The Queensland Government On: Vegans

(I will write later and in more detail on the Queensland Government's systemic anthropocentrism, but for now wanted merely to give you a teaser of what to expect.)

Unfortunately for the 3.6 million cattle, 4.4 million sheep, 81 million chickens, 660,000 pigs and further millions of horses, camels, kangaroos, emus, bees, crocodiles, aquatic creatures and other NHAs annually exploited and brutalized (sorry, I meant “produced”) by Queensland's $10 billion “food and agribusiness sector”*, it should not surprise us that the Queensland Government considers veganism:

- “an extreme 'cult' diet” (Queensland Health, Child, Youth & Family Health Clinical Procedure Manual, 1996)

- “a bulky diet with a limited range of food” (Queensland Health, Vegetarian Diets For Children Fact Sheet, 2005)

I am not sure what Queensland Health means by “a bulky diet” (perhaps they think we eat trenchcoats), but “limited range of food” is a patently ridiculous assertion, failing to take into consideration such things as fruit and vegetables (with those alone you have enough material to make yourself a unique and varied meal for pretty much every single day of your extended vegan life), and then of course wholly discounting the myriad herbs and spices used to enhance the flavour of such meals. This is before we even get into the endless manufactured vegan goods such as soy products and “meat substitutes” (though since vegans do not consider meat a food, it is difficult to imagine why they would want a substitute for it, since the recipes rarely call for “cardboard substitutes” or “gravel substitutes”).

The Vegetarian Diets “fact” sheet (I'm sorry to keep using so many sarcastic quote marks) also goes on to say that “B12 is only found in animal foods”. This is not merely a ridiculous assertion but an outright lie. B12 can only be synthesized, I suppose you could say, by particular prokaryotes (that is, bacteria and archaea) that occur naturally in and around and upon just about everything and at all times. Technically speaking, you could lick your keyboard and run a very good chance of sucking up some delicious B12. What I think Queensland Health meant to say was that B12 is only of sufficient concentration in animal foods, and this is certainly true, but it's only in animals because they have been eating vegetables containing the bacteria and archaea responsible for manufacturing B12, and their bodies have been storing it. It's basically the same as the protein argument. All vegans need to do is make sure they eat food fortified with B12 (most vegan cereals and non-dairy milks), or pop a supplement every once in a while. No big deal. (Vegan B12, incidentally, is derived directly from the primary, rather than the secondary, sources.)

*The Queensland Department of Primary Industries does not of course make any of the above-mentioned figures particularly easy to find, but they are there if you dig a bit.

A Brief Note On Contractarianism

I was reminded of the profoundly silly argument of "contractarianism" by a piece on Abolitionist Animal Rights.

“Contractarianism” is a nothing term stemming from ideas about the social contract (see Hobbes’ Leviathan, etc.) but perverted by the anti-AL sect and used to denote gussied-up reciprocal morality.

At least in the context of animal rights – which is the only context we are concerned with here – a more useless idea has yet to manifest itself so clearly and so grotesquely.

The otherwise excellent Animal Rights FAQ inaccurately calls contractarianism “perhaps the most impressive attempt to refute the AR position”. Let us proceed then to define what contractarianism is, and we shall see where we go from there.

Contractarianism, loosely and in this context, is the notion that what I do and don’t do for you, you do and don’t do for me. All of us living in a society abide by a social contract of some form or another: I don’t rape your children because I am desirous that you do not rape mine. I don’t steal your flat-screen television because I expect you not to steal mine. I pay my taxes because I expect you to pay yours.

Happily, the AR FAQ quickly redeems itself by stating: “We begin by observing that contractarianism fails to offer a compelling account of our moral behavior and motives.”

Contractarianism is, effectively, a term for something that never needed one, and even with this brief definition we can see that a moral system predicated on the notion of reciprocality is infinitely absurd. As a scientist might say, it “isn’t even wrong”. It places higher faith in artificial systems than in traits biologically and demonstrably inherent to humankind and it makes me uneasy that a great many philosophical, social and political theorists are labouring under the notion that the only reason I haven’t set out to murder them or molest their newborns or let down the tires on their cars just before a snowstorm is because they have refrained from doing any of those things to me. It seems to entirely overlook the notion that I don’t do these things because they are inherently wrong. It seems to me a bastardized type of the already-bastardized theory of utilitarianism, wherein I live my life a certain way because it is useful, not because it is right.

But what has contractarianism to do with animal rights? Working from our simple definition (and it requires no further embellishment), since non-human animals are incapable of abiding by any man-made moral contract, then we have no obligation towards them. Since beagles, for example, haven’t universally agreed not to perform ghastly and torturous experiments upon us, then why should we refrain from doing the same to them?

Contractarianism very quickly falls apart beneath even the most superficial scrutiny. Parties not privy to a contract ought not be affected by it, and since non-human animals are incapable of being parties to a contract informed by human desires, prejudices and moral hypothesis, and whatsmore articulated in a human fashion, then the same ought to be true for them.

Contractarianism is also inherently silly for another reason, because animals do abide by contracts with us. When were you last beaten by your dog? When were you last collected from the street by a maniac feline and taken somewhere to be tortured in a bathtub? Which members of your direct family have been sent to a slaughterhouse run by chickens and pigs? Do you suppose that John Locke wrote his Treatises on Government with the foxes baying and snarling at the entrance to a hole he dug for himself in an effort to escape them? Did a family of cougars and koala bears, having flown one another in specifically for the task, recently bulldoze your neighbourhood? Which of your sisters (or was it your cousin?) was sent to university to have her skull crushed by a team of white-coated chimpanzees in order to test the efficacy of a new helmet for orangutan fighter pilots?

We preemptively broke the human-nonhuman contract before it even had a chance to be formed, and there is no use now in your pointing at the myriad injustices wreaked upon us by the natural world (umm…pigeon droppings on your BMW and didn’t you used to live next to that one guy who got bitten by a terrier?) and using them as justification for holocaust.

The only thing that needs to be considered, ever, when considering what our obligations towards animals should be, is “does this cause them harm?” That is the only universal defining moral system of any usefulness.

Opposition V

"What are poor people going to eat?"

It is heartening to know that, when challenged on their flesh-eating ways, a great many carnivores display a profound selflessness by arguing against it on the basis that, if we abolish animal use, “poor people will have nothing to eat”.

Let us set aside the sheer inefficiency of factory farming animals for food, and the knowledge that it takes around 28-33 calories of fossil fuels to create one calorie of meat (as opposed to a single calorie of fossil fuel giving us 2.5 calories of oats, or 2 calories of potatoes, or 1.5 calories of soy, etc.), and 12,000 gallons of water to make one pound of beef (as opposed to 60 gallons for a pound of spuds, or 240 gallons for a pound of soybeans, etc.). Instead we can look at some other facts.

United States Department of Agriculture figures show that while Americans consume an average of 123kg of meat each per year, in India – typically recognized by Westerners as a “poor” country – this figure is 3kg. From the UN’s list of 50 least developed (i.e. poorest) countries, of which I could find recent (2002) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) data for only 41, the average level of meat consumption is 14.6kg per person per year. Of course, these figures are not entirely useful as meat consumption per person in Samoa weighed in at 82.6kg, while meat consumption per person in Bhutan, like India, was only 3kg. Outside of Samoa, the next highest level of meat consumption per capita is 32.6kg in Vanuatu. The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates Australian per capita meat consumption (1997-1998) as 74.2kg, which 8.4kg less than Samoa, but then Australia has a population of approximately 21 million people, whereas Samoa supports around 220,000. What this means is that Australia is consuming 1,558,200,000kg of meat per year, and Samoa is consuming 18,172,000kg. So Samoa appears to be the exception rather than the rule and overall it seems to me that poor people are not eating quite so much meat as rich people would like to believe.

"Where will I get my protein?"

People are very concerned about protein, and rightly so. As each of us leaps from our hay bed every morning - having spent a long night shivering against the debilitating chill - to spend the day running non-stop across the Savannah pursuing wildebeest, our bodies are using protein to develop muscle and repair damaged tissue. And for the lucky ones amongst us, who have less uncomfortable office jobs, protein is just as important, as we exert ourselves quite significantly by bicycling or jogging to work, bounding up ten flights of stairs, and then find ourselves involved in intensive labor, perhaps hefting photocopiers to retrieve wayward pens and pulling up carpet with our bare hands. As we sit down to what is no doubt our daily meal of watered-down water and chopping board residue, perhaps licking the insides of old breadbags found discarded in the freezer as an added treat, we may indeed be struck with the notion that we aren’t getting enough of that good old protein.

The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of us are either overweight or obese and don’t exercise – or, as it is, merely move – enough for our bodies to need as much protein as we might desire. There is an enormous difference between the tiny number of the population who are professional bodybuilding marathon athletes who climb mountains all day and need around one full kilogram of protein, and the rest of us who are inactive slobs and need, on average, less than 100 grams (it is reckoned that we need 0.8 grams of protein for every kilogram we weigh). This protein can easily be acquired in the same way that the herbivorous animals we habitually eat for no good reason acquire it: consumption of plant foods. Legumes in general, soybeans in particular and such foodstuffs as seitan are all excellent sources of protein, and have the added benefit of not containing exorbitant amounts of cholesterol or saturated fats.

Opposition IV

"What about..."

Plants

"If it is your true position that non-human animals must be given rights, then surely plants must be given them also. Otherwise you are ethically inconsistent. A hypocrite!" This is a common opposition whenever the subject of animal rights is broached – and ARAs must broach it as often and as loudly as possible – and is generally accompanied by an expanding aura of smugness as the ARA chokes on her words before she retorts, not because she has had her entire ethical psychology obliterated, but because the objection is so profoundly ridiculous that it is sometimes difficult to conceive how it could ever be uttered by a person with the mental capacity for language. There are two chief reasons people will say something like this (leaving aside their obvious desire to be smart-alecs): either they are equating animals and plants because they use both for food or utility, or they are equating animals and plants because both are alive.

For the first, they might as well include salt and iron on the list as well, which shows how silly it is if that is the actual perspective they have – one does not ever suggest, even sarcastically, that salt or iron be given rights.

The second is slightly trickier. A common plant used for food is a cabbage. A cabbage is certainly alive insofar as it can die, or have the process of entropy affect it more dramatically and over a shorter timeframe than it would affect a rock. A cabbage draws energy from the sun and nutrients and water from the ground, and uses these elements to manufacture essential life-forces which allow it to grow and have a lifecycle, wherein it starts from a seed, grows into a sprout and then gradually into a fully-formed "adult" plant, reproduces and propagates itself, and then dies of old age, or disease or even, if you accept the following to be the taking of a life and nothing more, murder. But simply because a plant is alive, does it have a Life?

We can borrow here Tom Regan's useful term "subject-of-a-life", which he explains in his excellent book Empty Cages. It can be paraphrased thus: we are all subjects-of-a-life because we are in the world, are aware of the world, what happens to us matters to us (whether anyone else cares or not), and from this we can infer that we are morally the same, are morally equal, and there is no superior or inferior, no higher or lower. It must be said that an awareness of the world (sentience) and an interest in what happens to us while in it (self-preservation and self-contentment) are probably the key characteristics of a subject-of-a-life, but this expanded definition is a more useful one. So, using these guidelines, is a cabbage a subject-of-a-life? Or a rich and beautiful rose plant? A bristling bougainvillea? Or a great paperbark or wattle tree? Does a cabbage care what happens to it, whether it is deracinated and boiled and swallowed? Is it even aware that this is happening?

Just as we take it to be supremely odd that an animal would evolve to react to pain and yet not feel it, it is supremely odd that a plant would evolve to feel pain and yet not react to it, for neither combination of characteristics serves any useful evolutionary purpose whatsoever. And if you hold, though I sincerely hope you do not, that these beings were created by a god or gods, then what sadistic and childish oafs they must be!

Can we definitively prove that a wattle tree or any of its vegetative brethren do not have thoughts, imaginings, sensations? Again, just as we cannot disprove Russell's intergalactic teapot or the pink unicorn, no, but the best evidence we have (and this solid empirical evidence is not even required, because we can establish these facts merely by observing the world) tells us that we do not, and therefore the burden of proof is not upon us, but upon those who would compare them with thinking, moving, breathing, feeling animals. Not knowing definitively whether or not plants feel pain certainly does not give us free license to inflict pain on creatures we do definitively know can feel it. And of course, this does not mean that we are free to simply chop down trees at whimsy and for no useful purpose, or set fire to undergrowth merely because we like to see things burn, or run a bulldozer through a swamp because we fancy telling our friends that driving a bulldozer through a swamp is one of the things we have done with our life, but no serious ARA would ever suggest that this is the case anyway and so the point is moot.

Ants

"I'll be you squash ants!" Another common rejoinder. And while it is likely true that most, if not all, ARAs and even the very strictest of vegans have most probably stepped on quite a number of ants and other insects during the course of their lives, this is irrelevant, because they are not intentional acts and nor are they done for pleasure or convenience. But while it is impossible to scour the ground at all times to be completely sure that you are not crushing insects beneath your feet, when they are seen, most ARAs and vegans, I think, would take passage around or over rather than just blithely barge amongst them.

But do ants and other insects feel pain? I am not myself sure and the scientific jury seems, for the most part, to still be out on the subject. Issues such as the ganglionic nervous system vs. the central nervous system and an apparent lack of nociceptors on one hand, and consistent response to negative stimuli and displays of learned behaviour on the other (suggesting intelligence), leave the whole question difficult to definitively answer. I personally do not feel that a complex nervous system for the transmission of pain signals would be of any tangible evolutionary benefit to an ant and think that, much like the Terminator, ants and insects are able to sense injuries, but don't believe the data could be called pain. After all, for creatures of that size, any real injury would probably mean that it was dead already. Ants and other insects are certainly aware of the world but I don’t know that they are aware that they are entities within it. But then again, if one sits and watches ants interact, with one tribe of ants stumbling across another, they do engage in quite fearful combat, and in the end, whether one or neither emerges victorious, the ants most certainly appear to go through what can only be called "death throes", thrashing about in much the same way a fish would when pulled from water, or a human would with a spear through his belly. A final fateful exclamation of agony, or a merely nervous reaction to damage? It's very difficult to tell, but by conceding that we do not know definitively whether insects feel pain, we do not equally concede that plants do, or that animals do not. There is plenty of material widely available on the subject and you are encouraged to research the issue and reach your own temporary conclusions (I say temporary because evidence may come to us tomorrow, proving once and for all that insects do, or do not, feel pain).

In any event, no, I myself do not squash ants, or at least not deliberately. And I am equally opposed to vivisection or scientific experimentation on ants, and factory farming ants for food, and using them for their fur (or rather, chitin).

Voting

"If you truly think that animals should have rights, do you think they would vote Green?" This isn't even funny the first time you hear it because it is so spectacularly ignorant. Because we say that animals should be given rights does not mean they should be given all rights, or even most rights. A koala bear, for example, need not be given the right to free speech, not only because it is incapable of speech that we would understand, but because even if it were given the right (not that it is our place to give a right such as this to a koala – leave that to the other koalas), I doubt it would know what to do with it, and even if it knew what to do with it, I doubt it would be care much to act upon it. Koala bears do not share many of the same interests that humans do, with a few exceptions: the desire for good food and shelter and open spaces, for slumbering in the sunlight, for kinship and love and family, for entertainment (as when they play games with one another), to be safe from danger and to be free, in the end, from suffering. This is an animal's, any animal's, chief key core fundamental founding irrevocable universal right, its birthright: to be free from suffering. It is the only right we need "give" them, as though humanity has proven itself in any way worthy of being the arbiter of what things ought and ought not happen, and ARAs will not ever suggest otherwise. No ARA will ever suggest that since humans desire to all have their opinions heard, and since it could be argued that, if we are forcibly prevented from expressing our opinions, then we would be suffering (no matter to what degree), then the right to free speech is a right that prevents us from suffering, and that it should therefore be granted to non-human animals also, because no animal suffers to any degree by not having its opinion on abortion or the Iraq War heard. Likewise voting: if we are not at least permitted our say in who is to rule us, then it is likely that we may suffer when there is elected a person who operates contrary to our interests (so since we all suffer no matter who is elected, does this mean the right to vote is a right we no longer need? No, and again because of degree), but this does not mean non-human animals should be given the right to vote, for they have no parliament and are not interested in the hot-aired affairs of human beings.

But if an animal is to be free from pain and suffering, then what are we to do about animals that are in pain or that suffer through causes not human? Well, rights come with obligations and your right to free speech means that I are obliged not to censor it. An animal's right to freedom from suffering means that we are obliged not to torture or otherwise harm it.

Are we then obliged to seek out animal suffering in nature and mitigate it? This is a more complex and relevant question. I for one feel that if we first respect an animal's right to be free from suffering, then a greater knowledge and sense of compassion will naturally evolve from it, which may well lead us to a point where we do attempt such things. I think it is enough at this stage to a) not be responsible for any suffering and b) mitigate or eradicate suffering within our purview. Veganism is the only guaranteed way to achieve objective a), but objective b) can be accomplished in myriad other ways, such as educating others on veganism and generally working towards a more ethical and compassionate (not "humane") social understanding. I have, at this relatively early stage in my own self-awareness, no firm opinion on whether such campaigns as those performed by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) are a good idea or a bad one. They are certainly a good idea for the mitigation of suffering in select groups of animals, as when a laboratory is broken into and the test subjects – rabbits, mice, beagles and the like – liberated, which is noble enough in itself, but I think it fosters severe distrust amongst the public (not because of the act itself, but because of the way the act is presented by the media and the research community). This will lead to stubbornness and make it even more difficult to educate people. I probably side with Gary Francione and others in this case by saying that veganism, and encouraging others towards veganism, is probably a better expenditure of energy, but at the same time I have no real objection to the "hard" work done by the ALF and similar organizations (provided they temper this work with their own vegan educational programmes).

Opposition III

"They don't suffer as much as humans do…"

Says who? And what do you mean by "suffering"? If you mean physical pain or merely discomfort, then the only thing you need to know in order to determine what can or can not suffer is whether it has a central nervous system or not. All animals have a central nervous system. If you mean mental anguish, then the only thing you need to know in order to determine what can or can not suffer is whether it has a brain or not. All animals have a brain. If you mean a combination of physical and mental pain, then it will no doubt enlighten you to learn that all animals, possessed as they are of a central nervous system and a brain, experience both.

But you intend paint it in shades of grey. "Don't suffer as much," as though because a pig is not Plath or Sartre and cannot articulate the relentless hideousness of its life for the betterment and inspiration of future generations, then its suffering is not equal to a human's. For that is the only difference between human and animal suffering: when an animal suffers, it cannot express its suffering to us in words that we understand, and therefore its suffering is unlike ours. But its physiological response is identical: if you harm it, it will flinch away from you, it will attempt escape, it will cry out in pain. Its nerves will carry the same information about the harm that has been inflicted upon it and its interior organs will respond in the same way ours do. This is, as has been said, an objective fact in the real world, and not a subjective interpretation. What possible evolutionary or indeed godly use could there be for a creature that, when harmed, feels nothing and yet calls out? Dumb liquid machine that she is, why does a dog cry and limp when she has a thorn in her foot? And why, when the thorn is removed, does she comfort herself by licking the injured paw? And why will her brother lie down beside her and offer sympathy by licking it in turn? Because her brother knows how much it hurts.

As for how the creature intellectualises the pain? Supremely, utterly irrelevant. Even if they lack the capacity to understand what, exactly, is happening to them, or why, they most certainly do not lack the capacity to feel it. This is enough. In fact, I will take it one step further by suggesting that if animals are as stupid as everyone likes to think they are, then not only do they suffer in much the same way that humans do, they suffer more.

A non-human animal without the same "advanced" cognitive tools as a human animal would be unable to conceptualize its suffering and would have no ability to seek interior relief. If I have a broken leg it may very well cause me a great deal of pain, but I take solace from knowing that the pain will not last forever. I have ways to distract myself from it and concentrate on other things. I am comforted by my family and friends, my survivability and mobility are not greatly hindered, and I can in fact numb it completely through drugs that I am able to go out and freely purchase from any chemist in the country. I may even take some dumb pride in it and revel in the sympathy it generates. But for the goose as its feathers are ripped from its body, or the chicken forced to sit in its own potent feces which eat through its flesh, or for a cow with a broken leg as it is whipped into the screaming slaughterhouse, or for the chimpanzee that has the top of its skull removed and receptors and sensors plunged into its brain (to test, amazingly, its response to “stimuli”), or for the lamb which is not even stunned before having its windpipe opened up by a kosher butcher, that terrible pain and that sheer blind panic are its everything.

Opposition II

“Shouldn’t we worry about X first?”

Unsympathetic people, upon learning that one is a supporter of animal liberation, tend to become immediately defensive, and commonly conjure arguments along the lines of “Shouldn’t we concentrate on wife beating and poverty first?”, as though it is humanly impossible to have more than one ethical concern at a time, and that those who prioritize animal liberation must be raving misanthropes. This is a fine example of speciesism, the notion that all animals are equal with the exception of humans, who are more equal. It betrays a scientific ignorance and a misguided intellect, or, to be fairer, a misinformed intellect.

It is also an attitude that raises a profound ethical problem, for if we are expected to deal with one issue before moving on to the next, then what hierarchical structure of importance should we apply to these wholly human concerns? Should we concentrate on the spousal abuse first and only then, once we have that problem well and truly and globally under control, do we move on to the next action item? How do we make our distinctions? Should our greatest minds have a meeting, and decide our proper course? Will the instructions descend to us from on high? Or will it be a democratic arrangement, where each of us has an equal say? Will people held in custody for years without trial or charge be allowed to vote on the female circumcision elimination bill, or the stomach cancer patient on the heart disease reduction act, and be expected to disregard their own interests? Do the obese get greater weighting than the anorexics in the BMI Amendment?

It is as if we are somehow miscreant extremists if we dare suggest that animal liberation activism could ever possibly be included in the same moral schema as eliminating third world debt or mitigating spread of AIDS in Africa. Putting aside the fact that it is extremely statistically unlikely that these “humans first” people are members of Amnesty International, or blood donors, or sponsor an Afghan orphan, or are irregular contributors to the Salvation Army or a similar local charity, or that they even give these issues a moment’s thought until the problem of animal cruelty is thrust into their faces and they require something to shield themselves from its horrific reality, they also fail to offer any coherent or convincing explanation for why human problems come first.

And it isn’t as though we are asking them to come on a firebombing exercise with us. This opposition is raised even if you simply recommend that somebody not purchase a certain brand of facial scrub, or cut back on their consumption of dairy and try soy, rice or wheat milk as tastier and far more nourishing alternatives (mustering support for the cause is, we all realise, sometimes a matter of modest degree). Perhaps by their regular intake of fast food hamburgers – the chief end result of the unspeakably vile and sadistic industry of intense factory farming – and using hemorrhoid ointments that have reached them only after first being rubbed into the eyes of hundreds of rabbits and other defenceless creatures in a laboratory somewhere, they consider themselves fine and noble contributors to the cause of equality for women or whatever else, but I submit that they are misleading themselves.

Opposition I

I wanted to start off by sketching, over the next few posts, a few common oppositions to the cause of animal rights or animal liberation. These will not be particularly thorough and are certainly not as well-scoped as the comprehensively excellent Animal Rights FAQ (which I heartily recommend you read forthwith if you have even the slightest interest in the subject) but are nevertheless issues I want to cover, however preliminarily. I fully welcome criticism of and feedback on any and all aspects.

“But God tells us that…”

Statements of this ilk I wish to dispose of from the outset, not because of their unusual prevalence, or because they constitute a superior moral arsenal (they certainly do not), but because they are innately grotty and irresponsible. While I fully accept that the construction of a consistently convincing and rigorous ethical framework for animal liberation necessitates a great many animal rights theorists carefully and deliberately architecting arguments that acknowledge disparate religious assertions and beliefs, either by integrating them or merely treating them with undue respect, this is not a position I am willing to take, and I categorically reject any and all expostulations founded in religiose rhetoric.

Permitting and abetting maleficent behaviour because it is an edict from a supernatural being who instructs us on how to live our lives is not something that shall be tolerated by me and nor should it be tolerated by any clear-minded individual with a genuine interest in truth.

Animals don’t have souls

The notion of a “soul” is a cowardly one, an enormous cop-out. The soul is not in any way measurable – you cannot weigh it, or hold it in your hands, or otherwise sense or perceive it. Dissect a person and you will not find it. Is this because it left the body immediately upon death? Through which orifice? Several centuries of documented medicine have yet to produce a single case of a surgeon sawing open a patient’s skull and catching a glimpse of the soul as it scurries away from the light. Perhaps souls are like cockroaches, unusually prescient?

The immortal soul is a manufactured attribute ascribed solely to humans in a vain attempt to bolster this strange notion we have of mankind’s inherent supremacy over all other life. It gives us moral primacy. Yet it is no more real than Carl Sagan’s garage dragon – invisible, hovering, heatless, incorporeal. “What’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?” There is none whatsoever, but we perpetuate its (non-)existence for the profound degree of comfort it offers, that we are somehow imbibed with this unique spirit while all other creatures are not. How convenient for us! And what a shame for them!

Can we categorically disprove the existence of the soul? Of course not, just as we cannot disprove Bertrand Russell’s intergalactic teapot, but inability to disprove does not amount to a concession that, for all our skeptical efforts, it might as well exist. You do not win an argument by pointing your finger at somebody and saying “Prove that it doesn’t!” The burden is not upon us.

But let us pretend, in order to amuse ourselves, that humans are in fact in possession of these immortal souls (meaning we live forever, or, rather, that there is another life for us after death). Then it seems to me that non-human animals have only one life, which increases our obligation towards them to make this life the best possible.

God made us in his image, and set us upon Earth to rule it

Christians in particular enjoy trumpeting our majesty and celebrating our inventiveness, our civilization, our dominion over all living and unliving things. Interestingly enough – and I have been in this situation enough times to call it a rule of thumb – when pressed into a corner these same people begin to argue for primal instincts, and even evolution: “Survival of the fittest”. Or “we are descended from cavemen.” Or “but bushmen eat meat”*, as though we were comparing like case with like, though later they laugh snidely with their friends about the plainsman’s obstinate barbarism.

I refuse to believe in any creator-god and I explicitly repudiate the notion of a creator-god who encourages the willful harm and torture of some of his creatures by others, as this is, after all, what anti-animal liberation Christians (and others) are effectively arguing for. They do this out of a fear of god, a fear that drives all their actions and inactions, but also out of desire, simply, to continue in their ways. The holy books, so apparently open to myriad interpretations as to disqualify them from any usefulness in any context whatsoever, seem to suggest that because humankind has been given dominion over the Earth, then mankind should do whatever mankind pleases. And not only that, but if mankind does not, then it is a sin (the church, having the parishioners in its thrall, will energize this belief without ever plainly stating it). What a poor god indeed who would punish those who refuse to punish others. And what a pathetic god that, merely by disobeying his instruction, we prove ourselves holier and more divine than he! And by not killing merely for pleasure or for taste, you become mightier than all the armies of the Earth. How sublime that is!

* The subject of flesh-eating and non-human animal use amongst "primitives", "tribespeople" or whatever they have most recently expressed a desire to be referred to is not, so far as I can ascertain, one very expansively discussed by Animal Rights Theorists, and I fully intend to introspect on it soon and report my findings. It would be a mistake, however, and as I indicated, to consider meat-eating/animal use for pure survival in the sub-Sahara or the jungles of Brazil and meat-eating/animal use for pure pleasure and convenience in the "civilized" world as one and the same issue.