will1182 said:
Oh boy, people like me. I can see where this is going. I'm done being nice.
I really don't think you need to turn things nasty due to one turn of phrase.
Okay, define "welcome". The cat is simply reacting to your appearance; you perceive it as some sort of gesture.
Exactly the same thing can be applied to humans too.
Yes, humans talk to you and can tell you what they feel, but there's absolutely no proof that that is nothing more than the conditioned response of an organic computer.
Perhaps this is a reflection on you rather than relationships in general. What kids aren't happy to see their dad?
I never said that, my children are perfectly happy to see me, just not
as happy as my cat.
Of course, this is all just my interpretations of gestures, as neither my cat nor children can talk. I have absolutely no proof my children even have feelings, they're probably just acting entirely on instinct.
Having never owned a pet, I am no more blinded than you by your attachment to your pet.
That is precisely the blindness I was talking about. You surround yourself entirely by humans and never other animals, and shock, you see humans as having emotions and other animals not.
You love your pet, and just assume it loves you back.
You're absolutely right.
I love my children, so obviously I have no evidence that they really love me back, I just assume they do because I want them to.
Take a step back and look at it from a neutral perspective.
Okay, all species are descended from a common ancestor.
The very idea one species could evolve emotions entirely independently without any other species at all having them while, at the same time, all the other species have actions that look speciously like emotional responses but really just conditioned instincts, is so utterly absurd, arbitrary and against every concept of evolution that I would find it impossible to believe that anyone could believe it if I wasn't faced with so many people that apparently do.
Yep, I saved my disabled friend who has no parents and let someone with parents die. I'm a selfish bastard.
Please read my post again. Please read the post before that, if that wasn't enough to make you clue in:
I have no problem with that and never said you were.
Did you honestly miss the sarcasm there? Or were you just trying to find something to criticise?
I never said you did say that.
"The parent-child bond doesn't "transcend" death. (Unless you believe in an afterlife, in which case there's no problem anyway, as he'll just end up with his parents anyway.)"
Yes you did.
No I didn't. I said that it wasn't true. Pre-empting the possibility that you might claim it.
I never claimed that you did or would, just that you
might.
And your example for that has how humans react when other humans die. Which, as I pointed out, is pretty damn similar to how people react when their pets die, just to differing degrees. The only exception being the parent-child relationship which is intrinsically biased due to evolution and so inappropriate for the example.
It's not biased or inappropriate, its an example of how human relationships are stronger and generally more important than human-animal relationships. I will not type out that sentence again, because you don't seem to get it.
Calling it "biased" just because it doesn't apply to every relationship is silly, it's a valid example. Especially considering
every human is someone's child.
You're the one not getting it. The parent-child relationship is strong
because it is a parent child relationship,
not because it is a human-human relationship.
If humans gave birth to some other species, the relationship would be just as strong, because they'd still be parent and child. The fact that the parent-child relationship is also human-human is, for the purposes of the argument, essentially coincidence.
Yes, I know you said that, because that is exactly the thing that I have a problem with.
Oh, you have a problem with my opinion? I had no idea, I will immediately recant it because you can't seem to accept that it differs from yours.
Yeah, that's exactly what I was expecting from that statement. A great piece of sarcasm you had there.
The only way this disabled person is different from a dog is that he is a human. He corresponds exactly with a dog in every single one of your arguments as to why humans are more worthy of life and yet you still attribute that same superiority to him even though he fails the very tests you give out yourself
The man can still live a long, fulfilling and enjoyable life, despite his handicap. Don't try to tell me he can't. The man can not be
literally the same as the dog. He does not act purely by instinct, he has the capacity to make friends, and he is not guaranteed to die after 15 years. That alone makes him worth more than a dog. Forgive me if I would save him rather save a fellow human than a dog.
So you'd be fine with someone saving their pet if their pet was an elephant then?