Are humans more important than animals?

[crazywargod]

Bringing up Hitler/Nazis in a conversation, basically.

 

Can you just sum up whatever point you had in mentioning the movie, rather than having me read through the whole page?

It was an example.

 

 

The apes were superior to humans and it was by strength not morality.

Superiority and morality, sadly, don't go hand in hand.

[RheaZen]

It was an example.

 

The apes were superior to humans and it was by strength not morality.

Superiority and morality, sadly, don't go hand in hand.

... aaaand it's back to that definition of superiority. They reigned above humans, yes, but were they truly "superior"?

[crazywargod]

... aaaand it's back to that definition of superiority. They reigned above humans, yes, but were they truly "superior"?

Yes.

[RheaZen]

Yes.

And you're not going to budge on your decided definition?

[lightbird]

Yes.

Only if you consider being able to rule over something as the sole definition of being "superior". For biodiversity, however, there is no "superior", if we try to go back to what the topic really was about.

[crazywargod]

And you're not going to budge on your decided definition?

It is not my "decided" definition. It is the summary of all the definitions.

 

So no.

 

 

@lightbird:I can agree with that and take my leave as not to bring it back up.

Edited November 19, 2010 by crazywargod

[RheaZen]

It is not my "decided" definition. It is the summary of all the definitions.

 

So no.

No, it isn't. But it appears this is pointless anyhow.

 

 

 

Yes, back on the topic...

[MedievalMystic]

Please, CWG, is that what you would tell yourself in that situation I just mentioned? Would you still feel superior if you were standing there, without all of your high tech crap, just you and your almighty brain, looking at a lion grinning in your face? Somehow I seriously doubt you'd feel so smug. In an instant, you aren't superior...you're dinner. Take away the high tech, and we're at the bottom of the totem pole any way you want to look at it.

 

For all of our 'brains' we've sure managed to make an ungodly mess of the planet, haven't we?

[kirianas]

everyone has equal rights wether there animals or humans!! it is true that hummans are a bit overpopluated and animals are endagered. you are both overeacting!

 

 

No eggspam, please read the rules.

Edited November 19, 2010 by NixAyum

[marhawkman]

I support "People Eating Tasty Animals".

 

That should tell you how I feel on this subject.....

[Kai]

Please, CWG, is that what you would tell yourself in that situation I just mentioned? Would you still feel superior if you were standing there, without all of your high tech crap, just you and your almighty brain, looking at a lion grinning in your face? Somehow I seriously doubt you'd feel so smug. In an instant, you aren't superior...you're dinner. Take away the high tech, and we're at the bottom of the totem pole any way you want to look at it.

 

For all of our 'brains' we've sure managed to make an ungodly mess of the planet, haven't we?

At some point in the past our ancestors did exactly this and they won massifly.

[Bee Teno]

You realise there are people stronger than gorillas right?

After reading through the past few pages I discovered your post. You are wrong. We have WEAPONS that we use to do our dirty work, take away the shiny guns, then try to face that gorilla that is weaker than you.

[Kai]

After reading through the past few pages I discovered your post. You are wrong. We have WEAPONS that we use to do our dirty work, take away the shiny guns, then try to face that gorilla that is weaker than you.

That's a terrible comparison. Humans have better brains and fingers which they use to produce tools. Taking away a humans tools, you might as well chop off a gorilla's arms.

[Phantom]

I'd much rather give money to animals. People give money to humans all the time. The difference between humans and animals is simple, humans are overpoplulated when compared to animals so they can pretty much choose to do what they want with any animal and the animals can't do anything about it because they are outnumbered by humans.

 

Think about it this way, you donate money to humans so they can be fed and get it job, and you donate money to animals so they can be fed and taken care of. A year later the same humanoide you payed for may still not have a job but benefit from your food, and the animal you payed for may be fed and live in a survivable enclosure.

[Juzz]

Honestly, I'm more into animals than people... Tigers are endangered and could end up extinct because of people. If they disappear, the balance of the wildlife might suffer which in turn could cause us to suffer. Also, the future generation will not be able to see these creatures... Just look what happened to the Dodos...

 

 

[casprrr]

This is an interesting discussion thread, and now that I've finally read most of the previous posts and skimmed over a small number of the others, I think it's time add my own comments.

 

The original post was a question about whether human charities or animal charities are more worthy. I donate to both, because both types are deserving. Judging from the previous posts, that seems to be the consensus: Some feel that animal charities are more deserving, some feel that human charities are more deserving. This is good, because it means that there is a balance with the respondents to this forum indicating that they will support both causes.

 

That's my observation concerning the first post. For the discussions about which I would choose to save - animal or human - I would almost certainly save the human first, and the animal second. If a baby was trapped in one room of a burning home, and a puppy was trapped in a separate room, I would try for the human first, but hopefully rescue both.

Rescue? As an aside, I did adopt my dog from a local shelter. I did not adopt a human from an adoption agency. This does not mean that I think that animals are either more nor less worthy of adoption than humans, it just means that I wanted a dog, not a child.

 

There were hypothetical questions - Digidude123 asked "what if there was only one panda left in the world, and he was dying, and there was a random person dying, which would you save?" I would save the human, since the panda is the last one. It's the last of its kind - can't reproduce. However, it is unrealistic to think that I would be in a position to save the last panda on earth, but it's at least remotely possible that I might be in a position to save anothers' life - be they human or animal. If I was in a position to, I would save the life of a cat, or a dog, or a tiger... I would not choose to save the life of a flea, or a mosquito, or a fly.

 

 

[Icepelt]

Animals are more important seeing as if one dies a whole ecosystem could get screwed over.

[RheaZen]

>.>

Even if it were an endangered species?

[Icepelt]

That's what I'm saying. If an animal goes completely extinct or even goes missing from the area, it could mess up that area's "cycle."

[Renorei]

People are infinitely more important to me than animals. If I had a choice between saving an entire species of some animal, or saving one human child, I'd save the human child, assuming the child is fully functional, mentally. Not because the human child is the same species as me--I don't really care about that--but because the human child is sapient and the preservation of sapience is more important than the preservation of mere life. That's why there's nothing wrong with aborting a non-sapient, unthinking fetus, but there's something very wrong with killing a sapient human.

 

Now, if you showed me a sapient dog or tiger, who could think on the same level as humans and had an individual consciousness just like a person, and then you showed me a human who was severely mentally retarded and couldn't really be considered sapient and asked me which life I wanted to save, I'd pick the dog or tiger. You don't have to be sapient to be a human, but you do have to be sapient to be a person (by my standards), and in that circumstance I would consider the dog or tiger to be more of a person than the human. The human in that situation would be just another animal, and as I said earlier, people (whether or not they are human) are more important to me than animals.

 

It just so happens that, so far, the only sapient beings have always been humans.

 

When I see people donating money to animal charities when there are still humans in this world who are suffering and dying (through no fault of their own), I am always flabbergasted. It's something I have trouble conceiving of. Because animals are not sapient, they don't have the same capacity to suffer like we do. They have the same capacity to feel physical pain, but not the same capacity to suffer, which is primarily a mental thing. I am amazed that people would devote resources to saving a bunch of animals when they could instead devote those resources to preventing the suffering of sapient beings or preventing the deaths of sapient beings.

 

And yes, I know that humans are one of the biggest problems on this earth and one of the biggest threats to our ecosystem. I don't care. To me, the sheer miraculousness of sapience means that I can tolerate our species' flaws, warts and all (especially in light of the fact that, as a species, we are slowly reaching a level of consciousness of the rest of the earth that we will start becoming better stewards of this planet and not just consume, consume, consume, destroy, destroy, destroy).

 

I think something that people often ignore is that with greater complexity there is greater potential for things to go wrong. Your car is more likely to need repair than your can opener, your pencil sharpener, or your hedge clippers. Your computer is more likely to get a virus than your simple calculator. Humans who are highly intelligent can become infinitely more dangerous criminals than humans who are unintelligent, because the highly intelligent human can conceive of ever-more brilliant criminal schemes and murderous plots, whereas the simple-minded human won't be able to kill that many people before he gets caught because he can't outsmart the cops for long.

 

With humans and animals, it's the same way. Because we are smarter, we have the ability to damage this planet in ways that animals couldn't conceive of. We are smart enough that we can make tools, that we can rise above our mere physicality and build towers of glass and steel and machines that will chew down a forest and giant metal tubes that can fly through the air and factories that spit deadly chemicals into the sky. I am a human of above average intelligence, and if I felt compelled to do so, I could use the resources at my disposal and kill hundreds of wolves or tigers before anybody stopped me. I could kill hundreds of people even, if I wanted to. But how many wolves or tigers could manage to kill more than a few humans before getting hunted down and killed? Not many.

 

So in that sense, I can somewhat understand where people are coming from when they say they don't like humans or that we are bad for the earth or whatever. Because of our sapience, we are capable of more damage and more malevolence than any animal.

 

 

But what gets ignored is this--because we are sapient, we are also capable of more good than any animal. What is more useful, your calculator or your computer? Your computer generally, because it is more complex. You can do more good with it, but you can also do more evil with it, and it is also more likely to let you down. But its potential for good should not be ignored just because things can go wrong. You shouldn't just throw out your computer and use only your calculator instead on the grounds that your computer could get a virus. Just as we shouldn't overlook humans because of the evil we are capable of and the damage we have caused, because that ignores our potential for good.

 

Humans are the only species on this earth capable of destroying this planet. But we are also the only ones capable of saving it in an emergency situation. Take this, for example--if scientists detected an asteroid on course with earth that would hit the planet in 40 years and destroy all life, could the tigers save us? Could the dolphins save us? Could they have even detected the asteroid in the first place? No.

 

Humans, on the other hand, could see the asteroid coming and could potentially avert the disaster by using financial resources to develop a means to blow the asteroid up while it is still in space, thus sparing the earth and all its creatures. Tigers could never do that, so I cannot help but consider tigers (and all other animals) less important than humans because they are not sapient, and thus not capable of nearly as much good as we are (though they are also not capable of nearly as much evil).

 

Thus if I had $1000 to donate to charity, every red cent of that money would go towards humans. None for animals, though I bear them no ill will. I just can't justify using finite resources for the prevention of animal suffering/death rather than preventing suffering/death for sapient beings.

 

...Sorry for the ramble. That's just how I feel and I felt like explaining it fully.

 

Not that I don't care about animals. If I saw an animal suffering in my daily life and I could help it, I would. And I have before, actually.

Edited November 20, 2010 by Renorei

[Vexx]

Humans are the only species on this earth capable of destroying this planet. But we are also the only ones capable of saving it in an emergency situation. Take this, for example--if scientists detected an asteroid on course with earth that would hit the planet in 40 years and destroy all life, could the tigers save us? Could the dolphins save us? Could they have even detected the asteroid in the first place? No.

....I'll have to say that I think we'd have a snowball's chance in hell of saving the planet if an asteroid of that size is heading our way. :I

 

....Even if we could, what other good can we do? Are we just here for miraculous asteroid protection for this planet?

I'm serious here- what good do humans do for this planet that isn't against what we have caused ourselves? ....Asteroids and aliens?

[Nimrodel]

"Say you had a thousand bucks. How would you divide it between an animal charity and a human related charity "

 

I'd donate to an animal related charity.

 

I was going to answer some of the other questions that has turned up along the way, but all of a sudden I can't remember any of them, so

[Hawktalon]

Animals. Don't argue with me. It won't change my opinion.

[Shienvien]

That's why there's nothing wrong with aborting a non-sapient, unthinking fetus, but there's something very wrong with killing a sapient human.

I agree with this part, as well as I generally do think the lives of my fellow (thought-capable and not willfully evil) specimens as more important than the lives of the same amount of other animals.

 

However, I do not consider animals or plants as little value as the quoted. They too, think and feel, even when the complexity of thinking and feeling depends on the creature's build and capabilities. After all- we *aren't* the only sapient kind of animals out there. We might excel others we know in this area, but we're no better or more unique than a raven, rat, or when it comes to being unique only, a rock.

 

 

 

As for donating... Depends entirely on circumstances. And on occasion, the human(s) or other animal(s) under question.

[Nine]

When I see people donating money to animal charities when there are still humans in this world who are suffering and dying (through no fault of their own), I am always flabbergasted.  It's something I have trouble conceiving of.  Because animals are not sapient, they don't have the same capacity to suffer like we do.  They have the same capacity to feel physical pain, but not the same capacity to suffer, which is primarily a mental thing.  I am amazed that people would devote resources to saving a bunch of animals when they could instead devote those resources to preventing the suffering of sapient beings or preventing the deaths of sapient beings. 

I'm flabbergasted that people think as you do =o Animals don't have the same capacity to suffer as humans? Suffering has nothing to do with perceived sapience; burning alive is unbearable suffering regardless if you can use a spoon or eat from the ground. I'm not sure where this belief comes from either, when most everything points to exactly the opposite.

 

There was some psychological test ages ago that pretty much proved that- when deprived of basic psychological and biological comfort needs- animals go insane just as a human would. It's illegal now since it was basically torture, but I can't remember the same. Ah well =p Could've been an interesting read for those who aren't convinced animals can suffer like humans. They were kept in metal boxes with nothing in in, no light, by themselves, soundproof, things like that. The animals actually began showing symptoms of psychopathy.

 

In all honesty, I'm tentative to reply to some of the posts in here, simply because I get the feeling most of it is dictated by religion, teachings, or handed down beliefs. Not real fun to chat about since a majority of it is simply "what I believe in", done-and-done =(