"Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment."

I'm impressed with my opponent's speed, but not with his argument. Perhaps if he slowed down and took my time, his arguments would have more substance. ==================== Sentience in animals ==================== ---->>>"I pointed out that not ALL animals are sentient. Only a few of the more advanced ones are. You said nothing against this, really. " -->. .. ladies and gentlemen. My opponent has no real argument. Why? Because he categorically confuses the difference between SENTIENCE and SELF-AWARENESS. To be sentient is, as I stated before, the ability to feel pain or pleasure. One does NOT have to be self-aware to be sentient; practically every animal on the planet is sentient while self-awareness is arguably in only a select few. My opponent's severe misunderstanding of such a simple concept throws this argument in my favor. ==================== Eating animals ==================== ---->>>"Our ancestors ate meat. Our grandparents probably ate meat. Meat is part of the human diet. Human taste buds have evolved to enjoy the taste of meat. We enjoy the taste of meat, because meat is good. Meat, meat, meat. " --> Again, my opponent commits numerous fallacies. JUST BECAUSE IT'S NATURAL OR COMMON DOES NOT MEAN IT'S RIGHT. He's repeatedly committing fallacies here and there, and to point out the flaws would be redundant on my part. ---->>>"Also, my opponent has not countered the fact that we only breed cows, chickens, and pigs for meat (well, cows for dairy, too, but the PETA is against that, too), and if eating meat was outlawed, farmers would have no incentive to breed such animals, and it would lead to a severe decline in reproduction, and one goal of animals is supposedly to reproduce successfully in large numbers. " --> I have replied to this with your lab rat example. I stated that it should be our responsibility to take care of them, and attempt to find or integrate them into an environment they can live on by themselves. Since we bred them solely for using them (and thus violating their rights), it should be our responsibility to try to fix this and accommodate the rest. ---->>>"Finally, animals acknowledge that there is a food chain, and there has always been a food chain as long as there has been food, before humans. Humans simply arrived to be at about the top of every food chain, although sharks and polar bears are ahead of us. If humans can be eaten by animals because they are meat, and humans can eat meat, they should actively participate in their local food chain and EAT MEAT! " --> Again, you are committing the appeal to nature fallacy. ---->"I attacked your nature fallacy. That was your counterargument, right? " --> YOU DID NOT ATTACK IT. You merely committed it. Voters, do realize that my opponent hasn't given anything substantial to show why this fallacy is wrong; he just merely breaks it over and over. ==================== Using animals as clothing ==================== ---->>>"That WAS my original argument. Because we have correlated eating and using for clothing, I guess nothing further needs to be said. " --> And I have refuted it. Because you yourself admit that using animals as clothing can only be justified if you can show that eating them as food is right. Since your attempt at that failed, this argument sinks as well. ==================== Animal experiments ==================== ---->>>"You said that A didn't imply B. I said that it didn't imply the opposite of B, either, and that there may be a lack of correlation. You didn't defend this part at all. " --> Look closely at what my opponent states. In reply to my statement that A =/= B, he argued that this doesn't mean it didn't imply the "opposite of B". What would the opposite of B be then? My opponent gives a vague, actually none, definition for opposite and neither the voters or I can tell what he means. But let's pretend that by "opposite of B" he means the "opposite truth value". So in context with my statement, he MERELY STATES THE OPPOSITE. An ungrounded assertion that should be tossed out the window; my opponent has no argument here. ---->>>"Even with such programs, the population of lab rats would never recover to the "glorious heights" that it reached when lab rats were the primary test subjects for scientists. And high population is a goal for animals, which we fulfill. " --> There are several serious problems with this answer. First of all, lab rats don't need to recover at "glorious heights" - when was that ever a concern? High population is NOT a goal for animals because animals don't consciously have abstract goals such as this. My opponent is on the wrong footing here. ==================== Animal entertainment ==================== ---->>>"I'm pretty sure that the circus animals would rather perform and be fed than never fed at all. " --> If you read my hobo analogy, then you will see that this is a false idea. We should simply give them a habitat, where they can have the freedom to what they will. Feeding hungry animals is fine, but forcing them to be your pet or entertainment is NOT. Here is my analogy one last time: If I went up to a hobo and gave him food and shelter, than this is a moral (or at least not immoral) thing to do. However, I tell him that at the cost of this he must be my personal entertainment. After awhile, maybe he considers to quit - and he should have the right to. YET, can animals quit? No. ---->"Also, you do not provide any sources for animal abuse in the home, and a circus website or video would really have helped your case, but it would be too late to do so next round, as it is the last. " --> If you seriously doubt the existence of animal abuse in the world, even only if it's a few cases, then you really need to start Googling. ---->>>"This implies that we should never give the animal a chance. This would mean restricting the animal to never entertaining for food, on the basis that the animal might be unhappy with it. Most animals would rather entertain than starve. Entertaining for food is just about the only option many animals have in today's society, so we should give it to them. " --> This statement only applies when the quote is seen in context. It obviously refers to forced animal entertainment, or when the main motive is to recruit animals for entertainment. While yes, it is okay to have a bonding relationship with an animal that includes some rudimentary form of entertainment, it is not okay to have all the other animals to be forced into entertainment. The key word is forced - they should just be left in the wild to roam free. ==================== Conclusion ==================== My opponent's argument, I'm sad to say, are monstrously unconvincing. Even as a personal animal welfare advocate (meaning we can use them to eat, wear, experiment, and entertainment), his arguments are not even close to entertaining. Over the course of this debate, he has violated the same fallacy over and over, confused the difference between sentience and self-awareness, and ignored obvious facts.