Culling the herd

An award-winning biology professor looks forward to the day Ebola, bird flu, or another pathogen wipes out 90% of humanity:

Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number. Pianka then displayed a slide showing rows of human skulls, one of which had red lights flashing from its eye sockets.

His favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world's population is airborne Ebola because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years.

When Pianka finished his remarks, the audience applauded…five hours later, the distinguished leaders of the Texas Academy of Science presented Pianka with a plaque in recognition of his being named 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.

Sound outrageous? Pianka admits most people are not ready to hear his ideas. His perpective of humanity is gaining ground, however. In the blockbuster movie The Matrix, Agent Smith refers to humanity as "a cancer of this planet." Much of radical environmentalism sees humanity as a curse on the Earth.

In one respect, they are not far wrong. Earth suffers because of mankind's own curse. Of course, atheists reject scripture. I wonder, though, if any of them find Pianka's position extreme. If so, on what basis? Christianity (and Judaism and Islam) view humanity as the pinnacle of God's creation and the caretaker of the planet. But if we are in fact merely the end product of blind evolutionary processes, no better, as Pianka says, than bacteria, then what is wrong with proposing a thinning of the herd? After all, that's what effective wildlife managers do with deer populations to prevent starvation and disease.

Most people fail to follow a worldview to its logical conclusions. Atheism can build a moral code only on some variant of utilitarianism--the greatest good for the greatest number--because there can be no transcendent value to human life. Thus, killing millions can be justified in pursuit of the perfect communist society, or protecting 'Mother Earth.'

Religion is often caricatured as the source of genocidal fanatacism. While it's true zealots can abuse faith as a license to kill, they at least do so in violation of their worldview. For Pianka and others like him, flirting with Ebola is the fulfillment of their worldview. And make no mistake: they, too, have disciples.