The flaws of NT-based morality

[Roy]

That isn't racism.

Perhaps tribalism might be a better term. It's certainly discrimination to have slavery apply only to other tribes.

Was hating the Nazi's racism?

Not the same. OT law discriminates against all non-Jews, not just against members of specific other groups.

There weren't that many races around that area. pretty much all were semitic or arabic, and some africans. They didn't think of races like we do now. They thought of nations. They could like or dislike someone from a neighboring tribe who were the same race as they were.

We can (and often do) do that now. But that's dislike based on individuals, which is very different from dislike based on group.

[tabibito]

Animals that demonstrate self awareness, the ability to count and measure quantity and even have a grasp elementary geometry, have a respect for rules, evidence empathy, learn their own names and the names of others, have at least a rudimentary capacity to read (as in pattern matching), and can communicate at least a few ideas to humans are not uncommon. Even flying bundles of stupidity (aka pigeons) can do all of that.

[Roy]

Roy, if you think that animals have rights it is on you to demonstrate that.

I've made no such claim.

You have claimed that animals don't have rights, and it is your onus to support that claim.

But as you've made abundantly clear over many threads, you don't do that. Instead, you spout total bollocks, then when called on it you insist that others support the counter-claim, even when they never asserted it.

Do your own leg work, you lazy hypocrite.

[seer]

I've made no such claim.

You have claimed that animals don't have rights, and it is your onus to support that claim.

But as you've made abundantly clear over many threads, you don't do that. Instead, you spout total bollocks, then when called on it you insist that others support the counter-claim, even when they never asserted it.

Do your own leg work, you lazy hypocrite.

Idiot, it was Star who first said animal had rights. I said they don't. I said that Star was making stuff up - if he can demonstrate otherwise let him. Now go back to your sand box child...

[Adrift]

I've made no such claim.

You have claimed that animals don't have rights, and it is your onus to support that claim.

But as you've made abundantly clear over many threads, you don't do that. Instead, you spout total bollocks, then when called on it you insist that others support the counter-claim, even when they never asserted it.

Do your own leg work, you lazy hypocrite.

When the lion eats the gazelle, has the lion impinged upon the gazelle's rights? When a cat plays with a mouse, are there certain rights for the mouse that the cat oversteps? In the materialist world, one devoid of the existence of any sort of all-powerful creator/s who might grant rights, wouldn't the concept of "rights" be a purely human construct? And if rights are a purely human construct under materialism, what happens when large groups of humans disagree about who should obtain certain rights? What makes a right? Does might make right?

[Roy]

No it wasn't. All of Israel's Semitic neighbors generally had the same racial make up as they did (ignoring for now that "race" is a relatively modern construct). The few places we do hear of people of a likely different genetic makeup, we don't hear of the Israelites treating them any differently. Moses' wife Zipporah, the Queen of Sheba, Simon of Cyrene, Simeon who was called Niger, the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:37, they were all likely black, yet scripture never makes a big deal of their race, and in fact views most of them positively.

As far as the treatment of foreigners living among Israelites, we get passages in scripture that calls for their equal and positive treatment,

You've omitted the passage about treatment of indentured Hebrews vs foreign slaves.

You've also not noticed that this one:

Scripture Verse: Leviticus 25:35

If your brother becomes impoverished and is indebted to you, you must support him; he must live with you like a foreign resident.

© Copyright Original Source

suggests that foreign residents and natives were treated differently.

While the concept of slavery seems to us in the individualist modern West as a totally intolerable social convention, it was practiced absolutely everywhere in the ancient world, and was considered perfectly normal. The Bible's way of dealing with the subject was not condemning it outright, but by progressively showing how both the slave and the master are equals in God's eyes. I think an argument could be made that slavery was so ingrained into the social fabric of the ancient world that had the Bible condemned the institution of slavery outright, the Gospel message would never have spread across the world,...

That argument would require as a premise that there is no god capable of spreading the message anyway.

[seer]

To me they are two ways of saying the same thing. When I talk about human rights or animal rights I mean by those words "the right way to treat humans" and "the right way to treat animals". I am not claiming that rights exist as some sort of platonic metaphysical entity in the ether.

Same thing with rights. Animal rights mean to me nothing more or less than the standards by which it is morally right to treat animals. So I read a sentence of yours like "That because we should treat animals well does not mean that they HAVE RIGHTS!" as nonsensical because "we should treat animals well" and "they have rights" are identical statements to me. They would only be different statements if I believed in the existence of a metaphysical entity of Rights, which I don't.

No Star, they are not the same thing. To say that something has rights is to suggest that it has intrinsic worth. That there is a non-arbitrary way in which to approach or treat them. There isn't. If I follow your logic the plants in my house have rights because I choose to treat them well.

[One Bad Pig]

Idiot, it was Star who first said animal had rights. I said they don't. I said that Star was making stuff up - if he can demonstrate otherwise let him. Now go back to your sand box child...

Rights are constructs given by (human) society. Animals have whatever rights humans want to give them. Those rights, however, only define human relations to them, so in a sense they're not animal rights at all; they only regulate human behavior.

[Roy]

Idiot, it was Star who first said animal had rights.

No, he said that the NT was silent on the issue of animal rights. He did not say that animals had rights.

I said they don't.

And now you're doing everything you can to avoid taking responsibility for supporting your claim, while simultaneously insisting that others prove things they never said.

Hypocrite.

[Roy]

When the lion eats the gazelle, has the lion impinged upon the gazelle's rights? When a cat plays with a mouse, are there certain rights for the mouse that the cat oversteps? In the materialist world, one devoid of the existence of any sort of all-powerful creator/s who might grant rights, wouldn't the concept of "rights" be a purely human construct? And if rights are a purely human construct under materialism, what happens when large groups of humans disagree about who should obtain certain rights? What makes a right? Does might make right?

Wow, lots of questions.

I don't think animals, or indeed humans, have rights other than any granted to them and enforced through societal agreements.
People who believe that there are such things as God-given rights might disagree.

Does that cover it?

[seer]

Rights are constructs given by (human) society. Animals have whatever rights humans want to give them. Those rights, however, only define human relations to them, so in a sense they're not animal rights at all; they only regulate human behavior.

Exactly, in our country dogs have worth as pets, for instance, because we assign that worth. In China they have worth because they are food too: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/...umours-8964726

[tabibito]

NT assigns value to animals as living creatures (lesser than the value of humans), and it does cite the Old Testament with regard to its assignment of rights to certain animals - "You shall not muzzle the ox while it threshes the grain" (or words to that effect). I would be surprised if they were the only references.

[Roy]

Rights are constructs given by (human) society. Animals have whatever rights humans want to give them. Those rights, however, only define human relations to them, so in a sense they're not animal rights at all; they only regulate human behavior.

Would you say this applies to humans too? That humans only have whatever rights humans decide upon?

[Darth Executor]

That isn't racism.

Was hating the Nazi's racism?

The Nazis were not an ethnic group, like other tribes would be.

[Darth Executor]

Would you say this applies to humans too? That humans only have whatever rights humans decide upon?

That is correct.