Animal Rights and Objective Ethics

How should we treat animals? Should we use them in experimental labs? Should we support modern factory farms?

I've been faced with these questions through reading a few articles for a class. The most interesting article I read was by Tom Regan. We is for animal rights to the point that they are equal to human beings. What I though was really interesting about his articles is he developed a ethical system called "The Rights View". This view is simple: every human being has worth regardless of race, gender, disabilities, or anything else because the are subjects of life, or participants of life. He then moves to the basis that animals, being participants and subjects of life, also have the same rights as humans.

This strong view is hard to justify and ultimately it is unsound. But I'm not focused on that really. My concern is that he never justified why he thought that humans should have moral worth. It was a given to him. This is the greatest question that is begged in our culture today - we assume that humans have worth. I am all for this of course, but we never really see if our worldview can justify such a statement. In all my studies in the university and on my own, I have yet to hear any cogent, coherent, or strong enough basis for the justification for inherent human worth outside of God. It falls apart without a transcendent referent.

So how does a believer in God deal with animal rights? Well a Christian can look to St. Francis of Assisi as a start. He or she can also realize that God created man in His image, but nonetheless gave man the responsibility to be stewards of His creation. These different roles do not neccesitate inequality, but the essence of man does. Man has a glory, likeness to God, "divine spark" that no other has. This does not mean to dominate, but the very nature of this spark is to love, care, and be responsible stewards. We must not neglect God's creation; we must take care of it and respect it.

This obviously means to treat creation humanely. At the same time, we must realize differences in moral worth from the rest of creation and humans. By this I mean that it is better for someone to kill my dog than it is for someone to kill my brother or neighbor. This also means that is possible to have animals in experimental settings that treat them as humanely as possible because it is better for an animal to be the first experiment than a human being.

I say this loosely though, realizing that there are always exceptions. What I am saying means that when a human life is at risk than an animal life would be better taken than a human life. For instance, in the disease of AIDS, it would be worthwhile to test animals, as they did when they tested for a cure for polio, for cures than to just let it continue. This assumes, of course, that no other option is viable or as effective. However, when it comes to testing superficial things such as beauty products, or other such things, we should not even feel the need to endanger lives over such trivial things. But when life, disease, and disability is in concern, I see a moral window (although very small).

Finally, in regards to modern factory farms, they are just horrible. This, however, has to do with reform of the system and not eating animals at all (although I have sympathy to the vegetarian and/or vegan lifestyle). I think it would be smart to find any possible way out of supporting large factory farms that treat animals inhumanely. Unfortunately, this is a hard thing to do, especially in bigger cities. It is important though, and something I'm looking into.