Free The Whales, Diminish Man

Our understanding of creation is a central battleground in Satan’s attack against God. He chose in his confrontation with Eve long ago to call into question God’s character and His Word.

Of late he’s grown bolder, calling into question God’s very existence. Man’s philosophy of rationalism played right into his hands. According to this thinking Man only calls “real” what he can discern with his physical senses. Since no one in this era has seen a burning bush, a flaming mountain, or a pillar of fire, it is easy to declare God to be a myth, made up to keep the masses content and under control.

The problem was, people had that pesky Book — the one that told all about God and His work in the world. For many, this Word proved convincing, despite the fact that it so often seemed to contradict observable science. People relied on something called faith and the infallibility of God’s Word.

So Satan stepped up his game. He went after the image of God on earth — Man himself. If God did not exist, you see, there could be nothing pointing to Him. But first Satan had to change basic perceptions. Creation, then, came from an event much like spontaneous combustion — a result of chance, not of design; from the mind of nothing rather than from the mind of Omniscience.

From that happenstance, all of matter evolved, with Man, nothing more than the most intelligent of all that came into being. Nothing else separates Man from the rest of organic life. We are in the evolutionary chain, and the animals are our brothers.

Such a view, of course, means that Man is NOT a reflection of who God is as those who advocate creation contend. God, according to the Book, made all, then Man, in God’s own image.

But if Man is nothing more than part of the evolutionary chain, there’s nothing special about him. No image of God, no soul or spirit. He is matter like any other animal. When he dies, his dust returns to dust, and nothing more.

A group of people have been pushing this view to it’s logical conclusion. It’s wrong, they say, for Man to treat other animals with disregard and disrespect. We shouldn’t kill animals for their skin or fur; we shouldn’t use them in experiments; we shouldn’t eat their flesh. And the latest? We shouldn’t enslave them.

According to a lawsuit filed in San Diego last October, San Diego’s Sea World is holding their animals as slaves. On behalf of five orcas, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) took the zoo to court, and a week and a half ago argued the case before a judge.

Said their attorney, Jeffrey Kerr, “For the first time in our nation’s history, a federal court heard arguments as to whether living, breathing, feeling beings have rights and can be enslaved simply because they happen to not have been born human” (as quoted in “San Diego judge to decide future of whale ‘slavery’ case”
by Julie Watson, Associated Press, emphasis mine).

Thankfully the judge threw the case out two days later, ruling that the 13th Amendment applied only to humans.

For intelligent beings, some humans seem to be … less than sharp. Why would humans, of all the animals, care about the “enslavement” of fellow creatures? Seemingly other whales don’t even care. Other animals aren’t going vegetarian either.

As misguided as it is, the very fact that members of PETA are trying to right what they perceive to be a wrong only proves that humans stand apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. We have a moral compass, a sense of right and wrong, that other animals don’t have. Where did this come from? How could something with no root in the evolutionary chain be a part of the evolutionary process?

Who else in the world is moral besides Man? Well, God is, and the Bible explains that He breathed the breath of life into Man and he became a living soul. (See Gen. 2:7). The fact that Man alone is like God in this respect is consistent with the Biblical account of Man’s creation:

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Gen. 1:27)

People are going to great lengths to show that some animals have language and feelings, that they bond much the same as do humans — all proofs, they say, that animals are our brothers. It’s all very logical — except the orcas don’t seem to think the fish they feed on are brothers, so why should we?

Unless we’re different. Unless we have a moral compass that determines some things are right and some things are wrong. Once, that compass was aligned with God and His holiness. More and more we are turning things upside down — calling evil, good and good, evil. Nevertheless, the existence of a moral compass is itself the image of God shining through. He continues to make Himself known through His creation, no matter what Satan does to distort the picture.