Bill Snedden

I've already provided a synopsis of my beliefs in this area in my post to spin, above.

If you're thinking of the same argument as I am, I actually think that its probably one of the better arguments that can be made as to why humans should limit their consumption of other animals: it could be to their own detriment.

IIRC, the argument holds that the raising of animals for food is a poor use of otherwise scarce resources as the amount of grains and vegetables necessary to raise one animal for meat would feed more humans than the amount of meat available in the one animal. Is that about it?

If the statement is true (that the food used would feed more humans than the meat would), then I, for one, think that it's an excellent argument to support a reduction in the raising and consumption of non-human animals for meat.

However, it doesn't really address the moral issues involved in eating meat.

Regards,

Bill Snedden

brighid

No they don’t prove me wrong. An omnivore means that one has the ability to eat BOTH. If you were strictly an herbivore , you would be unable to process meat and therefore it would be detrimental to your survival to do so. But since you are an omnivore you can process meat and possess the proper equipment to both tear the tissue and digest it. Meat also provides many positive health benefits when consumed in proper quantities. Because you choose not to eat meat and you are alive does not disprove the fact that you are an OMNIVORE and ABLE to eat and process the flesh of animals.

Here are some of the primitive societies that were cannibals – Neandrathals – extinct. Aztecs – extinct. Anasazi – extinct. KaiTangata of Easter Island – extinct. So, how is it that primitive societies that no longer flourish, thereby NOT contributing to the gene pool prove me wrong? And if you study the affect of cannibalism in animal species you will find that in general it has adverse affects on the population and cannibalistic predators tend to be weaker and more prone to disease then their non-cannibalistic counterparts. That is hardly conducive to the furthering of the species. It is useful when attempting to control a population (as mentioned in conjunction with marine organisms) or to ward off starvation. But cannibalism as the soul or predominant source of sustenance is deleterious to a species, just as inbreeding is.

The moral/ethical aspects of your argument have been addressed at length – in dissent of your opinion and poorly constructed arguments. Just because you don’t agree with the arguments does not invalidate them. You have proved no credible argument to invalidate the very credible arguments that have been presented to you. And you obfuscation and disgusting use of ad hominems doesn’t help you much either.

And the answer to your question about why kill an animal – to eat it of course, because I am interested in survival and I am an omnivore and have predatory inclinations as a member of my species. I like red meat. It is good for me. I advocate humane techniques in breeding and harvesting the animals that will become my food.

And in the survival of the species – who is more likely to propagate and survive – the human animal that eats a well balanced diet, with lots of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and healthy sources of protein from a variety of sources, whether they be plant of animal based – or the human animal that eats a diet that encourages heart disease, colon cancer, and other disease that will limit fertility and longevity?

And there is something called the cycle of life and the necessary death of an animal for the food of another animal – be it human or otherwise and it serves a necessary and vital purpose in sustaining current life and helping to create a good environment for new life.

We should not needlessly or cruelly slaughter animals, and we should only kill what we need for survival and materials. We should use ethical breeding practices and allow the animals to roam freely, but I see no moral reason not to harvest animals that are bred for food. Every species is food for another species, including human – while alive and after our deaths.


Brighid

SallySmith

Yes, the grain goes farther than the meat does, to put it simplistically. Theoretically this is an excellent argument. However, in reality, it seems that politics is what limits food distribution, not lack of food. I was referring to the environmental impact of factory farming - the degradation/destruction of the land, water quality, etc.

Edited to say: oops, this was a response to Bill's last post.

[ March 14, 2002: Message edited by: SallySmith ]</p>

SallySmith

Sorry Bill, I have been skipping much of the back-and-forth between various people because honestly, I find it tedious. I am indeed intellectually lazy at times.

It appears that the following sentence is the crux of your position:

"Non-human animals do not possess the ability to enter into social contracts and therefore have only such rights as those who engage in contracts are willing to extend to them."

Forgive me if this next bit too can be found in your previous post(s), but I am curious as to what rights you personally are willing to extend to non-human animals and why. I'm just interested in hearing how other people view animals.

x-member

FWIW, most of the cultures you've mentioned I have read only engaged in cannibalism on rare occasions. It was not a part of their diet but rather an act of ritual. They did not engage in cannibalism for sustinence.

Further, many of the cultures you mentioned became "extinct" when they were conqured by other cultures with both tools that these tribes did not have, and deseases they had not been exposed to. Cannibalism was not causal to the event.

Jon

Pomp

spin,

I'm dropping out of this discussion. Everything Bill Snedden has said to you so far is exactly what I would have said, although I probably wouldn't have been quite so gracious about it, as I've tired of banging my head against the wall. If you want to have a serious discussion about the ethics of killing non-human animals for food, then I repeat the suggestion that has been made to you several times: explain your own conception of morality to us, show how eating meat violates that conception, and we will discuss it.

Fear the Reptoids!

Phomisezux
Captain, 1st Raptarian Surface Reclamation Brigade

[ March 14, 2002: Message edited by: Pompous Bastard ]</p>

brighid

Thanks Jon – I should have been a bit more succinct. You are correct! I am not sure about all the specifics and I don’t think anthropologists agree on the full extent each practiced it, and as we uncover more data perhaps we will learn more. But at the moment, the consensus seems to be that these cultures did practice cannibalism, either for ritual, during periods where starvation was high, or as a method for conquering or intimidated other tribes. Although I feel it is safe to say that cannibalism is not a good practice because of the reasons I sighted.

Thanks!

Brighid

Mad Kally

spin,
I'm waiting for your answers.

Koyaanisqatsi

Not to add any more to this nonsense, but I just came back to this thread and noticed that Punkerslut had addressed my post, so here is my response in kind.

It will most likely include arguments and observations others have already made.

Then again, maybe not. I don't know because I lost interest in wading through the bullshit...excuse me...plantshit at around page 9.

This should be interesting, considering scientists have no idea how human consciousness exists, let alone plant consciousness.

Well, I'm glad that's not a matter of philosophy or morality then, because with such specific parameters so carefully and well defined you're clearly morally free to eat plants.

I reiterate. Only an arrogant, homocentric f*ck would think they could possibly know whether or not plants are conscious. Your quote serves little to nothing to change that observation; indeed, it only affirms it.

No, just those who think they know what plant consciousness is (or is not).

How quaint.

Consumption.

No, hunger.

What was that about sentences following a little bit of sense?

Or, it can be taken in its context and applied in the manner I meant it to be applied. See if you're capable of doing something like that.

No, we should do just the opposite. We should address legitimate concerns instead of leaping on personal, sanctimonious, hypocritical soapboxes and spouting out our asses about such things as the moral justification for eating plants being that no one has been able to determine if they are self-aware or not.

It goes something like this, "No one should eat meat because the animal is conscious and suffers. We should all eat plants, because plants are not conscious and do not suffer when we kill them."

You (or "science" for that matter) have no possible way of supporting that conclusion, so your morally superior tone when it comes to meat should also be applied to plants, since you have no way of knowing whether or not plants have consciousness or suffer just as severely as animals.

This is the hypocritical part of your soapbox.

Further, for all we (or "science") know, you could be doing far more damage to the ecosystem by not slaughtering the animals that do primarily eat vegetation. This is the homocentric part.

You seem to think that you are somehow outside of the animal kingdom and that you're some sort of free agent in this whole affair, based on your homocentric notions of the importance of "choice."

Indeed, as your shining example demonstrates.

Sure it does. It means that you are sanctimoniously declaring yourself to be "above" or apart from the animal kingdom based upon your own personal moral interpretations of comparative ruthlessness (what goes on in slaughterhouses; the amount of suffering; etc.), which you are attempting here to foster onto others.

In other words, you are basing your moral convictions upon the amount of suffering.

My response to your piousness was to point out the comparative ruthlessness of other animals and how there is absolutely no problem within the natural process with such things; indeed, the majority of other animals murder their victims, eating them while still alive, yet there are no moral compunctions displayed on their behalf, suggesting and supporting once again my arguments of homocentrism and sanctimonious melodrama on your behalf, concluding with my declaration that if you want to stand on a soapbox preaching some sort of moral absolute on this issue (as you appear to be doing), as far as I'm concerned, you can piss up a rope.

Do you understand? If a praying mantis has no moral compunction about ripping its lover's head off and consuming the still blinking skull, I'm not going to lose too much sleep over Gomer stun gunning a cow, so if you want to preach from the mountaintop (are you following the train of thought now?), then by all means, spew away, but don't come around here with a moral high ground and try to justify it with appeals to ignorance.

If you think plants aren't conscious and don't suffer when you murder them, fine, but know that you are a hypocrite (and a sanctimonious one at that).

That's what I was posting.

Nor was I arguing such a thing.

"Right?" There's that unwarranted moral superiority I was talking about.

Is it? Actually, most such predators feed upon the lame and the already dying.

But, I guess, this too means nothing to you since you're not a part of the animal kingdom. You rise above it all by pretending that plants are less of a moral evil to murder and consume than say, cows.

Once again, your moral universe is your own to travel through all you like, but as I said before, if you're going to come here and preach about it, you have my permission to go piss up a rope.

It's nothing personal, I just can't stand hypocritical, sanctimonious moralists who feel that their interpretation of existence gives them some sort of position to condemn others; especially when their position hinges upon a bundle of blatant rationalizations such as the nonsense you've posted regarding plants having no comparative consciousness or ability to suffer simply because science hasn't been able to determine such a thing.

Remember, it was you who based your moral linchpin around inflicted suffering. I was just pointing out your hypocrisy.

Yes, we do, once you comprehend the fact that all life is conscious and that it is the height of homocentric arrogance to assume plants have no consciousness and no comparative means of either self-awareness or suffering simply because you wish to rationalize your moral convictions in this manner.

Do you understand what I'm addressing in your position? You're no better than a carnivore saying, "Science proves that Cows don't have any consciousness the way we have consciousness. They don't know what's happening to them the way we know what's happening to us," and using that as a basis for your moral piousness.

It's hypocritical, sanctimonious bullshit.

Again, did you ever stop to think that its part of nature's "plan" that we do not live longer and survive longer? As the late great Bill Hicks used to say, "We're a virus with shoes."

How do you know that "nature" isn't intent on killing us as quickly as possible and this is the best it could come up with, because we're such a resilient virus?

Considering that "nature's" approach to this issue is to necessitate the constant, en masse consumption of living beings by the trillions on a second to second basis throughout the entire ecosystem and that this process has been in place and operation for hundreds of millions of years both here and elsewhere throughout the universe in one form or another (down to the very building blocks of matter), don't you think that possibly, just possibly, basing your moral piousness on what you perceive to be cruelty to animals in the manner our society processes its food is just a tad on the melodramatic, self-aggrandizing side of things? Just possibly?

And that preaching such moral superiority is not just a tad obnoxious, but fundamentally hypocritical since your alternative is to assume that plant life is qualitatively and therefore moralistically different for no other reason than "science" has not yet been able to determine how a plant screams?

Bullshit. The option is called, "survival."

According to your own, personal moral convictions. The rest of us don't seem to need a justification for participating in a natural function of our bodies and our ecosystem.

Believe me, if I could consciously transcend the physical realm and not have to breathe oxygen or drink water or consume matter in order to remain alive, I would embrace it. But for someone to come along and say, "Eating meat is morally wrong, but eating plants is morally correct," is enough for me to respond with, "Piss up a rope," capisca?

Again with the word "justifiable." To whom are you justifying? Yourself? Fine, then keep it to yourself AND STOP PREACHING.

Now I know why this topic has dragged on and on and on. It's identical to the cult member's claims of moral piousness.

Just plants, which would destroy the Earth. So, again, it brings up the question of whether or not we're here to save the Earth from all of the plant eaters?

I don't buy it, but I'm not going to base any kind of moral, proselytizing rant on it the way you have.

I thought English was your first language?

"Ebonics?" Too bad you aren't as clever as you are pious.

And now on to another shining example:

Says you. Oh, sorry, and "science."

Hmmmm...Now where have I heard this form of fallacious "reasoning" before? Oh yeah! From a pigassed ignorant red neck.

"If you put a shotgun to a cow's head or feed it mush, the cow will not feel pain or joy either way."

Just replace the word "plant" with "chicken" and you're making the exact same argument you're piously attempting to rail against.

And lest there be any further misunderstanding between us, I don't give a shit what you believe, just don't be a hypocrite while preaching it from the mountain tops.

Bill Snedden

Is that true even in third world countries?

Hmmm. I hadn't considered that, but I it would probably make a reasonably good argument as well.

Again, it doesn't touch the moral aspect generally under discussion, but I think it could be compelling in its own right.

Regards,

Bill Snedden