If eating meat is unethical, why is it ok to kill babies?

What benefits society? Killing animals benefits society.
What else benefits society? Controlling the population benefits society.

Legally protected abortion and bovicide are both good ideas. Though if you don't like abortion, you can wait for the babies to grow up and then kill them when they and their famished families come to take your cows, their pale, emaciated frames encroaching on your pastures as they moan like zombies of hunger pain. Slowly they advance, first a trickle, a dozen at a time, then a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand, and suddenly the population of China is at your doorstep - the cows were far from enough to sate their appetites, and now they have come for YOU...
 
Actually theism/atheism does not fit well in this debate.

If you are an atheist and firmly believe God does not exist then everything on earth is one great cosmic accident. Since we evolved to eat meat as well as vegetable matter there is no reaon we cannot farm animals the way we farm crops.

If you are a theist and believe there is a higher power then you believe Mankind was put above animals. In a few faiths it is unacceptable to eat certain kinds of meat, but overall it is again perfectly acceptable to raise food-animals like we grow corn.
 
You could also argue that cows and other domestic animals were not forced into their current situation, but that natural selection led them there. It is hubris to think that it was all a human idea. More docile creatures would find protection and medical care among people. They would be able to take advantage of the uniquely human facility for predicting forage crops, rather than relying on memory. Despite the fact that they are killed prematurely (something that does occasionally happen in nature), domestication has proved a significant advantage in terms of increasing their genes. Cows were never as numerous as they are now.
 
If you are an atheist and firmly believe God does not exist then everything on earth is one great cosmic accident
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It is slightly off topic, but there are other possibilities for an atheist point of view. We could believe that although the process is not directed from without, but there is an evolution going on in the universe towards novelty and complexity.
 
But could ethics have any real meaning if a god does not exist? Free-will even?
 
No Absane, just no. Not here.

wsionynw said:
If you're anti-abortion then why not be anti-animal slaughter?
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I'm anti-contradictory-vocal-self-righteous-idealogue. Believe what you want, but before you start getting preachy, examine your own contradictory values. Goddamn hypocrites.

baumgarten said:
What benefits society? Killing animals benefits society.
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How? Raising cows as America does is deterimental to the environment. Each calorie of beef consumes takes about 10 calories of petroleum to produce, the runoff from fertilzer to grow all the grain to feed the cows is killing everything in the Gulf of Mexico, wiping out an entire ecosystem. Monocultural fields in the Midwest are unsustainable, as the synthetic fertilizers they use require enormous energy inputs. Current farming practics also require great amounts of water from underground reservoir that are drying up, since not nearly enough comes from the sky. Some places houses and towns literally sink into the earth as the aquifers are sucked dry.

Raising beef is an inefficient way of getting nutrients. The amount of grain it takes to grow one cow could feed 10 times as many people as that one cow could.
 
Roman said:
No Absane, just no. Not here.
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Fine



I'm anti-contradictory-vocal-self-righteous-idealogue. Believe what you want, but before you start getting preachy, examine your own contradictory values. Goddamn hypocrites.
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Is that a technical term? But yes, One wonders why a lot of people are hypocrites (contradicting beliefs and actions).


How? Raising cows as America does is deterimental to the environment. Each calorie of beef consumes takes about 10 calories of petroleum to produce, the runoff from fertilzer to grow all the grain to feed the cows is killing everything in the Gulf of Mexico, wiping out an entire ecosystem. Monocultural fields in the Midwest are unsustainable, as the synthetic fertilizers they use require enormous energy inputs. Current farming practics also require great amounts of water from underground reservoir that are drying up, since not nearly enough comes from the sky. Some places houses and towns literally sink into the earth as the aquifers are sucked dry.

Raising beef is an inefficient way of getting nutrients. The amount of grain it takes to grow one cow could feed 10 times as many people as that one cow could.
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In biology, I was told that given a plant has x amount of energy, an animal will only be able to make use of a certain amount of energy from that plant. Then, every animal eating the next animal receives 10% of the energy of the previous animal.

So, it seems with that bit of information and yours, it is way better to get nutriets from plants, eh? I still love meat but when you think about it, there are better ways for energy and protein.
 
Meat eating versus vegetarianism? You know, there are ways to say that it takes thousands of gallons of water and fuel to make one beef cow, but this isn't the way it's done in Kansas. The water that goes into beef is rainwater, not processed. The fuel expenditures are minimal, and are usually only the amount that it takes to transport the animals some place or another. The land that they graze on requires minimal care and usually requires no insectides, fertilizer, planting, and especially no plowing.
 
Why do people who think its unethical to kill humans think its ok to kill animals?
Because we all extend our compassion/empathy to varying to degrees
theres your answer :)
 
My point is, compassion is something that can be applied to almost anything, you can always choose to empathise abit further than you already are. We all have our own cut off points.
I personally decided to stop eating meat because i couldnt continue justifying my moral divisionism that set animal species apart in terms of their rights. Or my *percieved rights* that i projected onto them.
I think once we start playing a game of 'oh compassion applies here but not over here' or..'Oh morality applies to you, but sorry you dont meet my criteria for someone who deserves moral treatment'.
Then the whole CONCEPT of morality becomes a sham.
 
Roman said:
Why are so many vegans/vegetarians aghast at the idea of raising dumb animals for food meat, yet believe it's an unalienable right to kill unborn babies?
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Because babies will grow up to be even dumber and evil human beings that kill more animals. It's logical.
 
you can look at the issue in two ways. if you believe in god, then human rights are god-given, and animals don't have souls. if you do not, then your "rights" extend only as far as you are able to defend them. animals cannot defend themselves against our weaponry, and hence we eat them. i too cannot see the correlation between eating meat and abortion, nor the correlation between abortion and murder. whatever. :cool:
 
baumgarten:

What benefits society? Killing animals benefits society.
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It doesn't benefit animals. Why is human society so much more important to you?

What else benefits society? Controlling the population benefits society.
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Except that women do not have abortions to help control population size.


TW Scott:

If you are an atheist and firmly believe God does not exist then everything on earth is one great cosmic accident.
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No. The universe operates according to a set of natural laws (of physics, chemistry, etc.) It is no accident that when you drop something it falls downwards, not upwards.

Since we evolved to eat meat as well as vegetable matter there is no reaon we cannot farm animals the way we farm crops.
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Except ethical reasons.

Are you pretending you've forgotten our previous discussions?

If you are a theist and believe there is a higher power then you believe Mankind was put above animals.
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No. You're just thinking of your brand of theism. There are many other alternatives.

In a few faiths it is unacceptable to eat certain kinds of meat, but overall it is again perfectly acceptable to raise food-animals like we grow corn.
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So, majority rules? No religions can be wrong? Interesting point of view. Not that you actually believe it.

spidergoat:

You could also argue that cows and other domestic animals were not forced into their current situation, but that natural selection led them there. It is hubris to think that it was all a human idea. More docile creatures would find protection and medical care among people. They would be able to take advantage of the uniquely human facility for predicting forage crops, rather than relying on memory. Despite the fact that they are killed prematurely (something that does occasionally happen in nature), domestication has proved a significant advantage in terms of increasing their genes. Cows were never as numerous as they are now.
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But what about the quality of life of the average cow? Cows are killed prematurely. In the case of veal, they are killed before their first birthday.

Many animals are also kept in appalling conditions. Witness factory farming of chickens, to take one example.
 
antifreeze:

you can look at the issue in two ways. if you believe in god, then human rights are god-given, and animals don't have souls.
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You are only thinking of one idea of the Christian god. You ignore other religions.

...if you do not, then your "rights" extend only as far as you are able to defend them. animals cannot defend themselves against our weaponry, and hence we eat them.
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And yet, we are not allowed to kill newborn human children. That is considered murder, even though the children "cannot defend themselves against our weaponry".

This is a clear double-standard, wouldn't you say?
 
But what about the quality of life of the average cow? Cows are killed prematurely. In the case of veal, they are killed before their first birthday.

Many animals are also kept in appalling conditions. Witness factory farming of chickens, to take one example.
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True, but what about OUR quality of life. isn't it much less drugery to go hunting once in a while? Taking care of a herd of sheep or cows is a pain in the ass. It seems we are taking advantage of each other. Animal husbandry supports a larger human population than hunting and gathering, so natural selection favored it, even though the hunter-gatherer cultures that still exist spend a fraction of the time we do in food aquisition. Natural selection also favors domestiication from the point of view of the animal's gene pool, since they get protection from predators, guaranteed food supply, and can take advantage of human intelligence. I guess for evolution, quality of life is irrelevent. The quality of modern life is probably less than we enjoyed in the past, too, yet it seems inevitable.


If we are talking about the ethics of eating meat, perhaps we need to separate the subjects of domesticated and wild meat.
 
This is a clear double-standard, wouldn't you say?
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Standards always have a degree of contradiction. It's not OK to lust after a 17.5 year old, but OK when she turns 18; what really changes?
 
Standards always have a degree of contradiction. It's not OK to lust after a 17.5 year old, but OK when she turns 18; what really changes?
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This is an arbitrary line which is drawn. Ethics is not that simple. If everybody was equally capable of applying ethical principles, then each case could be fairly decided on its merits. But we don't do that. We enact general laws, which are meant to apply to a wide variety of cases. In the instance you measured, a line must be drawn somewhere, so one is drawn, somewhat arbitrarily, at age 18.

The fact that it is illegal for a 40 year old to have sex with the 17.5 year old does not mean it is also immoral. On the other hand, it might be immoral for the 40 year old to have sex with a particular 25 year old, but it is not illegal.
 
spidergoat:

I really don't want to repeat a discussion I have already had in depth several times on this forum.

If you're interested, take a look in the Ethics forum at the thread "Is eating meat morally wrong".
 
How? Raising cows as America does is deterimental to the environment. Each calorie of beef consumes takes about 10 calories of petroleum to produce, the runoff from fertilzer to grow all the grain to feed the cows is killing everything in the Gulf of Mexico, wiping out an entire ecosystem. Monocultural fields in the Midwest are unsustainable, as the synthetic fertilizers they use require enormous energy inputs. Current farming practics also require great amounts of water from underground reservoir that are drying up, since not nearly enough comes from the sky. Some places houses and towns literally sink into the earth as the aquifers are sucked dry.

Raising beef is an inefficient way of getting nutrients. The amount of grain it takes to grow one cow could feed 10 times as many people as that one cow could.
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Yes, but those people would suffer from malnourishment if they ate only grain. Additionally, the taste and texture of meat count for something - there is a psychological and cultural benefit to society in killing animals.

If domesticating livestock is that bad, we can kill them all right now, consume them, and begin hunting. But most people need meat.

It doesn't benefit animals. Why is human society so much more important to you?
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Because I'm a human.
 
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