If you wish to interpret the bible literally, that’s obviously your choice, but others, can reasonably interpret it differently.

I understand that is your personal dogma. Please just understand that in the world of “using our reason,” that dogma has no more absolute standing than the dogma that if God says to kill it, we should kill it. Using the pure tools of human reason, there is no reason to prefer “we should avoid killing whales if we can” over “we should kill them if that is an effective way to protect people” or “we should kill them because the Bible can be interpreted to say we should.”

There is no such thing.

Killer whales in captivity are very new, and every killer whale in captivity was captured for the express purpose of putting it on view and selling tickets.

There is no incentive to make a sanctuary and it would cost a lot of money.

However I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that Sea World could be pressured to put its killer whale shows “out to sea” (in sanctuary-like large sea pens), which would alleviate a lot of the whale’s stress, if (a) there were enough pressure to do so and (b) they could still continue to find some way to profit from the whales somehow.

The “Free Willy” episode suggests that these whales cannot be returned to the wild now, but their living conditions could be made much more appropriate than is currently the case.

There have been far more “incidents” involving trainer injury than most people realize. I have no doubt it’s caused by animal stress. Sea World has known of the problem for years and they have taken all the actions that can reasonably be taken with their current model. The model itself is not adequate: they need to ditch “Shamu Stadium” and build something around much larger and whale-friendly sea pens. There’s no reason the animals can’t still be managed, be put on display, and/or even do their tricks – killer whales do appear to be naturally friendly enough when they’re not stressed out, & let’s face it: there is ZERO chance of persuading Sea World to do the right thing if it means throwing away a very very profitable gig.

But god gave us reason, and expects us, I believe to use it. And if we can successfully prevent the whale from killing, by not killing it, we should. To place it in a sanctuary, would, you’re right, put the caregivers at risk. but they’re specially trained to anticipate violent behavior, and, moreover, they choose to go into this line of work.

Your view on Noah is not the only “intelligent” one, however. It may be your preferred opinion, but it is not the only “intelligent” possibility. It is not unintelligent to believe that while each part of the Bible needs to be understood on its own terms, the prescriptions to Noah are meant as actual prescriptions, and not some kind of code for something that has nothing to do with the actual words written. Many “intelligent” people believe this.

It is true that our modern abilities provide for other options, but that does not necessarily make those options “preferable” to an option that God originally ruled as appropriate and in fact mandatory. You get into dangerous ground when you start deciding that the “reason” God originally mandated something no longer applies because people are smarter than we used to be. It’s not impossible that it could be so in some respects, but it’s not wise to assume that our “advancement” automatically makes it so.

I admit I am skeptical as to the feasibility of relocation. The creature almost certainly is not equipped to survive in the wild, and in some sort of custodial care, would still be susceptible to dangerous interactions with humans, which is the whole problem. It wasn’t the audience members it was eating, it was its handlers. However, I’m not beyond persuasion on those points.

But we can relocate this animal, to a sanctuary, for example. And, it’s disheartening that, intelligent people, seem to assume that killing it, is the only option.

question, for anyone: is the resistence to nonlethal remedies to the whale problem, because of skepticism, regarding the efficacy of relocating, the whale? Or is it due to the wish to faithfully reflect, the literalist interpretation, of the relevant biblical passage?