Surely you realize that you are making this up?
Or have you been brainwashed past the point of critical thinking and fact checking?
Honestly, how can you feel good about yourself when you have to go to this length to deride a group of people for the simple fact that they do not believe in something? Something which has presented no compelling evidence for itself.
Does it make you feel like your life choice is better when you just make things up? Or are you just upset about some bad atheist that gave you a hard time.
Whatever it is, something messed you up hard.

It's like...I enjoy when people question my beliefs, to some extent. It is nice to be challenged and to strengthen your position on something, or explore different viewpoints.
But what you're doing is disgusting. It is based off of lies, false assumptions, and sets nobody forward.
Can you honestly be happy living with that much hate?

This post was edited by ringo794 on Sep 22 2014 10:44pm

They aren't actually moral codes because non-human animals are incapable of ethical thought.

We are absolutely different in our cognitive ability to empathize, we are capable of understanding the existence and content of others' phenomenally bound unitary world simulations and pain-pleasure axis therein.

there have been plenty of studies on elephants showing just this? btw, no idea what the last bit there means, mind explaining it in english?

This post was edited by duffman316 on Sep 22 2014 10:43pm

None of us can see through the minds of animals, but I'd say my dog definitely can empathize. She feels jealousy, loneliness, and does an adorable "ouch that hurt" wimper when she sees me stub my toe. Personally I think our "moral code" is more illusion than fact and it's been given a special place recently in the human mind since the masses now have enough resources we can actually spend time thinking about it.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Sep 22 2014 10:48pm

We are uniquely aware of the existence of other minds, and further, are able to adopt a scientific worldview in which those minds are treated as equally morally relevant ends as one's own.



Proto-empathy, maybe (though I'm inclined to think it's more of an instinctual response rather than an actual understanding of unitary phenomenal consciousness), but non-human animals are non-linguistic and aren't able to develop conceptual ethical frameworks.

This post was edited by Voyaging on Sep 22 2014 10:49pm

Again, we can't see through the eyes of another animal, so we can't really say if they are developing an ethical framework. They react in much the same way we do when developing a "morality". If exposed to harsh conditions and not sociolized properly they will breed distrust and aggressive behavior, depression, etc. etc. similar to what we would expect a human to. If exposed to affection, structure, etc. etc. they adjust accordingly. I don't see any reason to give humans a greater standing than some animals I have known, and because they are non-linguistic the way we perceive it does not mean they don't communicate with each other in complex fashions that are lost to the average human. In the end it really comes down to empathy, we will give properties of ourselves to things we can relate too. We can relate most to other humans, so naturally they are the first ones we say "Yes, they have a moral structure!" , but it hasn't always been that way. For a long time we had savages who weren't people and weren't thinking about morals, society, advancement, but as our sphere of empathy expands it will eventually enclose animals in some respects such as it did with the ability to feel pain (vivisections anybody?) and eventually morality.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Sep 22 2014 10:58pm

I'm pretty sure ants made cities way before the human existed, that all communicate with there feeler (antenna?) a language we still don't understand, they do breeding to name only one human-like aspect of there society, and also they 11x the weight of all mammals on the planet (including humans..) just under our feet !

The more I think about this, the more I like it.

C'mon are you guys seriously suggesting that animals have even a SEMBLANCE of the complexity of thought or communication that syntactical human language offers?

You have my whole-hearted agreement though that animals deserve full ethical status as subjects of experience.

The fact is, though, they are not self-directed moral agents because they lack the empathic (as well as autistic) intelligence required to have a satisfactory understanding of consciousness. Hell, most humans barely have the intelligence required, which is why you get people claiming that without God morals don't exist and shit like that.

This post was edited by Voyaging on Sep 22 2014 11:04pm

yes, seriously