BlazingCatFur:
English Philosopher Roger Scruton Battles The “Humans Are Not Special” Folk.
Almost all people believe that it is a crime to kill an innocent human, but not to kill an innocent tapeworm. And almost all people regard tapeworms as incapable of innocence in any case — not because they are always guilty, but because the distinction between innocent and guilty does not apply to them. They are the wrong kind of thing.
We, however, are the right kind of thing. So what kind is that? Do any other beings, animal or otherwise, belong to it? And what follows? These questions lie at the center of philosophical inquiry today, as they have since the ancient Greeks. In a thousand ways we distinguish people from the rest of nature, and build our life accordingly. We believe that people have rights, that they are sovereign over their lives, and that those who live by enslaving or abusing others are denying their own humanity. Surely there is a foundation for those beliefs, just as there is a foundation for all the moral, legal, artistic and spiritual traditions that take the distinctiveness of human life as their starting point. More.
The wisdom from “science” today is that the foundation of all that stuff is evolutionary psychology in a world where we did not evolve so as to perceive reality but did evolve so as to need coercion.Which is why we evolved to pay taxes to support all that.
read the rest HERE
Some people ARE tapeworms …
izlamo delenda est …
The theory of natural selection leads to the belief that any and all evolving organisms evolved solely to do a better job of surviving to reproductive maturity and to beget offspring with the same or similar traits.
Anybody who says humans evolved to “need coercion” is somebody who wants to do the coercing. That seems a bad evolutionary trait, given that there are lots of individuals (and I count myself among them) who would be motivated to
killuse force to prevent such a creature from harming them.The day that a tapeworm demonstrates a consciousness of the world it lives in, an awareness of cause and effect, an ability to evaluate the effect in the future of choices made now, and finally the realization that it lives in a universe with similarly-equipped conscious beings and that voluntary cooperation is in its own, and everybody else’s, best interest is the day that I will value a tapeworm.
If the human is a Nancy Pelosi or Chucky Schumer it’s kind of a toss-up, isn’t it?
No tapeworm has ever spoken up to explain to me why is as valuable as I am.
I bet the people who elevate tapeworms to the same value as humans are also perfectly happy to say a fetus is “just a clump of cells”.
I find it hard to elevate those individuals over the bug I squashed today because it annoyed me by just being there.
On a side note, if you get a chance to see the Body World Exhibit (the picture is from the exhibit) make sure you go! It truly demonstrates that the human body is a miracle. The first part of the exhibit is conception thru birth. I went with my daughter’s Human Body Systems class and I was so glad to see that the kids spent so much time looking at this part. None of them will forget the humanity of the pre-born and the dignity of the elderly.
plants have feelings also. damn you murdering vegans, go eat sand.
Humans, having the incomplete picture we do of the visible universe, have done a pretty good job of garnering an understanding of its breadth and scope.
Willingness to undertake a quest for understanding alone, that’s what makes us better than tapeworms.
Tapeworms are like Oysters.
They could give a shit about a scenic sunset.
Why does the skinless guy have 2 peckers?
The last time I checked a tapeworm was not made in the image of God.
Genesis 1:26
@Tony R: Check again. One pecker, two testicles.
Total three hangy-down things, if anyone’s counting.
🙂
@geoff the aardvark: Since I don’t have any pictures of God, I guess I’ll just have to take your word for that.
😉
Tapeworms and leftists both want to get all up in peoples’ butts, just for different reasons.
Wait a minute! Is this liberal ploy to get voting rights for tapeworms? I smell liberal voter expansion. Are tapeworms the next maligned group to get illegal benefits?
grool, I must disagree quite strongly with the part of your statement which is “just for different reasons.”.
It is clear that the parasite and the leftist both have the same reasons for existing:
It is quite obvious that the goal is to attach oneself to a productive host and steal and take sustenance from that host. And all the while reproducing more and more parasites whose only ambition is to take from more infected hosts.
And the same goes for the tapeworm.
MSG Grumpy
MSG, I stand corrected.
How strange. A few weeks ago I said this exact thing to my wife. How fetusphobes must view a baby in the womb as a parasite. Therefore, they see no issue with killing the human.
However, those of us who value the sanctity of life, see the fetus as a human being with separate DNA than the mother (and father). A unique individual person.
How utterly vile are those who reject God…..and truth……and science for that matter……