LD Debate topic - Animal Rights

[Shakugan no Shana]

So I joined my school's debate club this year after quitting football (FINALLY) and am doing Lincoln-Douglass debating. LD debates are one on one and based less on facts than morals.

The topic for the first two months in Wisconsin is whether animals deserve rights or not.

Anyone got some good points/ideas for me? I gotta go both ways, not just aff and not just neg.

[Griffstar]

No. For the simple reason that they are not of our species, and we should not disrupt the natural order of their species.

[Metal Mulisha]

Adolf Hitler supported Animal Rights.

[Empire]

animal rights as in what? Always go down to specifics and then deny it based on a simple principle of other things.

Its almost impossible to say they don't have the right to "live" but try and relate that to the origin.

Most morals go with origins to the bible, bring up sacrifices and shit.
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Petty rights such as no lease and shit is easily countered.

[Shakugan no Shana]

It all depends on how you define rights Empire.

The most difficult debate I was in (got wrecked), the guy was able to allude that animals are essentially the same as humans in a biological and mental state and thus should be treated with equality.

[Poison]

no they have no souls

[Empire]

It all depends on how you define rights Empire.

The most difficult debate I was in (got wrecked), the guy was able to allude that animals are essentially the same as humans in a biological and mental state and thus should be treated with equality.

Pets aren't though. We humans DOMESTICATED them as our pets(for the non-eaten). They were wild animals who would attack humans without regard for "laws" that we humans created. There in lies your point on laws. Laws have to be between two agreeing parties. Animals can not acknowledge one way or the other that they are fair and have no point on the voting process. Just like how our laws are not valid in another country.

As an example take the "laws of nature" we don't as a society take "surival of the fittest" and euthanize the elderly do we?


And for eaten, first off in the animal world they would have no second thoughts about eating us if they were higher on the food chain. That being said, start off with the homeless, hungry, and others in the world dying of starvation. Then go on to say, we have enough problems with hunger and famine in the world. When we finally achieve a more stable food supply you want to take it away on ethics? The same ethics that would basically be the same as cancelling plant harvest?
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On the biological and mental state.

First off biologically we are labeled in the same sort yes, but our intelligence is far beyond theirs. Which brings you to the POINT.

Ethics. When you decide is that "right or wrong", you use morals, knowledge of said subject, and emotions towards it(ethics). Animals don't do this. There cognitive functions are basically that of pure instinct and reflexive nature.

Try as you might, you can't explain to a primate(the next highest and closely related animal to us) that genocide is bad. They don't/can't understand this.
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As for rights.