The "List"
The animal rights people are in a desperate need of a list. What is conscious, and what is not. What can feel "the desire to live", and what can not. And such things. Some of them
try to make one.
"My personal opinion, although I can not prove it, is that the demarcation line for consciousness lies somewhere in the insect world."
Aside from being a quite lame attempt at making such a list, this again demonstrated the basic inability of vegans/ARs to grasp simple biological concepts. This one draws a "demarcation line", and it lies "somewhere in the insect world". As a biologist, I have to ask: what is above (or to the right of), and what is below (or the the left of, it doesn't matter) that line? Obviously, there are insects on both sides. Which insects? Where are the spiders? Sponges? Molluscs? Sea cucumbers? I asked, and hope to get an answer.
Not All Animals Are Equal, Either
What about insects, one might ask. Especially when
a colony of insects infests one's home.
Vegans/ARs are in a desperate need of a list of which exactly animals are worthy enough to be included into their extended compassions.
"I include insects in my animal rights philosophy.
I believe that at least certain insects are also conscious. ... For this reason, I believe we should include insects in our sphere of compassion."
Most vegans/ARs don't go this far. After all, an animal's value drops sharply with the level of its differentness from humans. Some of them (dare I say, most) are quite happy to kill some of the more pesky insects, such as mosquitoes and flies, even though this is a blatant denial of the 'basic rights' of those animals.
But what about the 'pests'?
"There are non-lethal methods for removing insects. Many of these methods simply involve using common household products, such as dish washing fluid. The smell from the chemicals in these products does not harm the insects, but causes them to leave our homes."
One topic this site conspicuously avoids is the topic of mammal 'pests'. From my experience, I know that vegans/ARs mostly have no problem with killing 'pests' such as rats, mice, other species' of rodents, various insect species', etc. They justify that particular view by reasoning that those 'pests' present a threat to us (so, humans do come first, after all), even when that is not strictly true.
Their view of what a 'pest' is requires looking at, too. While they're perfectly happy, even supportive, of killing of rats which happily live on our garbage and mostly out of our sight, they consider the extermination of introduced hedgehogs which threaten the survival of the rare bird species on an island to be evil. In this case, as in the paragraph quoted above, they favor relocation.
This demonstrates additional flaws in the vegan/AR way of thinking. The obvious one, of course, is that they don't really think all the animals deserve the 'basic rights', even if they feel "pain and suffering, happiness, joy and sorrow, and a desire to live." The less obvious one is the result of their general ignorance.
Animals, and all other living beings, don't live in a vacuum. You can't relocate an animal without consequences. Space in this world tends to be taken, and the new-come competition isn't welcome. When two beings are competing for a place which is already taken, one of them gets it, and the other has to go; dies, doesn't get a mate, goes hungry, something along those lines. It is usually the new-comer. So, re-location doesn't really achieve anything, except soothing the vegan/AR conscience. But that is, after all, the entire point of this particular form of reality denial.
What about killing plants?
What about killing plants, and follow-ups.
"It is not wrong to eat plants for the same reason that it is not wrong to kill bacteria.
Bacteria, on the other hand, just like plants, and just like rocks, do not possess anything similar to a nervous system, nor do they exhibit any behavior which would indicate that they possess consciousness.
Bacteria, just like plants, and just like rocks, are not capable of feeling anything whatsoever."
One thing vegan/AR people desperately cling to is the fact that plants don't have a nervous system. But what is the nervous system, anyway? It is a system of cells which, by the means of changing polarity of their membranes and chemical messengers, transmit stimuli, thus enabling the animal to perceive and react to the outside world, and regulate their own bodies. Plants, indeed, do not possess such a system. They do exactly the same thing in a somewhat different way. They do it chemically, using plant hormones, instead of electrically. Their method doesn't work in the lightning-fast way we're used to, but it works just as well. When a herbivore attacks them, some plants are capable of producing defensive toxins not just in the afflicted area, but in other parts of their bodies as well. Some plants communicate the fact that they're attacked (chemical screaming, wouldn't you say?) to other plants around them, and the other plants react to that by producing toxins, even though they're not attacked themselves. We can't perceive it, since plants don't scream or run away. We can't relate to it, since a plant's reaction is so different from our own. But it doesn't mean it's not there.
"Therefore, by eating meat, not only do we cause animal death and suffering, we also end up killing many more plants than we would if we ate a vegetarian diet."
This reflects another thread of vegan/AR thinking: killing is evil. This is denial of the
basic fact of life. If killing other living beings is such a bad thing, then why does every single living being on this planet engage in it, directly or indirectly? Why killing members of your own species, in case of humans, is not something that should be done on regular basis, is another matter.
"...animals are conscious beings capable of feeling pain and suffering. Animals are capable of feeling happiness, joy, and sorrow. Animals are capable of feeling a desire to live."
This is a good example of something vegans/ARs like to label other people with: anthropocentrism. Why are pain (and pain is something vegans/ARs definitely don't understand), suffering, happiness, joy, sorrow and the "desire to live" (whatever this might be) so important? Because they're something
humans feel. And, as the anthropocentric view of the world teaches us, and vegans/ARs wholeheartedly embrace, humans are
the measure of everything. The more different something is from humans, the less value it has, and therefore does not deserve moral consideration. This is the hypocrisy vegans/ARs are very fond of. They portray themselves as people whose moral considerations expand beyond humans, and do it in a way which shows them to be the exact opposite.
Why is it wrong to eat meat?
Just to clarify for the people who got sent here by Google: it is not wrong to eat meat. Why?
Three Basic Facts.
But let's look at this:
Why is it wrong to eat meat?"Regardless of what we think about the more controversial aspects of animal rights, such as medical experimentation, there is a general consensus in our society that it is ethically reprehensible to set a cat on fire for entertainment. However, since we do not need to eat meat to survive, when we choose to eat meat, we are choosing to inflict death and suffering on others simply for the pleasure of tasting meat."
The key words here: the pleasure of tasting meat. This is a theme which is common to the most of the vegan/AR thinking. Humans eat meat for no other reason but to "gain a few moments of trivial pleasure."
True, humans (mostly) find eating meat to be something pleasurable. The question one has to ask here is, why is that so? The answer is simple: animals enjoy food that is good for them. Humans enjoy meat and sweets, goats enjoy young leaves and shoots. It is a specific reaction, as you can find out by tasting a young leaf: it is disgusting to humans, but a goat would enjoy it. If you enjoy your food, you have an additional incentive to look for it and eat it, which will make you stronger, and therefore more likely to survive. Rather simple evolutionary logic.
This makes the burning cat analogy used here a very flawed one. Burning a cat for fun really has no other purpose than enjoying its pain, and usually has nothing to do with the cat itself. Instead, the cat is a symbol for something else, such as abusive boss, restricting parents, or any other source of perceived injustice. Slaughtering a chicken so you can eat it, on the other hand, is something completely different. One doesn't slaughter a chicken so one can enjoy it's pain, one slaughters it so one can eat it.
The Opposition
Animal Rights and Vegetarian Ethics - List of Questions
Here is a nice example of the denial of reality the animal rights proponents usually engage in. The Reality Check follows...
Yet Another Basic Fact
The fact that a creature exists doesn't give it any rights. There is no such thing as "basic rights".
Another Basic Fact
Humans are animals, just like any other.
