More on “brainwashing” children, St Augustine’s major fallacy, and Lino Farrugia’s clutching at religious straws
Submitted by ANIMAL RIGHTS MALTA’S BLOG
Lino Farrugia, secretary of the hunters’ federation (FKNK) seems convinced that speaking out absurdities will convince the overwhelming anti-hunting majority in Malta to switch ranks and support the totally unnecessary killing of innocent and sentient birds.
Mr Farrugia, in today’s The Times, replies to Joe Aquilina-St John’s letter of January 5 by saying:
“Letters such as The Opposite Of Hunting (January 5) by Joe Aquilina-St John of Mellieha are typical of those under the illusion that they are qualified to educate children”.
I suppose that soon, the Education Department will employ Mr Farrugia as an examiner and selector of aspiring teachers in Malta, perhaps to ensure that values such as xenophobia and the justification of the unnecessary killing of weaker innocents are instilled in our young pupils at an early age. Of course, that would not be “brainwashing”. On the contrary, it would be the best way to ensure that our young pupils are brought up to have a “good moral character” (might is right) and to “recognize right from wrong” (holding a gun makes you right). I’m sure that Mr Farrugia would be the best qualified for that post. Oh well, but let’s move on.
Mr Farrugia goes on to write: “In what he calls ‘the bible of the English language’ Mr Aquilina-St John finds that an antonym for the word ‘hunting’ is conservation. We wish to inform him that according to the New Testament of the English Language, hunting has become synonymous with conservation”.
I don’t know which edition of Roget’s Thesaurus Mr Farrugia has, but I have failed to find hunting as being synonymous with conservation in any of the online Thesauruses. Mr Farrugia would have perhaps been more credible if he included a direct quote, and perhaps also mentioned which edition of the Thesaurus he would be quoting from. Apart from this, to claim that hunting is synonymous with conservation defies common sense. The onus is on Mr Farrugia to prove that common sense is mistaken in this case.
Mr Farrugia goes on to say that “Hunters have to safeguard, husband (are they marrying birds now?) or conserve the species of the individual birds they hunt, as otherwise there would be nothing to hunt. Whatever Roget’s Thesaurus had to say in the 19th century about hunting, the fact is that in the modern age hunting and conservation go together. If the correspondent for whatever reason cannot understand this simple fact, that is not our problem”.
Three replies are in order here.
First of all, the best way to safeguard or conserve a species is to stop killing its members.
Secondly, for one to ensure that species are “conserved” (if we are to concede this point, considering that numbers don’t matter and all unnecessary killing is murder) requires that there is sufficient monitoring of legal and illegal hunting. But, as reported in The Times of January 10, Mr Farrugia sees nature observers who report illegal hunting as provocative and irresponsible, and describes it as “foreign interference” if any of the nature observers are not Maltese. This seems to suggest that Mr Farrugia is more interested in “conserving” illegal hunters than the “protected” birds they shoot and kill.
As for the comment on Roget’s Thesaurus being a 19th century book, Mr Farrugia, who perhaps has more worthwhile things to do (killing the defenceless) than to educate himself by reading books, would perhaps be surprised to learn that the book is often updated and re-published, which makes it contemporary.
Mr Farrugia goes on to say: “The correspondent (Mr Aquilina-St John) suffers from the same prejudice as those trying to brainwash Malta’s schoolchildren. Children need to be taught values and principles based on the whole truth, not just a part of it”.
Again, I guess that Mr Farrugia is referring to values and principles such as xenophobia and the unnecessary killing of sentient and defenceless animals. But let us see what this “whole truth” is, according to Mr Farrugia.
Mr Farrugia, referring to Mr Aquilina St-John’s reference to St Francis, writes: “Other saints held a different worldview to that of St Francis. Foremost among them is St Augustine who had opposing views. In The City of God he wrote: ‘Christ himself shows that to refrain from the killing of animals and the destroying of plants is the height of superstition for, judging that there are no common rights between us and the beasts and trees, he sent the devils into a herd of swine and with a curse withered the tree on which he found no fruit’. These two great saints of the Catholic Church represent the two extremes of the interaction of humans with the environment. The modern version of Christian ethics tries to embrace the middle way”.
It is a good thing that Mr Farrugia, in attempting to justify the unnecessary killing of sentient non-human animals, chose to quote St Augustine’s irrational justification for killing them. First of all, let us scrutinize St Augustine’s main claim. St Augustine tells us that “Christ himself shows that to refrain from the killing of animals and the destroying of plants is the height of superstition”. This in effect means that we are entitled, if we so wish, to grab a knife, and start killing any non-human animal that comes in our way. I’m sure that not even Mr Farrugia would condone such behaviour. And it is heartening that at least, the modern Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraph 2418), says that “it is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly”. Would Mr Farrugia perhaps claim that this sentence in the official Catechism goes contrary to Christ’s teachings, or will he concede that perhaps St Augustine was grossly mistaken on this issue? But let us examine St Augustine’s justification of this highly immoral claim.
St Augustine tells us that it is “the height of superstition” to believe that one should not kill animals or plants, since Christ supposedly sent devils into a “herd of swine” and supposedly cursed an out of season fig tree for not bearing fruit. The absurdity of the second example (on the fig tree) makes belief in the literal interpretation of the first (about the pigs) doubtful at best. For let us examine what the Bible is saying here, and consequently, what St Augustine and presumably Mr Farrugia take as literal truth.
In that particular passage, the Bible (Mark 11:11 - 11:14) says: “And Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple: and when he had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, he went out unto Bethany with the twelve. And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry: And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it”.
So according to a literal interpretation of the Bible, we are supposed to believe that Jesus actually cursed and “punished” a fig tree for not producing figs while out of season! This, in effect, means that the original claim that to refrain from the killing of animals is the height of superstition, itself rests on superstitious belief, which logically nullifies the claim, since to use superstition as a negation of superstition is paradoxical at best.
But then again, one could always pick and choose which parts of the Bible to be taken literally, and which not, I suppose. But one would perhaps deem it at least understandable if I claim that it’s Augustine’s belief that Jesus literally punished a fig tree that is “the height of superstition”. And apparently, that is Mr Farrugia’s belief as well, considering that he brought it up as an example to justify the killing of any living being that is not human.
Also, like I wrote in “A “God-given” right to kill, and humanity’s “uniqueness”", “One should perhaps be reminded that a word-for-word literal interpretation of the Bible would sanction slavery; genocide; capital punishment by stoning of blasphemers, gay people, and those who work on the Sabbath; the giving away of daughters for prostitution; and lots more heinous crimes which we find justified (or sometimes even demanded of us) in the Old Testament”.
I wonder if St Augustine and Mr Farrugia approve of slavery; genocide; the killing of blasphemers, gay people and those who work on the Sabbath; and forced prostitution - because the Bible says so!
Mr Farrugia concludes his absurd letter by writing: “Relating to hunting, this translates into ‘hunting is morally acceptable provided it is sustainable’. This is the education our schoolchildren should be getting. Instead they are being brainwashed by extremists. We again urge the Minister of Education to take action and put a stop to the shameless actions of a few masquerading as educationalists”.
I’m sorry, Mr Farrugia, but St Augustine’s particular belief in a literal “truth” that would make Jesus crazy (like anyone who really punishes a fig tree would be), disqualifies him from making a moral conclusion that hinges on an absurdity. St Augustine may have been a clever philosopher in other matters, but on this point he was grossly mistaken, which invalidates any conclusion one makes out of his assumption (such as the conclusion that ‘hunting is morally acceptable provided it is sustainable’). If such a conclusion is to be validated (and I can’t see how needlessly killing sentient innocents could ever be), one should perhaps look elsewhere than superstition.
Of course, I concede that Mr Farrugia, in his usual habit of calling any dissenter an “extremist”, tells us that “these two great saints of the Catholic Church represent the two extremes of the interaction of humans with the environment. The modern version of Christian ethics tries to embrace the middle way”. Well, Mr Farrugia, the modern version of Christian ethics does not try to embrace the middle way. It actually embraces St Francis’ way. Like I already quoted above, the Catechism states that “it is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly”, and hunting is in effect making animals suffer and die needlessly. I have given enough evidence to show that St Augustine’s opinions on this issue are seriously flawed, since they rest on superstition which, if taken as true, would make Jesus (whom St Augustine believes to be God) crazy (through cursing and punishing trees). I highly doubt that Mr Farrugia could ever meet the challenge of proving St Francis wrong on animal issues.
As for “brainwashing” and “shameless actions” of “a few masquerading as educationalists”, sweeping accusations unsubstantiated by rational evidence only serve to ensure that such people making such statements are not taken seriously.
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