I think the that PETA’s harping on the MoD is really neither here nor there: MoD still funds animal research which PETA opposes, after all. Recalling a particularly egregious incident, however long ago, is typical activist propaganda.
The sentence quoted above is, IMHO, the only one that actually matters when criticizing PETA. But I would like to hear you defend it with some sort of reasoning. Why are humans more important than animals? Do you believe in souls? Is it because most humans are smarter than animals? If intelligence is the standard, what about humans that are less intelligent than animals (because of accidents or birth defects, etc.)? The reason I started this thread was that I think your sentence above is the reason people hate PETA, but they always fail to provide a warrant or any reasoning at all.
Also:
Cite? I’ve never heard them say anything this broad. I thought they supported using bacteria to replace animal experimentation.
Actually, I’d like to retract that, and apologize to the mods. While I’m growing pretty tired of Bull’s repeated cheap shot insults and their degradation of threads, that’s not an excuse for me to try to move him toward an explicit breaking of the rules.
I see that there wasn’t a “that” there. I feel that anyone that supports a truly vile organization is someone that is probably vile themselves, at least to some degree. Someone who supports the Klan is probably racist. Someone that supports the HSUS is probably a bigot that wants to destroy cultures that they see as inferior due solely to that culture’s treatment of animals and probably has an extremely warped view of proper, normal animal use in any society.
So, Unregistered Bull, your position is that if a “culture” is doing something systematically immoral, criticizing it is wrong? Even if you’re a member of that “culture”? That’s pretty ridiculous. (I put culture in scare quotes because it isn’t at all clear how you’re using the term).
It’s worth adding that you still haven’t offered anything resembling an argument. Since this is GD and not the Pit, you might want to offer something resembling reasons or evidence instead of your politically schizophrenic condemnations.
Immoral? :rolleyes: We’re talking about how a culture uses animals for food, religion, tradition, or sport. Not female circumcision or child marriage. Whatever a culture does with animals, as long as they aren’t endangered wildlife, should not be stopped by the government because people, even a majority of people, feel that that culture is inferior because they dislike how they treat animals. The only immoral thing is the feeling of cultural supremacy and the advocation of getting the government involved in enforcing the bigoted notions that both HSUS and PETA (and their supporters) posess.
I know of no place on the internet populated by wiser, kinder or more interesting people than the SDMB. Despite the quality of the people who are here, the AR arguments being made do not seem to have won over any converts.
This could be because nobody is listening. It could be because those who are listening are rather stiff-necked. It could be because the arguments are weak.
But Paul, where are the AR arguments being made? I have found a handful of threads discussing it, which seem to devolve pretty early on into Unregistered Bull-style non-argumentation. I haven’t found a single PETA thread with a genuine AR debate.
I agree that the AR arguments aren’t fully persuasive, but I’m disturbed that on this board instead of having those arguments in the open (where they might actually have some use), we have the AR debate by proxy with misguided assertions from both sides.
So you are saying that the problem is with the Dopers, not with the argument? I find that hard to accept. As I said, I think the world of this little community. Even Badger.
It is my high esteem for this community that makes me frustrated with how it deals with this issue. Smart people shouldn’t be making huge unstated assumptions. I expect more from the Dope.
When this issue comes up it doesn’t get debated. Instead, the same old criticisms of PETA are trotted out (because AR issues are inevitably brought up by something PETA has done) – criticisms which all hinge on assumed wrongness of AR. But that unspoken assumption never gets the attention it deserves.
It’s as if every time an abortion thread came up, instead of debating whether or not fetuses qualify as human lives, we endlessly debated NARAL’s tactics.
If this were an assumption like “human life is important” or “freedom is good,” it wouldn’t need stating. But the position that animals can be killed and tortured for the happiness of humans cannot simply be assumed, it must be defended against AR arguments; arguments which are not sophistic – by any standard they are philosophically robust and deserve genuine debate.
You speak the truth. There can be not doubt PETA (which we are using as shorthand for Earth First, the ALF and all the rest) raise the issue, but their tactics (heck their holier-than-thou attitude) annoys people to a point where the public reject their point.
All humane people are opposed to unnecessary cruelty. The tactics of PETA (et. al.) makes even saying this simple truth somehow an endorsement of terrorism.
Perhaps the use of violence prematurely is not only morally wrong, but perhaps it is also a political policy.
Besides the distateful tactics of PETA, it’s might not be debated because the vast majority of what HSUS and PETA stand for is absolutely ludricrous. They’re animals not humans. Most people, irregardless of political stripe (excepting the Greens perhaps) don’t have a problem with their use as food, companionship, or medical research. The same with hunting and fishing. These things that the vast majority of people have no problem with, are things which PETA and HSUS wish to destroy. PETA and HSUS are anti-civil rights organizations who whish to take away human civil rights (cultural, traditional, religous, logical commercial and medical treatment of animals) while at the same time give human civil rights to animals. Organizations promoting bigotry because of genuinely weird as well as unpopular reasons, simply don’t get alot of support.
Despite Bull’s undocumented, unsupported, and untrue attacks against HSUS, most people understand that the two groups are far different.
It is a problem that there’s nobody on this board who is an informed supporter of Animal Rights. This is not due to any weakness of AR arguments–there are informed supporters of all kinds of crackpot theories on this board, many of them far weaker than animal rights theory.
I think it’d be fascinating to get a Tom Regan or one of his students onboard to offer a vigorous, intellectual defense of the AR position.
It would be interesting to see an informed debate. The AR people have a point, but I suspect they push it a bit too far. Would they not do better to push the ball in their direction as quickly as public opinion would allow rather than using violence?
I think some of them are working in that direction (again, I refer you to Tom Regan).
What, you’ve never heard of the quiet, rational, work-within-the-system guys? You’ve only heard of the outrageous, out-of-control, violence-advocating guys?
Imagine that: the outrageous people are the ones that get the attention. Who’da thunkit?
Daniel
Again, though I have to say that I see some percent of what PETA does as valuable. Late last week, there was a story in a local newspaper about an abandoned dog; the same day, a PETA representative called us up asking whether our humane society needed any support in dealing with this dog. The case wasn’t in our county, so we tracked down the number for that county’s humane society, and PETA proceeded from there. It would be fairly typical for them to respond by finding a home for this dog, or offering an emergency grant to pay for the dog’s care.
They do some awful stuff, but they also do some good stuff too.
HSUS is anti-hunting. It is against many traditional uses of animals. They wish to get the government involved, and have been sucessful to some degree, in trying to destroy traditional uses of animals.
Fair enough, but the Italian Fascists made the trains run on time. Hezbollah runs clinics in souther Lebanon and Al-Qida provides scholarships in Pakistan.
These folks do have a good argument to make, they have a point, but the way they do it (I predict) will lead to many, many human lives lost. If these folks (nice, caring people, most of them) are not terrorists (and they are not, yet) their philosophy is the sort of thing that produces real terrorists.
All these people sit around and say these words, these harmless words. I fear that at least some unstable people will take these words as encouragement for violence that goes far beyond criminality and into the realm of terrorism.