are vegetarians more ethical by not eating meat?

[LastPoet]

You know, mods are members too and entitled to their opinion as any user is. At least learn to diferentiate us.

[Sal]

You know, mods are members too and entitled to their opinion as any user is. At least learn to diferentiate us.

Really? I thought mods were these special people with divine powers that could make users non-existent in forum form.

These Mod powers are given by god, right?

[LastPoet]

These Mod powers are given by god, right?

Define 'god'

[littleendian]

You know, there are good reasons to eat meat, but a big lack of those for the barbaric traditions of your religions 'mo'. I can back up human meat eating habits with alot of reasons,

Really, I must have missed those. Please provide one rational reason and I will put it into my signature, I beg of you, because I too love the taste of a juicy steak! Give me a reason, please.

[Creed of Heresy]

It was earlier mentioned that animals have central nervous systems and in larger ones they are similar to a human's and that therefore they must have the same human desires to live and ability to feel pain.

I just want to state quite flatly: Similarity =/= proximity. You know what else has a central nervous system? Insects. I wonder if you are so careful when it comes to termites or ants or spiders as you are when it comes to respecting their desire to live. A desire you are not even sure of. See, that's the thing; vegetarians have to convince me of their bullshit. They are the ones making an appeal to morality: "animals have the desire to live, so we can't eat meat morally!" Except no brain study of an animal has ever managed to show that they have even a fraction of the emotional range we do, much less the ability to comprehend just what death even means or to consider what life itself is. You're saying we should all just swear off meat until it's been proven or disproven but the thing is it can't be because it's a claim with the most minimal foundation and when asked for evidence that should be easy obtain it starts shuffling its little claim-feet and mumbling that studies have been made but they don't actually show any kind of proof of animals exhibiting even CLOSE to the same amount of thought processes as human beings. Fuck THAT, if I held off on everything until everyone's bullshit claims could be proven or disproven, I'd never fucking do anything because there's always someone with some stupid bullshit. You keep dismissing plants as having feelings, yet we have evidence that they CAN fucking feel shit.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/05...71027.html

They can apparently do approximations or similarities towards feeling or hearing or smelling and remembering things. Approximations! Kind of like the approximations you INSIST we consider to be actually comparable between humans and animals. APPROXIMATIONS of wanting to live or APPROXIMATIONS of feeling how we do. Well where do you suddenly draw the line? At a nervous system? Why? Do YOU understand fully how a plant operates? Clearly not because plants can apparently do things animals can, MUST MEAN THEY'RE CLOSE ENOUGH TO ANIMALS TO NOT EAT, THEN.

Do you see the slope of slipperiness on which your bullshit mentality stands upon? Do you see how far down it is and how fucking stupid it was to climb this slope? Because down at the bottom entails never eating. Ok? You've made some pitiful appeals to emotion and morality without any basis, and you've tried to use the argument that because they have brains they must feel and be sensitive, yet plants exhibit such things WITHOUT brains, which takes away any weight your argument has.

Just shut up and quit bitching and eat a damn steak.

[littleendian]

I just want to state quite flatly: Similarity =/= proximity. You know what else has a central nervous system? Insects. I wonder if you are so careful when it comes to termites or ants or spiders as you are when it comes to respecting their desire to live.

I kill a mosquito that is going to sting me, yes, that is called self-defense and is quite justifiable.

Except no brain study of an animal has ever managed to show that they have even a fraction of the emotional range we do, much less the ability to comprehend just what death even means or to consider what life itself is.

Neither do most human beings have a good understanding about what death means or what life is, but that doesn't allow us to exclude them from moral considerations. Neither has any brain study ever shown that another human being has quite the emotional range that you yourself as the subject of those experiences have, all you see is some neurons firing. It is all based on reason and inferance. That doesn't lead you to question that other people have very similar experiences and desires as you do.

You keep dismissing plants as having feelings, yet we have evidence that they CAN fucking feel shit.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/05...71027.html

I never dismissed that plants have some kind of consciousness and will, that they are very much alive. However it is never immoral to do what I need to do to stay alive, and I have to eat plants in order to stay alive. I don't have to eat animals, and I have much more direct evidence of the suffering and pain of a screaming pig when it is butchered than when I pick an apple from a tree. Which, by the way, is not killing the tree, matter of fact it is what the tree has produced the apple for in the first place, reproduction. I'm actually giving the tree its equivalent of sexual pleasure for all I know.

Just shut up and quit bitching and eat a damn steak.

I'll consider the screaming all capitals and the insulting tone as a confirmation that you, too, deep down inside can feel that there is actually something very wrong here. Why else would you, and not only you, get so emotional despite your proclaimed trust in reason.

Also, it is unworthy of someone who quotes Hitchens in his signature to tell someone who he disagrees with to "shut up".

[NoraBrimstone]

Why the fuck do you care so much about what other people eat? It's none of your business. I'm sure you eat foods that I object to, but I'm not going to bitch at you about it as long as you don't try to make me eat it.

You're behaving like an 8 year old new veggie.

[littleendian]

Why the fuck do you care so much about what other people eat? It's none of your business. I'm sure you eat foods that I object to, but I'm not going to bitch at you about it as long as you don't try to make me eat it.

You're behaving like an 8 year old new veggie.

What you are trying to say I believe is that I should just do what I believe is right and be quiet about it. I am already doing what my current thinking suggests is right. However, what I believe is right is a function of a reasoning process, and the greatest ally of reasoning is discourse. Quite possibly one of those days someone is going to provide some insightful comment (in between the noise, all those all-capital curses and arbitrary assertions) that are going to convince me of how wrong I was not to eat meat. This thread is a collective thinking process, its the grassroots scientific principle.

edit: removed inappropriate value judgement, sorry.

[ideologue08]

Why the fuck do you care so much about what other people eat? It's none of your business. I'm sure you eat foods that I object to, but I'm not going to bitch at you about it as long as you don't try to make me eat it.

You're behaving like an 8 year old new veggie.

What you are trying to say, in quite an offensive and immature tone, is that I should just do what I believe is right and be quiet about it. I am already doing what my current thinking suggests is right. However, what I believe is right is a function of a reasoning process, and the greatest ally of reasoning is discourse. Quite possibly one of those days someone is going to provide some insightful comment (in between the noise, all those all-capital curses and arbitrary assertions) that are going to convince me of how wrong I was not to eat meat. This thread is a collective thinking process, its the grassroots scientific principle.

Well, I eat meat because I believe God said it is allowed. That's pretty much it.

[littleendian]

Well, I eat meat because I believe God said it is allowed. That's pretty much it.

One of the ten commandments clearly states: Though shalt not kill.

Nothing about humans. Would you dare to re-interpret Her word to suit your case?

And completely on the side: Appealing to God is not going to convince a lot of people in an atheist forum.