::DADDIO: Yeah, and after they've read a book like Animal Liberation, they'll wish they HADN'T ever heard of him. Books that effectively challenge the established institutions upon which we've become so dependent upon can very easily be left out, or even KEPT out, of mainstream thought. That shouldn't be a big secret to anyone. In fact, in SOME cases, a book's obscurity can be a MEASURE of its integrity.STUART: Can being the operative word here. That's not an exceptionally good premise to invest into.
DADDIO: Really? Why not?
::DADDIO: MAINSTREAM is not synonymous with GOOD, correct?
STUART: Of course it isn't. Bill Clinton is president. But let's don't go so far down this road. After all, I was :just taking a pot shot at you. It's the way I relax after a hard day's resource depletion and worker exploitation.
DADDIO: Wow. You almost sound like a normal human being.
::DADDIO: Well dang, by those standards, NOTHING is "mainstream" - except maybe the Holy Bible. Hmmmmm..........Stuart, care to comment?
STUART: Yes! You're falling into my trap! (diabolical laugh)
DADDIO: Good. I think you're starting to crack.
STUART: Does he suggest that suffering is confined to physical suffering or does he go the whole route and :suggest animals suffer emotionally?
DADDIO: Pardon my French, but what fucking difference does it make? Is there OK suffering and NOT OK suffering? Don't go there - you'll lose. And how the hell does a living thing suffer physically without suffering emotionally? Doesn't the very concept of suffering depend on an emotional component? How can anything suffer AT ALL if its not capable of experienceing emotion? You're not going to suggest that other mammals, for all intents and purposes, don't have something comparable to what we call EMOTIONS, and then try to back it up with some lame, brain washed, meaningless, hand-me-down excuse - like "science hasn't proven that animals can suffer", are you?
STUART: : Many of the arguments which support the positions of animal rights activists are based on very scant :evidence and a whole lot of
subjective and anthropomorphic thought.
DADDIO: Oh my god, you ARE! Stuart, what are we going to do with you? One minute I'm talking to an intelligent sounding, organized, human being who can think for himslef, then, all of the sudden, some little gremlin throws a switch and the right half of your brain has a black out. What ARGUMENTS are you referring to? The "SUFFERING" ones? How the hell is anybody going to prove that animals suffer? Can YOU suffer? Physically? Emotionally? Prove it. Show me the proof. Does the universe even exist? I don't believe you. Where's the research?
It sounds like you and this "CYNIC" fella have got some serious missunderstandings about what science is and what role(s) its equipped to play in our lives. Let me see if I can clear this up for you a little:
Science 101: SCIENCE is a really bad substitute for your own sense of morality. I don't think anyhting could be more self evident than that. If you don't get THAT, well.....I don't know dude......they gotta special in place in Hell all ready for ya.
Science 102: Money makes THIS world go 'round, not the search for truth. Scientific research is not free, it costs money. If its results aren't going to make somebody rich or KEEP somebody rich, its often either not done at all, done and ignored, done and supressed, or done and rigged. So, the absence of science, if it were relevant to this particular issue, which it isn't, does not necessarily indicate that something is amiss with the positions of animal rights activists. Not only does no one stand to make a killing in the animal liberation market (pardon the pun), but, also, the whole concept of animal liberation is a threat to the deep pockets of agribusiness in its current form and all it touches.
STUART: I don't suggest animals don't I know they suffer when I shoot them. I just don't find the moral conflict :in doing so.
DADDIO: Your losing me here. I think you ARE suggesting that animals don't suffer in ways that should cause us to take pause when we kill them. Isn't that the main thrust of this post? And, you're looking toward hard science to give you moral guidance on this issue? Unbelievable. Were your parents scientists or something?
STUART: Morality enters into it when certain practices are engaged in within the meat industry which :unnecessarily injures and inflicts pain.
DADDIO: Jesus, you're gonna keep me up all night again.
Point #1: Why should morality enter into it HERE? If there's no EMOTIONAL suffering involved when the pain is inflicted NECESSARILY, then there's no EMOTIONAL suffering involved when its inflicted UNNECESSARILY, right? Does the animal give a shit WHY pain is being inflicted on it?
Point#2: The operative word here is UNNECESSARILY. Meat industry oponents are contending that the whole damn THING is unnecessary. You'd probably concur that at least SOME of it is, right? So, I'm curious, where DO your moral concerns lie with regards to the meat industry and animals?
STUART: Even inadvertant pain is not a moral issue here.
DADDIO: Stu, you are having a life long moral crisis. How does the INADVERTENT nature of an act alleviate your responsibilty for moral consideration of the act? If you accidently killed somebody, wouldn't you feel obliged to at least apologize for it, if not compensate the victims family in some way? This is just plain childish. Where did that good old God fearing Christian go that was worried about getting right with the Lord? You think HE'S not gonna make us pay for our mistakes? Heck, in the Bible he's got us stoning each other to death for the most benign, incidental slip-ups.
STUART: I'll give you the bunnies but I want to knee-jerk to your button pushing here. Daddio, sit back a minute :and think through what you wrote here. You and I both know it's wrong to murder without the ten commandments but your comment implies that everyone else does too. That was societal law as well as :a direct commandment of God. Even from your perspective or a humanistic Jewish perspective it was :law like any other. Do you wish to imply that law is wrong?
DADDIO: No, I'm glad its against the law to murder people. The problem is that I'm surrounded by millions of Bible wielders contending that the Bible is the book of choice for moral indoctrination. And my position is that this is a lofty load of shit. Hardly any of its 1400 pages contribute anything beneficial (or are capable of contributing anything beneficial due to rampent errancy) to the moral code that stems from my own common sense. Furthermore, anyone that does feel an improved sense of morality from more than one onehundredth of a percent of its contents started off as a moral imbecile, and, to that extent, I guess I'm glad it was available to them. But I would strongly prefer that such individuals did not have to trudge through hundreds of pages of irrelevant historical facts in order to attain the same level of morality as a baboon.
STUART: I think you wish to suggest that I'm not capable of reaching an opinion unless the Bible tells me to :have it. I wonder if you characterize all believers thusly. I think your statement makes it apparent that you do.
DADDIO: Yep, pretty much. I'm waiting for the scientific evidence that proves otherwise.
STUART: Dismissing a group of people (as diverse as any other group) out of hand as you do reveals one of the :ticks in your clock Dad. What are you rationalizing when you do this? Unbelief? I could be wrong, but if you need to rationalize unbelief (revealing an underlying fear), you're not truly an unbeliever are :you?
"The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom" Proverbs
"If you don't look good we don't look :good" Vidal Sassoon
Is there a wider chasm somewhere?
DADDIO: (Damn, that's a great closer. I wish I understood it.)
To the point, and this is extremely important, so put your nose right up to the screen and hear this: I AM NOT AN ATHEIST!!!! This is where Christians seem to be eternally stuck in outerspace. They all seem to think that, if you don't sleep with a copy of the Holy Bible under your pillow, then it is not possible for you to be religiously inclined. I am, in fact, a deeply religous person. The difference between me and you is that my religion is not inspired from this wacked out book - at least not anymore than it is from this water bottle I'm holding or from the great crap I just took. To me, at BEST, its an account of one long 4000 year subversion of the human race by aliens - and their plans WORKED. Pretty damn interesting in THAT light, but that certainly doesn't make it a wholesome dispenser of morality. And at worst?........well, why beat a dead horse.
If fearing God is important to you......well, then DO IT, and forget this sadistic sociopath JEHOVA. God will take care of HIM.
