Hi all
IAN:
<some snipped>
There was a pattern to what occured in Germany during the national
socialist period. It starts with elevating animals to having the same
rights as humans. Once you have made this IMMORAL (IMO) step the
action of treating people as animals becomes a much smaller step.
Human life is SACRED.
Animal life is not SACRED
JON:
Human life is sacred to humans. No doubt about it. As a human being, it is
moral of me to consider sacred the lives of other humans. Humans have the
moral obligation to consider humans more sacred than other life forms. That
doesn't mean other life forms are not sacred.
Animal life is sacred to animals. Of course animals don't know what the word
"sacred" means, but they care about their own life in a simple fundamental
way. When their life is threatened, they care enough to fight or run for
their life. You can call it instinct, but this instinct is a primitive moral
code. Each cell in each animal also has a primitive moral code. Our crippling
dependence on logic sometimes gets in the way of seeing this. We look at
cells and just see biological functions. We don't see the Morality at work
under the microscope, but it's there.
All goes back to my original assertion that Morality is not just a human
invention. The word Morality is a human invention, yes, just like the word
"gravity".
IAN:
To suggest that because you can make
anything sacred, everything is sacred is to debase the very concept of
something being sacred.
JON:
Everything is sacred, but that doesn't mean human beings aren't supposed to
consider certain aspects of life more sacred than others. As humans, we have
a moral responsibility to consider those things that relate directly to
humanity as the most sacred. If we were dogs, we wouldn't have that
responsibility. As humans, we must consider humanity and human life more
sacred than anything else.
But to say nothing else is sacred besides humans is wrong. This whole planet
is sacred. The air we breathe is sacred. The creatures we share this planet
with are sacred. Yes, humanity is the most sacred, but other aspects of
reality are sacred as well. It's all about caring. Failing to care for the
world around us has direct ramifications on us, so when we hurt the world, we
hurt ourselves. Hurting ourselves is immoral, and by failing to care about
the rest of the world (the non-human aspects of the world), we hurt
ourselves. So it is Moral to consider all of reality sacred, and this does
not belittle the word sacred at all.
Jon
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