Approximate Agenda for 02/07/03 Friday Evening Covenant Group
(Meeting #7)
DINNER (6:30-7:00 PM)
LIGHTING OF THE CHALICE (7:00):
"Life is a gift for which we are grateful. We gather in community to celebrate the glories and the mysteries of this great gift."
CHECK-IN (<2 minutes each à 7:00-7:20)
MAIN TOPIC (7:20 – 8:10)
"Animals", including but not restricted to the following aspects:
(eg, Soul? Intelligence? Ability to communicate? Play? Love? Awareness of death? Altruism? Is it just specieism, and being more powerful allows us to exploit?)
CHECK-OUT (<1 minute each à 8:10-8:20)
CLOSING WORDS (8:20)
"Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; Therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes sense in any immediate context of history; Therefore, we are saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; Therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness."
Background Preparation for Covenant Group Discussion of "Animals"
History:
The Greeks believed that humans had separable body and spirit (soul). Sometimes claimed that this "soul" is what separates us from animals. This questionable dualism may be what allows us to view animals as different sorts of creatures than ourselves.
Darwin hypothesized that, like other animals, we humans were playing just a momentary part in a continuing evolution of life forms. This scientific view, that perhaps we are not special beings who sprung directly from god, may have triggered a change in the way we view animals.
Charles Darwin observed that the difference between humans and other animals "certainly is one of degree and not of kind". Are there not moral implications to this?
SPCA was founded in 1866 by Unitarian Henry Bergh
It is estimated that 5 million shelter cats and dogs were euthanized in the US last year. The World Wildlife Fund predicts that an average of 100-200 species (plants as well as animals) will become extinct every day during the next 40 years.
UFETA = Unitarian Universalists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Judeo-Christian culture:
"Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." -Genesis 1:28
God gave us dominion over the earth and all the creatures. Does this mean that animals and the earth itself are ours to do with as we wish? Or does our dominant position mean we should act as stewards of life on this planet?
Perhaps it can be moral to sacrifice the lives of animals in medical research which will aid humans. But just because we *can* use an animal doesn’t mean that every such use is worth the cost of the resultant knowledge. Part of being a steward is weighing everything before making a value judgment.
"We don’t have to go vegetarian to expect our food production facilities to let animals live like animals. One Midwest farmer put it this way: "Colonel Sanders wants us to think of chickens only in terms of dollars and cents. They are nothing but little pieces of meat to be bought and sold for food. And so we’re supposed to crowd them together in small places and get them fat enough to be killed. But that’s wrong! The Bible says that God created every animal ’after its own kind’. Chickens aren’t people, but neither are they nothing but hunks of meat. Chickens are chickens, and they deserve to be treated like chickens! This means that we have to give each chicken the space to strut its stuff in front of other chickens." I have heard that poultry raised ‘free range’ produce different fats in their eggs, fats that have been determined to be less harmful for us. In other words more humane production is healthier for humankind. "
- Rev. Len DeRoche
Every part of the universe, including every animal and plant and rock on this earth, has developed into its current existence according to "god’s plan". Every cell, every molecule, has a role to play. As minor temporal beings on but a small speck of a planet, it is unlikely that any human can know the totality of "god’s plan", or fully understand the dependences between its many parts. But in our arrogance, we often blithely assume that the entire universe has evolved for us humans, that we earthly humans are at the apex of all evolution, and that it is logical for us to impose whatever is best for our personal current benefit onto the entire web of life.
"The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men."
- Alice Walker
"The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth."
- Henry Beston, The Outermost House
Hunting is not something I myself want to do. But I understand its necessity. Without hunting, some populations (deer, for example) would quickly expand and demolish the biodiversity we seek. But HOW people hunt might be an important facet. If all hunters were to teach their children the need to maintain biodiversity and respect for each animals’ place in our lives, a balanced environment might be an easier goal.
"I ask people why the have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it’s such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her."
- Ellen DeGeneres
Does a child who has an animal to care for have an easier time learning empathy and the connectedness of life? Perhaps.
What makes humans different from animals?
Is it our ability to communicate?
Isn’t it apparent in the sounds of a scolding crow, a humpback whale, and a dolphin that something is being said? And anyone who spends time around animals comes to appreciate their body language.
Is it intelligence?
Suppose there is an alien species more intelligent than ours. Would we agree that gives them the right to treat us as we treat animals?
Is not a full grown dog is more rational than a week old human?
Is it specieism?
We label the hunting of animals as ‘sport’. We accept the cruelty inflicted on animals in factory farms, so that we can consume their bodies as food.
Do we exploit animals simply because we are more powerful?
Do animals feel a sense of love?
Does our love for a companion animal differ from our love for a fellow human?
Are animals aware of death?
Why do they play?
Do they exhibit altruism? Empathy?
Do they have a soul? Do they have "faith"?
Why is population control more acceptable for animals other than humans?
Why do animals matter? What would life be like if animals disappeared from the face of the earth?
"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."
"The Human Race is… the only animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what they might have been."
"It is just like a man’s vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions… The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot."
- Mark Twain
"The question is not, Can they reason nor, Can they talk? But Can they suffer?"
- Jeremy Bentham
"No one can prove that animals have souls. But if we open our hearts to other creatures and allow ourselves to sympathize with their joys and struggles, we find they have the power to touch and transform us."
– Rev. Gary Kowalski (President of UFETA), The Souls of Animals
"Animals have a capacity to surprise us, to respond and relate to us, and even to elude us, as nothing else on earth can. Despite popular language, we cannot own an animal – they are never completely ours – for they are unique and distinct individuals, endowed with certain power, freedom, and dignity. Unlike anything that is human-made, animals are not reflections of ourselves but windows into the divine."
- Colleen M. McDonald (UU)
"I care not much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it."
- attributed to Abraham Lincoln
What about the UU Seventh Principle? ("We… covenant to affirm and promote… Respect for the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part.")
What does this mean when applied to animals? To answer this, we need to understand WHO animals are – not just what they are to *us*, cuddly companions or suburban pests, but who THEY are.
Researchers have discovered that prairie dogs use more than 100 nouns and adjectives to describe predators. Chimpanzees have learned ASL, and gone on to teach the language to their offspring. How well do discoveries like this fit in with our beliefs about animals’ lives? Are we even *willing* to come to terms with these findings, findings which challenge our world view by suggesting that animals have not only biological lives but also BIOGRAPHICAL lives?
As a UU, connections are important to me – I sometimes stop and examine my relationship with other humans. What about my relationship with animals?
Doesn’t the 7th principle require us to ask "Are we in right relation with the animals in our lives"?
Look how many animals are killed crossing our highways. Not just dogs and cats, but deer, raccoons, snakes, rabbits, turtles who cannot keep up with the fast pace imposed by human life, who dare to intrude upon "our territory". If the UU 7th principle is telling us that we and animals exist to co-inhabit this earth, maybe road kill is telling us that we’re not doing such a great job of living this principle. Perhaps the road is more than a break that animals have to cross, perhaps it is symbolic of a break in the interdependent web, a break in the earth itself.
"Is the goal of human life human well-being, and, if so (or if not), where are the limits?"
- Colleen M. McDonald
"If we really were Homo sapiens ("man the wise"), would we not recognize that our own existence depends on the vast diversity of life?"
Look at the diversity of life on this planet, and meditate on the wonder that we apparently all came from a drop of water.