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[Nikitas]

PETA repeatedly oppose killing rats, they suggest live trapping and releasing in the countryside, which could well be someoen else's land, so the urban pinko liberal hygiene problem becomes someone else's problem. In the UK it is a criminal offence to do this, but no one has prosecuted PETA yet for incitement.

Biologist Plummer says categorically that there is no such thing as a clean rat. They are carriers of several diseases, some of them fatal to humans and other mammals. In addition they are mechanically destructive. So there is no such thing as a clean or healthy rat. Rather than administer drugs and all that baloney it is much easier to squash it.

I have no problem with guilt. I detest others trying to use it to manipulate. Intellectuals like Woody Allen have commented on this, and attribute it to a certain religion, or group of religions. As a pure Hellene I do not feel bound by these religious precepts and the false ethics they spawned.

[Get Real!]

As a pure Hellene....

And a Spartan at that no doubt…

[Oracle]

PETA repeatedly oppose killing rats, they suggest live trapping and releasing in the countryside, which could well be someoen else's land, so the urban pinko liberal hygiene problem becomes someone else's problem. In the UK it is a criminal offence to do this, but no one has prosecuted PETA yet for incitement.

Biologist Plummer says categorically that there is no such thing as a clean rat. They are carriers of several diseases, some of them fatal to humans and other mammals. In addition they are mechanically destructive. So there is no such thing as a clean or healthy rat. Rather than administer drugs and all that baloney it is much easier to squash it.

I have no problem with guilt. I detest others trying to use it to manipulate. Intellectuals like Woody Allen have commented on this, and attribute it to a certain religion, or group of religions. As a pure Hellene I do not feel bound by these religious precepts and the false ethics they spawned.

On the contrary, it is 'religious precepts' which preach man is above all other creatures.

So, at what point do humans rise above the lineages they have co-evolved with and come to singularly deserve ethical treatment?

[Nikitas]

At the point that they simply can. Dominance is a vital function. Lions dominate hyeanas with no ethical limits, and we do not ask why, and humans dominate lions, so why agonize about the one and not the other?

Here rises the guilt I was referring to above. You bypass the source, but that does not change the fact of its origin. Guilt is a judaeo-christian invention. The implication of your statement Oracle is that humans are thinking beings and must ponder the consequences of their acts etc ad nauseam. Well at some point we must concede that thinking should rank humans above the non thinking by virtue of the sheer power it affords. Whatever constraints we put on ourselves are based on short or long term self interest and not much else, again becaue we can think and appreciate our self interest. Morality and guilt have little to do with it.