Sentient Beings

Thank you Andy for bringing up a wonderful point that gets lost on a lot of Animal Rights people. When I speak of 'sentience', I use the old definition used by Buddhists, which tends to be incomplete. A Sentient Lifeform as it pertains to the Buddhist and Hindu world-view simply states that a being is 'sentient' when they can feel pain and have some semblance of consciousness. Buddhist never tried to understand the physiological aspects of this, they were merely pointing out that we cannot cause harm to any being unnecessarily. As for me, I know for a fact that animals can feel pain; not necessarily in the manner of which WE as humans do, but we will never know that for sure since they cannot communicate with us. If we had a term for 'being that can feel pain, has SOME consciousness (even though we cannot discern), and is "valuable" then that is the term I would use. My use of Sentient is merely making up for the lack of specific terminology in this regard.

I feel that certainty is also a problem when discussing things of this nature. As with Religion, I do not like when anyone is "certain" they are right. I hold dearly to the idea that all Life is sacred; does not mean we cannot eat animals. Life begets death begets life in the circle of Samsara (for the Buddhists) means that some die, some live. It is HOW the life is taken that is the issue for me. MOST people in this world do not give a shit about from where their dinner comes. Most Christians, Jews, and Muslims believe that God gave them dominion over the animals and therefore should not care about them. The Pure Science version seems to be in line with the Pure Religion version here; neither of which give a second thought to being Compassionate. I also hold dear the fact that I might be wrong, which keeps me on my toes and allows me to fully delve into the issues.

All in all, Sentience does not enter into it (shout out to Monty!). The term is a human construct and has had different meanings in different times. Compassion makes one rethink from where their dinner comes, and most people if they really thought about it would come to the conclusion that the current system is terrible. I hope that we can all agree that cages where chickens, pigs, and veal calves cannot even turn around should be BANNED.