All the fire in hell is too little punishment for what we do...

It may come as a shock to you, eots, but our prehistoric ancestors you admire so much also "shed tears over Bambi meeting his destiny".

Eots mentioned the fact that hunting was part of our ancestors' life for thousands of years. But what eots probably doesn't know is that Mr. Caveman also had a troubled conscience just like so many of us today. Anthropologists all over the world have already catalogued thousands of fables created by Stone Age peoples to deal with the moral repercussions of hunting.

Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert say a prayer in front of the slain antelope asking the animal to forgive them and then introduce their saliva into the wound in order to "free its soul".

Natives from Vanuatu believe that the main goal in the life of an animal is to feed humans. They believe animals crave to become their next meal and they are in fact doing them a favor by hunting them. (I wonder how they rationalise the fact that they all desperately run for their lives at the sight of them).

African tribes, indians in the Americas, aborigines in Australia and Papua... you name it...

There are literally tens of thousands of myths, legends and rituals created by prehistoric peoples to relieve the burden of conscience that results from hunting. They are primitive attempts to rationalise the pain and premature death they impose on those creatures.

So what eots said, rather than invalidating my point, reinforces it:

While wolves and mountain lions only show empathy for their offspring, you cannot be a rational being without displaying some degree of empathy for other living creatures.

The moment we became humans, thousands of years ago in the African savannah, was the moment we started feeling compassion towards others. Empathy for other living creatures is a natural outgrowth of our ability to create abstract moral concepts such as good and evil, just and unjust etc...It's a natural outgrowth of our ability to understand rationally that life and pleasure is good while death, pain and suffering is bad for other sentient beings like us.

You cannot suppress our tendency to feel empathy any more than you can suppress our ability to walk upright because it's part of the whole rationality package we developed thousands of years ago.

Take away our ability to reason... Turn us into mountain lions, into wolves and we'll immediatelly stop feeling empathy for other creatures. That's the only way to do it.

Now, I have no problem admitting that human beings show varying degrees of empathy towards strangers and other forms of life:

You have people, like KittenKoder, who have a lot of compassion for the suffering of animals.

You have people, like eots, who have less empathy for the suffering they endure and their lives being abbreviated.

You also have people who are totally unable to feel any empathy for dying animals, strangers or even their own family members. Psychiatry calls these individuals psychopaths.

Some people have more, some people have less but only mentally ill individuals have no empathy at all for the suffering of others.

Please, notice that I'm not disagreeing with anything you said about predation and the suffering of prey animals as being part of Nature's plan for life on Earth, Sitarro. I'm simply stating:

We are not mountain lions, we are human beings and due to our rationality we cannot avoid feeling empathy everytime we see a living being enduring any kind of suffering. It's something that is hardwired into what we are.

yes a quick clean kill is important...

Jose' if you were a sexy woman I could agree with all that.

But you are not.

So I do not.

Any sexy women want to agree with Jose'?

It may come as a shock to you, eots, but our prehistoric ancestors you admire so much also "shed tears over Bambi meeting his destiny".

Eots mentioned the fact that hunting was part of our ancestors' life for thousands of years. But what eots probably doesn't know is that Mr. Caveman also had a troubled conscience just like so many of us today. Anthropologists all over the world have already catalogued thousands of fables created by Stone Age peoples to deal with the moral repercussions of hunting.

Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert say a prayer in front of the slain antelope asking the animal to forgive them and then introduce their saliva into the wound in order to "free its soul".

Natives from Vanuatu believe that the main goal in the life of an animal is to feed humans. They believe animals crave to become their next meal and they are in fact doing them a favor by hunting them. (I wonder how they rationalise the fact that they all desperately run for their lives at the sight of them).

African tribes, indians in the Americas, aborigines in Australia and Papua... you name it...

There are literally tens of thousands of myths, legends and rituals created by prehistoric peoples to relieve the burden of conscience that results from hunting. They are primitive attempts to rationalise the pain and premature death they impose on those creatures.

So what eots said, rather than invalidating my point, reinforces it:

While wolves and mountain lions only show empathy for their offspring, you cannot be a rational being without displaying some degree of empathy for other living creatures.

The moment we became humans, thousands of years ago in the African savannah, was the moment we started feeling compassion towards others. Empathy for other living creatures is a natural outgrowth of our ability to create abstract moral concepts such as good and evil, just and unjust etc...It's a natural outgrowth of our ability to understand rationally that life and pleasure is good while death, pain and suffering is bad for other sentient beings like us.

You cannot suppress our tendency to feel empathy any more than you can suppress our ability to walk upright because it's part of the whole rationality package we developed thousands of years ago.

Take away our ability to reason... Turn us into mountain lions, into wolves and we'll immediatelly stop feeling empathy for other creatures. That's the only way to do it.

Now, I have no problem admitting that human beings show varying degrees of empathy towards strangers and other forms of life:

You have people, like KittenKoder, who have a lot of compassion for the suffering of animals.

You have people, like eots, who have less empathy for the suffering they endure and their lives being abbreviated.

You also have people who are totally unable to feel any empathy for dying animals, strangers or even their own family members. Psychiatry calls these individuals psychopaths.

Some people have more, some people have less but only mentally ill individuals have no empathy at all for the suffering of others.

Please, notice that I'm not disagreeing with anything you said about predation and the suffering of prey animals as being part of Nature's plan for life on Earth, Sitarro. I'm simply stating:

We are not mountain lions, we are human beings and due to our rationality we cannot avoid feeling empathy everytime we see a living being enduring any kind of suffering. It's something that is hardwired into what we are.

Originally posted by José
You have people, like KittenKoder, who have a lot of compassion for the suffering of animals.

Originally posted by KittenKoder
Not me, I'm an omnivore like I was created ... if it's digestible, I'll eat it ... love my meats to.

Originally posted by Ringel05
Finally you make a rational, well thought out argument as opposed to a simple emotive flame based on a scripted movie scene.

It's interesting to see how them thar 'publicaNtz act when confronted with truth.
Big bad hillbilly dun got skeereded.
By Boy George !

Jose' if you were a sexy woman I could agree with all that.

But you are not.

So I do not.

Any sexy women want to agree with Jose'?

another delusion leftist

but you got all there was to get from that post

Thanks, Ringel... I think...

You see... I just have to watch a wildlife documentary to conclude that Sitarro is right on the money when he says Nature has no problem at all with brutality, suffering, pain...

Nature (or God if you prefer to call it so) has no problem with a pack of african wild dogs eating a wildebeest alive, no problem with a lion killing all the cubs of the former leader of the pride, no problem with young hyenas killing their siblings to eliminate future rivals etc, etc, etc...

The whole problem lies in our ability to reason and show empathic concern for others.

We are the only species on Earth that has the ability to pass moral judgements on Nature.

Rationality/Moral reasoning gave us the unique ability to repudiate and disregard Nature whenever it clashes with our moral bearings and commiseration for the suffering of another creature.

Originally posted by Ringel

Originally posted by Divecon
another delusion leftist

but you got all there was to get from that post