PunkyKat wrote:
A concept I will never understand. I remember watching animals on TV be killed because they eventualy lost it and attacked their abusive owners and the police would kill it and I would ask why they had to do that and I was told "a human life is more important than an animals". When I tell how I think animal testing and vivesection is wrong in any form I am told it is okay because it is helping people and that human life is more important. Why? Humans are the most selfish, greedy and destructive creatures. I love my bearded dragon more than anything and would defend her to the death if I had too. I would save her before I was to save a person, even a family member. Why are humans oh so important? When I asked that I usualy got a religious answer about humans were created in God's image and they have "dominion" over the animals. I never bought that and it just adds another reason to the list of why I dislike most Christians.
My mum used to say my autism is the reason I felt this way.
I am a Christian, but I'm also a huge animal person. Logically I've never been able to reason why people's lives are worth more than animals, unless we are looking at who contributes more to society...and if we are looking at it from that point, we would save the drug dog working for the police before we saved the homeless person on the street contributing to the drug problem. And we know most people don't think of it that way.
There are more and more studies being done presently/lately on consciousness in animals and in animal intelligence, and it's making humans rethink how we treat animals. With studies like these, it also makes us think should be valuing their life more highly than we do now. But the fact is, at least for me anyway, the majority will think of humans as more valuable than animals. For example...I had a biology lab class today. We looked at starfish embryos under a microscope. If we had to reach in a tank and kill a starfish to put under our microscope I wouldn't have participated, luckily we had (probably very old) prepared slides. Now I'm willing to bet my life anyone in there would have pitched a fit if we had human embryos in those slides...even if we think we value starfish as highly as humans, I just can't accept that I would react the same way to the death of a starfish as I would to the death of a person. I probably wouldn't even react the same to the death of a cat the same as the death of a horse, they're different animals and I'm more attached to one than the other. Some people related more to people, some have a real connection with animals.
I think I just rambled there, it's 2am and I don't have the energy to see what all I just said