are vegetarians more ethical by not eating meat?

[The Grand Nudger]

Don't compare "killing" an apple to killing a pig, the former we can do in the comfort of our living room, the other is something so repulsive and contrary to what we feel is right, our innate ethics, that we hide the act away behind fences and walls and pay other people to do it for us and to print pretty pictures on the packaging to never remind us of what was necessary for our pitiful few minutes of taste.

Meh, I don't have any trouble killing pigs, nor would I find any reason to hide the killing, or cleaning. Now, that's probably because we always kept a few pigs around when I was growing up. I'm used to it, familiar on a practical and day to day level wherein the killing and butchering of a pig doesn't seem in any way a momentous or meaningful event to me. But maybe there is something to be said here-in that if a consumer figures that they might be aghast at whatever goes into their meal - pick some other menu item.

Why is it so hard to accept that all living beings might feel the same urge to stay alive? Any cow or pig has as much or as little right to be alive as you or I, brain size don't enter into it.

It isn't, I would kind of expect that both creatures had a pronounced will to live. As far as what rights they have - well, that depends. Animals raised here in the US have more rights than many human beings in other parts of the world. Fortunately I don't live in a place where this holds - but our livestock are fairly fortunate in co-habitating with me on this count as well.

The viewpoint of the homo egocentricus is a residue of Christianity and we as atheists should set out to overcome it. We took away the geocentric universe, then we took away the superiority of the white man, then that of man over woman, now we are taking away the arbitrary distinction between man and other animals. It's only logical.

I'm all for busting barriers between ourselves and other species of animals, but forgive me for wondering why eradicating those divisions, whether real or imagined, would have the effect you appear to be hinting at?

"Human killing" is an oxymoron.

I think that perhaps you're a little murky as to what the word "oxymoron" means. This is one of those things upon which I would absolutely insist - if we were going to continue eating meat, precisely -because- I value ethics, and the life and well being of the animal. I can't watch an animal suffer, personally. I shot a bird with a bb gun once when I was a kid and learned that about myself very well (of all things eh, balling like a little baby over some magpie..lol). If you can't end the animals existence swiftly and decisively - you just don't do it.

We're not talking about what is convenient, we're talking about what is right. As a self-identified catholic, your own God told you "Thou shalt not kill", and by your own standards it is blasphemy to your own God to re-interpret Her words as only applying to humans.

I don;t think you'll find any traction on that count. Their god is also a known lover of animal blood and burnt flesh. Their god also gave them dominion over beasts and it;s seal of approval on eating meat (provided that they don't drink the blood..remember...that's set aside for the big guy).