How do non-religious people motivate that humans have a higher "value" than animals?

[Macrobiotic]

Christians, muslims and jews are disqualified from this thread simply because they believe that a God created humans to be above and have a higher value than animals. If their teachings said man and animals were equal and that no man should ever hurt an animal the question could have been directed at these religious people too.

---------- Post added at 21:38 ---------- Previous post was at 21:36 ----------

Ahh, I see, in your dream utopia where everyone who doesn't agree with you has been sent to the death camps, you will be justified in living long and inefficiently using land. But you are doing those things now, not after your imaginary apocalypse. What's your justification for contributing to overpopulation and waste of land today?

I don't see how I contribute to either. The food I eat takes far less land to produce than the land required to produce meat. 60% of my diet consists of vegetables, seaweed and beans. The remaining 40% are grains, although ecologically produced they make no difference in the amount of land used for crops compared to the meat in industry, and especially not when seen from a local perspective. Food must be produced locally first hand, imported secondly. Local food cannot be measured from a global perspective. It's as if you're saying Sweden should supply Africa with grains. What nonsense.

I also don't have children and I don't plan on having any either. Wouldn't want them to be born into a world like this.

 

[RolandtheHeadless]

"The food I eat takes far less land to produce than the land required to produce meat."

So you're really interested in preserving land, not animals?

Unless a pasture has been over-grazed -- which good animal husbandry does not allow -- the pasture can still provide habitat and food for the animals who live there.

In contrast, a field used to produce crops is normally plowed, tilled, fertilized, sprayed with insecticide, harvested, and then left a biological wasteland for the fall and winter months, when animals are most in need of food and shelter.

 

[Tamayo]

Christians, muslims and jews are disqualified from this thread simply because they believe that a God created humans to be above and have a higher value than animals.

You really think that religious people are incapable of having a non-secular justification for their natural eating habits beside their beliefs? I didn't want to resort to name-calling, but that's just downright idiotic. I'm really sorry that your initial run-in with a religious person was apparently an incredibly bitter one, but it's completely stupid to ignore the views of the majority of the population just because you think that their beliefs disable them from thinking rationally and logically.

If their teachings said man and animals were equal and that no man should ever hurt an animal the question could have been directed at these religious people too.

I'm sorry to break it to you, but I'm pretty sure that the only person on this whole forum who views Mankind and animals on an equal ground is you. Since when did any part of what you just said apply to non-religious people?

 

[RickNZ]

I don't see how I contribute to either.

And yet your first response wasn't to deny your impact, it was to say it won't matter when your fantasy decimation of the human race has happened . Now you realise how silly that looked, you try to change your argument.

Local food cannot be measured from a global perspective. It's as if you're saying Sweden should supply Africa with grains. What nonsense.

Nonsense indeed. Your nonsense. I can't even imagine how your mind twists that out of what I said.

I also don't have children and I don't plan on having any either.

On behalf of the sane part of the gene pool, I offer my sincere thanks for that.

---------- Post added at 12:31 ---------- Previous post was at 11:51 ----------

I'm sorry to break it to you, but I'm pretty sure that the only person on this whole forum who views Mankind and animals on an equal ground is you. Since when did any part of what you just said apply to non-religious people?

As far as I can tell, he's trying to construct a fallacious argument on the basis of "Religious people believe humans have a soul or a purpose planned by a god, or whatever other thing that clearly puts them in a different ( and more valued) category than animals, therefore if you're not religious you have no possible way of valuing animals differently to people." Of course this is nonsense. A great novel doesn't have a soul or a divine purpose. Neither does a pile of scrap paper covered with incoherent scribbles. And yet if I needed to burn something for warmth, it's not hard to decide which one would go on the fire first, simply because the difference in value is obvious to any rational human. Likewise if I'm hungry for meat, I think I'll be chowing down on something that spends its days standing around mindlessly chewing grass and crapping it out again. I'll be leaving alone the beings with thoughts, hopes , dreams, ideas, originality, individuality, complex emotions and meaningful relationships. It's not hard to see the value of these. Unless you're some kind of seriously depressive sociopath...

 

[Kouhia]

Religious - main reasons for wars.
Nothin else, contiune.

 

[BrianLewis]

Religious - main reasons for wars.
Nothin else, contiune.

No flaming intended I suppose lol

I can understand why he excluded religion or religious people from this post, it's far too clear where we stand, and I respect that he is wondering what justifications nonreligious people may have. I have not seen much of an argument along that lines that doesn't project the entirety of human emotion onto these creatures, or doesn't just paint everything that's capable of moving from one location to another as equal to all others. However, if you take that to the next level, why are animals that move from one place to another on a different level than plants that can't? Some people may want to put all animal life on the same level as humans, yet they tend to break their own rule of thought by segregating plant life.

 

[Tamayo]

I can understand why he excluded religion or religious people from this post, it's far too clear where we stand

That is absolutely not true -- My beliefs aren't all necessarily strictly secular, and even if they were, that wouldn't make him any less of an ignorant, dismissing person than he has already explicitly announced in this thread. Keep in mind the fact that Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc. gather their teachings from books that are outdated in some regards, but must also be taken in the correct context in any case. Not only do many people such as Macrobiotic have wildly wrong misconceptions about the substance in religious scripture, they also probably have no clue about the many nuances within said scripture that change, and even supersede information stated earlier within it.

Just because someone has the idiotic idea that all of these religious groups "want" to kill animals, or feel more empowered or justified to do so than other people, it doesn't mean that we're all like that, or even that the majority of religious people are like that. Is there mention of man's domain over the world in the Bible? Yes. Is there plenty of justification ASIDE from the singular idea he's fallaciously clinging to, both in and out of religious scripture? Hell yes.

He never asked for religious people to explain themselves, but instead decided to proudly reject whatever they may have to say because he thinks he understands religion well enough to think that there's no possible way that a person can subscribe to beliefs independently of their religion. This is an extreme over-generalization of religious people, and a clear show of the utter mental incapacity it takes to be socially illiterate enough to dismiss people who he doesn't know, and religions which he clearly has no understanding of.

 

[RolandtheHeadless]

"Some people may want to put all animal life on the same level as humans, yet they tend to break their own rule of thought by segregating plant life."

There are people who avoid such hypocrisy. They're known as Fruitarians, and will only eat the ripened fruit or nuts that have fallen to the ground, without harming to the plant that produced them.

I kid you not.