Retired game show host Bob Barker has given $1 million to Drury University in Springfield to establish “a professorship on animal rights.” Barker, who graduated from the school in 1947, hopes the gift will lead to Drury offering the nation’s first animal rights undergraduate program.
“I think some students would become full-fledged animal rights activists,” said Barker, who last year gave another $1 million to set up the Drury Forum on Animal Rights, which resulted in a class taught on animal ethics. Barker also has donated endowment funds for animal rights law at eight law schools around the country.
I agree that animals shouldn’t be mistreated. But the whole idea of animals being endowed with certain inalienable rights seems a bit, uh, wacky.
Animals can be great companions. I’ve shed a tear or two when pet birds or dogs have died. But, from a biblical perspective, animals have no souls. Their purpose on earth is to be companions to humans and sometimes food for humans.
Hey, Bob, how about giving a million bucks to set up a course explaining that human life is precious and we shouldn’t be throwing aborted babies in trash cans?
I, too, am puzzled by the excessive concern some people have for animals 'rights' and the disconnect they seem to have when it comes to defending human life. I saw a bumper sticker earlier this summer that declared with a passion: EATING MEAT IS MURDER! Unless the driver was talking about cannibalism, her logic escapes me completely. (Happy Thanksgiving, by the way ... enjoy your turkey! We're having meatloaf ... murderers all!)
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