When killer whales kill: A biblical view

In the long run we are all dead.

~ John Maynard Keynes, progressive economist

It has been a little over a week since the tragic death of Dawn Brancheau, a veteran trainer at SeaWorld in Florida who was killed by a serial killer whale named, "Tilikum."

Eyewitnesses said that Dawn did not accidentally fall into the tank of the animal as officials from SeaWorld originally claimed, but that while the trainer wasn't looking the killer whale grabbed her hair and mercilessly mauled her in the water. SeaWorld quickly revised their storyline of the tragic accident:

SeaWorld acknowledged two hours later that Tilikum had grabbed Brancheau by her ponytail and yanked her into the water. The park then made its head animal trainer available to the media to explain and defend its methods of training and maintaining its whales.

These unscrupulous acts on SeaWorld's part are beyond the pale. The park must be held accountable, and Tilikum the killer whale should be immediately destroyed.

This euthanasia policy isn't without precedent. I remember reading about a mountain lion that had killed a jogger in California. Officials tracked the offending animal down and immediately killed it so that the public could be put at ease when out enjoying the wilderness.

The theory that fooled the world – read "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design"

Other stories of killer sharks, bears, lions, tigers, bulls, etc., that had to be hunted down and destroyed because these wild beasts killed people are not uncommon in America and around the world. Where did people get the idea that animals which kill people must immediately be destroyed? Well, the same place we got the ideas found in natural law, the common law, the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights – it all came from the Bible.

Perhaps surprising to most people is the fact that God has explicit commandments on how to deal with animals that kill humans. Early Catholic theologians like St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and others followed a natural-law philosophy of the universe that animals should be hunted and eaten by others. This was reflected in their theology.

Christian thinking downgraded animals for three main reasons:

God had created animals for the use of human beings, and human beings were therefore entitled to use them in any way they want;
Animals were distinctively inferior to human beings and were worth little if any moral consideration, because:
- humans have souls and animals don't; and
- humans have reason and animals don't;
Christian thought was heavily humano-centric and only considered animals in relation to human beings, and not on their own terms.

Turning to the Bible, in Exodus 21:28-29 Moses gives God's law concerning personal injury or what we call today "torts":

If a bull gores a man or a woman to death, the bull must be stoned to death, and its meat must not be eaten. But the owner of the bull will not be held responsible. If, however, the bull has had the habit of goring and the owner has been warned but has not kept it penned up and it kills a man or woman, the bull must be stoned and the owner also must be put to death.

For centuries, Western civilization has prided itself in being founded on the Judeo-Christian traditions of intellectual thought. But then came the advent of a Darwinian worldview in the 1860s, which removed mankind from his lofty perch of special creation by God and placed humanity equal to (or beneath) animals, and the ascendancy of the progressive movement in the 1890s that intellectualized and codified Darwinian thinking into public policy, culture, medicine, education, law, politics and economics.

Humanists and social egalitarians of today contend that people are no higher or better than animals.

Now, because of perverse ideas of egalitarianism, modern society is reluctant to kill Tilikum, the killer whale who willfully killed three people on three different occasions, but instead we rationalize that it wasn't the whale's fault. SeaWorld, therefore, felt emboldened to conduct a big press conference with a back drop of the offending killer whale swimming carefree in his tank, while the body of the murdered Dawn Brancheau lies six feet underground in a cold, dark grave in Chicago, Ill.

America, is this justice? Have we not lost our way, our humanity and our moral virtue when a serial-murderer killer whale acting according to its name and nature can frolic in his holding tank in front of millions of people all over the world and not be killed for his multiple murderous acts? This makes no sense to me on any level.

That Dawn's family attended the press conference in apparent solidarity with SeaWorld only adds insult to injury and shows how ubiquitous the self-delusion of the animal-rights movement is in modern society. We have thus made God's word null and void by our own traditions, our foolish notions of egalitarianism and radical policies concerning "animal rights." No law or opinion should be able to rise above God's Holy Word; otherwise, we have sown the seeds of society's own destruction.

The anti-Christian view rooted in the ideas of the progressive movement is controlling today. Progressivism is a diabolical philosophy that since the 1890s has propagated such perverse public policies as: the welfare state, eugenics, forced sterilization, abortion, Marxism, radical environmentalism, pragmatism, utilitarianism, feminism, socialism, naturalism, animal rights – all within the paradigm of social Darwinism.

The sacred worth of humans has been deconstructed into a cold cost-benefit analysis of progressive economists.

British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), has been revered by European socialists and American progressives including U.S. presidents Woodrow Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. Keynes is perhaps both the most famous (and infamous) economist of the 20th century. In answer to perceptions about his spend-your-way-out-of-bankruptcy theories causing a precipitous rise in deficit spending and financial instability among world economies, Keynes was unrepentant, asking, in effect, who cares about deficits? As Keynes said: In the long run we are all dead.

Rest in peace, Dawn Brancheau.