Spain About to Grant Human-Type Rights to Apes
Labels: Great Ape Project.
Spain is on the verge of fully passing the Great Ape Project. Conceived by Peter Singer and an Italian philosopher, that which was unthinkable in 1993 when it began, has come to pass in a mere fifteen years.
Singer's overarching goal is to obliterate Judeo/Christianity as the reigning philosophy of society. And this is why the GAP is supported by people like Richard Dawkins. Now, we are merely one great ape among several others, each with minimum rights based on individual capacities rather than due to being members of the human species. Of course, only we will have the duty to honor these "rights"--but one-way streets are designed to push traffic in specified directions.
The GAP grants apes, chimpanzees, orangutans, and bonobos the rights to life, the right to be free from "torture," and to not be involuntarily confined. From the story: Parliament's environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Apes Project, devised by scientists and philosophers who say our closest genetic relatives deserve rights hitherto limited to humans. "This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity," said Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project.
Given that animal rights activists believe a rat, is a pig, is a dog, is a boy, one would think the GAP would be denigrated by them as speciesist because it values apes higher than other sentient or "painient" animals. But of course, they understand the game that is afoot. They know that the GAP is a spear between the ribs of the old order because it explicitly supplants human beings as the premier species. This is a disaster for universal human rights and human exceptionalism.
More soon.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 4:54 PM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
Why the scare quotes around torture? Is torture the wrong word to use for apes?
No one will deny that it's immoral to intentionally starve an ape, just for the fun of it. Of course that doesn't mean that the ape has rights, but I don't see why we shouldn't call this torture. Unless the normative force behind the restriction comes from somewhere different than it does in the case of human torture. I'm guessing that's your position. But why? Why should we think that the reason not to torture depends on those exceptional features that separate us from apes?
This is a little off-topic, but maybe another way to get at the same question: if human exceptionalism is the foundation of bioethics, does that mean that veterinary medicine has no ethical norms? And if not... where do its norms come from?
Any project that Singer supports is one that I almost instinctively oppose. He has taken the utilitarian view of life to its logical conclusion, looked it straight in the eye, and decided it was a good thing. Most people can only maintain their positions in favor of abortion, ESC, and euthanasia if they don't look to close at the inherent contradictions of their off-kilter world view. But Singer has no such disconnect and most people are appalled at what he promotes while still supporting the version of "rights" that leads to such a utilitarian view. Thank you for your blog! We need more people out there telling it like it is and pointing to where our current culture of death will take us.
Duckrabbit. It is wrong to starve a rat.
The term torture is to prevent the use of great apes in medical experimentation, such as in HIV work and the development of the hepatitis vaccine.
Duckrabbit: I wish human exceptionalism were the foundation of bioethics. If you ever decide to read my Culture of Death, you will see that the problem with modern bioethics is that it has dropped that concept.
Veterinarian medicine and ethics flow from human exceptionalism, one aspect of which is the duty to treat animals humanely and with empathy and compassion.
Some humans will be considered LOWER than other species...if this "human as vermin" kind of ideology mushrooms.
The basic power scenario (first extend out some bits of "equal rights" talk - and then...take it back)!
Watch the old but great animated video ANIMAL FARM! (Or read the Book!)
We are all equal but the PIGS will make themselves more equal than others.
The following statement hits the nail right on the head:
"...only we will have the duty to honor these 'rights'..."
If you give human rights to apes, then you have to hold them to those same standards. What do you do with a male gorilla that kills another while fighting over a mate? Do you have a trial and send him to prison for life or put him to death? You can't force man's laws onto nature.
I'm all for anti-cruelty laws, but you can't claim an animal is the same as a human.
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