The human relationship to animals.

[Philostopher]

Just read an interesting Op-Ed piece by a bioethicist author named Peter Singer in the Oct/Nov '04 issue of Free Inquiry (it's the official publication of the Secular Humanism Organization). It's not online at their web site, so I'll throw in a few relevant paragraphs shortly -- the gist of the piece is that Mr. Singer believes many humanists, for all they don't believe in a higher power or use the bible as any kind of guiding text, still buy into the Christian belief that man has dominion over -- and commensurately less responsibility to -- less intellectually complex beings (i.e., animals) because ... well, just because, apparently, in our case. The bible gives believers in it an out on this -- the world is theirs to care for or destroy, if they want to believe that it is, because the bible kind of says so in a lot of ways.

I know not all Christians buy into the Paulist attitude about animals. I never did, when I was, and many in my family didn't either, at least to the point of their treatment of the domestic animals in their homes.

Some subset of Christians believe this because it's in the bible; his question is why non-Christians believe roughly the same thing, or at least behave roughly the same way, when nothing directs or guides those who don't believe in the bible to believe or act this way.

Quotes from article (Taking Humanism Beyond Speciesism):

During nearly two millenia of European history in which Christian dogmas could not be questioned, many prejudices put down deep roots. Humanists are, rightly, critical of Christians who have not freed themselves of these prejudices -- for example, against the equality of women, or against nonreproductive sex. It is curious, therefore, that despite many individual exceptions, humanists have on the whole been unable to free themselves from one of the most central of these Christian dogmas: the prejudice of speciesism.

--snip--

{...} According to the dominant Western tradition, the natural world exists for the benefit of human beings. God gave human beings dominion over the natural world, and God does not care how we treat it. Human beings are the only morally important members of this world. Nature itself is of no intrinsic value, and the destruction of plants and animals cannot be sinful, unless it leads us to harm human beings.

--snip--

{...} as humanists, we should scorn a religion that honors a man like Paul, who -- along with his prejudices against women and homoesxuals -- could ask "Doth God care for oxen?" as if it were obvious that the answer must be negative. Paul's question led Christians to disregard those passages in the Hebrew scriptures that did suggest some compassion for animals. {this view dominated thinking} right up to the middle of the nineteenth century, when Pope Pius IX refused to allow a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to be established in Rome on the grounds that to permit it would imply the false belief that humans have duties toward animals.

--end of snippage--

Now, I'm not looking to start a battle over anything, here -- not between vegetarians/vegans and omnivores, nor between Christians who don't buy into the dominionism Singer mentions and humanists/atheists/agnostics here. I'm really more curious about the personal attitudes and experiences of my fellow non-believers here and how they came to hold them.

Personally, I agree with much of what Singer said in the article -- I see no compelling reason, as a non-believer, to assume the general intellectual superiority of the human being gives me an excuse, as an individual, to abuse animals. Among other things, practical experience over the course of my life has taught me that hitting a cat is as likely to result in its shitting on your pillow as behaving itself the way you want it to. A frightened dog, even though it will probably mind you in the particular instance for which you hit it, will exhibit other neurotic behaviors if it's disciplined with pain rather than reward. Even if I could make no moral/ethical case for treating animals well, in other words, I could certainly make a strong case for finding alternative methods for disciplining (or not) the domestic companions who share our homes purely on the rational basis that abusing them doesn't result in their behaving better.

The issue of food animals is more complex. The way corporate/factory meat producers treat animals is wrong, I don't think I'll find much argument here. Personally, we've stopped buying meat we can't source -- the problem is, the FDA has perverted the rules for labeling things 'organic' or 'cruelty-free' to the point that label really means squat when you purchase a package of meat at the store. This happened because the corporate farms were, of course, afraid it would hurt their bottom lines. They want to be able to abuse animals because it's cheaper than to treat them well, and they don't want those who take the time and expense to treat their food animals well before they become food to have a market advantage. So they buy politicians who water down the labeling laws, and everything goes back to the way it was.

I know that simply not buying and eating meat is one alternative, but that's not likely to happen here. Even if the humans in the household stopped, I have four cats and a dog here who require a certain amount of protein in their diets, and the healthiest way to provide it for them is to provide it in some form or other through using meat, whether it's through a diet I provide for them or through prepackaged animal food. We don't eat as much of it as we used to, around here, and we never waste food if we can help it. It seems like the least we can do, if we're not going to forego it entirely.

Having been a Christian at one time, I recall what the bible said about the (superior) relationship of humans to animals -- I disagreed with it then, largely, because it didn't make sense to me to think that way, and I guess I always had a more Buddhist or Taoist attitude about most things even when I thought I was Christian. I couldn't believe humans were going to get a pass for mistreating animals, no matter what the bible said about it. The massive suffering imposed on fellow mammals who can think, who feel pain and respond to it in various ways, and the thought that it's 'our right to cause them suffering because God says so' was objectionable to me, to say the least. I know I'm not alone in this -- many Christians don't accept this 'dirty little secret' of Paulists and others, that we can destroy everything because 'God said so.'

So, I guess I'm just asking -- where do you stand on this, and why? Have you ever really thought about it? What do you do to reduce the impact of suffering on the four-leggers? Is doing a little enough -- like volunteering at an animal shelter, rescuing animals from the street, refusing to eat meat or being careful where your meat is sourced, just generally being a good custodian of the environment? I know there are many organizations that lobby for things like greenspace and wetlands preservation -- are any of them really effective, or are we fighting a losing battle against greed on these issues?

Just curious, I guess -- does the general superiority of human intelligence give us the right to be callous about 'lower' animals, or should we really be more conscious of our behavior and do what we can (especially since we have no religious text telling us the earth we inhabit is ours to turn into a midden heap)? And how much is enough to do?

[leftofthedial]

1. we should respect all life

but recognize that this is a game of survival

plus, pork tastes great.

[trotsky]

3. LOL I will second that.

Clearly we are evolved to be omnivores. And while we tend to eat too much meat in our society, I don't see why we can't enjoy it now and then. As long as the animals are raised & slaughtered humanely (which tends to make them taste better, duh!) I say bring on the meat.

[Philostopher]

4. I think that's about where I stand on it, too.

I can't really envision giving up meat entirely, but I think the animals we eat should be treated better. And I think lower-impact meats taste better, too.

The corporate farming and meat-producing industries are wasteful of both animals and resources. That, in itself, is disrespectful of the resources we have, animal vegetable and mineral, and will deplete things like soil and water far sooner than if we were more respectful and careful, and only used what we absolutely needed.

I guess I hadn't ever really grokked, until I read that op-ed piece, the irony of the fact that many who believe the earth they live on was a gift from a creator for their use seem to be the most willing to turn it into a garbage pile. I suppose it's part of the 'but when it's gone, when we've totally turned it into a big sewer, then God will take us all up to heaven!' thing, I don't know -- I never really remember feeling that way, even when I was going to church. I always felt like the American Indians had it right on the concept of leaving the shallowest possible footprint on the face of the earth.

Humans may well be a brief blip in the history of this planet we inhabit. The urge some folks seem to have to leave it a steaming pile of garbage in our wake disgusts me, and while there are some non-believers who act like they believe this, let's be honest -- Christians have a ready-made script for behaving like this when they do it (not saying they all do it). 'God gave us the earth to do with as we saw fit, who cares if we use it all up and render it uninhabitable for anything but cockroaches? All time will end when humans no longer inhabit the earth anyway, everybody who matters will either be in heaven or hell.'

The guy who wrote the article didn't get that specific about it, but I certainly don't think I'm crawling out on a limb to say it's the way Christianity makes it acceptable for those who wish to feel and behave, and the reason for it. They think when humans no longer inhabit the earth, nothing will -- all time will end. I'm inclined to think the history of life in the universe is longer than humanity will inhabit it. As far as I'm concerned, God will go when we're extinct, since we made gods in the first place -- but the universe likely will live on.

There are environmentalists and animal issues people who are Christian, but really they're going against doctrine -- and good for them, if their consciences drive them to go beyond believing it's not worth caring for this planet if they're not going to be on it. I think it's probably more difficult to feel that way if you're hearing persistent messges that it's all here for us to suck down until it's gone.

[leftofthedial]

9. they are instructed that earth is "man's" dominion

to be exploited

they are also taught that women are chattel, also to be exploited in the service of going forth and multiplying

religion is a mental illness. expecting mentally ill, delusional people to behave logically or rationally, or even consistently is, well, delusional.

:shrug:

[leftofthedial]

8. I wish I could raise my own

but then my kids would get too attached! LOL

Why am I reminded of the joke about the heroic three-legged pig?

[fshrink]

2. Superior

we are, but this belief does not imply disrespect or abuse. The first part of the argument would be to define our superiority. This reflection is essentially philosophical, which explains why it is so lacking in the US, where philosophy is some kind of European "nouvelle cuisine". Humans are superior, in my opinion because of one and only one feature: language, or more precisely, to follow Chomsky, grammar. This unique feature is at the same time our greatest strength, our evolution edge, and our curse. That's our superiority and very few have developed some kind of understanding of that. Curiously, the believers motto "In the beginning was the "Word", is not erroneous in its substance, although it is in its context (i.e. simplistic, archaic or delusional construction).
The second problem comes from what I think is shame, a very powerful emotion indeed. The shame is directed at our animality, under all its instinctual aspects (e.g. sex, hunger, low inhibition). It's like the newly rich who scorns and lashes at the poor. It's also in my opinion one pillar of racism. As homophobes lash at homosexuals, indeed are obsessed by homosexuality, because of their awareness of their own homosexual fantasies, shameful humans lash at animals because of their awareness of their own animality. There are varying degrees.
In conclusion, it is not our intelligence, our ability for complex language, which produces our cruelty towards animals, it is our own ambivalence about our animality. Our intelligence allows us to have this kind of discussion and will, eventually, allow us to cherish the animal in us.
There is also another important, connected, factor, which is our general remoteness from the animal life. Animal life has become like all the rest, an image, a spectacle, a representation, which fosters a two-dimensional, flat, virtual vision of the world in which moral principles lose their validity. This might even be seen among humans actually (e.g. the idiot's war).

[Philostopher]

5. I guess I hadn't thought about it that way.

But I also think humans are in a superior position to animals because we've developed reason -- which goes along with language and grammar, since articulating concepts among ourselves is necessary for shared reason, and animals don't appear to have any mechanism for doing this.

As far as shame goes, I wonder if shame would be as useful a tool as it is without religion? I don't know, the concept of an all-powerful overseer is what seems to move shame out of the individual perception of having done wrong (i.e., by doing harm to another) and makes it a cultural and social phenomenon that can be used to manipulate entire groups into displaying a set of desired behaviors, or stopping a set of undesired behaviors.

I guess social pressures would or could still be codified even without the concept of an omniscient god or gods potentially registering their approval or disapproval, but I'm inclined to think the ease of using an omniscient, omnipresent higher power folds into the use of religion as a social control -- that people can be convinced something is shameful much more easily through religion than through reason, and that compelling people to do something 'because God will smite you if you don't' will be more effective than trying to compel them to do it 'because it's the right thing to do.'

That's the thing the author of the article was puzzling about with humanists -- that they've incorporated many of those behaviors and attitudes, including an attitude about other living things, even though they often defy reason, and humanists don't believe there's any higher power to approve or disapprove. I'm not sure why he found it puzzling -- in my anecdotal experience, it doesn't seem to matter 'how Christian' somebody is, if they're not inclined to think a great deal about how they behave toward others, it's comforting to be told it's okay to be careless and greedy. That's the message of the current regime, coopted from Protestant Christianity -- that humans are the ne plus ultra of all time, and that the world ends with them. I'm guessing there are plenty of conservative non-believers out there who are happy to stumble along and not think the least about how they affect anything else in the world. It's about the only reason I can think a non-theist would be a conservative -- because they're greedy and self-serving enough to want to be told it's okay to be that way.

[fshrink]

10. The funny thing about shame

is that it is also our best social regulator! That's what you're supposed to feel when you break the social bond, a bond which has been/is necessary to our survival. I think that religions have substituted to shame the odious, infamous, disgusting, repugnant, abject, guilt.
Yes, I agree also with your last statement. To way more than we think politics is just finance through other means. They don't care about the cherry, they're after the cake. This said, most of them will die in angst and despair because they produce nothing, they wrong people and shame will catch up with them (even if they feel no guilt!)

[RebelOne]

6. Well, all I can say is that I am a vegetarian.

I do not believe animals should be abused or slaughtered for our pleasure.

[Tafiti]

7. If this article piques your curiosity,

and you're looking to explore further, I would love to recommend a couple authors on this very subject - namely, the issue of "the natural world exists for the benefit of human beings."

Definitely read Daniel Quinn's Ishmael trilogy - (1) Ishmael, (2) The Story of B & (3) My Ishmael. You may find the presentation somewhat annoying and elementary, but one has to assume that Quinn's intention was to present the philosophy contained in the book with mass appeal (understanding, comprehension).

Also Derrick Jensen - one of the most amazing writers I've ever read. His "A Language Older Than Words" is his first, and probably has more of a direct relevance to the issues you raise, but if you read it and like it, you must read his follow-up, "The Culture of Make Believe". Fucking fantastic. I've never cried while reading a book, but Jensen definitely made me well up a few times.

Both Quinn and Jensen are essentially secular humanists, or animists. Please read them, I promise you'll be glad you did. I'd love to hear what you think of them. I'm pasting a review of "The Culture of Make Believe" below from Amazon to give you an idea, because I thought it was good. And a link...

********************

Had I grown up in Nazi Germany a soldier, would I have aided the genocide? I would like to think that I would have protested the slaughter by working underground with escapees. However, I might have been a totally different person. Perhaps the harsh SS training would have turned my heart into an icicle, filled my head full of propaganda, and habitualized my body to subordination. Perhaps I would have been a willing executioner. Perhaps it would have been impossible for me to lift my consciousness above the zeitgeist - not many did.

Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. Understanding the present is much more difficult. Could it be that colonialism, imperialism, the KKK, and every other boot-licking, world-plundering, cold-blood-murdering institution somehow mutated and merged into one New World Order bent on killing the planet and everything/-one that stands in its way? Moreover, if one were raised inside such an institution, believing it completely natural, and even being rewarded for participation in its mundane work-a-day activities, would it be possible for that person to awake to the insanity of their culture?

Along with all of us, Derrick Jensen grew up inside such a culture, realized what was happening, and wrote this book to tell other potential executioners what is going on. Reading The Culture of Make Believe is like looking into the mirror of our culture, and chances are you will not like what you see. I'm not saying this to rub it in your face, but to give a word of caution. Let me to be more explicit. If you are able to accept new information into the ken of your mind, this book will radically alter your perception of reality. You might not be able to live the same way there after. It's like having the psychological sanity rug pulled out from under you - or blasted to pieces. Upon finishing, you will feel as if you had a full-frontal lobotomy, or as though you just swallowed a gallon of hydrochloric acid. That's the aftertaste of Western Civilization - no frappacino.

Sounds ambitious, most people would agree. I imagine submitting Jensen's thesis to Ph.D. advisors. "What's your topic?" they'd ask. "I want to write a critique of Western Civ." After a giggle, they would reply with something like, "Sorry, it's too broad. Narrow it." Well, if you count A Language Older Than Words (the thematically congruent if discontinuous part I of this book), Jensen foots the bill in a mere 984 pages, which, although placing it somewhere on par with War and Peace, nonetheless forms a tight, if unusually bulky critique of this 3,000-year institution. Altogether or taken separately, the two books provide one hell of a tour I highly recommend. Jensen's authenticity bleeds off the page. Perhaps the best, that is most relevant, book I have ever read.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1931498571/qid=1103575571/sr=2-3/ref=pd_ka_b_2_3/103-1776237-7909417

[Philostopher]

12. Thanks for the recommendations!

I do need to get back into reading a little more -- I've spent so much time online the past couple of years, I need to get back to real books again!

[curse10]

11. Peter Singer's book, "Animal Liberation" turned me into a veggie

and really opened my eyes to the idea of speciesism. I think it's a very judeo-christian belief that we are somehow "better" than animals. Those ridiculous t-shirts that say "I didn't climb my way to the top of the foodchain to eat carrots" is a prime example. We are the species that kill and destroy on a level beyond any other species, yet they call us the civilized ones? These are the same people who say animals have no feelings or dreams. There are people out there that actually think fish don't feel pain. In my opinion that's akin to thinking the earth is flat.

People don't want to know what they are doing. They blindly eat their bigmacs while blindly believing in their god. It's the same sort of mentality.

As for the cats. I'm a veggie and have two kitties. I've done a lot of research on this. Cats need a certain kind of enzyme only produced by animal by-product. No getting around it. Humans don't need it. So while I do feed my cats chicken based cat food I do not feel guilty about it. They need it, I don't. Humans don't need meat. But if I didn't feed my kitties I would be killing them, so one animal must be sacrificed for another. Thus is nature. But humans don't need to kill. So I don't.

[Philostopher]

13. As I noted, I doubt the hubby and I will ever be fully vegetarian.

As it is, I only eat meat one meal a day, and we are careful not to be wasteful. We never throw any away, we try to buy stuff that's as 'cruelty free' as we can (with everything, actually), and we try not to encourage the industry standard by not buying anything we know to be produced by a megafarm (we quit buying Tyson and Butterball poultry, and we don't eat all that much red meat anyway). We try not to be thoughtless, in other words. We figure it's the least we can do.

We're discussing buying a chest freezer and finding local farms that sell poultry and beef, and buying there. There are a few in our area that are 'traditional' farms -- the cows and chickens are raised in the more traditional fashion, and I'm guessing they're fed silage and grain in place of each other -- and already, we've noticed the quality of the chicken we buy that's supposed to be produced by 'better practices' tastes better.

I understand and respect that some people don't eat meat, for various reasons. I don't see it as an option myself, but I definitely see why some people do.