This house believe that animals have rights

Before I begin I would like to point out that con has used Wikipedia as a source - Wikipedia is not a trustworthy source so not all of cons arguments could be completely correct. Con as also accused me of rebutting his arguments. Telling him that the definition is incorrect is not really a rebuttal. The reason I did this is so that we could continue the debate with the definitions corrected because without this correction the debate wouldn't have made sense. I will now contradict your arguments from round 2. Regarding you first argument that "Humans do not have any obligations towards animals." Firstly we do have obligations towards animals - ethical obligations but I will not elaborate on this since it is going off topic. You claim that animals have no rationality or interests. Animals can understand cause and effect. A pet dog or cat may come onto your lap. Why do they do this? They do it because they are seeking comfort and warmth.We have a base desire to look, nurture and respect - although there is a minority who do not follow this basic human desire. I will like to thank con for his long (and unnecessary) explanation on the animal brain. You have said that if they cannot think morally or rationally then they cannot receive rights. Babies and people with profound disabilities cannot always think rationally or morally! Does this mean that babies shouldn't receive rights? Does this means that people with disabilities shouldn't receive their rights? If you do believe this then feel free to challenging me to this debate separately because I will gladly debate this topic with you. Again, regarding your short paragraph on morality, just because somebody cannot treat you in an ethical manner it doesn't mean that they should lose all of their rights. This also comes under a large percentage of the people. Criminals, babies, people with disabilities, the elderly ..... the list goes on. You have said that it is a waste of time to give money to animals because we receive no benefit in return. I am going to have to go back to the point about disabled people and babies. Are you saying that it is a waste of money helping disabled people - and that includes babies, children, adults and the elderly. Now I will contradict your second section. It is true that we kill animals for meat and that is because we need food to survive and we need more specifically meat to have a balanced diet of protein. That does not mean that animals do not have rights. Some people eat meat and some animals eat meat. That is another similarity between us. If you claim that nature put us at the top of the food chain so we should kill animals then that makes us no different from them. That would make us the same as all other animals. I understand that we should help our own species before animals but they still deserve rights. Con has failed to provide an argument to back up his statement claiming that we would choose a sick child over an animal. As I have already said - it is obvious that we would choose the sick child but you haven't said why this means that animals shouldn't have rights. Regarding your argument stating that "Animals should not be a major concern." I don't see how animals rights is interfering with these larger issues. I doubt that animal rights campaigners would have helped with these larger issues. Even if they would have helped. As my argument has explain - animals deserve rights. If humans have the right to dominate other creatures then that makes us like the animals - does this mean that we don't deserve rights either? Sources http://www.bbc.co.uk... http://www.animalfreedom.org...