Animal rights is an unjustified ethical doctrine.

Greetings and salutations to my opponent! I look forward to a productive debate. I acknowledge my opponent's desire for this debate to be free from semantics arguments, and will therefore avoid discussion of definitions except where it seems necessary to continue the debate. To begin, I think it is important to evaluate the resolution my opponent has propounded, namely that "the moral background of animal rights [are] empty and unfulfilled." I disagree. I believe that the moral background of animal rights is full of rational justifications, even self-serving rational justifications, which shall be expounded upon during the course of this debate. To provide just a few: 1. Fulfilling the urge towards universal compassion and understanding: "A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." -- Albert Einstein, http://www.wisdomquotes.com... The animal rights movement represents in part an extension of the process Einstein eloquently described above by which humanity recognizes and comes to value all of existence. 2. Acquiring Symbiotic Benefits The fewer life forms an organism harms, and the more life forms it benefits, the more important that organism becomes over time to its ecosystem. Similarly, the more organisms a life form harms, the more likely it is to cause the collapse of its ecosystem. In like fashion, granting ‘rights' to animals and protecting animals from the worst depravity of human society makes it more likely that other species would perceive us favorably and form symbiotic bonds with us, which is an important evolutionary process. See Symbiosis, http://en.wikipedia.org.... To some extent, this has already occurred with dolphins (http://www.eurocbc.org... ) and at least one bird (http://en.wikipedia.org... ). While an animal may not appreciate the ‘rights' being accorded it (as rights are a wholly human conception) they could appreciate the benefits thereof and, in their appreciation, develop symbiotically with mankind. 3. The Meta-Ethical Argument: Allowing the shooting of the box To the extent that extending rights to animals would in no way harm humanity, such rights could be argued as being justifiably extended under the meta-ethical argument that where extending such rights may do nothing, it at least accomplishes no harm, where as by not extending such rights a harm may be allowed to continue, but in no way would it accomplish any good. To sum it up more simply: let us suppose that there is in front of a person a cardboard box and this person, inclined to shoot things, is handed a gun and told that the box is empty. Should this person shoot the box, we could not say that this person did anything wrong, for there was no meaningful harm in doing so and the shooter derived pleasure from the act, so there might be said to be some small measure of good in it. However, imagine that we said that there may be a child in the box (say a 50% chance); what then would be the moral ramifications of shooting the box? Even if the box appeared to be empty after the firing, surely only a depraved mind would risk the life within. If the child was within the box, then clearly the shooter would have taken the child's life for his own pleasure, a result I doubt many would consider a good outcome. As a corollary of this line of thought, it could be said to be moral to prevent others from shooting the box, but at best amoral to take no action against the shooter. Likewise, let us presume that by extending animals ‘rights', we reduce a cause of their suffering (human depravity). There is nothing to say that by doing this we have done anything absolutely good, or right, or moral; yet there is the possibility that, in preventing animals from suffering the worst of what schemes humans may devise against them, we are, in diminishing the needless suffering of sentient beings, doing some amount of good. In comparison, by doing nothing, we are at best amorally standing by while actions are being taken with no regard for the potential ethical concerns raised thereby. By extending rights to animals, even unnecessarily, we force humans to consider their actions and to develop a finer, as opposed to a more callous, regard towards fellow living creatures (including other humans). By not so doing, we invite humans to consider to think of other living creatures as mere machines disposable at one's leisure, a line of thought prevalent amongst psychopaths. (http://en.wikipedia.org... )This concern, of raising moral awareness and enhancing empathy, has been addressed by past philosophers and ethicists as noted here: http://en.wikipedia.org... . Having shown that there are at least three legitimate reasons for extending rights to animals, I believe that my opponent's resolution has been disproven. I would note that the animal rights movement does not necessitate rights equal to human beings being extended, nor does it require the extension of such rights to all animals, as noted in the Wikipedia article. Of course, my opponent appears to be using the PETA definition of animal rights, which extends the scope of animal rights efforts considerably. Regardless, I believe the afore-mentioned justifications still apply even to PETA's version of animal rights, in so far as that by indoctrinating others to be needlessly deferential towards other life forms you necessarily cause them to be at least appropriately concerned for the welfare of others. I therefore turn this debate over to my opponent and await the argument in support of his resolution.