“We don’t have enough warring, irreconcilable factions yet. This guy thinks we need to add Planet of the Apes to the playlist of Arab v Jew, and Black v White.” —Len Reinhart, Commenter on the article
David Barash attempts to make the case in this article from Nautilus that it would be a “terrific idea” to produce “humanzees“. His primary premise is a belief that humans are not discontinuous from the rest of the natural world and that humans were not specially created and endowed with souls while all other creatures were not. His primary support of this premise is an “immense pile of [biological] evidence” against the idea of humans having a “discontinuous unique biological status” from other animals. Barash labels the belief that humans have a special status as “the most hurtful theologically-driven myth of all times”.
In Barahs’s mind, we see Western naturalism at work as he appeals to evolutionary biology as the primary authority evidenced by his use of biological studies as the sole support for his beliefs. His dismissal of the notion that humans are created in God’s image is purely ad hominem as he names the belief “magical” and implies that those of us who hold such beliefs are self-serving and either indifferent or antagonistic towards other creatures. Barash’s only support for this attack are references to the mistreatment of animals which he carelessly and inaccurately attributes to the result of a theological belief in God. In his mind, it’s an absurdity to believe in a personal, living God who endows humanity with a special status as image bearers because this belief does not fit into his naturalistic mind. Naturalism presupposes there is no other way to rightly and accurately understand the world apart from what is observable, quantifiable, measurable, etc., and the consequences are dangerous.