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Gratitude, Compulsion, Idiocy or Nobility?

fromdownunder said:
I often wonder if the raw, live oysters I eat occasionally are aware of their fate and either approve or disapprove of being stabbed, dipped in a sauce, and swallowed whole. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

A few years ago there were Restaurants in Melbourne where there were crayfish swimming around in tanks, and you could specifically pick out the one you wanted for lunch. Did they happily reside in the tank, and know that when Billy Bob was removed, that the cooked version of Billy Bob would be residing in my stomach 30 minutes later?

Somehow I don't think so.

Norm
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Unfortunately, I suffer from Billy Bob's Revenge - :crab: :lobster: only; :squidward :squidward :squidward are not a problem. I wonder if this might be due to shellfish being much more vengeful than molluscs, which usually seem to be very docile creatures. I've had Montezuma's Revenge a couple of times, in spite of never eating one single Montezuma, which seems kind of unfair, but at least Montezuma isn't permanent. Billy Bob sure knows how to hold a grudge!
 
Kumar said:
Both are live beings.
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The food chain is composed almost entirely of live beings. That doesn't stop it from being absolutely essential to life on Earth.

Human is also animal. Both feel pain. Both should have right to life.
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All humans are animals but not all animals are humans. You wish to give to animals the same rights as humans, including to those animals that humans have essentially created by breeding. Are you also in favor of extracting the same responsibilities from those animals as we demand from other humans? You told us earlier that humans were "senior" to other animals. What rights does that status bestow? What responsibility? Why the double standard?

The people whom you've let fill your heads with nonsense are hypocrites. They do not themselves actually respect animals as they want you to believe they do. Are you aware that the vice president of that organization requires insulin for her diabetes, which can only be produced via the captivity and exploitation of animals? Does she nobly die so that those precious animals cannot be used to save her life? No, she makes excuses. The standards these people advocate -- which you ignorantly parrot -- are patently unrealistic. They're based on models of history, biology, and diet that are long on faux morality and short on fact. Those people just want the satisfaction of telling everyone else what to do. But not to do it themselves. Their demonstrated beliefs differ from their pretended beliefs, which effectively dooms their argument -- and yours.

Many such.
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"Many such" what? What are you talking about?
 
JayUtah said:
The food chain is composed almost entirely of live beings. That doesn't stop it from being absolutely essential to life on Earth.



All humans are animals but not all animals are humans. You wish to give to animals the same rights as humans, including to those animals that humans have essentially created by breeding. Are you also in favor of extracting the same responsibilities from those animals as we demand from other humans? You told us earlier that humans were "senior" to other animals. What rights does that status bestow? What responsibility? Why the double standard?

The people whom you've let fill your heads with nonsense are hypocrites. They do not themselves actually respect animals as they want you to believe they do. Are you aware that the vice president of that organization requires insulin for her diabetes, which can only be produced via the captivity and exploitation of animals? Does she nobly die so that those precious animals cannot be used to save her life? No, she makes excuses. The standards these people advocate -- which you ignorantly parrot -- are patently unrealistic. They're based on models of history, biology, and diet that are long on faux morality and short on fact. Those people just want the satisfaction of telling everyone else what to do. But not to do it themselves. Their demonstrated beliefs differ from their pretended beliefs, which effectively dooms their argument -- and yours.



"Many such" what? What are you talking about?
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Senior people have duty to nurse their juniors not to exploit them. Nature progress from senior to juniors like pareñts nurse their children.

Btw, are you telling that such animals have right to life, no right to enjoy lífe, no right to bring their children and nurse them? Are they ONLY made to serve the humans?
 
Let's make it simple. Kumar, when you see someone choking their chicken what is your innate reaction? Do you think everyone's reaction will be the same?
 
Kumar said:
Senior people have duty to nurse their juniors not to exploit them. Nature progress from senior to juniors like pareñts nurse their children.

Btw, are you telling that such animals have right to life, no right to enjoy lífe, no right to bring their children and nurse them? Are they ONLY made to serve the humans?
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Animals are not people Kumar, senior or junior.

They will never progress to people, not in our lifetime anyway, although slime mould might be the dominant life form in the distant future.
 
Kumar said:
Senior people have duty to nurse their juniors not to exploit them.
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Why? Most species of food animal have been created by breeding for just that purpose. Why is Homo sapiens not allowed to benefit from what he made using his superior intelligence?

Nature progress from senior to juniors like pareñts nurse their children.
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Except that animals aren't my children. You are still stuck in the conflation of animals and humans. There is a difference, whether you choose to respect it or not.

You said you were here to understand. Part of understanding is realizing that you're alleging an equivalence that has no basis in fact. I asked you earlier whether you were willing to relax that allegation in order to advance toward understanding. Clearly you are not, which suggests you are not here to understand but rather to evangelize. That being the case, I think I'll continue to hold your feet to the fire.

Btw, are you telling that such animals have right to life, no right to enjoy lífe, no right to bring their children and nurse them? Are they ONLY made to serve the humans?
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Essentially yes, but I don't subscribe to your simplification. Some species have been bred especially as food animals. Service to humans results in benefits they would not otherwise enjoy. Humans domesticating animals to serve them is a longstanding historical fact. Again, the people upon whose pretense of morality you're relying know this. Their leaders have no problem keeping animals captive to exploit them for their ability to produce lifesaving drugs for their own benefit. Yet they propose to deny this to others on allegedly moral grounds. You still have not addressed this, and we haven't even gotten to PETA's own animal euthanasia practices.

If you're going to use them as an authority on the ethics of behavior toward animals, shouldn't you at some point explain why even they are unwilling to live within the morals they propose to impose on others? Have you considered that their model of morality is unrealistic? Have you considered that it is not based on facts? If not, then how can you say you're trying to understand? You seem unwilling to look at your own position with a single iota of critical thinking. You seem to be taking a purely moralist's position and chiding others for not being as righteous as you are.

I keep two dogs and two cats. The cats have a responsibility to rid my property of rodents, which can carry disease. They are brothers from the same litter and are 17 years old -- quite a lifespan for the species. They have lasted that long only because I have cared for their injuries, arranged for vaccinations, and prepared food for them when rodentia doesn't present itself in suitable numbers (e.g., during the winter). Thus they live a better life than they would as wild cats, but only because they serve me. One of my dogs is blind. He would not have survived in the wild. The other I acquired with a lame hind leg, which I arranged to have corrected by surgery at my considerable expense. Without my intervention he would have been unable to hunt or defend himself and would have died a miserable or violent death. I care for them because they serve my purposes and for no other reason.

PETA tells me what I'm doing is wrong. They tell me that the animals I keep for my own purposes should be set free to live on their own. I am quite sure that were I to do that, they would live short lives and die violent deaths. I find the protests of radical animal rights activists to be very short-sighted and very selective and rather incompassionate on their face.

Humankind's relationship with these two species -- dogs and cats -- began as symbiosis. Wolves that were tame enough to approach humans were rewarded with food scraps. Humans that were brave enough to tolerate the presence of predator wolves were rewarded by the wolves allegiance in defense and early warning. Millennia of breeding for these traits created a new species. The species Canis familiaris would not exist at all but for H. sapiens' efforts to create them from wolves for their own purposes. Similarly Felis catus arose by selective breeding from small wild cats that were drawn to humans' granaries. Again a symbiotic relationship arose as the cats preyed on the rodents that spoiled the grain. Humans bred in the traits that made them suitable to that task, and cared for them in order that they would survive and serve the purpose for which they had been bred. There's no "nurturing" involved. It's a purely practical project.

Food animals are generally also species or sub-species that would not exist at all without humans and would not continue to exist were humans suddenly to disappear. They currently are born and live in numbers that would be wholly unsustainable without human care, leading to many lives lived that would otherwise not be lived. You seem to look only at the fact that they will be slaughtered (in most cases humanely) and used as food, which is their entire raison d'être despite your romantic delusions otherwise. During their lives they enjoy protection from predators that their cousin species in the wild do not have. they enjoy free access to food that their cousin species in the wild do not have. You gloss over all this symbiosis to arrive only at the notion that they will serve a valuable purpose by dying, and that this is somehow immoral.

Your comically starry-eyed notion of animal agriculture simply has no basis in fact. You're being led along by the nose by people who have no facts on their side, no desire to live according to their own moral judgment, and no sympathy for the consequences of their own misjudgments. You are being deceived by a political group for their own purposes, unaware of how such groups tug at moral heartstrings in order to get advantage they wouldn't have otherwise. They aren't the first or only group to try to shame people into doing what they tell them to do. Animals do not have the same rights as humans because they are not the same species as humans. Ethical treatment of animals is not as laughably simplistic as you're trying to make it, and the people who are telling you to make that way obviously understand privately that it is not.
 
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