Do you agree with Richard Dawkins?

[Ice104]

If we are no more than an animal then there should be no problem.

A lot of animals eat meat.

What IS wrong though is people taking extra offense when a human is eaten by another animal. Why should we be more privileged?

I think eating meat is perfectly moral as long as you do not take personal offense when a human is eaten by another animal as people often do.

[The Grand Nudger]

Where do you plan to get fertilizer from to keep farms going and producing massive amounts of food each year? Or is your answer going to be to cause more deforestation when the farmland's soil becomes infertile dirt from over farming?

This. We have two options, at present.

We can use extensively refined "inorganic" fertilizers - you'll find no lack of protesters here along the lines of raping the earth, destroying habitat, poisoning the planet and ourselves

or

We can lean more heavily on the by-products of livestock production (this is how organics roll btw) mainly, the metric tons of manure required to supply a fraction of the nutrients of the more refined "inorganic" fertilizers - you'll find no lack of protesters here along the lines of raping the earth, destroying habitat, poisoning the planet and ourselves

Both groups need to sit back, take a breather, enjoy their ribeye or their bean sprout salad (I won't judge either way), and work out a practical solution to a practical problem.

(btw, I'm reading that UN report, I don't see what you see in it, care to help me out?)

[TheJackel]

We can use extensively refined "inorganic" fertilizers - you'll find no lack of protesters here along the lines of raping the earth, destroying habitat, poisoning the planet and ourselves

This will not make a difference.. because it's the bacteria that thrive on fertilizers that cause much of the problem.. And what amount of processing does inorganic fertilizers entail vs organic? Can someone show inorganic fertalizers having a negative effect vs positive? So far I see either no difference, or change.. If it's a healthier life then fine, but don't fool yourself in thinking it will make much of an impact on the supposed argument. :/

However, my point to this person is that no matter what you do here, you are competing for resources and killing life just to take another breath. It's rather irrelevant what game you want to play to justify it morally or ethically.

[Chris F]

Been vegan for 26 years. When I was a kid my auntie told me where meat came from and never ate it again. I'm a builder so I'm surrounded by bacon sarnies and people who take the piss but being 6 foot 6 and 19 stone I just give em a few slaps round their greasy chops.its choice at the end of the day, my dad still takes the piss tho

[The Grand Nudger]

To the crop there's no difference, to the producer and consumer there's a ton of difference. Less costly (for both) due to increased efficiency, largely in the uptake. Less runoff (if done properly, but obviously this is a huge area of concern regardless). On the other hand, some consumers demand niche products for reasons that are best described as "ad copy".

In the end though, absolutely right, it makes no difference. The more food/space/things etc we need/want the harder we will have to leverage this rock (or other rocks), there's no getting around that. We aren't exactly innovators in this regard either (when considering life as a whole). Morality and ethics don't even begin to factor into questions of survival for me, personally.

[parttimeprojectionist]

OP this is actually pretty simple, you apply certain ethics and i guess morality to certain situations. sometimes people decide to apply certain ones to meat.
im cooking beef bourguignon right now BTW!!

[Kratos]

Been vegan for 26 years. When I was a kid my auntie told me where meat came from and never ate it again. I'm a builder so I'm surrounded by bacon sarnies and people who take the piss but being 6 foot 6 and 19 stone I just give em a few slaps round their greasy chops.its choice at the end of the day, my dad still takes the piss tho

Yeah pulses have more protein than meat. Meat is a frivolous food with lot's of wastage. But money talks, morality is always second to profits.
People are so fucking evil they condone vivesection (cutting alive) of animals, give them slow horrible deaths sometimes for no purpose at all, it's called pure science vivisection, the white coats just torture an animal to death a certain way and write down the details. I congratulate you on being a good caring person. I am good and evil so I eat meat and veges but I am not evil enough to condone vivisection of any kind.

[cdabamsworth]

Not sure if anyone has posted this, but I believe Dawkins wrote this (found it online):

*You mention in the book 'The Ancestor's Tale' that you are appalled at the
works of liberal thinkers from 100 years ago—I think this is part of "The
Grasshopper's Tale." You are appalled at their comments on race, and you
wonder what scholars 100 years from now might be appalled at. You speculate
that it might be our treatment of other species. This made me wonder: Are
you a vegetarian?*

No, I'm not, and that's an interesting question. What I believe is that we
should try to minimize suffering. And so I would have no objection to
killing something to eat it, provided it doesn't suffer. So I'm much more
worried about the suffering in slaughterhouses and in factory farms—the
dread that might enter the mind of a cow or pig when it's being led to the
slaughter. To the extent that slaughtering practices are humane, I see no
objection to using animals for meat.

The objection to using humans for meat would be not just that they are
human, but that they would feel fear, they would know what was coming to
them, they would be in a position to suffer in a way that a pig or a cow, if
it was well treated, would not. So my aim would always be to reduce
suffering, not to take a kind of absolutist position that there is something
special and unique about humans which entitles them to exploit and use other
species of animal for any purpose.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah pulses have more protein than meat. Meat is a frivolous food with lot's of wastage.

Unfortunately they have a supremely shitty yield (hard to hold that against them, they represent one of our earliest attempts at ag), especially compared to the amount of protein you can yield from any number of animal protein sources on the same amount of land. Aw, too bad, you had nothing but bullshit to add to the conversation.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Natural rights are derived from logic and human/animal nature

That is a bald statement unsupported by proof.

Logic does not infer 'true'. An argument may be logically sound but the inference will only be true if the premise is also true.


'Animal nature' is a vague term. For me,our animal nature means we are driven by survival above all else.That human beings as a specie are innately self interested.

I have no interest in the humbug of a bunch eighteenth century, bourgeois slave owning white men. I also reject the fatuous claim of 'self evident 'rights.


That's all I have to say on the matter.I'm happy to agree to differ.