Those are all valid points and I don't reject any of that.

But calling individuals/groups of people primitive, tribal, and inhuman does NOT qualify as proper justification as to why they should stop doing whatever it is that they do.
So if these actions are to be understood of one culture by another as "self-centered", "self-righteous", or "egocentric" (which I'm not even sure applies here, but okay), then we might as well round these Hindus up in cages and use them as slaves, because surely, our culture and our peoples are superior to theirs because we don't condone the slaughtering of endangered animals (but anything else that isn't either domesticated, cute, or cuddly is A-OK!).

species go extinct everyday (literally, up to 150 a day)

there are more important things to be in an uproar about than a dying species getting a push in that direction

these ppl pissed are just like many RS'ers who bitch for the sake of bitching and every time you give them an opportunity to bitch they'll do it regardless if its an issue they're even remotely concerned about

why the fuck is there even a debate on this?

dont think their sea turtles..
looks like flat nose turtles

Hahaha best response evar! :lol

I'm not calling these people primitive, tribal, or inhuman. I'm calling them ignorant and yes egocentric because they KNOW they are killing animals that are protected by law, for good reason, but they do it anyway. That's as selfish as it gets.
Uh, YES. And it's not just some dense chicken-headed westerners claim :rolleyes: Anyone who kills, sells, or purchases parts of an internationally protected species is a poacher. It is directly on par with killing Silverback Gorilla's for their hands and feet or Rhinoceros for their horns. If that was a groups religion would you justify that as well? Hell maybe Mayan descendant's should be allowed to continue with human sacrifices too! Point is: the world has evolved and religions have too as well.

I think your point is that the WESTERN world has evolved and therefore everybody should as well.
When the Europeans were endangering animals in America for the fur trades (as a fucking fashion statement), or slaughtering Africans by the millions to produce rubber, there existed no higher moral values than (if you'd let me entertain you with boring racial history) the type of Herrenvolk ethics to condemn them of these actions.
Fast forward a century or so, following a de facto recognition of these Eurocentric atrocities, these higher western values were codified into such international laws that condemned OTHERS from benefiting form the same type of wrongdoings the Europeans committed.
So how does any of this tie in at all to the topic at hand?

As I have said, I am not arguing against the wrongfulness of hunting endangered species/ knowingly destroying a fragile ecosystem. But there is a double standard that you are advocating.
What you need to understand here, once again, is that my dissatisfaction with your stance is NOT based on whether it is right or wrong to poach--I think most of us here are on the same page with that, morally and legally. Rather, it is the fact that you seem to suggest that these rules are supposed to be universally lawfully binding simply just because.


And I was hoping it wouldn't go this way, but if you must bring up international law...

An important element of international law is the notion of opinio juris, which in short entails that states should only abide by treaties out of a moral sense of obligation. It is NOT the same as domestic law created by (if you will,) the social contract that concludes that all individuals must abide by the rules of the state. So even though India and Bangladesh have both signed and ratified to CITES treaties, if you take this case up against Bangladesh in ANY international court with proper jurisdiction, you can bet your ass that regardless of the verdict, that Bangladesh will make a hell of the case. International agreements (based largely upon, but not entirely, of course) western values aren't as stringent as one would think.
Furthermore, international law applies to states. It does not apply to groups of people who are otherwise stateless (which is whom your originally displeasure was geared towards). So while in this case the atrocities occurred in Bangladesh, the same thing could easily have happened across borders and all over South Asia over the last week.
So back to your question: if today, Silverback Gorillas or African Rhinoceros are being hunted as part of a long-standing cultural and/or religious tradition that is VISIBLY still alive today, then yes, the same merits could, and WOULD be presented to any international court attempting to prosecute them based on these traditions. And let's not forget, these very species are endangered in the first place NOT because of deep-rooted cultural practices, but because of Europeans (surprise surprise) that wanted these artifacts as an element of their wealth and domination of this planet. And the Mayans? Of c--oh wait! I almost forgot that the Europeans have long killed off most of them even before the development of these said international "moral" principles that everybody should abide by.

In conclusion, I'll repeat myself once again: No, I do not think the Hindus had any sort of right to slaughter any type of animals at such a scale (particularly endangered ones). But at the same time, there also exist no universal set of ethics that would indefinitely condemn them of these actions. Why? Because laws carry bias. Any type of law, no matter how detailed or simple, carry bias in one way, shape, or form.
Using some sort of "international" set of laws or set of ethics to justify the moral prosecution of cultural practices is retarded. It's a double standard and I hope you see that now.

Regardless, this debate has gone WAY off topic. I think I'll just stop here.

Actually I would say there is an international set of ethics. What you are advocating is cultural relativism which basically says that ethics depends on your culture, which in itself is fallacy. What you imply when you advocate for this is that every culture's set of ethics is correct because it depends on culture, but then this argument fails when two cultures have conflicting views on the issue, aka hindus find killing turtles ethical, while westerners find killing turtles unethical, how can both be correct?

Therefore ethics cannot depend on culture and what you are advocating is flawed. Killing endangered animals for the sake of religion can't be justified and bringing up past examples of violations doesn't prove that killing turtles is OK. We know the europeans back then were in the wrong. However, we can't change the past unless we develop a time machine.
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Although I do not support this one bit, it is different from shark fining because here, at least they use 100% of the turtles. Whereas in shark fining, the finned carcases, most often still alive, are dumped back into the ocean and left to slowly die on the ocean floor.

I'm not in 100% agreement with this, but I'm too lazy to go into a long off-topic debate about this in this thread. But thank god somebody finally understands my point.

Here's how it works.

Awesome Tier
Sustainable wild harvest (ex. Wild Sockey, Oysters, Dungeoness Crab and Urchin in BC)

Acceptable Tier
Responsible Farmed where the animals are treated well (Ex. Foie Gras, Most cattle and pigs)

Not Ok Tier
Non sustainable wild harvest (non-ocean-wise fishing, fishing the crap out of stocks like Cod back east at the turn of the century).
Non-responsible farmed (atlantic salmon farmed here with fish lice). You know that gross slimey day-glow orange salmon sashimi you guys are fond of? Yeah, that's not cool. Samurai sushi anybody?

Very Not OK Tier
Endangered species. This turtle thing would be good example.
However, at least they are using the hole animal.

You Should Fucking Go To Hell Tier
Shark Finning. The sharks are quickly being depleted. They are a critical part of the eco system, they are killed in-humanely with the fins cut off and are throw back into the water left to drown. It's not even good use of the animal as they are only using 5% of the animal!!!


I think I need to stop here with the finning. You don't want me to get started on how disgusting it is. No Chef worth his weight should be party to serving Shark Fin soup.

but shark fin soup TASTES so good :troll:

It's ethical to be racially tolerant, but where do we draw the line between racial tolerance and the need for moral interventions?

Cattle are not endangered. I wouldn't give a shit about them raising these turtles and eating them if they weren't endangered. Instead they are endangered but these dumb cunts are using their religion as an excuse.

No they should not be dismissed, but instead they should try to adapt their religion to the changing world.

How the fuck can you say that it being endangered doesn't mean twat, and then in your next sentence say that you don't support the killing of endangered species? You seem to be taking everything negative in this thread as an attack on all the followers of this religion, when it's really an attack on how these specific sacks of shit are using their religion as an excuse to slaughter an endangered species.

Are you fucking dense? Clearing the Europeans have since realized what they had done was wrong and have helped pass laws to try and prevent similar things from happening in other areas in the present and future. Species don't get tossed onto the endangered list just because some guy feels like it. Their is a very valid reason for any species being endangered. It's not just that killing endangered animals is illegal, but also morally wrong.

how are we going to progress as a planet/species if we keep our heads in the sand and act like these religious acts are 'ok' since they are 'historic'.

it is a joke. there IS right and wrong, and this is wrong.

Changed to another parallel, let's see how the logic floats now...
^
How's that work for you now?
There is clearly a distinction for separating tradition for the sake of tradition, religion and "because that's the way it's always been done" from learning from our past mistakes.

Maybe other cultures don't share our "western" view of stewardship, but I really must underline the point that stewardship IS an enlightened viewpoint, and "doing stuff for the sake of the tradition" in spite of knowledge that it is harmful IS backwards and unenlightened. After all, western countries have done plenty of exploitation of nature. And now we realize what was done was destructive and wrong.




This is mostly a business parable, but I think it applies to blindly following tradition for the sake of tradition.
http://i.imgur.com/f0m7i.jpg

Here we go with the discussion of "morals" again. I just spent every previous post in this thread trying to argue against using morals/ethics/whatever-the-fuck-you-want-to-call-it as a standard of judging others' behaviors, and now we're back at square one.

This is not to be taken as a personal attack towards any posters in this thread, but I just love how every one of you in this thread have probably taken two philosophy classes in your undergrad year and think that you know everything there is to know about morals and ethics.

Just because you believe something is ethically incorrect (even if it appears to be the general, international consensus), it doesn't mean everybody and anybody else who don't share your perspective(s) are wrong and backwards/unenlightened.



And please, don't throw around words like "backwards" and "genocide" like they have some arbitrary meaning that everybody's supposed to understand.

I can say exactly that.
Being endangered has no bearings on tradition. But whether or not I support slaughtering endangered species is another question. This, in NO way is a personal reflection of my other belief that traditions should be respected, and not be changed willy-nilly because of what others think.

Like I said, just because this tradition involves something I don't agree with, it doesn't mean they have to stop because I (we) think its disgusting what they're doing.

And at which point did I take everything negative in this thread and see it as an attack on the Hindu religion? I specifically centralized my arguments on quotes made by posters who made CLEAR efforts to attack the religion (and subsequently their practices) and their peoples.

^Just read culture_vulture's long post from the last page, and good on you for putting into words what was in my head

I think this has turned into a good discussion. I'm obviously on the opposite spectrum you are, but I don't feel slighted by it in the slightest. Open dialogue and difference of opinion should be encouraged, especially in a public forum such as this.



I think you are putting on blinders if you pretend that "ahead" and "behind" in terms of human morality evolution doesn't exist. I've not taken any sort of true philosophy course, so please don't think I'm speaking from an arrogant perspective on this. I'm no arts major either so my english obviously sucks...



I don't think you can quite put morality aside.
As we continue to evolve our collective human consciousness, we see trends...

1. Hunter gatherer
2. Exploit the environment for your own gain.
3. Discover the impact humans have an impact on the environment.
4. Understand that if things continue this way, we destroy nature's gift to us.
5. Decide to make a choice of stewardship or exploitation.
6. I could be mistaken, but I think all peoples regardless of culture feel the burden of losing of something that took lots of time to achieve. It's like your art project final that took weeks to complete. You'd cry if somebody smashed it. A universal morality is that humanity empathizes. Expanding on that, a general educated populace will understand and empathize of the loss that humanity has caused.

I don't really mean it as an insult when I say that a culture is behind. It's more of a statement of the overall living conditions of the populace, their collective levels of education and their priorities rather than their morals. It's like how some of grandparents don't quite understand the concept of stewardship. It's not because they don't empathize with what destruction humanity has wrought upon nature (point #6), but rather they don't even quite get the concept that humanity is quickly destroying something that was not easy to come by (point #4)



But I ask you to stretch your imagination just a little here. If we were 200 years in the future and well on our way to building a human utopia, a heaven on earth so to speak. Would you not agree that as the enlightened life forms on the planet, that we would be good care takers of all the lesser species on this planet? There would be respect for the animals and most of all understanding of it's place in the eco system.



So long story short, you can't ignore morality. It has shown that human morality does evolve.

And why a 3rd world country shouldn't be allowed to abuse their environment and take advantage of their natural resources in a harmful manner? It's because they are slow as fuck. They got their last. We, humanity in it's collective wisdom has already learned from our past mistakes. We have put laws and guidelines in place so we don't repeat our errors.

I'm going to paint you some far off parallel, but maybe with this, you can use it to distance yourself from culture vs culture and look at it from a morality perspective.


I guess my point is, history has shown that evolution of morality IS a concrete and hard fact. It is linear and moves in a forward and enlightened direction.

And secondly. Just because somebody fucked up, doesn't make it acceptable for everybody else to follow suit. In fact, somebody fucking up and learning from it has an obligation to make sure the same thing doesn't happen again.

100,000 turtles?

uhh ok...

and how many of these are murdered in Canada for thanksgiving day?

http://englishbakery.files.wordpress...ild_turkey.jpg
http://blog-imgs-36.fc2.com/a/k/t/aktshop/turkey1.jpg

what made you think it's bad to kill turtles and it is completely fine to kill turkies?

Vulture, I missed this discussion over the weekend but Culverin has said it all more eloquently that I would have :lol Good points on both sides.

Timpo....:seriously::fulloffuck::facepalm:

Sad stuff for sure. What if 100,000 people were sacrificed "in the name of religion" and their meat was consumed and organs sold off for profit? That sounds kinda fcuked up. "But those are people! and that would be murder!" you would say. Well, what's the difference? Those turtles are having their lives taken from them just like any human would in the same circumstance. Life is life, plain and simple. That's the way I look at it. Just my $0.02

So do you eat meat or are you a vegan?

I'm no vegan, more a vegihead with a slip now and then. Fish = OK. I'm more concerned with the religious cop out people use for financial gain. Religion seems to be more of an excuse than anything.