Do animals have rights? Human rights? Why not?

Are you ready for a new social movement? Brace yourself!

Can you remember the last time you voted? Did you vote at a voting site? When you were voting, did you notice a gorilla or a chimpanzee, also voting? How surprised would you be if that happened? I asked someone that question and the answer was “Um, in this year …”

So, maybe we would not be surprised if that happened jn our modern times. Maybe anything is possible, now.

There is a powerful and persistent movement to give legal rights to animals. I can’t predict the future for this, but it might grow and become part of the laws, in many countries.

I have a friend who is a dedicated vegetarian, and possibly a vegan. One of his concerns and motivations is the ways people treat animals. He doesn’t like to eat a living thing that was killed to make food for him. [Note: he is not suggesting rights for plants. The only living things that some people give rights to are animals, and not plants.]

If you want to know more, watch this video:

This is a fundamental question about our existence, and really a spiritual issue. Humans are on a crash course, and we disagree with each other in a very fundamental way.

Imagine if it became illegal, like a crime, to eat meat.

Would that change your life?

Do you believe in evolution? Do you believe that all life grew from an accidental chemical reaction in a primordial pond, or something similar? In the theory, somehow, amino acids created in nature grew into living cells. Over many millions of years, those cells generated organisms with many cells, and in time; plants, fish in the water, animals one land, birds in the air, and us.

You know the story. We call it Darwin’s “Theory of Evolution”, but now many and probably most scientists don’t use the word “Theory.” Most scientists seem convinced.

Charles Darwin is described as a “Naturalist” although that profession did not exist, in his time. Darwin’s father sent him to Cambridge University so that he could learn a profession and make a living.

Charles Darwin was trained to be a minister of the Church of England, a Christian pastor. It might be more accurate to describe his profession as a “Theologian,” someone trained in the knowledge of God.

From the perspective of Theology, Charles Darwin gave the world a universe without God, where every living thing evolved from some original life form, probably a single cell. No God was needed to create life.

Many of us believe this: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1) The model for human rights comes from the idea that God made us and we are different from all animals.

That might change soon.

The model for evolution is like the Theology of Atheism. If we start from the logical point, it is possible that animals have rights, legal rights, something like our human rights. If we believe in a Godless universe where life emerged and evolved, we need to explain how some of the evolved organisms have legal rights, and the others do not.

If you are wondering about the seven days of creation in the first chapters of the Bible, we don’t know how long a day was, before twenty four hour days were created, as part of the creation.

It is interesting that the emergence of life forms, as we know from the fossil record, was described accurately in Genesis chapter 1.

Check it out, ancient Bronze Age people wrote about something that scientists are only discovering in our time. Living things moved from the water and the air, onto the land. And humans were created at the end of the process.

That brings up questions that should be answered.

These fundamental differences are not as abstract and strange as we might think. One rule for understanding belief systems is to ask ourselves: If we follow this road, where will it take us? Do we want to go there?

In the Bible, a man named Jesus told his followers:

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. (John 16:12-14 )

1) Jesus told us about a spiritual being, the “Spirit of Truth,” also known among Christians as the “Holy Spirit.” This does not fit in any model of the physical evolution of living things.

2) Jesus also told us that direction from the Holy Spirit will guide us into all truth. He gave us the road to follow.

We have a division in our modern world that is basic, and more profound than we might realize. Spiritual truth about a God who created us is radically different from the model of the evolution of material life only, with no spiritual forces in the universe.

The difference is stark, and we are all faced with a basic choice for our lives.