When is a person not a person?

Since Darwin’s travels and subsequent books, his theory of evolution moved from scepticism, through acclaim, to widespread acceptance.  He did not initially set out to discredit God as creator, but once his theories took hold they gave man the excuse he was looking for.  If there is no creation, there is no need for a creator.  Discredit the Biblical version of creation, and godless evolution seems a plausible explanation for how we came to be.

There is much more at stake, however, than an argument over the beginning of life.  If it was simply an interesting theory, we would not have the situation in the UK today, where it is required that every text book purports the theory as truth.  Even though thousands of eminent scientists worldwide raise serious intellectual doubts over the validity of Darwin’s evolutionary ideas, every documentary on TV unquestioningly assumes the truth of the theory and no reference to God as creator of life is ever made.  No alternative theory or counterpoint is ever voiced in the media.  Free schools are not allowed to teach creationism.  State nurseries which defend creationism automatically lose their funding.  For the small elite who are running with the demonic agenda for our world, it is essential that evolution is universally believed and never questioned.

The problem is that if life evolved and is continuing to do so, can we categorically say that human beings are more important, or set apart, from the rest of the animal kingdom?  Can we even say that all human beings are of equal worth?  Doesn’t abortion become part of ‘natural selection’?  Isn’t euthanasia evolution’s way of enabling the fittest to survive?  Shouldn’t it concern us that Hitler used evolutionary theory to justify the mass murder of the ‘sub-human’ Jews?  Doesn’t it shock us that not so very long ago, the slave trade was justified by the belief amongst some slave owners that negroes were sub-human? (In 1953 the discovery of DNA testing provided proof of their total humanity). 

The Bible is clear that God created human beings with a unique identity and function, designed for life in relationship with him. 

Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’  So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them (Gen 1: 26-27).

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being (Gen 2:7)

Evolutionary theory, however, cannot state at which point, if any, in man’s development, he attains the status of ‘personhood’.  A recent news item brought home the sinister significance of this ambiguity.  Animal rights activists in Manhattan, USA, went to court this week to call for chimpanzees held in captivity to be recognised as persons under the law.  This is not an isolated case. 

According to some, using a subjective assessment of personhood, chimps may qualify for such a status.  They are, after all, highly intelligent.  But if they are granted legal personhood, what does that do to the value of human life – especially for the disabled, those with specific learning difficulties, the unborn and the weak?  Human dignity is seriously undermined.

Steven Wise, the adjunct professor at a Catholic law school who filed the lawsuit, has been quoted as saying that he saw no difference between a chimpanzee and his four and a half year old son.  Tragically, this doesn’t lift the value of animals – it merely lowers the value of humans.  Wise is dehumanising people deemed ‘lesser’ than himself on the basis of cognitive ability.  Yet personhood is not based upon intelligence, location, size, development, appearance, colour or sex.  Humans are persons by God-given right.

The most dangerous flaw in the lawsuit is the premise that personhood is based purely on cognitive ability.  Evolution demands that this is the case.  However, in line with the comments above, if cognitive ability is the plumb line, some disabled people, infants and elderly, who are determined to have fewer cognitive abilities than others could be deemed to be non-persons.  Therefore evolutionary theory not only does away with God, it also undervalues human life and makes way for an ominous subjectivity on the behalf of an elite to be the arbiter of who should live and who should die.  Man is playing God and the results will be disastrous.

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