The future of science…
Written by Stephen on April 2nd, 2006Courtesy of Drudge we receive news of this:
a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth’s population by airborne Ebola. The speech was given by Dr. Eric R. Pianka (Fig. 1), the University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist….
Pianka hammered his point home by exclaiming, “We’re no better than bacteria!”
Pianka then began laying out his concerns about how human overpopulation is ruining the Earth. He presented a doomsday scenario in which he claimed that the sharp increase in human population since the beginning of the industrial age is devastating the planet. He warned that quick steps must be taken to restore the planet before it’s too late.
Lest you think this is a just a hoax, check out the professor’s website, a course description outlining his position, and a student evaluation objecting to his statements (you need to scroll down a bit).
What’s frightening is that folks like these will soon enough be considered mainstream as we desert the idea of human exceptionalism. If we become just another animal, after all, where’s the imperative not to kill one another in order to preserve the resources for the rest of us. (Because Prof. Pianka certainly does not intend to lead the world’s depopulation by example.)
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In the words of Emily Klatt: LAWL! Human race: PWNED.
April fools, right Texas?
2
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Atlas Shrugged, anyone? The notion of human beings being “just another animal” without ability to think or reason is frighteningly similar to the ideas of the looters in that book.
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These are not new views. They’ve been proposed by other whackjob scientists before, and this was the plot of Tom Clancy’s “Rainbow Six”. I’m a trained scientist, and I accept evolution. However, the jump from “humans evolved from the same common ancestor as the great apes” to “the death of a human is morally the same as the death of an ape” is one that makes no sense to me.
Was the universe created especially for humanity? I certainly don’t think so. If so, why are there hundreds of billions of other planets, and why did it take 14 billion years for us to come around?
Does this mean that humans are exactly the same as bacteria? No, that’s ridiculous. We alone have the ability of conscious thought. We alone have language. We alone have charity, and medicine, and art, and a whole lot of things that give us good reason to count ourselves as important and special. Just because the universe wasn’t created specifically for us does not mean that we don’t matter.
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“a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation . . .”
A few hundred!? How can that many people be so worthless? When did education become a qualification to be as foolish as you wanted to be? And this happened in Texas dammit.
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“Does this mean that humans are exactly the same as bacteria? No, that’s ridiculous. We alone have the ability of conscious thought. We alone have language. We alone have charity, and medicine, and art, and a whole lot of things that give us good reason to count ourselves as important and special. Just because the universe wasn’t created specifically for us does not mean that we don’t matter. ”
Actually, I think many would argue that animals have their own sort of thinking, and we can definitely make a case for animals having their own type of language. Animals are clearly communicating with one another, and often with humans (think of chimps learning sign language). I think it would be ridiculous to argue that humans are entirely different from other animals, and that we can therefore needlessly kill other creatures (who don’t happen to communicate in our language) and destroy their environment for profit. Obviously these scientists are not proposing an acceptable answer to human destruction of the earth, but rationalizing such destruction in the name of human exceptionalism seems just as narrow-sighted.
I’m curious as to why the loss of human exceptionalism (or at least a revision of this concept) is here equated with humans killing one another:
“What’s frightening is that folks like these will soon enough be considered mainstream as we desert the idea of human exceptionalism. If we become just another animal, after all, where’s the imperative not to kill one another in order to preserve the resources for the rest of us.”
I don’t think there will ever be “mainstream” support of a plan that will kill most of those in said mainstream. And I don’t understand why if we “become just another animal” we will therefore kill one another. This seems rooted in the assumption that animals are for killing. If we admit that animals have some rights, and that humans are not so incredibly different, then wouldn’t that mean the adoption of a wider “culture of life”? If we feel hesitant to kill an elephant because we see signs of “human emotion,” then why would we run around killing other humans in the street?
It’s too bad that these scientists are proposing killing to stop killing… it would seem more sensible to find ways to lower the human impact on the earth, rather than just writing off humans as inherently destructive.
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Becky,
I never said the loss of human exceptionalism would automatically lead to our killing one another, simply that it would remove a barrier to it. Given that we have a dark nature, and on historical reflection, we do terrible things to people when we deny them the benefits of being human. The theme of justification of crimes against humanity by denying the humanity of Jews or blacks abounds in the journals of Nazis and slavers. Historically speaking, denying the exceptional nature of our fellow man as compared to animals (which we can use to our advantage) is a bad thing.
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Stephen,
I just wanted to point out that, if we highly valued all forms of life down to bacteria, then we also would value human lives. I think the revision/loss of human exceptionalism could mean valuing all forms of life *more like* how we value human lives, rather than suddenly valuing human life less than bacteria.
Of course, as you point out, human nature might not be ready to value, say, an elephant, when it can’t even be relied upon to value other human lives. It’d still be a worthy goal, though.