Chronicling the many cases of PC madness is a never-ending affair, and one could easily hire a team of hundreds just to keep up with every idiotic and brain-numbing idea, scheme and agenda being promoted by various whacko groups around.
Simply opening the daily newspapers provides a steady stream of such moonbattery. All this craziness simply confirms Chesterton’s dictum: “A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon.”
One group which is a constant winner in the Fruitloop of the Year category is PETA. Although this is supposed to stand for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a more accurate title might be something like People Ever Thinking Askew, or some such thing.
I have written about them numerous times in the past, such as here:
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2009/06/18/peta-deada-in-the-heada/
And here:
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2008/09/26/peta-and-further-scenes-from-the-passing-madness/
Well it seems that these folks are at it again, this time wading into the Good Book. Given that this is basically a secular activist group without a shred of biblical morality, it is a bit rich of them to now claim to be experts on all things scriptural and theological.
But that they are doing just that. Believe it or not, they have just written a letter to the Committee on Bible Translation demanding that they remove all “speciesist” language in the Bible. I kid you not! Here is how PETA puts it on their website:
“After hearing about the latest translation of the New International Version of the Bible – which uses gender-inclusive language such as ‘he or she’ instead of ‘he’ – PETA has written to the Committee on Bible Translation to suggest that its next translation also remove speciesist language by referring to animals as ‘he or she’ instead of ‘it.’ In the letter, PETA points out that many modern writers are using ‘he,’ ‘she,’ and ‘who’ in place of the inaccurate ‘it’ and ‘which’ to refer to an animal.
“‘Updating the Bible’s language regarding animals would not only reflect modern writing trends but also reinforce the idea that animals are living beings valued by God, not inanimate objects,’ says PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich. ‘Jesus taught us the importance of mercy and compassion, and this update would encourage mercy and compassion for all God’s creatures – including those who have feathers, fins, and fur’.”
There you go. The next time you see the Bible talking about pigs or worms, make sure you scribble out the offensive language and refer to them as he or a she. Of course this is at least consistent for these guys. Recall that PETA President Ingrid Newkirk has proudly proclaimed that “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.”
That’s right, there is no difference in PETA’s eyes between a human being and a rat. We are all one in their understanding. This sloppy thinking is par for the course for secular humanists. Recall another animal rights’ activist, Peter Singer, who has actually claimed that while it is in bad taste to eat animals, there is no morally compelling reason why we cannot have sex with them.
But here we have PETA seeking to push all this nonsense on theological and biblical grounds. They have all of a sudden morphed into theologians and Bible scholars. Sorry, but they need to read Scripture a bit more carefully. While animals, like the rest of God’s creation, need to be treated with respect, they are not on a par with human beings.
Only humans are made in the image of God, only humans are the object of Christ’s sacrificial death, and only humans will have an eternal destiny. Sure, humans share with animals the fact that we are all creatures, while God is the creator, distinct from us.
But on the level of personhood, only humans share common ground with God. Animals, rocks, trees and other created things do not share in this area. To conflate humans with non-humans is always just one way traffic for these folks. While they may talk about raising animals up to the level of humans, what really happens is humans are dragged down to the level of animals.
And we have seen plenty of ugly examples in history when humans are dehumanised and depersonalised. The Communists and the Nazis both took a cavalier view of human life, seeing humans just as another part of the evolutionary continuum.
Because humans were seen as not at all special or unique, they were treated as being totally dispensable and worthless. Thus hundreds of millions were slaughtered last century in the name of these evolutionary humanist worldviews. Bad ideas always lead to bad consequences.
As mentioned, treating animals humanely is of course appropriate and the mark of a civilised society. But we do neither animals nor humans any favours by confusing the two, and seeking to merge them together. Humans are unique and different from non-humans, and when we lose that distinction, we are asking for, and get, trouble.
http://www.peta.org/mediacenter/news-releases/PETA-Asks-for-Animal-Friendly-Update-to-the-Bible.aspx
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