What Students Learn in Liberal Colleges ...

We took cameras and tape recorders to high school and college campuses around North America. We asked some randomly selected students what they think about the relative value and importance of human beings as compared to animals. Let's see how they responded:

"I don't know if humans are more important than animals. Part of the reason I am in college is to figure out these types of things."

"Well, I think people are just as valuable as animals. I think it is a combined thing. We are all alive. We are all living creatures. We all deserve the same."

"By far people are way more important than animals. I mean, I consider myself to be a little bit right-wing, conservative, and all these save-the-animals people, well, personally they annoy me."

"I don't think people are any more important than animals. Every living thing has a right to be heard, and we are not to say whether we are more important than just a dog or cat."

"People are more important than animals. Mainly just because animals can't speak for themselves."

"The value of individuals and people has to do with being able to take care of what is around you, being able to take care of animals and plants and your environment and each other, which humans can uniquely do."

"Human life is important. It is sacred. The Bible said we were set apart from the animals. We have a higher position."

"When people kill animals to eat, I kind of cringe a little bit. You know, that personally is my opinion. I thought we abolished slavery."

Obviously, these students express different opinions. The first person was somewhat agnostic about the question and said, "I'm not sure. One reason I am going to college is to inquire and to investigate such questions." Others spoke assertively. One person who said people are more important explained that he is "right-wing," though a high value judgment for humanity is not unique to a political view. Most people said that, fundamentally, there is no difference-we are the same as other animals because we are all alive.

The latter comment is most intriguing. The way we exploit animals is wrong because slavery has ended. Notice the value judgment in this statement: "There is something inherently wrong with slavery. We are opposed to slavery as an evil. What difference does it make, ultimately, whether we put a horse in a harness and attach him to the buggy and beat him on the back with a whip to transport us around, or if we hitch up people and beat them on the back? After all, we are all the same."

The dream of the American Civil Rights Movement was persuasively stated by Martin Luther King Jr. King protested vigorously against discrimination. The heroic woman Rosa Parks ignited a nation when she refused to sit in the back of the bus because of the color of her skin. But if we are all germs, who cares who sits in the back of the bus? What difference does it make whether one person enslaves another, human or animal? We make value judgments about the worth and the value of human dignity on the basis of a philosophical foundation. And if that foundation says from the outset that human life is insignificant because we are destined to return to the slime from which we came, why should we care?

-- From a Usenet newsgroup 2/07