The Bible and Human 'Dominion' Over Animals: Superiority or Responsibility?

The cover girl for last week's Time magazine is not pretty, by conventional standards. She's a bit jowly, for one thing, and whiskers sprout from her cheeks and chin. The deep brown eyes that gaze into the camera are frankly a bit off-kilter, and she cops some attitude: "Way to go, Einstein" floats in a thought bubble over her droopy ear. But hey, she's a dog -- a pug, judging from her smushed-in nose.

Anyone who lives with animals or has observed them at any length will tell you that they can seem pretty darn smart. Recent studies confirm that they are, in diverse ways and to varying degrees. That's the point of the magazine article. So why our history of ignorance, why our dismissal of them as "just a dog" or "just a bird"? The article pins partial blame on the Bible -- on one sentence in particular -- and the absolute authority that people give to such biblical texts.

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