Peter Singer is an Australian professor of bioethics at Princeton University. He is an atheist, utilitarian, and naturalistic evolutionist. He is a strong supporter of the Animal Rights movement, but many believe he goes too far and I am most definitely one of them. Singer claims that humans, despite being a more advanced species produced by naturalistic evolution, have no greater entitlement to life than nonhuman species, but an equal right to life, because both have the capability of suffering and happiness. I completely disagree with Peter Singer’s claim that animals have as equal a right to life as humans because of suffering and happiness. I disagree for two reasons. First, in my Biblical worldview, God places humans in dominion over animals, giving humans a right to life over the lives of animals. Second, in Singer’s own naturalistic evolutionist worldview, it is logically inconsistent to believe that humans and nonhuman species have equal rights to life while also believing in naturalistic evolution.

The Bible demonstrates that humans have a greater right to life than all other creatures, and that creation exists to serve mankind. Genesis 1-3 provides insight into human nature and mankind’s relationship to creation. In the very first verse that humans are ever mentioned in the Bible, God says that humans are made in God’s image, are set above creation, and are given dominion over all life on earth. Furthermore, even after the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, God still chooses to explicitly demonstrate that the lives of humans are greater than that of animals despite the now corrupted nature of man. Near the end of Genesis 3 God is casting Adam and Eve out of the Garden for their sin, but rather than covering the first humans in warm insulating clothes made of vegetation, verse 21 says, “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” Out of His abundant love for mankind and for the convenience of mankind, God chose to kill animals from His own precious creation to clothe them. Another key story is that of Jesus’s encounter with Legion, a collective multitude of demons who were possessing a man. Although the Bible does not support uncalled for killing of animals, Jesus allowed Legion to enter 2,000 swine and drown them in the sea to demonstrate both the value of the human soul and human value over animals. St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas have supported this belief and use this very passage as their justification. Augustine said, “We need not govern our behavior towards animals by the moral rules which govern our behavior towards men. That is why he [Christ] deliberately transferred the devils to swine instead of destroying them as he could easily have done” (Midgley 210). The Bible makes it plain that the creatures of the earth are lesser than humans in their right to life and mankind is given a mandate to care for creation and refrain from cruelty to animals, but when it comes down to it, God chooses man over the animals in the face of suffering or pain.

The Biblical view of animal rights is clear, but when looking at the naturalistic, atheistic view of evolution which Peter Singer has adopted, there are logical inconsistencies in believing that humans and nonhumans have an equal right to life and in naturalistic evolution via natural selection. If you believe that humans are of greater intelligence and rationality than nonhuman species and that they reached this point because of naturalistic evolution, then you believe that in order for species to evolve they must struggle and contest against other species through natural selection. Natural selection deems that the fittest will survive; that the animal instincts of one species will prevail over other species. Therefore natural selection involves discrimination against other species according to the instincts of the predator species. For example, because of its instincts, a wolf will kill only what is necessary for survival and not waste any of the meat. However a polar bear hunts for sport, then leaves its prey after killing it, ignoring potentially good meat. Therefore all species are not equal and deserving of equal treatment because all species seek to survive according to their own interests.

However, if one believes that all species are equal in their right to life, then natural selection is a flawed theory. How is it that all species that can suffer are equal in right to life if natural selection (which is “natural”) demands that the fittest survive? This is a contradiction of the “natural” laws of science. It seems that scientifically no species has any rights, rather that every species ought to survive according to its instincts. Any species which suffers extinction did not have their right to life violated, they simply weren’t fit enough to survive. So if one believes that all species are equal in their right to life, then this belief did not emerge from “naturalistic” science, but must have instead arisen from moral outrage. This further contracts naturalistic evolution via natural selection, which suggests that in the same way that species evolve from lesser to greater biological organisms, they also progress in the development of morals and ethics. Therefore, morals and ethics aren’t absolute, they are relative. Given these points, it is contradictory to believe that all species are equal in right to life, which appears to arise from morality, and to also believe in Peter Singer’s naturalistic model of evolution, which scientifically suggests moral relativity.

All things considered, I completely disagree with Peter Singer’s claim that animals have as equal a right to life as humans because they experience suffering and happiness. Animals are amazing creatures created by God, but our value as humans, as eternal beings, is infinitely more than that of the animals God has placed under us. I do, however, believe that while the Bible teaches that we have dominance over all the earth, the animal kingdom included, we are not to be cruel to animals or to treat them inhumanely because they are also a part of God’s creation. While valuable and beautiful because of their nature as creations of the most high God, there is no strong enough reason to suggest equal rights to life between animals and humans.

Midgley, Mary. Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UP, 1978. 210. Print.