Quote:
Originally Posted by dissentowner
Who cares, they are scum. Why is it when someone kills a young person or goes on a murder spree everyone on here is quick to cry capital punishment but when it comes to animals they are not people they are just animals right? The human race is so twisted.  |
You must have misinterpreted my post. I agree that the human species is in no way intrinsically "worthier" than any other animal species, which is what I pointed out - we are also members of the kingdom
Animalia.
It's quite likely in our genes to feel less remorse for killing and mistreating non-humans than for killing and mistreating humans, and thus see it as a lesser offense. The closer two individuals are genetically related, the more they care about each other's welfare as a general rule (the closest being parent-child relations in species which have few offspring). A gene which influences behaviour in such a way as to cause an individual to refrain from hurting a similar looking (and thus probably closer related) individual is more likely to be propagated in a population because the individual genes of the same type reinforce each other's likelihood of survival.
But this is not really a very good excuse for us in particular, because we have a much greater abundance of higher thinking ability than any other species on Earth, having such a large and well-developed frontal cortex. This means that we can override our reptilian tendencies and move away from genetically fueled subjective thinking.