Posted on 07/16/2002 3:21:27 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
Man arrested for burning kitten on grill July 16, 2002 Posted: 4:03 PM EDT (2003 GMT)
A neighborhood friend of Sherry Scott holds the kitten they named 'Lucky,' in a recent handout photo.
LIBERTY, Missouri (AP) -- A man was arrested Tuesday for allegedly burning a kitten on a barbecue grill as several other people stood around and watched in amusement.
A witness pulled the scorched, 7-week-old tabby from the hot coals, but it was severely injured and had to be put to death, police said.
"They kept saying, `Meow, meow,' and they were poking at it with a stick," said Sherry Scott, who burned her hand grabbing the kitten.
Charles C. Benoit, 24, was charged with animal abuse, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. He was jailed on $10,000 bail.
Jim Roberts, spokesman for the Clay County prosecutor's office, said he does not expect anyone else to be charged, because no witnesses could identify the others.
Scott said that on Friday night, she saw 10 or 12 people at the barbecue grill in the courtyard of the apartment complex where she lives. Scott said she asked what they were cooking, and they said it was a cat. She said the group taunted her, daring her to rescue the cat.
She said the group scattered when she threatened to call police. She said she pulled the kitten from where it had been shoved into the coals at the back of the grill. Its tail, whiskers, fur, eyes and throat were scorched.
"I called him Lucky because I thought I got him out of there just in time," she said.
Scott said she and other residents stayed up Friday night trying to nurse the kitten with an eye dropper of milk. But animal control officers decided that because of its respiratory injuries and inability to swallow food, it had to be destroyed.
"If you would have seen him, you would have cried," said Sheri Simpson, one of the residents who helped care for the kitten.
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed
Nothing sarcastic in my response. I'm curious as to which laws you keep?
Bizarre is in the eye of the beholder I guess.
Most Christians regard M Scott Peck as pretty bizarre. I do too, in general.
However, I was actually endorsing your point that God doesn't consider the male or the female form more valuable to him. Apparently you missed that and chose instead to hurl an insult. Whatever. I had already gotten the point that you didn't wish to have an understanding but rather to make a big splash.
So, when a few hundred thousand people are slashed to death in Rwanda, and someone drops the comment about it, "God works in mysterious ways", what sort of nasty God are they referring to to allow such things to happen? God the Puppeteer, yes?
In contrast, the God you are hoping exists is one that controls everything so that no one has pain, isn't that what he would be, if he intervened?
You forget about the supreme goal of love, which requires freedom, and freedom requires consequences. And also the transcendent human spirit. Where you value physical life, I value spiritual life even more. If God is the giver of life, can he not also take it away? Who are we to say when it is our time?
"He is not a tame lion..." From the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
I don't think any Christian would argue that God is pleased to have people killed. It is not what he created this world to be, but what we corrupted it to be. Now it is just something we have to live with and struggle with daily. He does not like it, but he helps us inwardly, daily, if we want him to.
Ever seen Eric the Viking? When Eric and his buddies get to Valhalla, they discover that the gods are a pack of cruel, unpleasant children
And what is your theory? I am assuming you aren't thinking that Monty Python actually is a good place to learn theology. And yet you accuse God of those very things, based on observable fact. I'm not clear as to what your point is in bringing these things up. Perhaps if your theory of what God is/is like were put down, it might help me to understand.
This reminds me of the Catholics I knew who told me they went to mass to get their tickets punched just in case the things they did not really believe were true.
However getting one's ticket punched is not how one validates one's relationship with God, is it? So sadly humorous as it is (I know people like that too), it doesn't really add to the discussion.
I believe if you keep God's laws, the label you apply to yourself does not matter. God does not care about labels, and he isn't cruel or whimsical.
Then you have something in common with CS Lewis:
there is another way of demanding results in which the outer world may be quite illogical. They may demand not merely that each man's life should improve if he becomes a Christian: they may also demand before they believe in Christianity that they should see the whole world neatly divided into two camps - Christian and non-Christian - and that all the people in the first camp at any given moment should be obviously nicer than all the people in the second. This is unreasonable on several grounds. (I) In the first place the situation in the actual world is much more complicated than that. The world does not consist of 100 per cent. Christians and 100 per cent. Non-Christians. There are people (a great many of them) who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still call themselves by that name: some of them are clergymen. There are other people who are slowly becoming Christians though they do not yet call themselves so. There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God's secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. For example, a Buddhist of good will may be led to concentrate more and more on the Buddhist teaching about mercy and to leave in the background (though he might still say he believed) the Buddhist teaching on certain other points. Many of the good Pagans long before Christ's birth may have been in this position. And always, of course, there are a great many people who are just confused in mind and have a lot of inconsistent beliefs all jumbled up together. Consequently, it is not much use trying to make judgements about Christians and non-Christians in the mass. It is some use comparing cats and dogs, or even men and women, in the mass, because there one knows definitely which is which. Also, an animal does not turn (either slowly or suddenly) from a dog into a cat. But when we are comparing Christians in general with non-Christians in general, we are usually not thinking about real people whom we know at all, but only about two vague ideas which we have got from novels and newspapers. If you want to compare the bad Christian and the good Atheist, you must think about two real specimens whom you have actually met. Unless we come down to brass tacks in that way, we shall only be wasting time.From Mere Christianity, chapter 32, Nice People or New Men?
You can read that article, which has a single line in it that can bring me to tears even though I have read it many times...
here :http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/cslewis/merechri/merech32.htm
And the text of the entire book which is actually a transcription of a series of radio monologues on the subject.
HERE : http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/cslewis/merechri/meretoc.htm
I had already gotten the point that you didn't wish to have an understanding but rather to make a big splash.
Perhaps I misunderstood you. Is that what you intended to convey in your posts?
I thought you had no desire to show people what a proper sentence was?
If you know what they mean, then why bug people about it? Or ask, "is this what you mean?" If you make like the problem is yours, you're more likely to win people's affection and influence people that way, even if it's NOT yours. Of course this is to an extent, when it's not a hill you want to die on.
Oh gosh there goes one of those silly cliches again...
Incidentally, why should I forget Diamond's post, since it is the one you took issue with?
Are you projecting? Do you really think I'm mad? In fact I am not. I would really like to give you a hug, I think you would be an interesting person to know.
And you can rest assured I meant what I said there.
Oh of course they aren't. I'm the least funny person I know. lol my attempts at humor are most appreciated by those who know me well. They are lame at best.
You know you could have made it simpler by just saying "if you say that persons do not transcend animals in this regard, which seems to be what you are arguing, then you are cutting off the branch on which you sit. "
Oh that's right, you said that already.
I am not ashamed to admit I feel a kinship with animals myself. I feel kinship with humans too but there are some cases where killing is necessary (e.g. self defense, capital punishment, war) or at least the lesser of two evils. I feel a closer kinship with humans than animals.
I love my dog, I would have a very hard time butchering animals I had raised on a farm if I had them. In fact, the other week I rescued a baby robin from what I thought was heat stress. I fed it for a few hours, but I soon realized it had a prolapsed cloaca and was doomed without veterinary treatment. You should have witnessed the turmoil in my mind. I could not for the life of me kill it myself but gave it to my hubby to do, since he wasn't emotionally entangled already. I spent the next half hour trying not to cry.
That being said, I will ardently go out and pursue and harvest up to four deer this fall. (we have party hunting so conceivably I could fill my hubby's two tags as well as my own...) because I will not be emotionally attached to the deer.
This would be very hard to contemplate, or theorize about, since there either *is* or *is not* an innate moral capacity in human beings. Also that moral capacity is corrupted to differing degrees from human to human. If there is a universal moral code imprinted on each human heart, there is no way to demonstrate otherwise. You can look at society however and note the effects of continued degradation of conscience (a natural outflowing of moral capacity.). You can look at animals who can watch the male of their species kill their babies and within a week be begging for that male to impregnate them (lions). You would be hard pressed to find that as universally true among humans as it is in animals. This kind of thing would be very hard to quantify, and likely you could make a study say whatever you wanted it to.
I mean my attempts at humor, not the people who know me well! :-)
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