On Scully
[Rod Dreher  03/21 12:19 PM]

Reader Christian writes:

I read “Dominion” a couple of years ago, after reading Fred Barnes’ recommendation of the book in The Weekly Standard. Like Rod, I was moved by the call to compassion in the book. It did indeed change my thinking about how we treat animals, and it persuaded me that factory farming is abominable.

But because “Crunchy Cons” is rooted in religious instincts, I was surprised Dreher didn’t go into the book’s theological weaknesses. For that, we should look to NRO contributor Wesley Smith, who reviewed Scully’s book in The Weekly Standard. He writes:

“Although Scully says he is not ‘particularly a pious or devout person,’ he claims that there is a model for the ethical treatment of animals contained in Scripture. In the Garden of Eden, he points out, there was no predation. He also reminds us of the prediction that — as Isaiah 11:6 puts it—‘The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid. These are biblical suggestions that God does not want us to harm animals or cause them to suffer.

”While there are serious Judeo-Christian principles that could be used to make an argument for, say, vegetarianism, significant problems exist with this line. It is, for example, God who first kills animals, when he clothes the wayward Adam and Eve with animal skins in Genesis 3:21. Moreover, there seems no way around God's establishment of the animal sacrifice practiced at Shilo and Jerusalem. The New Testament offers little additional help to Scully. The Gospel of Luke reports that Mary and Joseph sacrificed turtle doves at the temple to celebrate the birth of Jesus — who would go on to speak approvingly of the killing of the fattened calf. Not only were there fishes among the loaves, but, after the Resurrection, the risen Christ fed the disciples a fish breakfast.”

More troubling is Scully’s tendency to label those who hunt animals for sport, rather than merely for food, as “pure evil.” Smith writes:

“[Scully] is, for example, obsessed with trophy hunters and a trade association called the Safari Club International, which he loathes to the point of insisting that its tax-exempt status be revoked. Now, trophy hunting seems little more than killing for ego. But Scully is so outraged, he cites approvingly a description of it as ‘pure evil.’ One could reasonably call trophy hunting disgusting, even reprehensible. But our ethical impulses go seriously astray if we do not reserve "pure evil" for the worst wrongs perpetrated against people: the Holocaust, crashing hijacked airliners into skyscrapers, raping little children.”

Smith was not persuaded by Scully’s arguments against factory farming, but here he doesn’t rest on biblical texts so much, so I was happy to disagree with Smith on that point. However, I find it hard to dispute Smith’s bottom-line on Scully’s book:

"’Dominion’ should have been the text that taught us how to practice kindness without falling into the trap of Peter Singer. Unfortunately, ‘Dominion’ fails at that task, mostly because Scully will not temper his emotional fervor long enough to explore the good humans receive from animals or the consequences that would befall us if we ceased to benefit from them. Animal suffering is crucial to a proper analysis, but so is human welfare.”

I realize this e-mail is provocative, and Smith’s review has its debatable points, but I think it’s only fair to cite a negative take on Scully’s book, which, however persuasive in spots, is a mixed bag overall.