Do you agree with Richard Dawkins?

[Adjusted Sanity]

Broilers are in the main raised in over crowded barns. Thety are so overcrowded that they become stressed and opten resort to cannibalism. To stop this, they are debeaked; their top beak cut off. This is painful at the time and remains painful. They are kept in semi dark conditions to reduce the stress. They only see daylight when they are taken to the slaugher house.

For me this is just too much suffering. I agree it is immoral to put them through that in their millions just to satisfy a liking of the flavour. It's refeshing to find a person who takes responsibility for their actions rather than raise dubious reasons why it's not moral in the first place, e.g. it's natural.

I'd be interested to know why you think it is immoral?

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Because of things like that. But I enjoy meat. Maybe I'll check how the animals are being treated first, but I'm not stopping just because some animals are treated badly. The cruelty should stop, but I'm not stopping my consumption because it won't effect shit.

[Scabby Joe]

Broilers are in the main raised in over crowded barns. Thety are so overcrowded that they become stressed and opten resort to cannibalism. To stop this, they are debeaked; their top beak cut off. This is painful at the time and remains painful. They are kept in semi dark conditions to reduce the stress. They only see daylight when they are taken to the slaugher house.

For me this is just too much suffering. I agree it is immoral to put them through that in their millions just to satisfy a liking of the flavour. It's refeshing to find a person who takes responsibility for their actions rather than raise dubious reasons why it's not moral in the first place, e.g. it's natural.

I'd be interested to know why you think it is immoral?

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Because of things like that. But I enjoy meat. Maybe I'll check how the animals are being treated first, but I'm not stopping just because some animals are treated badly. The cruelty should stop, but I'm not stopping my consumption because it won't effect shit.

That's just what a lot of people said about slavery. I think it is a bit of a cop out to say you will continue doing somthing you know to be wrong just because others are. Every person makes a difference, however small.

[TheJackel]

I think you have missed the point. Sure, we may kill something. Step on a bug etc. the point is, should we inflict UNNECESSRY pain and suffering when we can decide not to.

eating plants is killing something, and even competing for food resources. And the argument you are purposing is a guilt trip argument for people who eat meat. Tell me, do you tell this to bears or other animals? And do you have any idea how much natural habitat we would have to convert to farming to feed the world all on a vegetarian diet? You have any idea how many ecosystems we have destroyed as a human species just by converting natural habitat into farmland? agriculture is the principal cause of habitat destruction.

The Chaco thorn forest is being destroyed at a rate considered among the highest in the world to give way to soybean cultivation.



Satellite photograph of deforestation in Bolivia. Originally dry tropical forest, the land is being cleared for soybean cultivation.[6]

Or how about here in the United States where there are so few states that even have what you can actually call "wilderness"? :

United States agriculture in 2007, there were 2.2 million farms, covering an area of 922 million acres (3,730,000 km2).

And that doesn't include Urban sprawl, highway and road systems ect.. To put that into context, the size of the United States is about 3,794,100 sq miles (9,826,675 km²).. Remove Alaska and you kind of get the picture..So what do you plan to do to reduce "Unnecessary" pain and suffering on species in which we destroy by ripping apart their natural habitats so we can make you feel better about not eating meat?

[Faith No More]

I think Dawkins is saying its a kind of prejudice to elevate the suffering of humans over the suffering and rights of animals due purely to the fact that we are humans. Its like favoring your own race or gender and discriminating against them based on a similar prejudice.

Well, what is your justification for it being okay to eat plants but not animals? Could it not be said that you are discriminating against them because they are not animals like you?

[Adjusted Sanity]

That's just what a lot of people said about slavery. I think it is a bit of a cop out to say you will continue doing somthing you know to be wrong just because others are. Every person makes a difference, however small.

Ill let everyone else be activists. I already can't eat wheat. I don't feel like giving up meat right now. I'll check how the animals i eat are treated from now on at least. I won't support abusing food.

[mediamogul]

I think Dawkins is saying its a kind of prejudice to elevate the suffering of humans over the suffering and rights of animals due purely to the fact that we are humans. Its like favoring your own race or gender and discriminating against them based on a similar prejudice.

Well, what is your justification for it being okay to eat plants but not animals? Could it not be said that you are discriminating against them because they are not animals like you?

Plants don't have a nervous system capable of supporting sentience. Show me a plant that can meaningfully suffer and then there will be an issue.

[Faith No More]

You mean a plant that can suffer in the way you do? How do you know definitively that plants can't suffer, and why is sentience where you draw the line?

[Ace Otana]

You mean it's not needless because you enjoy the taste so much?

There is little we can do about the wild, as you say. If you were in the wild you might not be at the top of the food chain and may be eaten by a large predator. Does this mean we can take your life in a less painful way?

Farfm animals do not always have food readily available. The killing may be mostly quick but the suffering in the weeks and moths beforehand is not.

I'm against animal cruelty, not the eating of meat. If animals were being harmed and given poor treatment I would be against the poor treatment. Morality has nothing to do with what you eat.

It maybe atheism attracts those who don't want to live by any ethical or moral code; maybe that's what they didn't like about religion.

I don't think I'm unethical or immoral in anyway. I've done no wrong as far as I know. Eating certain foods isn't immoral in anyway. Eating meat is immoral to you. It's your opinion and of course you are entitled to your own opinion. I just don't agree with you.

[mediamogul]

You mean a plant that can suffer in the way you do? How do you know definitively that plants can't suffer, and why is sentience where you draw the line?

That's a bit of a loaded question. We are fairly sure of knowing that certain things can suffer. It's the same type of argument against the existence of god. What about a plant would lead us to believe that it was conscious of capable of suffering. We have very good reasons to believe that this with comparable nervous systems to us are capable of suffering.

Because sentience means consciousness and the ability to suffer. Suffering is self-defined as an undesirable state to each organism capable of it. It is based upon the nature of the organism. Happiness is self defined as a desireable state. Each sentient being has the right to be free from uneccessary suffering and the right to reasonably pursue its own happiness provided it does not impinge upon another's rights to be free from suffering and to pursue their own happiness.

Where else would we draw the line? The nature of the organism in question must be the foundational consideration for ethics.

[The Grand Nudger]

Suffering? That would be the observed or perceived effect of adverse conditions on any given organism would it not?

You can observe plants suffering anytime you like. Maybe it's the "perceived" bit that lends the weight? Well, not everyone who "suffers" perceives it as such. There are many folks in third world shit-holes who figure they've got a good life set up for themselves, content, happy, but by our definitions "suffering".

"By our definition" is troubling for the same reason that "meaningful suffering" is troubling, mostly because you were just talking about speciesism (which does not cease to be speciesism simply because you've invoked "sentience", a concept which itself has been heavily criticized by the very same notion) each reflect only a particular bias, no rock solid justifications.

You don't eat meat, I do. We're likely to have wildly divergent reasons for our respective decisions (and it's likely that neither of us reached these decisions by means of logic). Many of us eat more meat then we need to (or should, and here I'm speaking only of overall health no morality involved) and it is expensive, oftentimes wasteful, sometimes exploitative. Human condition. I absolutely love animals (and plants), I care greatly for the well-being of both, I am also an avid hunter, a lover of bacon, and I don't shy away from pesticides and nasty, nasty fertilizers that "completely rape the earth". I extend "morality" to other human beings only because I am a human being (and not because I have any rock solid justification for this, or any sort of objective "morality" at all), this has it's upsides and downsides. You won't find me campaigning for the lowly chicken's freedom or prosecuting a chimp for murder. I can only repeat what has already been said many times over. I like eating meat, I can eat meat, I'm not extending or revoking any consideration that any other animal would grant (or deny) me. It's completely neutral in that regard (as it likely is for every other animal that eats meat-there is no predator that could not be a vegetarian btw, not a single one- why are they exempt while I am being taken to task? Do you imagine ourselves to be so different? Speciesism ftw!).