Vegetarianism versus Veganism versus Meat Eating

[Belz...]

No more than saying you should "save gas" means you need to get rid of your car and walk everywhere.

I'm arguing for wiser and informed choices, not donning a sackcloth and personal deprivation.

I'm a meat lover. I'll leave vegans to fend off protein deficiency with pills.

 

[Aepervius]

This is a very good point.

I dunno about that. I have much more preponderantly seen vegetarian *starting* the argument, than the contrary.

Shall we count the threads started on this forum, where the op has a pro-meat agenda versus the one where the op has a pro-vegetarian agenda ? That should be a good proxy in absence of real statistic.

 

[arthwollipot]

I dunno about that. I have much more preponderantly seen vegetarian *starting* the argument, than the contrary.

Yeah, but I see it as similar to a gay guy starting an argument by saying 'why's everybody always pickin' on me?'

 

[Belz...]

The vegan is committed to a rights approach which says that animals have rights.

Which is ridiculous. Rights are a human invention designed to fit humans. Rights also come with responsibilities, and animals cannot be held responsible for their actions.

 

[Belz...]

The argument about killing always interests me is that the pro-meat-eating side seems to think that dying itself does not constitute harm. I've never understood this.

That wasn't a very thoughtful thing to say. If dying itself is harm to animals then this applies to plants as well. Face it, in order to live, something must die. There simply is no way around it, and this is where the vegan theoretical ideology fails in the face of reality.

 

[Rat]

The moral argument about meat make not much sense. For one it is very very obviously culturally related and not that obviously unethical to use meat as food. For two if you think we haven't heard that argument 1000 time before, and we did not think about it, then you(*) are just fooling yourself(*).
(*) impersonal you/yourself as anybody proselytizing meat-as-food=immoral.

Thus i can understand scrut being very curt : it is not as if there has been *new* argument on that front.

I really can't understand what you're getting at here. No, there may not be an 'argument' about it being wrong; some people just feel that it is wrong, and I don't see how you can argue about that at all. I feel it's wrong to murder and to steal, and while I can come up with good societal reasons why these things are bad and how they harm society, those reasons are not why I feel they're wrong. Are we atheists not always saying that we don't get morals from religion, because we already know right from wrong? Are you now saying that your definitions of right and wrong are the final definitions?

 

[Rat]

I dunno about that. I have much more preponderantly seen vegetarian *starting* the argument, than the contrary.

Shall we count the threads started on this forum, where the op has a pro-meat agenda versus the one where the op has a pro-vegetarian agenda ? That should be a good proxy in absence of real statistic.

I'm not sure which way that would go, but I'm not sure that it matters. I have almost never seen the vegetarian starting the argument, with the exception of a couple of threads on here. I have often experienced meat-eaters starting debates with vegetarians. I have most often experienced neither, since most people I know are adults. It's entirely possible that you know lots of vegetarians but don't know that they are vegetarians. Hmm...where have I heard this before?

 

[Aepervius]

Yeah, but I see it as similar to a gay guy starting an argument by saying 'why's everybody always pickin' on me?'

That would be true if there was any picking. There is *clearly* people systematically picking (and sadly killing) gay people, it is not as if homosexual went to other men and told them they should give up being hetero and try the gay sex. But this is exactly what often happens with a minority of proselythic vegetarian, some even wanting to impose a stop on meat eating.

 

[Belz...]

This is what I believe PETA do. They really don't care about the cruelty issues per se since they want to outlaw meat eating altogether. The cruelty issues, however, bring people in on the ground floor who might, under other circumstances, not oppose meat eating per se.

Didn't Ingrid Newkirk say PETA's goal was "total animal liberation" ? That kind of talk is frightening.

 

[Rat]

That wasn't a very thoughtful thing to say. If dying itself is harm to animals then this applies to plants as well. Face it, in order to live, something must die. There simply is no way around it, and this is where the vegan theoretical ideology fails in the face of reality.

So a vegan feels that it's wrong to exploit animals, and because they eat plants this feeling is wrong? What?

 

[Belz...]

So a vegan feels that it's wrong to exploit animals, and because they eat plants this feeling is wrong? What?

That's not what I said, and you should know better than to do that.

Tsukasa Buddha implied that killing animals was wrong. If it's the killing that's wrong, doesn't that apply to the plants that vegans are eating ?

 

[Aepervius]

I really can't understand what you're getting at here. No, there may not be an 'argument' about it being wrong; some people just feel that it is wrong, and I don't see how you can argue about that at all. I feel it's wrong to murder and to steal, and while I can come up with good societal reasons why these things are bad and how they harm society, those reasons are not why I feel they're wrong. Are we atheists not always saying that we don't get morals from religion, because we already know right from wrong? Are you now saying that your definitions of right and wrong are the final definitions?

I have no idea why you put religion in this, I only mentioned cultural and ethics.
Anyway what i am saying is that the issue is not , and has never been as clear cut and as immoral as some push it to be.

And for your info "Are you now saying that your definitions of right and wrong are the final definitions?" yes they are definitively the final decision on what I see as right or wrong for me. Otherwise i would not use them as definition for myself on right and wrong. *feeding* on anything but human, I never see as right or wrong. It isn#t a moral issue to begin with. Only some people want to make it one.

 

[Rat]

That's not what I said, and you should know better than to do that.

Tsukasa Buddha implied that killing animals was wrong. If it's the killing that's wrong, doesn't that apply to the plants that vegans are eating ?

Ah, OK. I think most people don't feel the same way about animals and plants, whether vegetarian or not. I feel it's wrong to kill people; I don't think that applies to plants.

 

[Aepervius]

I'm not sure which way that would go, but I'm not sure that it matters. I have almost never seen the vegetarian starting the argument, with the exception of a couple of threads on here. I have often experienced meat-eaters starting debates with vegetarians. I have most often experienced neither, since most people I know are adults. It's entirely possible that you know lots of vegetarians but don't know that they are vegetarians. Hmm...where have I heard this before?

My anecdotes. Yours. Both as worthless. Which is why I suggest a proxy like counting thread on this forum, which at least don't present a memory bias (although it certainly could have other bias).

 

[Aepervius]

Ah, OK. I think most people don't feel the same way about animals and plants, whether vegetarian or not. I feel it's wrong to kill people; I don't think that applies to plants.

That's fine, I think it is wrong to kill people, not wrong to kill animal for food, not wrong to kill plant for food. You have another scala. None of us can pretend to have an absolute scala which is valid for everybody.

Now it is time to go to that moral relativism / moral objectivism thread.

 

[Rat]

My anecdote. Your. Both as worthless. Which is why I suggest a proxy like counting thread on this forum, which at least don't present a memory bias (although it certainly could have other bias).

I agree, except I suspect even that has little more worth. It's very much not a random sampling, for one thing.

 

[Belz...]

Ah, OK. I think most people don't feel the same way about animals and plants, whether vegetarian or not. I feel it's wrong to kill people; I don't think that applies to plants.

I think we all agree on the distinction. But I feel vegans want animals to be in a special category that has the best of both worlds when I see no reason to treat animals differently than plants except for the suffering part (which is obviously because plants don't suffer at all). The killing issue is not relevant, to me.

 

[Rat]

I think we all agree on the distinction. But I feel vegans want animals to be in a special category that has the best of both worlds when I see no reason to treat animals differently than plants except for the suffering part (which is obviously because plants don't suffer at all). The killing issue is not relevant, to me.

As long as your objection is only to those who preach or evangelise (which, as I say, I have never experienced), I don't very far disagree. I do, after all, eat meat. Of course, we are all animals.

 

[redfarmer]

Which is ridiculous. Rights are a human invention designed to fit humans. Rights also come with responsibilities, and animals cannot be held responsible for their actions.

I don't completely buy this argument. There are certain humans that we would say have rights, e.g. infants, the mentally handicapped, etc., but we don't completely hold them responsible for their actions. For instance, an infant who caused the death of another person, say by overturning a boiling pot of water on her sibling, would not be held responsible for murder (although we may hold the adult supervising the baby responsible depending on the circumstances). However, if someone were to kill the infant, they would be charged with murder, not cruelty to infants.

I think we need another criterion here and the best I can think of is intent.

 

[Schrodinger's Cat]

I really don't think I've ever heard any of this 'preaching' and evangelism from vegetarians, and I have known, and do know, quite a lot of them. Maybe it's different elsewhere, but it just doesn't seem to be common around here. I think most vegetarians I've known are such for what you would call ethical reasons, in that they just don't want animals to be killed for their food. I don't see how anyone can argue against this (aside from trotting out what always feels to me like a naturalistic fallacy), and it rather surprises me that they aren't more evangelistic if anything, since if you actually feel that it's 'wrong' to kill animals for food, I would think there would be a moral imperative to spread that to others, but I just don't hear it, presumably because they're adult enough to realize that if others shared their beliefs, they would already be vegetarian.

I wouldn't say I've heard evangelising, as such, in the other direction, but I know that vegetarians often have to put up with constant teasing and cajoling to eat meat, as well as frequent questioning as to why they eat as they do. I suspect most vegetarians have also had the experience of someone coming up with ludicrous hypotheticals along the lines of "what if you were stuck on a desert island with just a herd of pigs for food? Ah, so eating meat isn't necessarily wrong! etc..." I have also known meat eaters who will serve meat to vegetarians or dairy to vegans and tell them that it is veggy, presumably on the basis that what they don't know can't hurt them.

I'm 30 and have been a vegetarian since I was 11. I admit that in my first couple years as a veggie I did have "meat is murder" stickers on my trapper keeper and, if the subject was brought up, would passionately argue that meat eating is immoral. But I grew out of that within a couple years, and frankly I was a kid, so I don’t think my brief "evangelical vegetarian" period should really count.

Now I feel that humans are omnivores. I do not think there is anything inherently immoral about eating meat, I buy (humanely raised) and cook it for my husband and dinner guests. I just personally care about animals more than I like the taste of meat, so I chose to not eat meat because I am able to get all my nutritional requirements without it. It also helps that I was never a big meat eater to begin with, so it's not a challenge to abstain from it.

I have known many vegetarians and the vast majority of them have not been "evangelical" vegetarians who try and convince others. Also, of the few I do know who were "evangelicals," most of them were only that way in their younger years and grew out of that phase fairly quickly. However, I'd say about 50% of the time when someone finds out I am a vegetarian, the person I tell criticizes me, teases me, tries to convince me I'm being stupid, etc. Yeah it's true that PETA is a big publicity hound, but I see way more ads from, for instance, The American Beef Council than for any vegetarian groups. In my experience it's overwhelmingly meat eaters trying to push their lifestyle on vegetarians, not the other way around. Yet whenever vegetarianism gets brought up in this forum, there is invariably meat eaters complaining about vegetarians "pushing their lifestyle upon them."

Not that I'm complaining, because it honestly doesn't bother me one bit when people get on my case about it. I find it amusing more than anything else. The best comment I ever got was in the North End (Boston's Little Italy) awhile ago buying cheese at a cheese & butcher shop. The old man behind me asked me, after ordering just cheese, "Hey, aren't you going to buy some of that delicious sausage they've got?" To which I replied, "Oh, I'm a vegetarian." His response was an exaggerated eye roll followed by "Pffft, I don't need to hear about your personal problems."