manu,
You live in the city, or at least not in the country, right?
I lived in a very rural area for many years. I watched many animals walk across our land and even had our dog chase a mountain lion away a few times. We had pigs eaten by bears, too. I've been around coyotes, beaver, and deer, marmots, porcupines, and others. I've seen their half-eaten carcasses, too.
Animals do not "cure themselves." LIke us with the flu, they will get over the mild or moderate infections, but they will die from them just as we do. I've seen it.
I've seen deer with tumors, I've cut them out of deer that I have hunted, in fact. I've watched bear die of pulmonary disease. It's not pretty, watching a bear struggle for breath, but they do it. I saw that while out camping for a week in the woods. I have picked up dead birds with misshapen legs. I have heard birds wheeze from lung diseases and I've seen them die from them.
I suppose you've heard of "bird flu"?
They suffer from and die from the very same sorts of things that plague us. Since it happens out in the wild, unless you're out there a lot you won't see it.
But there's another matter in your post that strikes me: you have a strange idea of what constitutes "superiority." If we are created by God and, according to the story, created from the stuff of the earth, why should we be exempt from the diseases of the earth? And why should the ability to discover the sources of and reasons for disease, and then discover and administer their cures, be some sort of inferiority?
That really makes no sense.
Superiority comes in more than one form, not just the physical. After all, little furry creatures and slimy fish survived when the big, superior dinosaurs died off.
A large brain and the abliity to make moral decisions would seem to have some bearing on the matter of superiority.
But I would say that mostly, human superiority is a matter of morality and responsibility, not disease immunity. That is, we have the ability and the duty to make moral decisions for the other animals, decisions that they cannot make. We don't usually do it well, but that's another matter. We can, should, and often do make very good moral decisions for animals that can't appreciate what we do and cannot give us anything in return.
That kind of unselfishness seems to me to be very superior.
2007-03-25 20:08:19
·
answer #1
·
answered by eutychusagain 4
·
0⤊
0⤋