AL

Lemmings do not jump off of cliffs' date=' this is a myth started by a disney film maker that herded a bunch of lemmings off a cliff, taped it, and put it in a nature film (I've seen it, it's quite funny). But they are stupid enough to jump off with very little coaxing.[/quote']

Thanks for pointing that out. I was not aware of that.

I've had several pet rodents, so I am well aware that they will walk off a cliff without much regard for gravity. In fact, my last hamster fell off a 15 foot drop twice. He survived both drops with no injuries though.

 

In any event, my point was that animal activities, ecology, behavior and so forth should be given consideration before we decide what sorts of moral protections to give them.

Further, the analogy you give with racism doesn't quite cut it for me. If there were real, tangible differences between blacks and whites (and not just something trivial like skin color or hair texture), then I would argue these differences do need to be taken into account when we decide how we're going to treat one group or the other. The reality is that such differences are miniscule at best, so we (or I, at least) will treat blacks and whites and any other race of people as moral equivalents.

IMM, I'm curious at what point you draw the line. Surely if animals are our moral equals, you'd extend the exact same moral protections you'd give to humans, no? Would you save a deer from a mountain lion? I'd say it would be morally negligent not to attempt to save a human who was assaulted by a mountain lion, but I'd probably do nothing to save the deer -- the justification for the latter being more ecological than moral. But if deer are our moral equals, then why not extend the same moral protection?

 

I think consistency is a good thing to have in any moral system, but I acknowledge that my moral interests will clash, and that at some point I have to give way for one over the other. This is implicit in even the most staunch animal-rights activist. Did you strain the last carrot you ate to ensure you didn't ingest any nematode worms? Do you boycott purified drinking water because zooplankton died during the purification process? You may think I'm nitpicking, but these are some of the extremes that a Jainist might go through to minimize animal suffering, and unless you do same, the Jainists have you beat for moral consistency.

 

That said, I do value the lives of animals and even plants. But we need to take other, non-moral factors into consideration: that there are heterotrophic life forms (including us) that destroy other lives in order to maintain their own, that the ecology of some animals essentially relies on them being exterminated in droves (particularly creatures like mice that follow an r-strategy of population growth), and the fact that humans are the only creatures that are capable of bettering the planet for all parties involved. All of these non-moral factors need to be taken into consideration before we simply decide animals are our moral equivalents.

 

A lemming left to its own devices will uselessly give its life to a bottom of a cliff -- if we can take the little critter and do beneficial scientific research with it, it will have given its life to something a bit more worthwhile.

Everyone else' date='

 

My apologies for becoming upset yesterday. I've mentioned in other posts that animal rights is my most sensitive issue, and I'm very prone to letting it affect me on a personal level.

 

I try to be reasonable, and I do a good job about 95% of the time.

Fair enough. We all lose our cool at some point. You're one of the few people that acknowledge it, and that is commendable.

 

AL,

 

 

Actually I'd say this is probably true for 99% of the people on the planet on every political topic. Pangloss, being a moderate Libertarian, should be particularly aware of just how poor and shallow political discourse is in America - everything people say and think can be articulated in 30-second soundbytes, summed up in the talking points of today, or written in some garden-variety pundits next best seller.

 

To prove this point, consider the best philosophy a few hundred years ago, "On Liberty", "On the Principals of Moral Obligations and Legislation", "The Leviathon", etc. All of these works were read by nearly all voting men, discussed intelligently. However, the works of today of comparable quality, such as Rawl's "A Theory of Justice" and Nozick's "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" are read by a small number of academics and first year philosophy students, I have not seen any of these works referenced in mass media for the last 10 years. The most popular works nowadays are Ann Coulter's "How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)", Micheal Savage's "Liberalism is a Mental Disorder", and Michael Moore's "Fat White Men" - I've read all of these books and considered if they are what the majority of Americans read for their "informed" political opinions, then reason is dead forever replaced with ideologues memorizing apologetics and rationalizations. (I might add that one more way to prove how people enjoy their fast-food apologetics is simply like this: how many people do you think will skip over this quite reasonable post because its a moderately lengthy read? Maybe I'm just being cynical, but I think it brings up a good rhetorical point: ideologues dont care what their opponents have to say.)

 

Having said that, I think I'm in a pretty good place accuse my ideological opponents of giving their opinions relatively little thought, and peoples opinions on animal rights is no exception. I partially blame PETA on lowering animal rights to the status of Micheal Moore by relying on outrageous spectacles to get their point across, but if animal rights has to keep up with current state of fast-food news and the "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality, then the demonstrations are the only way to accomplish it - however, as long as my "ideological opponents" continue to attack animal rights in the same ways that PETA defends it, then they are rightfully called uninformed and have given their position no thought.

 

I've personally never been interested to read PETA's "Holocaust on Your Plate", I have more compelling things to base my deeply held convictions upon. I've preferred to read the legitimate academic (although not as emotional or flavorful to read) discussion on animal rights, relying heavily on Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation" and "In Defense of Animals" - it puts veganism and animal rights as a position based on philosophy, and reveals the lack of consideration for animal rights to be a mish-mash of contradictory values that is morally intolerable.

 

Hopefully, I've got across my point: I think there is good reason to believe that my ideological opponents are uninformed, and that my veganism isnt "faith" like Pangloss seems to think it is. Based on my experience, I genuinely believe that 99% of all of my ideological opponents, if they are unwilling to put away the credulity that I see everyday or even take a few hours out of their day to read "Animal Liberation", are simply uninformed - I'm sure I could probably try to talk about the principles of equal consideration of interests and the merits of preference utilitarianism, but I doubt my points will be recieved well by many people. (I'm to the point where I think as long as reasoned discourse is dead and people continue to base their meat eating on the fact that they like the taste of steroid-saturated meat, then maybe the best case I could ever make for veganism is to write a cookbook of my favorite recipes.)

I've given animal rights quite a bit of thought. As a postbac in biochemistry making a career switch to the health professions (M.D. or Pharm.D., haven't decided), I've already killed a number of lab animals. Of course, I do not take such affairs lightly, and I treat these animals with the utmost respect and humanity, and not simply because a life sciences ethical committee is watching my back either. These animals are so heavily anesthetized by the time they are euthanized, that I hesitate to even say they are in a "vegetative" state -- even a vegetable is capable of responding to external negative stimuli or environmental stresses.

 

My moral system is heirarchical (I could elaborate its structure further, but this post will get quite lengthy), and although I believe we have a moral responsibility to the animals, I believe that our responsibility to other humans trumps that. You can view this as an inconsistency, but I view it as a simple acknowledgement that we are restricted to finite resources. You cannot feed the hungry if you yourself are starving to death. We are the stewards of the planet, and we need to be in optimal shape ourselves so that we can extend further protection to the animals. Paradoxically, this will involve sacrificing some animals so that our knowledge of medicine will increase, but this is not just for our benefit -- this is for the long-term benefit of animals as well, since we will be acquiring further knowledge of veterinary science. If there was a way for medical knowledge to increase without this sacrifice, I'm in favor. If there were a way for a surgeon to develop manual dexterity without cutting up an animal, I'm all in favor. But until these methods are developed, I hold that it is still morally obligatory for us to minimize human suffering first, before that of the animals.

 

In any event, I'm always curious about other people's views. When I have the time, I'll pick up a copy of the animal ethics books you mentioned here. I'm always looking for a good read anyhow, and I'm not afraid to be proven wrong, though I doubt a few books'll change my career path.

IMM' date=' there's nothing wrong with you doing whatever you want to "lessen animal suffering". But expecting others to go along with your unsubstantiable opinion is functionally akin to expecting children to pray in schools or give their souls to Jesus. It's your belief. You're entitled to it. But that's the end of it.

 

I do agree that people shouldn't pick on you for having that opinion, but it doesn't make them insensitive to the plight of animals, it makes them intolerant human beings.[/quote']

To be fair, zyncod was responding to a comment by IMM in which she essentially insinuated that her ideological opponents haven't given their position much thought. If she wants to believe that, that's her prerogative, but she shouldn't reasonably expect that some wouldn't take it as pejorative.

 

Also, I object to your characterization of other people's disagreement as intolerance. I argue with my loved ones all the time -- sometimes quite vehemently -- but I would hardly call it intolerance.

I have pet cats. I feed them lots and lots of dead pig, cow, chicken and tuna. I could probably feed them vegetables, but then that'd be "experimenting" on them, and we can't have that.

Well aside from the false dichotomy fallacy of assuming that homosexuality must be caused entirely by either genetics or environment, rather than some combination of the two with some confounding factors thrown in for good measure, I'd really like to see these religious apologetics sites explain how homosexuality occurs in animals. Do gay animals get abused? Do they grow up in broken homes?

The book read like a plot out of a very typical, moderately-budgeted Hollywood suspense flick. Although this was the reason I didn't think the book was that great, it's also the reason I suspect so many people loved it.

 

In any event, regarding the alleged "facts" of the book, there really is a Priory of Sion, but it's a real-life scam. One of the founding members of the group admitted that the group was created as part of an elaborate ruse in the mid-20th century, yet Brown puts it into his novel as though the group has had its roots and connections to the grail going back ages.

 

But again, this book is fiction and should be acknowledged as such. I just singled out the Priory bit because Brown put it in his intro as part of the "factual" elements of the book.

inspired by this thread, "intelligent design", so most of you don't believe in creation? what do you think about the ancient sumerian civilization? the first ever human civilization on earth which appeared virtually overnight. Cities and temples...their knowledge of the solar system,mathematics,astrology[/b'], etc... how could the sumerians possibly build a highly advanced culture literally overnight? it's even considered advanced in OUR time according to some scholars. According to the ancient tablets, they owe their civilization to the "gods" sent from heaven.. they even have a list of their "gods" dating back to 400,000 years.. does this make any sense?? heck, after knowing this, i'm beginning to think that there are in fact extraterrestrial activity here on earth long ago and maybe helped shape the human intelligence.

It just struck me as particularly hilarious that you pointed out astrology as a high point of an ancient civilization's progress.

Irreducibly complex structures are structures that work only and only if ALL parts of the system are present. If just one part is removed, the system becomes broken. Take roughly the human body, if you didn't have a heart, or lungs, or your eyes, you would be "broken" if not dead.

A biological construct can only be characterized as "irreducibly complex" if you assume what it was designed for. There is no reason to assume design. To use the infamous mousetrap analogy, a mousetrap is "irreducibly complex" only if you assume its purpose is to catch mice. But unfortunately, this ignores the fact that an organism will tend to make do with what nature has provided it. If, instead of receiving a full blown mousetrap, an organism had just the spring, it wouldn't be able to catch mice, but there's still plenty that can be done with a spring such as using it to jump, or absorb shock, or whatever else have you. All other things equal, this may give the organism an evolutionary advantage over organisms that don't have springs, and now the species is one step closer to the complete mousetrap.

The first;

Who was the first scientist to prove that living things did not evolve form non living matter and what fellow countryman furthered his findings before the year 1800?

 

I thought it would of been Darwin but the year 1800 rules him out.

I would've said Louis Pasteur' date=' but a) he didn't really prove it was impossible; he only demonstrated a very particular way that won't work, and b) the year 1800 rules him out as well.

 

The second question;

Why dont the oceans leak out the bottom?

 

My guess is that the earth's crust seals the water in.

That question doesn't even make sense. What bottom?

Very likely there are some areas folks like ICR do studies in that would be worthy of publishing in the journals if they were fair and balanced.

Well, an IDist (Stephen Meyer) did get published in a journal -- The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. The article is primarily a review of the literature (mostly Creationist "literature" as well as references to Meyer's other works), rather than field or lab research demonstrating something substantive.

 

The article hasn't fared very well under scrutiny, but shortly after its publication, it was hailed by its supporters as proof of ID's scientific legitimacy.

 

The full article can be found here.

A critical review, here.

gah, i can't remember where that is from....SImpsons?

Yup.

"[intelligent Design] is the greatest case of false advertising I've seen since I sued the movie 'The Never Ending Story.'" -Lionel Hutz, attorney at law.

And if anyone wants to make thier own "Interview with a creationist" type thread' date=' or post it here, I invite you to do so. Only if you do, don't point out any specific religion, since creation/inteligent design as taught in schools doesn't advocate any specific religion[/quote']

 

Interview with a Creationist:

 

Do you have any evidence whatsoever to make your case?

 

--No, but we do have a lot of hearsay and conjecture. Those are kinds of evidence.

Unless you are Amish' date=' you are using Asian products. And what about the human rights violations in the Middle East (Oil?). Japan? Taiwan? What is wrong with them? You are probably consuming less overall, so from that standpoint, great, but it is very difficult or impossible to single out one country and boycott it. Also, are your sure a boycott helps the working class?

 

Also, this thread seems to assume extremist views are bad, but in the past, it has lead to the greatest changes in society. Some good, some bad[/quote']

Moreover, many products are multinational. A computer built in America may consist of components built in Taiwan, so it is very difficult to single out these products, let alone countries.

 

Also, boycotting the products from an entire country to protest one particular instance of government misbehavior and/or inaction seems a little unreasonable to me. I don't buy Japanese seafood products because I object to the whaling activities of the Japanese fishing industry, but that's not going to stop me from buying a Toyota Prius automobile. It's a little dubious to say Toyota is partly responsible for the hauling in of dead cetaceans just because both parties have the loose affiliation of being "Japanese."

I've already pointed out where he's saying that we should not investigate further. I'll post the quote again:

Do not listen to anyone who says we can discuss all this later. No' date=' we can't.

[/quote']

 

I don't think that means we shouldn't investigate further. Moore is complaining, and he anticipates that there will be some who will respond to his complaints with "now is not the appropriate time to complain." So he's responding with "do not listen to [those] who say we can discuss all this later."

Was Atlantis not a city which was technologically advanced?

Why would someone disbelieve in the City of Atlantis?

Did this city not have a vast surplus of gold?

It's very straightforward why it's hard to believe that Atlantis was as advanced as that Walt Disney movie made it seem, and that some of Atlantis's defenders would have you believe. Plato mentioned specifically that the Atlanteans were defeated in war by the Athenians. So unless you believe it is reasonable that an army of sandal-clad spear throwers can take down a great space-faring civilization with the latest in laser-beam weaponry and massive, armored battle titans, you may want to reconsider what you think of Atlantis's technological sophistication.

Science is the gathering of facts, facts by definition can be proven, true proof implies the absence of doubt, but the absence of doubt is possible only in the presence of omniscience.

He's falsely equivocating his different usage of the terms "fact" and "proof." Science makes inductive inferences that can be regarded as factual knowledge, but provisionally and subject to the availability of new information. When he later states that these facts must have "true proof" and "the absence of doubt," he has pulled a sleight of hand in swapping out inductive for deductive inferences. The rest of his argument falls apart accordingly.

 

Omniscience is a scientific impossibility, therefore fact is a scientific impossibility, therefore science itself is scientifically impossible...

You'd be hard-pressed to make the case that all knowledge should be denied if we cannot have omniscience, since even the claim "all knowledge is impossible" is itself a knowledge claim.

 

By the use of science, I have proven the absence of science...

Well, he didn't really use science to disprove science at all, but if he actually did, then his proof is undermined by his own admission via the stolen concept fallacy.

I believe people should be free to engage in all forms of consensual, adult sexual relations. Aside from hetero- and homosexuality, this includes, but is not limited to, polygyny, polyandry and incest. Note that this does not include beastiality (unless you can really prove the animal consented -- doubtful), and does not include sex with minors. Although a minor can technically "consent," I regard their "consent" to be as meaningless as their signature on most contractual agreements. Note furthermore, that this does not mean I approve or endorse any of the above sexual activities. I believe people should be free to do it and not be thrown in jail or harassed or ridiculed for it; doesn't mean I believe they should do it.

 

How's that for extreme?

 

Oh, and I can't stand fire-and-brimstone religious types either (Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Jesse Helms, Jimmy "I would know the prophet Mohammed was a pervert because I'm one and it takes one to know one" Swaggart). I don't really consider that extreme though, because just about all moderate religious people I know can't stand them either.

if the government and/or the people of a country paid for a solar panel on their house even something like 2m^2 and a number of batteries to store excess power(like ther would be any) wouldn't they generate a significant amount of power?

Here in California, the power companies have a program whereby a solar panel on your house would feed energy back into the power grid if you generated excess power, so there's no need to get batteries. Excess power you generate and feed into the grid also go into lowering your energy bill, which is a nice bonus.

 

we could shut down the most polluting powerplants(coal and oil fired) thus saving fossil uels and helping the enviroment. buildings that are larger than the average home could also have additional panels. and obviously people could add more panels if they wanted.

any thoughts on this idea?

Sounds easy, but there are some complications. Consider that not everyone lives in a sunny area. I spent a month in Seattle in summer, and I am not engaging in hyperbole when I say I never once saw the sun over that city. Also consider that many people live or work in high rise buildings and apartments that consume a lot of power, but offer very little surface area for collecting solar power, so there will still be a need for non-solar energy sources.

I challenge any creationist(or anybody else for that matter) to attempt to find a single peice of logical and/or empirical evidence that suggests that creationism is true.

 

The "intellectual" creationists usually quote Michael Behe or William Dembski.

 

The less sophisticated "intellectual" creationists will regurgitate Behe's mousetrap analogy (a mousetrap is specifiably complex; removing just one of its components would cause the entire function to fail, ergo it must've been Intelligently Designed, many biological constructs fit this bill). Nevermind that the whole notion of specified complexity presupposes teleology in order to prove teleology -- begging the question is the least of this analogy's problems.

 

The more sophisticated creationists will regurgitate Dembski's (mis)use of the No Free Lunch Theorem (which states that no algorithm can outperform any other algorithm when averaged across all fitness functions). Dembski thinks this implies that an evolutionary algorithm of mutation and selection (or genetic drift or anything else you want to add to the mix) cannot outperform an algorithm of blind chance. This is a misinterpretation of the theorem that one of the theorem's coauthors (David Wolpert) has pointed out to Dembski.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CF/CF011_2.html

 

Dembski wrote an entire book entitled No Free Lunch, and the entire thesis of his book is refuted by one of the premise's coauthors -- how humiliating. I'd resign into a life of obscurity if that happened to me, but Dembski and other Creationists have no shame. It's a quest to save hellbound souls, not a quest for objectivity in science.

The covariance of two independent random variables X and Y is zero.

Cov(X, Y) = 0

 

The correlation coefficient of two random variables X and Y is:

p = Cov(X, Y) / (Var(X)*Var(Y))^0.5

 

Thus if two random variables X and Y are independent, their covariance is zero, and so is their correlation coefficient p.

This reminds me of a documentary I once watched in which a commentator asserted, "Heisenberg tells us that particles are not 'things,' but rather, they are nothing more than probabilistic tendencies."

 

If there's one thing about Werner "Uncertainty" Heisenberg that I'm certain about, it's that he said no such thing.

I think this would be considered extremist.

 

Love your enemies' date=' bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.[/quote']

It's hard to think of hardcore pacifists as extremists, but as another example, consider that Vietnamese Buddhist monk who set himself on fire to protest the Vietnam War. Now that's extreme pacifism.

I don't believe that. You are not born with a gene dictating whether you prefer vanilla or strawberry ice-cream' date=' so why should you be born with a gene dictating whether you prefer men or women? You may have a genetic preference for one or the other, but it is probably not one gene and I imagine that social phenotypic factors are more powerful.

 

Ask youself this: if you were brought up in a society where it was normal to be homosexual, do you think you would be? I think if most people are being honest then they would say yes. It is only natural to be infuenced by your surroundings. [/quote']

If society were more open to homosexuals, I'm sure more of them would come out of the closet, but that doesn't necessarily mean more are choosing to be gay.

 

One of the main reasons I doubt culture and social influences play a significant role in homosexuality is the prevalence of homosexuality in many animals. Consider this study of gay sheep:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3008

It's doubtful that sheep have a meaningful "culture" or "society" and yet as many as 1 in 10 rams are gay. Not to mention that this study suggests there is a biological connection (a smaller hypothalamus) to homosexuality. Of course, it may still be the case that sheep can choose to be gay and this choice causes their hypothalamus to shrink, but that I highly doubt that.

 

In any event, I agree that whether or not it is a choice should not dictate how homosexuals should be treated.