are vegetarians more ethical by not eating meat?

[NoraBrimstone]

Now, you can eighter give an answere to how you came to that reasoning which made you ask if I was homosexual

Usually when a person is doing something and comfortable with it
He tries to oppose anything that considers what he does as a crime or a sin

So the most people who try to reject religions are drowned in sins that they are not willing to stop.

Homosexuals are a very good example, they will refute anything (even if it is crystal clear) because they are not willing to consider themselves as sinners.

For you, I think your problem is freedom and equality
You will try to reject any religion that restrict your freedom or not to treat you equally with other humans regardless if it is proved or not.

Does this mean you're a bus driver???

[Mystical]

<<WAIT>>

Is this guy serious?????

A chick and a chic? A chicken is my niece?

And I thought I was the one without an education. This guy..Wow. This guy..

[Muslim Scholar]

<<WAIT>>

Is this guy serious?????

A chick and a chic? A chicken is my niece?

And I thought I was the one without an education. This guy..Wow. This guy..

According to evolution, you grandfather was a fish
So I don't see it very strange that your niece will be a chic (ups, I mean chicken)

[KichigaiNeko]

Oh dear oh dear...are you a sock puppet for catfudz??

---

Do I report you now?

Or do I wait till after April 1st?

[NoraBrimstone]

Bus drivers.... *sigh*

[littleendian]

One claim made by vegetarians is that it is people should not kill and eat animals because it is unethical. I believe it is just as ethical to be a meat eater if not more ethical.

It is ethical if it is necessary. A wolf could never be unethical for eating his prey because otherwise it means death for him. However if it is not necessary for humans to eat meat then it enters a moral arena, and that I (and many other vegans) are still alive and healthier than ever is proof that it is not necessary.

1- animals are consumers which feed on plants. They have adapted by consuming plants that make sugars and feeding themselves (most of them). Therefore under deontological theory they have broken a duty which is when we define it as unethical. This action was taken on a free agents choice to kill and consume the life of the plants which have not broken the ethical theory.

Others breaking ethical laws does not releave us from adhering to ethics. Also, plants do not have a central nervous system, therefore have no capacity to feel pain. Plus it is necessary for the animals to eat these plants to survive, anything that one does if the alternative is death can never be unethical.

Therefore would it not be ethical to consume the consumers do to the fact that willingly feed on other life (other meat eaters apply). Meaning we would no longer have decide whether to break the ethical code to kill and consume the consumer.

Just because there were human genocides in the past does not make it ethical to kill humans today, similar for rape or slavery or any other unethical behaviour for which you could name historical examples. "They did it first" is not a worthy response for a thinking person.

While this has be chosen to do so by us or else it would according to the 2nd dimension of categorical imperative be unethical because if not
freely acted then the alternative would be by force.

The animals we breed for slaughter were brought into life by our will and action, not their own, therefore from beginning to end we bear the moral responsibility for these bred animals and the consequences of their existance.

2-if you were making a choice to deprive yourself from meat you would still be taking innocent life.

Very true, but there is a strong ethical difference between self-defense or the necessity for suvival and killing simply because one enjoys eating meat, which is exactly what is happening. Also, as plants have no central nervous system killing them is not unethical. Have you ever heard a pig scream for its life?

A life that has adapted to being reliant upon it's self. You also are in a sense approving of self-destruction by neglect to necessary nutrition.

You can actually be healthier on a vegan diet. Try eating only meat for a week and you will get terribly sick, I bet you will be dead by the end of the year. There are vegan triathletes which completely disproves that there is anything lacking in a vegan diet. We have only been brainwashed by industry to believe we need animal protein, perversely it seems likely that it even makes us sick. I won't go into the details about B12, which has nothing in-and-of-itself to do with animal or plant foods.

So what do you think?

A genuine thanks for making me reflect about this again, but I've only become more convinced about the rationality of veganism. Anything else is just residue from the Christian dogma and the dark ages.

[frankiej]

But... but... killing is fun! Oh and I have a totally pimpin' leather jacket as a result of some poor dead cow.

[littleendian]

Yes, we can choose to eat either plants or animals but plants are living organisms, too. Just cuz it can't yelp when you pluck an apple doesn't mean it's not made of organic, living materials. You start the argument that eating animals is unethical then you slide down the slippery slope to the point that you eventually reach the point where you'll have to starve to death because life comes from death via consumption.

Don't compare "killing" an apple to killing a pig, the former we can do in the comfort of our living room, the other is something so repulsive and contrary to what we feel is right, our innate ethics, that we hide the act away behind fences and walls and pay other people to do it for us and to print pretty pictures on the packaging to never remind us of what was necessary for our pitiful few minutes of taste.

While they live, treat them well, and when you go to kill them [because they're gonna die anyway eventually]

You are gonna die anyway, does it really follow from that that it is ethically justified to kill you now?

do it quickly and cleanly and don't make them suffer. There's no contradiction here unless you're just trying to split hairs, which is just petty and argumentative for the sake of being petty and argumentative.

I believe if we were talking about your life or your death you would not talk about "splitting hairs", and I'm sure you wouldn't want to be killed "quickly and clean" or otherwise, period. Why is it so hard to accept that all living beings might feel the same urge to stay alive? Any cow or pig has as much or as little right to be alive as you or I, brain size don't enter into it. The viewpoint of the homo egocentricus is a residue of Christianity and we as atheists should set out to overcome it. We took away the geocentric universe, then we took away the superiority of the white man, then that of man over woman, now we are taking away the arbitrary distinction between man and other animals. It's only logical.

---

Human beings are omnivores* and so it is not unethical to eat meat.

(*our teeth are a mixture of sharp teeth (at front) for tearing and ripping flesh, and grinding teeth (back/sides) for chewing grains/veg etc).

Category error. Being an omnivor is a biological characteristic, not an ethical one. From the phyiscal ability to rape and kill doesn't follow that it is ethical to do so.

However, this does not excuse us from the duty to treat animals in a humane fashion, which we should do always.

"Human killing" is an oxymoron.

I respect other peoples life choices, but personally I think it would suck to be a vegetarian / vegan! But - each to their own.

We're not talking about what is convenient, we're talking about what is right. As a self-identified catholic, your own God told you "Thou shalt not kill", and by your own standards it is blasphemy to your own God to re-interpret Her words as only applying to humans.

[NoraBrimstone]

Lol. If you morally object to killing and eating animals, don't kill or eat animals. See how simple that was?

[Creed of Heresy]

Yes, we can choose to eat either plants or animals but plants are living organisms, too. Just cuz it can't yelp when you pluck an apple doesn't mean it's not made of organic, living materials. You start the argument that eating animals is unethical then you slide down the slippery slope to the point that you eventually reach the point where you'll have to starve to death because life comes from death via consumption.

Don't compare "killing" an apple to killing a pig, the former we can do in the comfort of our living room, the other is something so repulsive and contrary to what we feel is right, our innate ethics, that we hide the act away behind fences and walls and pay other people to do it for us and to print pretty pictures on the packaging to never remind us of what was necessary for our pitiful few minutes of taste.

Speak for yourself, I've butchered deer, pigs, cows, and dressed them as well as turkeys and pheasants, and I didn't feel any repulsion. You still haven't exemplified what the difference was for either of those things by the way, you just said "one is ok, the other is repulsive," even though there are hundreds of millions of people in the world who find the act anything but, and you never provided anything more than an appeal to emotion for justification. Weak, baseless argument, I dismiss it entirely and chalk it up to your personal feelings and nothing more.

While they live, treat them well, and when you go to kill them [because they're gonna die anyway eventually]

You are gonna die anyway, does it really follow from that that it is ethically justified to kill you now?

I can serve a purpose, I can help mold and shape this world. A chicken or a cow cannot. It's this little thing called sapience. I possess it. A cow does not. The ethical justification for eating a cow is that it is livestock, and its purpose was to be bred for food. That justification does not exist, because I am not livestock, nor was I bred for being food to another human being. So no, it would not be ethically justified, whereas eating an animal still is.

do it quickly and cleanly and don't make them suffer. There's no contradiction here unless you're just trying to split hairs, which is just petty and argumentative for the sake of being petty and argumentative.

I believe if we were talking about your life or your death you would not talk about "splitting hairs", and I'm sure you wouldn't want to be killed "quickly and clean" or otherwise, period. Why is it so hard to accept that all living beings might feel the same urge to stay alive? Any cow or pig has as much or as little right to be alive as you or I, brain size don't enter into it. The viewpoint of the homo egocentricus is a residue of Christianity and we as atheists should set out to overcome it. We took away the geocentric universe, then we took away the superiority of the white man, then that of man over woman, now we are taking away the arbitrary distinction between man and other animals. It's only logical.

I reiterate above; bovines lack the intelligence to be worth comparing to a human being, same with all livestock. It's so hard to accept because I do not have a chicken or pig brain and I'm also told by scientists that animals are little more than instinctual responses, and that we ourselves are just barely more, but more we are. We are still capable of independent action based on a high level of environmental determination. The rest of the animals in this world, save for a very scant few, are not, and those few that are have extremely limited variable interaction. You can make some vague appeals to ethics all you want, but you have nothing to base these supposed ethics on other than personal feeling and I'm sorry but I have no inclination to accept what you say as fact or valid based on nothing more than your FEEEEEELIIIIIINGS. If you're just trying to protest what I'm doing, then fine, feel free to bitch while I eat a steak, I don't care because ignoring you is very easy to do while I eat this delicious, juicy slice of heated and seared and seasoned meat. If you're trying to engage me in a debate, then do so with debatable points, and not with appeals to emotion. The only "rights" in this world are what we humans give or don't give, and I don't give animals that have been bred for slaughter the right to live for anything more than their intended purpose, and neither does the vast majority of the human race. Yes, I'm going with the ad populum argument, because in this case, where you appeal to "ethics," which themselves are established by the opinions of the population, it's wholly valid. The right imbued upon me is a right imbued through the genetic success of the rest of my race; natural selection put me in a power of control over these other races. I can outthink them, which is my strength over creatures five times my size, and it is the strength that allows me dominion. That I DON'T just mindlessly kill them all is already quite ethical. Asking me to also not consume a few that my species has long become accustomed to devouring to the point that those species have been domesticated for exactly that purpose is foolish and hollow and demanding too much.

The difference between all those other arguments is that one unfairly established strength of one over the other with no basis. There IS a basis of human strength; the fact we are the most successful of all mammals, through numbers and intelligence.

When a fucking group of cows get together and learn how to split the atom or map Higgs-Boson particles with supercolliders or fucking fly despite lacking the physical aspects necessary to do so on their own, then you can start stating that other animals are equal to humans, but until then, quit your bitching and lemme enjoy my damn turkey.