Evolution & Animalism: Overcoming our Aversion to our Animal Natures
David P. Barash writes in the Fall 2000 issue of Free Inquiry:
"In an aversion to animals," wrote Walter Benjamin, "the predominant feeling is fear of being recognized by them through contact. The horror that stirs deep in man is an obscure awareness that in him something lives so akin to the animal that it might be recognized."
In effect, then, the fear of being connected to animals is due in large part to an awareness of the fact that there is a sound basis for making this connection.
One of the most direct routes to genocide and war has long been through dehumanizing the enemy via animal images: it is comparatively easy to kill people who have first been reduced to rats, dogs, bugs, or other "vermin." To be sure, people sometimes derive positive self-images from animals: no human society is without admiring references such as soaring like an eagle, being brave like a lion, strong as a bull, and so forth. But it is one thing to be like an animal, quite another to face the facts of being animals, all of us, deeply and irrevocably imprinted via our anatomy, ysiology, history, even our behavior. [emphasis in original]
If you look at attacks on evolution, you'll find frequent complaints about being compared with animals, about children being encouraged to act like animals, and rejections of being immediately related to animals. Many of the same far-right Christians who object to evolution on such grounds may also criticize others — especially gays — in dehumanizing rhetoric which likens them to lower animals or vermin. Although it's probably not occurring on a conscious level, all of this may have common attitude in the background which needs to be addressed before the issues themselves can be addressed.
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Comments
Their justification comes from that bible verse that says something like all the world’s plant and animals are for you to do as you please.
Does anyone know a time when the bible did anything good for humankind?
I believe there is a profound clue in referencing that scripture, but I would add this to it: A particular culture, already imagining itself to have divinely commissioned dominion over the earth, is the reason such things were written. Genesis is simply a reflection of a particular culture’s values as well as a justification for living like “gods.” “No, hunter-gatherers, we’re justified in taking your land to put under cultivation BECAUSE WE ARE LIVING AS MANKIND WAS MEANT TO LIVE–NOT LIKE THE ANIMALS.”