Moral Argument for God's Existence

[Angrboda]

Plus its hard to come up with a moral position for a carrot.

The Federal Constitution has three forms of protection for plants: the protection of biodiversity, species protection, and the duty to take the dignity of living beings into consideration when handling plants. The constitutional term "living beings" encompasses animals, plants and other organisms. At legislative level, the Gene Technology Act limits the scope of the term to animals and plants. Previous discussion within constitutional law relates the term Würde der Kreatur ("dignity of living beings") to the value of the individual organism for its own sake. Since its establishment by the Federal Council in April 1998, the ECNH has been expected to make proposals from an ethical perspective to concretise the constitutional term dignity of living beings with regard to plants. Although previous discussion of Würde der Kreatur was marked by the context of the legal interpretation of the constitution an ethical discussion should be carried out independently of this.

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Although the authority of intuition in ethical discourse is contested, it was hoped in the initial phase of the discussion at least, to draw on concrete, typical examples to agree on general criteria for dealing with plants.

It became clear, however, that for plants – unlike animals – it was almost impossible to refer to moral intuition. There is no social consensus on how to deal with plants. Even within the ECNH, the intuitions relating to the extent and justification of moral responsibilities towards plants were highly heterogeneous. Some members were of the opinion that plants are not part of the moral community, because they do not satisfy the conditions for belonging to this community. Others argued that plants should not belong to it, because otherwise human life would be morally over-regulated. A further group felt that there were particular situations in which people should refrain from something for the sake of a plant, unless there are sufficient grounds to the contrary. This opinion was justified either by arguing that plants strive after something, which should not be blocked without good reason, or that recent findings in natural science, such as the many commonalities between plants, animals and humans at molecular and cellular level, remove the reasons for excluding plants in principle from the moral community. The only criterion on which all the members could agree, despite their very differing intuitions, was that we should not harm or destroy plants arbitrarily. Whether concrete ways of acting could be derived from this prohibition on the arbitrary handling of plants, and what they might be, remained unclear.

The Dignity of Living Beings With Regard To Plants: