[quote]flatrick said: “I am by the way a lawyer (yes yes, that’s probably why I am so cold-hearted) and I can tell you this much. There is not one single country or international convention that grants an animal any rights. Only humans have rights. All the laws that protect animals (i.e. not allowing someone to burn a dog for no reason) do not actually protect the animal in itself, but their proprietor as if animals were just humans’ property like any other object or “blob of matter”.”[/quote]
Fortunately, this is beginning to change:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_rights#Early_21st_century:_First_animals_to_be_granted_legal_rights
[quote]What you don’t seem to understand or at least to acknowledge (see my first answer to you) is that animals have no degree of thought.
I understand it is very hard to believe and it might even seem absurd (see my comparison with the size of the universe), but THIS is a rock solid proven fact. In other words, I’m absolutely not giving you my opinion here, just repeating what all scientists would say.[/quote]
No it isn’t. Neither fact, nor proven. I think it is arrogance to the extreme to assert that anything as complex as thought could be expressed in binary values of Yes or No. And to top that you draw the line exatly between humans and the next step down the evolutionary ladder.

[quote]I’ll repeat it one more time. Even if humans are animals as well and even if our genetic pool is very similar to those of other mammals, we still are extremely different. An animal resembles more a plant than a human. [/quote]
If you truly believe that, I suggest you brush up your basic biology.
[quote]Here’s what Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says on animal consciousness: [/quote]
Sure, that’s why philosophers make the best scientists…
Philosophy may have its uses, but making scientific claims is not one of them. In fact by it’s very nature, philosophy has to make claims that are unprovable. As soon as they’re provable they leave the realm of philosophy.
[quote]I should have been more specific, I realize that now since you bring my comment up; on this latter statement, I was referring to the fact that animals can or cannot feel pain (which was the primary discussion). The first statement was perfectly correct though, 5 years ago at least.[/quote]
If you had ever seen an animal in pain, you couldn’t maintain this opinion. Of course you cannot measure pain in animals, so there is no way of proving they feel pain, but you can’t measure pain in humans either. You can only infer the pain through physical and behavioural reactions. If you discount that as evidence for the existance of pain, you would have to say that a human who is incapable of communicating his pain orally is also incapable of feeling it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain#In_other_species
[quote]Specialists currently believe that all vertebrates can feel pain, and that certain invertebrates, like the octopus, might too.[/quote]
I realize that you discount wikipedia as a reliable source of information, but you will find that this article is suitably referenced.
I’ll close my post with a quote by another philosopher (Jeremy Bentham 1748-18362):
[quote]The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, “Can they reason?” nor, “Can they talk?” but, “Can they suffer?”[/quote]

A simple script on submit of the form checks the length of the post and if it is really short it checks for the word “First” (with or without exclamation mark, these settings can be configurable).

It then simply replaces the occurance of “First!” with the statement “I am a RETARD” and locks the comment for everyone else to laugh at for eternity :)

Oh, and I grew up on a farm. I’ve eaten my pets before. At first, it was hard. BTW, zucchini DOES have personality. You vegetarians are sickos! How can you play god and say that plants don’t miss their vital organs?