They hunted and killed a baby elephant!

Killing a animal is simply not the equal of killing a human.

Some animals that die don’t deserve it and some people who live don’t deserve it.
But they cannot be equated as a rule.

 

I'm not equating the two. I'm saying it's the same argument; throwing gays off buildings or killing baby elephants, you're saying they're alright practices because they're legal in their jurisdictions and that's bs, unless it was alright for the Nazis to kill all the Jews or Stalin to have his Gulags, etc.

Killing animals for "sport" is EXACTLY like setting a cat on fire to see it run and hear it scream and watch it die, IMO. Go ahead, tell me how they're different except for the size of the animal and the method of killing.

 

Humans re the dominant species its our right to exploit nature around us this includes hunting for sport and slaughtering inferior life for food or if a human desires a trophy to mount or preserve. It was legal so they killed an elephant seems fine by me.

* And I love Veal I don't care if the animal suffers for such a delicious meal.

 

Intellectual honesty noted and appreciated.

 

"Intellectual honesty" is a total lack of morals??

 

Can a citizen of the united states freely travel to any one of these particular countries where homosexuality is illegal, pay to partake in murdering homosexuals by throwing them off of a building, and return home to the united states and face no legal consequences for their actions? Is there a thriving tourist industry built around the legal murdering of homosexuals?

 

It’s the consistency of beliefs. Living those beliefs. The lack of hypocrisy. I respect that even if I don’t agree with his beliefs 100%.

I can respect and understand taking either side of this debate if the individual is consistent and willing to live up to their position.

 

Reinhard Heydrich, considered by many to be the architect of the Final Solution, was noted by most who knew him as a sterling human individual, brave, kind and exceptionally devoted to his family. Without making comparisons to hunters, it should be pointed out that it's not enough to simply believe in something and practice it, the thing you believe in must have a certain modicum of conformity with basic standards of human decency.

Where is the downside for the hunter or veal eater? Of course he is "consistent and willing to live up to his position ". Why wouldn't he be, what's so hard about slaughtering an animal for the fun of watching it die or eating a good cut of veal, All moral quandaries should be that easy.

To put it another way are you willing to let a corrupt politician cheat you of your taxes and rob you of your property just because he can? If he takes the position that he should be able to mulct anyone who cannot stop him then where is the moral inconsistency when he robs little old ladies (or you) of their life's savings?

 

Thank you, that's a really good comparison I've never yet seen anyone bring up, Kudos

 

Agreed.

If you subscribe to a worldview where ethics and morality are subjective there is no logical argument against trophy hunting or eating a hamburger. If we are comfortable with a clean kill in a slaughterhouse with a pneumatic captive bolt we shouldn’t cringe at a clean kill in a wild animals natural habitat with an appropriate firearm. As others have stated, either animals are for our benefit or they aren’t. There really isn’t any middle ground on an animal death for me. That death occurs and the reason has little relevance if animals aren’t the equal of humans. What does matter is ensuring the death (and preceding life lived) is as free of pain and suffering as possible

Might does not make right. On that we also agree.

 

No, it seems we do not if we go by your second para which flatly contradicts what you just said.

We may use animals for our benefit, all animals do, but we should never forget that they do not live for that reason, as Henry Beston has famously said:

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

 

We can’t have it both ways. If we are all animals none of us exist for any “reason” and the above prose is meaningless.

 

I think you have me mixed up with someone else saying if it was legal it was “OK to do” in my opinion.

As far as the difference in shooting an animal to kill it and setting it in fire to burn to death, that not even remotely the same thing IMO. The fire is far more cruel and monstrous in its nature.

 

Wow, a lack of morals lecture from a guy who supports abortion. Killing babies good, killing animals bad? Figure that one out.

 

So making an omelette is identical to wringing the neck of a chicken to those who oppose women's rights?

 

Unless you do it for food.

 

Are these guys going to eat elephant meat??

 

Thanks to the rule of law which has made a rare appearance of late, yes, these guys have that option again.

 

Are omelettes made specifically from fertilized eggs rather than unfertilized eggs? A chicken will lay them regardless of whether they are fertilized or not.

 

Our lives are their own purposes, so are animals. It is indeed "...a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" but that doesn't mean we should indulge and glorify the most atavistic parts of our natures and kill rare and magnificent creatures in the bargain.

 

Huh?

 

Asinine deflection duly noted and ignored for obvious reasons since it disingenuously failed to address the pertinent question.

 

The locals harvest the entire animal..
Nothing goes to waste.

 

Proven wrong countless times in this thread

 

What I find sad is we as humans have chosen to believe we are so low, so insignificant, that we must search for meaning in the ironic attemp to attribute godlike characteristics to lowly animals.