4tsrgsegserg posted:

So what do you think about the concept of biological equality that liberalism is premised on? If we were to base society on the premise that all living things are equal, then we would focus on improving the wellbeing of cockroaches and antarctic krill because they greatly exceed humans in number, biomass, and combined brain volume. It seems like in order to deal with reality we have to accept biological inequality among species. Does this extend to humanity itself? Is there biological inequality within species?

Catholic ethics has been criticized by some zoophilists because it refuses to admit that animals have rights. But it is indisputable that, when properly understood and fairly judged, Catholic doctrine — though it does not concede rights to the brute creation — denounces cruelty to animals as vigorously and as logically as do those moralists who make our duty in this respect the correlative of a right in the animals.

In order to establish a binding obligation to avoid the wanton infliction of pain on the brutes, it is not necessary to acknowledge any right inherent in them. Our duty in this respect is part of our duty towards God. From the juristic standpoint the visible world with which man comes in contact is divided into persons and non-persons. For the latter term the word "things" is usually employed. Only a person, that is, a being possessed of reason and self-control, can be the subject of rights and duties; or, to express the same idea in terms more familiar to adherents of other schools of thought, only beings who are ends in themselves, and may not be treated as mere means to the perfection of other beings, can possess rights. Rights and duties are moral ties which can exist only in a moral being, or person. Beings that may be treated simply as means to the perfection of persons can have no rights, and to this category the brute creation belongs. In the Divine plan of the universe the lower creatures are subordinated to the welfare of man.

But while these animals are, in contradistinction to persons, classed as things, it is none the less true that between them and the non-sentient world there exists a profound difference of nature which we are bound to consider in our treatment of them. The very essence of the moral law is that we respect and obey the order established by the Creator. Now, the animal is a nobler manifestation of His power and goodness than the lower forms of material existence. In imparting to the brute creation a sentient nature capable of suffering — a nature which the animal shares in common with ourselves — God placed on our dominion over them a restriction which does not exist with regard to our dominion over the non-sentient world. We are bound to act towards them in a manner conformable to their nature. We may lawfully use them for our reasonable wants and welfare, even though such employment of them necessarily inflicts pain upon them. But the wanton infliction of pain is not the satisfaction of any reasonable need, and, being an outrage against the Divinely established order, is therefore sinful. This principle, by which, at least in the abstract, we may solve the problem of the lawfulness of vivisection and other cognate questions, is tersely put by Zigliara:

The service of man is the end appointed by the Creator for brute animals. When, therefore, man, with no reasonable purpose, treats the brute cruelly he does wrong, not because he violates the right of the brute, but because his action conflicts with the order and the design of the Creator (Philosophia Moralis, 9th ed., Rome, p. 136).

With more feeling, but with no less exactness, the late Cardinal Manning expressed the same doctrine:

It is perfectly true that obligations and duties are between moral persons, and therefore the lower animals are not susceptible of the moral obligations which we owe to one another; but we owe a seven-fold obligation to the Creator of those animals. Our obligation and moral duty is to Him who made them and if we wish to know the limit and the broad outline of our obligation, I say at once it is His nature and His perfections, and among these perfections one is, most profoundly, that of Eternal Mercy. And therefore, although a poor mule or a poor horse is not, indeed, a moral person, yet the Lord and Maker of the mule is the highest Lawgiver, and His nature is a law unto Himself. And in giving a dominion over His creatures to man, He gave it subject to the condition that it should be used in conformity to His perfections which is His own law, and therefore our law (The Zoophilist, London, 1 April, 1887).

While Catholic ethical doctrine insists upon the merciful treatment of animals, it does not place kindness towards them on the same plane of duty as benevolence towards our fellow-men. Nor does it approve of unduly magnifying, to the neglect of higher duties, our obligations concerning animals. Excessive fondness for them is no sure index of moral worth; it may be carried to un-Christian excess; and it can coexist with grave laxity in far more important matters. There are many imitators of Schopenhauer, who loved his dog and hated his kind.

When asked about the rights of animals in a 2002 interview, the pope, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, responded, "That is a very serious question. At any rate, we can see that they are given into our care, that we cannot just do whatever we want with them. Animals, too, are God's creatures . . . Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible."

No group bears a heavier duty of self-restraint toward other creatures than the people who farm them, and John Paul II, in a 2000 address, had a message specifically for modern agriculture: “Resist the temptations of productivity and profit that work to the detriment of nature. When you forget this principle, becoming tyrants and not custodians of the Earth, sooner or later the Earth rebels.”

You can learn more about the Bible's teachings about care and concern for animals at JesusVeg.com.

liberalism is premised on the equal moral value of human lives, not "biological equality". i'm not even sure what you mean by this phrase.

Biological inequality as in the difference in value between a cockroach and a human being. You're just being difficult, aren't you?

racist eugenics is absurd however, which should be obvious to anyone with any experience meeting and interacting people of different races.

Well I guess this doesn't have any practical relevance. But since we're on a leftist forum we're not concerned with reality, so consider this example.

In Roseweird eugenic utopia you're aiming to create a new race of superlesbians or whatever, from what I understand. Doesn't this imply a distinction between"superior" and "inferior" types of humans, with more resources allocated toward the reproduction and survival of superior races such as women, communist lesbians, etc as opposed to inferior races like men?

Keven posted:

I need a project

print off some of these and put them up in yr neighborhood/place of employment: