h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Right...because you fail to believe means you can discredit anyone who does believe. Not sure how to get around that wall that you've constructed. There are certain undeniable truths of this world and God is one of them.

But if you READ my posts, you'd see that I was acknowledging that non-Christians are coming from a different perspective and the truth of this world does not reach them as they don't accept it.

Not to be critical but I don't actually see how you're contributing to thsi argument. (probably bad wording tehre) So your belief system says its Ok to eat meat, well done. Good for you. If you're here to convert us I will be annoyed thats just you puching yoru beiefs at us, if you have a valid argument (Say about teh treatment and breeding of food animals) then put it in.

Not to sound harsh, but I'm not really interested in your religious beliefs. I am inetrested on how you feel about treatment of animals though.

Yes, we can regard it as equal, Akershaker. It would be a happy day indeed when we can call police and ambulances because of wounded animals.
These carnivores eat meat to survive, and they don't really breed their prey. We seem to regard animals as items, not as living beings´, which is our biggest fault.
Why do you trust a book that was ultimately written down by humans? Even if this god really exists, there's no reason why the writers wouldn't change the text a bit to comfort themselves. Human life isn't really more important than animal life. It's comforting to think this, but we do this because of our egoist drives. Probably every animal (except for dogs, they have an inbuilt minority complex) thinks (or is directed to fell because of instincts, however you want to call this) of its kind as the superior species. Humans, however, only have a reason to worry about animals because of the cherished civilization. If we'd stayed on the trees, we wouldn't worry about cattle diseases any more than a lizard did. Now we must do our best to repair the damage we've done.

Not true I'm afraid. That's the point about animals. They don't think in the same way that we do. More, they act. They do not consieve "time" as we know it, only "now". The difference between us and animals is that we don't have to follow our instincts, whereas instincts are all animals have.
Like it or not, we are superior to animals. By definition. This is not an argument, it is fact. We can love animals, we can personify animals, we can see human manerisms in their actions. But, at the end of the day, any human attributes you see in animals say more about you than them.
Another thing. I'm Christian, and I don't think that you're doing us any favours. This is not the way to make people understand, it only makes people defensive and angry.

wide

I notice quite a few people on both sides have stated what animals think and feel as if they could actually know those things. You can't know an animal species believes itself superior or that it hopes for a rosy future or anything else. These are just assumptions. We can't even really say that the human species believes itself to be superior. We know some people think this because they say it. We also know that some people think we're not superior and some people even think we're inferior, again, because they state their beliefs. Non-human animals don't. Over the years lots of studies have been carried out by scientists to try and establish whether this or that species thinks, plans, has self-awareness. The work continues. All the data isn't in yet. Even so, people who've never really put in the effort to try to find out for sure, continue to state this and that as though they knew the facts. Well, how very human of them

I would take issue with one thing you said, wide. "Like it or not, we are superior to animals. By definition. This is not an argument, it is fact." It sounds as though you know something that I don't and are assuming that these "facts" you know are so completely obvious that everyone must know them, so they don't need any explanation. I don't know these "facts" which form the basis of your assumption that humans are superior. I'd be grateful if you would explain them. Other's will probably be interested as well.

I wouldn't say we're superior, and woudl never assumen that an animal had no perception of time or thought (Chimps do, dolphins do cows do. Hence how tehy know its milking time as opposed to any otehr time of teh day) What I would say is taht humans are teh dominant species on teh planet, as we live in just about every part of it and control teh local environment (in our case damaging it for a laugh)

Seems like a fairly accurate analysis 33337.

I don't like to defend the christian, but his religous beliefs are no worse than some of the vegetarians have expressed in here. He is definately wrong about the bible being the true word of god, due to the fact that it contradicts itself, repeatedly. (I wonder if our christian freind goes out into the desert and digs himself a hole to defacate into every night?).
Now we have got rid of god from the equation, let's deal with some of the vegies. "if you get 1% of the population to stop eating meat then you save 9,000,000 animals from being killed". perhaps true, I can't argue the figures, but what do you think happens to those 9 million animals, they are not allowed to be born. No farmer can afford to produce animals he can't get paid for, so he doesn't.
As most farm animals are made by artificial insemination, the bit about the males is also rot. It is now perfectly possible to get almost all of your ofspring to be male or female, depending on which one you want. so most of the male sperm are not used to fertilise the eggs, only the female sperm are used for cattle. for chicken it is even easier, the eggs are not fertilised at all, so no "unborn" chicks are produced. the eggs would not produce any offspring.
Dolphins do farm fish, in the same way that fishermen do. but instead of using a physical net, they use a sonic one, and gradually tighten it. eating any fish that try to escape.
As regards the philosophy of eating meat, as there are few places on this planet that aren't farmed in one way or another, the only animals you would be left with are things like sheep (producing wool), cows (producing leather) and chickens (producing eggs). Nothing else would live, as most things don't produce the necessary secondary products.
How can we tell what animals think and feel, use linguistic tools that tell you the complexity of the language. This tends to corelate to the percentage of cortex in the animals brain, and most animals only use about 20 or 30 symbols in specific situations.
The only creatures who's language comes close to man's are the dolphins, and as they don't have hands, then they don't have the technological need for the complex past, present and future tenses that we need to use.
Trying to get back to the theme of this thread, testing on animals is essential for lots of things, but the LD50 test (at what level do 50% of the animals die?) is a joke. Cosmetics may not be tested on animals in england, but most of the raw materials were in previous years, and even if not, they can be tested in any cooperative banana republic.
A lot of animal testing can not be done any other way. And a lot of the animal rights people have the same problem as the "pro life" side of the abortion arguament. they think that the people on the other side of the arguament are mass murderers, so anything thatyou feel like doing to them is totally O.K. send them a letter bomb, so what if they 5 year old opens it, they are murderers, let them know how it feels. well, I don't buy into that rationale, and never will.
Well, I hope that lot wasn't TOO inflamitory, but you can't let some of the rubbish that has been sprouted in her go unanswered.

Got few points to make about some of your points, xyroth.

You said "what do you think happens to those 9 million animals, they are not allowed to be born. No farmer can afford to produce animals he can't get paid for, so he doesn't."

Why would it be a bad thing if those animals were never born?

You said "As most farm animals are made by artificial insemination, the bit about the males is also rot. It is now perfectly possible to get almost all of your ofspring to be male or female"

I know that's possible now and it may happen all the time for all I know, at least in some countries. Do you know for a fact that it does though? And do they use that method to ensure only hens are hatched for egg laying? Because of course millions of eggs do have to be fertilised.

You said "Dolphins do farm fish, in the same way that fishermen do. but instead of using a physical net, they use a sonic one, and gradually tighten it. eating any fish that try to escape"

There was a thread over at Ask h2g2 where we were talking about bubble nets. Very interesting. I guess the sonic net you mention works in a similar way. I don't think we really consider what fishermen do to be farming the fish though. There are fish farms and it seems quite legitimate to think of what happens there as farming, but I think that most people would consider what fishermen and dolphins do to be hunting.

You said "As regards the philosophy of eating meat, as there are few places on this planet that aren't farmed in one way or another, the only animals you would be left with are things like sheep (producing wool), cows (producing leather) and chickens (producing eggs). Nothing else would live, as most things don't produce the necessary secondary products."

Do you mean if everybody became a vegetarian? Not really sure what you're getting at. If everybody cared enough to give up meat, it would be very surprising if they then went on to exploit the animals and the environment even worse than before ... or have I misread you there?

You said "How can we tell what animals think and feel, use linguistic tools that tell you the complexity of the language. This tends to corelate to the percentage of cortex in the animals brain, and most animals only use about 20 or 30 symbols in specific situations"

I'd like to see you try to tell what I think and feel using only linguistic tools that tell you the complexity of the language.

You said "A lot of animal testing can not be done any other way"

There was a really interesting item on BBC News 24 yesterday evening. Doctors were complaining about how incredibly difficult it was to make any progress with cancer treatments because so few people would agree to be part of their trials. I can't remember the exact figure but it was something like 5% of patients who were asked actually said yes. The doctor said it a was terrible shame for the patients too because people who were part of a trial tended to do better than people not included in a trial, even if they were the ones receiving placebos. The reason for this is that the progress of trial patients is so much more closely monitored than other patients. I'm not really sure what to make of this news but it did occur to me that it's ironic that so many animals have to suffer for this species when so many people care so little for themselves and each other.

I don't think anyone on this thread or any of the other threads in this forum has tried to justify terrorism. I think most of us would want to dissociate ourselves from the dangerous maniacs who indiscriminately leave bombs where any innocent person could get killed or injured. The world seems to be well supplied with nutters and you just have to hope none of them will attach themselves to you or your cause(s).

We are more intelligent, more dextrous, more versatile, more pretty much everything. Everything that we can't do ourselves, we can find out how to do. The next generation of humans can do so much more than the previous one. Technology is rampant and every year, micro-processors double in speed.
What will the next generation of animals do? They will do exactly the same as the one before, as they act on instinct.

At the end of the day, I cannot persuade you to my side of the argument. You believe that animals have a soul (I think, please don't think I'm telling you what to believe, I'm working on assumptions.), and that all creatures with a soul are equal at some level. This is why my first couple of paragraphs won't persuade you, because they have nothing to do with actual worth between creatures with a soul. If my brother is more accomplished than me, does that make him a better being? No, of course not. But this argument does not work when only one creature has a soul.
I am inherently better than animals, because I am. As in, "I think therefore I am." I don't believe that animals do, and you do.
Go figure.

wide

Thank you for making it so easy, wide. You more or less make my point for me. You assume what I think - even though it wasn't necessary for you to do so, because it must have been pretty obvious from my previous postings that I do not think animals have a soul. I don't think I've got a soul. I don't believe there's any such thing as a soul.

If you still fall back on completely foundationless assumptions when evidence to the contrary is within easy reach, how can you expect to be taken seriously when a bit of careful consideration and effort needs to be made? You think what? Therefore you are what? Do you think animals don't think therefore they don't exist?

I think you'll find that, in a state of nature, many many non-human animals will turn out to be superior to us. It's true that a tiger couldn't compete with us in science or business but I'd like to see you confront him on his own territory and explain to him how superior you are. See how finger nails compare to claws, and so on. We're all adapted for our own environment and therefore, you might say, "superior" in that environment. But a big brain isn't the only spectacular adaptation in nature. You might say we're superior because we can destroy everything else - not many tigers left now, as a matter of fact, their claws weren't much use against the gun. Or maybe you think it's our ability to use our intelligence to destroy our environment that makes us so splendid.

I am not saying that animals have souls (or not), just that the christian should get his facts right before quoting them. and I am not suggesting that the vegies are mad bombers, but a lot of vegies coming out with the same stuff as on here seem to think that you can get rid of people eating meat without changing anything else.

getting pretty nitpicky aren't we?
"I think therefore I am" was the least of what I expected you to argue with. It is a well known and understood theory, and you can disagree with it if you like, but to ask for further clarification was a shock.
I apologised in the post for assuming what you thought, but with limited information to work on I'm afraid that that's what most people do. As I said, it was a statement of my beliefs, which is why I think and act as I do. You also have your beliefs, which make you think and act differently. We will not meet in the middle.
Deal with it without getting nasty.
We have evolved away from needing to compete with tigers on their own ground. That is what our inteligence is for.
In disagreeing with you, I am not stupid, any more than you are stupid for disagreeing with me.

wide

I wasn't arguing with Descartes' statement. That needs no clarification. It was the context of it's use that was open to criticism. Nobody had questioned whether you existed. Have a look at what you said.

You wrote "I am inherently better than animals, because I am. As in, "I think therefore I am." I don't believe that animals do, and you do. Go figure."

Does that make sense to you? I don't really imagine that you could believe that animals don't think and therefore don't exist, but that's what you wrote. It also sounded rather aggressive, but it's easy to get the wrong idea about people's "tone" in this sort of environment.

I didn't mean to sound "nitpicky", but you've been in this thread since the beginning. Yours was the second message. It's not as though it's hundreds of posts long and you've just joined and can't be arsed to read the huge back-log. My posts 14, 17 and 19 must've given a major clue that I was unlikely to subscribe to any form of superstition, like the idea of having a soul, for example. There was really no need to make a wild guess.

Sorry if that sounds a bit brusque. That's not my intention. It's just difficult to know how to say it without just, well, saying it.

The linguistic tools tell you what sort of thoughts that languageis capable of saying. IF it only has 30 symbols, and they are used as "I want a mate" and "danger", there is no way that they can be telling things to their children, and thus can not be thinking like us.
This is not to say they can't feel emotions, they can, but not as complex as ours.
They can also feel pain, but don't experience it the same way, again due to the lack of complexity.

So you don't actually mean you can tell *what* they think and feel, but a judgement can be made about their capacity for communication?

That seem fair enough. But we're outside observers and we have to piece together observable facts. Not all the facts are observable. There's a lot of scope for speculation and interpretation. The scientists who study the human brain admit that a lot is unknown, even with all their brain scanning equipment and co-operative subjects. Occasionally some taken for granted "fact" is swept aside by a new discovery.

I don't know anyone who's under the impression that they have a deeply intellectual cat/dog/budgie but sometimes our pets surprise us with their cleverness or their emotions. A few years ago, one of my dogs died and the other one seemed so upset that he practically pined away. He would perk up if he saw a dog in the distance who walked like the one that had died. Then you could see him droop as he understood it wasn't her. He obviously didn't understand what had happened, but there's no denying the emotion he felt. That lasted 3 years - till he died himself, in fact. He'd been a happy, energetic dog up until his companion died.

I don't necessarily agree with you about the pain. Animals all need to experience pain in a horrible way. It would serve no useful purpose otherwise. I think it may be the opposite way round to the way you describe. I think we humans may experience pain the way any animal does. Pain is a primitive and brutal thing but very necessary to the survival of every animal, including the human animal. But then again, we can only really guess. Pain perception varies from person to person so it may well vary from species to species to some degree.

True, pain is necessary. but how that pain is experienced is dependant on descrimination, which is proved to happen in the cortex, and the cortex varies with linguistic complexity. the dog can feel theloss of the companion, but not the agony of someone totally different that just happens to share some mannerisms with the companion. It is the level of descrimination that makes love, hate and pain so much greater for humans.

Not really relevent to teh alst post but probably worth mentioning.

Something I learned

Until age 3, a human baby and a human chimp are the same, cognitively and intelligently. Thsi is according to every test psychologists know. thsi can mean one of 2 things.

1, teh tests are flawed, we are completely different, if you argue that then all teh tests which say that we are superior to dogs are invalid.

2, The tests are accurate and we should really consider taht killing, testing on or eating any chimp is like killing, testing on or eating a 3 year old child.

Food for thought.

Sorry, I don't buy that last one. there is one crucial difference that can be measured by 3 years old. the human will have started talking. If you use baby sign, the human starts talking even earlier.

I buy that 33337. It works for me. The reason the chimp hasn't started talking xyroth, is that it lacks the vocal equipment.

It's a bit late at the moment. I was going to say a bit more about pain, language and chimps, but I can't stay awake. I'll try to find time tomorrow.