Do you agree with Richard Dawkins?

[Kratos]

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.

Then why do pulses get planted for? Duh

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

im cooking beef bourguignon right now BTW!!

Oh,yummy! What wine are you using?

[mediamogul]

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.

You are still killing life... You are just discriminating based on what you think suffers more. And that's fine.. However, you are still killing life and even contributing to the extinction of many species as you compete for resources and habitats. Seems you don't have an issue with agriculture destroying entire ecosystems while you pile your plate with vegetables ect. So where is your moral boundaries when it comes to the destruction of life?

"Killing life" is not the issue at hand. It is causing unnecessary suffering. A plant is not conscious, does not feel pain. It's not about what I think. It's about what the facts demonstrate. Do you think that a carrot suffers? How would it suffer?

[The Grand Nudger]

By demonstrating the effects of adverse conditions, which they do, constantly. I think you mean to say "How would a plant suffer like we suffer?" Simply defining away the "rights" of other living creatures because they are different, good for you. I can accomplish a similar end in fewer steps. Nothing has any "innate rights". I'm scot free to eat bacon now correct?

[Adjusted Sanity]

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.

Then why do pulses get planted for? Duh

That is the stupidest response to anything I've heard all week.

[The Grand Nudger]

Why do pulse get planted-

Skillset of the producer/labor, suitability of land, access to market, tradition, financial limitations, infrastructure, market projections, etc. Depends really, case by case basis.

[mediamogul]

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.

The one comment I will make is that logic exercised properly can give us truth. Truth in the narrower fallible human sense and not in the exalted absolute religious sense but truth nonetheless. I don't buy into cultural and moral relativism where nothing is true or ethical. Dawkins puts it perfectly :

Philosophers, especially amateurs with a little philosophical
learning, and even more especially those infected with 'cultural
relativism', may raise a tiresome red herring at this point: a
scientist's belief in evidence is itself a matter of fundamentalist faith.
I have dealt with this elsewhere, and will only briefly repeat myself
here. All of us believe in evidence in our own lives, whatever we
may profess with our amateur philosophical hats on. If I am
accused of murder, and prosecuting counsel sternly asks me
whether it is true that I was in Chicago on the night of the crime, I
cannot get away with a philosophical evasion: 'It depends what you
mean by "true".' Nor with an anthropological, relativist plea: 'It is
only in your Western scientific sense of "in" that I was in Chicago.
The Bongolese have a completely different concept of "in", according
to which you are only truly "in" a place if you are an anointed
elder entitled to take snuff from the dried scrotum of a goat.'


That's fine with me. I'm happy to discuss and not one to push my beliefs on others.

[Minimalist]

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.
--A. Whitney Brown

[mediamogul]

By demonstrating the effects of adverse conditions, which they do, constantly. I think you mean to say "How would a plant suffer like we suffer?" Simply defining away the "rights" of other living creatures because they are different, good for you. I can accomplish a similar end in fewer steps. Nothing has any "innate rights". I'm scot free to eat bacon now correct?

Haha. You are free to eat bacon whenever. Just don't you ever try to restrict my ability to not eat bacon.

A carrot's suffering is not meaningful in the sense that there is actually a nervous system to experience pain and discomfort. It does not have a nervous system period. How would it suffer or experience discomfort. There is a different between "effects of adverse conditions" and suffering. Once again the issue is not with "living" creatures it's with sentient creatures.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'd never do such a thing, you vegetarian types are my best customers..lol.

(Again, you're defining "meaningful" as something which is synonymous with "like us" in the biological sense. There's no problem with this -to me-, but it would fall under the remit of speciesism. I'm not judging you for it amigo, it's kind of expected. The trouble is that any justification you draw from this can be criticized by demonstrating parallels between those species you have included in the group of "has rights" and those you have excluded. It's not as difficult as you might imagine. We aren't as "aware" of ourselves as we like to think, and plants aren't as "oblivious" of themselves as is so often supposed. We leverage different biological mechanisms to achieve the same ends, and they often have similar outward effects.)