Amimals are not roombas. Roombas can not feel pain or fear or anything else.
how do you know? a roomba turns away from a staircase, i assert that the roomba must then feel fear. thats just as good as your assertion that animals do.
Animals are not pre-programmed machines.
how do you know that? thats the assumption that kills the argument for animal emotions.
You kill animals–that is your relationship with them–except for your cat–I mean, you have a relationship with an animal that you are not going to kill, I hope… So it is to your ***advantage ***to argue that animals are pre-programmed, albeit living, machines. If you were to think of them otherwise, if you were to truly “love” an animal you could not take its life away. You need to keep your emotional distance from animals–because if you got too close–if you began to care…
i dont farm now, and i have no financial interest in any animals and havent for almost 20 years. i ate my first calf, J.R. Mooing, loved him to death, showed him to my friends fed and washed him, but the farm life proved to me that he didnt feel any emotion for me, he felt emotion for the feed bucket. so when i ate him i didnt feel bad at all. thats about the same time that the idea of animal emotions started to sound a little silly. i still get a hog and slaughter it for a party every once in a while, my family farms. in the culture i come from sentimentalism is considered a weakness. its a cultural trait, it doesnt have to do with animals, it has to more to do with the dustbowl and the great depression.
Pete, why ***are ***you always in these animal threads? You don’t have to answer me publically–but think about it. If you are content with killing animals, and it doesn’t bother you, why are you always sparring with people who view animals differently? Have you had a major difference of opinion with someone in your “real” life? The friend in your example crying over the animal commercial?
i believe that this sort of thing is at the bottom of peter singers preference utilitarianism, abortion, euthanasia, eugenics and any devaulation of human life. my friend being an example. i think its irrational, if it was harmless, i wouldnt bother telling people so, i never really did, but when that little old man froze to death covered in newspapers, and not 2 seconds later a PETA commercial came on, it crystallized in my mind that it is not harmless at all. its a perversion of the love of one another that G-d commands us to have. it glorifies not Him, but His creation. its disordered.
You are looking to find evidence that animals don’t have emotion, are not capable of it–because that makes it easier to kill them?
im not looking for evidence, im pointing out that there is none, its all an assumption that animals have emotion and not that those actions are simply programmed behavior.
We can get into some technical arguments–and I am new to this thread and don’t know what’s all been posted but I can assure you that animals are not just pre-programmed machines.
ive been asking for evidence for hundreds of posts, if you have a technical argument, post it.
I have worked with individual animals who have posed problems to their handlers/caretakers. I have been quite shocked on several occassions to experience a transference (for lack of a better word) with that animal, that lead me to help understand its behavior and reactions. I hesitate to write this…but I in fact have experienced it. I can not experience this at will–it just happens–only lasts a few seconds–but I actually have felt what the animal was feeling. (This IS not ME projecting on to the animal. What I learned has always been a surprise and IS always helpful.) I figure that God is allowing me insight into what’s going on with this animal so that I can help it, and help the human handlers/caretakers to understand it.
It is often difficult to translate this into words–as these animals do not think in words–in fact, I think that our style of communication (words) actually helps us to deal with many things and helps to diffuse fears and quell emotions. What’s going on inside the animals heads is often pretty intense–they are even MORE connected to their environment, and the stimuli within their environment, than we are who often walk around in a daze and can easily talk away our fears and talk ourselves out of feeling this way or that…
So this is why I don’t eat meat. Animals are not a mystery to me. I know what they feel. And I expect you to NOT believe me. I have been blessed, and I will speak for the animals who can not speak for themselves because a few chromosomes and genomes are in a little different sequence…
i believe youve had those experiences, but you know as well as i that i can never experience the evidence you do, personal revelation no matter how true doesnt count as evidence to anyone but the person involved in matterrs like this, but it does explain your insistence.
anyway, if you have a technical arguement present it. if its all personal im willing to accept that. but dont use that as a basis to imply that my motives are bad, or i have some special interest, or i am uneducated or evil in some way.
