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[QUOTE=Ravager]How about finding another way, where violence isn't the answer?
And besides, why does a person that doesn't quite match up to your standards need to suffer in such a way. Can't they be rehabilitated?[/QUOTE]

If there was another way, sure. However, all animal testing is violent in some way in essense. This is the point brought up by DW, and I was addressing it.

[QUOTE=Ravager]So, it's absolutely pointless then?
Wow, no wonder these corporations get away with it so effortlessly. [/QUOTE]

Come to the US, and see how it's done. Business bribe the government with enough money, and they do whatever they want. Money in which, no group of people would be able to counter realistically unless we got into 7 digit numbers of people. It's not about standing up and saying "we don't like this" any longer. It's about money. Plain and simple. Nothing gets changed in this country, or world, without money.

[QUOTE=Ravager]Another perfect example of your own personal experience leading to a general view which you then apply to the whole group.
You had a bad experience, so you have an obvious bias against them but what about all the people that are saved? Look at the statistics.
Not every medical professional is in the job for the money, quite the opposite in the majority of countries, in fact. These people spend a far greater time in training than most to earn a substantially smaller wage than say, a stock broker.
And if you had a world withoutthe medical professionals, what do you think would happen?
A far worse reality than one with hospitals, I'm certain.[/QUOTE]

Nonsense. Without hospitals, and medical advancements, humans would be dying regularly before they reached 30 years of age. Which, would solve the problems of world hunger, poverty, and my issues with humans devastating every natural habitat of every creature on this species outside of the two poles of the planet.

Aside from that, do you know any people in either of those fields? Maybe it's different on your side of the ocean. However, here, in the US, everything...everything amounts to a paycheck.

Magrus wrote:The young are weaker than the old or those who are fit, hence fitting into his description, no? A human toddler would be easier prey than a old lady or 20 year old male, yes?

My point is about the comfort zone of language. Yes the young are the easiest prey. I don' see survival of the fittest arguments couched in terms which make that clear; at least not in this thread

Do you know many weak, sick people who go swimming in oceans? :laugh: Forgive me if I am wrong, but I don't see many people who aren't in good physical condition who actually go swimming in areas where sharks can reach. Your argument is ridiculous.

I think that is my point, not yours. Your argument is ridiculous

[QUOTE=Fiona]My point is about the comfort zone of language. Yes the young are the easiest prey. I don' see survival of the fittest arguments couched in terms which make that clear; at least not in this thread[/QUOTE]

Survival of the fittest, in essence does fit. It is a human ideal, which provides a delusional basis in which people feel it is right and proper to kill off anything they can to make their life easier.


[QUOTE=Fiona]I think that is my point, not yours. Your argument is ridiculous [/QUOTE]

No it isn't. A shark needs a certain amount of room in which they can swim in. That specific amount of room precludes those who are either not physically fit enough to swim into a depth and get out of the water readily themselves, or those too stupid to do so without help. Sharks do not come up to shallow water regularly. In fact, they would never do so if humans didn't steal all of their prey. Whether through hunting, boating and scaring off prey due to ship activity, or polution. A shark entering water which is only 10 feet deep means there is something seriously wrong with it's eco-system, and as they are the top of the food chain in the ocean, that means none other than humans. Which means, if little billy gets eaten by sharks for swimming in the oceans, it is a humans fault.

epistemology

It's a branch of philosophy, meaning an area of study. It's not a philosopy (i.e., it's not a school of thought, a theory, or a system of belief).

Also, [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law"]Godwin's Law[/url].



more ducklings, people.

[QUOTE=Magrus]If there was another way, sure. However, all animal testing is violent in some way in essense. This is the point brought up by DW, and I was addressing it.[/QUOTE]
Drugging a hamster would be violent?
Not that I agree with such a thing.
[QUOTE=Magrus]Come to the US, and see how it's done. Business bribe the government with enough money, and they do whatever they want. Money in which, no group of people would be able to counter realistically unless we got into 7 digit numbers of people. It's not about standing up and saying "we don't like this" any longer. It's about money. Plain and simple. Nothing gets changed in this country, or world, without money. [/QUOTE]
Well, maybe that's come about in part because people are reluctant to stand up any longer? You don't just give up because there's a better way out there which you can't follow. You do what you can, even if that is the equivalent of a drop in an ocean.
[QUOTE=Magrus]Nonsense. Without hospitals, and medical advancements, humans would be dying regularly before they reached 30 years of age. Which, would solve the problems of world hunger, poverty, and my issues with humans devastating every natural habitat of every creature on this species outside of the two poles of the planet. [/QUOTE]
And of course, everyone you know and love would be dead in the same time frame. Everyone would suffer more painful deaths.
People would compress their lives into shorter time frames.
Families would get larger to compensate for the higher mortality rate as they once were, though modern technology would still be around, so the net result would be exactly the same. In fact there would be more people doing such things.
[QUOTE=Magrus]Aside from that, do you know any people in either of those fields? Maybe it's different on your side of the ocean. However, here, in the US, everything...everything amounts to a paycheck.[/QUOTE]
Actually, my mother works in the local hospital, I undertook a few weeks work experience there last year (where I saw the conditions and how hard the staff work and in such conditions too). My mother had a quite a few health problems lately, due to some unfortunate side effects after an operation and they took good care of her, giving her strong painkillers as required and the drugs that she needed. When she was in agony she was able to call for an ambulance and they admitted her to deal with that. She even fainted at one point while she was in there and they had a wheelchair there ready for her, having some instinctual feeling, that she seemed like she might collapse. Those aren't the actions of a health service obsessed with a paycheque.
The nursing staff here are often complaining about their low salaries, the government has had to make special accomodations just to house professionals such as nursing staff in London, due to their wages not stretching far enough to afford housing in the capital.

Yes, that's probably diffirent to the US, but none of your posts so far have limited your reaction to the US or even just NY, it's been international.

So that's what Godwin's law is? How very human. Considering that I study WW2 the European theater out of interest as a hobby, of course I'm likely to bring up Hitler and the Nazis, but then I don't always bring them up to compare to things I don't like, because there are some things I admire in Nazi Germany. But just by automatically classing me in that despicable definition proves how humans just love to classify things and make them different, just so they can attack them further.

[QUOTE=Chimaera182]So that's what Godwin's law is? How very human. Considering that I study WW2 the European theater out of interest as a hobby, of course I'm likely to bring up Hitler and the Nazis, but then I don't always bring them up to compare to things I don't like, because there are some things I admire in Nazi Germany. But just by automatically classing me in that despicable definition proves how humans just love to classify things and make them different, just so they can attack them further.[/QUOTE]

I know. It is horrible when you fit a stereotype. It is soooooo unoriginal and it feels very dehumanising. But truth be told we are none of us very original mostly/ *shucks*

See my last post on the previous page for my other pearls of wisdom in addition to this, I spent a while on those...
[QUOTE=Magrus]Do you know many weak, sick people who go swimming in oceans? :laugh: Forgive me if I am wrong, but I don't see many people who aren't in good physical condition who actually go swimming in areas where sharks can reach. Your argument is ridiculous. [/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Magrus] Which means, if little billy gets eaten by sharks for swimming in the oceans, it is a humans fault.[/QUOTE]
Ummm, don't you contradict yourself here? The young/sick/old/weak don't go swimming and yet you point out that if a shark targets a child that it's humanity's fault, yet the child shouldn't be swimming in the first place.
And besides, weather systems may draw a shark to change it's usual territory, while you could blame a part of that on a weather system, there are a great number of factors, that the meteorologists themselves, probably don't fully understand yet involved in the weather.

Sorry to be jumping on your back like everyone else Mag, but I have to say this...

[QUOTE=Magrus]Why is it any more ridiculous than a human seeing nothing wrong with killing an ant that steps into their house and seeing something terribly wrong with a human being killed? I have been subjected time and again by human cruelty, my dreams shattered, the love of my life taken away from me by the same things. I have every reason to have less respect for the species I was born into than a cat, or a sparrow, or a dolphin. A cat isn't racist, a sparrow doesn't remove a species from the face of the earth because it threatens it's source of food. A dolphin doesn't randomly drown people who fall into water for it's own amusement. Humans do all of those things.[/QUOTE]

[quote="Baldur's Gate]He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster[/quote]

Had to quote that. It's not right that you consider all humans cruel and vicious"]Criminal Code[/URL]

So in answer to the question, in Queensland, no, it should not be murder.

P.S. Welcome back Fiona!

Magrus wrote:...A cat isn't racist, a sparrow doesn't remove a species from the face of the earth because it threatens it's source of food...

A lot of species are extinct (wiped off the face of the earth, as you put it) because other species have driven them to extinction through extensive hunting. If earthworms hadn't developed so they can avoid sparrows, sparrows would eat every single one of them with extreme prejudice

Have you ever actually paid attention to what other creatures do when they see a dead creature of the same species on the ground in front of it?

Animal Planet has taught me that lions will often eat their dead cubs. And sometimes their living cubs too.

I'll reply more extensively later when I have some more time.

Though they'll never eat an animal struck by lightning...

It seems I've missed rather a lot of this debate. I have read most of it, and it seems like Mag is being ganged up on here. Unfortunately, I will be joining the mob, which seems to prove his point that humans are out for themselves and don't care much about others .

Going back to the original case, we should ask ourselves a few questions. Why did the man (not 'some kids' as Mag states in his first post) kill the ducklings? Did he have a mental illness? Was he brought up to hate ducks? Was he drunk or on drugs? Maybe the ducks had crapped on his step, his elderly mother slipped in it and cracked her head on the concrete and bled to death. Unless you examine all the details, you can't tell what actually happened.

On the subject of 'humans are worse than animals' line. Animals (and particularly pack animals) can be quite violent and unneccesarily cruel towards each other and other species. I find it incredibly difficult, particularly working in the care 'industry' (I hate that term) and wanting to work in a caring profession, to comprehend the idea that people don't care about helping others. Certainly the medical professions in Britain care quite a lot - possibly because patients pay for medical care in their taxes, instead of depending on what condition they have.

[QUOTE=Fiona]I know. It is horrible when you fit a stereotype. It is soooooo unoriginal and it feels very dehumanising. But truth be told we are none of us very original mostly/ *shucks* [/QUOTE]
Yeah, cuz that's exactly why I didn't like that.

Anyway, hasn't this thread skewed considerably? Weren't we debating semantics? Why it was that we call murder when it's human-on-human crime but something less severe on human-on-animal crime, that sort of thing?

[QUOTE=Chimaera182]So that's what Godwin's law is? How very human. Considering that I study WW2 the European theater out of interest as a hobby, of course I'm likely to bring up Hitler and the Nazis, but then I don't always bring them up to compare to things I don't like, because there are some things I admire in Nazi Germany. But just by automatically classing me in that despicable definition proves how humans just love to classify things and make them different, just so they can attack them further.[/QUOTE]
You brought up Hitler and the Nazis (TM) in a debate about a guy killing a couple of ducks. You compared the ducks to Jews and the guy who killed them to Hitler. At what point does this strike you as reasonable?

You even waited until halfway through your post to mention Hitler by name for dramatic effect. Now that's class. I think I'll link to your post every time someone asks what Godwin's Law is because it's just so beautiful.

And I almost went with Stalin instead. Maybe I'll change a few words and make it Stalin; the paragraph would easily support it if I change like 3-4 words. And that wasn't the middle of my post; it was the end of it, and that was due to the order in which I responded to previous posts, not some clandestine order I created in my head.

Animals and humans are two different things. It's Simple. Just don't worry about it.

Being proactive here...

...before things get heated up.

Argue if you must, but kindly put a lid to calling one's argument as ridiculous. Disagree if you want, but no ad hominems please.

Thanks.

Chimaera182 wrote:And I almost went with Stalin instead. Maybe I'll change a few words and make it Stalin; the paragraph would easily support it if I change like 3-4 words. And that wasn't the middle of my post; it was the end of it, and that was due to the order in which I responded to previous posts, not some clandestine order I created in my head.

Do you believe that the comparison between a dictator responsible for millions of deaths and a man who killed a group of ducks is valid - i.e. would you say the two are ethically similar? If not then drawing a parallel between Hitler and duckling-slaughter is surely uncalled for. If you do think the two are ethically similar, as your posts suggest so far, well... to be honest I haven't devised a reply for that scenario yet

edit:

Animals and humans are two different things. It's Simple. Just don't worry about it.

I know what you mean, lately I take the "don't worry about it" approach to pretty much every single debate too.

Unfortunately I don't have time to enter this discussion just now, but a principal question:

Do you think humans and ducklings have the same value and should have the same rights? If so, what is your argument for this?

My arguments for humans having a higher value than any other species is posted in another recent thread, I'll try to find it later.

[QUOTE=Magrus]Those ducks weren't in someone's home, taking their food, or attacking someone.[/QUOTE]

If anything those kids were in the ducks' home.