Is morality objective or subjective?

[Harbal]

Most animals may not be self-aware but many of them have their own little minds. To think otherwise is imo a form of animal abuse.

You can't abuse an animal with a thought.

Thoughts lead to actions

Not always.

[Gary Childress]

There is another strain too and while not precisely Christian and more Platonic I could refer to Richard Weaver's philosophical metaphysical-apologetics. But he opens the doors to other ways of thinking about such things when he speaks about "the metaphysical dream of the world".

If people didn't make mistakes and think or do the wrong things, there would be no need for "apologetics". And it's not the one standing opposite the "apologist" who has reason to apologize.

[Atla]

You can't abuse an animal with a thought.

Thoughts lead to actions

Not always.

but usually

For example I think that after Descartes, for hundreds of years most people thought that animals were just insentient objects, and treated them as such. Just one more reason why imo Descartes had one of the most destructive influences in history.

[Gary Childress]

Thoughts lead to actions

Not always.

but usually

For example I think that after Descartes, for hundreds of years most people thought that animals were just insentient objects, and treated them as such. Just one more reason why imo Descartes had one of the most destructive influences in history.

Descartes was picked up by ordinary people who took his idea and turned it into hubris through the social mechanisms we have that ended up destroying this planet. Descartes himself said nothing more profound than "I think, therefore I am. And if I am not thinking I am not and if I am not then I'm not thinking." Other than that, Descartes was a human being like the rest of us, looking for certainty in a world that our own minds judge as full of death, destruction, and what we deem as evil. You can blame Descartes if you want but then you would have to blame every human being who ever tried to make something better of the world. Because the world is crumbling in front of us and all those who tried to make it better obviously failed to make it better.

[Lacewing]

'...we have a spirit. Animals do not.'

Anyone who can look into the eyes of an animal and not see spirit is being ignorant.

[Atla]

Not always.

but usually

For example I think that after Descartes, for hundreds of years most people thought that animals were just insentient objects, and treated them as such. Just one more reason why imo Descartes had one of the most destructive influences in history.

Descartes was picked up by ordinary people who took his idea and turned it into hubris through the social mechanisms we have that ended up destroying this planet. Descartes himself said nothing more profound than "I think, therefore I am. And if I am not thinking I am not and if I am not then I'm not thinking." Other than that, Descartes was a human being like the rest of us, looking for certainty in a world that our own minds judge as full of death, destruction, and what we deem as evil. You can blame Descartes if you want but then you would have to blame every human being who ever tried to make something better of the world. Because the world is crumbling in front of us and all those who tried to make it better obviously failed to make it better.

The "I think" by itself is fine imo. That's not really it.

But I have a very different opinion, I think Descartes's philosophy caused a soft schizophrenia for billions of people by soft splitting their thinking into the mental and the material. Over 99% of people still have it in the West. It's difficult to say that without this mild shared insanity, humanity would have fared better or worse though.

That he caused centuries of unnecessary misery to animals too was just the icing on the cake.

[Lacewing]

...the world is crumbling in front of us and all those who tried to make it better obviously failed to make it better.

So no one has ever made the world better? To your way of thinking, the current state you see negates all other states?

[Alexis Jacobi]

I'm sorry, but I'm just not bothering with the rest of your self-satisfied ramblings. There isn't enough meat in there to be worth my time. If you can be shorter and more substantial, I might bother.

When I respond to a post of yours, I do so not because I believe you can be engaged with, but simply because I work to clarify my ideas in relation to you.

I also write in the way that I feel people in this environment should write. The essay form expressing thorough ideas. I recognize that some don’t like it for various reasons. I understand.

You however both lie to yourself and slither out of a necessary response when you fail to identify the overall ideas expressed, which certainly have relevance in the present age.

[Gary Childress]

...the world is crumbling in front of us and all those who tried to make it better obviously failed to make it better.

So no one has ever made the world better? To your way of thinking, the current state you see negates all other states?

The world is what it is. We've all contributed to it.

[iambiguous]

So whose interpretation are you using?

Biblical usage. The Bible uses the term both ways, so understanding which one is meant, in each case, requires the context. But I am using the term in the second way, theologically, when I say that animals do not have that faculty."

But you cannot know. There are branches and sources in theology that clearly don't agree with you. The Bible verses were from Christian sites.
You speak from your own viewpoint, that's all.

Indeed. His own "rooted existentially in dasein" point of view.

I merely suggest further that personal opinions pertaining to things like morality and religion are derived from the particular world we were "thrown" into at birth historically and culturally, our indoctrination as children, and the uniquely personal experiences we have as adults.

Unless, of course, the philosophers and the theologians among us can offer proof that this is not the case at all. Can they provide us with a demonstrable argument that there is but One True Path? And that their path [and only their path] encompasses it?

[iambiguous]

I would point out that human cognition is not merely quantitatively greater and more intelligent, but qualitatively distinct as well. We perform cognitions that no animal ever does. There are no animal cultures, no animal academia, no animal civilizations, no animal democracies, no animal philosophers or artists or mathematicians...and so on.

The Christian God deemed it Divine to create a world in which animals devour each other. A slaughterhouse of predator and prey.

Not only that but the whole point of being a newborn is to become a meal for others.

Sea turtles lay their eggs in the sand. But only one in a thousand will actually make it to adulthood. The rest are "a quick snack" for predators.

What on Earth was God thinking here?

Back, perhaps, to Harold Kushner?

[iambiguous]

The human body works on exactly the same principles as the bodies of mice, cats, dogs, horses, elephants and every other mammal.

That's the body. But we aren't talking about the mere body: we're talking about...well, use your own word: the mind, the self, the consciousness, the soul, the cognition...pick the term you like.

Indeed, imagine if the human body was completely different from that of other animals. So different that, in fact, the theologians could bring this up over and over and over again: "How do you explain that, Mr. Biologist?"

How hard could it be for an omnipotent Creator to encompass His existence such that leaps of faith and wagers would be completely unnecessary?

[Immanuel Can]

...my theological examples to the contrary.

They don't help us in the case of "spirit" in the theological sense.

Why are you using the term theology when you're only considering your own particular Christian view?

"Theology" is the study of God. The study of false gods is called "mythology."

[Immanuel Can]

I thought it was pretty obvious that it wasn't deductive in form. Perhaps you should take a course in philosophy some time.

So...you don't know what "colloquially" means?

I know that you are too much of a pedant to intentionally refer to an induction as a deduction on some supposed grounds that you like to communicate more easily with the common man, especially as it is he over whom you absolutely love to lord your supposed superior education via that same pedantry.

I really can't be bothered with a response to anything this petty.

[Immanuel Can]

...I don't agree with them.

Yep. Okay.