Unholy Animal Slaughters?

According to Hartmann and Blass, the religion of Santeria allows animal sacrifices today (2007, p. 219). In fact, killing animals for religious reasons has been common for thousands of years: the Greeks and Romans did it, the Jews did it, and many shamanic religions still do it.

I don't know much about Santeria, and I don't much like the idea of killing animals for religion. However, governments must not make laws to stop people killing animals for religious reasons, even if the animals are endangered. People kill animals for many reasons, the most common being to eat them, such as lamb shank with white beans, and even the filthy Big Mac. Other reasons are for fun, such as bull fighting, and because they are seen as pests, which is why we often kill cockroaches, rats, and even kangaroos (in Australia, kangaroos are sometimes so numerous that they really are pests to human agriculture, so farmers cull them.)

It's hard to see why any of these reasons would be better or worse than any other, with the possible exception of killing for sport, but even there, most arguments against that would also seem to apply to all the other reasons that human's kill animals, including to eat them. THis is the main reason why I think we cannot consistently argue that it's wrong to kill animals for religious reasons, or even just for fun. If we do, then that reason will probably also apply to killing animals for food.

But if you think I'm wrong, please present your case for thinking that it's OK to kill animals for some reasons, such as to eat them, but not to kill them for other reasons, such as superstitious religious beliefs which are always false (for every religion), or even for fun.

Note: if you have studied in my class before, you might remember that we read Stephen Law's essay "Carving the Roast Beast", in which he presents a very strong argument that it is morally wrong to kill animals for food (2007, p. 124 - 140). I disagree with Law, but his arguments are strong, and they might be relevant to my idea here. In fact, now that I think about, I want to make my main idea a bit stronger: governments must not make laws to ban the killing of animals for any reason that does not directly harm other human beings.

As you can see, I had a very rough idea in mind when I began this response, but it is certainly not a carefully planned and organized academic writing. Perhaps I should have kept if shorter, but Hartmann and Blass allow us to write for 10 - 15 minutes in a response writing, so that's what I've done.

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References

Hartmann, P., & Blass, L. (2007). Quest 3 Reading and Writing, (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Law, S. (2007). The Xmas Files. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.

You don't need to add a list of references in a less formal response writing, but it's not a bad idea to practice doing it.