I'm a vegan and I come in peace...

Gardenia

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Yeah, I don't really give two shits about animals. Having worked with cattle, sheep and pigs, I can say that none of them are deserving of my respect. (Perhaps except for the pig, at least it has the common decency to not poop directly where it's eating.)
Well done on being the first vegan I have seen with a decently constructed argument though.
 

AndyFromMonday

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evilthecat said:
You seem to have moved past the definition I would use
Your definitions were wrong.

evilthecat said:
That's cool, I'm just not sure from what you've said what you think that quality is.
Read this sentence again and bask in your inability to distinguish humans from animals.



evilthecat said:
As I've already said, none of this is about 'consciousness', it's about identity/ego formation. Support your original point (that only human beings are capable of suffering) or don't.
I already have. Animals are capable of pain, not suffering. There's a difference.

evilthecat said:
Your point still doesn't stand.
Yeah it does. Your ego won't let you admit it though.
 

remnant_phoenix

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Cadmium Magenta said:
...we are not animals.
Biologically speaking, we are. On what grounds do you claim that we are something more than animals? Our ability to reason, be self-aware, and have concepts of morality? As far as science can predict, those things are simply side effects of having a highly developed brain, and throughout time we have socially invented concepts of ethics and morality, concepts which have no objective or scientific value. In terms of hard science, there is no reason why we "should" operate on a level that is greater than that of other animals. Therefore, if other animals (even omnivores such as bears and dogs) will kill each other for food, there is no objective reason as to why we shouldn't as well. Scientifically, your logic has no ground.

Now, if you're approaching this from a spiritual perspective, yes, most spiritual paths advocate the idea that human beings exist on a level that is set apart from animals. Approached from this angle, you could argue that "killing animals for food when we don't NEED to" is morally wrong, assuming that that is what your spiritual beliefs dictate. The problem here is that someone accepting your stance of "killing animals for food is immoral" would be dependent on that person accepting your spiritual standards of morality first.

Either way, your argument is shot in the foot right out of the gate.
 

winter2

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Oct 10, 2009
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So... it's immoral to eat meat? HAHAHAHHAHAA! GOOD ONE CHIEF!! TELL US ANOTHER ONE!!!

WHOOOOOOOO!!!

Seriously.. good joke. Tell us more please.
 

Skiisk

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I know a lot of vegans, but I have never met a healthy looking one. That's pretty much the only reason I need for eating meat, but there are other reasons.

First of all, meat is delicious. I also eat vegetables and fruits and whatnot, and while they are also delicious in their own way, I would choose a steak over a carrot at any given day, any given moment.

Second, nothing I can do about how pigs are treated. I don't have that much money or power. I'm just one dude, and while that is a bad way of thinking, it's also true. I can stop eating meat right now, and it will change absolutely nothing, except make me miserable

Third, if the roles were reversed, do you really think animals would give a rats ass about your well being? If you give them the chance, animals will steal and eat your baby in a heartbeat. A house dog would eat your child in a heartbeat, if given the chance.

The first reason is however the most important one. I love meat. I love it so freakin' much I can't live a single day without stuffing my face with some delicious dead animal. Eat grass if you want to, I don't care. But for fucks sakes stop shouting it from the rooftops.

Oh yeah, and humans are also animals. I don't see a problem with an animal eating a weaker animal. That is how nature works.
 

Irony's Acolyte

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A Vegan? Quick, someone grab him! We're having ourselves a vegan dinner tonight!

No, but seriously, that's cool. I don't have problems with vegans or vegetarians (though I shake my head at things like tofurky). Still, I have no problem with the killing and harvesting of animals for resources. That's not to say I'm fine with some practices of certain businesses when it comes to animals, but I'm not against eating animal products or using them for other things. Same thing with animal testing. Animals kill and devour each other all the time, and being omnivorous, it's obvious we were built to do the same. And when it's the life of an animal over the life of a human, guess which one I'm picking nearly every time?

And when did animals have liberty? Treating them like they're the same as human beings and should be treated as such is degrading to many people. When a species starts protesting over being slaughtered for food and clothing, then I'll reconsider. But for now they seem content to live a predator free, food-plentiful life.

And if you're going to go with 'depriving a life', why eat plants? They're alive too. Are they suddenly unimportant because they can't speak to you?

All just because we don't have to, doesn't mean we can't.
 

Terminal Blue

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AndyFromMonday said:
Your definitions were wrong.
Oh really..

Well, it would be nice if I could hear the right definition so I can stand corrected. But I suspect you're still not going to give it to me, so I'll have to remain in eternal ignorance.

AndyFromMonday said:
Read this sentence again and bask in your inability to distinguish humans from animals.
Slow down..

You used a word, 'consciousness'. I asked you what you think it means.

I'm not questioning whether it's possible to distinguish humans and animals, I'm asking how you are doing it in this particular context. Surely that's not so difficult, is it?

AndyFromMonday said:
I already have. Animals are capable of pain, not suffering. There's a difference.
Let's be more specific. They're different, but they're also connected. Suffering is the experience of pain, whether physical or emotional. We measure suffering by observing a pain or distress response.

So, if an animal can feel pain, can display a distress response to pain and can exhibit a learned distress response even when the pain is gone how do you know it's not suffering?

If a human displays a distress response to pain, how do you know that it is suffering?

How do you measure suffering as a separate thing to pain?

AndyFromMonday said:
Yeah it does. Your ego won't let you admit it though.
I'm sorry.. this would be your point that you're more likely to go to prison for beating your dog than beating your child.

I'd like some qualification on that. Where, and by what evidence?
 

Spineyguy

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The self-elevation of humans above other animals has largely emerged from religious ideas about creation, because we see ourselves as exempt from many of the rules which govern the animal kingdom.

I believe that there is very little to distinguish humanity from any other species on this planet; we kill, we die, we eat, we starve, we fight over territory, so on and so forth. However, mankind has set itself apart largely through the development of language and the ability to learn from the mistakes of others, not just our own.

So I have no qualms about eating meat, or wearing fur or leather, I don't care that many of the animals that we keep in captivity are mistreated, and I certainly don't mind the odd spot of violence; in fact, I'm quite partial.

I can understand why someone who doesn't share my faintly malevolent attitude might think that the exploitation of animals is distasteful, but the way in which religious morality has infiltrated even our diets is just ridiculous. Ethics are an illusion used to make stupid people fall in line, the truth is that the laws made by our ancestors, very early concepts about not killing and keeping your hands to yourself, exist because they are a good way of running a successful society. We don't need to be told that murder is bad, because anyone with a brain-stem can see that if everyone just killed whoever they wanted it'd happen to them soon enough. So, by the same principle, eating meat that has been reared specially for consumption can not been considered a bad thing, it supports farmers, packers, haulage companies, shops, countless humans have their lives improved by the livestock and the people eating it. Yes, some cows die in the process. Yes, some farms harm their livestock. But if looked at from a rational, utilitarian perspective, the benefits of the meat and hide industries far outweigh costs.

If you don't want to hurt the poor cows then that's fine, just leave it to the rest of us. Veganism can continue to provide people with a sense of superiority for as long as we have mouths to feed. The problem, as with anything, is the minority who try to force their views on others. Stop doing that and no-one will have a problem with you. Going to a dinner party and asking 'Has the meat been sourced locally? Is it free-range? Have the chickens been provided with silk pillows on which to lay their eggs?' is just asking for trouble.
 

minuialear

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Vampire cat said:
Animals are not like humans. For example, a chicken does not care if it lives to tomorrow... It does not concern itself with carrying on it's race in a concious way.
Have you learned how to communicate with chickens and have you learned through this magical ability that they honestly don't care about living? Just because you don't understand what an animal's thinking and just because the animal isn't wearing business casual and discussing stocks with its fellow chickens doesn't mean it's incapable of thinking about its life or desires. Scientists are continuing to learn just how sophisticated a lot of species we thought were dumb actually are, because we're learning to accept the fact that intelligence can't only be defined by what humans do and how humans speak, etc. Just sayin'.

evilthecat said:
Some vegans need regular vitamin B12 injections, for example, because their digestive systems simply don't absorb enough of it from sources besides meat. The majority might not, but if the people who do need them try to live without them they can become very sick.

Uncritically adopting a vegan diet can also cause muscle atrophy and ultimately potentially serious complications like heart attacks, I know this falls under the 'thinking about what nutrients we need' banner, but do you honestly think most people are capable of that or should indeed be forced to do it? It's not easy, people have different nutritional needs and unless you're a trained nutritionist you often won't know if you're missing something important.
I agreed with you up until the point where you said "do you honestly think most people are capable of that or should indeed be forced to do it." Everyone ought to be paying attention to what they eat anyway, whether they're vegan or not. Uncritically adopting a vegan diet may cause anemia and depression/memory loss; uncritically eating a diet including red meat can cause serious complications such as heart attacks, diabetes, hormonal diseases, and cancer. Uncritically eating any sort of diet can a multitude of serious health problems; the only reason people seem to make such a big deal out of the vegan issues (which for most people is as easy to take care of as it is to make sure your steak meals aren't giving you cancer or to take a pill for lactose intolerance/acid/indigestion/etc) is because they assume watching one's diet is something that omnivores don't need to do, which is a dangerous fallacy.


OT: I think arguments saying not everyone can be vegetarian/vegan because not everyone can eat/sustain themselves on certain foods that are currently pretty important for the diet are valid (if you're allergic to soy and gluten you're pretty hosed in terms of eating a healthy vegan diet that consists of more than salads, for example). But I don't think arguments that "If everyone ate like a vegetarian/vegan, there would definitely be more problems (e.g., everyone would be less healthy, we'd kill more animals etc)" are, because they ignore the existence and/or emergence of several technologies (lab meat, urban gardening, fortifying foods, sustainable farming, etc) that would all but eradicate most of the issues people say they have with not killing animals for food. I think for a lot of people the real issue is that they like convenience (which is somewhat fair), and want to choose the option that appears more convenient (i.e., the option that appears to require less fuss about what to eat).

I'm starting to think it'd be beneficial to raise more kids as vegetarians; not in order to breed a generation of vegetarians, but just because eating an "abnormal" diet causes people to think about what they're eating more often, which is something everyone (meat eater or not) needs to be doing on a regular basis. Omnivores (in Europe/US/Canada, at least) who were raised vegetarian tend to be more intelligent about their diets than omnivores who were never taught a sustainable diet that didn't include meat, based on my experience. (I say Europe/US/Canada because there are millions of people in India, for example, who are vegetarian, and while Indian food by nature is pretty healthy and gets the job done, I think that's more due to an organic evolution of cuisine than cause they're concerned with being health nuts, like people often are in the more Western cultures.)
 

AndyFromMonday

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evilthecat said:
Well, it would be nice if I could hear the right definition so I can stand corrected. But I suspect you're still not going to give it to me, so I'll have to remain in eternal ignorance.
I already provided them. You ignored that post.


evilthecat said:
I'm not questioning whether it's possible to distinguish humans and animals, I'm asking how you are doing it in this particular context. Surely that's not so difficult, is it?.
Look over my previous posts. There's a distinct difference between animal and human not related to biology.

evilthecat said:
Let's be more specific. They're different, but they're also connected. Suffering is the experience of pain, whether physical or emotional. We measure suffering by observing a pain or distress response.
Except they're not. Pain is an immediate response to an outside stimuli considered harmful by the brain. Suffering is psychological by nature and only beings who are conscious can suffer.

evilthecat said:
I'm sorry.. this would be your point that you're more likely to go to prison for beating your dog than beating your child.

I'd like some qualification on that. Where, and by what evidence?
Spanking is socially acceptable. Beating animals isn't.
 

Pandabearparade

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Cadmium Magenta said:
That's true, but we are not animals.
We are animals, just animals with significantly higher reasoning abilities.

So why do we think it's okay to deprive an entire species of their liberty and kill them for their flesh?
I have a counter-question: What happens to those herds of cows the moment humanity goes full-vegan and stops using their meat and milk? Many would be eaten by large predators, but most would just die of starvation.

They aren't a natural product of any environment, the mighty aurochs they stem from (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs) has been extinct for centuries. Cows depend on humans for their survival as a species just as much as humans depend upon cows for delicious, delicious hamburgers.

So if you love cows, go eat a burger.
 

FolkLikePanda

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Were animals and some other animals eat other animals, why should we be any different to other animals other than the reason we have a conscience.
 

MisterDyslexo

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First of all, its not feasible for everyone. If you don't recognize that there's well over two billion people for which a vegan or vegetarian diet is either impossible or infeasible. Now take in the extra costs people will take in to feed themselves with the proper amount of nutrition (my family is on the cusp of lower class and middle class, living vegan in this area would probably put us over). Yes, yes, I know how much food is made every year, I know how much is thrown away. Unless to feed them you want to turn the world communist (which wouldn't last very long) it won't happen (mostly because communism is as feasible as anarchistic capitalism), you can't feed everybody like that.

Secondly, we humans are animals. We have the functions as any other animal, so why should we be excluded from that? Because of our higher functioning intelligence? Our higher function gives us dominance though, its evolution. And guess what, if we didn't exert our evolutionary dominance, another species would supersede us, whether through intelligence or force. Since we'd no longer be feeding off of them, it'd most likely be that force is more favourable. Over time, force would become more valued in the evolutionary process, and humans, potentially, could no longer be at the top. Don't say it couldn't happen, because I hear from every single vegan I've met that we shouldn't interfere with the lives of animals.

Its massively hypocritical to treat animals better than humans. Its not just hypocritical in most moral views, but its just not how we're wired. We are animals, period, and we have instinct. It will never happen. It goes too far against human nature. We're wired to generally value humans over other animals. Nevermind again, the sheer hypocrisy of putting a lesser species on a higher pedestal than us. Animal welfare groups mostly tend to treat animals as more than human beings (PETA with their support of their arsonist buddy-pal, Animal Liberation Front). And lets ignore the hypocrisy of those groups themselves, like how PETA euthanizes over 90% of the animals they take in. Involuntary euthanasia, aka murder. Its not gonna happen, and if you're a Darwinist, you know it.
 

DeltaEdge

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What about the plants? Plants are even more defenseless than the poor little defenseless animals (who would most likely eat you without any hesitation if they were hungry and presented with the opportunity) and they are stationary and unable to run away. They are living beings as well. If I chose not to eat animals because they are living breathing organisms and by eating them because I am conscientiously choosing to kill them and devour them, then I may as well starve myself because plants are living beings too. If animals were sentient, they would likely still eat each other as well. Just because they have morals, doesn't mean that they are any less hungry. For humans, up until recently, it wasn't even possible to live healthily without killing and eating animals. It was a necessity then, and it is only thanks to current technology that we even have the choice of not relying on animals for our nutrition. Although I do believe that it is wrong to kill an animal just for its fur or for a certain body part or for sport and then just discard the corpse without even using it, just killing the animal to eat with I don't have any problem with. I can't say that I completely approve of wiping out massive amounts of a population to feed people with a taste for that specific animal, but that's the price that we pay to be able to go to a grocery store and pick up 5 cans of sardines from where ever they are caught. When we eventually drive the animal populations to the brink, we will as a human race, either die off, or begin to eat more conservatively and end mass hunting off animals. Although it is probably far off, I think that someday that will happen and then things will change. Taking too much from the environment is a problem, but in time we will either learn from it, or die from it. But yeah, so to sum it up, I don't think that is is morally wrong to kill animals and eat them. Although over killing them is a problem, we are still in the same boat as them. No matter how many morals we possess, we still need to eat to survive. I think that if it is wrong to kill animals, then it is wrong to kill plants too because they are both living beings. But I don't particularly approve of: over killing them, killing for sport, animal torture and cruelty, or killing them and only taking specific parts then discarding the rest. As for the scientific testing of animals, if it's for the purpose of creating medicine that saves lives, then I can't really say I completely disapprove. But if they are just doing it in the name of science to see how long after the injection it takes for all of the animals legs to blow up and it's head falls off, then I can't say that I approve. But everyone is entitled to their opinion, and this is mine.