What has being at the top of a food chain to do with testing on animals? Or factory farming? Or forced domestication? And tell me exactly where you learned that humans are at the top of the food chain. As I understand it, many, many humans are consumed as food by carnivorous animals each day, despite our paranoid delusional efforts to deny our vulnerability.Morality is a human construct which serves to compensate for our own lack of connection to the life/death process which governs this planet. We no longer are able to recognize which role we are supposed to play in a balanced world, and try desperately to compensate for what we've fucked up by creating hierarchical rights systems. They are largely inadequate, which is not surprising when you consider that fact that we are trying to govern the whole planet and its functioning with them.
I, obviously, cannot accurately put myself in the "shoes" of any other creature on my planet. Does that mean I shouldn't try to consider other perspectives? Do you not consider how a child might feel before you decide whether to spank her or not? Did abolitionists not try to consider how slavery was unjust and how those humans might feel? I claim that it is wrong to value life hierarchically. There are no species more or less deserving of respect and life on this planet. To suggest otherwise involves a rationalization process which is inherently specio-centric (anthropocentric, always, since no whale, beetle, or datura has ever argued their superiority.)
I will not deny that it is sad that people die. I will not deny that it is infinitely more difficult when a loved one of mine dies. I will not deny that I would do almost anything to avoid this happening. I WILL NOT, however, support a SYSTEM that values all human life above any other life. This system is based on the process of unreasonable emotionalism which you so fervently condemn in your posts. The difference with this emotionalism is that it is enshrined in a species-wide unconsciousness, grounded in fear. I find your arguments ridiculous, and challenge you to transcend your biases for a moment and convince me that they are not. Stuart, you are ridiculous, you clearly have no respect for life non-human (note the tone in your "fuzzy bunny" comment), and you cannot rationalize this lack of respect.
By the way, I put 'god' in quotes for a reason. Don't clap your hands for having a potential convert. (I know, you're not, but I, too, could not resist.) In that sense, 'god' does create morality, in that 'god' is the construct of human fears and inadequacies, and morality is 'his' crutch.
