Do you agree with Richard Dawkins?

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

What difference does Dawkin's view make?

Finally! THE question!

To me? None; the guy is an evolutionary biologist and polemicist,not a philosopher.

I don't care that many people choose to be vegetarian or vegan , fruitarian or breatharian.,for whatever reason. I DO care when such people try to insist that everyone else do the same.Then they can go fuck themselves.

Have you ever noticed that vegetarian diets seem most common in countries in which people simply cannot afford to eat meat?

[The Grand Nudger]

Perhaps a stranger thing to notice about vegetarian (or largely vegetarian) cultures is that they heavily exploit livestock to produce said diets, also a necessity brought about due to a lack of capital investment and infrastructure- IE they some po' folks in tha' world. Gotta have fertilizer. Those that don't heavily exploit petrochemical fertility. Bring on the suffering!

Those that do neither, well, those folks starve.

Here's a fun aside, specifically for those vegetarians among us who are going the the ethical argument bit. Why don't we eat more bugs? We could produce massive amounts of bugs without resorting to any sort of agriculture at all. In this way we could limit our reliance on harmful vegetable production and distasteful livestock production. Two birds one stone. Are we all ready to hop on-board?

[TheJackel]

Perhaps a stranger thing to notice about vegetarian (or largely vegetarian) cultures is that they heavily exploit livestock to produce said diets, also a necessity brought about due to a lack of capital investment and infrastructure- IE they some po' folks in tha' world. Gotta have fertilizer. Those that don't heavily exploit petrochemical fertility. Bring on the suffering!

Those that do neither, well, those folks starve.

Here's a fun aside, specifically for those vegetarians among us who are going the the ethical argument bit. Why don't we eat more bugs? We could produce massive amounts of bugs without resorting to any sort of agriculture at all. In this way we could limit our reliance on harmful vegetable production and distasteful livestock production. Two birds one stone. Are we all ready to hop on-board?

oh you can't, killing bugs is unethical.. It would be better to bio-engineer humans to not need organic food at all!

[The Grand Nudger]

Perhaps, but not by the metrics set forth so far in this thread. A line was drawn about sentience, and I believe bugs were on the short stick side of it, or at least at the very bottom. That would make them either completely guilt free, or the least of all evils.

(I'd love to make appeals to sci-fi myself, but I think these guys are actually hoping for a serious discussion...lol)

[TheJackel]

Perhaps, but not by the metrics set forth so far in this thread. A line was drawn about sentience, and I believe bugs were on the short stick side of it, or at least at the very bottom. That would make them either completely guilt free, or the least of all evils.

(I'd love to make appeals to sci-fi myself, but I think these guys are actually hoping for a serious discussion...lol)

So now it's an appeal to a lesser evil to feel less evil even though it's still evil.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, unnecessary suffering would leave the door open to necessary suffering. If we were presented with multiple possible solutions, wouldn't we have to opt in on the one that causes the least amount of necessary suffering? That would seem to be consistent with our stated justifications in adopting this principle.

[TheJackel]

Well, unnecessary suffering would leave the door open to necessary suffering. If we were presented with multiple possible solutions, wouldn't we have to opt in on the one that causes the least amount of necessary suffering? That would seem to be consistent with our stated justifications in adopting this principle.

So suffering can't be avoided.. And I think that is a wet dream about as likely to happen as trying to prevent teens from being sexually active. Just ask the Christians how well that works out. :/

[The Grand Nudger]

Again, maybe it can, perhaps we aren't considering the full range of possibility, but the term offered was "unnecessary suffering" so that's what I've been running with. It's pretty rough to make this stick to ag out here in the real world...but I'm trying....

[TheJackel]

Again, maybe it can, perhaps we aren't considering the full range of possibility, but the term offered was "unnecessary suffering" so that's what I've been running with. It's pretty rough to make this stick to ag out here in the real world...but I'm trying....

Yet I'm about to eat a bologna and roast-beef sandwich... It looks so delicious sitting there! And it would be waste of an animals life to just toss it in the trash. So I choose to honor and respect them and eat them in thanks

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Perhaps, but not by the metrics set forth so far in this thread. A line was drawn about sentience,

Not by the Jains,who are extreme vegans,refusing to eat not only dairy produce,but anything which grows below ground; Eg; spuds, onions,garlic,ginger,sweet potato---


I'm put in mind of a section in 'Gulliver's Travel's' (unedited version) Gulliver runs into an order of monks who eat nothing but cabbages which have died of natural causes. Would it be morally acceptable to eat meat if one ate only road kill, domestic pets,horses and zoo animals which had been euthanised to save them suffering?

Not real happy to eat pigs, but not un-happy enough to stop eating them.


Will not usually eat horse because of the taste and aesthetics, or kangaroo for aesthetics,but have eaten and enjoyed dog,once,in China. I did not know at the time, having quickly learned not to ask about was eating unless I REALLY wanted to know,which I did not.