Christianity

[Alexis Jacobi]

Why would I bother when I am at the source, the knowledge of God’s existence?

Put like that I can only agree! Pray for me, that one day I may ascend!

(Hold on! Just got a tap on my left big toe!)

[attofishpi]

Why would I bother when I am at the source, the knowledge of God’s existence?

Put like that I can only agree! Pray for me, that one day I may ascend!

(Hold on! Just got a tap on my left big toe!)

Well, clearly wit isn't your thing, and neither is thinking objectively about subject matter that confronts your bias. Surely there must be something you are good at!

[Harry Baird]

So the comment I make is one of noting what I have always noted in you: your extreme idealism. That idealism has largely been developed by the Occident and I think it has its root in Christian Personalism. The individual is “sacred” and inviolate (at least ideally). The individual has rights. Or rights are recognized and granted.

As an idealistic radical (I do not say this judgmentally but assessingly) you extend the rights of Christian Personalism to animals and to man’s domesticated slaves: the animal brutes who are now semi-people. Persons.

Interestingly, I must note that in the absence of Christian Personalism we would likely live in a far more cruel and brutal world.

Certainly, the Christian tradition could be seen as very influential in the recognition of the rights of the individual person, and probably (depending on what the realistically open alternatives were) you are right that Christianity's emphasis on the person has reduced the cruelty and brutality that would otherwise have existed, but I think that a couple of caveats are warranted:

1. Traditionally, Christianity hasn't recognised the individual rights of non-human living beings to an especially meaningful extent: according to Genesis, God began permitting flesh-eating as a compromise sometime after the expulsion from the Garden, and, too often, Biblical Christianity is used to justify the subjugation of non-human living beings.
2. Christianity is anyway neither unique nor preeminent in its recognition of individual rights when applied to non-human living beings: Jainism, for example, extends individual rights much more fully to non-human living beings than does Christianity; even Buddhism and Hinduism are much more respecting of non-human living beings than Christianity, with vegetarianism if not veganism common among adherents.

Yet there is (as with any positive virtue) also a downside: mawkish sentimentalism. When the sensitive individual deeply feels all the agonies of the “tragic” world and, in a sense, separates himself from that world which causes so much anguish. (This is not a comment about you but a general assessment about the ultra-sensitive).

You seem to equate "ultra-sensitivity" with "mawkish sentimentalism", which I don't think is fair given the negative connotations of the latter, but, setting that aside, I think that your observation, while true, needs another caveat - or, at least, I see fit to add one, beyond your preceding positive comments.

I agree with you to the extent that ultra-sensitivity can be debilitating, causing ultra-sensitives to separate from and become ineffective in the world due to empathic anguish.

The caveat is that ultra-sensitives are often seeing clearly that which non-sensitives see only dimly if at all - the agonies of others in particular, but also their joys - and are in that sense much more in touch with (the overall truth about) reality. This potentially gives them a better basis for reliable and sound recommendations and decisions.

For this reason I stress: it seems greatly to be doubted that humankind will stop consuming domesticated animals. Therefore, the most that can be hoped for is better conditions and less suffering for animal slaves. This is a real attainment of (relatively) recent history: the animal rights movement.

I think we can hope for more than happier exploitation, and the animal rights movement in its purest form is based on the ideal of the full liberation of animals from self-interested human control, so that rather than their being treated merely as a means to satisfying our interests, their own interests are respected. That this ideal will ever be achieved might be doubted, but doubt should not tempt us into compromising on the ideal.

[Harry Baird]

So if I were down to reincarnate into, say, a Hereford cow -not that I've ever even been to Hereford- and none were available, I would end up as a water buffalo, or something?

I think you would more likely end up as one of these:

[Harry Baird]

Finally, after many, many posts of dodging and avoidance, we get a definitive (non-)answer from you - one that says it all.

Be fair, Harry.

I've been more than. You asserted something that seems obviously, painfully, and dangerously wrong, but rather than summarily dismiss it and flame you, I tried to find out why you believe it. I also worked to understand the differences in how we use relevant words, and adapted my language so as to avoid words we used differently - "sentience", "awareness", "consciousness", etc, even though those words are more natural for me.

It was (remotely) possible that you had some insight that had eluded me and the majority of others, or that you had been privy to some revelation, or that you might simply have at least had a creative way of justifying your (nevertheless false) belief.

So, I asked and asked, over and over again, giving you every opportunity to explain why you believe what you believe, or at least to say something of substance. That's not just fair, it's generous.

All I got in response was dodging, avoidance, and banal, contentless, repetitive reassertions and sloganeering - with one exception: your claim that (perhaps with the odd exception) animals behave habitually and programmatically, and without any indication of creativity (to which you refer in this context as free will), from which you infer that they lack minds.

Let's address that somewhat more comprehensively then, before we wrap up this exchange.

Firstly, the inference is invalid: it is possible to behave habitually and programmatically yet still to be capable of joy and suffering, both of which (joy and suffering) entail having a mind.

Secondly, the claim on which the inference is based is false: non-human living beings often make creative choices.

Crows can solve complex puzzles they haven't seen before. Honey badgers can ingeniously outwit their captors. Roosters can work out how to rescue hens from captivity, and rats can learn how to free their trapped companions (and about half of the time, when there's chocolate they could eat on their own instead, they free their companions and share the chocolate anyway).

None of that is programmatic; none of it was trained: it's creative intelligence, also demonstrating compassion, empathy, selflessness, and a desire for freedom.

You objected earlier to non-human living beings having minds in part on the basis that they don't form markets to trade goods, but crows will reciprocate being fed with gift-giving, which is near enough, and sweeter for being a voluntary gesture of appreciation and friendship.

It's also worth pointing out (too briefly) the unique personalities, preferences, styles of play, and interpersonal interactions of non-human living beings, which in their uniqueness are unlikely on the automaton assumption.

But you want an explanation...okay, fine, try this...

Your frolickin' cows? Natural grazers who were kept from doin' that for six months and then re-introduced to the pasture. It wasn't joy the cows exhibited: it was a system reset for meat.

Who knows what that's supposed to mean?

What exactly is a "system reset" for a cow? What does it achieve? How? What do running and leaping have to do with "resetting" a cow's "system"? What triggers a "system reset" for a cow? Who programmed in the trigger and the reset itself? Why?

You will not accept my explanation

You hadn't provided one until now, and the "system reset" "explanation" that you finally have provided is too vague and meaningless to even be considerable as an explanation.

Even if you could fill in the meaning gap with answers, you'd still not have provided any reason to believe that your explanation is the correct one.

I will not accept yours.

The difference is, I've voluntarily offered you good reasons to accept it (which you've ignored). So have Dubious, AJ, and others.

AJ, you said, to Harry...

So the comment I make is one of noting what I have always noted in you: your extreme idealism.

...I say it's garden-variety fanaticism

A better label than "fanatical" is "uncompromising": and we ought to be uncompromising on fundamental rights - as you are when it comes to humans.

Imagine a situation in which a group of humans - perhaps of a particular race, ethnicity, or gender, or with some other common feature - was purposefully bred by another group of humans explicitly for subjugation and exploitation. It would be natural and appropriate to take the position that even if their not being bred (into subjugation and exploitation) meant that they would not exist at all, then they still ought not to be bred (into subjugation and exploitation).

If a person were to take that position on the basis that the natural rights to life, liberty, and property of the humans in that group are unconditional, then that would be rightly uncompromising, rather than "fanatical" with the implication of wrongfulness.

Once it is recognised that non-human living beings, too, have natural rights, then their situation becomes clearly analogous.

flavored with mental illness.

General so-called "mental illness" doesn't preclude the sufferer from being right on any particular moral issue. Being delusional about the facts related to that particular moral issue, though, is far more likely to cause errors.

[Harry Baird]

Hmm. Now that I visualize myself being a cow getting its tits relentlessly sucked day in and day out in order to provide milk for me, I suddenly feel myself leaning toward veganism.

Those are appropriate sentiments of the sort that - rightly - motivate vegans. Moreover:

Oh? Why deny the cow that wonderful pleasure.
Did you know that when milking time comes they struggle with each other to be first in line?

Did you know that for a cow to produce milk, she must first give birth to a calf, who is stolen from her shortly after birth so that her milk can be thieved from her? Do you think that it is a wonderful pleasure for a cow to be forcibly and unnaturally inseminated only to have her baby stolen at birth - over and over again, until, a short way into her natural life, she is deemed "spent" and slaughtered for her meat?

At least they have a purpose and enjoy their job.

That "purpose" is not of their choosing, and any "enjoyment" at having their swollen udders unnaturally relieved pales into insignificance against the unbearable heartache of their loss.

[attofishpi]

Harry, with as little offence as I can possibly muster. Perhaps fuck off to a thread more appropriate to deal with your problem of humans eating animals...TRUST ME...Christ AND GOD don't give a flying fuck about me eating those SAPS.

[Harry Baird]

Nope.

[promethean75]

I want u to pay close attention to this ill mannered and psychologically unstable man posting obscenities in large red letters, Harry, becuz that's what Christianity does to u mate.

[attofishpi]

I want u to pay close attention to this ill mannered and psychologically unstable man posting obscenities in large red letters, Harry, becuz that's what Christianity does to u mate.

Insanity is posting about ethics of eating animals in a thread called Christianity.

..although it was never a coincidence that Christ was born among animals in a manger - 666 is an important number to consider on the dial..

[promethean75]

When you're tryna create a mythological idol that will appeal to the lower, down trodden slave classes, you give that character the most modest, most humble origins possible. Where better to have him born than in a dirty manger among animals.

Thus Nietzsche, Friedrich notes that u will never get the people to cry Hosanna unless u ride into town on a mule.

[Gary Childress]

Hmm. Now that I visualize myself being a cow getting its tits relentlessly sucked day in and day out in order to provide milk for me, I suddenly feel myself leaning toward veganism.

Those are appropriate sentiments of the sort that - rightly - motivate vegans. Moreover:

Oh? Why deny the cow that wonderful pleasure.
Did you know that when milking time comes they struggle with each other to be first in line?

Did you know that for a cow to produce milk, she must first give birth to a calf, who is stolen from her shortly after birth so that her milk can be thieved from her? Do you think that it is a wonderful pleasure for a cow to be forcibly and unnaturally inseminated only to have her baby stolen at birth - over and over again, until, a short way into her natural life, she is deemed "spent" and slaughtered for her meat?

At least they have a purpose and enjoy their job.

That "purpose" is not of their choosing, and any "enjoyment" at having their swollen udders unnaturally relieved pales into insignificance against the unbearable heartache of their loss.

I have the highest regard for vegans. I see vegans as about as close to virtue as a person can get in this world. Life ultimately feeds off of death as a necessary condition. It may arguably come down to minimizing the number of living organisms we kill to sustain our own existences. Vegans are virtuous among humans as a serial killer is virtuous compared to officials of the Bush Jr. administration that organized the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan that resulted in more deaths than any serial killer could possibly tally.

However, with that said, I live with my mother. She's "old school", and grew up on a small family farm in the 1940s. I tried to be a pescatarian once upon a time (eating only fish for meat because I thought fish weren't as "sentient" or whatever as pigs and mammals that we eat) and I think it did more to alienate our relationship than anything else. It lasted for two years and all I heard were smart-ass comments and cracks at dinner time alluding to how weird I was being.

¯\_(*_*)_/¯

[attofishpi]

When you're tryna create a mythological idol that will appeal to the lower, down trodden slave classes, you give that character the most modest, most humble origins possible. Where better to have him born than in a dirty manger among animals.

Thus Nietzsche, Friedrich notes that u will never get the people to cry Hosanna unless u ride into town on a mule.

..for someone that seems intelligent you are just another short of sight idiot.

[promethean75]

hey.... wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?

[Sculptor]

Hmm. Now that I visualize myself being a cow getting its tits relentlessly sucked day in and day out in order to provide milk for me, I suddenly feel myself leaning toward veganism.

Those are appropriate sentiments of the sort that - rightly - motivate vegans. Moreover:

Oh? Why deny the cow that wonderful pleasure.
Did you know that when milking time comes they struggle with each other to be first in line?

Did you know that for a cow to produce milk, she must first give birth to a calf, who is stolen from her shortly after birth so that her milk can be thieved from her? Do you think that it is a wonderful pleasure for a cow to be forcibly and unnaturally inseminated only to have her baby stolen at birth - over and over again, until, a short way into her natural life, she is deemed "spent" and slaughtered for her meat?

At least they have a purpose and enjoy their job.

That "purpose" is not of their choosing, and any "enjoyment" at having their swollen udders unnaturally relieved pales into insignificance against the unbearable heartache of their loss.

Yes knew all that. It turns out that Cows get over it very quickly and often they are not separated until the calf is ready anyway.
Boo hoo. You've obviously never worked with animals. So you should hold back on the childish emotive language, and vegan propaganda . Where is the theft? Animals cannot have a concept of property. Does a lion steal a calf? What about your pet cat, when it tears apart the small birds and mice it terrorises. When are you going to put a stop to all that?
Cows cannot "chose" their lives. There is every reason the think that humans cannot either. But they are born for the purpose which they serve.
What I can tell you is that domesticated animals live healthier and safer lives than the wild ones. But you would know that is you knew anything - but you don't. You don't know shit.
Which is a wonderful case in point.
Domesticated animals make great shit. It is the best and most natural form of fertiliser better than the crap that is used to grow the increasing demand for vegan based foods.