wa123

In the end, I think having a soul would depend on one's ability to 'grant' a soul to a lesser being. Isn't that an _expression_ of some sort of religious belief? Obviously not yours. O Sean         London After Midnight         http://www.londonaftermidnight.com         For LAM info email:         This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it (remove 'SPAMKILL')         Usenet: alt.music.london-am         P.O. Box 1377, Hollywood, CA, 90078-1377, USA.         Tel: 1.323.782.5551

Ok, keep that in mind when the crack head pulls a gun on you in the alley. I am a person and an animal is an animal. You keep coming up with personifications using human examples which don't apply to this situation at all. When you say, What does the animal think about being eaten? or Animals feel pain, so therefore they have a soul. you aren't making any point at all. What if I said... How would you like it if a person who was faster and meaner than you suddenly grabbed you while you were drinking a coke, and along with a bunch of his friends ripped your arms off and disemboweled you on the spot. And then I explained that I was talking about a pride of lions bringing down a gazelle at a water hole in the African Veldt. It would be just about as dumb as saying that butchering a steer for food is the same thing as a crack head pulling a gun in an alley. There is a *big* difference between people and animals. That much is self evident. You might be interested in some of the fundamentals of debating... There are seven classical logical fallacies: 1. Ad Hominum: Attack the person, not the argument. 2. Pathetic: Attributing Human characteristics to animals    or things. 3. Post hoc (ergo) Propter hoc: After the fact , (therefore)    because of the fact. 4. Circular Reasoning: Making an argument that does not    conclude. 5. False Premises: A sound argument _base_d on a false premise. 6. Leaping (jumping) to Conclusions: If A = B and P = Q,    therefore A = Q. 7. Begging the Question: Formulating an argument in terms of    the desired conclusion. Although you've got some nice examples of the other numbers going here, you're solidly rooted in number two. Blessings Elder Perm Poom The First Internet McChurch Tabernacle http://www.mcchurch.com

Although you've got some nice examples of the other numbers going here, you're solidly rooted in number two.         And that's your opinion, as wrong as it is, IMO. I would say you're firmly planted in denial. You continually deny any fact I might present and also resort to saying things like you're talking silly and misquoting me (not to mention the outright putdowns of my beliefs- saying that I feel the way I do about animals rights _base_d on the cow with big long eyelashes). So lets count how many of those apply to you, shall we?         You have displayed a lack of knowledge on the treatment of food animals and animal physioloy/psychology. For one you said animals can't be evil: a famous study on chimps by, I think, Wolfgang Kohler in the Canary Islands showed two chimps taunting a chicken, actually hitting it with a piece of wire over and over which one chimp hid behind his back until the chicken was in range for the next beating. The other chimp tempted the chicken with food. This went on for quite a while until the chimps tired of their abuse. This showed behavior thought to be unique to humans; cooperation, planning a future course of action, deception and cruelty. It also showed the chicken was pretty stupid.         So when you say animals are so vastly different from humans by having no capacity for evil or abstract thinking, you are actually quite wrong. There are some animals who not only share an amazing amount of their genes with us, but also behavioral patterns AND even the ability to communicate with species outside their own, like the  many chimps and other primates taught sign language and other forms of communication with man (and many of these studies actually show clearly abstract thinking- in a non human animal!!!). I am not saying they are as intelligent by our standards as man, just that they are more similar than you seem to think. And to write all animals off as lesser beings undeserving of compassion in the face of all this real evidence (not PeTA propaganda) is downright hostile, IMO.         My MAIN point through all this, which you think is circular logic, is that since these facts exist, isn't there a slight possibility that your not granting a soul to any animal other than man amounts to nothing more than Human Chauvinism? Even with the fossil record proving that man came from animals, proving that all life on earth is connected? Even with the very plausible theory that all life on earth could have spawned from the same slime pool billions of years ago, ONE single spontaneous burst of life?         The illogic of God granting souls to only the most cruel and selfish beast He ever made, man, and only inventing souls at 10:30pm on New Years eve (if all recorded time since the Big Bang were compressed into a single year) is mind numbing to me. Again, you are free to think what you want, however, I would think one would allow the possibility that all the mountains of evidence, which show animals and man to be very similar, do in fact have an inkling of truth about them. I am not saying there is no God or that man is not important, just that perhaps we don't have all the facts in just yet. And to allow the killing of animals, which of course an animal _object_s to (that is NOT applying 'human attributes' to an animal, it's just plain silly to deny the fact that no animal wants to die), to go on is just plain cruel. By anyone's standards. Keep an open mind... Sean         London After Midnight         http://www.londonaftermidnight.com         For LAM info email:         This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it (remove 'SPAMKILL')         Usenet: alt.music.london-am         P.O. Box 1377, Hollywood, CA, 90078-1377, USA.         Tel: 1.323.782.5551

Keep an open mind... You are being far to kind He's using every exuse in the book to liberate his concience and make anyone who feels that animal abuse is wrong look like they are in another dream world.  He doesn't realize how uncivilized and silly it looks.  But if he wants to continue to be naive about the health risks that red meat causes and if he wants to be selfish, well it's a free world