I have never claimed that animals don't have value over being a food source....
On the previous page you posted this:
Actually yes. You confuse "love" for their instinct to protect their offspring in order to keep their species going.
They know their place in the food chain, they know they exist as some other animal's food source. They don't even know they know it, they are animals it is just in their DNA.
That is where we human animals come in. It is in our DNA to consume them.
Which made it sound like you believe animals function more or less as unthinking, unfeeling robotic creatures who are only operating on instinct and the only comprehensive capacity they have is to understand that their purpose is to reproduce and be eaten. Because, after all, they are animals and are part of the food chain. But then you kept mentioning that WE are animals, and since we also have a place as prey in the food chain, yet also experience all kinds of complex emotions and (hopefully) have value beyond just being someone else’s food source, I was just trying to understand how you reconciled these things. Especially because you then went further to say you think your pets love you. I was having trouble sorting out your views and making them consistent and sensible in my head, that’s all.
.....but that doesn't change the facts that animals ARE food sources. It is just nature.
If a person chooses to refrain from eating them that is great, however there is no moral superiority in doing that, since that is what we human animals are designed to do. I am not morally conflicted about doing what nature intends of me, and I can still manage to be an animal lover. YMMV.
Well, I don’t know that it’s correct to discuss things in terms of nature’s intentions, since nature isn’t a sentient being and therefore doesn’t really have wants and intentions. Whatever we choose to do — eat other animals or not, protect ourselves from predators or not — becomes a part of the “nature” we live in.
If you’re talking about “nature’s intentions” in the raw and primal sense, as in what the human experience has looked liked throughout much of history when we were hunting animals for survival, then I personally have no problem “going against nature” in that case. After all, nature “intends” for us to sleep in huts and caves, travel everywhere by foot, have no control over the number of children we have, and die from simple bacterial infections. Nor is it really “natural” to buy our food at the grocery store.
Nature gave us humans an extraordinary capacity for intelligence and we have mostly chosen to use that intelligence in ways that make our lives safer, longer, and more comfortable for ourselves and others. Where one decides to draw the line in regards to which “others” also deserve to benefit from our progress differs, of course. Personally, I try to make choices that extend those benefits to as many living beings as possible since I’m fortunate enough to live in a time and place where I can so easily abstain from causing harm in the name of survival. YMMV.