I frankly don't care very much about the issue of animal rights, but this post really merited a response. : The root of the animal rights movement would seem to hang on the
: issue of rights and the definition of rights. On its face, the premise
: of rights of animals has always struck me as absolutely ridiculous.
: Perhaps it is an innate understanding of my position in the food chain.
No scientific absis for this. Humans are largely primary consumers (herbivorous), to some extent secondary consumers (sheep, cows, some fish), rarely tertiary consumers (other fish), etc. There are many animals higher than us in the food chain. Do you think that makes mosquitos better than us?
Anyay, the whole notion of a hierarchy of animals, with any species at teh top, is scientifically discredited a long time ago. Life is a tree, not a ladder.
: Perhaps it is the inevitable result of a cursory examination of the
: issue unfettered by the obfuscating effect of raw emotionalism. Not
: mean to demean emotions - but raw emotion without reason is the basis
: of much suffering in this world.
Oh please, please, please! Let's not have this turn into another name-calling like the one in the Capitalism room. the kind of 'I have reason but you have mere emotion" type of attack. It's not substantive, nor is it conducive to debate.
: To formulate the concept of rights requires a high cognitive
: capacity. Indeed, the formulation, exercise, and protection of rights
: requires a sustained mental effort that no species other than man even
: comes close to possessing.
We really can't be certain of the mental capacity of other species, chimpanzees, dolphins, etc. Anyway, the sisue of where rights comes from is by no means settled. Some would argue that inherent in the capacity to feel pain is the right not to be subjected to pain unneccessarily. This at least is consistent, plant's can't feel pain so eating them is OK.
: The call of rights for animals then is
: really a call for man to invest animals with his rights – those rights
: he (or possibly someone higher) created.
No, no one is saying chimpanzees need the right to vote, only that they have the right to live peacefully and to enjoy tehir natural environment. Please know what you criticize.
:What natural laws or set of
: morals exist that bestow rights to animals?
Ask a Hindu or Buddhist, he'll tell you that a 'higher power" has decreed that harm towards any sentient life is wrong.
:None, unless one ignores
: the carnage manifest in nature in order to maintain an ideological
: premise.
Sorry to inform you, but humanity has a good dela of carnage and cruelty as well. Should pygmy chimpanzees think that they're superior to us because we repress homosexuals? Should mole rats think they';re superior because tehy live for teh collective good rather than being selfish? Does the fact that our predominant economic system reduces the necessities of life and human beings themselves to monetary value mean that humans are a pimitive species, undeserving of rights? To compare the "carnage" in nature to the abuses of human society is comparing two totally different things.
: Any argument in favor of animal rights must acknowledge that
: man is the arbiter of those rights unless the protagonist wishes to
: assume that those rights stem from an even higher source of
: cognitive reasoning.
No. This may be my personal view, but it is not a necessary implication. If agnostics can postulate teh existence of the law of gravitation, etc. without the need to postulate a source for tesoe laws, then they can do teh same with respect to natural, inalienable rights. Human rights were determined on exactly such a basis, people didn't get together and draw up a contract saying "OK< we all ahve a right to life". throughout history, human rights have been proclaimed by people on the basis of being natural and immutable.
: There is a dilemma, therefore, for those who see a world without
: God. If man and only man is responsible for the creation, maintenance,
: and delegation of rights,
No, you can believe in natural rights without believing in God.
: there can be no convincing moral component to
: an argument in favor of animal rights when this argument is juxtaposed
: to the historical cultural record of man.
???
:If you don’t believe in God,
: you believe man is an animal.
I believe in God, I also believe man is an animal. How can one not believe this, given the known fact that evolution has occurred and the known fact that we have so many similarities to other animals. saying man is not an animals is like saying a carrot is not a plant.
:If man is an animal, he is not subject to
: any morality contrived by a small minority of idealists when history,
: as seen by any objective atheist, proves that man is only acting true
: to his animalistic, carnivorous instincts with such behavior approved
: by all majorities of historical and contemporaneous mankind.
1)man is not carnivorous, and never has been, where do you get this?
2)tehre is no evidence that if people followed natural instincts they would be more cruel, etc. then they are now. Societies in "a state of nature" are generally teh msot peaceful.
3)a strong argument can be made that it is society and/or property relations and/or social conditioning that makes man the cruel, violent creature he is. in other words taht evil stems from society, not from human nature. See Marx, Confucius, Colin Turnbull, etc.
:Morality
: abides meat eating if morality is man-made.
Not necessarily. You can oppose meat-eating on religious, humanitarian, altruistic, environmental, or health reasons. One coudl oppose emat-eating as immoral simply because it is so wasteful of resources.
How can you eat that steak when teh grain for taht cow could have fed so many starving Sudanese, etc.
: If one continues to argue in moral terms after this they are
: acknowledging either their own willful and determined ignorance of the
: animal nature of man
See above, it si by no means clear that teh evil oin man stems from hsi animal nature rather than society.
: or they acknowledge the existence of some
: ecclesiastical standard of morality.
Many do (Hindus. Buddhists, some Christians). Please. There are good arguemnts against animal rights (the Darwiniain struggle for existence, etc.), but you haven't given any of them.
