: Human rights may be paramount to animal rights, but human rights do not justify animal abuse, and no matter how you try to justify it -- honoring one's god, fertility ritual, harvest sacrifice, casting out demons, the abused animal still suffers and dies; religions which readily subject animals to pain need to reform or disappear. We need to move beyond the dark ages. : By the way, your analysis of my motives is dead wrong. It has nothing to do with my religion, or lack thereof; it has to do with my opposition to cruelty to animals. If you really feel that tehtering an eagle so it can never fly, and then slowly smothering a bird to death, is a basic human right, then yes, you and I part company entirely on this. I fight for human rights, but not for the right of humans to torture animals.
I'm sorry if I misunderstood your motivation. This is why psychological arguments are bad, because they can very easily be totally mistaken and out of line as mine was. It is interesting, though, that in Jeff's post baove he does state that his non-religious stance hellps to justify his opposition to this practice.
I don't think that torturing animals is necessarily a right, but I cannot place animals rights above the freedom of religion. Once you begin infringing some religious practivces, where do you draw the line?
Relationship with one';s God makes all of the otehr things in life much less important, including animals rights.
