As silly as it seems, this position paper was commissioned to provide a guideline for interpreting a section in the Swiss Federal Constitution that protects the ‘dignity of all living beings’ which itself grants the government the legal authority to pass legislation such as that prohibiting animal cruelty for example. It is the wording of that constitutional clause which forces the use of the pompous term ‘dignity of plants’ but the authors are quick to define ‘dignity’ as ‘inherent worth’ for the purposes of the discussion, which again brings this a few steps back to the practical.

However consider that one of the criticisms routinely levied against secularism in general and atheism in particular is that it lacks moral compass because it has no guidance from scripture, which divinely inspired or not, has survived the test of time.

The response to this criticism has been that morals and ethics can be determined by reason founded on our innate sense of right and wrong. Now I have used this argument (maybe even on these pages) but I have always known it is flawed, because like it or not Western civilization’s cultural sense of right and wrong is of course grounded in Christian moral theology. If we really wish to move away from that dogma (or any other religiosity) in these matters, we are going to have to start from scratch.

This being the case one would expect to see treatments of certain issues with the sort of approach we see here in this document.

Don’t like the idea of slowly cutting into a plant and slowly slicing away small parts!!! That describes what most chefs do in the swiss kitchens!!! Tough! Deal!!

I’ll pay you some serious thought when you start dying of starvation because you respect other life forms.

I’m sorry, but with all the problems in the world, this is so anti-humanist and so ****in stupid and highbrow it makes me want to puke. I’d love to have a moment alone with anyone who took this report seriously.

The ethics experts should have returned a paper that said simply “Plants don’t have feelings. This is idiotic”

This is so repulsive.

Yeah

        leg said:

DV -
Freudian slip or a typo? I know you meant “conclusion” in your first point, but I thought “concussion” was quite apropo. I hope to get time tonight to argue some of your points as these things are fun to argue. However, I recorded the US vs Italy soccer game this morning and its my priority to watch it tonight. I hope they are not playing on GM grass, nor kill too many of the blades.

I trust my spell-checker too much…

These are not my points, they come from the report in question and indeed I was illustrating what Doc said that is that this frames things in a manner that is far more grandiose and foundational than it needs to be. So I’m not going to defend them.

What I was trying to show was that your contention that this sort of thing was a form of ’secular theology’ was right on the money, but we should note that this is to be expected if we we are going to move away from religious based ethics.

As it happens most of these results are, from the Abrahamic traditions point of view, tautological but considered from the Dharmic traditions (like Jainism for example) they are rather revolutionary, and in essence a rejection of that ethical system as it applies to plants. When we talk of moving towards a secular world we have to consider that this does not only mean away from the Christian ethos only.

        leg said:

I know you may not agree with this Buzz, but I feel this is a logical outcome of secularism. People need a belief system (religion). Take away the belief of a mysterious god and they will replace it with a “mysterious nature” – which is essentially pantheism. They will be just as fanatic in their belief as those who believe in a god. The rich history of the major religions prevents this sort of nonsense, but because the rise of secularism is recent and without established rules, this sort of nonsense can flourish. The troubling aspect of this issue is that there were enough politicians that went along with it.

I can’t say that I’m entirely in disagreement with you on this. Religion fills certain needs and in some cases it may be a natural desire of humans to have some kind of structure and even feel that there is certain symbolic or ritual signifficance to things. People cling to many of these feelings and principles, associated with religion, even if they formally have given up the underlying beliefs.

This can be seen in the Soviet Union, for example, where religion was abolished in favor of secular communism. Stalin took some of the harshest steps to abolish religion but he also seemed to have an understanding of a need to fill the void with a kind of state-worship and with pseudo-religious symbolism and idols. The body of Lenin was preserved in a tomb where people could come to visit it like a shrine and there were many statues and structures which invoked a religious-like spirituality to the concept of the State and society.

Okay, I take issue with that. I don’t know that it is justifiable to destroy anything for no reason, but to call harming a plant morally reprehensible? No. I don’t care if someone takes out their anger by tearing a dandelion to shreds because they just feel like it. I am not going to consider it “reprehensible” for someone to destroy a blade of grass with no just cause. That’s idiotic.

Sure, it might be “pointless” or “kinda a waste of time” or something but “morally reprehensible” Absolutely not.

Again I have a problem with this, because it implies that there must be some significant need to use a plant. the only justification I’d consider would be as simple as “because I felt like it.”

For example:
“Why did you pull up that bush in your yard”
“I didn’t like the look of it”
or even
“None of your damn buisiness. it’s my yard”

I see this as being something that really takes a few common sense ideas (Like genetic diversity should probably be preserved) and turns it into a completely manufactured moral delima that instills a ridiculous belief that we need to somehow justify each time we yank out a weed or use a plant as a test subject.

There’s no need to justify an experiment preformed on a plant! Even if the experiment does not return any valuable data, it’s only a damn plant! Why should they even have to consider defending the morality of it? How about leaving the ethics committee to work on the stuff that is actually important like experimental and potentially lifesaving but potentially harmful treatments on the terminally ill and so on.

This frames things in a manner that is far more grandiose and foundational than it needs to be.

        leg said:

I know you may not agree with this Buzz, but I feel this is a logical outcome of secularism. People need a belief system (religion). Take away the belief of a mysterious god and they will replace it with a “mysterious nature” – which is essentially pantheism. They will be just as fanatic in their belief as those who believe in a god. The rich history of the major religions prevents this sort of nonsense, but because the rise of secularism is recent and without established rules, this sort of nonsense can flourish. The troubling aspect of this issue is that there were enough politicians that went along with it.

To some extent you have a point in that ethicists are the theologians of secularism and as such are expected to deliberate over matters like this.

However if you read the report and strip away the moral/ethical framing, most of the conclusions are commonsense.

The first concussion is arbitrary harm to plants is morally reprehensible – and indeed one should not destroy plants without reason.

The second is that the use of a plant or a species requires justification – which is somewhat of a tautology I suppose but is hardly a crazy idea.

The third is that plant species should be excluded from absolute ownership – we can argue about this, but it is essentially a restatement of the patented DNA issue that is being debated in other domains.

The fourth is that genetic modification is NOT moral or ethically suspect if the plant is permitted to keep its reproductive ability – again put this in context with the issues that have come up over Roundup Ready plants which only produce sterile seed.

The fifth conclusion states that the patent issue is also an issue of social ethics, not just plant ethics

The sixth is that steps should be taken to maintain genetic diversity in those species that are subject to GM work – commonsense I would think

And finally the seventh and last states that any action with or towards plants that serves the self-preservation of humans to be morally justified, as long as it is appropriate and follows the principle of precaution. Hard to argue with.

This exercise is stupid because it is unnecessary and a waste of time, but most of the conclusions it comes to are reasonable (or at least pointless) even if we can’t agree with all of them.