Animal Rights

Some news about me: I broke my foot last Friday. Which is also the reason I respond to Dr. Mohlers show that late. I went to the hospital to see my grandma. When I left I took the stairs instead of the elevator, because the elevator took somewhat too long and I wanted to do something that's good for my health. Unfortunately I missed the last step of the stairway way, stumbled and distorted my left foot. This way I broke the fifth bone of my middle foot. There in one good thing in this whole accident: There is doubtlessly no better place to break your foot than next door to the department for accident surgery where they could plaster my lower leg.
Thanks to this I will be in hospital again on Thursday. Because the fracture is somewhat complicated they have to implant a metal splint. I hope to be home again on Monday in a week.
I wonder a bit how you put this in a theological perspective. An atheist who breaks his foot seems easy - but an atheist who breaks his foot next door the the department for accident surgery seems a bit indecisive on Gods part.

Why should we grant Rights to animals, what would stop us from doing the same with plants?

Dr. Mohler presented one case for granting Rights to animals in his show. And I don't think he presented the best one. Humans make laws for humans. Even if they are unaware of this fact. For example the protection of the environment. While it obviously protect nature and habitats it also protects human society which benefits greatly from living in an intact natural environment. When it comes to water quality it's obvious, but you shouldn't forget the recreational benefits from having a healthy landscape around you.
While animal Rights seem to protect Animals first and foremost, they also protect our society. As a society we also need compassion for each other. To preserve this compassion should be a very high priority for any society. If someone tortures, mistreats or abuses an animal that shows a great lack of compassion for animals on his or her side. And I seriously doubt that she or he can limit that to her or his treatment of members of the animal kingdom. Attitudes do have consequences. Once people accept the mistreatment of animals, who are able to show their pain and agony, it's not to unlikely that they will one day even mistreat humans in the same way.
That's where I also see the difference between mistreating animals and mistreating plants. Plants don't show their pain and agony (if they feel any). Animals do show those emotions. Especially the great apes do that and someone who is willing and able to mistreat those animals or is unwilling to show any compassion to those is a danger to the public order.
Dr. Mohler might laugh at the idea of outlawing great apes in circuses and television, but I see the logic behind all of this. Showing those animals in this fashion at some point dehumanizes them. The behavior of apes shown in circuses or television is in most cases anything but indicative of their natural behaviors. If someone acts in a ridiculous way he is said to act like a monkey. While monkeys and great apes very rarely act this way when behaving according to their nature. The whole dehumanizing insult of acting like a monkey or an ape would loose its effect if apes and monkeys would be shown how they naturally live.

Btw. 2 things

Firstly: Yes, the government of José Luis Rodrigues Zapatero did away with a lot of the conservative elements that Spain was known for. That's because Spain is a very young democracy and it is now just about 30 years ago that Spain was ruled by the fascist dictator Franco. With this time passed between to old regime and the new republic we see the Spanish society cleansing itself from the last influences of that period. I wonder why Dr. Mohler didn't mention the regime of Franco when I lauded the former conservative values of Spain... Maybe because the period of Franco, which is stained in blood, is perhaps the best example how much Christians can become complicit in an inhumane dictatorship.

Secondly: Albert Mohler seemed somewhat afraid that lawyers could be up to define a new case law by forcing precedences. That fear might be true for the anglo-american world. Not for continental Europe. Even thou a lot of my fellow citizens who are influenced by how Hollywood presents the court system (which is then by nature an anglo-american one), case-law is alien to continental Europe. That means for example that the equivalent of a county court in Germany can rule explicitly against the decisions made by higher courts. Our courts are bound to laws made by the legislator, which say have to interpret. In doing so they are free from former decisions. The only thing a judge who rules against the decision made by higher courts is that his decisions will most likely be nullified.

No further argument against polygamy?!

Dr. Mohler claimed on his program that with the advent of gay-marriage there won't be any rational hold against polygamy. I wonder whether he really believes that, because there is a very good rational hold against polygamy that has to do with the fact how human beings relate to each other.
So lets have a look at heterosexual polygamy. I've drawn a little sketch to visualize the problems that come along with such a relational triangle.



I analyze the relation between a man and several women, because that was what polygamy was during most of recorded history.



In order to be in love for a heterosexual the person of desire needs to be of the opposite sex. (Which is the definition of heterosexuality). That means that in the relationship triangle between three heterosexuals there can just be love between the women and the man. Between both women there can be in the best case close friendship.
Let us supposed those three persons met the women fell in love with the man and the man vice versa with both women.

It is unimaginably hard if not impossible to love two persons the same way. The man will have extremely hard problems to feel the same burning desire for both his women for an extended period of time. Even if he achieves to do so, it will hard in the same unimaginable way to show that love to both women equally.

Remember we started this example with the supposing that it is the best case - both women being close friends. How long can a friendship survive this situation? At one point one woman will ask herself the question whether he doesn't love the other wife more. Whether she isn't really wife No.2. In the moment she begins to wonder whether she really is wife No.2 it's just natural that she will test how close her husband is to her. Her best friend on the other hand must in this case believe that she is breaking the basis for their polygamous relationship by trying to be a better wife to him than she is. Which will start a competition between both. A competition driven by jealousy that can lead nowhere but into open or hidden animosity between both females.

The man on the other hand could try to moderate this competition. But would he really have any reason to do so? Having to women who compete for your affection is quite flattering. It also brings him into a situation of power that is hard to resist.
Remember that this is the best case of such a relationship. In a much worse case those women will already join this marriage with a sense of jealousy and competition. In this case the marriage is more or less just about a man being in the center of a competition between two women.



I'm at this point fully a humanist who believes that human dignity is inviolable. In the worst case the dignity of both women gets violated from the beginning. I the better case it is highly likely that it will get violated within the course of the 'marriage'.

If people want to give such a triangle a try against all odds against it, they may do so - but they shouldn't accept a broader society to sanction such a relationship.





Let's move a bit further from the social standard and lets consider whether it would be then permissible to sanction polygamies between bisexual or homosexual people.
You can not ignore that it has different starting points than a heterosexual triangle. With a homo- or bisexual triangle you could really have love between all partners.

At this point I will return to my prior argument - that it is impossible to love two persons the same way AND to show this affection the same way. In an homo- or bisexual triangle you would have the great risk of having a strong love developing between two of the partners and smaller ones towards the 3rd partner in the relationship. I would predict that he or she is kicked out of the relationship triangle sooner or later - or - that he or she becomes a kind of replacement partner with whom you have intercourse when the other partner has migraine.



Also in such a situation I see the strong risk that the dignity of at least one person in the relationship gets violated and therefor I wouldn't want to see it sanctioned as well. If people want to try this social experiment they should very well do so. But they shouldn't expect me to agree to it.

The End of all times

When you talk to people from other worldviews its quite often quite hard to realize how poorly they understand your position. When it comes to the End Times there is a strong and undeniable dividing line between those who stand on an atheist standpoint and those on a religious one.
He is right in analyzing that the world even in an atheist view has an end. To the biosphere as we know it with the next big meteor impact, to the solar system with the inevitable end of the sun and the slow death of the universe that will expand forever and in this course have ever and ever lower energy densities.
When it comes in this universe to the fate of mankind I'm optimist. I believe that mankind will solve the current social and environmental problems on this planet, will survive the meteor impacts to come and finally even escape from this solar system the time the sun will die. Undeniably mankind in such a distant future will be a biologically different species from what it is today. By natural selection our genes will change and our bodies adapt to ever and ever changing environment. But whatever happens, as long as the descendants of homo sapiens will survive - and might it be in some form of artificial intelligences that are beyond our current technological imagination - our culture, our memes as Dawkins called them will persist. They will be newly perceived, newly interpreted but even if our modern thoughts will be just the very lowest basis of a future human culture - they will survive. The ones after us will find new suns who will warm them and spend them energy for a further couple of billion years until also those sources of energy run dry. Afterwards they might be able to find energy close to neutron stars, but eventually one day even those sources will dry up. At this time I believe the ones after us will merely be highly intelligent machines with artificial intelligences beyond the capacity of our modern day brain. As such they will be able to save energy by simply running slower.
For the last of a long line of descendants of homo sapiens time will begin to run, as they begin to slow down more and more. In a universe in which there isn't really anything to see anymore they will see the millennia and millions of years flying buy until one day they will also run out of energy with a final thought into eternity.

Now that I laid out my escatology in a nutshell, lets see how it is different from the Christian escatology. Dr. Mohler said to be fulfilling life, all of life, needs to have a beginning and needs to have an ending just as a good story needs to have. From an atheist position we tell our lives like stories, but this universe isn't a story. It is. It's without a narrator - without a narrative. If there is ever anyone to make it into a narrative than it's by some future technology, some future power mankind or another extraterrestrial civilization.

Yes, the atheist way to view the world means that all the wrongs of the past won't be made right. The only wrongs we can make right are the wrongs of the future by avoiding them. To be able to do that, we need to understand this world in an unbiased way. We need to respect the human being

and we need to realize that ideas do have consequences.
Just like the idea that the end of all times is a thing to long for.

That is what makes atheists afraid of Christian escatology. In the centuries before us it was a mindset of constant waiting, that itself was already quite depressing. But at the moment this old believe that the end of times is something to long for gets into a toxic mixture with a very typical American way of impatience. When especially Christians talk about bring about the end of times by nuclear war - than this in plain scary.
I wish Dr. Mohler would have taken as much time to scold those Christians who feel entitled to accelerate the coming of the apocalypse as he took to scold atheists for their beliefs.

When it comes to the apocalypse the difference between religious people and atheists is that atheists (at least all of who I know) would do anything to avoid it, the religious seem to long for it.
If you believe that this world and what we can make out of this world is the best we will ever have, the idea that the end of this world is something good is genuinely scary.

As Dr. Mohler knows and agrees to: Ideas do have consequences.