If Civilization is "wired in" for human beings, why did it (seemingly!) take so long to develop? And if it is not wired in, why did it ever develop at all?>

<Which animals are we allowed to kill without being unethical or immoral? Which of these have sufficient cognition and self-awareness to feel pain like us? (Naturally if one assumes all these have souls, then it would be unethical to kill them without just cause.)

1. Sponge
2. Jellyfish
3. Sea star
4. Earthworm
5. Insect
6. Fish
7. Frog
8. Lizard
9. Chicken
10. Opossum
11. Shrew
12. Mouse
13. Cow
14. Pig
15. Dog
16. Seal
17. Whale/ Dolphin
18. Baboon
19. Gibbon
20. Chimpanzee>

Generally speaking, it would be safe to say that gratuitously killing any animals within that list is both unethical and immoral.

The moral arguments normally depend on religious dogma, and the bottom line would be that needlessly killing any animals would be abusing god's/gods' endowments to humanity.

Ethically, reasons for killing animals generally revolve around the need for food and other animal products (leather, glycerin, bone meal etc), or self defence. Hunting really only remains an ethical activity where it is still reasonably essential for survival, which the rise of horticulture and the spread of industrial civilisation increasingly pre-empts.

The further consideration within ethics of the need for animal meat and products, vis a vis alternatives, combined with some serious questions about the suffering inflicted on animals farmed and or harvested for their bodies is obviously far more contentious.

Bottom line with ethical vegetarians is not so much the killing of animals for their meat and other products, but the suffering inflicted on animals during their captivity and leading up to and including the manner of their death.

Notwithstanding that, the ethics of killing non-humans rests upon the considerations of need, described above, and the means by which those human needs (vs for example, human vanity) are met in separating non-humans from their body parts.

It's all about cruelty, and the extent to which non-humans are able to experience suffering as result. Clearly non-human mammals, which have similar nervous systems, will suffer physical pain in a manner redolent of humans. Many will suffer terror when faced with the prospect of inescapable death.

Humans can suffer more than other animals as our capacity for suffer is augmented by our intelligence and imaginations, and our ability to understand events happening non-locally. For example, the prospect of imprisonment, or a friend or relative suffering in another country, all the things that non-human animals don't have to experience.

<More than 2 million years ago, scores of whales congregating off the Pacific Coast of South America mysteriously met their end.>

SOL. Smiling out loud. (",)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungus...

<"Great mystery" = code for "doesn't fit in with evolutionary theory".>

They are both eukaryotes under Woese's taxonomic system, and both are Opisthokonts under Cavalier-Smith's classification system, but Cavalier-Smith's scheme that marks their similarities in having flagellate cells with only one flagella each doesn't in any case mean they possess some sort of nervous system and/or sentience.

As I've argued, the extent to which an organism can suffer determines the extent of consideration it should receive if it's to be marked for death.

Yet, I'd agree that the notion that dolphins, primates and a few others have significant brains and in the case of some, the capacity for fairly sophisticated problem solving and even abstract thought and creativity, should be a good marketing strategy for better care and conservation. The capacity for mammals to raise and care for family, and to love and to experience emotion, should also be a factor influencing everyone with spiritual and humanitarian values.

I just saw a feature on TV which was about an intelligent piglet that recognised itself in a mirror the first time, which is supposed to be a marker for sentience, if not borderline sapience. In fact, I believe that some humans that have never seen mirrors didn't recognise they were seeing themselves in the mirror the first time. The doco makers wondered if people would be so keen to eat pig if they know how intelligent they are potentially.

While I don't quite buy your position, I think it has some validity. But stepping back and considering the big picture, why does the human level of cognition somehow confer a measure of ethical consideration upon killing? If you wish to consider the various levels of cognition in animals in determing the morality of killing them, shouldn't you be consistent and consider the various levels of cognition in their killing? For example, do the more advanced predators have some ethical obligation in their killing? I doubt you'd answer yes, but that alone shows that we are talking a totally different ball game between humans and other animals.

<twinlark: I just saw a feature on TV which was about an intelligent piglet that recognised itself in a mirror the first time, which is supposed to be a marker for sentience, if not borderline sapience.>

That's fascinating.

Pigs BTW are said to be the most intelligent of the hoofed mammals.

<OhioChessFan: But stepping back and considering the big picture, why does the human level of cognition somehow confer a measure of ethical consideration upon killing? If you wish to consider the various levels of cognition in animals in determine the morality of killing them, shouldn't you be consistent and consider the various levels of cognition in their killing? For example, do the more advanced predators have some ethical obligation in their killing?>

Additional info: I have read info on chimpanzees killing other chimpanzees for little apparent reason. Killer whales (a dolphin) are also known to occasionally kill smaller dolphins and then ignore the bodies instead of eating them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetart...

Cetaceans then in a sense are like deer that went to live in the sea.

Maybe it only looks like "suddenly" to us because we don't have all the information. Maybe whatever art preceded these paintings did not survive. Or...

Maybe there is a great deal we do not know.

The Bible records two events which wiped out or shattered civilization--the Flood, and the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel. Which to me suggests that what we call "civilization" is very, very much older than we have always thought. Maybe the cave paintings, because of where they were, are all that remains of one of these proto-civilizations.

Maybe "civilization," in one form or another, has been with us from the beginning: or rather, since sometime after Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden.

I believe God created human beings in their present form, with all their capacity for civilization; and that our understanding of prehistory has been limited not only by the scarcity of the evidence, but by our own preconceptions.

<But stepping back and considering the big picture, why does the human level of cognition somehow confer a measure of ethical consideration upon killing?>

Interesting question. I guess the answer is that that is the only tool that enables moral and ethical considerations to be invented, perceived, contemplated, implemented and amended. But it has to be coupled with empathy and compassion to produce the sorts of desirable values most of us seek. Intellect free of the latter attributes constitutes psychopathy

<If you wish to consider the various levels of cognition in animals in determing the morality of killing them, shouldn't you be consistent and consider the various levels of cognition in their killing?>

I'm not sure we <should>, but we certainly <could>. The question is what are the implications of so doing? Some vegetarians try and turn their cats and dogs into vegetarians, and end up with neurotic, unhealthy animals, so I'm not sure that enforcing our ideas of ethics and morality on non-humans will do much other than entrench our own prejudices.

Whenever I read such passages from the Bible, I tend to do exegesis first. I do not take the above Biblical stories literally.

It does not mean that whoever recorded them is lying, for essentially the same reason why every author in history that writes fiction is not necessarily lying or propagating falsehoods. Shakespeare for example wrote many superb fictional masterpieces. They are fiction; but they also present truthful messages. If you are a Christian, then you must be familiar with how Jesus himself regularly told what essentially were short fictional stories. For instance the story of the prodigal son or the buried talents are told as a form of fictional short story (a parable); but Jesus certainly was not lying or and did not intend to disseminate a falsehood even if the stories that he told were not necessarily literally true.

Many Biblical passages make more sense if interpreted according to the context of the prevailing culture at the time and place where they were recorded.

One important example of exegesis:

The theory of evolution is one of the main points of debate between Creationists and Evolutionists. Creationists are almost always literalists when it comes to interpreting sacred scriptures; and they base their belief in the Genesis story.

For Christians (and Jews) does the Genesis story absolutely invalidate evolution? Yes, if one is a person who interprets the Genesis story literally. Otherwise, for people who do exegesis, no. Notice that the there is a kind of development in the Genesis story- from nothing, then comes the sea and land, then fish and terrestrial animals, then humans. This could be interpreted as a form of evolution.

Neither Shakespeare with his fiction, nor Jesus with his parables, gave any indication those particular stories were historical. To be consistent, you should affirm that if Shakespeare had ever written an autobiography, we should be reluctant to accept it as such. And that's just ludicrous.

I realize to the extreme, yes, it does smack of psychopathy. I know some deer hunters who enjoy the hunt so much and get this look in their eyes that makes me shudder..... OTOH, most hunters strike me as concientious and empathetic individuals. Who make reasonable efforts to avoid taking a shot that won't be a kill shot, etc. And I know some reasonable people who feel that hunting, among other activities, is innately distasteful and/or immoral.