Now, real scientists have some legitimate issues with the animal-rights movement. At times it has been regarded as almost as much of a threat to scientific research and understanding as the creationists.
So, who is Wesley Smith, you may ask? The Chron provides this bio:
Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. He is researching a book on the animal rights movement.
The Discovery Institute, a research institute in Seattle that promotes conservative causes, organized a briefing on intelligent design last year on Capitol Hill for prominent members of Congress.
"They are skilled in analyzing evidence and ideas," said Rep. Tom Petri, R- Wis., one of several members of Congress who were hosts at the session in a congressional hearing room. "They are making a determined effort to attempt to present the intelligent-design theory, and ask that it be judged by normal scientific criteria."
Michelle Goldberg in her Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (2006) calls the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture "the Seattle headquarters of the intelligent design movement".
Smith's column doesn't argue explicitly based on religious grounds. In fact, it cites the prestigious Nature magazine to express some scientific concerns about limiting medical research on animals.
So why is a flat-earther seemingly taking the side of scientists in this question? One reason is that it's part of the creationist schtick to claim to be scientific, when actually their whole scam is to confuse the public enough about science to get conservative Protestant religious views of creation (and other things) into public school science textbooks. Discrediting real science is part of the larger agenda.
But it really is a scam. They are coming from a religious point of view. More specifically, from a particular view of the Christian religion that is rejected by most Christians.
By publishing his article without alerting their readers that the Discovery Institute is a religious-scam operation, they are helping the flat-earthers pose as friends of science.
Shame on the Chronicle for playing along with the creationists like this!
The Chron bio of Wesley Smith notes that he's publishing a whole book against animal rights. His article does give a hint of the Christian-fundamentalist religious agenda behind his approach:
But there is an even more important, if esoteric, reason for refusing to grant rights to apes. The fundamental purpose of the [animal-rights] project is to undermine our belief in human exceptionalism - the principle that human life has unique moral value simply because it is human. Animal liberationists abhor human exceptionalism as bigotry against animals. Thus, by persuading us to include apes in the so-called community of equals, supporters hope to slowly erode society's belief in the unique importance of human life.
These misguided efforts overlook a crucial point: The way we act is based substantially on the nature of beings we perceive ourselves to be. In this regard, our self-concept as the world's most important species is extremely beneficial, because it is both the stimulus for promoting universal human rights as well as the grounding for our distinctly human duty to treat animals humanely.
... If we truly want to make this a better world, the answer is not to give apes unwarranted rights, but rather, to embrace the unique importance and solemn responsibilities that are essential aspects of living fully human lives. (my emphasis)
The flat-earthers want to resist any notion of physical kinship of humans and other primates, because such ideas are based on the godless, Satanic theory of evolution.
Also, the notion of human dominion over the created world is often criticized by ecological thinkers as contributing to an anti-environmental attitude. The flat-earthers don't want people bothering with nonsense like global warming. Because, hey, if God wants to heat up the planet, why should we try to stop Him? And if he uses oil companies and industrial polluters to help Him do it, well that's His choice, isn't it?
The Scriptural reference is to Genesis 1:28, in which God tells the newly-created Adam and Eve: "Be fruitful and miltiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living things that moves upon the earth". (RSV)
There are other religious interpretations of this besides "humans should do anything they feel like to other animals" (my words, not Smith's). God's injunction in Genesis can also be read as stewardship, which includes a strong sense of responsibility. Poisoning the air and water and melting the polar icecaps so that coastal cities around the world are submerged under water Atlantis-like does not strike most people as responsible stewardship.
Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg addresses this concept in her book, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis (1995). She focuses at one point on the meaning of Adam's "standing" as it has been interpreted in the Jewish midrash, the body of stories and interpretations elaborating the Biblical texts:
... Adam occupies a vantage point from which he sees not only the stars, but all created beings on earth. He can see downwards as well as upwards, he is rooted in a reality which he can perceive and map.
Nothing is said to indicate that he sees the animals as minuscule, but clearly they see him as awesome in his verticality. They assume, indeed, that he is their creator. That is, man knows himself as conspicuous, self-conscious, not an indigenous part of the world of nature. There is danger and fear in the loneliness of this position, the hazard of hubris. For what the animals perceive is something truly Godlike. In standing, he is the equivalent, in the lower world, of the angels. Sardonically, [Elias] Canetti writes: "We always overrate the man who stands upright. ... Because standing is ... the antecedent of all motion, a standing man creates an impression of energy which is as yet unused." The reserves of possibility signified by the standing position may be something of an illusion, Canetti suggests. We see Adam's godlikeness, here, from the viewpoint of the adoring animals.
But the authentic greatness of Adam emerges in his response. He abandons his belfry grandeur and proclaims a common identity with the animals as created beings who owe adoration to an invisible Creator. And he does this in no obsequious humility but in a paradoxical perception that "to stand in the presence of God" is precisely to achieve full "majesty and strength." In voluntary acknowledgment, firstly of the vast gamut of created life ("How many are Your works, O God!") and then of the ultimate coherence under God of this "pied beauty," Adam becomes most Godlike. He makes common cause with the animals (lit., I and you, let us go put on majesty), but he, in fact, goes first and alone.
The paradox consists of Adam's diminishing himself — surrendering a speciously Godlike role and assuming an authentic one. The paradigm for this is the enigmatic rabbinic statement: "Wherever you find the greatness of God, there you find His humility." Power and humility are both implicit in this vision of Adam standing in the presence of God: "man in his wholeness wholly attending." (my emphasis)
Of course, when you are trying to read Genesis as a 21st-century science textbook, you have a tendency to miss stuff like that. The religious stuff, that is, the real point of the Bible.
