Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Plants Have Feelings, Too

I am not making this up.

I just started preaching through Genesis. Last Sunday, one of my points was that the doctrine of creation matters, especially the doctrine of the creation of humans in the image of God. A member of the church sent me this article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Switzerland's Green Power Revolution: Ethicists Ponder Plants Rights." Yes, plants have rights in Switzerland. According to the article, bioligists in Switzerland have to prove that they are not harming a plant's dignity by modifying it genetically. Switzerland's constitution gives plants rights. As a result vegetation has an inherent value and that it is immoral to arbitrarily harm plants by, say, "decapitation of wildflowers at teh roadside without rational reason."

The man who gave me the article remarked, "After reading it, I became convicted by what happens to coffee beans at our house. We put them in the freezer, then pulverize them in a grinder, then douse them with boiling water, adn tehn we toss them down teh garbage disposal." Cruel indeed.

I don't know if it is funny or sad when radicals make Reductio ad absurdum arguments for you.

This shows both the logic and the irrationality of denying the Creator. If there is no God, then there is no basis for ethics. All living things are of equal value. However, what they cannot prove is that any living thing has any value at all.

3 comments:

M. Flexibilis said...

Your article takes it a step further, but I recently read an article on Spain extending limited rights to the great apes. Not all that surprisingly, Peter Singer helped lead the charge.

Anonymous said...

Besides saying that the values are obvious or that they don't need to explain origin (which is no argument), what are their best arguments for assigning value or meaning to anything? In other words, what allows them to play with matter without explaining where the matter came from?
I try to listen closely but that answer usually evades me.
I'm not being rhetorical.

Great Googly Moogly! said...

Your post reminds me of another post I just recently read about the same thing. I don't know how to "link", so I'll just copy and past it:

http://vanguardchurch.blogspot.com/2008/11/dignity-of-plants.html

While it's true that man is "more valuable than the birds of the air", etc., we should respect God's creation and care for it as God's stewards. After all, the New Heavens and New Earth are simply the redemption of this cosmos in which we live now. This is our "home" now and in the consummation (we were created from the earth and for life in this cosmos) and we should treat it (and all that it contains) as such, even though it also shares in the curse and will one day itself be redeemed.

I don't consider myself an "environmental wacko", but I'm rediscovering the purpose of God in and for His creation. He called all things that He made "good" and "very good", and as Christians we should be the leaders in living in harmony with the created order. We don't "worship" it; but we should consider it as God Himself does.

Jason