Vegetarianism Based On Animal Rights

Self-interest is only natural.

And, make them stricter, then.

They're human; why eat humans when we don't have to? There are predators and there are prey, humans are predators and we eat our prey, which are livestock and game

It's not immoral, though! Don't you see? Why do bears do it?

No, my answer is, it's not by job to decide for you. I don't want to be a cannibal.

You're completely saying another thing; we were talking about braindead people, in which case I wouldn't eat them because I don't want to eat people anyway.

No. Altering the environment to suit our needs and wants, yes is a good thing.

We already do

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

However, we're talking about something that every living thing does: eat. Omnivores, like human beings, are creatures that eat both meat and plants.

I don't want to eat human children; and I'd only do that if I were stranded in the middle of no where and they died of natural causes

Right, but it's all unnecessary...

How so? This is absurd. We don't owe anything to roaches or mosquitos.

Well, that's for a different thread, but I disagree

Why?

Plants are alive; plants "want" to reproduce and continue; plants are alive. Eating them is wrong because they are alive.

Besides, you said yourself that consensus is all there is to morals (I think) and the overwhelming consensus is in favor of meat eating.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

James R


I don’t believe in god as you well know, nature seems to dictate that we live off of other things in nature.

Having the option of being a vegetarian is just that, an option, not a moral imperative.

James R: No. To assume that nature is there solely for our exploitation is to forget what role nature plays in all our lives. Witness the road that has led us to the major environmental problems the world is having right now. We thought that things like forests and atmosphere and the sea were infinite resources for us to exploit. Only now are we finding out that we were wrong.
Speaking of religion, the bible is one of the culprits in promiting your religious view that all non-human animals are ours to exploit - given by God for our pleasure.

I am not interested in the bible so its irrelevant and you must be lacking protein if you think I have a ‘religious’ view. We exploit nature this is true but its the methods we use and the extent that we use them that are the problem and create imbalance not the fact that we exploit nature.

James R: The people with the most choice in the world also happen to eat the most meat. Why? For no reason other than their own pleasure.Also, wrong is wrong, no matter how many people do it. 1 murder is wrong. 100 murders doesn't make murder ok all of a sudden.

Murder may be wrong but killing isn’t necessarily wrong and it certainly isn’t wrong when it comes to acquisition of food. We eat meat out of pleasure yes, we also eat cheese and sugar for the same reason, your point?

James R: It's not my fault if the majority of people are immoral. Most people don't think twice about where their meat comes from. Look at the euphemisms they use to describe meat. Nobody eats sheep or cow - they eat mutton or steak.

WRONG! Most people DO know where their food comes from it is only in the West where people have a problem knowing where their food is coming from. Most people in developing countries still grow crops and kill their own livestock for sale or personal consumption. In NY there are locals in Long Island who breed their own ‘free range’ chickens and sell them to people in their local community, its not factory bred. They do this because they are concerned for how their food is contaminated with antibiotics etc. We know we eat cow and sheep. When I eat fois gras I know I am eating the liver of a goose or duck the euphemism only exists in your mind because you think that people would feel ‘guilty’ if they thought they were eating a cow or sheep right? No. Most people do know that they eat hamburger and it comes from a cow, just like we know fish fingers comes from some kind of white fish. Most people live in non-western countries and have surely seen an animal slaughtered and probably know who to kill an animal for food so again you speak not of most people but of western people most of whom live in urban areas.

James R: No. If the Dalai Lama would die if he didn't eat meat, then I'd say he has a good reason to eat it. What's your excuse?

The Dalai lama suffered from hepatitis B but I wasn’t aware that eating meat is a good remedy for that. The fact is that the Dalai Lama was raised eating meat and continues to do so even though he thinks ethical vegetarianism is great. I don’t need an excuse James to eat meat, I don’t need to justify it. I just find it completely priggish that you assume a higher moral ground based on dietary habits and find the majority of the worlds population immoral because of it. Like I said before most Tibetan Monks eat meat even in India where vegetarianism is prevalent but in your mind you are more moral than the Dalai Lama and even Aung Sann Su Kyi or Nelson Mandela, all immoral people because they have meat in their diet. I find it interesting that vegetarians always feel the need to justify their food habits, they can't just eat vegetables they have to attach it to all sorts of moral and ethical imperatives.

You must feel so puffed up, superior and self-righteous while eating your carrots.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Why are there three threads running on this subject?

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

The other one was brought back from the dead by someone posting a comment to a thread that was well over a year old. I don't see the third one.

 

Me an my wife have never preeched that meat eaters are e-moral or tryed to convience others not to eat animals... but the way som people treet animals (like in the video James posted)... i woudnt trust 'em wit a bucket-A-spit.!!!

 

Good I think its up to each individual to decide what they want in their diet. There are lots of people who don't buy meat off the shelf so to speak, who purchase meats from places like 'Whole Foods' a company that has a different benchmark in terms of standards:

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/products/meat-quality-standards.php

I think people are interested in healthy food from healthy animals that live a life much better than they would in a large breeding factory. I think its fine that people are vegetarian, I don't have that much meat in my diet but I sure do eat it so I do not consider myself a vegetarian nor would I ever consider being one unless there was a medical reason for making such a change.

 

Third one is in Free thoughts.

 

I have alot of meat in my diet. I eat at least one light serving per day, in order to get enough protein; usually it's just fish though.

 

That doesn't sound like a lot. I would consider a heavy meat diet one where meat is eaten with every meal. I have protein in every meal but it isn't always necessarily from meat.

 

Nothing, if you mean objectively.

Why not? Other animals eat animals. It doesn't harm us humans to eat animals; so it's ok to eat other animals.

We don't have to prey on other humans; besides, we only have to care about our own species.

I don't have issues with it, as long as they don't force it on me.

It's obviously beyond that, but you're trying to compare human species children to non human species. I care about my own species alot more than chickens, you see.

I know what I think: eating meat is fine.

Why is eating meat wrong? You have yet to provide a satisfactory answer; furthermore, you assume that the consciousness and self-awareness of common livestock are of the same level as that of human beings.

Right, but they're human, you see.

It is. Not doing those experiments will not result in the death of anybody; it's unnecessary. Quite simple.

Drinking milk and eating eggs is also unnecessary; it might not harm the animal, but it's theft, for one, and two we don't have to do it and thus trap animals for no reason. Therefore drinking milk is wrong, eating eggs is wrong, eating honey is wrong, and so on and so forth. Eating cheesecake is wrong, because milk is used in the process; eating honey nut cheerios is wrong, because they use honey.

And somehow the living things that are carrots, are not wrong, to eat.

Good point, but this is a utilitarian argument. Not a moral one. Is killing pests morally wrong? I am sure cockroaches feel pain and have a sense of continuity.

I'm not. I'm much more lenient in the "killing" department than you are; I was simply asking you, why you feel it's not wrong.

Why give them equal consideration? They are not people; at most, they feel pain. They are not wise, they do not philosophize, they do not have a concept of "self" in the sense of individualism. They have no ego.

I suppose, but you have to understand the pointlessness of this statement; since morality is subjective anyway, the 100 are right and the 1 is right. It just comes down to who can enforce their view.

 

Good for me and, ideally, for the benefit of the collective as well. I do not include livestock in this collective.

People are not going to stop eating meat, because it's not wrong.

 

Technically we could; but that would be immoral, from my perspective.

But we do, and we (Humanity) are not harmed by it.

We don't. We just tend to, and in the interest of survival it's "better" to.

No, because I do not want him to eat my mother and it would be against her will.

The "why" is irrelevant; I simply do.

I am going to after this.

You're saying they have "personhood". I don't agree.

No, I'm not. I have no problems with voluntary cannibalism, because it is voluntary.

No, you're looking at it incorrectly. Not doing something doesn't result in anything. Not doing the experiments doesn't kill anybody. It just doesn't help anybody; but then, it's still unnecessary and thus, wrong. After all, why do we have the right to experiment on animals?

Ah that's right, for the same reason we have the right to eat them: because we're able to, and it benefits us.

So you agree with that?

I know what it is; however you were defending roaches on the basis that it's bad to kill them because of the consequences on the environment, and not for the same reason that you defended livestock.

Of course they do. At least to the former.

They're not valuable to us, apart from being food. And there's a huge difference between cows and human beings: human beings have egos, and culture, and the capacity to understand the concept of self and individualism as well as morality, as well as the capacity to understand and alter our own evolution.

I know they're conscious but I doubt they are self aware in the same way you and I are.

By ego I refer to the sense of oneself as a unique individual. Very few animals have been observed to display this sort of behavior, and to the best of my knowledge no livestock have (only certain primates and a select other creatures). Although you are right, this is all arbitrary and it's difficult to know for sure. And that goes for your claims as well.

Right, because they're important to human beings in human societies. I'm not undermining the importance of morals, I'm only pointing out that they are subjective. Therefore what matters is consensus

It's the reality; what alternative do you propose? What good is your good if your good is powerless? If nobody is technically right then it comes down to power.

Human beings, because the survival of other human beings has a profound effect on my own survival and the survival of my kind.

People have also become nudists and cultists.

Vegetarianism is a minority and one that I honeslty think will never become a majority [out of moral reasons]

 

Alright, I've finished reading your article and I must say, very well written. *Cracks nuckles* Let's get down to business here:

Right, up until this point I agree with you, and if you really believe this then I am very surprised you aren't a libertarian as that is the key tenet: self-ownership.

Yes and no. All humans value themselves; although not all humans value other humans. And a person can be both a person and a thing.

Although I won't touch further on this as I will focus more on animal rights, in the next bit:

Who said we are going to take animal interests seriously? Our interests come first and foremost.

The latter, to the human animal.

Here's a characteristic: we're all the same species. Arbitrarily, we decide to grant members of the human species rights, as it collectively improves our comfort (supposedly); arbitrarily, we decide not to give non-humans these same rights.

As for plants:

Yes

No. That is self-awareness.

Right, but plants are still alive; the relevance of this is that living things want to keep living, even if they cannot understand death or feel pain.

Nor is there such evidence that livestock are the same. I do not think livestock contemplate the future or contemplate their own death - this is almost exclusively a human thing.

 

The Dalai Lama was a vegetarian for 1 1/2 years and then he suffered from Hepatitis B and said he was advised to go back to eating meat and eats it every other day. Tibetan Monks have a tradition of eating meat in their society so its not frowned on to eat meat but being a vegetarian is a good and commendable way of life too.

Nature doesn’t require us to drive vehicles either. Humans have a long history of eating meat it doesn’t have a long history of strict vegetarianism.

You say that I have to appreciate that what I eat may be morally questionable but have offered me no arguments outside that its what your personal bias on how it is morally questionable.

Where did I accuse you of having a religious position on vegetarianism? If this is what you think then you have misunderstood me.

JR: So, the moral question becomes: to what extent (if any) is it morally acceptable to exploit sentient, conscious beings for food?

Humans are at the top of the food chain Tiassa, we don’t need moral reasons to support eating other animals. An Inuit need not justify hunting fish for food and I don’t have to justify eating fish or meat even if I don’t hunt the food myself. What we would have to justify is depleting a particular resource but so far there has been no shortages of chicken or beef.

JR: Such blanket statements are silly. If I killed a human baby because I was hungry, you're asking me to believe that you'd have no problem with that. I'm not buying it.

Well I could say your example is silly as this is not a discussion about eating others from our own species.

JR: Last time I checked, sugar and cheese were not sentient beings.

From where do you glean that it is wrong to eat from sentient beings that are not of our species? You believe its wrong personally but you haven’t shown me any other reasons why this is wrong. Most of the world would agree with me that it is perfectly acceptable to eat other animals.

JR: Intellectually they know, but I don't think a person munching into their Maccas hamburger is picturing a cow. They don't think about it.

But it wouldn’t make any difference. There are people who eat snails and frogs and though it be cooked it looks unmistakably like a snail and a frog. Have you ever seen tongue at the market? Well it looks just like a tongue. Pig brain? Looks like a tiny brain.

JR: Yours is the standard reaction. You get all defensive because you've never real thought about the issue. You think of yourself as a moral person, so everything you do must automatically be morally defensible. And when you realise that there's no moral justification for your eating meat, your only fallback position is "I don't need to justify my actions to anyone!".

You are reading into things. I am not being defensive, I have thought about it and have even eaten an exclusive vegetarian diet for a short while but it did not impress me as far as a way of life. You think you are a moral person for not eating meat and I do not think of vegetarians as being more moral, I just think of them as people who don’t eat meat. I don’t see any moral flaw in eating meat so why would I think anyone would need to justify it? I answer in the same way on the abortion issue. I don’t think its immoral to abort a child so why would I need to justify it to anyone?

JR: Being immoral on this issue doesn't mean that people are immoral on all issues. People are more complicated than that. While I might wish for change on this issue, it doesn't mean I've given up altogether on humanity as a whole. Raising awareness is a first step. Before women started demanding the vote, people argued that it was "natural" that women didn't have the capacity for something like voting.

I see no correlation at all between women voting and vegetarianism. When people first began hearing about the treatment of animals in breeding factories the response was not to stop eating meat the response was to seek meat that had been raised in better conditions. The 'free range' supply that are not fed antibiotics etc.

JR: Second, vegetarians are not usually the ones to make an issue of what they eat. Mostly, it is the guilty meat eaters who notice and comment on a person's vegetarianism. They assume that anybody who doesn't eat meat must be mentally unbalanced. After all, there couldn't possibly be any good reason why somebody wouldn't eat meat, could there? So, in my experience, dinner table conversations start with a meat eater commenting on the vegetarian's choice of food, then progress to querying the weirdo about why they would choose to forgo meat. Then, on being informed of the moral arguments against meat eating, the meat eaters normally have two reactions: (1) they get all defensive and, as part of the self-justification process, (2) they trumpet their immorality, commenting on how tasty their steak is and how the vegetarian doesn't know what goodness they are missing out on.

I know people are vegetarians for many different reasons. I know someone who hates the texture of meat and has felt that way since childhood and so eats vegetarian. I have never known anyone to speak of vegetarians as being unbalanced. Most people I know are indifferent towards vegetarians. Guilty meat eaters? You’re really too much James I have never and will never feel guilty about eating meat, I have seen animals slaughtered in Cambodia and it hasn’t put me off eating meat. Those who wish to not eat meat are welcome to not eat meat, it doesn’t bother me one way or the other. It seems you are the one who feels they need to justify being a vegetarian, I have asked for no such justification neither have I ever heard of a meat eater complain about vegetarianism nor speak ill of them.

JR: It's not a matter of pride, Lucysnow

Not a matter of pride? You go on about ‘guilty meat eaters’ and speak of the ‘immorality’ of meat eaters, then turn around and say how meat eaters have it out against vegetarians and you are somehow a victim of malice by meat eaters at the dinner table and its not a matter of pride? Ha!

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Lions, tigers....etc eat only meat or they die . Is it fair ?. Not in my opinion .