“This case is the most recent brought about by the great ape personhood movement which seeks to extend personhood and some legal protections to the chimpanzees , gorillas, and orangutans. Prominent advocates in this movement include primatologists Jane Goodall, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, philosopher Peter Singer, and legal scholar Steven Wise, president of the Nonhuman Rights Project.”
The Story: A judge in Manhattan has ordered a hearing that will touch upon the continuing debate over whether caged chimpanzees can be considered “legal persons,” in the eyes of the law, and thus sue, with human help, for their freedom.
The Background: The case in question was brought by the Nonhuman Rights Project, a group that, as the New York Times’ notes, has been active in promoting a legal theory that some animals, such as chimps, are “legal persons” with the right to “bodily liberty.” The group claims that two chimpanzees, Hercules and Leo, are being “unlawfully detained” at a university on Long Island. The order, by Justice Barbara Jaffe of New York State Supreme Court, directed officials at Stony Brook University to show cause for holding the two chimps, at a May 6 hearing.
This case is the most recent brought about by the great ape personhood movement which seeks to extend personhood and some legal protections to the chimpanzees , gorillas, and orangutans. Prominent advocates in this movement include primatologists Jane Goodall, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, philosopher Peter Singer, and legal scholar Steven Wise, president of the Nonhuman Rights Project.
Why It Matters: The concept of personhood for certain animals will strike many people as absurd, but ultimately harmless. In reality, the redefining of personhood may have profound ramifications for human dignity and could even lead to the denigration and exploitation of human infants.
The Christian worldview is not longer the dominant framework in our culture for considering questions about ethics, science, or technology. Unfortunately, we live in a society where answers that cannot be shoehorned into an acceptable non-religious interpretative structure must be discarded altogether. It is similar to being asked to provide the sum of 4 and 3 but having to do so without resorting to a “religiously based” prime numbers. The absurdity of this approach is obvious since no answer we could give would ever be correct. Yet this is often what is expected when we are asked to provide answers to questions about animal rights that must rely on non-religious criteria.
Take, for example, the question of why humans have more intrinsic dignity than other animals. The reason, according to Christian thought, is because our dignity rests upon being created in imago dei, in the image of God. Our dignitas, our worth, is not a characteristic we acquire, an ability we possess, or a condition we can lose. It is based on our being created for the purpose of entering into covenant fellowship with our Creator.
Secularists, however, not only deny that this explanation is essential to explaining dignity, but reject all such “God-talk” as irrelevant and thus excluded from all debate on the topic. Instead, they believe the search for a moral distinction between humans and animals must be rooted solely in non-religious criteria.
But just as in the search for a non-prime seven, the search for a moral distinction between humans and animals will be in vain. Inevitably, they will have to either tacitly accept the Christian answer that humans are metaphysically different or they will have to reject the question altogether.