When I was little, the Sunday school teacher taught me the story of Adam & Eve. It was a pretty watered down, child-friendly tale with pictures of two happy blonde haired, blue-eyed people wandering through a lush paradise. They were butt-nekkid, but you'd never know that because they were artfully covered up by the foliage between the picture viewer and them. At the time, I was struck at the notion of how weird it was that Adam had short hair. I kept asking if they had scissors.

The important part of the story to the church was that god had made these two people and there was some sin going on, then a banishment, and well, suffering as we know it began. The old joke about Adam & Eve's navels made the rounds. The important part of the story to me was that at some point, god told Adam he was the steward of everything on the planet. It was his job to name them and take care of them.

My first brush with this acceptable view in actual practice came three days later, when the fire department showed up in school to teach us Stop! Drop! Roll! and other pithy sayings. I think that this comes up in every fire department lecture to grade-schoolers. What happens when the house is on fire? You're supposed to get out! Do you go back in for anything? No! What about a pet? No...? At least that's what they wanted us to say. Several children, including myself, stated that we'd go back for our beloved pets. So began the rhetoric that essentially boiled down to this: your parents can replace your dog, but they can't replace you.

One of my classmates, who'd just had twin sisters born to his family, pointed out that there were plenty of kids getting born, even if you didn't want them to be.

The helpful fireman said that they could have as many babies as they wanted, but they could never have another you.

So I wondered why it was that my parents could never get another me, but we could get another Buffy and Bambi? (My mother wasn't terribly imaginative with dog names.) To my mind, dogs were as individual as people are, just dumber and ate more disgusting things. Even more disgusting things than my brother.

The fireman said that I was special and couldn't be replaced, but dogs weren't as special, so they could be. Four of us, three girls, one boy, were inconsolable for hours after that.

The aforementioned Sunday school teacher was slightly more helpful. According to her, and therefore god himself, animals were put here for man to use, reference the creation story, and that they weren't as important as people were. After all, people were put here for god, right? God wanted us to be here. There was more, but I tuned most of it out.

That was my first taste of the notion of the Sanctity of Human Life. That humans are somehow more sacred than anything else. That we own it all and can do whatever we like with it. God said so. I think that, deep down, this is one reason so many people are bothered by the idea of evolution. Bad enough to theorize that we come from mere animals, even if they are primates, but to remove our divine special-ness? Oh, the horror. Could we face life knowing that the only reason we own our pets is because we're smarter than they are and can, therefore, enforce our will? Is it better to think that we own our pets because god said we did? Because god made us special?