Many years ago, when I was in the Boy Scouts, on a particular camping trip in Oklahoma in late autumn, I recall fishing at a small pond, and catching a fairly large bass. For some inexplicable reason I proceeded to experiment with the fish. I took a stick and begin poking it in the eyes, and face, essentially torturing it, and watching it die.

I learned how to fish from my Dad and his parents, my grandparents, who loved to go to area lakes and fish for bass, bluegill, perch, and crappie. They would bait hooks with small fish, minnows, or fat worms, not caring whether or not the minnows or worms cared, then cast the lines in the lake or stream, and wait for the bobber to bob, then descend under water, which meant a fish had taken the bait. The excitement of reeling the fish in was exceeded only by pulling it out of the water, watching it struggling at the end of the hook, and feeling the pride of the catch. Extracting the hook from the fish’s mouth was often difficult; sometimes the fish had swallowed it; other times it was too deep in the mouth. Notwithstanding the hook, the fish was either kept or thrown back—kept if it was fat and healthy enough to eat, thrown back if too small or insignificant. Maiming, killing, discarding the fish was never considered by the fishers.

Children are taught the power, if not the love, of God from the beginning. Any creature below a human is subjected, on a whim, to pain, torture, or death. Flies are swatted, mosquitoes slapped, bees and wasps sprayed with poison, spiders crushed, worms stepped on; besides the disregard for life in the insect world, children are taught as well that the lives of other vermin are unworthy—mice, rats, moles, rabbits, squirrels, frogs, toads, fish, birds, coyotes, foxes, skunks, opossums: it is a mighty list of the animals that are discarded and put to death without a second thought. Hunters build their ego by seeking trophies of various sorts: deer, panthers, wolves, moose, bear, and more. Only a few animals deemed near extinction receive any kind of consideration, usually from government and not individuals.

Because humans in America over the past several centuries destroyed many of the predators that preyed on animals such as deer, there is an overabundance of deer, and hunting is a useful way to reduce the numbers to maintain a balanced ecosystem. Killing for the sake of maintaining nature’s balance is justified, though it can be taken to extremes as well. For example, the federal government pays killers of barred owls in the northwest to reduce their numbers so that the spotted owl will not go extinct. Killing one animal to save another: quite a moral dilemma! I have a very simplistic view about such a situation. I feel that if it is part of God’s plan that one species dominates another, what am I to do about it? Am I to be responsible for the survival of the fittest in the animal kingdom? It seems that humans have imposed themselves already way too much in nature’s original order as created by God, and that continued or increased imposition by humans in nature might be more negative than positive.

It is just one more step, in the disregard for life, for a child to learn that human life itself is subject to individual whims to terminate or discard. Humans have reached a point of moral depravity wherein we must decide if an unborn human in the womb is more or less important than the mother’s ease, freedom, and life. The arrogance of humans has, in fact, advanced even farther than ever before. We have tests to determine the health and viability of the fetus, which if it appears to have defects, can be terminated.
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Life is so prolific that it has become cheap.