What is your excuse for killing animals?

[devnull]

It's 2010, you can raise healthy kids on a meat-free diet with a little effort.

Sorry Kevin, I havent been following this thread, so excuse the possibly stupid question - why would I want to do this? Assuming I have no moral qualms with the slaughter of animals for food, what is my motivation to cut meat out of my diet and work around the resulting nutritional deficiencies?

 

[cyborg]

When you want to engage in serious discussion, feel free to do so.

When you want to answer the difficult questions feel free to do so.

 

[cyborg]

Sorry Kevin, I havent been following this thread, so excuse the possibly stupid question - why would I want to do this? Assuming I have no moral qualms with the slaughter of animals for food, what is my motivation to cut meat out of my diet and work around the resulting nutritional deficiencies?

Killing animals is wrong if people do it. You just need to find animals killed by lightning instead and eat those. It's simple and practical!

 

[devnull]

Killing animals is wrong if people do it. You just need to find animals killed by lightning instead and eat those. It's simple and practical!

Oh, so the entire problem is a moral one? On what grounds though? People are animals. Animals kill and eat other animals. Whats the problem here?

(or have I just fastforwarded through the whole thread?)

 

[cyborg]

Oh, so the entire problem is a moral one? On what grounds though? People are animals. Animals kill and eat other animals.

Which as Kevin says is a naturalistic fallacy - that what other animals do isn't relevant to whether or not we should do it. But it is perfectly relevant as to why one shouldn't feel guilty that other organisms die for your survival: that is an inevitability.

Whats the problem here?

Something nebulous about cruelty that isn't fully explained.

 

[devnull]

Which as Kevin says is a naturalistic fallacy - that what other animals do isn't relevant to whether or not we should do it.

Which would be true, if there were other motivators or consequences being ignored. I don't think there are.

But it is perfectly relevant as to why one shouldn't feel guilty that other organisms die for your survival: that is an inevitability.

Could it depend on the intelligence of the organism maybe? Or how human-like they might be?

Something nebulous about cruelty that isn't fully explained.

Well, people can be cruel, and we should always strive to make the death of our food as quick and pain-free as possible.

 

[cyborg]

Well, people can be cruel, and we should always strive to make the death of our food as quick and pain-free as possible.

Which must make me a vegan but I haven't got an answer on that yet.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Sorry Kevin, I havent been following this thread, so why do I think I deserve an answer if I ask questions that were answered pages ago?

That is a really good question, I have no idea. It would defeat the entire purpose of having threads available for perusal if idiots just wandered in at the end hoping to have the threads started from scratch on their behalf.

Oh, so the entire problem is a moral one?

Well that saves me the trouble of answering, you now know what the thread is about.

On what grounds though? People are animals. Animals kill and eat other animals. Whats the problem here?

(or have I just fastforwarded through the whole thread?)

 

[cyborg]

That is a really good question, I have no idea. It would defeat the entire purpose of having threads available for perusal if idiots just wandered in at the end hoping to have the threads started from scratch on their behalf.

Yes, anytime you want to answer the difficult questions instead of being a jerk...

 

[Bill Thompson]

They were raped and physically crippled on a sex farm in Northern Washington. That is my excuse for killing animals.

 

[devnull]

"Is does not imply ought" is very true, but it also doesnt discount it.

You need to provide some other motivator to move away from meat that outweighs the nutritional loss aspects (remembering not everyone can access meat substitutes easily), or provide a strong negative aspect to meat eating.

I know that when I was working for a large multi-faceted company, the wagyu beef production arm treated the cattle very well and they were slaughtered very humanely. They taste good, theyre nutritious...... what is the *bad* here?

 

[cyborg]

I know that when I was working for a large multi-faceted company, the wagyu beef production arm treated the cattle very well and they were slaughtered very humanely. They taste good, theyre nutritious...... what is the *bad* here?

Cow farts destroy the environment, which makes eating beef wrong and making cows extinct right.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

"Is does not imply ought" is very true, but it also doesnt discount it.

You need to provide some other motivator to move away from meat that outweighs the nutritional loss aspects (remembering not everyone can access meat substitutes easily), or provide a strong negative aspect to meat eating.

I know that when I was working for a large multi-faceted company, the wagyu beef production arm treated the cattle very well and they were slaughtered very humanely. They taste good, theyre nutritious...... what is the *bad* here?

Thanks for the intelligent response.

A utilitarian (objectivist) might consider that sufficient grounds to make meat eating in that particular case moral. If the animals have a happy life and a good death, and people enjoy eating them, that makes for a potentially powerful utilitarian argument for the practise.

(The most prominent utilitarian who is anti-carnivore, Peter Singer, bases his arguments to a very large extent on the fact that USian factory farming is horrific and bears no resemblance to the boutique farming of wagyu beef).

That said, most utilitarians count the continuation of a human life as a very powerful good, outweighing almost any possible benefit to be obtained from ending it prematurely. Attempts to draw dividing line between humans and cows so that we can end the life of one prematurely but not the other inevitably run into the problem that either they are morally arbitrary or they put mentally disabled humans in the same set as cows, and a lot of people have a problem with that.

Singer, again, is perfectly consistent about this issue. He says that we should either be perfectly happy to stun the mentally disabled and bleed them out if it suits us and also be happy to do it to animals, or we should refrain from killing either group because it suits us. He goes with the not-kill-either-group alternative, but I think he accepts that the kill-the-disabled-and-pigs alternative is equally consistent.

The nutritional aspects of meat eating are not a major issue for relatively rich people living in the First World. You can eat a perfectly balanced diet with no meat in it if you make the effort. For subsistence hunters and such, the nutritional issue is pressing. For Joe and Jane Morbidlyobese in North America, Europe or Australia it's simply an issue of convenience and taste, not of nutritional necessity.

 

[cyborg]

Readers will note that Kevin doesn't answer the question of why it's bad.

It's also a funny change of attitude given the previous response Kevin gave to devnull.

 

[Telaynay's G'son]

Readers will note that Kevin doesn't answer the question of why it's bad.

It's also a funny change of attitude given the previous response Kevin gave to devnull.

The entire OP context illustrates the arrogance (and fallacy) of the religion of vegan.

Do the initiation rites include extraction of one's incisor teeth as an act of contrition?

 

[Roboramma]

Oh, so the entire problem is a moral one? On what grounds though? People are animals. Animals kill and eat other animals. Whats the problem here?

(or have I just fastforwarded through the whole thread?)

Similarly people kill and (sometimes) eat other people. What's the problem here?

Personally, I do have a problem with that. And I would continue to have a problem with it even if others in my society did not have a problem with it. I would also have a problem with it if I was not in any danger of being a victim of it.
From the responses of some in this thread, it seems that they wouldn't. And that surprises me. I can accept that their positions are consistent, but... I am finding it hard actually believing that anyone wouldn't also have a problem with that under those circumstances.

Please note that my post has nothing to do with animal rights. I'm simply talking about the relative morality that some are touting.

 

[Cain]

You make up a purely analytical proposition, you simply define the phrase "suffering animal" by certain behavioural observations. This doesn't add any information at all because you still don't know how an animal suffers, compared to a human. [he's got it]

You anthropomorphise animals by talking about their "interests" and "preferences" and "pains", as if human and animal minds were the same, which is clearly not the case. [this is not a straw man]

You also proclaim that you can reliably read an animal's mental state by observing its behaviour, which is an unjustifiable claim. [including animals I hear on the radio or phone]

For realz. It's just impossible to know. Some pet owners are so presumptuous -- "He likes it when you do this." So now they can read non-human tard brains? Then they throw the dog a bone without realizing that they're anthropomorphizing. It's so bad the law even recognizes animal "cruelty" -- whatever that means. People had a much more enlightened view on these matters in the sixteenth century.



----------------------------------------------
Manopolus:

None of it.

I call Poe... as I am not sure which of your remarks are sarcastic and which are not at this point (after reading a number of your completely ridiculous posts). I have no understanding of your position whatsoever. All I see is mindless heckling. If you actually have a serious position in this issue, please inform me of it. If you are merely here to make fun of what anyone else here says, let me know that too, so I can dismiss you as a mindless troll and move on.

I can see why its confusing. I used to think animals could feel pain, but Herzblut's impressive intuition has convinced me otherwise. I just wish he could present these findings to auditoriums of people, vegan and non-vegan. Surely they would nod their heads in agreement as what he says rings true. Because it is.

------------------------
Cyborg:

Everything else you are banging on about it irrelevant but you sure prefer it to answering simple and direct questions.

You said something similar to Kevin, more than once. So now you imagine yourself as a Mike Wallace? I thought I gave you more time than you deserved, but what was one such question? "Do your farts smell?" Quote it.

 

[154]

Here in a couple hours, it's gonna be brats and chicken.
Thank you, God.

 

[Mirrorglass]

I said I'd answer the posts a few pages ago in more detail, but it seems to me others have already made most of the points I would have, so I feel no need for it. If one of the vegans wants my answer to a particular point of theirs, please post it again; otherwise I'll try to move forward.

Anyway, the discussion has boiled down to both sides presenting some moral theories about whether animals have rights or not.

The vegan side (it seems to me; correct me if I'm wrong) believes animals have a capacity for suffering, desires and intentions, and that from this it follows that all moral rules that apply to humans apply to animals as well.

The omnivore side has made the claim that "capacity for suffering" is something produced by a form of abstract thinking unique to humans (some higher primates may or may not also be included), and that it is this abstract thinking, along with the fact that we are of a different species, that distinguishes humans from animals from a moral perspective.

The vegan side claims this distinction is "arbitrary", and also seem to say "arbitrary" equals "useless" which, in this case, equals "wrong", all of which are questionable claims when speaking of morality. Also,

why would drawing the line at abstract thinking be more arbitrary than drawing it at capacity for suffering?

Another point made by the vegan side is that some mentally retarded humans, fetuses and young children do not fulfill the criteria of abstract thinking.

For fetuses and children, it has been presented that they have the potential to develop abstract thinking.

This was also labeled "arbitrary". Some vegans have gone as far as to say they don't agree that having potential for something is grounds for moral consideration. (That's the impression I got, at least. If no one in fact believes this, disregard my next paragraph).

So, would you say that a human with no capacity for suffering, intentions or desires, but who has the potential to develop them, would it be okay to kill and eat them? (If there are some other qualities animals have that you believee grant them rights, rephrase the question to involve those).

As for the arbitrariness of the potential-argument.. Well, yes, it is arbitrary. So what? Why shouldn't a moral system make some arbitrary assumptions? Or rather, can you provide an example of a moral system that does not?

For the case about severely mentally retarded humans, namely that if moral rights are granted according to capacity for abstract thinking, then then some mentally retarded humans will have none - that is to say, the moral reasoning that allows me to eat meat doesn't protect these people.

Again, so what? It doesn't protect my windows or mow the lawn either. I have other reasons for not eating retarded people than their intelligence. The extreme example given, a human whose mind is so poorly developed he is indistinguishable from an animal, and has no potential for growth.. no, I do not believe this hypothetical being is in any way above animals. I don't think their life has any particular value. (It should be noted that I've never met or heard about a person like this, with the exception of the people born without brains).

The reason I would still not kill or hurt the person is the same as my reason for not hurting animals unnecessarily; such acts are very reminiscent to hurting people that can actually suffer. It would feel like hurting a person. Also, I can't think of a situation where hurting this retarded person was necessary; even the most fiery-souled vegan can't really think a meat-eater would consider eating human flesh any more readily than a vegan. Right?


It's been a long rant, so I'll sum it up here.

1) The meat-eater view is no more arbitrary than the vegan view.

2) No matter how many times you present it, the idea that meat-eaters should also eat children is false.

3) The arrogant, rude and condescending attitude that all vegans arguing in this thread seem to consistently sport is not helping your cause.

 

[154]

Do vegans ever thank God for their salad?