According to PETA, humans eating other humans is the same as humans eating steak, fish, or chicken. More lunacy from the radical left.
Financial Mirror | Kenneth Dean | Jan. 11, 2008
Sheriff’s officials were astounded Thursday by a letter [from PETA] requesting the man accused of murdering his girlfriend and possibly participating in cannibalism be placed on a vegetarian diet to keep him from being “involved in any senseless killing” while incarcerated.
The letter was faxed to the Smith County Sheriff’s Jail from the national headquarters of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Thursday morning.
The Tyler Morning Telegraph received a copy of the letter before officials and notified Sheriff J.B. Smith.
“You have to be kidding me, right?” was his initial reaction to the news of the letter asking the jail to feed Christopher Lee McCuin, 25, a special vegetarian diet and no meat.
McCuin is jailed for the murder of 21-year-old Jana Shearer and authorities have said, in previous stories, that when McCuin was taken into custody there was an ear boiling in a pot of water on the stove and a plate on the kitchen table with what appeared to be human flesh and a fork.
“It is up to you to prevent McCuin from contributing to any more suffering and death by placing him on a healthy, humane vegetarian diet,” the letter by PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich reads.
In a phone interview with the Tyler Paper Thursday, Friedrich responded the letter was serious and was not intended to be funny nor take away from the brutal death suffered by Ms. Shearer.
“Like humans, animals are made of flesh, blood, and bone. They have the same five senses that we do, and they have the same capacity to experience suffering and fear. And all animals share the desire to live their lives free of pain and to avoid a violent death,” he said.
Friedrich said his organization hoped to help Smith County prepare a nutritional vegetarian menu and possibly help organize a menu for the entire jail population.
[…]
When asked how eating a hamburger compared to cannibalism, Friedrich said all meat is from a corpse. He further stated he believes McCuin could become violent if he ate meat and could kill.
“Only in a culture where people routinely kill and eat living, feeling beings would anyone even think to kill and eat a human loved one,” he said.
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Only the kooks from PETA could come up with this!
What a bunch of maroons. to quote bugs bunny
David, while certainly the folks of PETA do not have a Chistian foundation for their approach to life, they are neither stupid nor kooks. They are quite consistent in their understanding that all sentient life is equivalent. The idea of equivalency is often followed by the idea that human beings have “no right” to oppress other sentient creatures. From there it quickly devolves into anti-humanism. Do not forget that the “animal rights” movement was started by Peter Singer who is now a professor of ethics at Princeton University. IMO, PETA is at the front lines of inclucating the equivalence idea into our culture. “Animal Rights” through Peter Singer is tightly linked to the devaluation of human beings, infanticide and euthanasia.
@bauman,
have you actually read Singer?
for crying out loud!
Curt, what part of Michael Bauman’s explanation do you disagree with?
Curt, Have you read St. Athanasius or St. Maxiums the Confessor? I rather suspect that I have read far more of Peter Singer and comprehend far more of his philosophy that you do of either of the two fine gentlemen I mention.
Are human beings are created in image and likeness of God and ontologically distinct? Any system of ethical thought that begins with the assumption that human beings are not created in the image and likeness of God and are not ontologically distinct from the rest of creation will end by devaluing all life.
For the record:
I stopped reading Singer sometime ago when these two pieces of such wonderful ethics popped out of what I was reading: It should be legal for parents to kill their children for any reason up to age two and that while he is personally taking care of his aged infirmed mother, society should have the right to euthanize anyone like his mother. I really don’t need to know anything else. He is a barbarian that values human life only to the extent that it is productive as he defines productive while at the same time giving intrinsic value to sentient animal life. I don’t choose to subject myself to anymore of his miasmic drivel.
Bauman,
I have not read the philosophers you mention, but I will have a look at them. Whether I have read them or not, though, has little (nothing) to do with my objection to your comments on Singer.
I do agree, that if I had the same values and beliefs as you I would be equally as offended by Singer’s conclusions concerning the ‘value’ of human life. Of course I agree that for someone who values humans above all other forms of life as much as you seem to do his arguments concerning euthanasia etc would be repulsive. His ethics do not devalue human life, from his standpoint. There is nothing morally inconsistent about his arguments. There are numerous arguments contrary to what you suggest, but that’s not really the point, because they invariably start on different assumptions to you.
Moreover, while from your standpoint ‘In Defense of Animals’ may devalue human life, if you are familiar with his discussion regarding charity, world poverty etc I fail to see how you could portray him in this light. Especially when he is one of the strongest voices for poverty stricken ‘humans’ in the third-world (to use an outdated term). As I’m sure you know, in contrast to some religions’ requirement of a 10% tithe to the church, he advocates giving all non-necessary income to organizations which directly help those in need – that new T.V./car/nice dinner you bought? – not using that money to save lives seems a pretty big ‘devaluation’ of human life to me.
On a side note, it’s interesting that you stop reading philosophy that you don’t agree with. Evidence of a fine critical mind.
Curt, you are right. I don’t have a fine critical mind, my orientation is union with God as revealed in the Church. God is not a idea to be debated, He is a person with whom we can, by His grace and condensension, live in loving communion. I see no reason to read stuff (call it philosophy if you wish) that conveys neither love nor wisdom (the root of the word philosophy).
Singer’s anthropology is wrong, therefore any conclusions he comes to morally and ethically for human beings will be fatally flawed. Those flaws will reverberate with unfortunate consequences throughout the rest of creation. If I were a scholar writing on modern thought, I’d read a lot of stuff with which I disagreed. I am not a scholar, I am just an ordinary Christian trying to live in obedience to God for the salvation of my soul. I try to understand the revealed truth of the Church so that I can quickly spot a counterfeit when it arises. It is part of the spiritual battle of our times.
I don’t have the time or the strength to immerse myself in untruth simply to satifiy some vanity that I have a fine critical mind by the world’s standards. It would be the intellectual equivalent of using pornography.
There is an absolute ground of truth and being–God, revealed to us in His Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ who went to the Cross so that we can recover our own selves. The relativism you express is a lie. It does not lead to tolerance and peace, but to anarchy, chaos and destruction. The denial of a hierachy of being and values which you also imply is equally a lie.
As an aside, the philosopher who impelled me toward the Church was Nietzche. I’ve been through the first two metamorphosis of the spirit (although not quite the way Nietzche had in mind). I spent forty years in the desert that you would have me go back to. It would be foolish to turn back into that desert without a specific leading of God to do so. What is left for me is to become simple as a child so that the sacred yes of creation may echo in my soul. That is a task at which I will spend the rest of my life.
You are welcome to join me. I’d enjoy your company.
Note 6. Curt writes:
It’s easy for professors, whose research, writing, and livelihood are dependent on endowments (especially at places like Princeton) to moralize about how other people make and spend their money. Ever notice how it never applies to them?
Singer is a utilitarian. He teaches that human value is a function of economic expediency, at least to the age of two years old or so. If parents don’t want their child, kill it. There is no prohibition against this in his moral universe.
Extend this utilitarian thinking forward, why not just kill the infirm, especially those at the end of life? While we are at it, why not kill them before they become a financial or emotional liability? They are going to die anyway, right? This would be consistent, which in Singer’s case it is.
Also, moralisms like don’t spend you money on TV dinners, big cars, and the like, which may be compelling in a feel-good-about-myself kind of way, have no real bearing on his ideas. Being right in one area, does not mean that a person is right in another.