@rew – You are correct about the Indians but that has become the modern term so I just used it.
Your comment with PETA is true. They would definitely think it is barbaric. However, if you look at history it is comical to the point of being absurd for a non-believer to call anything in the Torah barbaric or immoral. In the pre-Torah world there was not a large value placed on human life let alone animals. The whole concept that animals should not be mistreated comes from the Torah.
As an example in the colesseum (and I keep going back to it because this was the most advanced and orderly civilization of its time) the opening act before people fought to the death was exotic animals brought in to the arena to tear each other apart. That is what the world was like pre-Torah.
As to your point from Yirmiyahu – I am not saying that people who have been exposed to Torah cannot do things that are bad. The main point I am trying to bring out is that basically all of our modern sense of morals (value of life and such) comes from the Torah. So once G-d goes, civilization can take a sharp turn downhill.
This is not my original idea. It has been pointed out by historians. To quote historian Paul Johnson: “Certainly, the world without the Jews would have been a radically different place. Humanity might have eventually stumbled upon all the Jewish insights. But we cannot be sure. All the great conceptual discoveries of the human intellect seem obvious and inescapable once they had been revealed, but it requires a special genius to formulate them for the first time. The Jews had this gift. To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of human person; of the individual conscience and so a personal redemption; of collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items which constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind. Without Jews it might have been a much emptier place.”
If you want additional reading about this check out ‘World Perfect’ by Ken Spiro at Aish Hatorah. Its a great book that sums up this idea perfectly.