Animal rights and evolution

I refer to Alfred E. Zammit and Mario Vella's letters of March 24.

I shall not waste more time arguing whether we should take a completely literal interpretation of the Bible or not, since this is a futile exercise, considering that many people consider even questioning this as insulting. Suffice it to say that a completely literal interpretation of the Bible would make God a murderer of innocent Egyptian babies (read the story of Moses and Pharaoh). A non-literal interpretation would take that story as man-made with the intention of teaching a lesson, for surely, no just and loving God would kill innocent babies. Therefore, any further argument on the topic is futile. Either God is a child killer, or the Bible should not be taken as literal truth in its entirety, as far as I'm concerned. I'm more inclined to believe that the latter is the case.

Mr Vella asks what responsibilities non-human animals have, since, he says, rights go hand in hand with responsibilities. This is not necessarily the case. A case in point is human babies. Human babies do not have responsibilities, but I do not suppose Mr Vella would suggest that this would deny them having rights. Mr Vella might retort that human babies grow up to be adults with responsibilities. Well, some humans never will. Let's take humans who are severely mentally disabled. Does Mr Vella suggest that these humans have no rights? I suspect that he doesn't. Rights are means of protecting interests.

They are means of protecting those in need of protection. Non-human animals fall under this category.

Furthermore, we are not demanding that non-human animals be given human rights (like the right to vote). We are only claiming one basic animal right, which is the right not to be exploited by humans.

Mr Vella asks whether I have any scientific proof of how the human "race" actually started. Perhaps he may supply me with the scientific proof himself. I'm more than willing to learn.

Mr Zammit and Mr Vella seem to be trying to discredit evolution. It might surprise them to learn that Pope John Paul II, no less, endorsed evolution. I will give one quotation taken from Pope John Paul II's message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Evolution, delivered on October 22, 1996. Pope John Paul II says: "Today, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis. In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines.

The convergence in the results of these independent studies - which was neither planned nor sought - constitutes in itself a significant argument in favour of the theory."

On whose side are Mr Zammit and Mr Vella on? Are they on the side of modern Catholic teaching on evolution, or on the side of American far-right television creationist evangelists?