At 12/6/08 09:58 AM, Sajberhippien wrote:

At 12/6/08 09:42 AM, Cornbucket wrote: You take your own feelings that pain and death are bad things, and you apply that to lesser animals but not to plant life.

Unless you are against murder of retards, you do basically the same.

The assumption you're making here is that I consider pain and death to be bad things.

You know what they say about people who make assumptions, right?

Also with all the talk about humans having high intelligence and being above animals and whatnot, morality, ethics, whatever, here's some food for thought:

It isn't so much what we use to fuel our bodies with, it's what we DO with our bodies that counts. What we eat becomes a part of us. No cow or chicken can ever achieve what a man could achieve, however, when we consume a cow or chicken its lifeforce is transferred and becomes a part of our own. So, what BETTER way to honor an animal than to elevate it to the status of man? If a chicken gives you the energy to do great things, then that chicken has accomplished MORE in its death than it ever could have accomplished living a normal chicken life. The animals you consume become unwitting accomplices to everything you do... so as long as you're doing something worthwhile with that energy there's no reason to feel guilty or ashamed about what lower being gave its life in order for you to live yours.

At 12/6/08 07:15 AM, mythicaljake wrote: as long as we use the animals in a way that still means they have a happy life and are not mistreated, I don't see any problem.

Here, you're assuming we have (or CAN have) a proper understanding about what truly makes an animal happy. Elsewhere you said it's ridiculous to even try thinking of plants in the same manner. But just because a plant doesn't have a face doesn't mean we're unable to tell when it is thriving or when it is sick. We can spot disease and illness in plants just the same as we can with animals. You make the argument from ignorance that pain and pleasure do not exist in the plant world, or if it does we have no way to understand it. So maybe a plant doesn't sense pain in the same way we do. SO WHAT? Doesn't ALL LIFE put forth its best effort to survive? You take your own feelings that pain and death are bad things, and you apply that to lesser animals but not to plant life. But doesn't a flower bend to face the sun? Don't trees grow over and around obstructions in order to obtain light? We can see their volition to live right there. So how is killing a turkey to feed a family morally any worse than chopping down a tree to keep a family warm? Both turkey and tree do everything they can to survive, and in both instances we take their lives away so that we may extend our own.

You think your choice is based on a respect for life, but I suspect it's based more on your disdain for seeing (or imagining) things expressing their pain. You're unable to imagine in what ways a plant might hurt by being cut, so it's really just your lack of imagination that allows you to eat plants without feeling moral compunction over it. If cabbage screamed, you'd be fucked.

That is different, animal test subjects are heavily mistreated, and often abused by the scientists for the sake of abusing them.

Where in the world do you get that from? "Abused by the scientists for the sake of abusing them?" How do you claim to know this and from what basis can you say it happens 'often'?

Anyway, if you're a vegetarian because you prefer the food or it makes you feel more healthy and vitalized, then great. Keep it up. On the other hand, if you're a vegetarian because you think it's wrong to eat meat or that you're doing the world a favor in some small way by avoiding it, then you're an idiot.

This was obviously inspired by the recent vegetarianism thread. With so little to say for yourself, why did you even bother creating a new topic instead of just replying to the other one?

At 12/6/08 06:22 AM, mythicaljake wrote: You can obtain animal products such as wool, eggs and milk without physically harming the animal.

You're ignoring the fact that it still involves taking them out of their natural habitats/lifestyles in order to facilitate collection of said products. What, you have no moral outrage over keeping chickens in coops and cows in barns with vacuum suction devices attached to their udders? So shearing the wool off a sheep doesn't disturb how it naturally lives its life?

How far do you try to travel down the moral highroad? Do you stop at "physical harm" in its most final and obvious sense? What about beasts of labor? Is it immoral to ride horses and camels for transportation, to use donkeys and oxen to pull carts, to use dogs on the police force or to pull sleds in the arctic, so on and so forth? I assume you're against animal testing too. As in, it's morally wrong to test out medicines and drugs on mice, instead they should all be tested out on human subjects first. Right? RIGHT?

I don't bother people about their diets, but the idea that

At 12/6/08 05:28 AM, mythicaljake wrote: Our diet is better than yours, morally, ecologically, medically and economically.

is ridiculous. Your diet isn't superior in any of those aspects just because you choose not to eat meat. If you're even going to be douche-y enough to claim moral superiority then why aren't you a full-fledged vegan then? If you have even a patch of leather or scrap of an animal-derived product in your home then you can't claim shit for morality's sake. Ecologically/medically/economically is equally as debatable.

If you were leveling your criticism at the gluttonous, or people whose diet consists primarily of junk food, then I might be apt to agree with you... but omnivores are a diverse crowd with diverse tastes, certainly more diverse than that of vegetarians. Criticizing them as a whole is stupid of you, even if it is just some reactionary rant over the bullshit you catch at the dinnertable.

If you're standing on your lawn... YOUR property, albeit in the open air... would it be a violation of your privacy for someone to stand outside the property line taking pictures of you with a zoom-in lens?

Does the public's interest in the personal lives of celebrities trump the celebrity's right to privacy? Paparazzi aren't doing anything illegal, but does that make it GOOD or OKAY for them to do what they do?

Let's say you own a particularly large plot of land and you're building something secret way out in the field. No one is allowed to access your property, but... there's always Google Earth. I know they've blocked out maps for things like nuclear power plants and such, but would a private citizen have any leg to stand on in requesting the same treatment of privacy for their land?

The world is under constant surveillance. It isn't just inside shops, it's out on the streets, it's in the sky, there are cameras in your alarm clocks and there are cameras in your teddy bears. At what point is it too much? Where is the REAL division between "public" and "private"? Is it ONLY in your home? Does that mean it isn't illegal or wrong to install hidden cameras inside hotel rooms or microphones at restaurant tables?

Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.

At 12/5/08 04:32 PM, reviewer-general wrote: Should society be more open to ideas from "untrained" sources?

What with the whole "blogosphere" thing, I think it already is.

If a person doesn't have relevant credentials pertaining to the topic of discussion, they still have a right to offer their opinion. They shouldn't be judged by their credentials, they should be judged by the content of their argument.

It's really just a matter of perception. What if the person has the HIGHEST credentials and just chooses not to reveal them? You may assume they know jack shit, but they could've written THE book on whatever it is you're discussing. On the flipside you can have a stupid "appeal to authority" type of situation going on where there's more focus placed on the high credentials of the person instead of the argument itself, as if the argument is actually made valid BY the credentials.

Everyone has a right to share their view (however uninformed it may or may not be) but I think it's important to keep in mind that our backgrounds and experiences DO shape what our views will be, so knowing about a person's background (as in, whether they have the cred or not, and in what fields, etc) can only HELP with understanding how they actually formed their argument/opinion.

What do YOU value more? The freedom of information or the freedom of privacy?

In what case does a right to be informed trump another person's right to privacy? What about the other way around -- when does a right to privacy trump other people's right to be informed?

Do you think social phenomena such as paparazzi is a bad thing or not? Is it something that should be discouraged or something that should be protected?

Do you believe the phrase "if you've done nothing wrong then you've got nothing to hide" holds true? Is it a justifiable reason for breaching another person's privacy?

INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW.

At 12/1/08 12:16 AM, Korriken wrote: And now as I leave for this night to get me some sleep, I leave you with this to look at. It's interesting to look at, and shows that the human mind is capable of being deep. If the artist wasn't capable of deep creative thought, then he/she/they could have never come up with something like this.

What does that have anything to do with the topic?

It's a cool picture and all but it's not like it's a valid argument, like "see that's what you can do if you aren't a sheep!" I mean, what, you don't think artists inspire each other and feed off each other's ideas also? I say this because that picture is dated 2004 and I'm POSITIVE I've seen a similarly themed piece done a long time ago (at LEAST around '85, which isn't THAT long in the scope of things), only done with oil paint on canvas instead of being 'shopped on a computer.

Ranting about sheep mentality seems stupid to me because EVERYONE acts both individually and socially at times. Sometimes we have to suppress our individuality in order to operate within the larger whole, and other times we're obligated to ourselves to express our individuality so that we may actually change the larger whole.

At 11/30/08 02:11 PM, AapoJoki wrote: If you have a religion, it would be a smart idea to hide it from your children. At least until they're 15-18 years old.

Yeah, good luck with deflecting all their questions for over an entire decade.

At 11/30/08 02:52 PM, aninjaman wrote: That's the general idea when I say that humans are naturally conformist.
Societies work better if they stick together.

I agree. The people who avoid or ignore that instinct may also be putting themselves directly in danger.

When one sheep senses danger and runs, so do the rest. The "nonconformist" sheep who doesn't get what all the fuss is about is the one that stays behind and invariably gets its head bitten clean off. Also as you showed, the benefits of doing things we don't necessarily like or aren't fully informed about tend to outweight their costs. Wearing a stuffy suit to your office meeting might suck, but it's better than being comfortable in a mustard-stained t-shirt and no longer being employed the next day.

If people have a sheep mentality it's because it's evolutionary beneficial to have it. It's pretty much what being a social creature is all about.

At 11/30/08 02:41 PM, Memorize wrote: Would you save the life of 1 innocent, honest civilian by allowing 1 million theives, drunks, stoners, and adulterers to die?

Really, I think we've had enough absurd hypothetical scenarios here already.

At 11/30/08 02:45 PM, aninjaman wrote: cost/benefit analysis

If sheep didn't stick together they'd just be easier meat for the wolves.

At 11/30/08 12:25 PM, bigblueDUMBASS wrote: not all the hypotheticals are ludicrous.

Have you even READ through this thread!?

there are times when we know what the outcome will be.

or do we?

thats just it: its not black or white, its gray.

we as human beings have to go by our logic, and our morals in these situations, because there is no simple or easy ansewer.

But how does that show that the ends justify the means?

In my mind, justification for an action should come BEFORE the action itself. To say that "the ends justify the means" is invalid because the ends are not always as expected. Hindsight is 20/20 so that phrase only works if the ends actually happened to be favorable.

So to use one of your examples, let's say you think you have to hurt a kid to save him from a burning building. What if that kid, though surviving, happens to become a quadriplegic for life due to how you hurt him? What makes you so sure that OTHER means weren't truly available in the situation, you just hadn't thought of them?

Of course we all go on our logic and morals and we never really know the final outcome... but to say that the "ends justify the means" has the whole equation backwards. You should have justification first and foremost whether the results are favorable or not.

You have a goal, and you set a course of action to achieve it. Maybe that course of action is good for many, maybe it's good only for a few. Waiting for the results to find justification rather than being justified from the outset is a simply a poor way to see things, I think.

At 11/30/08 11:23 AM, Demonator911 wrote: Okay, now I doubt many of you have heard this story yet, since it's a local one

Apparently you don't read the newspaper... or the internet. There's already a handful of topics about this. Hell, it was a Google News headliner.

At 11/30/08 12:09 PM, homor wrote: gee thats a mature response to a joke.

Jokes are supposed to have mature responses?

*tells a rib-tickler*

"Ahh. Quaint."

At 11/30/08 11:55 AM, homor wrote: what the fuck does that mean you zen freak?

I'm fairly sure it means that we don't ever really know for sure what the ENDS will ultimately be as we're working through our MEANS... therefore, "the ends justify the means" is not a valid justification because it's always an afterthought based on what had already happened.

So, to match all the ridiculous hypotheticals already put forth:

"What if you had to crush one baby's skull in order to save a hundred other babies?"

Okay sure!

*skull crushed*

"Just kidding. Those hundred other babies weren't even really in danger. LOL!"

At 11/30/08 11:42 AM, marchohare wrote: stuff

Oh the contrivances of man.

I like what you post.

At 11/30/08 10:03 AM, Alphabit wrote: They ARE given the same rights as heterosexuals

Not really. The only thing the same is that they're allowed to be in heterosexual unions. It's allowed, but it isn't what they desire. To say that heterosexuals also aren't allowed to be in homosexual unions doesn't make it equal -- they don't want it in the first place so why would they care whether they're allowed or not?

The only significant aspect of gay marriage is the legal aspect (because ANYONE can take part in a ceremony for whatever reason, sensical or not). There are things that are arbitrated through the legal system when it comes to married couples and their domiciles, children, assets, liabilities, etc... and gay couples, since their unions are NOT recognized in most places, do NOT qualify to have their matters arbitrated by the legal system in the same way that hetero couples can. Therein lies the inequality.

At 11/30/08 10:55 AM, JoS wrote: Where is the WalMart greeter when you need them?

Under your feet, apparently.

At 11/30/08 10:18 AM, Alphabit wrote: I'm really impressed that the founders of America were actually thoughtful enough to include such a clause in the constitution; especially given that many people at that time where devout Christians. The founding fathers must have thought this through REALLY hard.

It was added in like five years after the Constitution was ratified. That's why they're called "amendments".

The only thing that could reverse this is federal intervention. I remember a few years back an Alabama courthouse was ordered to remove a granite monument of the Ten Commandments by a district judge for violating the first amendment. Fed judge > State judge.

Seltzer + Gatorade.

At 11/30/08 10:03 AM, scamuel wrote: No, I'm not. I'm not stupid.

Well if you were ACTUALLY intelligent then you would have either posted a link to where you're trying to order it from, or you'd have gone to a Microsoft Vista-specific website to ask for help instead of fucking Newgrounds of all places.

At 11/30/08 09:43 AM, scamuel wrote: after I enter my product key and click the order now button. An error stating "No offer found" appears.

It sounds like you're trying to enter your Vista serial number into a coupon code textfield.

At 11/30/08 06:06 AM, crayzrocker wrote: Although, children(as believed by scientists) require the fole of a mom and dad as their parents, and psycologically a child could get confused if he has 2 dads or 2 moms.

This is the conflict, some people believe that its ok, some people dont.

I agree that a mother and a father would probably be the "healthiest" combination pyschologically, but really, it's more a matter of HOW they raise their children than anything else. There are plenty of crappy moms and dads out there so it's not like a traditional home is necessarily a better home for raising kids.

Besides which, banning gay marriage / civil unions cannot prevent people of the same sex (gay or not) from living together and raising children. You don't think families like that already exist? I can assure you they do, regardless of whether the place they live has any civil union legislation on their books or not. Those couples are just seeking equal protection under the law as other couples already recieve.

At 11/29/08 05:58 PM, SadisticMonkey wrote: Call all unions, gay or straight, civil unions, grant both with equal rights legally, call relgious unions marriages, which have no legal implications.

Agreed, 100%.

problem solved, move on to a real problem.

Seriously, there's so much more important shit to be concerned over.

Is 'Tripp' a style or a brand-name?

I always thought those pants with the excessive chainery and ultra-flared legs were absolutely ridiculous looking.

The phrase "double standard" is stupid anyway. It assumes that all people occupy identical positions in this little game we call 'Life'. But they don't... so our "standards" should be different for EVERYONE.

You would get angry over a rich person stealing food, but not necessarily a poor starving person stealing food. Why would you call this a double standard when they aren't even on the same parts of the playing field? Why do people complain about the double standard between men and women? They each have different kinds of bodies and customarily they play much different roles in society.

What sense does it even make to judge everyone by the same standard when not everyone comes from the same place, or has had the same opportunities, or has the same strengths and weaknesses as everyone else?

Why should there even BE one standard?

Oh and I just watched a video featuring an ordained priest of the Church of Satan explaining some of the tenets of Satanism to the interviewer. It was somewhat interesting.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=
-6285932897071996798

He also discusses his book Androphilia: Rejecting the Gay Identity in which he talks about "the effeminization of men" and why it's a bad thing in culture. And he's gay himself. But like, masculine gay! LOL.