WHAT CONNECTS THESE VIEWS?
These three views may seem very different when they say how we relate to animals and how we treat them. Yet if we look more closely, they all have one thing in common: they share the belief that we should see ourselves, and define who we are, by referring to our supposed place in the 'World', 'Nature', the 'Universe', 'Evolution', or something external of which we are just a part. This belief is expressed in many different forms, but we find it in dogmatic statements like:
'We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes'. (Richard Dawkins).
'You are a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and the stars'. (Max Ehrmann's poem: Desiderata. 1927).
'Behold a Universe so immense that I am lost in it'. (Bernard de Fontenelle 1657-
There is a reason why I've put quotes around the words World, Nature, or Universe, as well as my using words like belief and dogmatic. For just as Freud spoke of psychology taking on all the characteristics of religion; so a belief in something higher than ourselves: like the World, Nature, the Universe, or Evolution; has also taken on the characteristics of a religion. In this case this religion has Nature as its God (or Mother Nature Goddess?), with an accompanying set of beliefs and values; whether emotional, biological or mechanical. So what is happening when we choose one of these sets of beliefs and values?
