This list is full of false statements. Almost all of them are false. Here are some big ones:
Natural selection completely determines the traits of animals (but not humans, because of culture). (FALSE -- see cultural variation among chimpanzees)
Natural selection doesn’t endow animals with superfluous traits. (FALSE. Male nipple, anyone?)
Arguments 4-6 seem to depend on the clearly false assumption that animals do not have memory (!!!!)
Christopher E. Doss Moscow, Russian Federation
--- On Mon, 4/6/09, Philip Pilkington <pilkingtonphil at gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Philip Pilkington <pilkingtonphil at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] vegetarianism: an eating disorder
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Monday, April 6, 2009, 9:30 AM
> Come on. We've known since Descartes
> that animals don't feel pain right?
>
> Jokes aside though this argument is still upheld by some
> today and its
> actually quite interesting:
>
> http://faculty.smu.edu/jkazez/animal%20rights/peter_harrison.htm
>
> People laugh at the idea that animals aren't conscious but
> if you consider
> animal psychology wholly from the point-of-view of pure
> mimicry this
> argument can certainly be upheld. Animals, after all, seem
> to be absolutely
> unable to change their own behavior patterns when lacking
> an external
> incentive which would imply a lack of consciousness.
>
> True, Harrison is one step away from some sort of
> creationism, but animal
> rights activists are often one step away from promoting the
> absurd argument
> that dolphins are more intelligent than humans.
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