Secular Humanism and Humanity: What are they?

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't know if you're being serious or not.

Because my kung-fu is stronk!

There are animals which need our care, that have been bred to be pets and then abandoned. So I go to rescue centres and I give them a home. They would most likely die in the wild very quickly. I'm not "buying" them, that would be getting them from a breeder which I am against.

If money changes hands, you're buying them. If it doesn't, you aren't. It doesn't matter whether you buy your dog from a breeder, the garbageman, or a shelter. I admire your actions and principles, btw. I'm a habitual rescuer myself. I'm thinking of going to our local shelter to get mah puppy someone to play with, 50bucks out the door and they escape the needle or a dog-fighting ring. Sold.

I hate animals being treated as a commodity. The ones in rescue centres are like helpless children who have been abandoned by their parents and need looking after.

Maybe, to you, they seem like that. To me, they seem like animals in cages. I don't know how we'd quantify such a comparison as a matter of fact, rather than a matter of personal experience/emotional response. Maybe they are like that, and I just have a hard...hard heart?

Unlike humans, they can never mature to the point where they can be allowed into the world on their own. The only humane alternative would be to put them all to sleep.

I think I'd contest this notion of humanity (or any given representative) maturing to the point of comparison whereby it can be allowed into the world on it's own-relative to some other rep of some other species in some other situation...but thats for another convo.

In contemplating some "final solution" to the worlds stray and unwanted pet problem, I couldn't put them down. I'd have to open the kennels. The crushing majority would not succeed.....but that only puts them in the same boat as myself, in that regard.

So no one "owns" these animals, and I'm not buying them.

Save that for the courtroom, when the dog bites the neighbors kid? Tell me how the defense holds up.

I am not grabbing them from the wild, nor trading for them from other "owners" so it's entirely different to your scenario, I hope you will agree.

I think you're engaging in a post hoc rationalization, but, I can see why you would perceive it that way, even if I don't agree (for reasons stated). IMO, you are an owner, you have bought the animals from their previous owner (or have been granted rights to property by said previous owner if no money changed hands). I think that it is patently ridiculous to state that "these animals have no owner" - okay...then somebody needs to round them up and get them to a shelter...like all of the rest of the owner-less pets out there. I think that perhaps, you have a position which is not supported by our current situation...and are making the best use of whats in place in order to further that position. That you would have to leverage a little finesse, when trying the making the square world fit the round hole of your notions - is to be expected. I don;t see how, for example, in the current situation, you could provide care and protection for those animals without going through the official step of owning them, in the legal sense, or assuming ownership of their liability. I don;t fault you for signing the papers that need to be signed even if the principles behind them don't line up with your own - just taking care to point that out. Imagine if I stated that "nobody owns this life" -referring to the fields...my means of production - as a defense as to why I planted 10 acres of tomatoes, for profit, on someone else's property? You may agree with me in principle...but you'd be so kind as to remind me that the laws and terms I leverage are not on my side, eh, that my statements are not a matter of fact, but of stated ideals?

A pet owner -does- have responsibilities ensconced in law that some other type of property do not confer, of course. You cannot be fined or confined, for example...for being cruel to your apple tree - or for running a cricket fighting ring in your lawn. I agree that it's -more- like adoption then, say, buying a gravel pit. But I could say that a toaster is -more- like a 747 than a balsa wood plane is....so there's always that.