Greg and Amy discuss what sets humans apart from animals, exploring the implications of treating humans as animals, questioning the consistency of such a worldview, and highlighting the unique value of human beings as made in the image of God.
Transcript
Question: I’m trying to find good ways to respond to the claim that we are just animals. I think the fact that we are not animals is intuitive. We don’t prosecute animals when they kill each other, for example. But as this claim is proclaimed everywhere, I’d like to have something else to argue with.
Greg: Does that mean we can treat each other like the animals we are? I mean, it seems to me that’s a pretty straightforward question. We are just animals. Therefore, we can be treated like animals. Why not? If we are animals. If we are simply animal. Well, that statement implies that there is nothing qualitatively different between us and other creatures. So, I don’t know what they could say because you treat equals equally, right? Whatever is true of one, if it’s true of another, then you are free to treat the other the same way as the first. So, what would be their complaint, then? I don’t get it.
I’m dumbfounded, shaking my head. This is not that hard. It’s not rocket science. Okay, we’re just animals. So, when all these Jews were herded into cattle cars and shipped off for slaughter, and they were actually used—because they took their baggage, they took all their gold out of their teeth, they took their hair, they took their clothing. This was a commercial product. Then they discarded them. Okay. If we are just animals, what was wrong with that? I’m interested to hear what they have to say.
Amy: Yeah, I think his suggestion here to talk about not prosecuting animals is a great one because it shows moral responsibility. It shows accountability. It shows that there’s something more about us as human beings that is not present in animals. Now, I think there’s a problem with saying, “Should we treat people like animals?” because I think people can follow that reasoning in two different ways. So, they might say, “Oh no, we don’t treat human beings like animals.” So, there’s where there’s a difference. Or they might say, “There’s no difference. We need to treat animals like human beings.”
I just saw somebody made a joke on Twitter about PETA, saying that it was wrong to go to KFC because if you eat fried chicken, you’re eating somebody’s family member. And the guy responded, “That’s why I always get the bucket. No family member left behind.”
But the problem is, people are following these lines of thought when we try to make arguments—because you can always follow it the other direction—they’re following these arguments to the absurd conclusion rather than to the reasonable one. And so, that might be something you might run into.
Greg: They’re assuming that we have moral obligations towards other animals, apparently, that other animals do not have toward us. So, why do we have the moral obligation? “Oh, we’ve evolved that way.” Well, maybe you’ve evolved that way. I didn’t, because I don’t agree with you. And if all of my beliefs are a function of my evolution, then all you’re saying is that you have one set of beliefs and values that is consistent with your evolution, but obviously it’s not consistent with mine and a whole host of other individuals in this world. So, it seems to me, if there is no God, as Dostoyevsky famously said, then all is permitted. So, it’s just a crapshoot. No God. Just evolution. We’re animals. We act like whatever is consistent with what we desire, and that’s the way animals act. They are not constrained by morality. That would be an argument against morality for humans, not for morality for animals, because morality entails obligations regarding behavior, and where do the obligations come from?
If the obligation is just a result of my evolution, then when we violate the so-called obligation, all we’re doing is going against evolution. And we had an atheist on my program—the Stand to Reason program—that made that admission. I don’t even know how it’s possible to violate your evolution. The thing is, I can’t just deny the evolution of my eye color. It’s all genetic. I can’t deny all of that stuff. So, how can you deny your evolution regarding morality? This does not add up, is the point I’m making. It is not the smart answer, given what we know.
Amy: We can all see that there is a dignity that human beings have that other animals don’t have. We can see this. We wear clothes. We speak a language. We create things. We create beauty. We communicate. We reason. We have emotion. There might be some rudimentary parallel in some animals, but there is a dignity to human beings and a sacredness to human beings that is not present in other animals, and we can see this, and I think everybody knows this. So, I think it would be worth explaining why you think that’s the case.
And you might even say, “Look, I suspect the reason why you’re denying this qualitative difference between animals and humans is because you don’t really have a way to explain it. You believe in evolution. Where do these things come from? It seems to be more than just ‘we have more of something than the animal has.’ There’s a qualitative difference between an animal that has obligations to morality and one that doesn’t. And so, you don’t really have a way to explain that. So, I can understand why you’re insisting, even though I think we all know that’s not the case. But I can explain it. I think we were made in the image of God. I think there are ways that we are like God that animals are not like God. Even though we are animals and we have many things in common with animals that we don’t have in common with God, there is something about us that bears the image of God that didn’t just evolve from materialistic things.”
So, it’s worth explaining that it’s not just that we have gained some functions and we have these functions better than the animals, it’s that we were actually made in the image of God and the fact that there is a personal, rational being that explains why we are personal, rational, moral beings.
Greg: And by the way, you cannot just look at higher functions and attach moral value to the higher function. That’s a category error. They’re unrelated. And if you do that, then when you have Down syndrome children that don’t have the higher functions, at least like most human beings do, well then they don’t have the value. This is instrumental value. I was walking through the airport, and it said, “Every Down syndrome child has a right to a job.” What’s curious to me is, apparently, every Down syndrome child has a right to a job, but every Down syndrome child does not have a right to life. And for example, in Iceland, they’ve gotten rid of Down syndrome. Hardly ever do they have a Down syndrome child. Why? Because they kill them in the womb. They do amniocentesis, which is a search-and-destroy mission, and they take their life through abortion in the womb. So, see how conflicted this is? What is it going to be? Do they have value? And even in this country, where people are saying they have a right to a job, if you have a Down syndrome child, and they find this out in advance, you are pressured to have an abortion. So, it’s all mixed up and convoluted here.