Is Nothing Sacred?
No, nothing is sacred in and of itself, I would have said. Ideas, texts, even people can be made sacred – the word is from the Latin sacrare, “to set apart as holy” – but even though such entities, once their sacredness is established, seek to proclaim and to preserve their own absoluteness, their inviolability, the act of making sacred is in truth an event in history. It is the product of the many and complex pressures of the time in which the act occurs. And events in history must always be subject to questioning, deconstruction, even to declarations of their obsolescence. To revere the sacred unquestioningly is to be paralyzed by it. The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas Uncertainty, Progress, Change – into crimes.
Religion and Animal Liberation By Keith Akers Today, the world of religion seems to be stacked against the animals. Religious views perpetuate the idea that animals can be eaten, experimented on, and generally used for whatever purposes humans have. In a broader way, religious views perpetuate the same idea about the environment; the environment is ours to use in whatever way we see fit. Peter Singer summarized this perception of religion at the recent Animal Rights 2002 conference. He said that “mainstream Christianity” is a “problem” for animals: it denies that animals have souls, says that humans are made in the image of God, and says that humans have dominion over animals. It thus provides the ideological support for a view of animals and the environment that allows humans to abuse or exploit animals and the environment as much as we want. So if were for the environment and the animals, we should be against religion, right? This is the conclusion that many in the vegetarian, animal
