My Linnaeus Challenge

Most people I know who have animals feed and love them.
Is that "like an animal"?

AV1611VET said:

Do you treat your spouse like an ape?

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I'ld have the exact same reaction.

I treat the woman I love, like....a woman that I love.

AV1611VET said:

If I was a married evolutionist, I wouldn't be ashamed of my doctrine, I would answer the OP as follows:

"Yes ... don't you?"

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Depends.
Sometimes "like an animal" means subject to various cruelties, like at a feedlot.
Or it could mean with love and care, like with a pet.
This is why your question is too vague for anyone to answer properly.

AV1611VET said:

I'm beginning to think you guys seriously don't know what I'm asking.

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I know what you are asking and I explained why your question is invalid.

You then started to be quite juvenile about the word "spouse".

AV1611VET said:

If I was a married evolutionist, I wouldn't be ashamed of my doctrine.

I would answer the OP as follows:

"Yes ... don't you?"

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Do married evolutionists have a doctrine? I feel cheated, no one told me, what is it?

AV1611VET said:

If I was a married evolutionist, I wouldn't be ashamed of my doctrine.

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See? Exactly like I said in post 13...

It is, in essence, not different from the nonsense that states "if darwinian evolution is true, we should put a bullet in the heads of disabled people...".

AV1611VET said:

Now you guys know why I called this a "challenge," don't you?

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I do.
You pick a phrase that's loaded with pejorative connotations.
You hope for a "gotcha!" opportunity arising from the confusion of different meanings of your terms.

Its a game for you.

Perhaps the OP should be moved to this section of the forum, given whom the OP is requesting the responses to be limited to.

As far as answering the OP, *when I was married legally in the US* ... I treated my spouse like a treasure. And still do. I also treated them like multicellular, eukaryotic organisms, as it made for good headers on greeting cards.

AV1611VET said:

If I was a married evolutionist, I wouldn't be ashamed of my doctrine.

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I'll ask again, what is this 'evolutionist' doctrine? I suspect it's just in your imagination.

AV1611VET said:

Do you treat your spouse like an animal?

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Yes. I treat her like a member of the species Homo sapiens treats his partner in a well-adapted pair bond. And she does the same to me. Well, most of the time.

AV1611VET said:

Do you treat your spouse like an animal?

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Yes. Like an animal of the species homo sapiens, to be precise.

If you feed your spouse, do you feed her like an animal? Or do you give her a good watering with Miracle Grow?

AV1611VET said:

Are you asking me?

If so, the answer is NO.

(I'm not ashamed to answer.)

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So she procures her own food. OK.

I guess it depends on your definition of the word animal. If you mean the word in the sense that we do when we talk about animals in biology, then we all treat our spouses (and other loved ones and assorted family members) like animals, because it would be really strange if we decided to treat them like plants. If you mean it in the more colloquial sense of animals as "non-human animals", then the answer is hopefully going to be no, at least if a person isn't a member of a philosophy or religion that treats all conscious living things as deserving the same high level of respect.

Standing_Ultraviolet said:

If you mean it in the more colloquial sense of animals as "non-human animals", then the answer is hopefully going to be no, at least if a person isn't a member of a philosophy or religion that treats all conscious living things as deserving the same high level of respect.

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Only a minority of animal species form long term pair bonds. But among those that do, the relationship can be quite remarkable. Ever heard of Konrad Lorenz? He was a zoologist who spend years studying animal behavior. He's best known for his work on geese. The goose and gander form a life-long partnership. They engage in mutual preening and feeding. They cooperate in the care of their goslings. And they're very protective of each other. If one is injured or ill, the other will stay by the mate until he/she recovers or dies. And if one partner should die, the other appears to go through a mourning phase. (This may be anthropomorphizing, but who knows?) This same behavior is documented in lovebirds and dove species. Hard to be certain, but some animals clearly seem to behave affectionately towards their mates. They may well be better adapted to monogamous relationships than we are.

BTW, if you come across Lorenz's book, you might find it interesting. He won a Nobel Prize for his work.