Animal Slavery

[Angrboda]

Actually, you haven't gotten to justifications yet. You need to show first that animal suffering and animals generally have moral significance. If they don't, no justification is necessary.

OK. Humans are animals, and God needs no justification for his treatment of us.

Indeed. From his point of view, he may be perfectly moral. From our point of view, he is neither moral nor immoral. He's just a thing. A thing to be opposed. God is not good. His commands are not moral.

That's where the evolutionary argument comes from, from arguments with vegetarians and animal rights advocates who mount an argument from ignorance that a moral division between how we treat animals and how we treat humans cannot be made. My argument shows that it can be made, so the advocate is put in the position of bearing the burden of proving that the lives of animals has moral significance.

Science debates whether the unit of selection for biological evolution is the ... species. From what I've read, the gene and the individual are considered to be much more significant than the species. So, no, you haven't shown that your argument can be made.

You've admitted the argument can and is made in science. What you debate is how good an argument it is. It need not be a good argument to deflate the opposing notion that no argument can be made.