[w_alloy]

It seems I am on a whole different paradigm than the rest of the board. I would appreciate it if you would read this to help me, not because I wish to be argumentative. In order for me to understand this disconnect between me and the rest of the world, I need to understand why you make the assumtions you make.

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I consider it immoral to torture another animal for the same basic reason I consider it immoral to torture a human being: I wouldn't want to be tortured myself.

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First, as I thought most people understood it, animals cant have "wants" as we conventially understand them becasue they are not sentient. If animals werent sentient this logic wouldnt flow. But I, as well as most of the people here apperently, view animals as sentient. I understand the semantics involved in this word, but I dont want to spend much time on it.

Second, you again are making a huge jump from you to the rest of the world. This is a faith based belief. I have not done near enough research on this, and havent had any upper level philosophy or ehtics classes, and I'm sure this has been discussed ad naseum by people much smarter then me.

That being said, you arent reasoning this out at all:

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I consider it immoral to torture another animal for the same basic reason I consider it immoral to torture a human being: I wouldn't want to be tortured myself.

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This is not a good reason!! Unless you are a relativist, this does not make sense. What does your wants have to do with anything, especially general morality in the world? This seems to be the same general argument everyone is making.

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I think the realities of our existence as we know it allow for a lot more justification on this than for torture, for obvious reasons.

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What justifications? To what higher power or ethic? You are again assuming, and I cant follow you here.

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A question for you: if you were ever "called on the carpet" by some sort of higher power, and asked to justify humans torturing animals, how would you defend it? What would you say that doesn't boil down to being on top of the food chain and might makes right?

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This question is absolutely ludicrous. Do you know what justify means? This is what this whole thread is about. You bringing a higher power into it suggests you are making assumptions which are not conducive to the type of discussion I want to have.

Regardless, I would respond by saying it has never been shown to me why this behaviour is inherently bad. I just know (if anyone out there stil cares about this and is even reading my posts) that people will say it has been shown to me and I have been blind to the logic. However, I maintain, IT HAS NOT BEEN SHOWN TO ME. People are making assumption which I dont agree with.

Which brings me to my last point.
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I assume you do believe that human suffering and death does matter, morally?

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I dont. I should have realized I needed to include this in my orginal topic. I did not want this thread to be me defnding my stance to everyone, but everyone defending their stance to me. I didnt realize everyone would use the assumption that human life is "valuable" on some kind of cosmic and supernatural level to say people are animals and hence there life is valuable too. This is not the logic I see in today's society; if this were the case either a) Murder would be against the law only as a social contract (like a peace treaty between all individuals). b) Murder would have a very simliar punishment as murder of more sentient animals, and there would be much more preservation and laws regarding the treatment and lives of animals. It is not plausible to me to support such a large disconnet, if scaling valuation is really what you belive. All values are relative, if humans are animals you cant say murder is always terrible, but murder of animals is sometimes ok especially if this is there purpose (how the f*ck can you divine their purpose, besides by arbitrarily assigning them this because you facilitated thier birth).

This kind of turned into a rant. Maybe I should have just focused on the last part. Irregardless, I regret starting this thread because its infuriating and depressing nature have caused it to become -ev. Ironicly I wish the thread dead just as it starts, because all of the above was just me clarifying what I was asking.