Utah animal rights activist admits to arson charges

[Bakustra]

Is it justified to harm people to get them to stop killing other people, merely to enforce our definition of right and wrong upon them? I think that your argument has a fundamental weak point there- if it works, then it undermines the very concept of criminal penalties altogether!

I am not sure I am following. Laws and criminal penalties are something that are (rightly or wrongly) defined by a large group of people. Some are good, and some are bad, but they generally are at least accepted by (if not voted in by) a majority (and yes I know that's not absolute.)
I was thinking more in terms of a minority trying to enforce standards on a general populace. In this case we have a single person (Bond) taking it upon themselves to excute a 'just punishment' on preceived wrongdoers to enforce a specific definition of right and wrong.

Well, don't we make actions criminal based on whether they are considered right or wrong, as a general rule? If so, then we run into that same argument, and if we make morality based on democratic consensus, then we run into the problem of who makes up this consensus. Is sacrificing people to feed the gods good or bad? The Mexica considered it to be good- is it then good? In other words, I don't see a way for your argument to work without sacrificing either criminal penalties or the idea of being able to render value judgments on things outside of one's society, which brings its own problems.

[Broomstick]

In general, I presume that the people arguing against Straha are also opposed to cruelty to animals. How then do you justify the killing of animals to be morally acceptable, but the torture, rape, or brutalizing of them to be morally unacceptable? That is to say, do animals have the potential to suffer only when they are not about to die? Bear in mind that before you rage about vegans or vegetarians, I personally do eat meat, though I don't have a particularly good defense of how I can do so morally.

Killing something does not, inherently, require subjecting it to pain for suffering. There are a number of methods that kill either so quickly as to be near instantaneous, or truly do not cause pain/suffering at all.

Granted, those methods are not always the ones chosen. Nonetheless, killing does not equal torture.

Okay, but let us apply those methods to a human being, and are we then allowed to kill them? That doesn't resolve the question I asked very well.

Under very limited circumstances yes, society does condone killing people. Among them:

1) Conviction of a capital crime (not all jurisdictions, obviously)
2) War
3) Self-defense
4) Withdrawal of life support for terminal illness/end of life/severe disability

Of those four, in the US at least there is usually great concern about avoidance of suffering for 1 (and even so, more and more states are abolishing this penalty). 2 and 3 may involve significant suffering as an effect of cause of death although deliberate torture (that is, infliction of pain and suffering as and end in itself) is usually not condoned. For 4, there may also be suffering involved due to legal issues, although mitigation of pain and suffering is certainly encouraged.

So clearly, some types of killing humans is permitted. If that is the case, it's hard to argue that it's inherently immoral to kill animals. In which case, we're back to the question of whether or it's OK to kill animals for purposes such as eating them or using parts like leather.

[AniThyng]

(for the record, I'm not vegetarian, and being brought up chinese, can and will eat anything. religious restrictions? what are those? environmentalism? you should see what we do to sharks...)

I'd think fish suffer a lot when they are hauled up on nets...it really does seem to me that we're just going to need to accept that we make arbitrary and often hypocritical choices on the killing animals issue, especially since it's obvious many of us eat meat in luxurious amounts, and not "just enough to supplement an otherwise vegetarian diet" amounts?

[Darth Fanboy]

Good on Bond for doing what he did.

Regardless of your stance on meat eating and/or animal rights, it is still highly unethical and in this case blatantly criminal to do what he did. What if someone had been inside one of those buildings? Would you then be justifying the murder as well? This isn't mere property destruction you are talking about. Besides one of the problems extreme animal rights activists have is that they pursue their agenda in such a way that it alienates others.

I am an unabashed carnivore, I love eating meat and I am grateful to the animals that live and die for our nourishment as they were bred to do. However, far more rational people than PETA or ALF activists have been the ones to convince me over the years to try and be a more ethical meat eater. I no longer eat veal or lamb as an example.

[DudeGuyMan]

Or he could be a strict Jain or other practitioner of Ahimsa, carefully avoiding the deliberate or avoidable killing of anything with three or more senses, which incorporates insects but not plants, fungi, or protozoans. Or he could have some moral code which justifies the killing of certain animals but not others.

He probably should have posted that then, yeah? Then we could gleefully pick that shit apart. But I suspect he's more the tiresome generic Western vegan with a superiority complex, who thinks ordering the garden salad instead of the chicken salad is all that equating animals with humans requires of him.

But the point of your post is not to engage in thoughtful discussion or debate, but rather to snipe at any such person that dares argue for vegetarianism on moral grounds. Shame on you for your cowardice.

Internet philosophy debates, where true bravery and cowardice are seen! Hurr! Blow it out your ass you dipshit. The purpose of a snipe like that is to bait the target into trying to explain why it isn't applicable. It's exactly like typing ten paragraphs of faux-intellectual "I see good sir, but how do you differentiate between the intrinsic value of, for example, a human infant as opposed to an insect?" bullshit except it takes up a fraction of the space and doesn't make me look like a dreary wanker out to show like five guys on a web forum how smart he is.

In general, I presume that the people arguing against Straha are also opposed to cruelty to animals. How then do you justify the killing of animals to be morally acceptable, but the torture, rape, or brutalizing of them to be morally unacceptable? That is to say, do animals have the potential to suffer only when they are not about to die?

Lolwut? Is there a big animal rape epidemic going on that I don't know about?

I'm a bit different than most when it comes to this topic. Most people seem to figure it's okay to kill an animal because it's tastier than fake soy meat, as long as the poor thing doesn't suffer in the process. (And even if it does suffer, it's okay to eat it, you just have to feel bad for ten minutes a year when the topic comes up on your favorite internet forum.) I never really got this line of thought.

I mean killing is worse than just inflicting pain, right? That's why murder sends you to prison a lot longer than just kicking someone's ass. And animals must have some intrinsic value as beings, right, otherwise why care if they suffer? So why is it cool to kill animals then? So here's my philosophy.

1) Animal suffering? Don't really care as long as I don't have to see it. If I do have to see it, it might set off the monkey-empathy I have as a result of being a non-psychopathic primate, depending on the type of animal in question. (Everyone cares more about kittens than cockroaches, and only pseudo-clever assmonkeys try to tell you it's because one is more intelligent than the other.) As long as it's all over by the time it hits my plate, though, it's all good.

2) Going out of one's way to inflict animal cruelty is still generally unacceptable, however, because it implies a lack of monkey-empathy. A guy who will torture his puppy would probably torture you, given the chance. Again this depends on the species in question, kittens versus cockroaches, a kid burning ants with a magnify glass isn't the same thing, etcetera.

Really this is the way pretty much everyone seems to operate in practice. Nobody really cares how the sausage was made as long as they don't have to see it, eating veal isn't the same as that creppy kid down the road (who's gonna be a serial killer when he grows up) strangling baby birds to death just because, and so on and so forth.

[Broomstick]

I mean killing is worse than just inflicting pain, right? That's why murder sends you to prison a lot longer than just kicking someone's ass.

True. However, inflicting extreme pain and suffering as part of murdering someone (in other words, torturing them to death) might well make a difference in how long you are sent to prison for murdering someone. Second degree murder, where in a fit of emotion you shoot someone in the head, might get you 20 years. First degree murder where you add a side order of, say, rape and dismemberment to the proceedings prior to shooting the person in the head might net you life in prison or the death penalty (depending on jurisdiction).

So... pain/suffering is bad, death is worse, but pain/suffering on the way to death is even worse than that.