Okay, here we go. I'm feeling organized so I sectionalized it.

Anthropocentrism and the Western worldview

Natural theology's anthropocentric worldview which dominates Western civilization is the cause, entirely, of our environmental crisis which we have faced for the last century.

I know, anthropocentric is a big word, so here: in Genesis, God creates the earth, nature, the animals, and then what? It creates man, and says that man is the ruler of all things. And so man named all the animals and established his dominance over them.

So, this anthropocentric worldview is one in which nature (and animals) serves as a means to an end; nature and animals are only of instrumental value, their value is measured by their usefulness to humans.

Now, this wasn't such an issue environmentally speaking during the first, let's say, 1500 years. However, as the scientific revolution sprung up in Europe during the 1860's, the anthropocentric worldview was still embedded in mankind's perspective towards nature and animals. When modern science and modern technology joined forces during the Democratic revolution, the anthropocentric worldview still remained consistent -- even if those who have this perspective are not Christians.

Now, I really shouldn't have to show how detrimental modern technology has been to the environment, looking at the atmosphere alone.

This anthropocentric worldview, catalysed by your faith, YOUR God (you, Christians), your doctrine, and your practices, has been used to JUSTIFY the genocide of species, destruction of land for economic purposes, subjecting animals to cruel lifestyles (animal testing, breeding, slaughtering, food manufactoring), an imperialist behavior that mankind must populate and OWN every piece of land (claim it as a country, a possession). What arrogance says "this land is mine, because I claim it so"?

For the record, this argument was summarized from an article written by Christian Theologian Lynn White, Jr.


My problem with the 10 commandments

Here's the problem I have with the 10 commandments as a code of ethics: it's a backwards ethical theory. It starts at the top, ascribing rights and what's good and what's evil, but provides no theory justifying it. A proper ethic is one which starts at the bottom, the meta-ethic, the theory, the foundation for which the ethic will come to be, and using that theory you see what conclusions it comes to. That's why the 10 commandments are arbitrary.

Furthermore, it's ethic really says nothing about what man should do, except how man should act towards another; it creates no sort of man-nature relationship other than declaring our superiority over it. Even if we accept the premise that mankind is superior to nature, there are still relationships to nature to be considered: recreation, conservation, speciesism, or economic value.

I can't emphasize enough how arbitrarily the 10 commandments are made. It's simply a backwards ass ethic. I'd love to go on in detail about speciesism, as it's a concept that really fascinates me and introduces conflicts between our anthropocentric worldview towards nature and how similar trains of thought have justified racism and sexism.

Speciesism, a quick definition

Speciesism is the unjustified prejudice or discrimination of a species based on biological, physiological, or intellectual characteristics; such prejudice and discrimination is a reflection on sexism and racism throughout history. Just as our skin color is irrelevant, so is our skin. Just as our size, shape, and strength are irrelevant, so are the same characteristics in bodies that do not resemble humans, such as a polar bear, or the blue whale. Just as our intelligence does not matter who is provided human rights, just as human rights are provided to infants, the mentally disabled, the lamens, and the intellectuals equally, so too much the rights be given to animals under the same principle. Animals, like man, have intrinsic worth. They are good in and of themselves.

Anthropocentrism and The Chain of Being

Here's some more reading for you; I reference Paul W. Taylor, Philosopher and professor at Brooklyn College, in his essay "The Ethics of Respect for Nature." Here I will elaborate on the immorality the Judeo-Christian ideology in its anthropocentric view; Taylor defines anthropocentric as "human actions affecting the natural environment and its nonhuman inhabitants are right (or wrong) by either of the two criteria: they have consequences which are favorable (or not) to human well being; or they are consistent (or not) with the system of norms that protect and implement human rights.

It concerns the Chain of Being; God on top, angels below, and then humans, and then the beasts, and further down the chain of nature. He skips over the metaphysical and epistemelogical difficulties because they are insuperable, leaving us with one assertion which deems humans superior to animals and nature: the mere fact of the genetic makeup of the species Homo sapiens. Such a justifying characteristic is surely irrational and arbitrary.

The Judeo-Christian concept of the Chain of Being is not only indefensible, but outdated. We recognize in our contemporary society, now more than ever, that humans and nonhuman animals are participants in the environmental community; that we undergo the same developments of natural selection, genetics, and adaption as nonhuman animals (and plants) do.

Moreover, and most importantly, the most evident but unspoken theme of the Judeo-Christian ideology and of the Western anthropocentric worldview, that of arrogance, exposes itself. Contrary to the Chain of Being's concept that we human beings are above animals and the rest of nature, we are not only newcomers on this planet in comparison to mammals, reptiles, sharks, spiders, algae, etc; BUT, we are DEPENDENT on nature, whereas nature is not dependent upon us. Our destruction of nature, our exploitation of nature as a means to an end, something to be used instrumentally because of our self proclaimed superiority, is destroying the habitat in which we must maintain for survival. I'm in the process of an essay titled "The Human Virus" where I go into much further detail on that subject.

If we destroy nature until it's no longer inhabitable by us, we die; nature is still there. Ecosystems will rebuild, our pollution will cease its terrible work, and the world will eventually cleanse itself. Our presence is not needed. If we go, nature would say "Good riddance!"

Do you intend to say that eating animals as food is wrong?

Should people only eat vegetarian meals where no animals where used?

Also, should ordinary animals get equal rights to man?

I'm going to suggest a small step from this anthropocentric view, one that includes animals within its base class and thus subject to rights like humans.

First, we must decide what criterion something must have in order to have moral rights. Here's a couple of popular and traditional answers, and their refutations.

1) Rights and duties are moral ties which can exist only in a moral being, a person, possessed of reason and self-control.

This is one of the earliest arguments for why humans have natural rights which animals do not. A very, very typical argument regarding animal rights. That because humans are the only beings (we know of) capable of higher reasoning and moral choices, we are superior to the rest of the animal kingdom and subject to rights which they are not.

Here's a tragic flaw. That argument is ruined by the argument from marginal cases. Infants, the mentally disabled, and imbeciles are incapable of reason and self control. Are they not a subject of rights and duties from birth? As though it were inherent in them? The argument is based on speciesism.

2) All sentient life forms are subject to equal moral rights

This is based on the argument from the principle of nonmaleficience, or right to be spared undeserved pain. This would include a much larger base class, giving animals, and many insects, moral equal rights to humans. We can not only deduce this to an absurdity, which will be done later, but it can again be defeated with the argument from marginal cases; there are persons who have a disorder and are not capable of feeling pain. Those within a vegetative state, or those who've suffered extreme brain damage, are not morally equal -- are not equal human beings (perhaps is a better way to say it) -- because of this. Again, this is another argument from speciesism; because one creature that is living is biologically capable of experiencing pleasure and pain, it is subject to special rights not provided to other creatures.

To solidify what it is that gives animals rights: it is being alive, which has intrinsic value and good, that subjects animals to equal rights.

What ARE these rights humans have, you ask? Among the two most essential, concrete, and inarguable are the right to life and the right to be spared undeserved pain

So, does this mean that since we can't go around killing other humans, not to mention eating them, that we can no longer kill animals for food? If so, it would follow that animals do not have the right to kill and eat other animals, like prey. A wolf is now immoral for doing it's natural behavior. So we're not imposing upon ourselves the duty to police the animal kingdom from killing each other, which of course is entirely absurd. So simply saying they have these rights isn't enough, because there seems to be some rational medium between declaring all animals must not violate another's rights to life or undeserved pain (which is absurd) and disregarding that animals have rights entirely based on a speciesist claim, just as serious as basing rights on gender or race.

Here I'm going to insert Aldo Leopold's philosophy from A Land Ethic; Aldo Leopold wrote the Bible for environmental philosophy and environmental ethics 20 years before the branches of ethics even existed (prophet?).

Leopold says that "we should stop thinking ourselves as conqueror of the land, and recognize ourselves in the biotic community as a participant."

Now, what does this theory lead up to? (Remember, meta-ethics > ethics, not the other way around). First, we acknowledge that animals are equal participants in the balance of the environment with us; rather than raising animals up The Chain of Being to our level and including them in our ethic, we lower ourselves down and maintain the same rights now recognized as they are shared between humans and nonhuman animals.

This eliminates the absurdity the argument of animals possessing equal right to life. For just as the wolf hunts the sheep as prey and eats it, we hunt prey and consume them. Just as animals don't eat their own kind, neither do we, balancing out the idea that if we're allowed to kill one animal, we're allowed to kill ANY animal. Any animal has the right to life, but as part of the biotic community it is subject to have its life taken by necessity in order to feed a family.

The principle of nonmaleficience also works under Leopold's holistic approach. Cruelty is inherently evil; submitting an animal to cruel suffering, as is done in slaughterhouses where calfs do not move an inch until death, where chickens stand on chicken wire, which hurts their feet, at uncomfortable angles that causes them to suffer, or in experiments where their suffering does not provide a greater good. If we were to attempt to calculate the Utilitarian principle to slaughterhouses we'd face impossible calculations, whereas an animals temporary suffering during a medical experiment that yields a new pharmaceutical drug that helps millions is morally justifiable.

We must also make a distinction from moral considerability vs moral significance. What is morally significant is relative and does not include proper representation to animals without bias based on their significance to humans. All are significant in the biotic system. Moral considerability is the distinction where we can, say, hold a puppy dog more morally considerable than a spider. You wouldn't smash your dog into goo with a newspaper. However, when the spider is of no significance at all, that is to say when it's on the wall at the far end of the room from where you're standing, you don't have to go out of your way to kill it.

Live and let live.

I'll stop for now because I've written quite enough for you guys to read and I'm sure very few will read it all. If you'd like, you can respond to the Christian anthropocentrism's causes and effects as one section and the animal rights as another.

I read it all. Im proud.

But reading this made me remember a very interesting day i had.

I woke up one morning and i look to the right of me and theres a spider on my bed. So of course the first thing i do is jump and say f..k. It crawls away and i go about doing my daily business. Later that day i saw the same spider on the ceiling. So i thought ahh i get to kill it now so i wont have to worry about it anymore. So i get my algebra book since i hate algebra and i go up to kill the spider but for some reason i stopped. I ended up just standing there staring at this spider for an hour. I couldn't decide if i wanted to kill it.

Now i cant lie after that hour past i ended up killing the spider. Even tho its just one tiny spider i still regret killing it to this day.

...so yeah anyway it made me remember that day.

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I stepped on a lizard once.

I love you NG <3

Now I'm a little unclear as to how EXACTLY we would go about claiming food and not interrupting nature.

I believe what you were insinuating is to give quick painless deaths to the food we're eating and give these animals (who are without their consent giving their lives for our food) be given nice treatment until their death (which will be quick and painless).

Is that close to what you're implying?

I see that you're moving away from a Utilitarian idea, and I'm curious to see what you have to say on the topic of intelligence.

I myself have a struggle in deciding what to think about the regulation of education, the mentally disabled, ignorance in relation to intelligence and learning, etc.

How could you apply this, to the same idea. I have a Utilitarian outlook on it, sort of Hitler-ish sadly and I was wondering if you could possibly enlighten me.

Again, great read.

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I purposely ran over a moth once and didn't feel anything about it. I felt guilty after a few days when I watched Once Upon A Rainforest though.

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We're part of nature. It's not interrupting anything.

Instead of having cattle bred for meat held captive in inhumane, unethical conditions like cages and lack of mobility, we let them be free range on a farm and take them when they're in a more comfortable setting. The captivity is the undeserved pain, not necessarily the killing itself.

Utilitarianism is flawed almost no matter where you use it.

People need to be placed in an environment that words towards their individual needs, rather than the needs of others at their expense. So, you shouldn't be placing students with a mental disability in the same setting as the honors students; not because the honors students are better, but because it would bog down the learning process for the students if the teacher shows consideration towards the disabled's needs and would dampen the proper learning environment and attention needed to the disabled if the class was taught on a regular or excaladed scale.

So you could either teach how the majority of the students' environment operates best at, and in the process leave one student behind (greatest happiness for the greatest number), or you could teach according to the disabled student's most effective environment and slow the other students' progress/education (least happiness for greatest number).

But both of those seem like the wrong thing to do. So, what you need to do is have moral considerability for each student and their own individual rights and abilities and nurture them as necessary to give them the best educational environment possible.

Moths are less sentient than other, larger animals. Bugs are kind of on the bottom of the moral considerability list, but still deserve consideration.

The lizard squirmed half smooshed until I mercy killed it.

I see.

How do you deal with ignorance though?

Ignorance sometimes is in control of power.

I just pretty much strongly dislike ignorance and/or the disent to learning. Yet time to time, alot of these people seize control in this world.

What's to make of things like this, let it be?

Gosh I love lizards.

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Nah. We live and let live instead of going out of our way to kill something that's not doing any harm. Ignorance can, and does, do harm. Now, we don't have to kill it, because as humans we're held with a higher amount of moral considerability amongst ourselves to enforce these rights (ex: never ("rarely") okay to kill a human, often okay to kill a bore). We can take control. We're smart enough to, just too busy sitting on our asses thinking.

This point of view is a remnant of the "Great Chain of Being". A religious dogma that was created about 1500 years ago to give authority to members of religious organizations over kings and kings over others and so on all the way down to the worms.

It is also part of a view that nature is rational and has a general ryme and reason to it, i.e. design. That nature makes decisions, it has an intelligence or greater power directing it.

This is just not what we observe in nature and a point of view that is only held in areas and by people that want to control or rationalize their control/dominance over other entities. Whether this be a companies dumping of toxic waste into a river and killing lots of little things that are insignificant to them or a hunter shooting a deer with a shotgun not for food but for the trophy or killing lots of people because they are less than you and should not be considered humans on your level.

It is just a rationalization technique that people use to justify their actions that would be viewed as a social no-no would the things they were hurting considered their equal.

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-i got kicked out of barnes and noble once for moving all the bibles into the fiction section


Think You Watch Movies? http://www.halo3forum.com/movies/81621-movies-you-need-see-before-you-die-weekly-review.html

If an animal is tasty, I afford it less rights and consideration than its non-tasty compatriots.


TMNT