Animal pain, suffering, and death: why does it matter?

[w_alloy]

There are only two ways you can argue that animals' suffering and dying is bad. The first is a utility based argument, of which there are many that I have grouped here under one catagory. These include maintaining ecosystems, teaching children respect, and many many others. I have no problems with these arguments. However, I think a large amount of activities labled immoral or illegal do not fall under this catagory, but under the second.

The second argument is made solely on an ideological and religious basis. People think it is generally bad for anything to suffer, and bad for anything to die. But why? I feel that those of you who are not religious, and view the world objectively and with an open mind (as I strive to do) need to defend your postion on this if it is anything other than "It matters not at all, except by the effect it has." However, I stronly suspect that a large portion of agnostic and athieistic readers of this board maintain that it is immoral to torture a rat, or an unwanted mut, or to mass slaughter cows. Why?

There are a few things that I need to note about this. I understand that I am tacitly questioning the basis of all morals. My answer to this ethical question is that of many evolutionary psychologists; morals exist, and in a larger sense all norms and values, becuase they help society in so many ways (we could spend a lot of time on this but I do not wish to). This is the view of morality that I have found the majority of smart non-religious people hold. You have to be very creative to support the normative value implied in this subject line through this view on moralty. I follow these moral guidlinese for pragmatic reasons, including personal ones (that they are ingrained into me). This is the same reason I would never torture a rabbit, or even kill one except under the most extreme cirumstances (it would cause me extreme emoitional discomfort). However, I think there is a big difference between feeling that killing bunnies with butterknives is wrong, as I strongly do, and thinking this behaviour is wrong, which I, frankly, don't.