Today it was reported that Tilikum, the whale at SeaWorld that killed a trainer last year, had returned to performing.
As you may recall, when this tragedy struck, Bryan Fischer lashed out at Sea World for not putting Tilikum to death as mandated in the Bible:
If the counsel of the Judeo-Christian tradition had been followed, Tillikum would have been put out of everyone’s misery back in 1991 and would not have had the opportunity to claim two more human lives.
Says the ancient civil code of Israel, “When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable.” (Exodus 21:28)
So, your animal kills somebody, your moral responsibility is to put that animal to death. You have no moral culpability in the death, because you didn’t know the animal was going to go postal on somebody.
But, the Scripture soberly warns, if one of your animals kills a second time because you didn’t kill it after it claimed its first human victim, this time you die right along with your animal. To use the example from Exodus, if your ox kills a second time, “the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.” (Exodus 21:29)
So it is no surprise that Fischer is up in arms over this recent development:
You remember, of course, that a 12,000 pound killer whale at SeaWorld Orlando killed his trainer Dawn Brancheau last year by pulling her into a pool by her pony tail and dragging and thrashing her around until she drowned in front of a crowd of stunned guests, which of course included young children.
That’s another death we can chalk up to animal rights insanity and to the ongoing failure of the West to take counsel on practical matters from the Scripture.
And now we discover today that insanity continues: Tilikum is back in the water, ready to kill again.
The justification for Tilikum’s return to the killing pools is nauseating. Said Kelly Flaherty-Clark, SeaWorld Orlando’s animal training curator, his return to active duty is “an important component of his physical, social and mental enrichment.” Well, as long as he’s happy, that’s the main thing.
This is the value system of environmentalists today: three human lives lost, no biggie. The supreme priority here is to enrich this killer’s pea-sized brain … And SeaWorld’s evaluation has put this animal right back in the water when he should long ago have been put out of everyone’s misery. If he kills again, somebody needs to shut SeaWorld down.
