I think that comparing abstaining from meat-eating and sending money to someone in need is pretty fair. So what, lets they are the same with regards to helping end suffering, and if you do both, great. If you go above and beyond, even greater. But this really has nothing to do with your decision to eat meat or not. You do what you can, and if you cant do everything, its no reason to not do anything. Im not sure what the point of you making this comparison is except to maybe inspire people to donate to those in need, which is great! But it sounds like you are promoting an all or nothing mentality, which is unreasonable.
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How do you morally justify eating animals? (itt the OP discovers forum discussions)
- Thread starter sulam
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I eat meat and i'll be damned if any freakin' hippy is gonna stop me. If those crazy folk at PETA had their way we'd all be eating planks and getting burned alive for drinking any liquid that wasn't squeezed from said plank.
People who eat meat aren't necessarily supporting the killing of animals, something people tend to forget in these debates is that there is a middle ground in this scenario and that not everyone who eats meat is going to sit their and laugh maniacally while a lamb is turned into a fine meat paste. You can love animals and still eat them.
People who eat meat aren't necessarily supporting the killing of animals, something people tend to forget in these debates is that there is a middle ground in this scenario and that not everyone who eats meat is going to sit their and laugh maniacally while a lamb is turned into a fine meat paste. You can love animals and still eat them.
i doubt most vegetarians would expect people to have a vegetarian option for them, they'd be more inclined to bring something for themselves.
peta are a bunch of fucktards and it doesn't matter what cause you're supporting when you get that up in arms about it, people will hate you.
i have been vegetarian for two years now and the food has been far more tasty than my 18 years of eating meat ever was. there's also a lot of stuff i never knew about, for example gelatine, that is utterly repulsive and sadly in far more foods than it needs to be. i don't see why a frozen ice block needs to have gelatine in it personally. :/
i mainly went vegetarian for simplicity; my gf is vegetarian and meat is really expensive anyway so i just don't bother with it anymore. i won't pretend i don't love animals and all that jazz, but i don't despise people for eating meat or anything; food chains exist, and i have no problems with it. it saddens me at the amount of people that think vegetarians eat nothing but fruit and vegetables and also think that we "require meat to live" but oh well, retards will be retards.
you meat eaters have to admit that some meat farms are fucking cruel though surely. chickens and pigs in less space than they should have just should not happen even if you are killing them to eat.
Some meat farms are cruel for sure. Don't act like every one is, and there seems to be a slow trend away from that sort of thing.
Sure, you can get the nutrients if you're careful but it's true that we were originally designed to eat meat too.
Though both sides probably agree we can get rid of PETA. They've been in my town twice this year alone.
Sure, you can get the nutrients if you're careful but it's true that we were originally designed to eat meat too.
Though both sides probably agree we can get rid of PETA. They've been in my town twice this year alone.
yeah i only meant some, edited that in.
i thought it was more a case of starting out eating nuts and berries and that sort of thing and then thinking "why don't we just eat those huge things with giant steaks for legs". but i don't really care about "what we were intended to eat" because it's quite irrelevant tbh.
If your argument for being a vegetarian is "I don't like when animals die", then you should realize that more animals would die if everyone changed to a vegetarian diet. This is just one source but there are plenty of others out there which describe the increase in number of animals killed so that vegetarians can feel morally superior. The truth is that unless you're growing all of your own food, a lot of animals are going to die no matter what diet you have. That's before you even get into the politics of food, which are far too deep for one thread to contain.
Slightly off-topic, but - not quite. You are greatly oversimplifying the matter. "Your moral system is just as right as mine" is, in itself, a kind of moral judgment. The conclusion of your argument, which is framed as an absolute judgment of value, is in direct contradiction with its premise, which is that all judgments of value are relative.
If morality is relative, nothing stops me from claiming your moral system is perverse and wrong. It may not be *absolutely* perverse and wrong, but that is no reason for me to accept it. Morality is something people care a great deal about - you can make your own bizarre moral system, but then you will attract the ire of everybody who disagrees, which very well might be nearly everyone else. Moral relativism does not say that these people should logically view your system as equivalent, because that would create a moral absolute. In fact, it is quite the opposite: these people will consider that your morals are wrong and they will attempt to convince you to adopt their morals instead.
Morality is a sort of tug-of-war where everybody passionately tries to pull moral defaults towards their own standards. It is competitive, and in this context, the idea that morality is absolute is actually adaptive. It is easier/better for the most part to accept that idea, even though it is wrong. Moral systems are more convincing when they are more logically consistent, but they all need to be based on a core of disputable principles.
In the case of animals, you can easily justify eating them from the principle that an entity is only required to care about others in proportion of genetic closeness, or you can condemn it from the principle that all suffering must be avoided. There is no natural way to compare core moral principles and arguments for or against them are usually emotionally grounded (which is a fair tactic in this case). Logic cannot tell you what you want to do, it can only tell you how to do it, or whether your wants are consistent with each other. It is easy to compare our current morality with ancient morality and believe that we could convince our ancestors of the errors of their ways, and you might be correct, but there is a possibility that you would be caught off guard by very high logical consistency and sound arguments based on principles they take as self-evident but which you reject (just like we might all be vegetarian in the future and not see that there are legitimate arguments for eating meat - they are just based on different core principles). You are well within your rights to condemn slavery from a modern perspective (after all, we pretty much all agree *now*), but wishing for absolute morality does not make it exist.
Where are these other sources? I only see the name "Steven Davis" popping up repeatedly-- and his analysis obviously has its fair share of criticisms (one of the comments in the link you provided gives some pretty well-reasoned objections).
Meaters: You want answers?
Veggos: I think I'm entitled to them.
Meaters: You want answers?
Veggos: I want the truth!
Meaters: You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has supermarkets. And those supermarkets have to be built by men whose ancestors ate meat. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Veggos? Meaters throughout history have greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for the animals and you curse the Butchers. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Meat-eating, while tragic, probably sparked man's cranial development. And our existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives...You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you wanted us eating those animals. You need us eating those animals. We use words like complete protein, forward and color vision, rapidly advanced intelligence...we use these words as the backbone to a life spent providing something. You use 'em as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very vegan supermarkets we provide, then questions the manner in which we provide them! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a knife and join the food chain. Either way, I don't give a *&$# what you think you're entitled to!
Veggos: Did you order the meat red?
Meaters: (quietly) We did the job you sent us to do.
Veggos: Did you order the meat red?
Meaters: You're *&$# right we did!!
Dig in.
Veggos: I think I'm entitled to them.
Meaters: You want answers?
Veggos: I want the truth!
Meaters: You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has supermarkets. And those supermarkets have to be built by men whose ancestors ate meat. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Veggos? Meaters throughout history have greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for the animals and you curse the Butchers. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Meat-eating, while tragic, probably sparked man's cranial development. And our existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives...You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you wanted us eating those animals. You need us eating those animals. We use words like complete protein, forward and color vision, rapidly advanced intelligence...we use these words as the backbone to a life spent providing something. You use 'em as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very vegan supermarkets we provide, then questions the manner in which we provide them! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a knife and join the food chain. Either way, I don't give a *&$# what you think you're entitled to!
Veggos: Did you order the meat red?
Meaters: (quietly) We did the job you sent us to do.
Veggos: Did you order the meat red?
Meaters: You're *&$# right we did!!
Dig in.
Awesome deck, Awesome. Darwinian Evolution FTW
*raucous applause*
That post made my day.
That post made my day.
thread can only go downhill from here, might as well end it on a high note
Thanks Deck for ending the thread on a great note. That was the best post I've seen on a forum in a long time.
you could have easily googled it but here's a pretty good source for you. It's Davis again but it lists references and its conclusions as well.
I love to eat my delectable meats, that my justification, I don't need to worry about the morals of others when it comes to living my life.
Hell, I could be an atheist in freaking Israel. I don't have to conform to other peoples morals and views, I just need to follow whatever rules are placed before me. (Murder=No No No...)
This doesn't mean I'll just randomly kill a dog and cook it up... (I don't even know how) it just means that I like my meats, and I'm not going to give it up to satisfy some guy sitting next to me at the resturaunt.
Hell, I could be an atheist in freaking Israel. I don't have to conform to other peoples morals and views, I just need to follow whatever rules are placed before me. (Murder=No No No...)
This doesn't mean I'll just randomly kill a dog and cook it up... (I don't even know how) it just means that I like my meats, and I'm not going to give it up to satisfy some guy sitting next to me at the resturaunt.
Isn't this just the same source? The link you initially provided and everything else I've found seem to all be referencing this one single analysis. I mean, this is all kind of secondary to the flaws apparent in the analysis itself (which I think are substantial), it's just that you said that there were "plenty of sources" when it seems like this is all just one guy being referenced over and over again.
Also, theatrics aside, Deck Knight's post is kind of just
I mean it's mostly just the naturalistic fallacy
again...
interesting, though unsurprising, that this somehow impresses people to the extent that they're calling for the thread to end.
If you can survive off of a vegetarian diet and are lucky enough to live in a place that supplies alternatives and can afford it good for you. But in many low-income areas being a vegetarian just isn't an option. You can buy 3 hamburgers at McDonald's for 3 dollars or you can buy two apples for the same price. If you're living pay check to pay check and are feeding a family, you don't have many options, you can eat meat or not support yourself or family. So good for people that have the privilage of non-meat alternatives, but don't call anyone out for not following the same life style
I do not eat meat at all. However my reasons for doing so are not because of any ethical factor, I promise you I could turn practically every ethics based argument you could make for not eating meat upon it's head.
I don't eat meat for the same reasons I try to avoid consuming petroleum here possible: it isn't sustainable. As the world population grows and water supplies dwindle, it will become impossible to maintain levels of meat consumption in most parts of the world. it takes something like over 10 times ( I don't have the exact number but I think it is more like 100 times) as much water to raise a ton of beef as it does to raise a ton of grain.
I think there are several strong though not infallible arguments for avoiding poultry, the first is inhumane treatment of chickens in order to increase production of eggs to unprecedented levels, and the second is the cramped living conditions chickens live in both.
there is also an extremely powerful and too often overlooked argument that overfishing is leading to the destruction of the ocean ecosystems, and this will eventually lead to a destabilization of habitats world wide. We dont understand all the connections between oceanic ecosystems and terrestrial ecosystems, and we are placing ourselves at a massive risk as a species. I have heard (though I doubt) estimates that there will no longer be life in the ocean by 2050 due to pollution and overfishing, I suspect the real date to be closer to 2100.
EDIT: lol at deck knight post, strong logic
I don't eat meat for the same reasons I try to avoid consuming petroleum here possible: it isn't sustainable. As the world population grows and water supplies dwindle, it will become impossible to maintain levels of meat consumption in most parts of the world. it takes something like over 10 times ( I don't have the exact number but I think it is more like 100 times) as much water to raise a ton of beef as it does to raise a ton of grain.
I think there are several strong though not infallible arguments for avoiding poultry, the first is inhumane treatment of chickens in order to increase production of eggs to unprecedented levels, and the second is the cramped living conditions chickens live in both.
there is also an extremely powerful and too often overlooked argument that overfishing is leading to the destruction of the ocean ecosystems, and this will eventually lead to a destabilization of habitats world wide. We dont understand all the connections between oceanic ecosystems and terrestrial ecosystems, and we are placing ourselves at a massive risk as a species. I have heard (though I doubt) estimates that there will no longer be life in the ocean by 2050 due to pollution and overfishing, I suspect the real date to be closer to 2100.
EDIT: lol at deck knight post, strong logic
Crux
Banned deucer.
I eat animals and I can't justify it :( The worst part is that it doesn't bother me.
It may be fortunate that I don't know any cows or turkeys personally (they are the tastiest animals to me :'-( ). I do know numerous cats personally, and the thought of eating a cat would just be terrible. I do know that somewhere in the world cats are eaten.
It may be fortunate that I don't know any cows or turkeys personally (they are the tastiest animals to me :'-( ). I do know numerous cats personally, and the thought of eating a cat would just be terrible. I do know that somewhere in the world cats are eaten.
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