- Anything Else -

I doubt you believe plants and animals can suffer equally.

Posted by: MDG on November 29, 1999 at 16:35:01:

In Reply to: the 'rights' of life forms posted by Paul Robinson on November 29, 1999 at 12:28:27:

:
: Kevin, you damage your credibility by resorting to unnecessary obscenities. (And, by the way, you weren't called a liar unless...)
: As one who used to hunt, I feel qualified to jump in here. As stated, hunting is not a comfortable "sport", but the adrenalin "rush" one feels when game is sighted is infinitely more profound than merely seeing, say, a deer in the wild. Exciting is probably the appropriate term. Interesting would be appropriate for merely seeing a deer.

: As to the "rights" of various life forms, all life forms except some bacteria exist by preying on other life forms. You apparently feel that animal forms are "better" than plant forms. Why? Both are alive. Both have some senses - perhaps all that we have. (Plants appreciate light, heat, moisture, nutrients, touch, airborne chemicals). Pulling that radish (or a dandelion!) from your garden is killing just as much as shooting a duck or a deer. Or butchering that steer raised specifically so you could enjoy steak. Efficientcy? I guess you could say the steer was grown in an animal garden, like the radish was in a vegetable garden. Does that make it O.K.?

Same old tired argument. Plants do not feel the pain that animals feel. It's been talked about so often on this board, and yet time and again one is forced into discussions of central nervous systems and the capacity to think and feel and suffer, and minimizing any suffering one might cause by limiting one's killing to plants, but in the end, I don't believe for one second that you think plunging a knife into a cabbage causes the same amount of pain and fear as plunging a knife into a cow.

: If you object to killing for food, as you seem to, then you must limit your nutritional intake to water and ripe fruit (ensuring that you plant any contained seeds, else you have destroyed life). What your life expectancy will then be I can only guess.

: I hunt no more, for unnecessary killing saddens me. Be that killing plant or animal - including human. Killing essential to my, or others', life is quite acceptable.




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