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Which isn't to say that I enjoy seeing animals suffer or anything, but I don't have any problem with them being eaten or worn. Which is exactly what the aliens are going to do to us when they get here.
Enjoy your time at the top, earthlings!
Drink deeply and lustily from the foamy draught of evil.
W: 1.756 Quadrillion L: 0 D: 2
Haters gon' hate.
Australia (Recently ravaged by the Hive Fleet Ginger Overlord)
sebster wrote:The two positions seem framed to encourage people to take sides and yell at each other, rather than discuss what is a rather complex issue.
Can we not, for instance, consider the idea that while humans have more rights than animals, that doesn't mean that animal has none? I would happily kill a wolf if it was about to kill a human, but I would not support going out and killing wolves for fun. This is because in the first instance, I believe the right of the human to live to be greater than that of the wolf, but that the human's rights aren't so dominant that his right to fun is greater than the wolf's right to live.
Now exactly where human rights become dominant over animal rights is a tough one, and depends a lot on the human right in question, and on the animal. Simply put, the more trivial the human right the less it should be dominant, while the more intelligent the animal the more it should be respected.
I think, outside of a few fringe whackos on each side of the debate, most people think more or less along these lines, albeit with different lines drawn for different creatures.
:Cue supporting agreement post:
Gailbraithe wrote:
If they were sport killing wolves, I would. Not saying its moral, but if I knew someone killed wolves for sport I would lose all human sympathy for them. I'm dead serious when I say I think wolves are better than humans. If I was forced to choose between a button that killed all wolves and one that killed all humans, this planet would be inherited by our four-legged friends.
But I totally acknowledge that is not a rational position. Wolves are just that awesome. Wolves exist on a plane of awesomeness that transcends all laws of reality, logic, reason and science. Wolves are so awesome that I hate the Space Wolves chapter for tainting the concept of wolves by mixing it with something as lame as Space Marines, which I think are totally awesome in any sort of non-wold related context. I think Furries should be sent to camps simply because so many of the bastards choose wolves as a focus of their perversion.
We should invade Canada, drive off the human inhabitants, and turn the entire country in a wolf preserve.
::deep breaths::
Sorry. I like wolves.
I might as well ask what your reasoning for this is. So, what is it? What makes one species greater than the other?
Smacks wrote:
After the game, pack up all your miniatures, then slap the guy next to you on the ass and say.
Gailbraithe just wants to wear his stylish wolf shirts.
Anuvver fing - when they do sumfing, they try to make it look like somfink else to confuse everybody. When one of them wants to lord it over the uvvers, 'e says "I'm very speshul so'z you gotta worship me", or "I know summink wot you lot don't know, so yer better lissen good". Da funny fing is, arf of 'em believe it and da over arf don't, so 'e 'as to hit 'em all anyway or run fer it.
Orkeosaurus wrote:Why are mushrooms morally superior to rocks?
Because rocks are racist.
If the aliens are xenocentric, hopefully they'll see us as similar enough to themselves to grant us many (or even all?) of the rights they have (assuming they have any, and that we'd even want them; who knows?).
This will not end well...
*Hides under a rock covered in mushrooms*
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2010/09/17 04:26:32
Orkeosaurus wrote:
Biocentrism is really pretty silly. Animals don't care about any sort of innate rights that other animals might have, and if humans are posited to be morally unexceptional when compared to other living organisms then that just leads us with some sort of roundabout nihilism. Plus, why does having a reproducing chain of amino acids make an object so special? Why are mushrooms morally superior to rocks?
Moreover, if we start regarding humans and other animals as morally equal, don't we also have to start judging humans and animals by the same moral criteria? It seems very strange to posit that a wolf is immoral because it makes no real attempt to minimize the suffering of its prey in the course of feeding.
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
