as our kin. The entire story of humanity can be told as one long process of separation - tribes separating from tribes, Christians separating from Jews, nations splitting along religious and ethnic lines, families splitting over ideological differences. But always accompanying these separations is the idea that one group is superior to another and that we are fundamentally different from one another. Arising from this notion is the idea that it is OK to oppress the "other" because she isn't like us. She is somehow fundamentally different than we are and thus less human. Nazi Germany is the society that many feel best exemplifies this kind of separation and certainly Hitler employed this technique to inspire hatred against those he hated, but pre-civil war America was no better a place than Berlin in 1938.
In American churches and theological schools of the nineteenth century, people actually debated about whether or not those whom they had enslaved had souls. If we believe that a creature is soulless, it is OK to enslave and oppress it. For this creature isn't like us. This creature is incapable of feeling and understanding its situation in the way that we do. I've heard it said that many in the south believed that slaves didn't place the same value on their own lives that their white owners did. How convenient and self-serving such beliefs are for they allow the oppressor to continue his unjust behavior without any need to examine his arrested conscience.
What I see going on in the evolutionist/creationist debate is that the creationists aren't willing to see the common "creatureliness" that humans share with animals. In a process as old as humanity itself, creationists view our relationship to animals as an Us vs. Them situation. If they recognize the common roots that we share with animals, they also have to accept the possibility that animals have souls and rights. How complicated the world becomes if we are not the supreme species, the only ones born with the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness! - the solitary proprietors of planet Earth - the rightful owners of all the planet's resources. If the cow has a soul, is it still all right to eat her? Does the rabbit have a legitimate claim to my vegetable garden? Am I robbing the bees of the fruits of their labour if I take their honey? It is not hard to see why people have separated themselves from the rest of the animal kingdom - why we have told ourselves that animals are fundamentally different from us - that they don't think and feel as we do. If we didn't have these rationalizations, we wouldn't be able to exploit, use and disregard animals as we do any more than the slave owners could have justified their ownership of human beings, or Nazi soldiers could have accepted the hideous orders they followed.
It probably comes as no surprise to anyone that I am on the side of evolutionism in the long debate about the origin of our species. Besides the enormous amount of scientific evidence to support the theories that Darwin proposed in 1859, I see a lot of anecdotal evidence that I am related to the other species that share the earth with me. Our bodies are really more similar than different especially if you look at other mammals. When you consider the primates, the relationship is undeniable. They look very much like us and even have hands whose form and function are close to that of our own hands.
The other thing that we understand about animals is that their physical needs are exactly the same as ours. A goat requires food, water and even clothing (we call it wool). She needs to breathe the same air we do. And like us, she had a mother who protected and nursed her until she was old enough to make her own way in the world. If Ms. Goat is cut, she bleeds. If she is cold, she shivers. And if she is wounded, she feels physical pain.
No rational person would deny any of these facts. So, doesn't it follow that if Ms. Goat has essentially the same physical structure and needs that we do, that she would also share our emotional, spiritual and cognitive qualities as well? If she can feel physical pain, wouldn't she also be capable of feeling emotional pain if her kid were taken from her prematurely, or if she were confined to a small cage?
In a marvelous book, The Souls of Animals, Unitarian Universalist minister Gary Kowalski explores this issue in great depth. He says, "none of these emotional traits are unique to homo sapiens. We now know that animals also reason; they also create tools; they also use symbolic communication. Each time we claim some gift or faculty as peculiar to ourselves, we discover that other creatures share the same abilities."
Kowalski has written eloquently about the souls of animals and I share this passage with you:
"The living world is responsive and charged with feeling, which flows like a sympathetic current between all sentient beings. Other creatures can be astonishingly complex and subtle. Their emotional lives are nuanced with moods that range from grief and sadness to gaiety and glee. Their family structures and relationships can be as intricate and their bonds with one another as strong and tender as our own... (Animals) are not an entirely different order of creation, but like us have rich and spacious interiors. They contain their inner landscapes: desert places and lonely canyons, cliffs of madness and rivers of serene awareness that merge in tranquil seas. They share with us a heart, and mind and soul.Animals are not our property or chattel, therefore, but our peers and fellow travelers. Like us, they have their own likes and dislikes, fears and fixations. They have plans and purposes as important to them as our plans are to us. Animals not only have biologies, they have biographies. We can appreciate the lives of animals, but not appropriate them, for they have their own lives to lead.
We have been long accustomed to regard animals as things: objects, tools, commodities, or resources. Thus, we raise and slaughter them for food; we use their furs and hides for clothing and decoration; we dissect their bodies for research; we study their anatomy with detached interest. We regard other creatures as means to our own fulfillment, not as ends in themselves. One might say that we de-humanize animals, but this would not be accurate since animals aren't human. Rather, we 'de-sacralize' animals - rob them of their holy qualities - and in the process, de- humanize ourselves. For animals cannot be relegated to the status of objects. When we treat them as if they were mere biological machines - collections of conditioned reflexes - we injure both their nature and our own."
Unlike those in other faith groups, evil is sometimes an elusive concept for Unitarian Universalists. We have no Satan to blame. We are more likely to accept hurricanes and diseases as simply natural bi-products of the processes that brought us life in the first place rather than the actions of an angry or vengeful deity. But, if evil exists at all, I believe it is found in separation. It occurs in those moments when we place a higher value on ourselves than we do on those around us, when we deny others the same rights and privileges we expect and enjoy, when we decide unilaterally that the other does not feel and dream and ache and bleed as we do. It is this kind of separation that motivates a man to shoot children in a religious day care center simply because he believes that they are less human than he is. It is this kind of separation that allowed untold numbers of African people to be enslaved during the colonial era. And it is this kind of separation that leads to the clear-cutting of the rain forest without regard for the millions of species who live there. This kind of separation is the cause of infant seals being clubbed to death in the sight of their mothers because their fur will bring a good price. This separation is responsible for the horrible treatment of young calves simply to make them a delicacy in restaurants. This kind of separation causes enormous suffering all over the world for millions of animals. When speaking of the destruction of natural habitat that occurs due to de-forestation and other environmental degradation, Prof. Bob Moore of Chicago Theological Seminary often says, "if you could hear the cries of the other species on this planet, the noise would be so loud it would drive you insane." No group is more oppressed than the animals.
Perhaps some of you are a bit uncomfortable with my comparison of animals with oppressed human beings. It may not seem quite right to equate humans with animals. But this is exactly the dichotomy that allows us to cast other living beings in the category of "other." This is the process of separation and superiority that leads to the kind of oppression that an Auschwitz exemplifies. The politics of oppression are the same regardless of who the victims are. And while I would certainly save the life of a human child before that of a squirrel, if such a circumstance arose, this kind of human vs. animal situation rarely presents itself - at least not when the humans are on the losing end of the proposition. Most of the time, as a human, I have the choice not to eat meat, or not to destroy a bird's nest in the eaves of my house. And if any dichotomy exists at all between humans and animals, it carries additional responsibility for the wellbeing of others, human and non-human.
Unitarian Universalism has long recognized its responsibility to the other creatures who share the planet with us. The seventh principle of the Unitarian Universalist Association is that "we respect the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part." As positive as this is, the same dichotomy that we explored earlier is inherent in that we are separate, superior and more important than other species. Our first principle is that "we recognize the inherent worth and dignity of every human being ". What if it said instead, "we recognize the inherent worth and dignity of every living creature?" Would we be in any way diminished by this change?
What implications would such a change have upon our daily lives? What products would we have to live without? Could we still eat meat and dairy products? Could we wear leather shoes? Would we have to allow mice and ants to share our homes with us? Obviously, recognizing the inherent worth and dignity of animals would present us with some serious challenges. I stand before you today wearing leather shoes. I had milk in my tea this morning. This is a legitimate dilemma for me and I wish I could either provide a solution or tell you that I never use animal products and I never kill flies. I am making an honest attempt to bring my life into line with my belief in the inherent worth and dignity of animals. But I am not yet where I want to be.
I believe that the first stop is awareness. I invite you to spend the next few weeks paying closer attention to the way your life intersects with the lives of other animal species. At the risk of becoming repetitive, I will remind you of something I told you a few weeks ago that I think can help in this dilemma, and that is the example of Helen Nearing, author of the well-known book, Living The Good Life: How to live simply and sanely in a troubled world. In this book, Helen explores the dilemma that all life exists at the expense of another. But Helen, an ardent vegetarian, always in her words "apologized to the carrot before she ate it." She never took for granted the lives that were lost so that she could live. And this constant awareness on her part led her to ever decreasing dependence upon animal products. Perhaps increasing our own awareness of how we interact with animals is a good first step for all of us.
We have certainly not heard the last of the debate between the creationists and the evolutionists. Just this week, the state board of education in Kansas voted to remove all references to evolution from the state's science curriculum. This is a disturbing development on many levels. There will be much debate about the matter and no doubt the American Civil Liberties Union will get involved. But I'm afraid that all the discussion will be about the implications that this ruling has for the principle of separation of church and state. This is a very important issue. But just as important is the message that Kansas school children will get about their relationship to animals. Instead of learning about their common origins with other species, they will hear what it says in the Book of Genesis that man has dominion over all the other creatures of the earth. This kind of thinking completely ignores the inherent worth and dignity of animals.
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