peruvianskys said:
Animals don't need to develop art and philosophy to have the mental capacity necessary for suffering. Pigs, cows, sheep, goats, and even rats have the neurological functions that lead to pain being felt, just as you do.
As I said, quite a bit of a difference between self-awareness and the ability to feel pain. Just because the neurological signal is being sent and it causes a pre-programmed evolutionary reaction doesn't mean there's any sort of perception or consciousness that recognizes it, it's just like a computer that's programmed to respond when you type `poke'. But at this point we're just talking semantics, and before you yell at me more, yes I am against the suffering of animals. As I also said before, I would like my animals to suffer as little as possible before I eat them.
peruvianskys said:
I see no reason why the evolutionary health of our species should be considered more important than preventing the suffering of another species, just like the protection and propagation of our race should not take precedence over the rights of another race. There's no logical or ethical reason to assume that the fate of humans somehow outweighs the fate of the other 99.999% of the Earth unless you subscribe to a frankly primitive tribalism.
Um ... because we need to, you know, eat food. Otherwise we die. I think our lives are more important than some cows being slightly uncomfortable. I'm not saying humans are somehow more important than other species. I'm saying that the evolutionary health of any species comes first on that species' list of priorities. In evolution, the first priority is the survival of your own species. This priority helps your species and others evolve and become better suited to the surroundings. That's how natural selection works. Those are the rules that we and all other life on this planet follow. I'm not saying anything about how things `should' be, I'm just explaining why I wouldn't eat a baby. Cannibalism is bad for the species, so evolution has created in me a drive to not eat humans. That's all I mean.
peruvianskys said:
This argument is so disingenuous. Obviously, or at least hopefully, you make moral distinctions that prevent you from raping or murdering or whatever for pleasure; the appeal to nihilism and moral emptiness only works if you demonstrate that you live by that philosophy in your daily life and I'm very doubtful that you do. I'm sure you want to reduce suffering, as most human beings do, and I doubt that you can honestly suggest to me that the consumption of meat has nothing to do with causing another animal to suffer. So if you want to be some kind of heartless evil person and rape and murder and disregard the health and safety of other living things, then there are way bigger problems than your consumption of meat; but if you're a decent person who wants to lessen the suffering in the world, as most people are, then you don't really have a reasonable excuse to continue doing something that causes so much of it.
I practice empathy. This means that, if I have something in common with something else, I treat it the way I would want to be treated in that respect. Yes, animals do feel pain in the same way I do. So I am against the suffering of animals. As I've stated previously, I would very much enjoy it if the animals I eat experienced as little pain as possible during their lives. I would very much enjoy it if people didn't attack their pets. I would very much enjoy it if people didn't shoot things for sport. But that doesn't have anything to do with my eating pork.
I think I've finally figured out where our difference of perspective lies. You seem to be under the impression that my eating of animals directly contributes to their suffering when it actually doesn't. The animal is already dead when I eat it, it can't feel a thing. Yes, it does suffer some before it gets killed and chopped up, but that's not due to the fact that it's going to be used for food, it's due to the fact that people are morons and poke them with pitchforks and shit. Which, as I said, is a behavior I would rather minimize. The argument I was making was that animals aren't sentient. They have no lives to get back to, no friends or family to love, no hobbies to attend to, no questions to answer, the way they think about the world is completely different than the way we do. In that respect, they're so much more like plants: nothing more than machines, created through the evolutionary process to react to situations in such a way as to keep their species' going. And I can't empathize with that, so I have no problems with treating them how I want in that respect. You don't either. You eat plants, which act in the same exact way. You probably aren't against people owning pets, which, if you disagree with what I've said, basically means that you're for slavery. Owning a pet is using animals for entertainment purposes, regardless of what they `want'. It's no different from raising an animal to be food. Their fates are sealed, and they can't do anything about it. And that's okay, because they aren't self-aware. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. But by now I'm just repeating myself, I've already said all this in my first post ...