(August 14, 2024 at 8:49 pm)arewethereyet Wrote: I saw if you want to live on fruits and berries...be my guest.

If you want to have an omelet...go for it.

Ice cream...knock yourself out.

Want burger or a pork chop now and then...have at it.

Vegetarianism and veganism can become quite cult-like.

Fuxxake...some people would bitch if they were hung with a new rope.

Exactly. People can eat whatever they like, it's no business of mine. But I have (more than once) been confronted about my carnivorous habits. I just wish people on the vegan/vegetarian side of the spectrum would appreciate that I don't approach them in a public eatery and lecture them about the evils of tofu.

Everyone should just shut up and let other people eat in peace.

Boru

My argument in favor of eating animals has always been simple, "if animals eat animals then why can't humans?"

If men are nothing more than highly intelligent animals then why can't we eat other animals?

(August 14, 2024 at 6:56 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: I see that almost everyone in the topic not only eats meat but most can't even imagine life without eating plenty of it even for every meal. But through most of the human history people were mostly vegetarians, meaning that they ate meat only a few times a year at most. Even the Roman gladiators were vegetarians and ate a lot of barley.

Animals were held for other purposes than for eating. Like sheep for their wool and cows to plow the fields, but today they barely live for long and are grown for food.

But, today that life is forgotten. People would rather eat some low grade meat like spam and hot dogs than non meat products. Like, a lot of people don't know what the alternative is and think that vegetarians eat mostly soy products like tofu. And there is that suspicious mentality for non meat eaters that they are in some ridiculous cult, (like you have to have some ideological reason for not eating meat every day, rather than just behaving like humans behaved for most of the history) which no doubt comes from meat industry, similar how oil companies are trying to portray drivers of electric cars.

And how can you blame people when the quality of food is degraded. People used to be filled with just eating bread which today is unimaginable when our bread is little more than a spiderweb that we use with eating meat. And even meat is not "meat". Sure if you eat a steak, but most people eat meat products without knowing what is in it, and we even have a saying "Anyone who loves sausages should never watch them being made" and we're fine with it.

‘Mostly vegetarian’ means the same thing as ‘omnivore’, which is what most humans have always been.

Boru

(August 20, 2024 at 12:35 pm)h311inac311 Wrote: My argument in favor of eating animals has always been simple, "if animals eat animals then why can't humans?"

If men are nothing more than highly intelligent animals then why can't we eat other animals?

Do you actually believe in the premise of that argument?  What's the if doing there?  Say we were something more than highly intelligent animals...would there, then, be some reason why we can't or shouldn't?  

I think we've got an exclusively suboptimal decision field.  There is no good choice.  We can only choose what type and what amount of moral complicity we're comfortable with stuffing in our mouths.  The chain of moral responsibility doesn't go further, in my view, because this is a natural evil.  An unfortunate state of affairs that no moral actor or moral agent is responsible for.  

A difficult position for a christian to support, as christianity is premised on a soul-making theodicy where a god is very much morally and actually responsible for natural evil.  All a part of the plan.

(August 20, 2024 at 12:35 pm)h311inac311 Wrote: My argument in favor of eating animals has always been simple, "if animals eat animals then why can't humans?"

Do you believe we can justify all behaviours, if other animals do it? I'd be surprised if you did, and if you don't that premise seems very dubious. 

Quote:If men are nothing more than highly intelligent animals then why can't we eat other animals?

I think you mean to ask why shouldn't we eat other animals, as we demonstrably can. I must say I don't understand what relevance the fact we are intelligent animals has here? Are you implying there is something more that should stop us eating meat, if so then please explain what this might be? Otherwise this premise seems oddly circular.

To answer the Nudge, In Genesis God creates man in his own image, to have dominion over the wildlife. We are expressly granted permission to eat animals after death is introduced through Adam and Eve both choosing to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Sheldon, was I arguing in favor of eating meat or against it?

To explain my argument a little further we ask the vegan if it is okay for a Lion to hunt a Gazelle, if this is true then why can't humans do the same?

To further the argument we could ask if it is okay for a Grizzly bear to hunt as well. Seeing as how they can live their whole lives eating nothing but vegetables but prefer to hunt and eat meat because it is both a fun and tasty thing to do.

Will they morally condemn the behavior of the Grizzly? Or give humans a separate responsibility?

Did a god give us permission to do a bad thing, in your view?

I don't think that lions have much in the way of ethical concerns. Or grizzlies. They're not moral actors. Perhaps if they were more intelligent, or more empathetic, they would develop such concerns..just as we have, and they'd be standing there wondering much the same as you and I are now. We're all cousins, after all. So..OFC we can do it, maybe some god even gave us permission to do it...but should we do it, and if we are going to do it or even must do it, can we do it in a way that addresses such concerns?

While I don't think that lions and grizzlies make a valid moral comparison, they probably do speak to our existential realities. Bears more so than lions as fellow omnivores. Being able to digest plant fiber does not actually mean that we or grizzlies could survive as we are on it. That's the problem that omnivorous adaptation solves in the first place. Rightly or wrongly, from a moral point of view, bears and humans have both evolved to exploit a variety of food sources. If there's something morally wrong with it, and in a way that invokes a moral responsibility analagous to human moral responsibility...we'd have to talk to the architect of that situation. Who might that be, in your view?

(August 28, 2024 at 10:06 am)h311inac311 Wrote: To answer the Nudge, In Genesis God creates man in his own image...

Which means what exactly? Does God have toenails? Zits? Sex organs right next to where it defecates?

So it's almost as if humans are something more than an animal, no?

You're saying that people have developed a capacity for moral reasoning, if what you're saying is true then wouldn't that count as evidence that our designer gave us some of his ability to Judge?

Should we is a different question. Should we eat any food at all? It would seem that those who fast receive a blessing from God, so it is good in his sight to abstain from any food or drink so as to, "hunger and thirst after righteousness."

But we are allowed to and we are allowed to think about what this means for our species, In my view God wants to use death as a reminder for our ultimate end. Death entered into this world through sin, this means that it is our responsibility to become a master over it.

"Sin is crouching at your doorstep, waiting to devour you as a wild beast devours its un-suspecting prey. If you do well, will God not be pleased?"

Death is our ultimate end, is it bad or good? Is it good that one animal should die so that another may live?

(August 28, 2024 at 11:08 am)Angrboda Wrote:

(August 28, 2024 at 10:06 am)h311inac311 Wrote: To answer the Nudge, In Genesis God creates man in his own image...

Which means what exactly?  Does God have toenails?  Zits?  Sex organs right next to where it defecates?

As it is written,

"He had no beauty that we would desire him."