Atheism and vegetarianism

[The Omnissiunt One]

Preaching to the choir, I'm anti death penalty anyway because of the risk of not guilty persons being killed. And I would be in favor of doing it like that too if it really needs to be done.

However, the point was that the existence or the development of the CNS is not relevant, there are many ways to kill without suffering. Nitrogen is just the one I'd advocate as a cheap and viable solution. Close to 80% of the Earths atmosphere is Nitrogen anyway.

Why do you put artificial boundaries up about killing humans? My criteria for what it's wrong to kill are clear and logical: if a being is a person, it is wrong to kill them. A being is a person if they have a sense of themselves existing over time, and can thus make plans for the future. If they can, then to kill them is to prevent them from fulfilling their plans, and hence a violation of their interests, which is wrong from a preference utilitarian viewpoint. This also gives me good reason to permit abortion, while having moral reservations about killing animals like dolphins and chimps, and maybe pigs, which have been demonstrated to have some degree of self-awareness. Killing a person, then, is wrong even if done painlessly.