ProfessionalTeabagger

If you stole it then by definition someone else owns it.

Again there's no such thing as "collectively more worth". I am guessing that you're going to repeat this claim over and over so we'll have to rebut it over and over. I can just as easily say one human has more worth than all other species who ever existed and it would be just as valid. I can say one person has more worth than a billion people or a billion people has more worth than one and it's just as valid. Worth is subjective. Do you understand? You are not some objective arbiter of worth. Those other species (AGAIN, an entirely human abstract concept/ biological with no meaning whatsoever to any of the animals and of no benefit to them) do not have more worth. Stop saying this silly thing.

The pedophile has to have a reasonable certainty of competence in order for the sex to be UPB. If, as you say, there's no definitive competency test then they can't say the kid is competent. So it can't be UPB.

If he's able to point out that a scientist who makes these claims can't even name one of the species that went extinct then that's reason for skepticism. I am very skeptical that there IS a consensus on the degree of extinctions caused directly by humans and I'm pretty positive there's no consensus that humans must go extinct to solve it. It IS the that institutions of scientific research have to please their "stockholders". Their stockholders just take a different form. They are invested in stiring up environmental alarm. As we can see from the global warming alarm it's possible to generate billions in revenue from grants and bring certain fields of research to prominence. You can't exempt scientists from having the same self-interest that you believe the corporations have without giving a valid reason. On average the animals suffer and die to the same degree whether we HAPPEN to have infringed on their environment or not. Animals infringe and kill each OTHER all the time. Microorganisms (which are just as much of a species as any other) kill and torment countless trillions. The fact that the animals MAY happen to be going extinct is irrelevant. It would incidental to the actual suffering. Do you see? There's no evidence that on average animals within a species suffer more as a result of extinction than they normally do. I know it SEEMS that way (because extinction feels like a bad thing because you are a human and you care about it) but it's not. If anything extinction prevents suffering within a species. And your "How would feel if animals said that to YOU/" thing doesn't work. Because, from my vantage point as a human, if i was an animal I would appreciate not existing and think humans a blessing. Thanks for your opinion. I don't have a clue how long humans will last. Maybe two minutes or 2 billion years. Who knows? The point was that you were wrong because humans CAN potentially last longer than any other species and the hundred thousand year number was wrong because it's based on a faulty variable. Get it? How do you know it's not reasonable that we will be around? How could you know that? How do you know we won't have evolved far beyond what we are and easily be able to prevent earth's destruction. Maybe we'll end all suffering through paradise engineering. Maybe we'll plunge earth into an eternal hell. You don't know so stop making claims about things you can't possibly know. I just GAVE you an argument for why your asteroid strike claim is wrong. The 20 million years thing is an average. An average. It doesn't literally mean there's a strike every 20 million years. That's why I said it could happen in a year or millions of years. Do you understand? Oh we're playing the "You're basically saying . . ." game? Okay. So YOU are basically saying we should kill ourselves in order that an abstract concept called "species" can contain a greater number and that animals can suffer just as much and go on suffering for billions more years and in greater numbers because you have sad feelings in your tummy and hate your parents for giving birth to you and want to project that unto the world? Really? How can you be so cruel? Have you no shame? If the above sounds like bullshit, remember I'm only interpreting "what you're basically saying . . ". We're not destroying the biosphere. What a silly superstition. We are not going anywhere and the only way the biosphere will be destroyed is if nature does it. The only thing that can prevent its ultimate destruction is humanity. If we followed your deranged, anti-rational plan trillions of times more animals will suffer pointlessly in a futile existence and the biosphere will be destroyed anyway. All so's YOU can feel a bit better now. This superstition has been refuted. I made a valid argument against this. You have as yet not shown how I'm wrong. You either rebut or you accept the argument. That's how debate works. You don't just go on repeating your claim. That's just spewing dogma. Our worth is not less than those species we supposedly destroyed or are supposedly going to destroy. Do you understand the difference between your opinion and reality? I gave you an argument for why this notion of objective worth is fallacious. Again you have to rebut the arguments being made , not just repeat your claims. It's not about how I RATE individuality. It is a fact that humans do not act as a single agent. The footprint thing is horseshit as I explained. You might as well say Bats leave a considerable footprint or viruses have a considerable footprint. There is no footprint because the criteria are subjective. It's anti-human propaganda. You can just change the criteria according to your values. How ridiculous. The annoying thing is that you peddle this as if it's objective and people (who are often primed with stories of humans original sin and ruining paradise, etc) uncritically buy it. It's religion. I'll try again. You are part of the human species yet you are engaged in a course of action you believe has the opposite effect of destruction. You you say we are the most destructive species and you include all of us. That's a contradiction. That's why you are self-refuting. It is simply accepting that we are born into a crowded 7.3 billion person world that domesticates you into a certain kind of life, and if you want to minimize your destruction of the environment, the best action is to not have children. As I said, suicide is too much toi ask from anybody. The world is not over-crowded. It mostly empty and humans are endlessly adaptable. The best action is not to avoid having a child. For example your parents had YOU and you are by your own admission are trying to reduce destruction; which could mean your birth actually lessened destruction. So your assertion that not having kids is the best way to minimize destruction is false. Why is suicide too much ask? Suicide is the logical conclusion of your position. What about the small amount of people who may think your proposed course is too much to ask? Is this another argument were in order to accept it we have to treat your entirely subjective preferences and values as if they are objective? Is it because YOU think suicide is too much to ask, therefore it IS too much to ask? What has something being too much to ask got to do with it anyway? If that is the logical conclusion of the argument and suicide is the correct moral course then that's the way the mop flops. But you can't advocate the actual conclusion of the argument because if you do then the contradiction would be obvious. Not sure if guilt is the right attitude to finding out that we're driving so many species to extinction. But pride certainly isn't. Available evidence indicates that Homo Sapiens has an unacceptable destructive potential. I think we have the potential to realize what we are, even if it's hard to swallow. Available evidence does not indicate that. The word "unacceptable" is a subjective one but you are referring to objective evidence. This is your problem. You mistake your feelings and values for the world. You are mistaking what "we are" for what you think you are.

Studies of what? You are the one making the claim that species are going extinct at thousands of times the rate that they should be (based on some yet to be revealed objective measure of how fast species should go extinct). Patrick Moore is pointing how these studies are unreliable. What burden of proof do I have? I have already argued that even if you are correct about the species rate of extinction it doesn't make your argument about voluntary human extinction valid. Didn't you notice me argue that a rapid rate of extinction may be a good thing? Moore was a founder of Greenpeace and fought with them for years. That's demonstrable. He's not a paid spokesman for the nuclear industry (why would this even be relevant?). The people who interpreted the data on the studies you cite are also paid and have a great financial interest in stiring up environmental alarm. We should be skeptical of them too, right? Now it's "enormously". That could mean twice as much or thousands of times as much. This is the slippery nonsense that leftist environmentalists always peddle. There's no evidence that species suffer more as a result of going extinct. If there is then produce it. An individual animal might suffer whereas it would not have if its species wasn't going extinct but the opposite could also be true. The fact is that species preservation is a solely human concern and you are projecting your selfish desire for species preservation on to animals. No it doesn't mean that. I already gave you an argument. Human beings can last longer potentially than any other species. The 100 thousand year number is not valid because it's based on observations of species who do not have our unique traits. It's possible that it may be likely humans will face an asteroid strike in the future, not to mention the inevitable expansion of the sun. We will be those other species only hope (not that they'll care or benefit overall because species preservation is an entirely human preference). Without human help every species on earth will go extinct. Are they going to get on spaceships when the sun fries the planet? In fact humans can now preserve samples of all species as so as none ever go extinct. In the near future we may actually end extinction. The human species does not act as a single agent so your assertion that WE are the most destructive species is fallacious. You are part of the human species yet you are engaged in a course of action you believe has the opposite effect of destruction. How do you explain that? Are you an exception? Can you do things other human's can't? I think it's you who are dealing in Orwellian double-think because you refute your self. Yeah I've seen lots of these crackpot sites. Again, what's your footprint? To tell that you need to know the future effects of your actions. But you can't know that. What if you are successful and you convince millions and end up reducing environmental damage in by 30 percent? Your footprint would be massively positive right? Yet those websites will tell you how much damage you are doing. Those websites are horseshit designed to guilt-trip people who can't think. You keep saying moral and immoral but are failing to provide any actual moral argument. You are just stating your preference and trying to persuade with appeals to guilt. Morality cannot be applied to a species. A species is not an agent. You need a moral agent in order to apply morality. I've already explained why that quote from Les Knight is nonsense. The scales do not favor our extinction because Les made that up in his head. We are not collectively guilty of being human and the concept of a species only has relevance to humans.

It's actually not a bad question. I don't think you can contact anyone that way. It's kind of an advantage because it illustrates how difficult a large enough anarchist society would be to take over.

Where's your evidence that humans have increased the "background rate" of killing and suffering? When was this measured? Ernest Mayr is wrong. We are a unique species so he can't make that comparison. Just because a large meteor strike happens on average every so many millions of years doesn't mean one can't happen tomorrow. The 20 million years figure is an average. It is not predictive. Human beings can overcome things that other species are helpless against so we may very well be around for several meteor strikes and worse. Without us all life is doomed. If everyone was so dedicated to preserving other species that they all voluntarily decided to stop breading then we wouldn't need to stop breeding because everyone would be dedicated to helping animals. Environmental footprints are bullshit. What's your footprint? There's no way to calculate such future effects. Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore refutes these claims. http://www.climatedepot.com/2011/03/04/greenpeace-cofounder-slams-species-extinction-scare-study-as-proof-of-how-peerreview-process-has-become-corrupted-ndash-study-greatly-underestimate-the-rate-new-species-can-evolve/

The scenarios are ambiguous and so I don't think there's any objective answer. How can I answer whether it's okay to take the £20 note if I don't know where it's been dropped and under what circumstances? Is it likely the not will be destroyed or taken by someone else if I don't take it. Is it likely the person who dropped will never come back for it? Is not taking the note likely to mean it will be destroyed? Am I willing to pay the person back if they find out and ask?

It's not your grammar I'm talking about but your failure to prove what you're saying and instead saying it "seems" rather than "it is". You have to demonstrate something is immoral. Telling us it "seems" immoral to you is just your opinion. What you're doing which is spreading a false morality in support of a plan of action that will never happen and will only make things worse seems immoral to me. But until I prove it it's just my opinion and I doubt you give two hoots about my opinion. I know animals experience pleasure. So what? Is the pleasure worth the suffering? Please tell me which moment of joy in an animal's life makes up for the millions of years of unspeakable suffering of all the animals within the species? I am pretty certain that on average animals within a species suffer no less in being "driven" to extinction than continuing to exist. Mostly every animal dies in some wretched painful manner. What difference does it make if there happens to be no more of that particular species? How does the animal suffer any more? It doesn't. It's entirely your sentimental preference for species preservation. You bring me and/or my family into your examples. But you are talking about species, not individuals or family. You don't get to conflate those as if they are in the same category. Also it doesn't matter that I ask the question "nonchalantly". What has HOW I ask the question got to do with the question? Are you going to answer it or not? BTW I would also make a case to a judge that someone who deliberately hurt animals should be in jail. Pro-species is not the same as Pro-animal. I am pro-animal first and I don't let my solely human valuing of species interfere with my caring for the well-being of the actual animals.

What exactly is the problem with this supposed extinction? If you could show more suffering is caused to individual animals as a result of this extinction then you might have an argument. But isn't there less suffering as members of these extinct species will no longer be born into horror?

Saying something "seems" immoral is not a good way to argue that it is immoral. That doesn't even reach the level of abductive reasoning. It is not immoral, as a species is not capable of immorality. Only individuals. Even if the human species was an agent that could act morally it's still not true that causing any other species to go extinct is immoral. The preservation of species is only a human value and does not exist without us. Your proposed measures to determine the worth of a species are arbitrary. They are 100 percent your preference. There is absolutely nothing true or valid about them. This is an attempt to perform alchemy and make what you happen to value transform into something objective. You cannot make your aesthetic preferences become correct anymore than you can turn lead into gold. You go on putting forward a nihilistic view of human behavior and pushing the Terror management hypothesis (which you appear to accept as fact). Even if you're correct it makes no difference to the fact that you are wrong in your basic premises as I have explained. You need to make a valid rebuttal to my arguments and stop with the "it seems . . ." and "I feel . . ." stuff.

It's bald assertions like that that make Mr1001nights look like the good guy and his position look like the rational one. If you want to make the claim that animals do not warrant having morality extended to them then you need argue it.

I think the TMT is not great. I think human beings that developed the ability to play and create gained an evolutionary advantage and as a side-effect we were able to create all sorts of cultural things. You are right to say that it does not make any worldview empirically false just because it plays that function. Even if everything we do comes from this terror management it's irrelevant because it would be true whether we do good or evil. There is no value of a human species, precise or imprecise. All value is necessarily subjective. Any attempt to pass of one's subjective valuing as objective is nonsense. Personally I think it can be extremely sad when a species ends but what I value most in terms of animal well-being is that individual animals don't suffer unduly. I don't care that much about extinction because extinction doesn't necessarily cause any undue suffering (other than in humans). Species preservation is just a selfish human desire. You of course are free to value as you wish. You can value humans as just one other species or whatever you like. But don't forget that those feelings have no truth value. I don't know if human beings ARE the most destructive species. I think that's kinda bigoted because human beings are very different and most of is have been living under evil people in an evil system. To go from the individuals most responsible for undue destruction to the species is a logically fallacious leap (Unless you are saying that we are all guilty of this destruction by virtue of being born human?). Humanity has not destroyed more species than it is worth because "worth" is subjective. To suggest that some individual somewhere (who is not particularly responsible for any destruction of these species) must not have a child because the species they belong to is X amount destructive is preposterous and morally wrong. You cannot hold an individual responsible for what the group they belong to does (or is claimed to do). There's no such thing as "our" moral right? That's insane collectivist nonsense. How can a species have a moral right? Only individual agents can act morally or have "moral rights". Are you really asserting that individual humans have no moral right to breed because of something the collective group "humans are supposed to have done? Also "nature's background rate of killing"? Is there an objectively correct rate of killing? Did nature get it right? As far as I can see nature is unspeakably brutal. Is the fact that nature manages to keep species around a lot longer and torture and kill billions more of them supposed to make nature superior? I think the worst possible thing to do to animals is leave them in the hands of nature.

I think the antinatalist prescriptions of people like the OP and Les Knight are the ultimate expression of the terror management theory. They are unhappy and voluntary human extinction gives their lives meaning and helps them cope. In a world were all human achievement is meaningless and futile, ending such a state of affairs becomes the ONLY meaningful path to pursue. But the VHEMT don't want to end all life, only human life. So they want to end the only species that can even understand or care about the concept of species to save all the other species who will never understand, care or be unduly harmed by their extinction. Their argument is based upon the false premise that a species value can be objectively measured. You can see this in that quote from Les Knight. It's so ridiculous to arbitrarily use the number of species as a measure as the concept of species is just a way humans differentiate between animal populations who have diverged and can no longer interbreed. No animal will ever care or be spared suffering by saving their species. Saving species is entirely a selfish human thing to do. It's a demonstrably human preference. I have talked to Mr1001nights before and he is irrational about this subject. When faced with an argument he can't logically rebut he will attempt to shame and emotionally manipulate. If you're reading this Mr10001nights I hope Mr Knight DOES debate Stef. I also hope you call in to the show and put these arguments to Stefan.

I think you are just as likely to see legally enforced antinatalism because of the environmentalist hysteria.

That's like saying I'm going to cut of my head in order to prevent possible brain cancer. If one is considering the welfare of the child and what IT would choose it's extremely reasonable to assume the child would prefer to have an existence rather than be condemned to non-existence based on the chance it might suffer.

Those two claims are not mutually exclusive. They DO claim it is magical as I have seen them do this many, many times. If you are insinuating that what I meant was that determinists actually say there is a magical thing called free will that actually exists then I have to assume you are trolling or joking. Obviously I meant it in the same way I'd say atheists claim God is magical. Just because they ALSO might say he doesn't exist doesn't mean they don't also say he's magical and just because they say he's magical does not mean they're saying he exists. You understand? Yes I don't know what free will is. So what? There are lots of things we might observe in the universe that we may not know what they are.

Not conscious? What? Yes you can observe that people are capable of abstract reasoning and animals are not. I don't have to know what it's like to be a cat to know it can't understand syllogisms. Even if it can and is somehow concealing that fact then it wouldn't matter for the overall point about free will. I don't know. That's the whole point. It's unknown much in the same way the reason for life was unknown. But I do know it is ridiculous to say it's completely independent of antecedent events/ causes. Determinists like to claim free will is magical but even MAGICAL events are not claimed to be independent of causes that produced them.

Concern troll.

Two pigs in a bath. One pig says, "Could you pass me the soap?" and the other pig replies, "What do you think I am? A typewriter?".

The arguments and claims in this letter have been addressed to the point of exhaustion. Free will is not actions produced independent of causes that produced them. Where are you getting this? You say that human intelligence is just different in degree from an animal but offer no proof. A human mind can do abstract reasoning, an animal cannot. This is observable. This is all the same determinst argument from incredulity and/or ignorance we hear over and over again. You can't imagine how free will could exist, therefore it doesn't. Can you even define cause and effect in a way that excludes free will without begging the question? Also, stop saying "I find . . ." and "It seems to me . . .". Those aren't arguments.

No he doesn't owe the child his services. This is a question liberals ask in order to drown principals in a sea of emotion. I don't think this child drowning scenario being so common is coincidental.

Why are you attacking me for asking these questions? I don't actually know if you are in on the 9/11 conspiracy or are part of a disinformation campaign to discredit genuine inquiry into holes in the official story but you can't stop me from having my say. 9/11 truth now!

Lack of transitional fossils? Nope. Not doing this shit. Bye.

Fair enough. You should stop saying "hope" and just say "afterlife" then.