:: I honestly am trying to understand your position. Ive read what you had to say (in the past as well) and its clear that you are a very intelligent person and your ideas/opinions are very well thought out and concise. Youve made it clear as to why you believe humans have the right to eat, test on, kill, etc... animals and we both know that nothing I or anyone else can say is going to sway you from your beliefs.Say Jeff, why don't you go back and attempt to make an argument against the salient points of my last post instead of reheating emotional swill. My positon is constructed there and states it plainly as you say. I thank you for the compliments but I grow weary of those who will NOT answer the questions. What is the moral basis of your judgements? Your whole post is laden with them.
:: Having said that I would, however, be interested in knowing this: Regardless of where they came from, who is superior, who has what "rights" etc.... animals are living beings that are on this earth and they do suffer physically and psychologically when inflicted w/ various delights from humans.
I'm not buying the depth of this statement at all Jeff. Physical pain is immensely amplified by the cognitive capacity endowed to man and the notion of psychological pain in animals is a dubious claim at best.
::When given the CHOICE to either; abuse, kill/maim, eat, etc.. animals or to simply use the alternatives to those barbaric practices and humans proceed to CHOOSE the former, than isnt that just evil?
Barbarism? Evil? This is moralistic and must be addressed. First of all, you've equated abusing and maiming animals with killing and eating them. Is this how you really think or are you just getting carried away emotionally? I don't support abusing and maiming animals at all but I suspect that your applied definitions of these two words are quite liberal indeed. Secondly, if a having a choice in the matter determines the morality of this issue, what of the entire written (and no doubt unwritten) history of man as an omnivore? What of those cultures that existed and still exist today as carnivores? Shall we erase their Arctic heritage from their memories on account of your delicate sensibilities? Does their ignorance of warmer climates absolve them of moral culpability?
As an aside here I would also like to point out that it is the quintessence of irony to hear that the choice not to kill arbitrates morality with regard to the issue of animal rights but that the choice to kill is considered sacrosanct within the pro-abortion colloquy of an abortion rights debate. When I think of the words barbarism and evil, this practice springs much faster into my mind than the psychological well being of my dinner.
:: Isnt choosing to unnecessarily hurt and torture and kill for ones own pleasures evil, unkind, uncompassionate and selfish?
Well that's a rather vlagrant mischaracterization of a meat eater - don't you think, Jeff? If I put a cat in a bag and kill it with a pick axe just to entertain myself you have a point. If every facet of the meat and poultry business is predicated on torture you also have a point. But I don't pick axe cats for fun and while factory farming may hurt animals to some extent, if you suggest that they all torture animals you have only empty rhetoric and intend only to manipulate the emotions of those whose support you covet.
:: Do you personally have any feelings of kindness or affection towards animals?
Actually, I love my Pooker and he loves me. But he serves my wife and I only as the subject of our anthromomorphic humor. We fabricate a thought life for him and project our expectations of a vicious anti-cat mentality onto him. A wonderful catharsis he is and he seems to enjoy it too. In fact, his life is immensely better than it would be if his species was never domesticated and he had to fend for himself in the wild. It is therefore, a symbiotic relationship.
But I would eat him if I had to.
:: If you were to witness an animal suffering and screaming in extrutiating pain and terrified out of its mind would that bother you at all?
Not after I shot it to put it out of misery.
::Would you feel hurt or any sympathy or sorrow for the animal whatsoever?
Tell me what I think and feel from the following true story, Jeff. I'm still evaluating it myself.
I was on a business trip this summer and had to rent a car. While driving an unfamiliar, wet, and twisting road at a speed of 55 mph (I wasn't speeding), I came around a bend to be startled at a mother goose and 7 or 8 goslings in tow. I made a split second decision to plow right through them rather than to swerve to avoid them. I killed mom and maybe three of the babies. Now, I was actually proud of myself for doing that after the intitial horror of it. I am a trained professional pilot and I marveled at how fast I made a rational decision to maintain control of my vehicle. Two years ago I came around a different turn in a different road and had a head-on collision with a young girl who was in my lane. Three surgeries and one immobile year later, my aviation career was ended but there was a great deal of satisfaction that day last summer knowing that my business, my family, and my health were not at risk on account of an emotionally accuated reponse. I did exactly the right thing when I had to.
The story goes on as I arrived at my hotel. I checked in and had to walk around the building to find my room. I remember actually appreciating the fact that I could walk as I approached my room. As I came to the door I noticed that a baby sparrow had fallen from its nest and was helplessly sitting on the asphalt. I couldn't see the nest and wondered where it had come from. There was nothing I could do for the bird and I reacted quite emotionally to consider the futility of its suffering. I had experienced a very long, pensive day of death, and birds, and career, and priority assessment. It didn't alter the menu for dinner though.
I see that suffering, injustice, and death is common to us all. Perhaps through my own efforts and with God's grace, I can forstall the deaths of my family and myself and minimize our suffering. But I haven't the slightest remorse when I prioritize my efforts to relieve suffering in this world. My priorities, in order of importance, are first to myself, then to my immediate family, then to my extended family, then to my friends, then to the rest of humanity.
If you have enough emotional energy to address the issue of animal suffering after you've attended to those people in your life who correlate to the above list, it is a credit to you. But many in the animal rights crowd hold a rather twisted set of priorities and place the well being of animals and nature as equal to or above the rights of man. I don't know it for sure but I rather suspect that a large majority of those who would become activists in the area of animal rights don't rate themselves or humanity very high at all.
You want to understand me, Jeff? Read that again a few times and in your reply, try to drop any rhetoric that implies that I might enjoy torturing animals for sport. I'm not an emotionless freak. I just don't want them to reign over all my beliefs and actions.
Stuart Gort
