tronvillain

Feather:
Oh, I will agree that it is subjective, and as such will carry no weight with someone who does not share the same subjective level of empathy, but that does not make it "religious" or illogical. That I feel empathy for animals is why I consider it "immoral" to torture them for entertainment, and that someone else feels more empathy for animals is why they consider it "immoral" to eat them.

tronvillain

Feather:
So, are you okay with cock fights and bull fights and dancing bears? Are you perfectly okay with torturing animals purely for entertainment? If so, then I look down on you just as many vegans probably look down on me. It is purely subjective of course, but that is the nature of morality.

Feather

True enough.

Here's where we start to disagree. If empathy is the criterion one is using to determine the morality of an act, then said morality becomes illogical, because it is not based on any sort of reasoning.

I find it intellectually dishonest to abhor the eating of animals, but not the eating of plants, since both of these kinds of things are living objects.

Now, now, tronvillain, let's not go around making strawman arguments at people. Torture is not the same as killing. I commented only on the latter--not the former.

cymbalina

Primal wrote:
This is a good point. I just really object to the way most of the vegans I have known use the "carnivore" label as a pejorative-- a wedge to separate their purity from meat-eating toxicity. It's insulting and inaccurate, IMO.
Example-- the vegan activists at my college who handed out flyers depicting "carnivorous" humans as slobbering, deranged looking Tyrannosaurs. If I handed out counter-flyers caricaturing vegans as emaciated pot-smoking rabbits emitting streamers of drool, vegans (and people in general) would have a right to be angry, or at least to call me on it.
My er, "beef" with veganism is that too many of its proponents (or at least the ones I know) combine personal attacks, self-righteous moralizing, and dogma "backed" by pseudo-science (humans can't digest meat, cooked food is toxic, etc). Some of these people are very intelligent and well-educated in general-- a vegetarian friend of mine, our high school valedictorian, also believed humans aren't capable of digesting animal matter and preached about it often. He was one of the people I admired most from our school, but I found his arguments for vegetarianism unconvincing and flawed.
The whole effect is reminiscent of fundamentalist religion to me. "Carnivore" is the "Satanist" of the vegan fanatic, IMO. I'm just glad I've learned that not all vegans are of that stripe.
Cymbalina

[ October 15, 2002: Message edited by: cymbalina ]</p>

The AntiChris

DigitalChicken

Apologies. I assumed you were talking about "food" products.

There are so many synthetic alternatives for non-food products, why would you hypothesise an imaginary "non-suffering" animal product? It's hardly surprising you received the response you did.

I'm absolutely sure there is. All kinds of beliefs, conditioning and personal prejudices are at play here. You make it sound like some kind of evil conspiracy!

I like to keep my hand in.

To be absolutely precise, you are correct. However, I don't think there is any doubt about the general thrust and tone of your earlier posts about vegans. If a theist had used the same sweeping generalistions about atheists, there'd quite rightly be uproar.

Wow! Did I really do all that? And all because I had the bare-faced effrontery to suggest that your particular take on empathy was "highly individual"!


Which particular vegan did you have in mind when you made this comment?

You see the "problem" as intractable, vegetarians have another view and vegans yet another. These are all positions based on subjective emotions and beliefs about the world and as such no one view is any more "valid" than another.

I'm afraid I have no idea what it is you're objecting to here.

I suspect we've done this to death, so please don't feel you need to respond any further - I assure you I won't take it as any indication that you concede on any of the issues I've raised.

Chris

[ October 16, 2002: Message edited by: The AntiChris ]</p>

Valmorian

I don't see why not, as humans are quite adept at anthropomorphizing all sorts of things. Cartoon characters aren't real either, but you still find people crying at Bambi.

CuriosityKills

I find it very interesting that people feel that human life is so much more important than everything else. Its not O.K. for us to kill each other but we can shoot just about every other living thing in site without repercussion.If someone gets mauled by a bear in the forest we kill the bear. It doesn't matter that the person was infringing on its territory. I think that this is a total waste of life.

Killing an animal to eat isn't as wasteful as this example. As far as I know, we pretty much utilize as much of the animal as possible. I find this to be a somewhat redeeming quality.

It is natural for people to eat meat, but it is not natural the way we cultivate farm animals. this is what I find repugnant. It has become so important to satiate our whims that we have totally lost site of the fact that we are dealing with living beings.

To me, shooting a wild deer for its meat is a lot more acceptable than eating a commercially raised chicken for dinner. The reason for this is that the deer has enjoyed a natural life up until that moment. For me, the cruelty is not the fact that the animal is killed, dying is part of life. the actual cruelty is the living conditions and the lengths that meat producers will go to.

This story is what actually convinced me that I shouldn't support this kind of a system anymore.

<a href="http://www.observer.co.uk/foodmonthly/story/0,9950,662799,00.html" target="_blank">http://www.observer.co.uk/foodmonthly/story/0,9950,662799,00.html</a>

[ October 16, 2002: Message edited by: CuriosityKills ]</p>

tronvillain

Feather:
Nonsense. Reason alone is incapable of providing a moral system. Without emotions such as empathy we would have no premises from which to reason. If you think your moral system is indpendent of emotion, you are simply deluding yourself.

Exactly how is it "intellectually dishonest" to use more than one criteria in assigning value to ojbects? A piece of coal and a diamond are both "carbon objects" but we do not assign them the same value. Do you call that intellectually dishonest?

I fail to see how what I said could be called a "strawman argument." It is simply a fact that if you are okay with torturing answer for entertainment, I look down on you. You avoided actually answering the questions, so whether I do or not is up in the air. So, do you think it is okay to kill an animal for entertainment, but not to torture it?

tronvillain

Valmorian:
As I pointed out earlier, I am using "empathize" in the first sense, not the second.

Primal

I actually like applying the term carnivore to myself, makes me feel higher for some odd reason cause I always think of a wolf compared to a cow. Not that this proves anything or makes on position better then another, I hope no one says "well a rhino is even stronger then a wolf". Just saying I like the term carnivore.