rsl12

yatzr: are you around the washington dc area? I would glady come and strangle, skin, and butcher your dog, and then you could enjoy dog steaks. not my personal favorite (dog has a strong taste) but would do so and you could prove your point at the same time.

anyways, the idea that there's some fine line between humans and animals is an interesting distinction--unless you have religious reasons for believing so (souls and all that)...gorillas and humans share 99% of their dna. how would you feel about eating:

aborted fetuses
person less intelligent than your average monkey (i assume such people exist)
person brain-dead from accident
someone evil (mr. manson)


(note: not really talking about being grossed out about eating these things--more about being morally disgusted by the idea)

my point is still that there's a moral line that everyone draws--some point beyond which the idea of eating, of causing death causes moral disgust. there's a great diversity of things to eat in the world, and the line gets drawn arbitrarily at a point, even though you could argue with the person about particular things that they *ought* to be able to eat, based on their arguments. where that line is drawn is a matter of personal opinion, and even though it's often a bit arbitrary, drawing the line is far from a useless exercise. for you, your line is humans/non-humans. but i could argue at length and perhaps get you to concede that special case #23432 ought to be eatable. but that doesn't make your line-drawing of humans/non-humans not useful.

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oh baby oh baby, i like gravy.