How do you morally justify eating animals? (itt the OP discovers forum discussions)

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mattj said:
I don't think anybody gets your argument. I haven't seen anyone say anything that would even possibly make me think twice about eating meat here. Have you guys really laid out your argument in an organized manner yet? I haven't seen it.
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I haven't read through the entire thread, but a lot of the reasons the OP stated contributed to my becoming a vegetarian a couple years ago, so I'll give it a shot.

1. Causing suffering is cruel. Causing unnecessary suffering is especially cruel.
2. People do not need to eat meat in order to live comfortably; therefore, eating meat is unnecessary.
3. Killing animals causes suffering to the animals.
4. Therefore, eating animals is cruel and should not be done.

Also, consider how much pleasure you get from eating meat versus the amount of suffering inflicted. Killing an animal for the sake of a more enjoyable meal seems disproportionate in what is gained versus what is lost.
 
Humans are omnivores, it's only natural to eat meat as a human. But it being natural doesn't justify anything if you are an evolved species like humans are.

That aside : People will not stop eating meat, they are too selfish and like the taste of it, so why would i stop eating meat? I like eating meat, me not eating meat won't change the fact that the animal died already. So why not enjoy it's precious flavour and be grateful that this beautiful animal gave it's life for my own gain (well.. gave it's life, more like has his life taken away from him ,, amirite)

EDIT: also http://drbenkim.com/articles-cdvegandiet.html (read it with an open mind)
 
If an animal is killed painlessly and no person is emotionally attached to it, I do not find anything immoral with eating it.

Sorry if this sounds really dark or depressing, but the only reason I really value my life is because it affects others. If I died and no one suffered any more than usual if I was gone, then I wouldn't feel bad about dying. I would still prefer to live, but I wouldn't really value my life.

Same thing with animals. If no person feels bad about its death and there is some kind of gain from its death, it can be killed (painlessly) for food. While animal emotions aren't as easily understood, any animal that is deemed 'suffering' from the death of another animal could be eaten as well. It also helps my argument since most animals eaten (cows, chickens, etc.) don't have as many documented cases of showing empathy as household animals (dogs, cats, etc.)

If anyone tries to turn this around and says that is alright to painlessly kill people, keep in mind that people are much more sociable than animals. If you tried to kill everyone who suffered due to the death of the original person killed, the web would grow to a massive scale because the world is so interconnected (keep in mind that people can affect people they don't know).

This is how I personally justify it.

tl;dr
Q: If a tree falls in a forest and NO ONE is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

A: Who cares?
 
Vegetarian boosters seem not to get I totally ripped off Jack Nicholson's speech in A Few Good Men.

Insofar as it was an argument, the fact is the vast majority of highly intelligent animals are meat-eaters. You can count on one hand the number of reasonably intelligent creatures that subsist on a meatless diet. From an evolutionary perspective, if a creature eats meat they also need to be faster, stronger, and generally smarter than their prey in order to get the advantages a carnivorous diet offers.

Human intelligence skyrocketed when our ancestors found a way to harness fire to cook meat, further increasing meat's already extremely concentrated nutritional benefits. Our bodies required much, much less effort to access the proteins once the cooking process broke them down to a far more consumable level. That isn't "naturalistic fantasy," it's history.

Why do traits like forward vision and color vision manifest? Because they are massive boons in hunting prey. Many herbivores have absolutely shitty vision because you don't need to see anything but grass and maybe a tree here or there to survive as an herbivore. Scent and hearing play a larger role, but even there predators often gain the advantage. Once you head far enough north, everything intelligent eats meat of some kind. Dolphins, Walruses, Orcas: All meat eaters or omnivores. Birds Of Prey are equally sharp. For every instance of an intelligent herbivore there are scores of intelligent carnivores and omnivores.

What I'm getting at here is that past is prologue, and biology tells humanity that any ethical concerns with eating meat are socially constructed feel-goody pap. Big cats rip their prey apart from the jugular and tear them to shreds. Humans use guns, or in the case of livestock we have literally bred the wilderness out of them. Humanity is the most brutal, cunning predator on earth. A farm raised chicken is still a chicken humanity has basically trained to be our eternal subservient. At the end of the day they still end up on a plate, whether we mimic feelings or compassion for them or not.

Now as to what you want to believe, that's your prerogative. If you don't like eating meat or think it is morally wrong to kill another creature, feel free to alter your economic activity so as not to patronize any entity that would offend your values. For me, human ingenuity has the capacity to solve every human problem. The only way humanity can ape sustainability of any resource is if we hunt something to extinction. Everything else has a technological solution, generally speaking.

And as far as meat not being necessary for good health: We don't all live next to Vegan Mart. We normals can't spend $500 a week just so we can ape mother nature who clearly decided through natural selection that plants should have incomplete proteins. If you're a rich, luxuriant upper class snoot (who doesn't have nut or other plant allergies, thus winning the genetic lottery too) who can afford that kind of lifestyle, so be it. Don't look down on me because all I can afford is the $4.99 a pound lunch meat. Snoot whims about who needs to justify what sicken me, and I'd toss them in a cage with a highly intelligent evolved carnivore (perhaps a crocodile, their species outdates ours by a several million years) just to prove the point. Mother nature doesn't care about suffering or ethics, she cares about who has the biggest teeth or the sharpest mind. No one is more selfish than a vegan who thinks everyone else should conform to their super special diet because they feel bad about eating animals. How do they justify their arrogance? Eons of natural selection bombard them, and they pretend to the station of inquisitor.

No animals were harmed during the making of this post.
 
Kristoph said:
Fallacy.
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You can't just say "naturalistic fallacy" and expect that to be a valid counterargument to any point. You need to explain why the fallacy applies to the situation in order for your calling out of the "naturalistic fallacy" to be valid. Just because it looks like a fallacy doesn't mean it is actually a fallacy.

Also, nice to see that you didn't read the criticism section of the article to see why it (arguably) isn't a true fallacy.
 
That was probably the first Deck Knight post Ive ever read that I sorta liked

Meat is fine, meat is great, its just the way we get meat that sucks. I think the fact that we have a chicken "basically trained to be our eternal subservient" is more a function of how large a demand for meat there is than it is of our predatory skills. That the demand is unnecessarily large is what causes the problems I have with the system.

Also, vegetarians/vegans who feel superior to others are kinda off, and they probably find other ways to feel superior anyways. Dont lump all of us in with them!
 
I don't see how eating meat is morally wrong. As stated by many people, I'm sure, humans are omnivores. Our bodies (or at least our teeth) are clearly designed with some sort of meat consumption in mind. I agree with the points Deck Knight has raised.

Also, why does Nature care about morality? Humans care about morality because, imo, morality is one of the factors that keeps us from running even more rampant with our big brains. For example, we generally believe that murdering another person is wrong. Without our "morality check," what's to stop me from eating the guy above me if he's closer than the nearest alternative food source? Humans tend to forget that we're still animals. Crafty and highly developed ones, yes, but animals nonetheless. We go through a lot of the same processes other mammals do. And like some other animals, we eat the lesser beings. We consume so much meat because we are intelligent enough to understand how to do so. And Nature, in conjunction with our formed societies, have shaped us to revel in our meat eating. We enjoy it. It tastes fantastic. It will continue so long as it has any sort of nutritional benefit. I honestly don't see the majority of the population agreeing to stop eating meat because it's "inhumane," or some other nonsense.

Not to bash any vegetarians/vegans, but I find the "it's wrong" defense infuriating and complete idiocy. Because it's not. Now, if you say something along the lines of "consuming less meat allows for us to allocate our resources more efficiently," then bravo, you've provided a logical reason for vegetarianism. Doesn't mean I'll follow you, but kudos regardless.

Though admittedly, I try not to think of the animal I'm consuming when I eat meat, primarily because I love animals and it'd make me a bit sad, lol. Wouldn't stop me from finishing them, though.
 
My justification for my meat-eating is that I am not harming any animal by doing so. The animal was already dead before I ate it, and my intention to eat it was irrelevant in its death. The fact is, there is more than enough demand for meat for the industry to show a profit that my refusing to eat meat would likely have no effect whatsoever on the treatment of animals. Thus I justify myself by saying that harming myself for absolutely no benefit to the anti-cruelty movement as a whole is simply a downside with no upside.
 
Eating animals is just part of the normal life cycle. Animals are known to eat other enimals too, eg. birds eat bugs, cats eat mice, crocodiles eat humans. It's a normal part of life for carnivores and omnivores to kill for food.
 
It's my own personal opinion that lets me eat meat. I've eaten Cow and pig and it's fine so I eat it. I don't eat Dog or cat because they're my pets. In other places people eat dogs and cats and worship Cows and pig. I eat meat because I don't find a problem with eating a cow or a pig. It's already dead and I'm not hurting it. To me cats and dogs are pets not food. Therefore I don't eat them.

I personally don't care what it is you eat. Sure I'll be disgusted if I see someone eat a roach (Which I have seen) but I know that in other places, roaches are food. Some people eat roaches, some people eat dogs, some people eat humans. It's a matter of personal opinion and I'm not gonna change personal opinion.
 
RBG said:
You can't just say "naturalistic fallacy" and expect that to be a valid counterargument to any point. You need to explain why the fallacy applies to the situation in order for your calling out of the "naturalistic fallacy" to be valid. Just because it looks like a fallacy doesn't mean it is actually a fallacy.

Also, nice to see that you didn't read the criticism section of the article to see why it (arguably) isn't a true fallacy.
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Deck Knight's "argument" is: we, at some point, derived significant benefits from eating meat. Therefore, it is morally justified to eat meat. This is just an offshoot of the generic we evolved in order to eat meat, I mean just look at our teeth and digestive systems and stuff argument that every run-of-the-mill "low-brow but strangely educated" 17-year-old posts in a Facebook comments section.

I guess you want me to give some sort of in-depth explanation as to why it makes no sense to arbitrarily assign moral value judgments to biology, but I struggle to see the merit. Just because an argument seems to make intuitive sense doesn't mean that it is comprised of anything more than convenient (but ultimately meaningless) pattern identification: "look at these teeth that can cut through animal flesh! Oh look, what a surprise, that's exactly what our biological ancestors used them for! It must follow that that is precisely the correct thing for us to have done. Morally! And well hey, what's stopping us from saying that it's the correct thing for us to continue to do! You know-- morally!!" As far as I'm concerned, the fact that this is clearly emptyheaded thinking isn't something that needs to be "explained" per se; merely "pointed out."

It needs to be "pointed out" that Deck Knight's argument strictly doesn't follow any line of logic. It needs to be "pointed out" that Deck Knight's argument is "convincing" in the same way that many religious debaters try to convince people that God exists, or that scam artists and psychics manage to fool so many people-- by using irrelevant sensationalism (check), theatrics (check), and appeals to very specific sets of "facts" which, while completely devoid of any logical consistency, "just seem too perfect" to our emotionally-vulnerable, reaffirmation-seeking brains. Biologically, we are capable of killing and eating animals for nutritional (and perhaps cognitive) benefit. This, intuitively, seems like a nice, innocent template from which we can pattern our future behavior. But what about the other things we are "biologically capable of?" My understanding is that rape was relatively prevalent in our biological ancestors (it certainly is in animals), and we can imagine many potential "evolutionary benefits" of such behavior. If this is the case, I think Deck Knight has a few posts to revise in the recent "male rape" thread-- after all, he has shown us that arbitrary moral value judgments can be assigned to picked-and-chosen bits of biological "history" with impunity (whoops, I think I just "explained" by accident).

But of course, he won't actually do that. That would be crazy and irresponsible, not because there is any appreciable argumentative difference between the two scenarios, but because meat-eating happens to be popular at the moment, and it is therefore easy to curry emotional favor with those desperate to settle their cognitive dissonance by drawing irrelevant patterns in a confident tone. So he ignores the inconsistencies and lets you do the rest of the work, because, appropriately, you're kind of biologically wired to do so. I think there might be some irony in there somewhere!
 
Deck Knight said:
And as far as meat not being necessary for good health: We don't all live next to Vegan Mart. We normals can't spend $500 a week just so we can ape mother nature who clearly decided through natural selection that plants should have incomplete proteins. If you're a rich, luxuriant upper class snoot (who doesn't have nut or other plant allergies, thus winning the genetic lottery too) who can afford that kind of lifestyle, so be it. Don't look down on me because all I can afford is the $4.99 a pound lunch meat.
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This. Several vegetarians in this thread argue that eating meat is morally wrong. Alright, let's assume that eating meat is wrong on the premise that it causes animals to suffer. However, eating meat allows a lifestyle with greater nutrition and allows more poor people to actually provide enough food with their families -- they don't have the luxury of being able to buy things like produce in great quantities. Wouldn't you agree that it is better, morally, to save thousands of people from starving and suffering while in turn causing animals to suffer in order to be able to feed these people?

Next, you'll argue, "Okay, that's an exception for the poor people." But you've been dealing with absolutes in morality. If it's not "bad" for people who can't afford much else to eat meat, then why is it bad for more affluent people? Do you have a right to tell people how to spend their money?
 
eating vegetarian is not five times more expensive than eating meat. that is by far the biggest load of bullshit presented in this thread thus far.

if you wanted to stop eating meat, you could absolutely make it happen on your current food budget.
 
by using irrelevant sensationalism
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argument that every run-of-the-mill "low-brow but strangely educated" 17-year-old posts in a Facebook comments section
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in the same way that many religious debaters try to convince people that God exists, or that scam artists and psychics manage to fool so many people
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My understanding is that rape was relatively prevalent in our biological ancestors (it certainly is in animals), and we can imagine many potential "evolutionary benefits" of such behavior.
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theatrics
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"look at these teeth that can cut through animal flesh! Oh look, what a surprise, that's exactly what our biological ancestors used them for! It must follow that that is precisely the correct thing for us to have done. Morally! And well hey, what's stopping us from saying that it's the correct thing for us to continue to do! You know-- morally!!"
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(whoops, I think I just "explained" by accident)
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I think there might be some irony in there somewhere!
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and appeals to very specific sets of "facts" which, while completely devoid of any logical consistency, "just seem too perfect" to our emotionally-vulnerable, reaffirmation-seeking brains
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Well you didn't actually say anything about vegetarianism itself in your post but pretty much everything about it goes here.

Our teeth and digestive systems don't "just seem too perfect" to be eating meat. It's not in the fucking ballpark like psychics have to be, this is science. Where do you get off saying it's "strangely educated" for 17 years olds to know what an omnivore is when they teach that shit in the 2nd grade?

There's no naturalistic fallacy when we continue to benefit from a readily available source of full proteins.

Vegetarianism dates back 2600 years. It's much older than concepts of personal liberty or sexual equality. It existed over 2000 years before the first movement to abolish slavery. I'm an idealist, so I believe that in time any worthy reform cause can and will cause change over the course of a few hundred years. What the fuck have vegetarians accomplished with 2600? At least the temperance movement had the god damn decency to die out.
 
vonFiedler said:
There's no naturalistic fallacy when we continue to benefit from a readily available source of full proteins.
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What you've highlighted here is the fact that the benefits we reap from meat-eating are greatly diminished from the ones our ancestors purportedly received. Furthermore, if the benefits are in fact currently significant enough to justify eating animals, then why even bring up our ancestors in the first place? The answer is that it's rhetorically convenient to bring up the fact that "they did it too," because that seems, at first blush, to be a legitimate moral justification. Our emotional reaction, especially those of us who believe that meat-eating is fine in the first place, is to take our biological history as some sort of "sign" that we are within our rights to continue eating meat. Obviously an objective onlooker would come to no such conclusion, but emotions are powerful and we often desire to reconcile new information with our current actions and beliefs-- sometimes to the exclusion of truth. I focused on this instead of the subject of vegetarianism itself because it's simply far more interesting (as I've said, I find the flaws in Deck Knight's argument to be pretty self-evident, and it's just more fun to think about how he still managed to apparently come off as well-reasoned and legitimate to numerous posters in this thread).


Also, I have no idea what that quote collage thing you constructed is intended to represent.
 
So I read a lot of the posts in this thread (particlularly part of Kristoph's penultimate post) as "if eating meat is justified because it's beneficial from a biological viewpoint, then rape/murder/assorted atrocities are justified because they've helped society progress to where it is now, and they could potentially progress it further!"

But you're missing a major point. Yeah, rape used to be common. And from an evolutionary standpoint, it's beneficial. Stronger males with a bigger libido produce stronger offspring who will grow to have bigger libidos. But then why is it morally wrong in this day and age?
We've grown out of it.
As time goes on, science progresses and cultures develop. At some point in history, people realized that rape wasn't fun for everybody, so they stopped. Did everyone stop? Of course not. But over time, it gradually became the norm. And yet rape still happens because we are still biologically committed to passing on our genes.
I hesitate to relate this to smoking, but it's really not that different a situation. Not too long ago, it was all the rage simply because nicotine had a convenient effect on our brains; it was designed to make us want more. As people realized it was bad, less people smoked - but it's still certainly not uncommon.
I predict the same thing will happen to the consumption of meat. Humanity is still developing, there's no question about it. As education increases, more people will become aware of the harmful effects of meat-eating, including but not limited to the suffering of the animals and the environmental impact of cultivation, processing and transportation of meat. (Not to say that a proper education would imply vegetarianism, simply that the majority of meat-eating Americans don't know much about where their food comes from.) Some people have already decided that eating meat is bad. They're ahead of the game. Vegetarianism is becoming more and more common. Within a generation or two, it might become the norm.
We can't decide that it's moral or immoral right now. We're in a transition period. We can all agree that rape is bad, right? Would we agree about a thousand years ago? Maybe some of us, but not all of us. Some day, the consumption of meat will be frowned upon as well. But for now, it's an important part of first-world society.



As a side note, does anybody else find it ironic that it's too expensive for us to eat vegetarian, but the vast majority of people in third-world countries can't afford to eat meat?
 
Kristoph said:
Also, I have no idea what that quote collage thing you constructed is intended to represent.
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Well you see unlike your use, this actually was irony. Your robust response which boiled down to those three check marks; no doubt attempting to prove him wrong (a logical fallacy anyway), was in fact itself in violation of the same theatrics. The statement "Deck Knight's argument is void because he uses sensationalism and theatrics" achieves a result opposite to your intention, therefore irony. Unlike whatever the fuck you were babbling about when you brought up irony to sound smart (it's ironic that he let's you think for yourself because if you think about it he's wrong? what the fuck?).
 
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