[315] in Vegetarian_Support_Group
something to ponder - reactions??
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (elsiedee@MIT.EDU)
Sat Jan 21 20:54:05 1995
From: elsiedee@MIT.EDU
To: vsg@MIT.EDU
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 20:53:08 EST
------- Forwarded Message
From: "Brian A. Luke" <LUKE@checkov.hm.udayton.edu>
Organization: University of Dayton
To: ar-talk@cygnus.com
Date: Sun, 25 Dec 1994 16:54:48 EST
Subject: human superiority?
Priority: normal
X-Mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.22
Message-Id: <158006203D11@checkov.hm.udayton.edu>
A poster made some claims about human superiority (sorry, I
inadvertently deleted the post). Others responded, and I just wanted
to add my $.03.
He claimed human superiority based on length of life, which entails
that vegetarians have more rights than meat-eaters, since we live
longer on average. That's nice for us!!
He also claimed superiority based on topping the (1) evolutionary,
(2) food and (3) intellectual chain. Something like that.
(1) Evolutionary superiority means adaptiveness, if it means
anything. This can be shown either by how long a species has
survived, or by how many different ecological niches the species
occupies. We lose on both counts. Homo sapiens has been around for
a few hundred thousand years, but the average life-span of a land-
based animal species is 4 million years, so we're not even close to
the average yet. Some bacteria species have been around more than 4
billion years, so we've got another 4 billion years to go before we
can begin to call ourselves the best. Secondly, humans do occupy a
wide range of differing habitats, but so do ants, termites, etc.
(2) Humans are not at the top of the food chain. Even those humans
who choose to eat flesh eat only herbivores, so they're no further up
the food chain than many other carnivorous mammals. To be at the top
we'd have to eat lions, for example. Of course, this all begs the
question of whether humans are naturally carnivorous.
(3) The claim of human intellectual superiority is supportable.
Here's a quote from another list to make the point:
"He kills wildlife by the million in order to protect his domestic
animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the
billions and eats them. This in turn kills man by the millions,
because eating all those animals leads to degenerative--& fatal--
health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease and cancer. So
then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for curess
for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are
being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat
is being used to fatten domestic animals." C. David Coats.
Man's intellect in action is something to behold.
Brian
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