A Manufactured New Sin: Speciesism

A new thought crime takes direct aim at
Genesis and human exceptionalism

 

 

A MANUFACTURED NEW SIN—A PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION

By J.Y. Jones, MD

Out of the University of California at Berkeley comes a tome about a sin only sparsely catalogued previously, and certainly never discussed in depth. This new sin is found in a book detailing this radical concept, Speciesism in Biology and Culture: How Human Exceptionalism is Pushing Planetary Boundaries.[1]

This concept is not new; references to speciesism go back more than a decade, although none of those references have significant bearing on my review of this book, so they are not included. We will examine all the materials I could find leading up to such a presumptive addition or replacement for the sins already listed in the Holy Bible’s Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17; Deuteronomy 5:6-21), as well as throughout the Scriptures.

A press release put out by the University[2] will be covered here. Tomorrow, in a followup article, we will go through the book itself in more detail.

Roots of the New Sin

Hardly anyone would argue with the book’s first premise, that of species realism: “Species are uniquely real biological entities.” The second premise, however, though also true, is labeled false by the authors, since “speciesism” is defined by it: “Species are uniquely real and one or more are superior to others.” The “one” referred to here obviously stands head and shoulders above the rest, so the intended target is the whole of humanity. Though it sounds new, it’s a concept at least as old as the animal rights movement, which has never been taken seriously by most people. Just try to check in at almost any steak restaurant and see how many people ignore that movement, though this work seeks to somehow derive its legitimacy from that form of radicalism.

The main thrust of the book is a challenge to human exceptionalism, an illogical position to take since, while nature and the remarkable planet on which we live are amazing, one doesn’t see cities with architecture that boggles the mind, scientific discoveries, study of objects billions of light years away, medical advances, super highways with massive bridges, and such things emerging from any other species (and I will use species in its original sense, rather than conforming to the book’s lesser definition).

Sorry, Darwin; Humans Are Exceptional

I will consistently maintain that man is the exceptional species, because of our sense of self awareness, our knowledge that death awaits us at the end of this life, our ability to reason, our creative ability, our capacity to think in both mathematical and abstract terms, an inborn sense of right and wrong, plus an unending list of other features unique to human beings.

These are all the construct of supernaturalism, anathema to Darwinian scientists, but still the only explanation that suffices. Man was given his many abilities by God, along with a mandate from Him to be diligent stewards of these abilities. Furthermore, we bear the image of God, an attribute found in no other species.[3]

I am well aware that evolutionary biologists wrote the book (and the words evolution or evolutionary always seem to be unnecessary in most applications—adding no substance to any discussion except a tip of the hat to Darwin). They are obviously prisoners of the Darwinian view of the undirected appearance of life, a universal common ancestor, and progressive upward movement of life (plus other developments in the cosmos itself, for that matter). They have no answer to the most basic questions, chief of which may be how did that assumed first common ancestor ever navigate across the gap between non-life to become life?

Yet no deviation or competition with the reigning godless scheme is allowed, and persecution of “doubters” seems to be increasing by the year.[4] It may sound far-fetched, but that persecution is posed to sound the death knell for evolution as a viable concept. Before proceeding further, let’s take a brief look at this persecution.

Darwinian Cancel Culture

The real reason behind the intolerance of alternative views is because the case against evolution is so strong that competition would rapidly nullify the entire doctrine. A very recent case in point is that of PhD biochemist and researcher Change Laura Tan, a tenured associate professor, who was summarily terminated from the University of Missouri’s biology staff (see 11 Jan 2023) after her prodigiously competent research findings began to skewer the Darwinian myth.

This is well documented in her book, co-authored by Dr. Jeffrey P. Tompkins.[5]  Her extensive research showed, among other findings, that the genes responsible for DNA replication, transcription, and translation are almost completely distinct across the three domains of life, archaea, prokaryotes, and eukaryotes. The implications of this discovery rapidly became evident to her superiors, since her data made it clear that evolution from a common ancestor was impossible, as an unbridgeable gap thus exists between the three domains.

Dr Tan’s finding comes as no surprise to proponents of intelligent design, nor do the findings of apparently very young planets and moons in our Solar System, nor the recent James Webb Space Telescope findings of spiral-armed galaxies seen distressingly far back in time. In all these situations and more, astronomers had expected to find totally different realities, yet practically all the evidence leads away from long ages and slow evolution and toward a young universe, solar system, and biosphere. Predicting outcomes of any research is one of the weakest cases for Darwinism. It puts evolutionists in an ongoing and constant “how to save the theory” mode.

The press release (ref. 2) has a statement in it that deserves attention.  The writer states:

More insidious is the common belief that some species—or even lineages—are superior to others. This has led to prioritizing humans and human culture over everything else and accepting that ecosystems and life within them should be destroyed to make way for humans.

I recognize a grain of truth in the statement, since in many cases mankind has failed in its responsibilities to be excellent stewards. Still, rather than a truism, this statement smacks of an animal rightist-type attempt to eliminate the unique status of mankind, which in fact lowers the status of all created life, since we are its designated stewards, as enumerated further below.

Calling Better Stewards

Improvement in stewardship can be accomplished, but it will never work in the utopian way this statement is intended. If fully implemented, the human race would be unable to do anything to any other species, including plants. No vegetables to eat! Clearing land for any purpose (no matter how noble or selfless that purpose, such as building the campus at UC Berkeley, as one example) by its very nature destroys and depletes habitat for countless species (possibly in all three domains of life). We already have in place a vast array of permitting processes, inspections, environmental impact studies, and the like, in a somewhat vain and certainly marginally successful attempt to do things better. These measures may do some good, and certainly provide lots of government employment, but that they delay almost any project and raise building costs is inevitable.

More insidious is the common belief that some species—or even lineages—are superior to others. —from the book Speciesism in Biology and Culture

Can Darwinians Do Better?

In any case, more such restrictions are not the answer, and it appears that such is the goal of creating a whole new category of “sin.” Since these deluded ones don’t believe anything is actually a sin, I doubt if any Darwinist will come up with a workable solution. In the Christian domain, the accountability to the Master Builder is powerful motivation to find workable, people-friendly, and environment-friendly solutions.

As mentioned, I believe we are witnessing the death throes of evolution, and we have advanced pretty far down that road. More and more people, including those with higher education degrees, are seeing the light and rejecting evolution as a worldview. And as its status is exposed even more as a “house of cards” based on faith in a highbrow scam, even more people will leave the sinking ship.

Nevertheless, its most ardent hard-core adherents will likely never change their minds. Nobel laureate Max Planck insightfully stated, “A new scientific truth* does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”[6] This statement has been paraphrased “Science advances one funeral at a time.”

*In this case, I refer to the weakness of the case for evolution. Thankfully, I am in a minor way an exception to this rule, as I was an ardent evolutionist up to forty years ago, when the contrary facts (fairly rudimentary at that time, compared to what we know today) plus the grace of God made me reject evolution and the hopelessness it embodies and embraces. Back then I was pretty much isolated in my negative opinion of Darwin’s folly, but increasingly today I find myself in the mainstream of humanity in general (but not likely so much among university biology professors). I exchanged my scientific indoctrination for the joys and solid assurances of the Christian life, and these become more precious to me as I grow ever older.  It was not an easy choice at the time, but in retrospect it was right and good.

Speciesism and Government

The press release about the book (ref. 2) states that

We (humans) push the global climate to extremes while driving to extinction the very organisms that we climbed over to get to the top.

What organisms actually advanced mankind to their disadvantage? What climate change—a whole different deception that is only slightly related? And isn’t just this statement what Darwinism has always been about? Doubtless man has in the past caused the extinction of certain species (the great auk and the passenger pigeon come to mind), but apart from these instances, the above quote is a shamefully shallow statement that is factually untrue.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

In our time, new laws passed (the ESA, or Endangered Species Act, for example) and their enforcement have been helpful in recovering some species, though there is a downside: Bureaucracy. Of the 1300 or so listed species and subspecies (endangered or threatened), only a small handful have been removed from the ESA, since listing is easy and removal is almost impossible. Much of this failure of the ESA relates to protecting bureaucratic job security and thus has become a major excuse for bureaucratic foot-dragging. Too often such legislation falls under the “Law of Unintended Consequences,” truly a lasting legacy of our times.

One example is the red-cockaded woodpecker, which has been listed since the ESA was passed.[7] It is still endangered, and the rules of the ESA are the culprit. As a tree farmer myself, I know the exact reason: The bird requires 80-year-old pine trees for nesting. If a population is discovered on one’s land, the affected parcel can be de facto seized, so that any human utilization, including logging, is prohibited. What pine tree grower in his right mind would let his trees grow to woodpecker-usable size (80 years old) given the existence of a very real threat of losing their land and livelihood to a bird? Yet individuals so penalized are allowed to keep on paying taxes on the land, though it becomes almost impossible to sell (often it ends up being donated to some conservation organization, when it is then sealed off from human utilization virtually forever).

Evolution vs Genesis: The Fruit Test

As well, we didn’t “climb to the top,” as the above quote maintains, we were designed by God to occupy that position. For most of history, man has been an imperfect, but nevertheless effective, steward of the earth and its resources. How well we carry out our dominion mandate has a tremendous amount to do with how well we suppress and otherwise deal with our Adam-imposed sin nature. The main thrust of Darwinism is, and always has been, a futile attempt to escape the due penalty for our actions in this life. But the Scriptural truth cannot be circumvented: “It is appointed unto man once to die, and after this the judgment.” [8]

On the subject of the unquestionable sin of racism, it’s quite true that this has always existed, as have wars, famines, droughts, storms, and the like (most or all of these did not exist, apparently, in the pristine and gentle conditions that were characteristic of earth before the Flood of Noah). In fact, I oppose any form of reparations to anyone who alleges to have ancestors who were enslaved, because no one alive today could possibly be held responsible for ancestral sins, plus in human recorded history, practically every people group has at some point been enslaved.  However, a brutal form of racism was scientifically legitimized by Darwin with his 1859 Origin of Species book, which ironically was printed a very few years before the USA finally abolished slavery (Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, January 31, 1865).

By all accounts, Darwin never apologized, recanted, or repented for his position on the superiority of the white race. Consequently, there can be little doubt that the worst mass murderers in history were his dedicated followers, and their most heinous actions were the natural outcome of their Darwinist worldview.[9] My cited references deal only with the Nazi Holocaust, but other mass murderers such as Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao Zedong, as well as current villain Vladimir Putin, all share a common worldview as atheists and Darwinists. But is there anyone in the scientific community who would presume to “cancel” Darwin?  Of course not, because for the present the cost is simply too high. I believe that may very well change.

Still, even these maniacal leaders, as well as Darwin himself, would likely be appalled at this new concept, attempting to equalize in any way Homo sapiens with Giardia lamblia.

Coming Next

In the next installment in coverage of this new “sin,” we will delve more deeply into the book itself (reference 1). There we will try to make some points that will hopefully challenge those who follow Darwin to look into a better, more satisfying, and more lasting way of life.

References

[1] Speciesism in Biology and Culture, Editors Brian Swartz and Brent D. Mishler, UC Berkeley, Springer International Publishing, 01/09/2023.

[2] Robert Sanders, https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/01/09/speciesism-like-racism-imperils-humanity-and-the-planet/

[3] Genesis 1:26-30, NASB.

[4] Bergman, Jerry, Censoring the Darwin Skeptics: How Belief in Evolution is Enforced by Eliminating Dissidents, 2022, Southworth, WA: Leafcutter Press, Revised edition.

[5] Tan, Change Laura and Jeffrey P. Tompkins, Information Processing Differences Between  Archaea and Eukarya—Implications of Homologs and the Myth of Eukaryogenesis. Answers Research Journal 8:121-141, March 2015.

[6] Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, trans. Frank Gaynor (New York Philosophical Library, 1949), pp 33-34.

[7] https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/animals-we-protect/red-cockaded-woodpecker/

[8] Hebrews 9:27, NASB

[9] Bergman, Jerry, https://crev.info/2023/01/scientists-holocaust/; Hicks, Stephen. Nietzsche and the Nazis. Ockham’s Razor Publishers, Rockford College, Illinois, 2010

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J.Y. Jones MD has been an eye physician and surgeon for five decades. He is a decorated Vietnam veteran, speaks Spanish, and has volunteered in 28 overseas eye-surgery mission trips. He has received numerous awards for writing and photography, and is a frequent speaker at sportsmen’s events, where he particularly enjoys sharing his Christian testi­mony. J.   Y. and his wife Linda have been married since 1964.

Dr. Jones is an avid hunter who has taken all North American big game species using the same Remington .30-06 rifle, resulting in the book One Man, One Rifle, One Land (Safari Press, 2001); Dr. Jones helped Safari Press produce the Ask the Guides series, their most successful North American hunting books. He has written 14 books and some 300 short articles for various periodicals. For more articles by Dr Jones, visit his Author Profile page.