Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Shaker on August 03, 2017, 09:51:58 AM
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Mankind has already consumed more natural resources than the planet can renew throughout 2017:
https://tinyurl.com/y8yw7lsu
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Self aware viruses
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There was an article in 'spiked online' a while ago actually celebrating Earth Overshoot Day. There are apparently people who genuinely believe that there are no limits to human activity or population and that to suggest otherwise constitutes some kind of misanthropy. But then, I guess, an alien visitor to this planet might reasonably assume we all believed this.
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There was an article in 'spiked online' a while ago actually celebrating Earth Overshoot Day. There are apparently people who genuinely believe that there are no limits to human activity or population and that to suggest otherwise constitutes some kind of misanthropy.
Which is Spiked all over, especially that wretched arse Brendan O'Neill, that most pitiable and abject of creatures, the ever attention-hungry professional contrarian.
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There was an article in 'spiked online' a while ago actually celebrating Earth Overshoot Day. There are apparently people who genuinely believe that there are no limits to human activity or population and that to suggest otherwise constitutes some kind of misanthropy. But then, I guess, an alien visitor to this planet might reasonably assume we all believed this.
I suggest we start a crowdfund to pay for the surgery to remove enough vertebrae from each of them to allow them to autofellate, then we would be spared their nincompoopery.
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The Spiked bunch apparently originate in some Libertarian Marxist ideology that see the natural world as nothing more than raw material for human 'progress'. They seem to loathe anyone who values nature for itself and are constantly attacking greens. Claire Fox of the Moral Maze comes from the same stable. She was on that programme last night discussing animal welfare and said that she considered animals to be 'useless' unless they could do something for humans. I just don't understand how anyone could get to this point of view. It really frightens me.
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The Spiked bunch apparently originate in some Libertarian Marxist ideology that see the natural world as nothing more than raw material for human 'progress'. They seem to loathe anyone who values nature for itself and are constantly attacking greens. Claire Fox of the Moral Maze comes from the same stable. She was on that programme last night discussing animal welfare and said that she considered animals to be 'useless' unless they could do something for humans. I just don't understand how anyone could get to this point of view. It really frightens me.
It feels like a kind of personality disorder must be in play. Extreme narcissism of some kind.
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Agree and inherent in the approach is that some humans are more useful than others. The alt right and alt left are really the same but got to that point from the opposite direction.
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The Spiked bunch apparently originate in some Libertarian Marxist ideology that see the natural world as nothing more than raw material for human 'progress'. They seem to loathe anyone who values nature for itself and are constantly attacking greens. Claire Fox of the Moral Maze comes from the same stable. She was on that programme last night discussing animal welfare and said that she considered animals to be 'useless' unless they could do something for humans. I just don't understand how anyone could get to this point of view. It really frightens me.
Don't disagree save on one (actually rather crucial) point: the Spiked mob are about as far away from Marxism as it's possible to be before you start coming around the other side.
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Don't disagree save on one (actually rather crucial) point: the Spiked mob are about as far away from Marxism as it's possible to be before you start coming around the other side.
You may be interested in this
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/05/31/spik-m31.html
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I thought the Moral Maze was a very poor programme last night. I couldn't believe some of the irrational things I was hearing. I would have turned off, but I waited until the end to see if it improved. In my opinion, it did not.
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I thought the Moral Maze was a very poor programme last night. I couldn't believe some of the irrational things I was hearing. I would have turned off, but I waited until the end to see if it improved. In my opinion, it did not.
What did you think were the irrational parts?
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What did you think were the irrational parts?
I would have to listen again to be able to quote, but I'm afraid I have no wish to do that, so I'm sorry I cannot answer your question.
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I would have to listen again to be able to quote, but I'm afraid I have no wish to do that, so I'm sorry I cannot answer your question.
Not looking for quotes, just what the ideas were.
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Not looking for quotes, just what the ideas were.
Which presumably entails quotes.
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Which presumably entails quotes.
Er no. It's perfectly possible to give a sketch of an idea without quoting.
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What did you think were the irrational parts?
I didn't get very far into the programme but was struck by Claire Fox's implicit (and I thought irrational) angle that animals didn't really matter morally because they aren't (in our sense of the phrase) moral beings. I've heard her make this point more explicitly before and it's a quite common view amongst those who don't care much for non-human life. It brings to mind Bentham's famous phrase: 'The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?' It seems to be a way of conveniently ignoring the relevant characteristic of sentient animals so as to argue your case on the grounds of an irrelevant one.
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Thinking about the programme, I prefer to remember a short sentence from the doctor: We are omnivores.'
My reason for this is that those who think we should all be vegans fail, apparently, to consider the fact that the human species would probably have become extinct almost before it started if they had not been meat-eaters.
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I didn't get very far into the programme but was struck by Claire Fox's implicit (and I thought irrational) angle that animals didn't really matter morally because they aren't (in our sense of the phrase) moral beings. I've heard her make this point more explicitly before and it's a quite common view amongst those who don't care much for non-human life. It brings to mind Bentham's famous phrase: 'The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?' It seems to be a way of conveniently ignoring the relevant characteristic of sentient animals so as to argue your case on the grounds of an irrelevant one.
This is the reasoning that would justify post birth killing effectively? A child of two isn't moral so we could just kill it. Same for mental disabilities.
I posted a thread on Ethics and Free thought this morning with an interview with Bart Schultz on his book on utilitarian philosophers, and I think your post highlights that the Felicific Calculus is a concept already loaded with the idea of the capability of suffering being the guide to what should be considered. Despite the seeming coldness of having a calculus, and the naming of it after Happiness, it's much more about avoiding suffering and protecting those who do not have 'normal' input to society.
As I said earlier, I am very much in agreement with you that these views are scary, but I'm not sure that that's because they are irrational. If anything they seem 'too rational', in that it doesn't show empathy.
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Thinking about the programme, I prefer to remember a short sentence from the doctor: We are omnivores.'
My reason for this is that those who think we should all be vegans fail, apparently, to consider the fact that the human species would probably have become extinct almost before it started if they had not been meat-eaters.
Fact /= value.
Omnivore says "is able to eat", not "should eat".
As for extinction: pity.
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Don't know enough about veganism to comment but vegetarianism is healthy and societies which are mainly vegetarian are certainly not dying out. Early Homo sapiens were vegetarian.
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Fact /= value.
Omnivore says "is able to eat", not "should eat".
Yes, but I think it is fairly safe to say that early homosapiens all ate meat of some kind, whether it was fish, birds or mammals!
As for extinction: pity.
[/quote]Welll, I for one am very glad I have had my brief moments of existence as a member of the human species!
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Don't know enough about veganism to comment but vegetarianism is healthy and societies which are mainly vegetarian are certainly not dying out. Early Homo sapiens were vegetarian.
Evidence?
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Yes, but I think it is fairly safe to say that early homosapiens all ate meat of some kind, whether it was fish, birds or mammals!
Yes, that's a fact, as far as we can tell at the moment.
Welll, I for one am very glad I have had my brief moments of existence as a member of the human species!
That isn't a fact but a value, and one I don't share.
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That isn't a fact but a value, and one I don't share.
Can you say why that is, or would you rather not.
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Well ... the actions of humans as outlined in the OP for starters.