Easter Humor

sohp writes "The longest running Internet cartoon of all, Dave Farley's Dr. Fun, has this laugher on some tasty case mods for the Easter season." cojoco sends in a webpage covering the secret dangers of bunnies, and we here at Slashdot would like to make a public service announcement that humans have a responsibility to care for their pets even if they chew through computer cords. linuxwrangler writes "It's Easter and the 50th anniversary of the Marshmallow Peep. The fine folks at Peep Research have found them to cooperative test subjects. People with too much time on their hands (tm) have braved copyright complaints to create "Lord of the Peeps, FOTP" and we can't forget NASA's brave peep-o-nauts. Happy easter."

Comments

Ah, yes...

[ransom2003]

Let's remember what Easter is all about...Bunnies. It's got nothing to do with God coming to earth in the form of a man to pay the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. Let's dress this holiday up just like we dress up every other Christian holiday and turn something sacred into a great way to sell Cadbury Eggs.

Re:Rabbit! Tasty!

[Fished]

It's it strange how one concept can be hated on both sides of the fence for totally opposite reasons?

Indeed. :)

I see santa as a way to indoctrinate kids with the belief that there is an all powerful being that judges whether they have been good or bad, and rewards or punishes them accordingly. Sorta like training wheels for later life when they fear the judgement of the god/afterlife fantasy, instead of developing an independant system of ethics to guide their choices.

Possibly. However, I have to say that in part, I am a Christian not because I was indoctrinated from an early age (I wasn't) but because I am not convinced that a sensible ethical code can be formulated without some kind of teleological (that is, losely speaking, goal-centered) foundation. In order to answer the question of "what is right" or "what should I do", one must first figure out what they are trying to accomplish. Then, having figured out what is right, we must then figure out how to accomplish it. Any ethical system needs to be evaluated according to these three questions: What should I do, Why should I want to, and how will I be able to?

So far, I have not seen any non-religious ethical system that can answer the latter two questions. Humanism tries, but fails: why should I care about the good of humanity? And, in case you haven't noticed lately, the secularization of human services under the banner of government has not given the wonderful results promised. (Go down to the 'hood sometime and see all the parentless children if you don't believe me. They were there before, they are there now. But there may be more now. "The poor will be with you always.")

As a Christian, I can answer these last two questions, but probably not in the way you expect. My answers are as follows:

• What to do? What God tells me to.
• Why? Because I love God, because he is good and just. Yes, I really feel that way. (And yes, I'm familiar with the gazillion old testament examples that you might feel inclined to cite.)
• How? With his power, and with the assurance that if I sacrifice my welfare in this life, I need not worry because I can look forward to something better in the next.

Christian ethics call for a profoundly unworldly viewpoint -- one that says "money doesn't matter, stuff doesn't matter, heaven knows that war on iraq doesn't matter: only God matters" -- and this viewpoint will ALWAYS be unpopular. When Christian ethics becomes trite, as in the formulation you gave in your post, is when it is watered down in an attempt to make it practical for people who *don't* love God more than their own life. Is it really surprising that it fails in such cases?

What's really wrong with dumping a rabbit?

[0x0d0a]

And how much of a humanitarian, to blame the animal for your own fuckup, and dump it on a shelter?

Okay, I know this will probably offend some people, but...what's the deal here? Really and honestly, if you get a chicken or a duck or a rabbit or whatever, there are people running around who are saying that if you aren't sure you can take care of it, you shouldn't get the thing. What do they have to support their argument? What's *wrong* with getting an animal, deciding that you don't like it, and having it put down?

It isn't on "humanitarian" grounds, as jamie's pointing out, since a humanitarian specificaly values *human* welfare.

Some sort of general ban on killing animals? I kill bugs, like the ants that like to get into my room all the time, and don't have the slightest problem with it. Most people don't. What's the mysterious dividing line between rabbits and ants? They both sense pain, etc, etc.

Some sort of pratical issue? We ban murder in most societies because allowing murder produces severe negative social effects on the society. If you allow it, people get desperate and attack other people back, and the society devolves into violence. Killing a rabbit -- there isn't much of a social impact there. Hitchcock's The Birds was a fantasy -- the critters aren't going to be able to do anything back to you.

The only reason I can think of that we have shelters for rabbits, but not for spiders, is that rabbits and fuzzy animals trigger a deep irrational "It's cute!" response -- the same sort of thing that drives PETA. Then we develop a moral system using these basic, irrational reactions as axioms that we then use to *justify* the reactions and our actions. "But it's *wrong* to keep a rabbit and then let it die!" *Why*, I ask?

Finally, if jamie and PETA and friends succeed, and people run out and buy N - M rabbits one year instead of N rabbits...then what? You have M rabbits that don't even have a chance at *life*. Yeah, maybe those rabbits would have ended up spending their last moments working on an electrical cord...but I'm still glad that *I* exist, even if I happen to die next week getting run over by a car.