What is your excuse for killing animals?

[Achán hiNidráne]

This.

Growing meat would be much better, less space taken up, no need to grow the rest of the animal, no messy slaughter, probably much more efficient, etc...

It could even be possible to create fur and leather that way.

 

[I Ratant]

I've never heard anyone apply the golden rule to animals before. How far does it extend? Should I be allowed to treat a bacterial infection or kill the wasps that get into the house?

.
Think of the smallpox virus... It's been eradicated, except for a couple samples held hostage in labs!
The horror!

 

[Cainkane1]

Meat, shoes, leather apparel.

 

[Dragoonster]

I don't hold to any reasons it's immoral to kill ants, or spiders, even though I try to avoid doing so. But I am a meat-eater, and eat pigs, which are pretty damned smart. I'd also eat anything below humans--dolphin, elephant, dog, cat, if it was tasty.

This conflicts with my thinking that high sentience is the only thing which should or does/should grant other humans rights. I try to stay consistent, and particularly with an abortion argument based on sentience--for example if the state wouldn't take babies off the hands of mothers I'd support the mothers' murdering them, because the baby is not terrificly more sentient than a fetus, no more than a fetus of 7 months is terrifcly more than one at 6 months. Luckily the state does take the baby. Problem is, in my lay opinion pigs and others are still a lot more sentient than a baby.

So for further justification I just say I'm a moral subjectivist/egoist of some kind and that this "allows" me to be a hypocrite or throw out conflicting axioms if what I find moral is mostly what I find appealing. But that's not much of an excuse!

It's definitely problematic, at least for me who doesn't see anything innately unique or rights-granting about humans except for our high sentience...which of course allows us to form language which allows ourselves to declare superiority and to set morals.

 

[Dragoonster]

Oh, I do object to infliction of pain on any sentient being, with margin of error on the dumb side of the scale. So torturing dogs, or even insects is out.

To everyone flippantly defending eating meat or not bothering to explain why this is morally acceptable, I'm interested in why you'd object to eating human babies (if you would, to be consistent I guess I wouldn't object). Just because it's illegal or some other reason?

 

[Arcade22]

I am a Human supremacist.

 

[BTMO]

I shoot them. Or stick steel hooks in their mouths to drag them out of their watery world.

Or step on them. Depends what you mean by "animals".

In the case of the animals I shoot, I eat them. This includes rabbits, deer and goats. Soon, it will include ducks and other game birds. In the case of the steel hooks, I eat them. I enjoy eating fish, crustaceans and molluscs.

I step on insects and spiders as required.

I also unknowingly ingest trillions of eukaryotes of various sorts, including protists.

In the case of cows and sheep, I usually use some sort of contract killer to do my dirty work for me - farmers, butchers, supermarkets. It is just too hard to shoot these animals, and quite frankly, I don't have the freezer space to justify killing an animal that weighs several hundred kilos.

 

[BTMO]

Also I would be totally comfortable stealing candy from a cow,

I wouldn't. It is too easy. Try stealing meat from a dog. THAT is a challenge!

 

[The_Animus]

As long as the animal doesn't understand its situation — it's about to die or is being kept alive to be eaten — I don't think it matters. It's also important that other animals aren't affected by its death.

This would even apply to humans. For example, imagine you're having a nice day, walking down the street and then... nothing. A car coming from behind hits you, instantly killing you, you have absolutely no concept of your impending death and therefore it's meaningless to you — not your family and loved ones. And therefore no harm is done to the person.

This would seem to imply that if you unknowingly get killed by a car but have no loved ones or family then nothing wrong was done. Further most meat comes as a result of factory farming in which the conditions the animals are kept in it terrible.

At this point, they are still in our diet and without extraordinary means are a requirement for us. There seems to be no other point in trying to deny that the world does operate as a food chain, and therefore no reason to exclude one's self from it.

Actually we go to extraordinary means in order to supply meat products to everyone. It would require less effort, less resources, less land, less water, less just about everything if we all stopped eating meat.

The intellectual capacities of humans make them equipped to extend the lifetimes of animals on a large scale, via:

1. Arranging favourable living conditions.
2. Controlling the environment.
3. In the long-term, colonising other worlds.

Thus, killing animals indirectly furthers their species, by furthering humanity.

Really? You are proposing that us breeding, raising, and slaughtering large numbers of animals furthers their species?

We don't arrange favourable living conditions. Again, most animals for consumption are raised under factory farm conditions, which are usually extremely poor. Please read up on factory farming chickens.

They certainly continue to live and reproduce in large numbers, but only for our own purposes. That is less like life and more like a resource than anything. We use them as a resource, and we find ways to breed them or genetically modify them or shoot them full of various substances soley for the purpose of increasing their yield. This is not what a reasonable person would consider furthering a species. Would you consider pumping all women full of fertility drugs, and increasing the output of their breast milk as furthering the women species?

There is no reason or justification for the way we treat other animals aside from 'Might equals right" and while that is certainly a reality of the world I dream that intelligent species would find better justification for their actions or not do it at all.

Despite this I eat meat, which makes me a hypocrit. Like most people I've grown up with eating meat and it has become a habit, a preference based on taste, and dare I say an addiction.

Now if we cut back on our overall meat consumption and allowed animals to live good full lives before finally using them for food that would be much better.

 

[Saraffina]

As far as I know they have no self. No thoughts, opinions, emotions. That is just my opinion though.

 

[SonOfLaertes]

There is nothing wrong with nature’s way per say, but we don’t live in the wild anymore. We grew above it.
Don’t you believe in human rights? Once you acknowledge that your personal pleasure should not harm others then you are out of the wild and into the civilized world. There is no reason why a man should have more rights than a woman, or a white man should have more rights than a black man, so why we stop at the human race? So why not animal rights? Where is the threshold? There is none.
Let nature be nature, but once you are in the civilized world you live without the hypocrisy of keeping your own interests above the interest of other beings who live and suffer just like you do.



QUOTE]

Hypocrisy? You miss the point of my post. Treating animals as animals is in their best interest.

We did not grow "above" nature. We shielded ourselves from some of it's ferocity, but we are still quite at the mercy of most of it's denizens.

The problem that you don't acknowledge is you have no way to control the consequences of the unnatural order you propose. What will you do with all the cows, sheep, pigs, etc. that must be cared for in a vegetarian world? Will you allow them to breed, or simply sterilize the lot so you don't have to deal with the problem of exploding populations? How would you manage the wild populations that are already eating themselves out sustenance? What will step into the gap to manage these animals -your good intentions? They will breed profusely, eat out there environment, and die horribly.

Populations of domestic and wild animals are managed because they are a resource. Without that imperative these populations will collapse under there own weight - no matter how many well meaning people attempt half-cocked sterilization programs or other unnatural solutions. There is simply no better or more powerful solution than the one we and the animals are programmed for - the natural solution. Any other "plan" will reduce nature to a mockery of itself.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

What do you mean by "It", the question or your answers?

My answers.
Regardless, the fact that you're asking me this, is a very good indicative that you haven't been paying attention to what I'm telling you.

Which means you can't answer the question.

I just did. That you don't agree, that's another issue. But I answered your question.
Yes, you clearly haven't been paying attention and/or you have a huge thirst for arguing for the sake of arguing.

Yes, this is painfully obvious.

Yes. So we both agree.

 

[Trent Wray]

I've never tasted road-possum, let alone twice-dead road possum, so the comparison doesn't really improve my understanding.

But I suspect that's for the best.

Yes you haven't missed out then. Now don't even ask me about thrice dead chum pablum. *shudders*

 

[The_Animus]

The problem that you don't acknowledge is you have no way to control the consequences of the unnatural order you propose. What will you do with all the cows, sheep, pigs, etc. that must be cared for in a vegetarian world? Will you allow them to breed, or simply sterilize the lot so you don't have to deal with the problem of exploding populations? How would you manage the wild populations that are already eating themselves out sustenance? What will step into the gap to manage these animals -your good intentions? They will breed profusely, eat out there environment, and die horribly.

For a very long time nature has done a great job of maintaining balance long before people decided they could do it better. If we didn't specifically breed them and cram as many as we can into as small a space as we can there wouldn't be nearly so many in the first place.

 

[Fnord]

I need no excuse to kill an animal.

 

[politas]

It is impossible for humans to survive without killing something. We must kill some life to exist.

We also kill other life forms just automatically. Our immune system is constantly killing life forms.

All life is related, ultimately. All life. That includes bacteria and plants. Any division we place between different life forms is ultimately arbitrary.

What is your excuse for killing bacteria?
What is your excuse for killing plants?
What is your excuse for killing insects?

You don't need an "excuse" for killing any of those, any more than I need an "excuse" for killing animals (or having them killed for me). "The Golden Rule" is insufficient argument to declare killing animals as something that would need to be excused.

Killing an animal to eat is is perfectly justifiable. It is natural. It has utility.

If you wish to argue that raising animals for eating is inefficient, that's entirely different, but the moral argument is invalid.

 

[JimBenArm]

I only kill icky animals like spiders and mosquitoes. And only because the voices in my head told me it was my civic duty to do so.

 

[Twiler]

Really? You are proposing that us breeding, raising, and slaughtering large numbers of animals furthers their species?

We don't arrange favourable living conditions. Again, most animals for consumption are raised under factory farm conditions, which are usually extremely poor. Please read up on factory farming chickens.

They certainly continue to live and reproduce in large numbers, but only for our own purposes. That is less like life and more like a resource than anything. We use them as a resource, and we find ways to breed them or genetically modify them or shoot them full of various substances soley for the purpose of increasing their yield. This is not what a reasonable person would consider furthering a species. Would you consider pumping all women full of fertility drugs, and increasing the output of their breast milk as furthering the women species?

What's the alternative?

I certainly don't agree with all the ways animals are treated, but is releasing them into the wild going to improve matters? And how would the economic impact be mitigated?

 

[politas]

This.

Growing meat would be much better, less space taken up, no need to grow the rest of the animal, no messy slaughter, probably much more efficient, etc...

It would be good. The big trouble, as I understand it, is getting the meat excercised in order to grow proper fibres.

 

[Trent Wray]

Another thing to consider, is that life itself is almost an aberration. The moment it manifests the potential for it to end is present at almost every moment. It doesn't seem to be the "natural" state of what the universe is "all about".