are vegetarians more ethical by not eating meat?

[Sal]

Heh, if someone is gonna eat the remains of my corpse after I'm dead, be my guest. After I'm dead, I won't be, so I won't even be around to experience suffering.

We're talking about slaughter, which is actively killing an animal, usually in the prime of its life when the flesh tastes best, and I suspect you might object to someone killing you in your twenties, painfully or otherwise.

But according to my value system I deem my worth above that of an animal other than human. I don't claim a paragon of virtue in this, just that my value system is that way.

I also noticed you anthropomorphize unto animals. Am I to think that my evolutionary line is the same as, say, a sheep? Or that my view (or any human) of reality is the same?

Now, I don't value humans the same as I value an animal. I just don't. To me, I even value insects below, say, a sparrow. I value dogs over cats (I'm a dog person), I value loads of stuff over other stuff. Why shouldn't I?

Because our value systems can, like any other object of science, be scrutinized regarding their integrity. Right now, our value systems have been formed by millenia of Christian or heathen dogma, and I propose we need to re-evaluate quite a few aspects of it.

Culturally, that might be true. But quite a lot of people, also through history, have been atheistic, it isn't until after the Enlightenment that they stopped burning atheists at the stake. So they just lay low all throughout history and just lived out their lives without ever mentioning their true views, simply because they were smart enough to not let their views be known and risk burning at the stake.

It's only in the Western comfort zone that vegetarianism, as I can see (although I'm not sure of it), has been tenable. People have lived and feed on livestock for longer than recorded human history. I don't claim an historic antecedence that would justify it today, although I would point out that it's a new invention of culture to calculate in the option of vegetarianism in western culture.

The difference between me and a sheep getting killed is that our view of reality and pain & suffering aren't the same; how could they be?

Quite easily, your will to live and ability to suffer serves the same purpose as that of any animal, namely to keep that animal alive and well, human or otherwise. There is no reason to suppose a difference if the evolutionary function is identical and biology is so strikingly similar.

Probably is, yet there is only one species of animal that has Mind Theory and even a concept of suffering, the rest just suffers without ever knowing or coming to a realization: "I'm suffering" or "He's suffering" because that requires a whole new tier of experience of mind. Not even apes have Mind Theory, and our toddlers don't form a Mind Theory until around the age of 4. There is a very simple test for Mind Theory, yet even apes that we have learned sign language fail it.

Why should I value an animal that doesn't even know it's suffering, and most likely only is responding to environmental stimuli and instincts?