High Noon In The Age Of Bacteria

It occurs to me that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and will be engulfed by the sun in another 4.5 billion years. Bacteria have been around since almost the beginning. The oldest fossilized bacteria being from around 3.8 billion years ago. I do not know whether bacteria will continue to survive right up until the sun goes nova. So, we’re roughly at the mid point for life on this planet.

So what? (Please keep reading. I’m coming around to a very important point in my long-winded way.)

Ten Better Commandments?

Richard Dawkins has made the point that if God were so perfect that he could have come up with ten better commandments than the ones in the Bible. Depending on your particular flavor of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religion (singular as always for me), the ten commandments may differ slightly. Here are the ten commandments on wikipedia with a good write up, including the original text of the Bible, which is either 16 or 15 paragraphs, depending on whether you prefer to take the version from Exodus or the version from Deuteronomy. That there are two versions and that they differ should immediately strike any thinking person as signifying that the Bible just may not be quite as perfect as many people assert anyway.

Moral Considerability – What does it mean? To whom does it apply?

First, moral considerability is essentially the technical jargon in the field of morals that is used to indicate whether or not one is worthy of moral consideration. As moral people tend to grant moral considerability to all other humans, the term is primarily used in relation to other species.

As an aside, I would point out that religion or other strong ideologies sometimes cause people to treat other humans without granting other groups moral considerability. Anyone who believes it is OK to kill or enslave members of any outgroup is clearly not granting that group moral considerability.

That said, I would try to keep this post to the topic of what species other than humans should also be granted moral considerability. As I have hinted in my title by the use of the word whom for members of other species, I clearly believe, quite strongly, that many other species are worthy of such consideration. I have often surprised people by asking who that bird is, rather than what that bird is or other equivalent. I believe living beings should be referred to as who and whom rather than what. It keeps us from forgetting that they are indeed other beings, not inanimate objects.