Animal rights is an unjustified ethical doctrine.

To begin, I would note that I am not in real life an animal rights advocate, but closer to an, as my opponent put it, ‘animal welfarist'. None-the-less, I believe I am fully capable of expounding upon justifications for animal rights without the need to believe that animals deserve those rights – many people justify any number of beliefs, and, in this debate, the question is not whether or not such beliefs or correct but whether or not people would be justified in holding them. I continue to believe that the answer is yes. My opponent, on the other hand, seems to be under the impression that it would be an impossible task to show that the animal rights movement is unjustified. I find this difficult to accept given that my sources provided some criticisms, but I will leave this issue to the voters to consider. 1. Argument: Fulfilling the urge towards universal compassion and understanding 1. Flawed syllogism: ethics is not the concern of EVERY moral agent and Einstein's intelligence is irrelevant. Not every person bound by laws proscribed by ethics need concern themselves with ethics. A criminal may commit a crime not because he understands it is wrong and does it anyway but because he doesn't comprehend how it could be wrong. Intelligence may not apply equally to all things, but it seems to be necessary to qualify an understanding of appropriate ethics models; after all, the models need to work. Like any law, one that provided animals with rights would necessarily not stop behavior infringing on those rights; yet like any lawful proscription, it would be enforced even against those who did not comprehend the rationale therefore. Also, Einstein was a philosopher as well as a physicist. . http://plato.stanford.edu... … and he had a lot to say about ethics. . http://atheism.about.com... 2. Why should we care? We are merely elements of the universe, interacting with our nearest fellow components. To not care (at all), to serve the self at the expense of all else, is to start a survivalist chain reaction of sorts that would lead to a self destructive environment. The universe exists and works towards continuing to exist, and so we care and those who do not care are informed that they should. That's ridiculously esoteric, but it is as close as I can get to explaining why there should be a tendency towards compassion in the most objective sense. 2. Argument: Acquiring Symbiotic Benefits We can not be fully insulated from the natural world because to achieve such a state would require the ability to fully extricate ourselves from it, which would be such a massive undertaking, excepting oneself from every other system, that Murphy's law would have to come into play. See . http://en.wikipedia.org.... Moreover, how could any technology ever exist to remove us entirely from the natural world without being unnatural, a state that in the objective sense does not exist? As for resorting to what I suppose might be called a limited form of animal rights, the raising of cows will be needless as soon as cloning technology is more fully developed. They're already growing meat in Petri dishes. . http://www.treehugger.com... Why would you raise a sentient animal to slaughter when you can just grow a mass of appropriate cells? It serves no purpose other than to cause suffering. Please show me the moral excuse for that. 3. Argument: Meta-ethics - Allowing the shooting of the box 1. As my opponent conceded the first part of his argument here, I will ignore it. 2. "The possibility of animals having rights, unless shown otherwise, is much less than 50% … just because there is a possibility does NOT MEAN we should have a reasonable concern for it. " Let's play with this scenario again. Let's say that there is still a chance of a child being in the box, but now that chance is only one in twenty four million. Do you still shoot the box *for fun*? I hope the answer is ‘no. ' Whenever there is a possibility that harm could arise needlessly from one's actions, one should restrain oneself. It is only where the probability of a harm in not acting outweighs a probability of a harm in acting that one should take the risk. If someone told me I needed to shoot the box or else they would shoot the child they were holding in their hands, I would shoot the box even if the odds were 99% that there was a child inside … because the 99% odds are better than 100%. Likewise, if humans needed to harm animals to survive, I wouldn't have any qualms. But they don't, so they shouldn't. Of course, this obviates any argument about aggressive animals; if there is a chance of harm to yourself if you don't act banefully towards another organism, it is still rational for you to do so … and, indeed, not even human rights contemplate refusing to kill in a life or death struggle with a fellow human assailant. 3. This is justified above. 4. "We like it, so we do it. " Sometimes I wish I could think this way. Life would be simpler. But clearly, doing things strictly because you like to is preposterous. Thieves like to steal. Should we let them? Murderers like to murder? Is that okay? If you destroy someone's car because you took it for a joy ride, should we exonerate you? No. Liking something is a reason you *want* to do it, but never a good reason *to* do it. Conclusion In conclusion, I would add only that I believe the animal rights movement remains justified.