Guy Ran Over A Goose

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='dauntingknight' date='02 June 2010 - 10:39 PM' timestamp='1275536388' post='2123001']

Best thing you can do is just stab/shoot the animal in the lungs(if it is obivously in great pain and is near death).
Believe it or not that is the most humane way to take an animal because it is a "quick, clean, kill".
Then after its dead bury it.

[/quote]
One time at summer camp, at the side of the road there was a deer who had been hit, and whoever had hit it stopped and cut its throat with a hunting knife. It was sad to see, but better die from a quick cut like that than by going into shock and shivering by the side of the road for God-knows how many hours.

[Marie-Therese]

[quote name='USAirwaysIHS' date='01 June 2010 - 11:41 AM' timestamp='1275406903' post='2122095']
Call me cold, but I'd call that natural selection. It's a goose; it can fly. It ought to know to get out of the way of predators, be them lions, guys with ray guns, or Suburbans. If it can't do that...darwinism.
[/quote]

If Darwinian natural selection was really valid, then human society as it currently exists would be extinct. There is nothing even remotely resembling survival of the fittest going on. Spend an hour at your local Wal Mart. My case rests.

In terms of the animals, it is true that animals have no rights in the proper sense. However, as Genesis recounts, God gave humans dominion over the animals, to which He had given the breath of life...He even allowed mankind to give the animals their names. While animals were to provide for the needs of people, in no wise can I see a circumstance where the willful abuse or torture of an animal could be warranted.

I, about a year ago, ran over a squirrel. To tell you that I was stricken would be putting it lightly. I hit the squirrel when he darted out in front of my car and I had no time to stop. When I hit him, I did not kill him, and I turned to see the poor creature dragging himself, wounded, off the road. I stopped the car and doubled back only to find that another car killed him before I could get back to him. I picked his tiny body up off the road and moved it to the roadside as lovingly as I could. Did that squirrel have a soul? No. Did I feel a responsibility, as God's highest creation, to care for the welfare of those creatures lesser than myself? Yes. The least I could do is give honour to the body of one of God's creatures who I had killed, even unwittingly.

In psychological and sociological terms, the desire to harm animals is often an indicator of a deeper disturbance of the psyche. Many serial killers often experimented with killing animals before moving on to human prey. I think the underlying issue isn't that the rights of the poor goose were violated...the bigger issue is that there are people who are cruel and heartless and who would rather kill a creature than slow down and allow it to pass. It is a symptom of the degradation of humankind's connection to God when the least among us, including animals, are treated with indifference or blatant abuse.

[sacredheartandbloodofjesus]

Maybe the guy was driving slow so that the goose would hurry up and cross the street and after it wouldnt the man figured "Hey, Im better off running this goose over than risking an accident with another car."

Animals do have a spirit because they are living but they are not capable of suffering. One must be 'aware' of pain to suffer, and animals are not concious beings. I believe that torturing animals is only wrong because its a perverted action of the individual. Meaning, its only wrong because the action is harming the individual who is doing the torture. The man who tortures animals is going to be harmed psychologically or he may harm someone else's psyche who sees his actions. In other words, he is torturing himself by torturing the animal and that is where I believe the worse sin is.

[Vincent Vega]

[quote name='Marie-Therese' date='03 June 2010 - 12:46 AM' timestamp='1275540407' post='2123036']
If Darwinian natural selection was really valid, then human society as it currently exists would be extinct. There is nothing even remotely resembling survival of the fittest going on. Spend an hour at your local Wal Mart. My case rests.
[/quote]
I can't tell if you're joking or not. My humour capabilites go to sleep at 1:00.

[Selah]

I wonder what St. Francis would say in this situation...

[dominicansoul]

i had a baby duck as a pet when i was a kid. i unwittingly shared my sour cream and onion ruffles with him, and he choked and died...

...to this day I cannot eat sour cream and onion chips...

[Catholic Fox]

[quote name='dominicansoul' date='03 June 2010 - 07:40 AM' timestamp='1275568801' post='2123104']
i had a baby duck as a pet when i was a kid. i unwittingly shared my sour cream and onion ruffles with him, and he choked and died...

...to this day I cannot eat sour cream and onion chips...
[/quote]

[Selah]

No matter how small animals may be or how less important, God wants us to care for them and defend them.

Things like puppy mills break my heart. Animal abuse is horrible.

I am a an on again-off again vegetarian, mostly because I don't care for the taste of most meat. Killing an animal for food is fine. Animals even kill other animals for food. In fact, if I walked up to a mountain lion, I'm sure it would try to eat me (I hope I taste good )

But, hurting an animal for the sake of hurting it is wrong. We have a duty, as St. Francis would say, to care for our "humble bretheren." That doesn't mean that I am going to save flies from being swatted (I did once, though, but only because the poor thing couldn't fly...whatever, laugh, lol). But, if I thought that someone was abusing an animal, you better believe I would turn their butts in. And of course, woe to them that lay a finger on my precious kittehs

[quote]
i had a baby duck as a pet when i was a kid. i unwittingly shared my sour cream and onion ruffles with him, and he choked and died...

...to this day I cannot eat sour cream and onion chips...[/quote]

Aww I'm sorry hun.

[Marie-Therese]

[quote name='USAirwaysIHS' date='03 June 2010 - 01:35 AM' timestamp='1275543355' post='2123063']
I can't tell if you're joking or not. My humour capabilites go to sleep at 1:00.
[/quote]

Well, my comment was intended to be tongue in cheek, but I wasn't joking. Darwinian natural selection is a joke.

Contemporary human society disproves the theory of natural selection. Humanity has used external technologies to prolong the lives of those who, in Darwinian terms, would be considered the weakest of the species and which would be weeded out.

The argument for natural selection is predicated on the way that the animal kingdom uses the weak and young members of a species to provide food for the stronger and faster ones. However, it doesn't take a scientist, a genius, or even an above average person to recognize that this is a completely rational natural structure. God designed things to work the way that they do. The fact that a sick animal becomes prey isn't probative. It is simply an example of how God has provided for the material needs of all creatures. Darwinian natural selection is an attempt to rationalize some external force of nature that determines the behaviours of creatures, when the answer is that the reason things are the way they are is that God made them that way. You don't need a scientific theory to establish that.

[MithLuin]

[i]* Puts on my biology teacher hat *[/i]

Darwinian natural selection does not say that animals [i]deserve[/i] to die. Rather, it explains how, in an environment that includes (say) cars, the geese who are able to escape from the cars are more likely to live to adulthood and have little goslings of their own. Thus, over time, more and more of the geese who are hatched will be able to escape from cars. By intentionally seeking to kill off pest animals, we end up making them better able to elude our efforts. So, just as we have bacteria that is immune to antibiotics, weeds that are not affected by pesticides and rats who can survive rat poison, we also would end up with geese who are able to get away from cars if lots of people started acting that way.

Darwinian natural selection does [i]not[/i] state that geese should just figure it out and it's somehow their fault if they get killed. That is a line of thinking called Social Darwinism, which assumes that the poor are starving and destitute because there is something wrong with them. Thus...we are under no obligation to help them. "If they're going to die, they'd better do it, and decrease the surplus population." (Scrooge)

Social Darwinism is neither a scientific idea nor compatible with Christianity.

Altruism and helping others is actually a trait that lends to the survival of the entire group, so it is a trait that natural selection...often selects for. Just sayin'. Also, natural selection only applies in cases where organisms are not surviving to adulthood or reproducing. Very few defects in humans actually remove them from the gene pool, whereas in the case of many other species, the [i]majority[/i] of the offspring do not live long.

Edited June 3, 2010 by MithLuin

[Marie-Therese]

[quote name='MithLuin' date='03 June 2010 - 06:33 PM' timestamp='1275604402' post='2123346']
[i]* Puts on my biology teacher hat *[/i]

Darwinian natural selection does not say that animals [i]deserve[/i] to die. Rather, it explains how, in an environment that includes (say) cars, the geese who are able to escape from the cars are more likely to live to adulthood and have little goslings of their own. Thus, over time, more and more of the geese who are hatched will be able to escape from cars. By intentionally seeking to kill off pest animals, we end up making them better able to elude our efforts. So, just as we have bacteria that is immune to antibiotics, weeds that are not affected by pesticides and rats who can survive rat poison, we also would end up with geese who are able to get away from cars if lots of people started acting that way.

Darwinian natural selection does [i]not[/i] state that geese should just figure it out and it's somehow their fault if they get killed. That is a line of thinking called Social Darwinism, which assumes that the poor are starving and destitute because there is something wrong with them. Thus...we are under no obligation to help them. "If they're going to die, they'd better do it, and decrease the surplus population." (Scrooge)

Social Darwinism is neither a scientific idea nor compatible with Christianity.

Altruism and helping others is actually a trait that lends to the survival of the entire group, so it is a trait that natural selection...often selects for. Just sayin'. Also, natural selection only applies in cases where organisms are not surviving to adulthood or reproducing. Very few defects in humans actually remove them from the gene pool, whereas in the case of many other species, the [i]majority[/i] of the offspring do not live long.
[/quote]

Word.

[sacredheartandbloodofjesus]

As a follow-up to my other post, if animals could suffer(be concious of the pain they feel) then a lion eating a deer slowly is evil because the deer is experiencing suffering for no fault of its own, and the lion has to inflict suffering on the deer just to survive(it must do an evil to survive). But as I stated earlier I do not believe animals can suffer.

[Selah]

I should really just stop reading the threads on here altogether

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Selah' date='03 June 2010 - 05:41 PM' timestamp='1275604875' post='2123353']
I should really just stop reading the threads on here altogether
[/quote]
What's ticked you off this time?

[Marie-Therese]

[quote name='sacredheartandbloodofjesus' date='03 June 2010 - 06:39 PM' timestamp='1275604796' post='2123352']
As a follow-up to my other post, if animals could suffer(be concious of the pain they feel) then a lion eating a deer slowly is evil because the deer is experiencing suffering for no fault of its own, and the lion has to inflict suffering on the deer just to survive(it must do an evil to survive). But as I stated earlier I do not believe animals can suffer.
[/quote]

Are you actually serious?? You think that a sentient creature has no sensation in their body? How do you explain that animals have proprioception? (That means that you have to have some sense of feeling to be able to understand how to move your body in space.)

So, by your reasoning, if you kick a dog and it yelps, that yelp is not in any way related to the sensation of pain?? I am sorry, but if you believe this, then you are seriously mistaken.

[ThePenciledOne]

I wonder if we could debate about similar things about our fellow man.

[Mercy me]

[quote name='notardillacid' date='02 June 2010 - 03:55 AM' timestamp='1275461725' post='2122655']
People deliberately kill pests all the time. Geese are pests. Have you ever killed a mouse? A rat? A rabbit?
[/quote]

I have no problem killing a pests that threaten me or my property. But for someone to go out of their way to kill an animal and to make it suffer is called cruelty to animals. Killing for the sake of killing is wrong. It is a crime and is often a sign of deeper issues. There is no question about it.

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Marie-Therese' date='03 June 2010 - 08:04 PM' timestamp='1275613442' post='2123421']
Are you actually serious?? You think that a sentient creature has no sensation in their body? How do you explain that animals have proprioception? (That means that you have to have some sense of feeling to be able to understand how to move your body in space.)

So, by your reasoning, if you kick a dog and it yelps, that yelp is not in any way related to the sensation of pain?? I am sorry, but if you believe this, then you are seriously mistaken.
[/quote]
I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt in assuming that he meant a more metaphysical conception of "suffering".

[Marie-Therese]

[quote name='ThePenciledOne' date='03 June 2010 - 09:09 PM' timestamp='1275613766' post='2123424']
I wonder if we could debate about similar things about our fellow man.
[/quote]

Well, if presented with the same question, I would assert that it would also be wrong to cause deliberate pain to a human by running them over with a car. I don't think this debate is about some esoteric assessment of "animal rights." Animals don't have rights. Humans, however, have the responsibility not to cause capricious violence...whether to goose, armadillo or person. That means that when you would rather intentionally crush some creature rather than be inconvenienced by slowing down, that is inherently wrong.

[Marie-Therese]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' date='03 June 2010 - 10:34 PM' timestamp='1275618859' post='2123458']
I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt in assuming that he meant a more metaphysical conception of "suffering".
[/quote]

Well, I tried to read it that way, but I couldn't. He said, plainly, to "be concious(sic) of the pain they feel." Is his argument also that animals are unconscious? They plainly are not. They respond to stimuli and changes in their environment. Does an animal suffer a grievance of conscience? Of course not.

I think his position is a straw man. For one thing, a lion killing a deer does not involve the process of a lion randomly grabbing a nearby deer by the foot and eating him slowly while relishing the pain in the dying deer. Lions kill their prey and then eat it. So this assertion that somehow physical pain is equated to evil intent is an absurdist position. Not to mention that the natural world is ordered with predators and prey by God's creation, and that is the way that creatures obtain their nourishment. The scenario with the goose is in no way comparable to this. It is about a human, who was given dominion over creation by God Almighty, intentionally causing pain to a defenseless creature. That is just wrong.