When I look, on the larger scale, at the behaviour of humans, I am most often disgusted. I don't have pets, but I have a plant that I like better than many humans... Hmmm... after making that comment, I was kind of going to get into defending humankind... but that pretty much says it, doesn't it? :D

VHEMT man, do the right thing =)
http://www.vhemt.org/art/colorvisualize.jpg
Its the only way life on earth will survive.
*ducks for cover*

you evidently are not understanding the point.

to reply to what you said:

humans may be able to build houses with hammers and nails. and we may be able to use the alphabet. we can invent things like cars and microwaves, and computers. this doesn't make us more sacred.

basically you are saying we are better because you THINK we are more "advanced" than other animals?

how do you know that they don't communicate with one another in their own languages, or write to one another. it is completely silly to think that we are BETTER than other animals with our thinking processes. wanna know why? because we don't think LIKE other animals. we don't communicate like them. therefore, for you to say that you know how they think, or what they think, you make yourself out to look like a total jackass. if you can't communicate with them, how the hell do you know if you're so much better than them?

you should know that other animals have roles in families and such, just like human beings do. and you should also know that they make their own shelters and come up with ways to survive. it's been proven that certain birds can tell different colors apart and can even learn human words, so what the hell makes you think that all other animals are any different from us, besides where they live and how they go about surviving? what makes us better?

i said that either way, it was brainwashing. i said that if you feel that brainwashing a human is wrong, you should as well feel that brainwashing another animal is wrong, because we are not better than those animals. this is my opinion. -- wait, maybe i shouldn't use the word "you" here, which is something you seem to be getting hung up on. it is MY opinion, that if a person thinks it is wrong to raise a child to hate or fight, that person would be a hypocrite to say that it was okay to raise dogs to kill one another. you may feel differently, and i don't really care, because we are not currently arguing about if YOU agree with that. we're arguing because you're missing my point by about ten thousand miles. --

now, back to the parallel. if that's the parallel you think i drew, sure. but i wasn't saying that we were better than dogs, i was saying the exact opposite. which has been part of my original point the entire time. which is what dham is apparently trying to defend to some extent. which is what you are obviously totally missing.

Anybody who doesn't believe that animals talk to each other, and even write books, hasn't read Charlotte's Web or Animal Farm.

<i>If you can't communicate with them, how the hell do you know if you're so much better than them?</i>

Consciousness. It's a higher-level brain activity they just aren't capable of.

We tend to give animals human characteristics, because we are looking at them from our point of view. We want to think they can reason, chat with their buddies, etc. And certainly there are many things that they do routinely that we can't possibly comprehend.

But consciousness is really important. Pain and suffering is quite different for us, because we have the ability to ask "why?", the reflection on the memory of it, and the reason to rise above it.

That's not to say that we shouldn't reduce pain and suffering as much as possible. But to say that a steer "prefers" not to fulfill its destiny as a section of my hamburger is to miss the fact that the steer truly has no preference. (Similarly, your car doesn't care how hard you drive it. It has no opinion on the matter whatsoever.)

UNless i mised a whole lotta research, thats almost impossible to prove, and curratly impossible to scope accurately how inteligent animals can be.

I was going ot say something about animals farm and reality but i couldn't be stuff, so i wrote this instead.

nic name: don't forget watership down :) good book.

ut: if an animal can remember a human by its voice or face, what makes anyone think they can't remember pain?

take rats, for instance, which are very smart animals. all of my rats know their names from the others' names, and all of them know me from paul (with whom i live) by my voice, the way i call them, and how i smell. if they can store those memories, what makes you think they don't remember pain? i bathe my rats on a bi-weekly basis, as well, and they know now much better than before how to behave around running water, which used to literally scare the shit out of them. now they act much more calmly, because they evidently know something they didn't before - possibly that i won't let the water hurt them.

or how about cats who have been neglected or beaten in the past? dave had a cat named phantom when we were about 12 and 13 years old. phantom had very obviously been treated poorly before we got him, and whenever we would go near him, he would shy away. eventually he learned that we would not hurt him, and he let us pet him and play with him.

i don't know exactly how the thought process of any animal (beside my own species) works, but i'm pretty sure that they can store bad memories as well as good ones, or they wouldn't act certain ways in certain situations.

i'm not about ready to say that they can reason like we, and that they can ask "why?" when something goes wrong, but it's pretty silly to put it out of the question when the only way to know is to be them.

dogs
 

The most perfect example that animals have a conscience is in dogs. My last dog's face would be covered in dried up tears everytime I went away for a couple days...and that never happened when I was around.

There is much we don't understand about the brain, but in those grey areas of our understanding we have to go by what we understand so far.

And in what we understand so far we have to resist the urge to prove by asserting that we can't prove a negative. It's true; I can't prove that animals don't have consciousness. That's proving a negative, which is impossible.

But I can look at the animals I've known, avoid the urge to anthropomorphize (i.e., humanize) them, and see that very obviously they lack an enormous amount. Even the brightest ones I've known are not able to solve basic problems. And training! Take housebreaking for example; if you don't catch the dog in the act, you can't correct the behavior, because dogs are unable to connect your anger with a changed condition in the room... that they created.

And I've said it before, but if you die and there is no other food source, after a few days most pets will eat you.

Which doesn't make them much different from a lot of the people in that part of the world.

Amen, brother. I drew this conclusion a long time ago during a philosophy class in college. It seems like no matter what analogy you use, someone somewhere can come up with an equally ridiculous analogy to refute yours.

an analogy, for fun. :)
 

As far as the fact that the use of Microsoft Windows serves some utility, I think that that's totally invalid, given that the same utility can be gained by other means -- Linux. Easily. In fact, from an economic standpoint, more easily.

You guys should remember that right and wrong are <i>invented concepts</i>. Meaning, they don't physically exist. You can't 'have' a right. And if you think you can, might I ask where it is, and if I can see it?

A moral is pointless unless you can get the majority of a population to agree with you. And even then, it's not really a moral as much as it is a mutually understood agreement.

I also feel that this applies very much so to the flawed concept of 'brainwashing'. Think about the things that you do every day that other cultures all over the world would consider horrible, disgusting, and wrong. How would you feel if, say, the Chinese, accused your parents of brainwashing you? You'd likely think that they were misguided, and tell them that you are perfectly capable of forming opinions of your own.

Brainwashing really is just a strange word for "communicating ideas", designed to make it seem like the communication itself is immoral.