Richard Dawkins is convinced that man is an animal. Meaning that I, Marco Respinti, am an animal. That Richard Dawkins is an animal. That we’re all just animals. The British biologist and ethologist is, in fact, a firm evolutionist. And at the core of the theory of evolution is that there is nothing particularly exceptional about man compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. Man is just one of the many animals that inhabit the planet.
Now, the Taliban evolutionist Dawkins is convinced that some of these human animals are worth less than others. For example, children with Down’s Syndrome. Dawkins judges these are much better off aborted. After all, not to abort them would be a crime.
Two questions.
1. What do animal rights activists think? Do animal rights activists, who would defend even a mosquito from DDT, think that tiny human animals with Down’s Syndrome should be prematurely aborted, as Dawkins orders? Are they instead willing to defend them as they defend all animals?
2. Partisans of the proposed anti-hate speech bill in Italy (the so-called Zan Bill) say that the bill would protect the weakest, such as homosexuals and the disabled, from insult and violence. I wonder if they would want to add to their bill that the eugenic abortion of children who, while still in their mothers’ wombs, manifest trisomy 21, is a crime that should also be punished?
Otherwise, the luminary Dawkins is right.
Dawkins, the animal.
Partly because – due to his rabidity – they call him “Darwin’s Rottweiler”.
Partly because he is convinced that man is just an animal; a human animal.
Image source: Richard Dawkins, photo by Colin Grey from Flickr, licensed by CC BY 2.0
