I don’t even.
Wishing death on another human being because they killed a wild animal? If you do this, seriously: Take a goddamn step back, calm the fuck down, and have a cocktail. You don’t like hunting? Fine. You don’t like this particular hunter? Okay. But let’s keep this shit in perspective, shall we? She didn’t do anything worthy of dying a cruel and horrible death. Calling her a disgusting monster is fine – calling her such and claiming that you wished she’d been killed, however, makes you ridiculous.
[edit] Sorry about that, not sure why the site failed to autoupdate again.
I had a similar discussion with someone about an article where someone had killed a lone bull elephant on a safari. There was no back story, just photos. I made the point that the elephant could be attacking local villagers, destroying crops or something equally as bad for the locals and it had to be put down. Without more information, an informed decision couldn’t be made. Their only argument was but it’s a beautiful animal that didn’t deserve to be killed. It didn’t bother the person to smash that spider the other day though. Did the spider deserve to be killed?
Not a big hunting fan, but this interview from Louis Theroux’s African Hunting Safari documentary is amazing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=NBgf_d9Cduc#t=2948
correction: the interview in minute 49 of the video.
I have absolutely no problem at all with shooting Bambi in the head and turning him into tasty, tasty jerky.
That said, I’ve met a lot of animals, and I’ve met a lot of people. In general, animals are more worthwhile, and I wouldn’t shed a single tear if suddenly, half the humans on the planet dropped dead.
A freaking men. people go on and on about how healthy and humane it is to cull animal populations to prevent disease, starvation, over population harming the environment etc. While it is true that keeping a population at healthy level is a good thing, humans aren’t special animals who should be allowed to ignore this law of nature, but instead we destroy natural habitats so more and more humans can be born and live. I have no problem with hunting bountiful species, but Lions, elephants, cheetahs whatever, dont hunt them if they are losing numbers every year you dumb shit, they have to have enough to keep reproducing a healthy population.
“…dont hunt them if they are losing numbers every year you dumb shit, they have to have enough to keep reproducing a healthy population.”
That’s exactly the point though: If you can’t legally hunt them, then the locals have absolutely no financial interest in keeping them as game animals.
If I have land, and people want to hunt the animals that live on my land, it is in my interest to keep their population at sustainable levels. In other words, to aim to have as many of them there as the land can practically support.
If hunting of those animals somehow becomes prohibited, I lose all financial interest in keeping those animals there: They have no value to me (other than looking pretty), and they actively inhibit my other attempts to make use of my land (e.g. farming). Also, as they have no material value to me, I have no interest in preventing others (read: poachers) from killing them.
Thus, legal and organized trophy hunting is the single BEST thing that can happen to the vast majority of these endangered species. In fact, the reason why many of these animals are so rapidly on the decline is that trophy hunting has become highly restricted, and/or banned.
wut r nature preserve
wut r tourists
Ah, humans. Another good example are Californians. They demand a ban on hunting mountain lions indigenous to their state. Then are surprised when one eats a cyclist on the bike trail. You can’t win here, man. Until you throw these people into the bush with little to no supplies, they won’t get it.
Google “Optimism Tax”. It generally applies to people who are ok with their cars being broken into, because they’d rather not “live their lives in fear” by getting gorram security systems. Same thing applies, IMO, to cougar chow.
Ah, someone should tell the Californians to eat more meat. It has been discovered that vegans smell just like prey animals. Vegitarians come in at a close second.
or send more predators to Kalifornistan
Coming soon – California Safari!
Come hunt some of North America’s most dangerous predators through the urban jungle which was once home to their two-legged prey, now hunted to extinction: The Western Hippie Douche-waffle.
Just ignore the idiotic armchair experts that talk out of their ass
Nah. I’d rather make fun of them.
Low-hanging fruit.
*shrug*
What the hell. Low-hanging fruit is just as tasty as the stuff you gotta work for. Fire away!
Most of these folks have no understanding of the fact that THE ONLY REASON that there is any wildlife left in Africa at all is because of the economic draw that these animals have. African countries make big money selling hunts to bwanas that want to come over and bag an elephant or a lion or so forth.
Tsetse flies in Africa decimate their cattle ranches yearly. Cape Buffalo carry the tsetse parasite, and that transfers into domestic cattle. We had the same problem here in the USA with brucellosis in the native Bison, so we killed them all. The only reason that African countries put up with this and don’t kill every Cape Buffalo pawing the ground is because they make huge money off of safaris where bwanas come in to hunt them some dugga boy mbogo.
There is a term for elephants that most of these latte sipping jackasses will never hear, and that is “rampaging cull”. This is an elephant that has discovered that it can get all it wants to eat by stomping the shit out of African villages and eating all of their food supplies. Of course, this means that these subsistence farmers are going to starve to death, because an elephant can eat all of their food in a couple of days. There is no way that the African governments would have put up with this bullshit if it weren’t for the fact that bwanas come over to kill these rampaging culls to the tune of 50,000 to 75,000 a pop JUST FOR THE TAG. Forget the daily rates and other fees and things they buy while they’re there. If it weren’t for this, every elephant in Africa would have been killed off long ago.
It is easy for them to denigrate these activities from their gilded perch on top of some highrise in New York. It is a litte less easy to understand life in an area where there is an overpopulation of lions, causing them to begin to starve, meaning they begin eating anything they can find – livestock that these people literally rely on for survival, and in some cases, the people themselves. If it weren’t for the reasonable wildlife management efforts created by these bwanas, there would be no lions left, because these people fighting for their own survival would have killed them off years ago…
City folk just can’t seem to get over the fact that they know very little about life. They think they know it all, but the truth is that they have lived their entire life on a 2 mile by 13 mile concrete island and are just pig damn ignorant of the truth of day to day life outside their little bubble. Of course, they’ll never admit that…
I killed a fly yesterday, where is the outrage?
You fucking monster. Someone should kill YOU with a rolled up magazine.
You advocating abusing magazines..?! o.0
That’s IT! Paper cuts and lemon juice for you, buster!
This made me remember some movie where the hero beat up bunch of thugs with a rolled up newspaper and they were falling down like he had a baseball bat. Then he exited the room and slid the lead pipe out of the roll.
And thus deprived your friendly neighborhood spider of its rightful meal? For shame!
Wild, schmild. I save the death wishes for militarized cops who kill harmless family pets.
That!
Messed up shit. I hunt. FFS, if you eat meat, you are involved in animal killing. Deal with it. I’m not a big fan of trophy hunting – I think it is a bullshit activity. However “I think you are an asshole for going on a lame-ass safari and killing a lion and gloating about it” is many worlds different from “I think you should be shot and have your head hung on my wall.” (Though it would be an interesting addition to my living room, now that you mention it.)
OH, on the cougar thing? West Seattle is rife with coyotes. I think it’s cool, but I have large dogs and a good fence. People who keep losing tiny little yap-dogs to them (or cats, which is actually sad) are the SAME PEOPLE who won’t let a team of trained exterminators deal with them. So…um….wildlife = good, wildlife eating = bad?
It’s hard being a flaming liberal animal-rights supporter AND a hunter and a sane human being who understands the food chain.
I’m not interested in hunting personally; doesn’t really seem like my thing. (On the other hand, I do enjoy fishing, except for when a fish strikes my hook and messes up my nap.) That said, I’m aware that somebody died to get on my plate, and the fact that I didn’t pull the trigger myself doesn’t change a thing from an ethical standpoint.
Related note: if you have ever claimed to be “pro-life” you’d better be vegetarian. Actually, strictly speaking, plants are alive too, so you should probably stick to fruits and vegetables that you can eat without killing the plant that grew them.
Incidentally, I used to dislike trophy hunting, and then I learned a bit more about it. As goober alluded to above, there are enormous benefits to villages in developing countries from trophy hunters. Influx of money PLUS large amount of meat PLUS one less animal to try to eat the humans’ food sources? I don’t understand the trophy hunter’s mindset, but the side effects make it a net positive. Would it be better if the entire world was developed countries and nobody needed to worry about wild animals keeping them from eating this winter? Sure (other than that we’d have even more people sipping lattes and pontificating on subjects they know nothing about), but that’s not going to happen overnight.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go back to sipping my latte.
“Related note: if you have ever claimed to be “pro-life” you’d better be vegetarian. Actually, strictly speaking, plants are alive too, so you should probably stick to fruits and vegetables that you can eat without killing the plant that grew them.”
The term “pro-life” as it is commonly used in our political discourse refers to the lives of unborn human children. It has absolutely nothing to do with furry animals of any other shape or size.
That said, you hint at a much more interesting, and much more valid, point: Many leftists who are against hunting are also in favor of the legalized mass-murder of unborn human beings. It’s almost enough to make one wonder if they’d be OK with a hunter who wore a lab coat and carried a stethoscope….
Oh my god, not this shit again.
1. A Zygote is not a child.
2. If you don’t want an abortion, don’t get one.
3. Other people’s decision to have an abortion is none of your business.
Y’know, I used to think that way.
I don’t think you’re going to assert that a human zygote is a member of some species other than homo sapiens. And I don’t think you’re going to assert it isn’t alive. What you’re asserting, then, is that it is right, just, and proper for a government to divide living member-organisms of the species homo sapiens into two groups, one of which consists of human beings with human rights, while the other has no rights at all.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not one to trust my government with the power to decide which living members of the species homo sapiens are human beings with human rights, and which are not. They’re all too likely to redefine the legal membership of those two groups.
Since you apparently are comfortable with your government having that kind of power, I’d like to understand why. Feel free to email me about it, at gmail dot com, if you don’t want to discuss it here.
> I don’t think you’re going to assert that a human zygote is a member of some species other than homo sapiens.
Nope. Try again. I will not be dazzled by bullshit. A zygote is not a member of anything. It is a cluster of cells. It is not a human being. It is no more a human life than a dried pine nut is a living tree. Are you destroying forests when you eat pesto sauce? Certainly not.
This is not an argument about government, or the subdivision of human rights. A zygote is not a human being. Killing it is not murder.
I’m going to start by apologizing for my pedantry. But I want to make sure I have all my premises on the table, and see if they are valid. I’m also still perfectly willing to take this to email, if you think the discussion is off-topic or unsuitable for this page.
You’re not answering questions I think are vital to the issue. I think good law is consistent and based on reality. If you disagree, the rest of this post is immaterial, and we need to debate the nature of good law first.
My arguments against abortion are based on biology, not bullshit. You appear to have conceded that a zygote is alive, by admitting that it can be killed. Your claim that a zygote is not a member of anything is absurd on its face, because it’s a claim it does not belong to ANY classes, when you’ve already given it membership in the class of living things. That makes it a member of the class of organisms, which makes it a member of a specific species. That’s how we classify living things. If you don’t think that’s a legitimate way to classify living things, say so, because at that point I don’t think we have enough common ground to discuss the issue, and we can drop it.
Two of my first premises are that the life cycle of sexually reproducing organisms, including humans, starts at the zygote stage (which is a single cell, not a clump), and that genetics determine the species of an organism. If either of these premises are false, I’d like for you to explain. If you agree that they are true, then we can move on.
A human zygote is not comparable to a dried pine nut. Nobody argues about the human rights of pine trees or pine nuts. The comparison is a red herring, and I am not chasing it.
Nope. Again, I will not be dissuaded from this. A zygote is not a human being. And if killing one IS murder, in your eyes, how do you feel about the fact that women’s bodies expel fertilized zygotes on a regular basis? You claim that your argument against abortion is based on biology – well, there’s some of that biology for you. Women who expel a fertilized zygote… are killers?
Killing human cells = murder? Then you should probably go picket cancer clinics and tell the doctors there to stop playing god. Go to the hospital and proclaim loudly that those facial warts have a right to live.
Because a zygote very much is just a clump of growing cells. It has the potential to grow into a human being, but that potential, in the case of the vast majority of abortions across the globe, is nowhere near realization. The analogy of a pine nut is very much apt. I have planted pine nuts and grown them into trees. I have also eaten whole forests worth of pine nuts.
Killing a zygote is not murder of a human being. If you claim that it is, you fail basic biology. Your argument is false. You are being disingenuous in an attempt to make your moral stance “right” in the eyes of others.
Your position seems to be rooted in the assumption that the product of gestation is a lump of cells that cannot be classified as a being with rights of it’s own. This is made abundantly clear by your comparison to cancerous growths, and plant life.
First, our moral/legal codes demand different treatment of species based on sentience; it is fairly clear that plants lack it, while it is also fairly clear that animals, especially mammals, possess at least some modicum of it. Generally speaking, our moral and legal codes prohibit certain conduct directed at sentient beings in particular, while non-sentient beings typically do not receive the majority of these protections.
Second, a human fetus doesn’t magically gain sentience at birth by the process of being pushed out of a vagina; It gains that during gestation. Gestation is, generally speaking, a 40 week process. Our current understanding of medicine is such that, with proper care, the point at which a fetus has a 50% probability of viability outside the womb is during the 24th week of gestation.
In short, after the 24th week of gestation, there is a better than 50% chance that the “lump of cells” is, in fact, a human being that can survive outside the womb, and in the absence of the mother. The last I checked, the extreme case of survival was born during the 20th week of gestation.
We can argue back and forth on the extremes all day, with the largely pro-abortion crowd arguing based on first trimester assumptions, while the largely anti-abortion crowd argues based largely on third-trimester assumptions, but the real fact of the matter is that the truth is somewhere in the middle.
The real question is where life begins, and both sides tend to rely on highly subjective arguments. This presents a problem, because the law must be entirely objective, and must also act to preserve innocent life. As such, it is a clear and objective fact that, at some point during the second trimester, the gestating fetus can be said to be a living being with it’s own natural rights.
I’m not trying to argue anything other than the legitimate place of a limited government; A legitimate government must act to protect people equally, and medical science has PROVEN that, at some point during the second trimester (if not before), a gestating human is a living being, and as such it MUST be accepted as having a right to life.
> but the real fact of the matter is that the truth is somewhere in the middle.
The vast, by a huge amount, majority of abortions are performed within the first 12 weeks. 12 is NOT “somewhere in the middle of 40.” You are incorrect. They occur when this clump of cells is still a tiny blastocyst, with no brain, no personality, no feelings, nothing. This is ALSO when women whose bodies autoterminate the pregnancy tend to do so.
Those three points I gave you are my stance on abortion. So far, you have done a really bad job of arguing them. A zygote is not a person. It has the potential to become one – but at the time that MOST abortions are performed, it is NOT a human being. Argue your second trimester party line somewhere else – I’m not convinced that the clump of cells is a human life being “murdered,” or that opponents of abortion should do more than just not have abortions themselves, or that it’s anyone’s damn business if a woman has an abortion.
You never did answer me. If a woman’s body terminates a pregnancy, is she killing a child, in your eyes?
“First, our moral/legal codes demand different treatment of species based on sentience; it is fairly clear that plants lack it, while it is also fairly clear that animals, especially mammals, possess at least some modicum of it. Generally speaking, our moral and legal codes prohibit certain conduct directed at sentient beings in particular, while non-sentient beings typically do not receive the majority of these protections.”
Our moral and legal codes are unconcerned with sentience. There is no sentience-based reason why a chicken, a cow, and a cat have different legal protections. Most Americans, from what I can tell, would be horrified to have a slice of Garfield served up on their plate but be fine if it was Bessie.
There’s also something confusing me about your stance, HSR47. Are you stating that first-trimester abortions are acceptable and that it should be second- and third-trimester abortions that are outlawed? If so, that’s not addressing either jlgrant’s or my statements. If you aren’t stating that, which of your arguments did you intend to apply to first-trimester abortions?
Incidentally, I feel compelled to point out that you have not yet answered my question regarding your views on mass killings of non-human sentients. I consider your answer important, since that’s where this debate started.
What’s this “natural rights” bull? Rights are a human concept, not an inherent reality of nature such as the sun or the moon.
The zygote (along with the embryo and fetus) is a part of the normal human life cycle. Cancer cells are not. Nor are the viral infections that give rise to warts. There is no moral equivalence, so don’t try to equivocate them. Women who expel a zygote undergo spontaneous abortion. Spontaneous abortion is not murder and claiming I am bound to oppose it is a straw man. I oppose procured abortion, and you should know better than to equivocate the two.
You still haven’t addressed my premises (the life cycle of sexually reproducing organisms starts at the zygote stage, and genetics determines species). Their importance should be obvious by now. So, if they’re false, explain why. If they’re true, say so and we can move on.
Right now, what I’m trying to do is arrive at a definition of “human being with human rights” that we can agree upon. Without that, we are talking past each other, not communicating. My definition includes three traits: one, an organism; two, a member of the species “homo sapiens,” as determined by genetics; three: alive. What’s yours?
You say that a human zygote is not human, but has the potential to be. At what point is that potential realized? Far more important, how do you know that’s the point where the developing human organism goes from being a potential human being to being a real human being with inalienable human rights?
The pine nut analogy only becomes relevant if, at some stage in its life cycle, a pine tree ceases being a piece of property and becomes a being with legally recognized rights. They don’t. It’s still irrelevant. Right now, the relevant question is: What traits define a human being with human rights?
“What traits define a human being with human rights?”
There is a human being with human rights that you seem to be forgetting, and that is the pregnant person. Personally my opinion is that anything that is a part of a human body, including a fetus, is a part of that human and, frankly, theirs to do with as they see fit.
I’m happy to concede that perhaps where a fetus could survive outside of it’s host, and removing a fetus from it’s host in a way that it might survive is guaranteed not to harm the host, and the fetus has a willing and capable carer to look after it once it becomes a person; then perhaps the law could compel removal rather than allow the fetus to be destroyed. But any chance at all that the host could be adversely affected by the removal then I couldn’t endorse compelling, the law should not force anyone into a medical procedure that might adversely affect them.
Anon, neither you, nor JL, nor Vyk, nor anyone else, has answered the question. It was nice of you to put it in quotes, but you promptly dismissed it afterwards, without answering it. So I’m going to ask again (and I’d be happy to see answers from JL, Vyk, or you), “What traits define a human being with human rights?” And further, “How do you know?”
I am not ignoring the rights of the mother. That’s a straw man argument. She has a right not to have sex, and if we honor that, she can have an assurance that approaches absolute certainty that she won’t have children. But if she chooses to have sex, she has a responsibility to be ready for the potential consequences, including children.
Also, I don’t think it’s reasonable to classify the child as part of the mother’s body. It fits the definition of an organism. It has its own genetic identity. In the normal course of things, it exits her body. It may live within her, but it’s not part of her.
Whenever I say a woman can choose not to have sex, somebody always brings up rape. For starters, rape IS an edge case, not the usual course of things. Second, the criminal is the father, not the child. The child, like the mother, is his victim. Neither punishing the victim, nor punishing the child for the father’s crimes, is part of our legal tradition. Third, in cases of incest (a particularly heinous form of rape), abortion has the effect of destroying the evidence, making the abortionist an accomplice of the rapist, after the fact. Fourth, outlawing abortion has little effect on maternal mortality rates. Chile’s maternal mortality rate continued to drop after outlawing abortion. (study commentary) Right now, the most significant factor contributing to maternal mortality there is late first pregnancy.
Finally, I am Catholic. The mother’s right to life is not reduced or abrogated because she is pregnant. The Catholic principle of double effect states that if a procedure intended to treat a pregnant woman’s illness or save her life has the effect of killing her fetus, there is no moral culpability. The classic example is when a pregnant woman has a hysterectomy to treat her uterine cancer. You’d use the same procedure if she wasn’t pregnant, and the probability of an 8-week fetus’ death is 100%, but this is not procured abortion.
*cracks knuckles*
> “What traits define a human being with human rights?”
Being a human being and not a cluster of cells that aren’t done forming what they might become, I think is a good starting point. I do honestly believe that there’s some wiggle room in the argument when it comes to fetuses in the third trimester, when they can survive with medical intervention outside of the womb. At the same time, I’m also (bringing up some of that BIOLOGY shit you threw down) quite aware that medically, an infant is not done cooking if it’s born at 42 weeks. The acts of interacting with the world around an infant help develop their brain – human infants are born in a state that I would still maintain is not a human being. Most infants finish that first real development within the first 8 months outside of the womb. For the majority of those first 8 months? They’re not people. I barely consider them human beings. They’re learning to become human, but a newborn infant’s brain is pudding. A pudding that’s still cooking off.
Don’t believe me? Ask an OB/GYN. I am not making this up. And yeah, I know a lot of parents, especially NEW parents, don’t want to hear that their darling snowflake is still just a forming human being, and not actually aware yet.
Now, if that’s my stance on newborn infants, do you get an idea of how little regard I have for a tiny cluster of cells, the size of a garden pea, a cluster that has no formed brain, no lungs, no heart, at 6 weeks? Hell, I’ve burned a wart off my foot with acid, and that wart had more cells and development than the blastocyst that most women abort. That thing had fucking HAIR on it.
> She has a right not to have sex
Our incredible drive to procreate is why the human race exists. I’m not going to get into meaty arguments with you on this unless you’ve read up on anthropological papers to the same degree I have. I’m not. Humans want to fuck. Saying someone has a “right to not have sex” is like saying “they have a right to not eat.” Human beings want to fuck. This is not an accident, nor is it the machination of some blood-cult god. We reproduce well because we have a genetic need to fuck.
> Neither punishing the victim, nor punishing the child for the father’s crimes, is part of our legal tradition.
That tiny cluster of cells is not a fucking child. I repeat.
> The Catholic principle of double effect states
I really, truly, 100% don’t give a fuck what your human sacrifice blood cult considers “moral.” Your church has caused more pain, suffering, death, and horror in history than anything I could ever do, even if there was an army of 1000 of me, and I wanted to really fuck up the world. You can lecture me about abortion once your fucking horrible cult comes clean about that whole “raping and fucking kids” thing.
How dare you quote “Catholic Morality” at me?
How dare you? Your fucking blood cult imprisoned, killed, tortures, and shames people who follow their provably natural drive to have sex, to make money and keep power.
How DARE you?
JL, you’ve just said that the difference between organisms of the species Homo Sapiens which are people (and presumably have human rights), and those which are not, is stage of development. There’s a word missing from your second sentence: “I think __ is a good starting point.” If the missing word is thinking, sentience, or something similar, you’re still describing a stage of development.
You’ve also mentioned “survival without medical intervention outside the mother” as a possible dividing line. You’ve said that you think the stage of development where a human organism becomes a person comes eight months after birth. I could infer that you don’t think it really has rights until then, but I’d rather not put words in your mouth. Meanwhile, the SCOTUS has chosen “birth” as the stage of development that separates human organisms from human beings with human rights, and made it the law of the land. That tells me that your basis (stage of development) is arbitrary and subject to change on political whims — like I said from the beginning.
Warts are still not human, nor organisms. They remain viral infections.
You can control your eating. Junkies can quit heroin. Alcoholics can quit booze. Smokers can quit nicotine, and it’s one of the most addictive substances on Earth. What makes you think you cannot control your sexual activity? People do not die from lack of sex. The survival of faithful consecrated religious (Bhuddist, Orthodox, Jewish, and Catholic — heck, even Anglican) and eunuchs proves that. They may suffer from lack of sex, but everybody suffers and suffering from lack of sex doesn’t kill anyone.
As for the anti-Catholic rant, the point of bringing up double effect was to counter Anon’s claim that I was “forgetting” the mother’s rights. I am not. The rest of your rant is an appeal to emotion, and immaterial to the discussion. I haven’t depended upon Catholic moral arguments to claim abortion is wrong, only on my premises that a living organism of the species homo sapiens is a human being with human rights, and that killing somebody violates their rights.
If you want to rail against Catholic morality, you should know what it is first. You’re behaving as if the men who violated its rules are in fact the exemplars of obedience. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is available on the web. If you take it in parts and give yourself time, it’s not too much work. Learn what it says, and then you can challenge Catholic morality with intellectual honesty and rigor.
I counter your double effect claims with this article.
Yeah!
Arkanabar, your first premise is “that the life cycle of sexually reproducing organisms, including humans, starts at the zygote stage.” This is false. An unfertilized egg is a living cell, like every other cell in the human body. Choosing to say that life starts only after it is fertilized by a sperm is drawing an arbitrary line. You’re begging the question; you’re saying, “Human life begins when an egg is fertilized, and therefore it’s wrong to kill that because it’s a living human.”
Your second premise is that “genetics determine the species of an organism.” This is also false. There is no rule saying “these two organisms share x% of DNA and are therefore the same species.” There are a number of criteria for species (appearance, behavior, ability to reproduce, etc); however, most of them are nonsensical when applied to an embryo. Why? Because an embryo is not an independent organism; it is not capable of surviving outside of the body it formed in.
An ovary is not an independent organism. An egg is not an independent organism, nor is a sperm. An egg doesn’t suddenly become an independent organism the moment a sperm fertilizes it. It doesn’t suddenly become an independent organism when it goes from zygote to blastocyst. It becomes an independent organism at birth. You could even argue that a fetus is an independent organism when it’s developed enough to survive without the mother and, in fact, abortions are very rare past that point (almost solely for medical necessity, as I recall, although I lack a cite for that at the moment). Prior to being able to survive on its own, it’s a clump of cells with human DNA and a certain structure, but it is not itself an entire human (nor any other kind of animal) any more than a human heart is.
As for red herrings, stating that nobody is concerned about human rights of pine trees is itself a red herring; there’s no reason to claim they have human rights since they are clearly unrelated to humans. However, people are concerned about the survival and health of pine trees under certain circumstances: concerns about deforestation, or overgrowth, or even just the timber industry. Despite this, I’ve yet to hear somebody screaming that pine nuts could have been used to replant deforested areas and that eating them was thus morally wrong. This is an argument that we reserve for humans, but with no sound biological basis to make a distinction.
I also note that you said, “I think good law is consistent and based on reality.” What about when the reality is disputed? Can you still have good law when there’s no consensus on what the facts are, or should the law avoid that topic until consensus is formed? As a related question: under a common-law system, is an action legal or illegal if there is no law pertaining to it?
@Vyk: I’m not begging any questions, and haven’t since my reply to JL’s assertion, “A zygote is not a child.” I’ve stated my premises, and JL’s arguments against them have largely been to restate his own position, rather than explain why they are wrong. Yours are a different kettle of fish.
From Hole’s Anatomy and Physiology, 12th Edition (a standard text in medicine): “Each sex cell provides 23 chromosomes, so the product of fertilization is a cell with 46 chromosomes — the usual number in a human body cell. This cell, called a zygote, is the first cell of the future offspring.” (p. 878, emphasis in the original)
I don’t think that the changes brought about during conception are an arbitrary marker of the start of an individual’s development. Nor am I alone: Merriam-Webster defines fertilization as “the process of union of two gametes whereby the somatic chromosome number is restored and the development of a new individual is initiated” “Fertilization.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 21 Nov. 2013. . If you can cite some better sources to back up your assertion that conception is an arbitrary division between parents and offspring, please do.
I don’t care if the zygote, embryo, or fetus is independent. In truth, none of us are. We all depend very heavily upon the actions of others in order to survive. Fertilization creates a new individual. The role of government is to protect the rights of all individuals, not merely the independent ones.
When reality is disputed, reasonable people use logic and evidence to arrive at the truth. And if the facts are not known, I think it’s better to err on the side of killing less, not more.
> We all depend very heavily upon the actions of others in order to survive.
That wart on my foot depended on my not burning it off with acid. Again, it was more developed than a fucking zygote.
> I think it’s better to err on the side of killing less, not more
So how do you feel about circumcision, tonsilectomies, and the death penalty?
And again, how’s that whole “raping kids” thing working out for you in your faith? Since you keep trying to prove how much of a moral high ground you hold.
JL: that wart on your foot is STILL not an organism, let alone human. Zygotes are both. Your analogy is invalid.
To address your red herrings and guilt by association:
Mutilation without therapeutic intent (which includes most circumcisions but very few tonsillectomies) is immoral. If the death penalty is used to gain revenge for the victims, it is also immoral. Revenge is God’s business, not ours; we’re far too likely to overdo it or otherwise screw it up. Executions are permissible when it’s the only reasonably effective means the state has to protect people from a criminal, rather like self-defense homicide and just war.
Rape is gravely immoral at all times, and even more so when the victim is a child (CCC2356), and this is an attempt to use guilt by association. The Church, like every other group of people since the dawn of time, has bad people in it. And while child sex abuse is always bad and child molesters should be convicted and jailed, it happens whenever there are lots of kids. But allegations only make national headlines when they’re against a Catholic priest.
The vast majority of new allegations against Catholic priests are not new at all; they are claims of abuse in the 80s and 90s, or earlier, where the sum total of evidence is the allegation of some criminal with a contingency attorney in tow. We’ve done a lot of work to clean up our act, and thrown a lot of innocent priests under the bus along the way. So far, not many others have.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not one to trust my government with the power to decide which living members of the species homo sapiens are human beings with human rights, and which are not. They’re all too likely to redefine the legal membership of those two groups.
That is the whole point, no government entity should have a say over what you do with your own body and the same goes for Joe Shmoe Churchy-McChurcherson.
“Mass-murder”? You’re very clearly misinformed on at least one of two points. Let’s start with this; mass murder is “a number of murders (four or more) occurring during the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders”. (Source: FBI) Next, there are around 3300 abortions in the US per day, and about 1800 abortion providers. (Source: Guttmacher Institute, an research firm and affiilate of Planned Parenthood) So, we have, on average, two abortions per clinic per day; even leaving aside the “same incident” criterion, that fails to meet the definition of “mass murder”.
At any rate, you’re dodging the point. How “pro-life” is “used in our political discourse” is irrelevant to the fact that it’s flat-out bullshit. It’s not pro-life. It’s also not pro-human-life; some people professing to be pro-life are against abortion even in cases of medical necessity (“pro-life without exceptions”). It’s not even pro-fetus; the majority of abortions (61.8%, Guttmacher) are performed not on a fetus, but on an embryo (<9 weeks gestational age, pick your dictionary). It's very simply anti-abortion, and any attempt to pretty that up (because it doesn't sound as good to be "anti-" something) is a blatant lie.
Now, a question for you, HSR47; are YOU ok with mass killings of living, breathing, sentient, independent organisms just because they don't happen to share the same genetics that you do? (Note that "breathing," "sentient," and "independent" are traits that embryos lack.) If so, why?
You’re trying to use a contrived definition created by a government agency for use in relation to domestic crime statistics as if it is the only valid definition of that phrase. Nice try.
As far as your view on the issue of the definition of “pro life” it again is a case of you trying to use contrived definitions as if they are the only valid options.
In other words, you’ve built some mighty fine straw men there; I hope you enjoy looking at them while you eat your next serving of red herring.
Are you aware of what a straw man is? It would require that I construct a weak argument and then knock it down. I did not do this; I specifically addressed what you said, verbatim, including quotes. I gave you two definitions to point out flaws in exactly what you said, with all necessary context. For one of them, I gave you a source. For the other, I assumed the derivation was obvious, but I’ll correct that in a moment. If you disagree with those definitions, provide your own. If you see a fallacy elsewhere in my statements, point it out. To claim the existence of straw men and red herrings without so much as pointing out what aspects of my statements count as such is, at best, hand-waving.
I had assumed that my comment, “if you have ever claimed to be ‘pro-life’ you’d better be vegetarian,” was self-explanatory, but apparently it was not. The OED definition of “pro-” includes, “Prefixed to a noun, noun phrase, or adjective, forming adjectives with the sense ‘favouring, siding with, or promoting’ what is denoted by the second element”. The OED definition of “life” includes, “The condition or attribute of living or being alive; animate existence. Opposed to death or inanimate existence.” (If you don’t like the OED, pick a different dictionary; this is not an obscure use of “pro-” or “life”.) Therefore, somebody who is actually “pro-life” is “favoring or promoting the condition of being alive.” Assuming that “as long as what’s alive is a human” is included in the term is contradicting the dictionary definition of the words. These are not “contrived definitions,” they are the dictionary definitions of the components of the term. Using “pro-life” to mean only “anti-abortion”, on the other hand, is a contrived definition.
Just to preempt your probable assertion of a red herring: I started this debate by casually suggesting that “pro-life” does not actually mean “favoring life”. That’s not a red herring; it’s the foundation of this discussion. An example of a red herring would be bringing up how the expression is “used in our political discourse”, since it’s immaterial to the statement that the term is, when taken literally, a lie.
Did we have to hijack this discussion with your pet topic? I don’t recall abortion rights and reproductive choices having anything to do with sport hunting. Ever.
You’e never done Skeet Fetus? Man, it’s great!
My bad. Pretty much the most trollish thing I’ve done in a while, and completely unintended; meant merely as a snide comment regarding a disconnect between what people claim and what they do, not the start of a shitstorm.
I do love a good shitstorm, though.
It’s not my “pet topic” nor am I the one who brought it up.
Excuse me for butting into this discussion late, but I really need to get off my chest that I find it funny how majority of pro-life people support death penalty, while majority of pro-choice oppose it.
I am pro death myself, supporting abortion and death penalty, although not with reservations. Legal system that dispenses with death penalty is heavily flawed, while abortion is used by some as replacement for contraceptives (we are talking about women with dozen and more abortions).
> while abortion is used by some as replacement for contraceptives (we are talking about women with dozen and more abortions).
As I have said many times: These women do exist, but they’re far from the norm. And even if they do… so fucking what? That’s really nobody else’s business. If they want to go through a really painful procedure, over and over, instead of wising up and using some form of BC, it’s really none of our business.
Since I was part of that FB discussion, I will point out that I’m a conservationist style hunter; while I’ve not hunted since 1999 after my father passed away. I’ve shot deer and small game for seasonal hunting and not as a “sport” hunt as I believe that’s cruel. I do believe in hunting for pest control (ie. feral hogs) but I also notice that the majority of those hunters also convert those hogs to food for themselves or the dogs they use in the hunt. Hunting for feeding your family and also happens to be sport; but hunting because you wish to cause harm is cruelty in the basest form.
However, people like Ms. Bachman, not related to Batshit Bachmann of Minnesota has been “sport” hunting vs. food hunting for a while. She has been doing it with natural predators vs. actual game hunting; which were on the critical to near endangered list of animals. That these were all “canned hunts” regardless of what the South African Government says and that it’s part of the Conservative elite’s trend of sport hunting in a place were laws only apply if someone gets caught and proven guilty. Her other kills are questionable as well, because of the look to be done “out of season” vs. in season kills; some people have asked for specific dates on those hunts because of it and she’s refused to comply to those requests unless from law enforcement and not the outraged public.
The above sentiment remains. Call her a disgusting monster all you wish, but she has still done nothing to deserve a painful death.
Everything she did on this hunt was perfectly legal, and the lions where she shot this lion are not endangered. Just because they are endangered in some places in Africa doesn’t mean that they are whete she shot this one. In fact Africa lions haven’t been considered endangered since back in the seventies after groups like safari club international took measures to get African nations to stop killing them with every means available. Without hunters like Ms. Bachmann thete would be no lions to hunt.
They are so not endangered that you don’t even need a cites permit to import lion parts anymore.
So yeah, not endangered. At all.
and that they’re not endangered, but on the critical list makes it perfectly okay to kill these animals in your eyes. How very Christian and atypical of you. Seriously, I’m sick to death of folks who kill for sport and pleasure because they’ve got to show how “macho” or manly they are. Such amazing displays of humanity here; I expect aliens we encounter will likely nuke us from orbit because of our actions and view us as a plague not to be spread beyond our world.
I would ask you this:
If someone else kills a wild animal for sport or pleasure, how is that any of your business?
If more people actually thought about the harsh impacts of overpopulation then I don’t believe they would be so quick to judge hunters. It’s not just with animals though, it happens with forestry as well. The Black Hills of South Dakota, specifically near Elk Horn Ridge, are covered in dying trees. The economy there can’t afford to let a natural wild fire do it’s job, but they won’t let the forest service go in and cull trees. Therefore, the basal level is too high, and the entire area is at huge risk for a massive fire that is unlikely to be easily controlled.
I’m not a trophy hunter either, and I believe that if you hunt an animal you should use every part of it, or let someone else do so. If they either extended the season, or offered more tags where I live, the mule deer here wouldn’t be diseased, starving, and causing accidents every other week.
They also wouldn’t draw their natural predators down into populated areas.
Re the Elkhorn dead trees: Why don’t they just say free firewood for everybody and let the general populace solve that problem?
I’m going to bet on it being Forest Service land… which means it’s illegal to take the wood, even if it’s already dead. (Also, possible transfer of parasites.)
I grew up in Idaho, where we had the same problem: Massive drifts of deadwood, but they wouldn’t let anyone deal with the problem, resulting in horrific wildfires every so often.
Illegal to take on Forest Service land??
Not here. All you need’s a permit.
It’s conservation land actually. The forest service there would love to take care of the deadfall. And the spread of parasites isn’t so much the problem. The trees there put off three types of pheromones. One says ‘I’m Healthy’. Another says, ‘I’m sick, come kill me’. And a third says ‘I’m too full of beetles, move on’. The beetles would be much more manageable if there weren’t so many trees. Ponderosa pines are prolific breeders, and in many areas have a basal level that is much too high. Drought, combined with to many trees that drink up to and more than 150 gallons of water a day equals a serious problem.
I lived in the Philadelphia area many, many years ago. The exurb has been pushed really far….and any possible predatory animals have been removed. Deer have not. Deer tags are easy to get, but areas to hunt are very restricted (I lived in one). One early winter, Philly had a deer issue. (as in roaming the streets downtown, getting run over, running into people’s apartments….). IIRC, they had to bring in snipers.
Yes, changing the predator/prey balance requires even more management on human part. Won’t get into whether that is “good” or “bad” – it just IS.
I am so sick of seeing this stupid story re-hashed. It’s not even important. Where’s the socio-economic impact?
I came here to see Mick & Alex & Omar & ..everybody!
From what I have seen, the outcry isn’t that she killed a lion, but that she appeared to have killed an alpha lion. Which is a whole different issue if true.
And, if you actually know anything about lion populations, you’d know that killing a large, full maned (i.e., OLDER) alpha lion is actually the least harmful and most beneficial to the species health. Now a younger, healthier, MORE FERTILE, “bachelor” lion will move in and take over the pride. There is a HUGE surplus of males in lion populations, and most of the excess males NEVER get a chance to breed and disseminate their genes, resulting in genetic bottlenecks (far more significant now that the lion population is no longer continuous).
Of course, it’s easy to argue emotionally that the evil nasty bad hunter just blew away Simba’s daddy. But it’s woefully ignorant of teh scientific facts behind lion populations. Likewise, as earlier commenters have pointed out repeatedly — the ONLY reason these animals are protected by locals is for teh economic benefit. Poaching is unbelievably worse in areas where they do not allow hunting, because at least the poachers will offer you SOMETHING for these animals that are competing with villagers for biospace. And teh poachers will go in and destroy a local breeding group of animals with machinegun fire, to grab the easiest to transport trophies and be gone before the Army shows up. WAAAAAAY worse for the populations than regulated hunting, promotes government corruption as poachers pay off officials, and the local economy doesn’t benefit nearly as much. . . plus, once the poachers kill out an area (because they have no direct stock in maintaining local populations — they can always switch hunting grounds), they leave, and the locals have NOTHING.
And no, I’m not a hunter at all. I don’t even fish anymore. (Not from a moral standpoint, but because it doesn’t interest me. So I have no self-interest in protecting my hobby from disapproval here.)
While I do agree with you, in general, there *are* some ‘hunters’ out there that I’d love to treat the same way they do their ‘prey’…and it’d surprise me a bit if you didn’t feel similarly 😉
Not really. I have love for many animals, have had wonderful pets. But when it comes to killing an animal… I can’t get behind those who state that a human being should be put to death or tortured because they didn’t kill an animal the right way. News flash: most wild animals die gruesome, horrible deaths. Even if no human beings were in the picture, they would still die horrible, gruesome deaths.
It annoys me to no end that people get this murderous hatred, and usually because they perceive that the hunter killed with an attitude they don’t agree with. That’s fucking retarded.
That’s a key point that’s often overlooked. There are a number of ways for animals to die in the wild, and essentially none of them are peaceful happy ways. Take deer, for example; deer don’t die in a hospital bed at a ripe old age surrounded by loved ones. Fleeing in terror from a predator that’s faster and then being torn apart, being hit by a car, disease, starvation; all in all, a bullet to the chest is one of the LESS nasty ways for a deer to die.
I gotta agree w/ Evandril.
I mostly agree w/ you, J, regarding the self-righteous idjits going berserk over a wild animal killing..but there were more than a few “hunters” in BB, for instance, whom I wouldn’t have minded seeing become vicitms of a hunting “accident”.
For example, that guy who shot an owned, domestic dog that was chasing their pickup, as they crossed the property to hunt ducks in Baldwin Lake. Some hunters really are complete jerks, and the human as well as animal world’d be better off without them.
Then again, good point about how most wild animals die.
I just most strongly agree with Gordon, that whatever you shoot, you or somebody had better eat it.
This, seriously! I pissed off an author when I did a book review recently because I revealed that the big “secret” was that the director of an animal shelter was also a big game hunter. The reason I mentioned it was because I don’t see anything contradictory with someone working to maintain humane treatment of pet animals and also engaging in hunting. The hunting she portrayed wasn’t even just for sport; they used all of the mountain lion even the meat (I’m not a fan of eating carnivores, but, hey, some people like it.)!
Haven’t eaten a pure carnivore (like cats) – but omnivore (bear) is FANTASTIC if butchered right at the kill site.
that is “correctly” not “proximate to”
I’ve heard that bear can be good when prepared well. I just get twitchy about the higher possibility of zoonotic diseases in carnivores, but, well, we all know that herbivores aren’t exempt from them either!
the problem is she’s white, you think these people poop themselves via social media every time a maasai warrior kills a lion?
Is race really the factor there? Put Tiger Woods in the same place, and he’ll get about the same reaction. (The headline would be awesome, though.)
yeah but how many people wished that tiger woods got a fatal std from his adventures in copulation? maybe it’s a celebrity thing. extra extra read all about it, tiger shoots lion. you think the lion’s name will be read as a victim of gun violence at an anti gun protest?
had to zoom in on the comic to see the facebook comments. For others, here they are:
“Despicable. Their numbers are dwindling and she’s smirking like a fool. She should be the one who’s being hunted, see how good that feels.”
“I’ve always thought there is no bigger cowardice than hunting with a gun. I’d love to see this woman thrown in a ring with a pack of lions, and let them hunt her.”
“Wish the lion had gotten her.”
“Now … put her in the plains without the rifle with the lions hunting her. Fair’s Fair.”
“This photo physically makes me sick. I wish that lion were alive to slap that smirk off her face with his paw.”
@Vyk: I am pro-HUMAN life. Human life has an inherent dignity and value that arises from our creation in imago dei that animal life (and plant life) lack. I’m entirely with JL that there is no way that killing an animal warrants death or torture. Heck, we don’t even think the 9/11 attacks, which caused thousands of human deaths, justify torture. On what grounds do we figure killing a lion does?
Sounds lik crap I heard on Fb about the wolf cull in northern michigan…the crap I saw on there and heard at work. Pathetic
Heh – the headline could read “Tiger gets a hole in one – lion!”
Yeah, had a co-worker (refuse to call him work mate now) that claimed that all hunters do it because they think it´s fun. “Well ofcourse fun” i said. He then made it clear it was because “fun” meant killing as fun, and that a large portion of the Swedish hunting crowd would start shooting imigrants and refugees if it was suddenly made legal.
Rule 2: You kill it if you are going to eat it.
Rule 1: You kill it if it is going to kill you.
Wow, the ignorance of some people… And these people are breeding and voting. Parading around naked waving a sign doesn’t do cockmongling shitnugget bologna to “SAVE DA WHALES DOOD!” (Reminds me of Psychostick’s “Political Bum”). It’s hunters who pay fees to keep wildlife preserves intact, manage wildlife population (like fucking deer here in MD. I hate deer), and keep the ecosystem running.
On a brighter note, I think Melissa Bachman’s hawt as hell. Women like her are marriage material.
…And I took the writer’s advice and bought an SKS. Had enough money left over for a 1915 Mosin Dragoon. Best money I ever spent.
…Plus, Africa is dealing with constant civil conflict and war, widespread poverty, poaching, political upheaval, and even genocide.
And people are suddenly concerned about the legal hunting and killing of a Lion? Logic…
I am a member of PETA* and I see no problem with this.
* People Eating Tasty Animals. Who did you think it was?
Oh Christ, please dont talk about “muh white privilege”, shit is so annoying.
I love how some people try to make like peace loving humanitarians by defending the ‘helpless’ lower life forms… They shout from the rooftops about how noble and giving they are when they protect a dumb creature… and then they will walk past the ‘out of work’ and ‘homeless’ as if they are invisible… IF they were really caring, they would open the doors to their larder and the extra bedrooms in their mansions to a homeless family or two and support them… those are the real humanitarians. I personally don’t care about extinction… It has been going on since single celled life developed on this planet. (billions of years?). Species come and species go. Nothing lasts forever. I’m stopping now or this rant will go on for pages… meh
Hmm. Apparently this subject is “triggery” for some people. 😀
But seriously, folks! One has to wonder at the psychology of people who elevate animals above people in the hierarchy of worthiness and rights. Twisted priorities, to be sure. I know a couple of them. I would not put it past one of them to go after Michael Vick with a machete if the opportunity presented itself. Nowhere nearly as incensed at murderers of other people, though.
And that lion? Probably would have been dead within a year anyway, torn apart by younger, stronger rivals going after his lionesses.