Originally posted by Dasa
Animals in the wild killing each other for food do not cause each other pain and suffering as do mechanical slaughter houses.
When one animal devours another - by special arrangement there is little suffering because animals do not have a false ego like humans......and in the attack they dis-associate themselves from the pain. (automatically) just like a mon ...[text shortened]...
This is the power and the potency of true religion - that it will change people for the better.
The only flaw in that theory is some animals have intelligence near to humans. For instance, some great apes have been given non-verbal IQ tests, the same kind given to humans with some disability that prevents them from taking a normal test and these apes come out with an IQ of 80, near the human range.
Also Dolphins have a huge brain, and are clearly intelligent, as well as some whales, Porpoise and such, they certainly feel pain when predated.
Also some birds, there was one parrot named Alex, who could understand something like 300 human language words, I think english in that case.
There are plenty of birds who can use tools, chimps are known to use tools including rocks, even otters use rocks to break open clams and such.
You have a very narrow view of what intelligence is.
For instance, I caught a baby mouse in a trap I no longer use because of what I am going to tell you:
There is a trap that is really terrible, it consists of an extremely sticky substance that once a mouse touches it, cannot pull free and this baby mouse did that. I tried to free it but could not without pulling off its legs so I took it to the garage with the intention of killing it as a mercy killing. So I am walking to the garage and then looked at the poor mouse. It looked back at me with such obvious and fast fear I never forgot that. I killed it quickly so it would not suffer but it was clear there was intelligence enough in that mouse to show extreme fear and was obvious to me animals feel pain just as you and I.
Your Veda's are giving you false information if you think animals don't feel pain. For instance, we know chimps wage war on each other and kill other monkeys. Those monkeys have very large brains compared to say Panda bears, who have very shrunken brains due to their single food source, bamboo shoots. Even those bears feel pain, even though they are clearly much lower on the intelligence scale than chimps, who have been clearly shown to be able to understand some english words.
The latest finding is about baboons, they have recently been shown to be able to figure out what english letter combinations would be words and which are non-sense. Even though they have no idea what the words mean, they can tell with very high accuracy if say XRTZ is a word or not or KITE is a word or not. They are rewarded with bits of food for correct answers and the experiments are designed to not give them clues from human operators. That means they have built in the capability for what you might call pre-reading. That means they have intelligence not known before, and all of that means the Vedas don't tell the truth, that some animals have intelligence close to humans.
To say otherwise is just egoistic jargon, wishful thinking by the writers of your Vedas, clearly not inspired by any god because a real god would know exactly which animal feels pain and fear when predated and would know Porpoises, Dolphins, some whales, chimpanzee's, Bonobo's, and some birds are way up there in intelligence, approaching human intelligence.
To say otherwise is just wishful thinking. Humans are not as unique as your veda's or christians or islams or Jews or any other religion that puts mankind on the top of the intelligence pedestal.
Question for dasa
14 Apr '12 00:16
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