Please Join ARAN & IAVS To Mark International Primate Day in Dublin

by (+ / .:. ) Thu Sep 06, 2007 10:51

The rights for Simians campaign originated here - http://www.greatapeproject.org/ the three rights proposed are :- the right to life.
the right not to be a slave.
the right not be tortured.
As reported in early 2006 by Pat C the declaration of the great ape project won support from both Spanish and Italian legislatures and thence garnered support across Europe. http://indymedia.ie/article/75708

Many make the mistake of scoffing and thinking these three rights are "human rights". There were 17 "rights of man" declared at the French Revolution and rejected by the Church as masonic liberalism. You enjoy all of them, and the Church has changed its mind. What was once a mortal sin is now ok. There are 30 articles to the universal declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948. Most were objected to by the Church in its "millenial history" as heresy, liberalism or masonry. You enjoy them all, ( I hope) and the Church now occassionaly makes reference to them, and indeed ratified them as an independent sovreign state- of course they used to torture and kill people for voicing those rights. what was a sin is now ok. There are 66 articles to the Council of Europe's convention of Human rights adopted in 1950 which forms an obligatory requirement for any state wishing to accede to the EU and 5 further protocols.

Make no mistake the greatest opposition to the granting of these rights comes from the Church & that is why I argue their inclusion first on theological grounds & thereafter humanist. Considering that in the synoptic gospels of Christian orthodoxy there is only one reference to the animal kingdom by the Christ - Though he used loads of animal metaphors & that reference was really very nice, being a pun, like much of what he said, on an item of economic worth - Are not two sparrows sold for a (€=$ the original greek was "lepton" often translated as farthing) and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father :: But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. :: Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.

There are 3 rights proposed for the Greater Apes.

Only 2 are comparable to any of the declarations alluded to above.

The acceptance that rational, thinking, feeling, great apes deserve to be afforded rights is not only intellectually sound, but morally desirable. Yet some Christians think it is approaching the "great beast" and under such arguments the RC church in both Spain and Italy described it all as an utter farce, for what seperates man from beast in the 3 great religions of the book is the presence of a soul verified by the power of reason. . Oh yes. That was groovy till along came great simians who could add, subtract, use language & express quite rational thought on such things as hunger, discomfort & the desirability of a bit of fresh fruit.

That raised for myself and others with whom I've mooted the problem at length one of the most important questions of theology and evolution. For let us take it as a given (citing Augustine) that creationism is a non-starter - and thus at some point we must wonder when did a soul enter the human genome. Was it before the extinction of Neanderthal? was it whilst Neanderthal bred with homo Sapiens? Was it some latter day or earlier day than those proto-humans or greater than our current great simians put on clothes??

Our rights as humans are based on rational progress and civilisation not any theological concept of a "soul". Our social organisation is the product of recent history which stretches only for a few thousand years. By any theology of the "books" - Judaic, Islamic or Christian the human had a soul before civilisation, before the "master / steward / owner" question, before kings, before letters and numbers. That applies equally to whether or not a Jew, Muslim or Christian adopts a creationist or evolutionist stance on our species history. I have already made reference to Augustine's confessions which is the bedrock of majority Christian theology in which he dismissed the heretical creationist belief of a "7 day work".

It is a sad and lamentable symptom of shallow understanding of theology, anthropology, and science, and "the work of God" that Christians might protest the granting of 3 fundemental rights http://www.greatapeproject.org to those simians with whom homo sapien shares 98%+ DNA and uniquely shares linguistic and rational capability. i suggest it is also a sign of cruelty to & neglect of "God's work" that you do nothing to protect legally animals who undoubtedly think and feel. Which is I'm pretty sure of it, a "mortal sin" lets give you a few centuries to change your mind.

That's the theology done -
Now the humanism.

As my comment to a near year old thread yesterday reported, http://indymedia.ie/article/72128?comment_limit=0&conde...06436 yet another step of the vestibule to hybrid and biotech engineered life was taken in the UK yesterday with the granting of research licenses to create "human-animal-chimera" organisms. The UK are by no means at the forefront or vanguard of such research or scientific speculation & elsewhere in Europe (notably Italy) even more ambitious steps have been taken to create completely artificial life http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/sep/06/2 & yet more are ready to use simian DNA and cell structures to create ever more "dr moreau" type experiments. We are far off seeing a human cockroach such as dreamt by Kafka - we are alarmingly close to a Human Ape which thus far would be offered no legal protection at all for whatever purpose it was put to. I doubt all such creators would be as bening as Michael Jackson and Bubbles.

To the far east in the Orient, the ethical squemishness which halts such speculation in the west has no common cultural basis. There the notion of human enhancement by use of biotech makes jolly good sense. It is my considered opinion that the extention of these rights to the order of great simians will not only serve to halt one avenue of ghastly possibility and "science fiction turned to fact" but also serve to facilitate a better understanding by Humanity of its place in this world, in this life, by connecting itself to what I call "Simianity".

For we are monkeys. & we have acheived much.

We need 3 more signatures from Ireland to ensure these avenues are blocked & Simianity respected as much for our Humanity's sake as theirs.

by francois Thu Sep 06, 2007 09:27

i agree animal testing is bad i will be there

by ARAN Wed Sep 05, 2007 23:26 arancampaigns at eircom dot net ARAN, Po Box 722, Kildare, Ireland

Hi Gloria,

Many thanks for those kind words, its because of dedicated campaigns work by yourself and other kind people that one day animal experiments will be a horrid thing of the past.

Thank you

by Gloria Wed Sep 05, 2007 00:19

Thinking of wild caught primates in laboratories undergoing cruel experiments is too almost too much to bear.

Lets support ARAN and IAVS and turn out to demonstrate against use of non human primates in experiments.