godlessmath

This reminds me of an episode of Futurama. In it, a new animal is discovered on some far away planet. Seemingly a dumb animal, it tastes very good and is very addictive. So they bring them back to Earth and start eating them up. However, then the animals start speaking and everyone realizes that they are intelligent!

Naturally, of course, if some superior alien force came down to chomp on us, we wouldn't like it one bit. Is it hypocritical then to want to eat animals that we are stronger than? Well, maybe. I don't know. There are a lot of issues here, and a lot of debate here will be very murky since first we have to decide on plenty of definitions and side issues, such as whether "evil" or "good" exist and what they are, or hell, whether any kind of morality exists and what it is.

However, how's this, is it okay to eat animals who would otherwise try to eat us if they had us cornered? I remember at least one vegeterian friend (now that I realize, I know a whole bunch) who would say that if he were out in wild, he would eat an animal if need be. This guy was a vegeterian of the moralist variety.

john_e

I find the issue of cost strange: I'm spending the same amount on food that I did before mostly giving up meat. Although I do refuse to go near meat substitutes after I got mild food poisoning from "quorn".

My friends argument for vegitarianism was most convincing: she'd feel really ill and start hallucinating whenever she ate meat

Take care all

The AntiChris

I see this "speciesist" argument pretty frequently when vegetarianism is being discussed here and it always raises some basic questions in my mind.

If you see no difference between killing animals and plants, I assume you're equally perplexed by the existence of animal welfare legislation in just about every 'civilised' society but the complete absence of any plant welfare legislation in those same societies?

Chris

vixstile

My eating animals has nothing to with mental superiority/inferiority, as I would have no problem with eating another human being, given the right circumstances.

The thing is: If I can, and I want to, then I am going to.

integral domain

Not really... it's perfectly logical to draw the line between plants and animals. I believe animals have more a sense of being alive... they also have nervous systems and can therefore feel pain. For the same reason that it's cruel to pull the limbs off a live animal while it's not cruel to pick stems off plants... it's not right (in my opinion) to kill an animal but it's ok to kill a plant.

Besides... I have to eat SOMETHING... or else I will die... and eating plants is to me obviously the lesser evil. Also, most of the time when you eat plants, you don't have to kill the plant... or, you're harvesting the plant at the end of a season, when it would die anyway.

And, honestly, I don't see how evoluntion has anything to do with this. I mean, I suppose, if you really are a HARD CORE evoluntionist... I suppose you could justify rape and slavery in the same way.... now, do you really want to go there?

integral domain

Ok... if that's your philosophy, then enjoy But please don't harrass me for being a vegetarian as many like to do. I'd also appreciate it if we ever have lunch sometime that you not try to trick me into eating meat (as somet people like to do). Thanks. Take care.

Mageth

This reminds me of an episode of Futurama.

It reminds me of an episode of The Twilight Zone, called To Serve Man.

vixstile

Plants have the ability of photosynthesis. Why is this ability less of a moral factor than emotions? They are both simply characteristics that evolved into the species enabling them to operate within their environment.

oriecat

Hello, another veggie here. I don't usually visit this forum so I didn't see this before. And I don't usually discuss my vegetarianism here, because of previous threads that turned very nasty, as someone else already mentioned. Notice how the thread asked "who's a veggie?" and most of the people who showed up aren't, but just wanted to get their jabs in or go on about how they love meat? I find it really disrespectful, personally. If the topic was "who's a homosexual?" would they come in and go on about how much they loved the opposite sex? I don't think so. I think most people would respect the original intent of the thread, but with vegetarianism, for some reason, it is always open season to hijack.

Volestrangler

I'm vegetarian about three or four days of the week. I'm not against eating meat, it's just that I find the practices of slaughterhouses to be somewhat stomach-turning. However I find myself to be incapable of giving up meat altogether. Yup, I'm a fragging hypocrite.