tronvillain

shamon:
What other justification do I need?

Ginseng

And therein lies the problem. People do not seem to know that ethics are inherent in us all. We don't murder, not because we don't want to go to prison, but because it is WRONG. We do not go around striking others because we KNOW it is wrong. Humans used to stone people to death (and they still do in some countries). We do not do that in the western world any longer because we now KNOW it is wrong. One day, if humans are here long enough, we won't eat mammals any longer because we will realize it is wrong. Ethics are not subjective.

Rational Ag

Ginseng,

I was drawing an analogy of your preaching to the preaching of Christianity. I realize that ethics and morality have nothing to do with religion, and I wasn't inferring that you were doing any of this based on religion. I was saying that you SOUND like a Christian with your "better than thou" morality and ethics. I wasn't inserting religion into the discussion, merely drawing an analogy to your tired approach of superior morality.

So you are going to try and assert that morality is objective? From where do you derive this objective morality?

I'm sorry, but ethics (another word for morality) is subjective. And your subjective personal morality is no better than mine. If you are going to argue your position on an objective morality you are going to first have to show that morality is not subjective. I do not buy your assertions, and I don't think many of the infidels here would buy it either.

I'm glad for you that your appeal to authority makes you feel so good. Would you feel worse about yourself if you were presented with a long list of intelligent, revolutionary, meat-eating people? You apparently don't understand the problem with the appeal to authority argument.

-Rational Ag

Ginseng

Oh ok. I didn't know it was just name-calling.

So you are a mind-reader? Cool! What are the other opinions of the “infidels” here?

No, I would still love myself very much, thank you!! It's just an added bonus for me to know so many of the highly-respected people in the world were also vegetarians.

DRFseven

It doesn't matter, anyway, shamon. What we needed in the past has no bearing on what we need now, so people can get B12 from whatever works. In the past, people didn't live long enough to develop the diseases caused from excess protein, fat, and cholesterol buildup. In addition, they ate many times the vegetation, including fiber, and exercised to an extent we would find astonishing, and all this mitigated some of the bad effects of eating meat. But we're different now. Now is not then. If people want to take supplements, why should the fact they didn't take them in the past stop them? There's absolutely no indication that they shouldn't get it from the supplement section of the grocery instead of the dairy or the meat section. Vegetarians have a very good health record, so it's obviously not hurting.

Valmorian

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Oh really? What an interesting statement. You have some evidence to back this up I suppose?

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Ah, that must explain the complete and total lack of murder in the world today. I was wondering about that. I suppose you think that everyone who does something outside of what you consider "ethical" recognizes it as wrong?

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To me it is wrong, sure. Now, how can you KNOW it is wrong? What method do you use to determine this "wrongness"? Outside of a societal contract, what other measurement do you use?

Ethics are subjective. Deal with it. The very fact that people here disagree with you about the ethical concerns of eating meat demonstrates this.

Yellow3

Actually, the BEST I could do, logically, would be to support humane and organic farms by - you guessed it - buying and eating their meat. Instead of making an infinitesimal dent in the factory-farming meat industry by boycotting their products and eating no meat, it would seem to me that supporting the alternatives and giving them a fighting chance to compete (thanks to my money) would be for the better. But that would require that I figure out where to buy the stuff, short of Yuppie Central places like Whole Foods which I can't find in this city anyway. And then we run into the problems of being able to actually afford it. It's the sort of thing I'd like to do, but my chances of doing so right now are somewhere in the range of 'not very damn likely'.

We are all a part of causing suffering. So are you, by the way; the vegetables you eat are bloody as well. I don't see much objective difference between killing a cow to eat it and slicing a jackrabbit in half with the combine to get at the grain we need to eat. Can you necessarily say that to leave off meat would bring the balance closer to zero? Wouldn't I need more of those 'bloody' vegetables to sustain myself if I wasn't getting the concentrated calories of meat? Wouldn't more field animals have to die to keep me alive?

Yes, we do have a choice to ameliorate cruelty when we can. But we don't have to. We are not going to be struck down for eating a steak instead of tofu. Myself, I choose to spend my money on cruelty-free eggs and non-overfished seafood ("trash fish" like mackerel, squid, and octopus is mighty tasty) and leave it at that. If I had access and cash I'd also spend it on free-range meats and animals that I knew had been slaughtered quickly and humanely. And thus I do cut down on the suffering that I can.

You can say that eating any meat makes me immoral. But until you give me a reason besides your say-so, I can just as easily say that your anthropomorphizing of the animal kingdom doesn't have anything to do with me.

- Jen
P.S. - by tje way, Brighid, the 'drop dead' thing was referring to the roaches (which won't kill me, but might make me wish they had. . . bastards! ) While I will drop dead without B12 supplements, the vitamin can be gotten now from yeast and microbial sources as well as from "higher" animals.

daemon

Oh, and here I thought those stories of the Palestinian suicide bombers and Israeli troops killing each other were factual. Thanks for educating me! Now, why on earth are the media lying to us about killings in Palestine/Israel, since they obviously never occur?
You have obviously never been around small children.

Please try to back up your assertions with less obviously false "evidence" next time.

Ginseng

Ethics are objective. I know this fact troubles you, but it is true.

A lot of things that are ethically wrong exist--what's your point? Murder exists, but it IS wrong. Are you seriously suggesting that murder exists because it is right?? Stoning people to death is wrong too. It is not subjectively wrong, it is objectively wrong. You know it as well as I do. Why? Because ethics are inherent in us all.

We don't stone people to death, and we will never stone people to death again. Why?? Because we realized it was wrong. We do not become LESS ethical. We have abolished slavery. Why? Because it was wrong. Why is this so difficult for people to understand??

Is there anyone here who thinks slavery is right? Are you ethically opposed to slavery? Is it a subjective viewpoint?? If slavery is objectively wrong, then your argument falls flat because it proves that ethics are objective.

tronvillain

Yes, it is subjective, until you can demonstrate that it is objective. You seem to think that morality being subjective is a terrible thing. Why?