Friday, January 22, 2010

So what's this dumb cow's life for anyway?

Jon asks:
1.) Is it ethical to eat animals? And if so, what kind of guidelines do we need to follow when hunting / farming animals?
2.) Is it ethical to "own" animals?
(See the link for a Petey Singer video; that guy is a trip)

Jon says his mind isn't made up yet, and he asked for opinions, so I thought I'd oblige him (it's tit-for-tat, people, figure it out).

Now, everybody knows God is pretty weird, but one of the weirder things he does is give human beings the task of cultivating creation. So, God made us farmers. Adam trimmed the hedges, birthed the goats, and apparently he was having a hard time of it, so God gave him Eve to help him out.

For those of us with any farm/ranch experience (however limited), the idea of cultivation is simple. Each thing has a natural capacity; it is the duty of the caretaker to nurture each thing until it reaches that end. So, in the vineyard, the caretaker does whatever is required to maximize the fruitfulness of the vine, to produce the tastiest, ripest grapes each season.

With animals, the same principle applies. Different species and even different breeds within species have different capacities--our job is to help them reach their ends. Retrievers are an easy example. It is in their nature to bond loyally to a few other beings and to go get things. So, in our human vocation as creation's caretakers, it is our job to help retrievers achieve this inborn capacity for fluffy love and catching frisbees (or perhaps dead ducks).

When we have done our part, animals with whom humans interact fulfill their role or maximize their potential. Most non-human animals do not possess the brain architecture to "fear death" (in the existential sense) and, so long as they do not suffer, experience no loss when they die (assuming that we have done our job cultivating them).

Genesis indicates Adam and Eve were vegetarians. It's not until long after they're gone that humans get in the business of raising animals as meat bags. Maybe the renewal of all things will mean we can finally stop slaying our furry little friends and feasting on their flesh, I don't know.

For now, it is enough to support humane treatment. Stuffing meatbirds in pens is not good. Cooping up hogs until we grind them into sausage sucks (that movie Babe actually kind of gets pigs right). At the same time, cows aren't particularly interested in much beyond eating and walking about 10 steps a day. It is criminal to prevent dogs from enjoying the servile freedom of a trained relationship with a human being.

Cultivation not hedonism; animals are not instruments in your pursuit of happiness.

6 comments:

  1. This Christian perspective is interesting in that it's starting point is the biblical treatment of animals, not the secular corpus of knowledge that we've built up about what animals are, where they came from, and what relationship humans have to the rest of the natural world. Out of curiosity, do you believe in the literal Genesis account of creation (including Adam and Eve in the garden) or are you using that story in your post allegorically?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Look at a cow and tell me it wasn't meant to be eaten. Same goes for the humble chicken. The ratio of appendages/head to body just screams, 'Food on legs!'

    ReplyDelete
  3. @JJ: Does it matter? For the record, I don't take the Genesis account literally, but I do take it as Scripture. Also for the record, I didn't include evolutionary accounts of our DNA similarities to different animals (though I understand that we are quite close to some surprising species), but I wonder what that can really contribute to the conversation. I tend to agree with Dan that a farmer's "secular corpus of knowledge" is waaaay more valuable here than an evolutionary biologist's. But I'm willing to be persuaded...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well, the Christian narrative you describe gives humans a certain stance in relation to the animal kingdom; humans as caregivers. I would argue that deeply implicit to this view is that humans are categorically separate, and superior to, animals. These are both positions that aren't supported by the evolutionary account of life on Earth. The Homo line of the great apes were omnivorous hunter / gatherers for millions of years, certainly not caregivers of the other plain animals of Africa. It's only Homo Sapiens, and only in the last 10 or so thousand years, that have domesticated animals and farmed the land. The point being: if you start from the view that humans have dominion over animals, you may (and most likely will) reach different moral conclusions as to how they may be justifiably treated then when you start from the position that humans are just one out of many ontologically equivalent species.

    ReplyDelete
  5. If I am ontologically indistinguishable from other organisms, then I suppose I should treat pigs with the same respect that a lion shows for a gazelle.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @JJ: I agree that lots of folks (Christian and non-Christian) have argued that humans are *superior* to animals, but I don't. We're different; authorized with a different assignment, and different cognitive capabilities with which to complete it. I mean, in the Genesis story, humans are like an afterthought. It's as if God has created all these wonderful beasts and he's like: "Oh crap, I need some low-level manager to watch over them. I know, I'll create a human." Not sure how that implies that we're superior. If anything we're supposed to be *serving* creation as cosmic janitors. I mean, I know lots of famous Christian philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Hume, and Russell assumed that we were superior because of human rationality, and maybe that has influenced certain readings of the Genesis account, but that seems like bad interpretation and bad theology to me. (And yes, I know that actual Christian have had similar views, but I submit to you that on the whole, the Christian tradition has been far and away more ethical in its treatment of animals than most others. And this precisely because Christians take the Genesis account seriously.)

    @Dan: Heh.

    ReplyDelete