Why It's Ethical to Eat Meat (Topic)

What if we genetically engineered animals that couldn't feel pain?

Is this ethical: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/02/headless-chicken-solution/

None.

ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

If you did that, you might as well make meat in a lab and save yourself the time and money spent on raising animals.

Quote from

Vrael

Quote from

TiKels

To really have any sort of discussion you have to define ethics.

Quote from name:EzDay

your whole post

Quote from

rockz

It's not ethical to eat meat.

Quote from name:everyone else who brings up this crap

It's stupid to revert back to the "DURR DESCARTE ASSUMED NOTHING SO WE SHOULD ASSUME ETHICS DONT EXIST DURR DURR" that a lot of you are doing when you're talking about an issue like this. You aren't cool or clever for doing it, it's been done a million times by a million idiots. What would be cool and possibly clever, is to address the situation in a respectable, reasonable manner, since you see that so little on the internet. We live in a society which has ethics; it's wrong to cause pain and suffering. Animals can feel pain because they have a central nervous system which was designed to feel pain, plants do not. This is why there's a question of whether or not its bad to kill and eat animals where there really is no question about whether killing plants is bad, we have no evidence whatsoever that plants can feel pain. It's obvious from simple observation that the overwhelming majority of non-human animal species do not share in our intelligence. They lack some crucial self-awareness that humans have. As long as animals lack that special something we humans have, I dont find anything wrong with causing them pain just like I dont feel like killing plants is bad. Sure I think we should treat them with respect as an extension of the idea that we should treat everything with respect, but if some cows gotta die for my burger, no worries from me.

First- You make it sound like I know who Descartes is beyond his name. I actually could not attribute a single quote, speech, or work to him.
Second- If you read I didn't say ethics don't exist, I said that you can't say what is unethical unless you define ethics.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 5 2012, 2:09 am by TiKels.

"If a topic that clearly interest noone needs to be closed to underline the "we don't want this here" message, is up to debate."

-NudeRaider

Quote from

Lanthanide

What if we genetically engineered animals that couldn't feel pain?

Is this ethical: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/02/headless-chicken-solution/

I think we'd need to tackle the ethical issue of genetical engineering in general first; where do we draw the line before we're playing God?

Quote from

TiKels

First- You make it sound like I know who Descartes is beyond his name. I actually could not attribute a single quote, speech, or work to him.
Second- If you read I didn't say ethics don't exist, I said that you can't say what is unethical unless you define ethics.

Right, and I'm saying that you're being annoying and taking the topic off-topic. Also the post wasn't directed at just you.

Descartes's most famous line is "I think therefore I am." Just so you know, you do know him.
Also if you've ever had a math class and used x,y coordinates. "Cartesian" coordinates come from Descartes.

None.

she/her

What's wrong with playing God?

Quote from

Lanthanide

Is this ethical: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/02/headless-chicken-solution/

That's super ethical. Looks like the future to me.

Quote from

Sand Wraith

What's wrong with playing God?

This. I don't remember agreeing to any sort of societal contract which stipulates we must purposely subvert our own advancement for the sake of stroking some deity's ego which I similarly didn't agree to appease. Not sure about anyone else.

Quote from

Azrael

This. I don't remember agreeing to any sort of societal contract which stipulates we must purposely subvert our own advancement for the sake of stroking some deity's ego which I similarly didn't agree to appease. Not sure about anyone else.

Please excuse the fact I forgot no one on SEN** is capable of responding to an actual idea, and needs everything spelled out explicitly and in terms which agree with their particular ideology. So silly of me.

Quote from

Vrael

I think we'd need to tackle the ethical issue of genetical engineering in general first; where do we draw the line before we're playing God?

I think we'd need to tackle the ethical issue of genetical engineering in general first; when such technology becomes available how do we determine safe ways to use it? How do we determine for example, whether genetically engineering super strong super smart children is good for society? Whether such advances might result in super good or super bad consequences for humanity?

**Besides Moose, Jaff, and JaBoK

Edit:

Quote

What's wrong with playing God?

Armies of super strong super smart children rise up and take over the earth, killing off their inferior human creators.

None.

she/her

Then we weren't playing God, because if we were, we'd have the capabilities of destroying them effortlessly.

What could go wrong with brainless chickens?

EDIT:

Famous last words.

There's nothing unethical about eating animals. Animals eat other animals, sometimes in ways more gruesome than us. Or they just kill for fun. Like cats for instance.

None.

Quote from

MillenniumArmy

Animals eat other animals, sometimes in ways more gruesome than us.

This may be true, but doesn't serve as justification for humans eating animals in any way, as it appears you intend it to. It's an appeal to the masses, that because animals do it, it's a popular action and therefore is okay for us to do it. I have a new respect for cats. Any animal that kills squirrels gets +1 respect from Vrael.

Quote from

Sand Wraith

Then we weren't playing God, because if we were, we'd have the capabilities of destroying them effortlessly.

When you played cowboys and indians as a kid did that make you a real cowboy or a real indian? When you fart around playing as a character in skyrim does that make you that character? If we were God we wouldn't be playing God. Just watch what happens when brainless chickens get eaten by tail-less six-legged cows which then mutate into a super species that eradicates all trees on the planet, forcing a small portion of mankind to escape to mars and rebuild the human race.

None.

she/her

OKAY

IM DONE

I NO LONGER CARE ABOUT THIS THREAD

(BTW: what to do with the animals that people have raised after we all become vegetarians)

Still Napping

We wouldn't have to play God if things were done properly the first time around.

None.

The argument for animal-eaters:
God or nature intended humans to eat meat. If we were supposed to be vegetarians, we would have the digestive system of a herbivore.

Quote from

Lanthanide

Maybe [eating meat might be necessary] if you're in the middle of nowhere and there is a cow next to you, [so] you kill it and eat it.

Now in a case like New Zealand where almost all of our cows eat grass (which is inedible for humans) it is quite different, except that you could in many cases replace the grass with wheat or corn and still be more productive.

Does that mean that it is ethical to eat meat in west Texas, where the land is suitable for grass, but not corn? Furthermore, is it unethical to eat the same cows after they have been transported merely a hundred miles east?

Quote from

Sacrieur

I mean we don't feel bad about chomping on plants just because they're living. Hell, plants don't even feel pain.

If you define "pain" as "a signal of present or impending tissue damage affected by a harmful stimulus", then plants do feel pain. I'm sure plant cells don't like being cut or separated from their roots. If you define "pain" as a response from the type of nervous system only found in animals, then no.

Of course, if eating animals is unethical, we could simply accept the fact that humans are always going to be somewhat unethical, and eat animals anyway.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 6 2012, 3:36 am by rayNimagi.

Win by luck, lose by skill.

Still Napping

Quote

If you define "pain" as "a signal of present or impending tissue damage affected by a harmful stimulus", then plants do feel pain. I'm sure plant cells don't like being cut or separated from their roots. If you define "pain" as a response from the type of nervous system only found in animals, then no.

Why would I define pain that way? Pain is a sensation. You need a CNS to "feel" anything. Plants don't have a CNS.

None.

Quote from

rayNimagi

Quote from

Lanthanide

Maybe [eating meat is ethical] if you're in the middle of nowhere and there is a cow next to you, [so] you kill it and eat it.

Now in a case like New Zealand where almost all of our cows eat grass (which is inedible for humans) it is quite different, except that you could in many cases replace the grass with wheat or corn and still be more productive.

Does that mean that it is ethical to eat meat in west Texas, where the land is suitable for grass, but not corn? Furthermore, is it unethical to eat the same cows after they have been transported merely a hundred miles east?

At no point have I been talking about ethics. It was simply one of the arguments jjf used, that it was ethical to feed a starving family a cow. I'm pointing out that if you're really concerned with feeding a starving family, it's far more efficient to feed them the corn that would have feed the cow in the first place.

Someone else brought up some bizarre point about not being able to grow corn on a tundra, which as far as I can tell has nothing to do with anything that anyone has said and was nonsensical anyway.

None.

she/her

I was trying to point out that in certain environments, it's much more feasible to live off of animals than plants.

Quote from

Sand Wraith

I was trying to point out that in certain environments, it's much more feasible to live off of animals than plants.

Except you didn't, because animals have to eat things too.

None.

she/her

Quote from

Lanthanide

Quote from

Sand Wraith

I was trying to point out that in certain environments, it's much more feasible to live off of animals than plants.

Except you didn't, because animals have to eat things too.

because all plants in the tundra can be eaten by humans like bushes and moss

Quote from

Vrael

Quote from

TiKels

To really have any sort of discussion you have to define ethics.

Quote from name:EzDay

your whole post

Quote from

rockz

It's not ethical to eat meat.

Quote from name:everyone else who brings up this crap

It's stupid to revert back to the "DURR DESCARTE ASSUMED NOTHING SO WE SHOULD ASSUME ETHICS DONT EXIST DURR DURR" that a lot of you are doing when you're talking about an issue like this.
You aren't cool or clever for doing it, it's been done a million times by a million idiots. What would be cool and possibly clever, is to address the situation in a respectable, reasonable manner, since you see that so little on the internet.

I have no idea what any of what you just said is talking about.

I had a couple more paragraphs typed up but then I remembered that the very best I can usually hope for from similar posts is a page of discussion spent finding out that someone made an inappropriate assumption or that someone's using a word incorrectly, and judging by your posts here so far you'd be even less interested in that than most people.

So with that, I will point out that beyond as an indirect survey, this thread is mostly pretty pointless to begin with (Lanthanide provided a surprisingly interesting link, though, even if it's not going to get much in the way of good discussion), so the fact that this particular post is pretty pointless I don't care about.

None.

Quote from

Lanthanide

At no point have I been talking about ethics.

The title of the thread is "Why It's Ethical to Eat Meat", so I assumed you were. I've changed your quoted text to "Maybe [eating meat might be necessary] if you're in the middle of nowhere and there is a cow next to you, [so] you kill it and eat it."

Win by luck, lose by skill.