C. Ben Mitchell used to head the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity and is now a professor in moral philosophy at Union University in Tennessee. He has a book review, reprinted in the current Center for Bioethics in the Culture newsletter. I am excerpting parts of it because he really understands where I am coming from. From the review:
Why has the animal rights movement gained so much momentum in the United States and Europe? Largely because of the erosion of the West’s belief in “intrinsic human dignity”, says Smith. Where humans are devalued, animals are supervalued. Where human dignity is affirmed, it is typically seen as a quality to be respected rather than merely ascribed
Precisely, and that misanthropic trend is now extending to nature, as we have discussed here often. Mitchell continues:
In his New Republic essay, “The Stupidity of Human Dignity,” atheist scientist Stephen Pinker argued that appeals to human dignity are really a way to sneak in religious values. [I dealt with Pinker’s ridiculous essay here.] So I say, let’s not sneak anything in, let’s be quite honest about it. At the end of the day, human dignity is grounded in the Judeo-Christian affirmation that every human being is made in the image of God, the imago Dei. One doesn’t have to be a Jew or a Christian to believe that that’s the case, but we should be honest that the notion owes its origins to the revelation of God, not to the canons of science.
And what has that legacy bequeathed to us? It would take more space than we have here even to begin to outline that inheritance, but suffice it to say that belief in human exceptionalism has been the bedrock of human medicine, democracy, international human rights, religious liberty, the rise of hospitals, abolition, civil rights, and a host of institutions we take as evidence of a civilized society.
I think that is true, but I strongly disagree that one must be religious to accept human exceptionalism, a point I emphasize in A Rat is a Pig, etc.. Indeed, the rational arguments in its favor of HE are overwhelming and robust. Moreover, I think people like Pinker and his brother in atheist proselytizing Richard Dawkins—who embraces the Great Ape Project explicitly to prove to us that we are not exceptional—are ideologically driven and founded on little more than a bitter desire to dismantle Judeo/Christian moral philosophy as the fundamental value system of the West in general, and the Christian faith, in specific.
This blog isn’t concerned with the latter issue, but cares very much about the consequences of abandoning HE—for reasons that Mitchell clearly explains:
The alternative of a society devoid of the concept of human exceptionalism is too ghastly to imagine. It would not be a world in which the lion and lamb would rest together and the human and the kudzu would co-exist. It would be a world like that of Hobbe’s Leviathan, red in tooth and claw. For while humans may contemplate animals rights, animals do not consider human rights in the least. Which world is more conducive to human flourishing? The one where human exceptionalism is protected or the one where animals are given human rights? The one where human slavery is evil and keeping Koala bears and sheep in comfortable habitats is not? The one where the sanctity of the great apes is respected and humans — especially the unborn, disabled, and elderly — are loathed? We should be suspicious of any attempt to elevate animals at the expense of humans. Doing so is a price too high to pay.
The price of giving up human exceptionalism is tyranny. That point can’t be made too often. And indeed, novelist Dean Koontz got the point as well in his preface to my book:
Wesley J. Smith knows too well that if the activists ever succeeded in their goals, if they established through culture or law that human beings have no intrinsic dignity greater than that of any animal, the world would not be a better place for either humankind or animals. Instead, it would be a utilitarian nightmare in which the strong would destroy the weak, in which power-crazed leaders would destroy everyone who loved peace, in which the wealth of the world would be concentrated in the hands of a murderous few, in which mercy would be unknown and the only virtue would be the ability to survive, in which the only right would be the right to die.
Ayup, as they say in Maine.
