Cruelty to animals

[Jax Agnesson]

I am wondering whether there are any consistent differences between theist and non-theist attitudes to hurting animals for human advantage.
Debate: Do our feelings about hurting animals have any basis other than personal preference?

[Thatguy]

I am wondering whether there are any consistent differences between theist and non-theist attitudes to hurting animals for human advantage.
Debate: Do our feelings about hurting animals have any basis other than personal preference?

I do think that there's more basis than personal experience. For me, science plays a role. Research into the degree to which animals feel pain and into how intelligent they are influences my views about hurting animals. As a result of what I've seen from science, I now don't eat octopus. Those guys are way smarter than I used to think when I ordered the sushi. So the more intelligent I'm told a creature is, the less inclined I am to hurt it. The more I'm shown they seem to feel empathy, the less likely I am to hurt them. The more I think about how related we are, biologically, the more sympathy I give them. So the thought of hurting a chimp or a whale disgusts me in ways that I don't feel nearly as strongly with other animals.

I should probably stop there, but... Science, I feel, gives us verifiable facts which are compellingly enough objective that we come to accept them whether we want to or not. I may not, as a fisherman, want to accept that fish feel pain with a hook, but objective tests show otherwise. This affects my willingness to fish.
In my experience, religion lacks that objective evidence and thus people tend to select their religious views to fit their own outlook. So a person who feels compassion for animals will select those parts of their religion that call for kindness to animals and recognition that we are all god's creatures. Those who are less favorable are more likely to believe the religious views that humans are not animals, that the animals are placed here for us to use, and that raising animals up in our estimation amounts to worshiping the creation instead of the creator.

[Jax Agnesson]

This idea that we may have more empathy with the animals that seem more like us (in behaviour, in appearance, or both) is interesting. Also interesting is the way kids can really care about Tamagotchi. This looks to me like the basis of morality may be an instinctive empathic response.

[LiamOS]

I think our feelings regarding animal treatment stem from social norms, and varying levels of emotional projection and empathy, whether those are warranted or not. In the presence of religion, this can change somewhat, but within a society, I think religion is less of a factor than one might expect, since religion will conform to social norms or vice versa.

[cnorman18]

Just for the record; the prevention of cruelty to animals is another innovation which MAY be credited to the Jews. The principle is called, in Hebrew, tza'ar ba'alei chayim (literally, "the suffering of living creatures."

It is indirectly legislated in the Ten Commandments: "The seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God; you shall not do any work -- you, your son or your daughter ... you ox or your ass, or any of your cattle..." (Deuteronomy 5:14). If that doesn't seem like a big deal, remember that this was mandated in Jewish tradition in the Bronze Age -- and 3,000 years later, in 1892, the great philanthropist Andrew Carnegie still compelled his human employees at the Homestead Steel Mine in Pennsylvania to work seven days a week.

The legislation about animals doesn't end there. It is forbidden to muzzle an animal while working it in the field (Deuteronomy 25:4), so it could eat all it wanted. "You shall not plow with an ox and a mule harnessed together" (Deuteronomy 22:10) -- being of unequal size and strength, both animals would suffer. A cow and its calf may not be slaughtered on the same day (Leviticus 22:28). If a man finds a bird's nest, he may not kill the mother with the young; he must send her away first (Deuteronomy 22:6); according to Maimonides, this is because "the pain of the animals under such circumstances is very great" (Guide to the Perplexed, 3:48). Maimonides wrote that in the twelfth century.

And it did not end with the Hebrew Bible. In the Talmud, there is a dictum that a man is forbidden to eat until he has fed his animals; and of course kosher slaughter is designed to be painless. One of the Laws of Noah, which in Jewish tradition apply to ALL people, not just Jews, is that one may not eat meat from a living animal; this was, and still is, a practice among some herding people, who will cut meat from an animal, bind up the wound, and cook it over a fire while in the field. (The only common violations of that law for most of us today would be the eating of "mountain oysters," or bull testicles, and stone crab claws.)

Notice that I do not attribute these laws to God. They were present in Jewish tradition by the 5th century BCE at the latest. Whether or not one believes that they come from God is irrelevant.

[Thatguy]

Just for the record; the prevention of cruelty to animals is another innovation which MAY be credited to the Jews.

And fundamentalist Christians like to point to the role of Wilberforce in founding the SPCA to show that their faith can also be seen as a driving force in preventing cruelty to animals. Kind people of every faith can, I'm sure, give many arguments from their faith to support kindness. That's a good thing insofar as it encourages anyone to be kind.

Still, there are those who find chicken waving to be cruel to animals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapparot

And the number of references to slaughtering animals as sacrifices seems less than PETAesque to me, the casual observer.

[cnorman18]

Just for the record; the prevention of cruelty to animals is another innovation which MAY be credited to the Jews.

And fundamentalist Christians like to point to the role of Wilberforce in founding the SPCA to show that their faith can also be seen as a driving force in preventing cruelty to animals. Kind people of every faith can, I'm sure, give many arguments from their faith to support kindness. That's a good thing insofar as it encourages anyone to be kind.

Still, there are those who find chicken waving to be cruel to animals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapparot

Funny you should mention that; I saw it mentioned in some of my reading for my last post. Modern Jews generally oppose the practice on those very grounds, even though just waving a chicken around doesn't seem to me to constitute "cruelty."

Shouldn't be a surprise; the following is from the Wikipedia site that you linked above.

Some Jews also oppose the use of chickens for Kapparot on the grounds of Tza'ar Ba'alei Chayim (the principle banning cruelty to animals). On 2005 Yom Kippur eve, a number of caged chickens were abandoned in rainy weather as part of a kapparot operation in Brooklyn, New York; some of these starving and dehydrated chickens were subsequently rescued by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.[8] Jacob Kalish, an Orthodox Jewish man from Williamsburg, was charged with animal cruelty for the drowning deaths of 35 of these kapparot chickens. In response to such reports of the mistreatment of chickens, Jewish animal rights organizations have begun to picket public observances of kapparot, particularly in Israel.

Now, waving a chicken around may or may not be "cruel," but this obviously was; and it had, as you can see, its consequences.

I've never seen this done; I've never even heard of it before today. I'd be willing to bet that only the most old-fashioned Orthodox Jews still do it. For one thing, I used to raise chickens, and swinging a live one around your head is likely to leave something of a mess scattered about. Just carrying one will do that.

In any case, I'm not talking about modern rationalizations or doubtful claims. I'm talking about actual teachings in actual documents that are thousands of years old. Why would you want to trivialize and dismiss what may be the origins of the IDEA of avoiding cruelty to animals?

And the number of references to slaughtering animals as sacrifices seems less than PETAesque to me, the casual observer.

Um, we haven't sacrificed animals for two thousand years. Perhaps you're thinking of Voodoo.

Sorry, I'm not particularly impressed with PETA. Not all animal-rights groups are this nutty -- see below -- but it is a fact that PETA once sent a message to Yassir Arafat asking him to make sure that no donkeys were killed when they were sending bombs into Israel with the intention of mass-murdering humans. The letter has been removed from their website, but it's easy to find and read online, because it was so widely noted with outrage. They even defended it -- the link here is to animalrights.net, which wasn't particularly impressed with PETA in this instance, either.

[Thatguy]

[quote="cnorman18
I'm talking about actual teachings in actual documents that are thousands of years old. Why would you want to trivialize and dismiss what may be the origins of the IDEA of avoiding cruelty to animals? [/quote]

I started with a more lighthearted reference only because it was the first to come to mind as it's been an issue locally in recent years. It is an actual, for some traditional, practice. I don't consider swinging chickens to be a major abuse and made sure to give a reference that shows that even many Orthodox Jews consider it at odds with the faith for the reasons you gave.

Um, we haven't sacrificed animals for two thousand years. Perhaps you're thinking of Voodoo.

No, it was Judaism I had in mind, and this objection was more serious. Not sacrificing animals because the Temple is no longer there, with plans to resume once the Temple's rebuilt, is not the same as stopping because the act was cruel. There is, as I said, plenty of justification in the religious teachings for treating animals well. But there's also plenty of precedent for seeing them as objects to be harmed to serve our ends.

[Mr. LongView]

As far as any relationship between theist and non-theist, that seems like a tough call.

I did recently read an interesting book, "Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals."

It laid out a pretty convincing argument that animal ethics is mainly based on emotion rather than logic and or science.

I suppose if I had to give a nod to one camp or the other I would say that it would go to the thiests?

Buhda be praised.

[cnorman18]

I'm talking about actual teachings in actual documents that are thousands of years old. Why would you want to trivialize and dismiss what may be the origins of the IDEA of avoiding cruelty to animals?

I started with a more lighthearted reference only because it was the first to come to mind as it's been an issue locally in recent years. It is an actual, for some traditional, practice. I don't consider swinging chickens to be a major abuse and made sure to give a reference that shows that even many Orthodox Jews consider it at odds with the faith for the reasons you gave.

Fair enough. We can move on from that issue, then. If it wasn't a serious objection, perhaps that should have been made clear. It appeared serious to me.

Um, we haven't sacrificed animals for two thousand years. Perhaps you're thinking of Voodoo.

No, it was Judaism I had in mind, and this objection was more serious. Not sacrificing animals because the Temple is no longer there, with plans to resume once the Temple's rebuilt, is not the same as stopping because the act was cruel. There is, as I said, plenty of justification in the religious teachings for treating animals well. But there's also plenty of precedent for seeing them as objects to be harmed to serve our ends.

There again, the only Jews that seem to be interested in building a third Temple and resuming the hereditary priesthood and the sacrifice system seem to be the Haredim and the ultra-Orthodox (and, of course, far-right fundamentalist Christians, as a necessary precursor to the return of Jesus). We Jews have long since moved beyond all that, two thousand years ago in fact, and have no need whatever to go back there.

As a point of fact, Pharaisaic Judaism, the forerunner of modern Rabbinic Judaism, had stopped participating in the Temple rituals before the time of Jesus. Since it was not physically possible for every male Jew in Judea to travel to Jerusalem for the major festivals, never mind for every birth, bris and personal life event, the people began gathering in their own communities, in places they called beit midrash or beit tefillah, "houses of study" or "houses of prayer" -- in Greek, places to talk together, or "synagogues" -- to STUDY the Torah, and to read the passages about the sacrifices at the same times that they were going on in the Temple. We still do that today, at the three daily services; Shacharit, Mincha and Maariv. Torah study, teaching, and debate and discussion REPLACED the sacrifices; that new "system" was already in place when the Temple fell, and a good thing it was; if it had not already developed, Judaism would have come to an end. As it is, we moved on, and few of us, other than Jewish and Christian fundamentalists, see a need to go back. Indeed, there are far more Christians eager to see a third Temple than modern Jews.

As my own rabbi once put it, "Who wants a holy slaughterhouse in the middle of downtown Jerusalem?" Besides, there is the small matter of the demolition of two Muslim holy places before that could be done. For the overwhelming majority of us Jews, the horrific war and enormous bloodshed that would ensue just aren't worth it to restore a system of cultic worship that hasn't existed for two millennia, and was more noted in its day for corruption and excess than piety and actual benefit to real, ordinary people's lives.

Temple? Temple? We don't need no stinking Temple!