Ota Benga and the Value of Life

Have you ever heard of Ota Benga, the African pygmy who was on "display" in the Bronx Zoo in 1906. I put "display" in quotes, because from the best I could tell, while he was certainly exploited because of racist bias, it seemed he was employed (or at least given room and board) by the Zoo and not treated as an animal. He had free roam over the zoo grounds and even helped out with some work. However, despite any compensation he may have been receiving the attitudes of the people were clearly that he was less than human, or at least less human than they were.

This story was a great example of worldview affecting the value of human life because we have explicit quotes from both evolutionist thinking and Biblically thinking people. A movement of black clergy tried to get Ota removed from exhibit with the leader of the group, a Rev. Gordon, was quoted stating "Our race ... is depressed enough ... without exhibiting one of us with the apes. We think we are worthy of being considered human beings with souls." The New York Times ran an editorial that claimed, "The pygmies are very low in the human scale. ... The idea that men are all much alike except as they have had or lacked opportunities for getting an education out of books is now far out of date."

While you could go round and round debating whether Ota was actually being mistreated directly by zoo officials, they responses to the situation speaks volumes about their views on the value of life.Those with a Biblical framework were bothered by a human on exhibit in a zoo and evolutionists either were more likely to be apathetic or thought it was appropriate, basing their conclusions on their idea of Ota Benga being less evolved than they were.

Something has value because something greater than itself has placed value upon it. Money, gold or jewels only have value in that they are desired. A thirsty man in the desert would value water far above gold or diamonds. The value we have as human beings is because God loves us. He made us and wants to redeem us. Regardless of what friends, family, bosses, or coworkers think of us (or even what we think of ourselves) we have value, not because we are so intrinsically awesome, but because God  has assigned a value on us. A value to great that "He gave His only begotten son so that whosever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).

A naturalistic evolutuonary worldview has nothing outside of mankind to assign value to mankind. Evolution views humanity as simply one more organism populating the earth. Molecules in motion. A meat bag controlled by chemical reactions with no greater value than chimps, dogs, slugs or bacteria. In order to claim some sort of value on people as a whole or a person as an individual, evolutionary thinking has to borrow that idea from a theistic worldview. In a naturalistic evolutionary view of the world, it is easy to see how if there is nothing outside of mankind (God) to assign value to mankind, then we can assign or deny whatever value we choose to any group we choose on any basis we choose and feel completely justified in doing it with no rational moral claim to the contrary.