Jurassic Park, is it possible?

god0fgod · Post by **god0fgod** » Sat Mar 13, 2010 5:00 pm

Did I say "directly proportional"?

I didn't.

novanilla · Post by **novanilla** » Sat Mar 13, 2010 6:28 pm

*shudder* A velocirapture MUST have a soul. Why else would they be called that?

soxie · Post by **soxie** » Sat Mar 13, 2010 7:04 pm

novanilla wrote:*shudder* A velocirapture MUST have a soul. Why else would they be called that?

Are you talking about "the long-prophesied second coming of raptor jesus" or a velociraptor?

novanilla · Post by **novanilla** » Sat Mar 13, 2010 7:25 pm

soxie wrote:Are you talking about "the long-prophesied second coming of raptor jesus" or a velociraptor?

Holy Carp! I knew it!!! There are just TOO many coincidences!

Darth Wong · Post by **Darth Wong** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 6:49 pm

god0fgod wrote:Oh dear. Does anyone else understand the difference between animals and small animals here?

By small I mean insect sized.

So what about chickens and pigs and other animals we slaughter for food? Do you think they have souls? You brought up "small animals" as examples of creatures we regularly kill without any sense of guilt. We do that to chickens and pigs and cows.

Very few people would hear the phrase "small animal" and think that it excludes everything larger than an insect.

god0fgod · Post by **god0fgod** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 10:33 pm

I'm talking about those animals without sentience. We all know chickens, pigs and cows are sentient.

We accept killing animals for food because of one or more of a few reasons:

1. We don't care.
2. We feel animals are unlike humans and were put there for our benefit. Hence humans should assume all superiority and rights over animals.
3. We feel it's natural for the stronger and more intelligent animals to take others for food; Survival of the fittest.
4. We feel happy as long as the animal has had a good life; Organic, free range and roadkill.

ToonArmy · Post by **ToonArmy** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 10:54 pm

god0fgod wrote:I'm talking about those animals without sentience. We all know chickens, pigs and cows are sentient.

Yes but you are defining sentience based on size, where do you draw the line between small and non small animals?

god0fgod · Post by **god0fgod** » Mon Mar 15, 2010 11:02 pm

Not necessarily size but you get the picture. It makes sense that insects have no sentience or at maximum a very very small amount. These animals are small of-course.

It's obvious intelligence doesn't have a perfect relationship with size. Humans are more intelligent than elephants as an obvious example. (The size of the brain counts more. Elephants have smaller brains than humans apparently, despite being larger)

novanilla · Post by **novanilla** » Tue Mar 16, 2010 12:22 am

NO no no... Everybody knows souls are kept in thumbs... No thumbs, no souls.

Darth Wong · Post by **Darth Wong** » Tue Mar 16, 2010 3:35 am

god0fgod wrote:I'm talking about those animals without sentience. We all know chickens, pigs and cows are sentient.

Well then, since this tangent started over an ethics discussion about what we should or shouldn't do with animals, why is such a narrow definition relevant? We're obviously talking about doing genetic experiments with something bigger than insects.

We accept killing animals for food because of one or more of a few reasons:

1. We don't care.
2. We feel animals are unlike humans and were put there for our benefit. Hence humans should assume all superiority and rights over animals.
3. We feel it's natural for the stronger and more intelligent animals to take others for food; Survival of the fittest.
4. We feel happy as long as the animal has had a good life; Organic, free range and roadkill.

I would tend to put my own feelings about my omnivorous diet thusly:

1) As per your #4, I am not comfortable with animal suffering. I do feel better if I think the animal was not treated cruelly in life.

2) We are natural omnivores, as demonstrated by the fact that it is difficult to acquire all necessary nutrients from a vegan diet. I know it can be done, but it does take a lot more work (and some of the necessary supplements are derived from animal sources anyway). In short, animal protein is, more or less, a necessary component of our diet, albeit not quite so large a component as certain people seem to think.

I don't know where you stand in particular, but regarding your #1 and #2, people who declare that animal suffering means nothing strike me as rather callous, to say the least. Regarding #3, people need to stop treating Darwinian evolution as if it's a moral principle rather than a scientific theory. Nobody thinks gravity or electromagnetism are moral principles.

kzone · Post by **kzone** » Tue Mar 16, 2010 1:35 pm

I don't know where you stand in particular, but regarding your #1 and #2, people who declare that animal suffering means nothing strike me as rather callous, to say the least.

Do you eat animal products?

This reminds me of animal rights activitist who go crazy when animals are abused yet they have a steak in the freezer

novanilla · Post by **novanilla** » Tue Mar 16, 2010 1:48 pm

@kzone... Just because people eat meat doesn't mean they need to disrespect the source and treat animals with grunts and cruelty. Your selected quote left out some pretty important context.

kzone · Post by **kzone** » Tue Mar 16, 2010 4:09 pm

novanilla wrote:@kzone... Just because people eat meat doesn't mean they need to disrespect the source and treat animals with grunts and cruelty. Your selected quote left out some pretty important context.

Have you ever been to a slaughter house? I have been to one and it is not pretty(IMO).

Wikipedia wrote:
Cattle are rendered unconscious by applying an electric shock of 300 volts and 2 amps to the back of the head, effectively stunning the animal,[10] or by use of a captive bolt pistol to the front of the cow's head (a pneumatic or cartridge-fired captive bolt). Swine can be rendered unconscious by CO2/inert gas stunning.

In my books, the above quote fit well as a good definition of cruelty.

god0fgod · Post by **god0fgod** » Tue Mar 16, 2010 5:05 pm

I said somewhere else that I like Organic and free range produce. Sometimes I am cooked a meal by someone else that may include intensively farmed animal produce. I either eat it or I leave it to waste where the animal suffered in vain.

On the genetics, it goes back to what I said about justifying medical research (That's to an extent, before anyone says I approve of anything horrific).

ToonArmy · Post by **ToonArmy** » Tue Mar 16, 2010 9:53 pm

god0fgod wrote:I said somewhere else that I like Organic and free range produce. Sometimes I am cooked a meal by someone else that may include intensively farmed animal produce. I either eat it or I leave it to waste where the animal suffered in vain.

As far as I am aware, so do correct me, organic meat is just from animals that have grazed on organic land and been fed organic feed. Importantly it's got nothing to do with how the animal is slaughtered and I assume they just go off to a abattoir and are slaughtered in the same way as other animals.

Where I do agree is free range chickens, battery chickens are farmed far too intensively imo. I know a few cattle farmers and their animals are all outdoors where possible, which is vastly different to battery chickens.

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