Biggest lie in the history of mankind

[nietzreznor]

Interesting post.

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God created man and woman and gave them the right to use animals as they wish.

This is imo the best argument I've heard (and well, I personally think religions are close to ridiculous, and I'm not at all religious). Fact is that this isn't exactly even correct (according to the bible), the pope has even stated that current, unnaturally large-scaled and cruel abuse is not ok, and animals should be treated better although people have the right to use them.

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Well, any appeal to God for right/wrong is just an appeal to authority, so in all honesty I think this is the weakest argument made in favor of 'abusing' animals.

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Me macho man, me stronger&personally climbed to top of food chain and eat wtf ever I want.

You also rape women/innocent kids if you think you'd enjoy that?

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I agree--the fact that humans are 'stronger' doesn't make what we do to animals acceptable, just like rape and murder aren't acceptable.

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We are so intelligent and animals are dumber than miss South Carolina

Why is this more significant than, say, being able to run faster or fly? Also this would mean young children and mentally retarded people would be available to be used as food.

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Setting aside the issue of mentally disabled people and children, I disagree with your point here. People can be different from each other, and different from other animals, etc. etc. in many different ways. But not all differences between living beings are morally significant. The fact that, say, humans have hands with opposable thumbs, and fish have fins, isn't a morally significant difference (all other things being equal; it would only be 'morally significant' insofar as it made a difference it what constituted living well for that species).
But intelligence--or wisdom--certainly seems to be a morally significant difference. And it is especially relevent to the issue of how to treat animals since part of the difference in intelligence between humans and other animals (excepting maybe monkeys and dolphins, I don't know) is that humans are capable of rational and moral thought in a way that other animals aren't. If this is true--if humans are moral agents in a way that animals aren't--then this clearly seems to suggest that we have a different moral status than other animals. (But one shouldn't take this to mean that we have a balnk check to do whatever we want to animals--it just means that there are significant moral differences between human beings and most other animals).

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We can feel pain and suffer but animals can't.

They can. Maybe less, but they definitely can suffer (even fish, according to new studies, although fish don't express emotions well).

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Well, at least the animals we're generally concerned about can feel pain (I wouldn't know for sure, but I doubt insects can feel pain). In any case, I definitely don't think that an animals capacity (or lackthereof) for pain should be the primary reason for our treating them well. Would it be okay to slaughter animals at will if we doped them up first? It might be less cruel, but it still seems unacceptable.

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We can create and enjoy art

Yeah, so..? Many animals can also enjoy things we can't.

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Maybe so, but this isn't a strong point unless we could actually point to the type of 'higher-level' things that only animals could enjoy. As it stands, the ability to create and understand art seems to be one shared only by humans (and perhaps superintelligent beings in other galaxies) and seems like a morally significant difference to me.

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We have consciousness and animals don't

And what exactly is consciousness, why is it so important and where's any evidence that points to the direction that animals don't have it? Many animals are self-aware.

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Certainly some animals are self-aware (but I'm really unsure of how many or which ones..) I'm not sure that having self-awareness is all that interesting in and of itself, but it would seem to be a prerequisite of any type of moral reasoning.

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We can love others etc.

And well, no animal cares about it's children? Some are monogamous too. Also, most human relationships definitely seem like just trading things, so that both sides benefit. While that's fine, I don't see it making us any more worthy.

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No one doubts, I think, that animals could care, on some level, about each other--but that's a very different thing than the love that humans can feel for each other.

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We have made a deal with animals that we help them exist in big numbers and then can eat them in exchange

Such a deal definitely has not been made.


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Agree with you 100% (social contract rears its ugly head again [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img])

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Life in pain is better than not living at all

If a being never exists, it simply never exists and so can't have any kind of rights or "will to live". And when a being exists it has rights. Just like a person is free to never have kids, but if a child is born, it has rights.

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Agree (except that I don't think animals have 'rights' per se; but we do have many moral obligations towards them, and I would include not killing them for food, in most scenarios, on that list).

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Abusing animals is natural, since we have always done it, and so must be right

Just because we have done something in the past doesn't mean it's right. Or is murdering and raping fine too? Also, before 20th century we didn't abuse animals on nearly similar scale, eating meat used to be much rarer than it now is.

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I agree--rights are claims about how things should be, so how things are or how things have been isn't necessarily relevant.

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But why would anyone try to claim that humans would be worth less than others? Because we are capable of doing absolutely sick things (even when not counting animal abuse). From nazis etc. to more common things like raping, scamming, murdering, bullying, adultery, incest etc. that can cause huge suffering, while we can fully realize what we are doing and the pain it causes.

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But human beings are also capable of really good things, too (art, science, knowledge, creating new technologies, etc.) It seems to me that the reason why animals haven't done "really sick things" is the same reason they haven't done "really good things"--namely, they don't have the right capacities to do such things.
That aside, I don't think it would be fair to judge the entire human race as a collective, and try and place it on a 'moral map' somewhere. The 'entire human race' is not responsible for the what the Nazis did--only the Nazis are (and perhaps only the Nazis that were actively involved). Grouping people as collectives and then judging the group by the actions of a few individuals is the type of reasoning that is prevalent in racism, sexism, etc., so it doesn't seem to me to be a fair approach.