:"...their self-indulgent lives", "...pressures of conscience", and "...someone else's idleness in a world screaming out for help" are not moral jugements I'll concede that Kevin doesn't argue morally. Those statements are denotative, you are arguing the conmnotation.
:Come on now, Red. The animal rights movement is emotionally manipulative and quite purely moralistic in its opposition to animal use. Why must you argue otherwise?
I wasn't arguing for the animal rights brigade, I was arguing from the progressive materialist brigade, which was clearly within the scope of your denunciations.
: I don't disagree with that. There is a fine line that must be walked to maintain all facets of humanity as technology encroches upon societal moires and notions of civility but this is only a tangential issue with these folks and you know it. Precious few of them will accept meat eating or any other form of animal use as a normal and acceptable thing. I liked that techno-bureaucratic thing though.
Its Lyotard ;) or Deleuze, I agree, partly, there is the further explanation of a kind of, what Reik called 'Christian Masochism', wherein a precious good, meat is renounced for teh excess pleasure of renouncing it. Further, i think tehre is a distinct alienation from meat production, people no longer experience animals as walking food, but predominantly as pets. I certainly don't think its any sort of moral degeneracy or conspiracy.
There are solid efficiency arguments, but thats a different story.
: You ought to attempt to draw the line better between illustration and offense in your posts, Red. This puts me off attempts at thoughtful discouse.
I shall re=phrase, Jacque Lacan poositted that the singular achievement of the jews was to draw all the horror and nastiness in the world, and collect it together in one symbollic construction- God encapsulates the horror of the world- certainly the God of job, hence my re-interpretation of the psalm, I will fear no evil, because God is the most evil thing there is: certainly the most frightening.
: Did they? Perhaps a small cadre of intellectuals are pacified with the mental meanderings of philosophers but those of us that think too simply cannot keep up with them. But perhaps listing a few of the pertainent meanderings will bear light on what you might possibly mean by issuing such a statement.
Emanual Kants critique of pure reason and practical reason details a working model of ethics- the categorical imperative; hegel deals with the function of religion unfurling in the dialectic of history. both of whom positted the supreme good, legitimised in Humanity as the legitimation of morality: i.e. without having to reference God hisself for our morals. Lyotard discusses the process of de-legitimisation by science in his 'The Post-modern Condition', which has more than a strong bearibng on this current debate. Slavoj Zizek, 'Multi-Culturalism and the logic of Multi-National Capitalism' new left Review 224(?) and numerous other writings, applies hegel's theories of morality to the contemporary world.
: All good questions, but did I frame this argument within the context of biblical theology? No, I did not.
I was taking the opportunity to return to our previous argument...
:This argument of relative morality vs. ecclisastical standards exists outside of any specific religion.
Save for the slight question of 'which religion is right?' and how do we decide?
None.
