Why do some atheists choose not to kill creatures?

[robertm]

To carry a fly outside to let it go is clearly an irrational act..

Could you elaborate?

... and the reason it's an irrational act is that letting it live is a waste of energy (it is far more efficient use of resources to kill it on the spot).

The most efficient action would be no action, of course. However, this is a complex situation that is being described, there is more involved than efficiency. It is known to all humans that flies are directly correlated with sickness/disease/death, and insanitary conditions weather one knows anything of microbes or not, so knowing this doing nothing would be irrational. Most would kill the fly, as most do if they can (for flies live on a much shorter time scale than we). Some probably feel it is easier to open a window or door and shoo' the thing out than to clean up an exploded insect.

Those that feel compassion for a fly (or anything else for that matter, including fellow bipeds) are merely projecting, empathizing, or otherwise behaving in a seemingly irrational, though ultimately natural and usually beneficial biological manner.

The principals of evolution allow one to assume that the overall behavioural patters of a given species (including us) is either beneficial for survival or trivial/useless/non-harmful; because, of course, we would all of us be dead or never born if it were otherwise.




I tend to think of emotions, emotional reactions, feelings and the like as a kind of lever arm through which certain sets of genetic code can 'lever' a biological system in a manner that improves the chances of reproduction and the continuity of the genes. This isn't to say that qualia isn't any less 'real' (or 'strange' as I like to say), or that the suggestion is much more than conjecture; though I think it a novel and useful way to see the role of emotions in a larger game.

 

[DaveC426913]

To carry a fly outside to let it go is clearly an irrational act..

Could you elaborate?

The fly is buzzing around in my living room. It's got to go. This is the given.
My choice of actions are to:
1] swat it and kill it.
2] capture it alive (not easy to do, takes practice), carry it to the front door, open and release.

There is no logical reason - only an emotional one - for gonig to all that effort.

 

[robertm]

The fly is buzzing around in my living room. It's got to go. This is the given.
My choice of actions are to:
1] swat it and kill it.
2] capture it alive (not easy to do, takes practice), carry it to the front door, open and release.

There is no logical reason - only an emotional one - for gonig to all that effort.

I made this suggestion;

Some probably feel it is easier to open a window or door and shoo' the thing out than to clean up an exploded insect.

Or even would rather go through the trouble of catching the thing and then letting it out just to avoid the gore.

Technically, whatever the precise causal event that an emotion may be, it is just as 'rational' as any other event. So, I suppose it depends on the colloquial boundaries one invokes in this particular usage of 'rational'.

By the way, has this thread helped you resolve your original question?

 

[Integral]

Dave,
I understand where you are coming from. I am similar in my behavior. I also am atheist with some Buddhist leaning. The Buddhists teach that every living creature is a sentient being and therefore deserves respect. As an atheist I will freely admit that I do not understand the not explain the existence of life. I only know that it does exist. Our inability explain or even understand its existence makes it unique as we are able to understand and explain so much of this universe. This uniqueness is sufficient for me to give it respect and treat it as a special thing not to be taken lightly.

Just call it respect for life and be done with it. You do not have to justify it beyond that.

 

[turbo]

Just call it respect for life and be done with it. You do not have to justify it beyond that.

It can be pretty complex for some folks, but respect for life covers it pretty well. I was brought up in a Native American/French tradition that emphasized foraging, collecting wild food, hunting and fishing. It's hard to shoot a deer, but that's how you get venison, and it's a whole lot better than confining beef-cattle in feed-lots. I hunt with a single-shot rifle, and never take a shot unless I am certain of a clean kill. Salmonids like brook trout, rainbows, and land-locked salmon have always been a good source of food, and when I was a little kid, I did my best to supplement our family's meals with fresh-caught fish. Again, you have to respect the fish and the resource. It's counter-productive to remove large breeding-age females from streams and ponds if you want the population to thrive.

Although I kill animals for food, when I find spiders, wasps, etc in my house, I capture them and release them outside. Can't say why, but I feel that as an omnivore, I should take personal responsibility for the meat that I eat, but there is no reason not to refrain from killing other critters when I could let them go.

 

[WhoWee]

If I am an atheist, why do I grimace when drowning a caught mouse? If I am an atheist, why do I capture a fly or spider and let it go outside?

More generally, if I believe that there is no connection between myself and other creatures, whether that be an "eye in the sky" entity, or some form of collective unconsciousness, or any other "larger than myself" phenomenon, why is there any harm whatever in killing a creature?

Answers I've already dismissed:
- There is some selfish rationale to maintaining an eco-balance. If we all killed creatures willy-nilly, there'd be no creatures left. Answer: nonsense. This is one mouse; one fly.

- I am a product of society / of my physiological emotions. It is conditioned into me to shrink from needless death. Answer: That is simply passing the buck, pretending I'm a victim. I should be able to throw off that pressure and believe in - and practice - my own philosophy.


Do all atheists kill creatures as it is convenient? If not, why not?



P.S. I really am an atheist, and I really am asking myself why I choose not to kill needlessly.

Help.

A scientist requires proof.

However, unless you want to become a murderer, you can never actually test your belief (or disbelief?).

Therefore, you contemplate alternative experiments - but the results are meaningless - killing a spider or a mouse is not the same as killing a person.

As for killing creatures - it's a lot easier to kill a snake or a bug, than a little puppy. That's because (most of us) like puppies and detest the others. In nature, very few predators kill more than they can eat.

 

[JoeDawg]

A scientist requires proof.

A scientist requires evidence, a mathematician requires proof.

killing a spider or a mouse is not the same as killing a person.

Arguably, its usually more messy, but not much different in principle.

In nature, very few predators kill more than they can eat.

Thats largely because hunting is a dangerous activity. Not because predators are ethical creatures. Cats practice their hunting skills on mice all the time. And the need for food is not the only reason to kill.

 

[JoeDawg]

The fly is buzzing around in my living room. It's got to go. This is the given.
My choice of actions are to:
1] swat it and kill it.
2] capture it alive (not easy to do, takes practice), carry it to the front door, open and release.

There is no logical reason - only an emotional one - for gonig to all that effort.

There are plenty of 'logical' reasons, but they depend on premises that you don't seem to value. I agree its an emotional reason at its most basic level. But if one decides to value life, that is doing no harm to you, then there is logic in not killing a fly for the crime of flying.

Same logic as 'self defense' for murder. Killing is reasonable in that context, but killing someone simply because they got in your way, is less reasonable.

Killing a fly may not impact your life directly, like the random killing of a person, but if one subscribes to a certain ethical code, even killing a fly would violate that. That devalues the code. And maintaining that sort of ethical code can be of benefit to the society you live in.

 

[DaveC426913]

There are plenty of 'logical' reasons, but they depend on premises that you don't seem to value. I agree its an emotional reason at its most basic level. But if one decides to value life, that is doing no harm to you, then there is logic in not killing a fly for the crime of flying.

Same logic as 'self defense' for murder. Killing is reasonable in that context, but killing someone simply because they got in your way, is less reasonable.

Killing a fly may not impact your life directly, like the random killing of a person, but if one subscribes to a certain ethical code, even killing a fly would violate that. That devalues the code. And maintaining that sort of ethical code can be of benefit to the society you live in.

Yes. I am trying to figure out this ethical code.

 

[Pythagorean]

This is interesting, actually. Have you considered that your feelings towards insects may stem considerably from your imagination? Not that this trivializes your feelings whatsoever.

Our lifestyles are somewhat of an artform. We want to be consistent with ourselves, but we also want some freedom. So we create whole "worlds" behind our observations to link concepts with observations (and to link concepts to concepts...).

I believe this is an artifact of our learning and storage process. Mathematics (a highly technical skill) is originally (at the least) learned through emotion. It's an abstract world itself that we make use of for understanding observations (or in the case of a mathematician, because we like the abstract world itself).

The spiritual "world" that we create for ourselves (and we all do it in some form or another... for some it's a world of skepticism and stubbornness) is tied to less repeatable observations than mathematics encapsulates. We weigh our "spiritual knowledge" heavily with suffering and sensation, personal experience. Two series of experiences (from two different people) are very rarely in the same order, so each case is different, but we still tend to group ourselves into our fundamental emotional interpretations:

I don't mind killing bugs in my house. They are invaders that I am at war with. It's interesting how I still pick an emotional kind of relationship with them as you do: for me it's war. I wonder how people who have no emotional attachment to insects feel about it.

There's lots of mosquitoes here too. Damned if I'll let some little prick penetrate me with his proboscis even outside my house.

HOWEVER...

I hunt. And I can't stand to be responsible for causing the suffering of animals that I'm hunting, so I like to put them down quickly when I can. I'm not so bothered by the "torturing" of insects, I suppose. I tend to justify it that they're pretty much a little automated machine of natures.. just a bundle of nerves. But I really don't know whether they share the experience of suffering or not.

I've also had a subconscious karmic fear of making bugs suffer for my own scientific curiosity. I imagine sometimes, that I'm being violently studied by aliens in the same way. "What if they can feel?" I don't think it matters much though, in the end. After all, they're just insects... ;)

 

[JoeDawg]

Yes. I am trying to figure out this ethical code.

I don't think there is one, in the absolute or objective sense. First one must decide, rather irrationally, what it is that one values, then proceed logically from there. The unfortunate part is, that since the original premise is irrational, any use of logic, thereafter, is likely to lead to unsatisfying contradictions.

Its at this point that an ethical person makes exceptions. The world is chaos, trying to enforce an ethical framework on it, any ethical framework, is like trying to saddle a moving horse.

The ancient greeks dealt with this by talking about virtue, its not the details that count, but rather that one deals bravely and honestly with the world. They also believed in fate though, which means no matter what you do, the result is the same. Lots of absurdities in life.

 

[DaveC426913]

Well, I definitely have no trouble squishing ants. They are invasive.

And centipedes. Even though they're beneficial in that they eat other critters, they are just too totally yiggy.

 

[Vectus]

I'm not sure if it'll help any, but this is a brief insight into my philosophy:

I find projecting human feelings and emotions onto creatures a bit silly, but at the same time I cannot bear to see any organism suffer that is capable of suffering. I will go out of my way to avoid causing said suffering or to put a swift end to any I see.

I know that most creatures in some way can experience--probably in a very different way than I do, but the ability is there nonetheless. I feel that if I am entitled to enjoy what experiences I can while I am here, then so should they. Even if they lack the capability to enjoy or even have those experiences in some way, most certainly can feel pain and fear, and that alone is cause enough for me to do my best not to inflict either upon them. The universe is harsh and unforgiving enough. I see no reason to make it more so.

I guess my reasons can be boiled down on some level to hardwired empathy and aversion to inequality.