Re: [Re: Disney Dinosaur Follies...]

[Josh Smith <smithjb@sas.upenn.edu>]

"Jerry D. Harris" wrote:

>
>    Of course, we all know and understand that in Nature, killing is
> perfectly natural and expected, and forms part of the basis for natural
> selection. (I did notice that Disney's movie is particularly anti-Darwinian
> this way: the moral lesson it pushes on kids is that the Darwinian attitude
> of Kron and Bruton, to let the weak perish so the strong may survive, is
> wrong -- instead, the weak should be assisted regardless of the increased
> threat and/or cost [and, if you note, the strong -- Kron and Bruton -- die
> instead of the weak!]  And yes, I know that some modern animals, other than
> humans, do help the weak members of their species, but let's not go into
> that again, OK?)
>
>    Disney is casting the theropods as "evil" (following Jerry's agument here,
> which I agree with) because they "kill".   Kill animals.  Uhm, and so the
> herbivores live in perfect harmony with the ginkos and take the energy from
> their leaves by osmosis or magic or love?  The last time I looked, eating a
> plant kills the plant.  So we are back to that tired old argument where
> animals are given more  "worth" than plants and it becomes "evil" to kill
> animals but perfectly ok to kill plants. Thus it is always the carnivores
> that are cast in these "villian" roles.  This has always struck me as very
> arbitrary.

--
Josh Smith
Department of Earth and Environmental Science
University of Pennsylvania
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