Both of my sisters are supporters of animal rights. One is vegan, the other vegetarian. I have great respect for their choices in this area. I have even considered becoming vegetarian myself, but I just don't share their views when it comes to the relationship between humans and animals.
In the animal rights debate, I hold three axioms that guide my decisions. If you don't accept these axioms then you won't agree with my views. It is that simple.
1. Human beings are distinct from, and more important than, all other forms of life.
2. Life itself is distinct from, and more important than, all non-living things.
3. All finite resources are of value.
This means that I think that living things, being more important than non-living things, have dominion over the things of this planet. Ants can feel free to move soil around. Plant roots can split rocks apart. Beavers can dam up rivers. They all have a right to manipulate their environment.
I think that humans have the same rights, but also have a right to manipulate the living things of this world. We can cut down forests for timber, herd cattle for food, and to breed dogs to be our pets.
However, humans are also capable of restraint (at least, I hope we are) and so should be willing and able to limit their manipulation of the world. All finite resources have value, so we should not use them as if they are worthless. Animals are a natural resource, one that is even more important than oil or precious metals. It is insane to hunt a species to extinction or to torture animals for our amusement. To accept that we are more important than an animal does not mean that animal has no importance.
We must not exploit the world beyond its ability to handle it, and we should treat plants and animals with more respect than we do our coal and iron resources. But as long as we are not wasteful, and what we are doing is not unnecessarily cruel - such as leading to extinction or causing unneeded suffering - then I do think we have a right to use plants and animals for food and other products.
DrStraw wrote:Only along the current evolutionary path. Had evolution taken a different course which resulted in the absence of carnivores then almost cetainly it would have taken care of the problem along the way.
Perhaps life would find a way to sustain a world without carnivores, but humans and other intelligent life would likely not exist. In an episode of "Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman" they discussed what intelligent alien life would be like. The general consensus is that aliens capable of the intelligence necessary for space travel would almost have to be carnivores for a number of reasons.
First, plants simply don't give as much nutrients as animals do. A pound of beef has far more value than a pound of grass. If humans needed to eat grass to power our brains we would be eating all the time.
Second, how much value a does a good brain have for each of these animals? When your food is a plant, you don't need a very good brain to find one and eat it. But when your food can run away, you need to be smart to figure out how you can catch it.
And if you look at the most intelligent species on earth, you find they are all either carnivores or omnivores. Dolphins, octopi, chimpanzees, and humans all eat more than just plants.
