Surely We’re Different!
Presented by Gregory Forbes, PhD, Professor of Biological Sciences, GRCC
About the Speaker
Dr. Greg Forbes is the National Course Director for the National Science Foundation’s Chautauqua course on evolution and evolution education for college and university professors. He also serves as the Education Director for the Michigan Evolution Education Initiative, a statewide initiative designed to help teachers effectively teach evolution; as the Director of the Evolution Education Institute, an initiative that expands the Michigan project nationally; is the Evolution Education Specialist for the 4000 member Michigan Science Teachers Association; and is a founding member of Michigan Citizens for Science.
Dr. Forbes is a Professor of Biological Sciences at Grand Rapids Community College where he also serves as Director of the Science Education Center.
Boasting a broad education in biological sciences Dr. Forbes has earned a B.S. in Wildlife and Natural Resources Management from California Polytechnic University, a M.S. in Biological Sciences from California Polytechnic University and a Ph.D. from the Department of Zoology and also the Department of Tropical Environmental Studies at James Cook University in Australia. Dr. Forbes also holds professional certification as a Certified Wildlife Biologist.
With 25 years of university and college instructional experience, Dr. Forbes’ instructional and curricular development work has included the development of 22 college and university courses in both the biological and physical sciences at four institutions as well as instruction of a wide diversity of courses such as zoology, natural resources management, geology, tropical ecology, marine biology and human anatomy and physiology.
In 2004 Dr. Forbes was awarded the Michigan Science Teachers Association highest award, College & University Science Teacher of the Year. In 2005, the Michigan ACLU selected Greg as the Civil Libertarian of the Year for his work in defending the integrity of science education against attempts to introduce non-scientific ideologies into the public classroom. He was also selected by the Freethought Association as the 2006 Freethinker of the Year in recognition of his efforts to promote freethought and in consideration to his work in the legislative arena to safeguard the teaching of science in public classrooms.
Since 1993, Dr. Forbes has served as an Editorial Board member for Skeptic Magazine, an international publication promoting a scientific approach to addressing social, philosophical, and scientific issues with a significant emphasis upon evolutionary thought, education, and inquiry. He also authors a regular column in the Michigan Science Teachers Association’s Journal entitled “Natural Selections; Essays on Evolution and the Nature of Science”. Dr. Forbes has been a featured or keynote speaker at many dozens of scientific and educational conferences. He is also a founding member and current Board member of the Michigan Citizens for Science, a citizens group that works to ensure quality science education in the public classroom.
About the Event
Announcements
As a reminder, we will be having a business meeting concerning our group’s growth and direction on March 21. This will be at the same place and time as our regular meetings.
Our next topic for discussion will be “Guns, Germs & Steel” moderated by Marshall Grate, on March 28. Then, two weeks later, on April 11, Jill Pinkerton will be the moderator for “Is alcoholism a disease?” Both will be presented at the Calkins Science Center of the downtown Grand Rapids GRCC campus and will be at 7PM.
A couple of items to point out are “This Godless Universe” by Rev Chuck, alt.atheism newsgroup. It is a well-expressed portrayal of the universe that is not planned or designed with us in mind, yet written with the poetic wonder that harkens to the late Carl Sagan. Also, from the University of Michigan Special Collections Library in Ann Arbor, MI, the booklet called Challenging Religious Dogma; A History of Freethought, was presented. It spans the lives and thoughts of freethinkers from Lucretius (c.99-c.55 BCE) to M. Murray O’Hair, who, with family members, was abducted and brutally murdered 6 years ago.
Dr. Gregory Forbes, the education director for the Michigan Scientific Evolution Education Initiative, brought us all up to speed regarding the recent legislation- H.B. 4382. This legislation seeks to change the education code for grades K-12, amending the current one to mandate that evolution be taught as an unproven theory and where evolution is taught, it is to include the creationist account of intelligent design by a divine creator along with it. Dr. Forbes gave us some history of similar, failed, legislative attempts to teach a religious viewpoint as science in public school science classes. He believes it will get to Gov. Engler’s desk, but not survive past that point. Unfortunately this mess may well make Michigan a national laughing stock, a la Kansas, as more attention is given to it.
Presentation
Dr. Forbes also joined Jeff Seaver in presenting this meeting’s topic: “Surely We’re Different! Is there ‘sanctity of life’ for human and non-human animals?” Jeff did the primary presentation and Greg fielded technical questions regarding biology and animal behavior, as well as calling on people in the group during discussion. Jeff mentioned two earlier topics in conjunction with this one. One, dealing with animal rights, was moderated by Simon Hatley and another, by Forbes, asking the same lead question of what distinction, if any, can be validly made between humankind and the rest of the animal kingdom. It was the general concensus that differences were more about degree, rather than kind, from these talks.
Jeff based a good deal of the presentation on ideas found in the writings of animal rights activist Peter Singer, and in particular, his books Writings on an Ethical Life, and Animal Liberation. One striking opinion of Singer’s is that our closest primate relatives should be re-classified as members of the genus Homo; the one that now includes only humans. This has been promoted by such heavyweights in the fields of evolutionary biology and zoology as Jared Diamond and Richard Dawkins. Along these lines The Great Ape Project was mentioned, which seeks to extend the rights of humans to the Great Apes. While resistance to these ideas is not surprising, it was noted that Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), had as her thesis the view that women should be considered intelligent creatures, educable, and as having the same innate rights as men. This was, likewise, met with incredulity and fierce resistance at the time.
Progress has been made regarding animal rights including the British government saying it will no longer allow the great apes to be the subject of harmful scientific experimentation; the US National Science Foundation report recommending the “retirement” rather than killing of chimps that are “surplus” for research; and New Zealand’s ‘99 passage of legislation prohibiting the use of “non-human hominids” (their wording) in research, unless said research was to benefit them individually or as a species.
Jeff had wrestled with this issue for a long time, having come out of a fundamentalist Christian background, with its profound distinction between mankind, made in “God’s image” and the “lower animals” that we were to have “dominion over.” His experiences also put forth the idea of “sanctity of life” but always excluding non-human life. So he explored the definitions of “sanctity” and kept coming up against terms like “holiness,” “saintliness,” and particularly “the “sacred” condition. Further digging on the term “sacred” dealt with religious veneration, worship of a deity, pertaining to religious objects, rites or passages. For a freethinker, these concepts were not very helpful, involving as they do the religious belief in a deity and humankind being divinely created.
We talked about what it was to be a human being; a member of the species Homo sapiens and got into what characteristics our species possesses. Issues of abortion and euthanasia are only related to humans. When does “personhood” properly become affixed to us along the continuum from conception to birth? In this vein, it was said that “membership in our species isn’t sufficient to give life value or to make ethical decisions.” We then discussed the idea of equality within our species. Peter Singer stated that equality is not a fact (different people have different abilities, deficits, strengths and cognitive levels, for instance), but rather it is a moral idea. George Orwell, in Animal Farm wrote, “All pigs are equal. But some pigs are more equal than others.” The concept that membership in our species is not sufficient for “sanctity of life” was extended to it not being sufficient justification for extending equal treatment. Since sanctity of life deals so heavily with religious beliefs, we explored what ethical standards humanists can apply. We looked at whether to treat all species equally regardless of condition, or only regarding certain species. And we explored what gives life meaning; what is the value of an individual life.
In seeking a unifying theme, we broadly considered shared interests of various species. Paramount among these was the interest in not suffering. This has implications for non-human animals as used in our diet, our experimentation and captive to us for other reasons. Peter Singer opined simply that pain is bad, no matter what being is experiencing it. Some have termed our tendency to hold ourselves apart from other animals as “speciesism.” To avoid speciesism we must allow that beings who are similar in all relevant respects have a similar right to life. It was maintained that a rejection of speciesism does not imply that all lives have equal worth. It was further maintained that we are culpable for animal suffering through our inactivity as well as our active participation in it. This brought about a series of contrary opinions in our group. It was stressed that we are oriented and directed toward our group and it was unnatural to be responsive to the entire animal kingdom especially to the detriment of our own group’s gain. Examples were offered too, of animals that are overly cruel, causing extreme unnecessary suffering to other creatures. One person stated that there is a distinction to be made between going into the environment of other beings and observing what is natural there, and that of bringing beings from their natural environment into ours for use in unnatural ways. It was also stated that we can no more ask an animal to be “ethical than we can for it to do calculus.” Human standards may be off-course when applied to the natural, violent world. Evolution was inserted in this part of the discussion regarding its blind indifference to the welfare of other groups or individuals, the selfish gene, the organism that lives long enough to pass its genes on to the next generation, at the expense of others. The apes that kill the offspring of females who bore another male’s offspring, to get her to estrus sooner to have his offspring.
Jeff reintroduced a modified version of the 1000.00/ hammer listing that Dr. Forbes had employed in his last presentation to our group. Essentially it is a listing from simple organisms to more complex ones and asks where the person viewing the list would stop killing the organism under contemplation with a hammer-blow, if compensated by 1000.00. Jeff’s list did not stop with the chimpanzee, but also included the unborn baby, the severely retarded human and a non-impaired human. We talked about beings that visibly suffer to us, what impact the choice of weapon has on our decision, and the added ethical considerations if the being is suffering before we act and/or if it shares the same genus (Homo), but has few important characteristics in common with a “normal” representative of the species; for instance a “vegetable” in irreversible coma. This was expanded into whether we would kill to save our own life and which beings we have few qualms with incarcerating…the veal calf…human criminals. There was afterwards discussion about the death penalty, war, abortion and different justifications made for killing one group but not another, depending on circumstances.
One thought that was presented was that it may well be more ethical to transplant an organ from a brain-dead human into a viable chimp than to sacrifice a healthy chimp for research. What about sacrificing a 6 month old human (that is arguably less cognitively endowed than an adult chimp) to save 1000’s of lives? We talked of the Judeo-Christian instruction that no matter the characteristics of the being- the human alone is held sacrosanct. Beginnings and ends are difficult for us in the human (especially) continuum. When does life actually begin and what constitutes death? Brain death? Other organs failing while the body is kept functioning? At what point does the bed space and heroic, costly techniques taken up by irreversible non-viable cases become outweighed by others who could be restored? Where is the line drawn between infanticide and abortion? How can we mercifully “put down” a pet to relieve suffering but keep a human in on-going agony beyond his normal time, ethically? We talked about the slippery slope that emerges when individuals or groups are seen as dispensable, or less worthy representatives of the group norm. A study was brought up regarding unwanted as opposed to wanted babies. The unwanted babies who were brought to term were more likely to engage in criminal activity and sociopathic behaviors, which causes us to ask where the emphasis should be placed for the greatest good in the abortion debate.
Vegetarianism was brought up, including the many reasons given for this lifestyle from personal health to ethical considerations of other animals, to the environmental impact. More was said about group vs. individual interest. The conclusion of the prepared material was that sanctity of life and human equality are ethical standards that are grounded in religious concepts and do not reflect the reality of the human condition. A more useful benchmark for moral decision-making is the Equal Consideration of Interests- in particular, the interest every being has not to suffer.
Recorder: Charles LaRue
