Don Tiny wrote:
Irish Boy wrote:
Human life > dog life, but a person that purposefully and cruelly takes an animal's life is morally worse than someone who accidentally or negligently takes a human life.
One of those statements essentially cancels out the other - both cannot be true without accepting cognitive dissonance; the original comparative (Human life > Dog life), which you agreed with, is a blanket statement regardless of the annotations connected to each side as a given circumstance merits.
Obviously, Vick's a whack-job - no question; and, we're all aware of the psych-101 tenet that one who hurts/kills animals easily can jump-up to humans. However, that's not a truth, that's a theory - one that does have some evidence to support it, but again, it's not a truth.
If intent is going to be involved in deciding who's the bigger dicksmack (Stallworth or Vick), I don't see how getting drunk and driving isn't volitional on its own - and thus enough of a prelude to equal 'intent' - which means that, again, the answer is clear since Stallworth killed a human and is thus the "winner".
To portray Vick as the bigger villain, it would seem that one must invariably couch their argument in such a way that it eliminates the human > dog status and then moves to choice ... even then, however, I don't see how Vick prevails.
Maybe I'm not understanding your argument correctly, but ... I guess I just don't understand your argument. There can all different levels of morality that results in you killing someone, from morally beneficial (killing Hitler), to morally neutral (having a heart attack or seizure while driving and hitting a pedestrian) to morally abhorrent (Gacy stuff). Same for dogs: morally beneficial (euthanasia), morally neutral, and morally abhorrent. Of course, there are a bunch of different levels of morally abhorrent, ranging from "only slightly" to "really, really awful".
Purposefully killing a human is worse than killing a dog. I've never heard anyone argue otherwise. But we've made all sorts of judgments as a society that something done accidentally or unintentionally is not as bad as doing something purposefully. We have cliches to that effect (don't cry over spilled milk). It is built into our justice system (1st degree murder to involuntary manslaughter).
If you believe that drunk driving is the functional equivalent of choosing to kill someone, then I can understand why Stallworth's actions would be regarded as worse than Vick's. I just don't see how that can be so. Thousands of people drive drunk every day, unfortunately. Sometimes, though rarely, their actions result in an innocent third party dying. They put people in danger of dying through their actions, though fatality is rarely the result.
However, a dog is tortured every time
a person tortures a dog. I know that sounds stupid, but Vick wasn't just putting himself into a situation where it was foreseeable that dogs might be tortured at some time in the future. He was torturing dogs. There's no second step in the chain of culpability.