Yet again there is no need for you to talk so much in response to so little.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that if you talk enough you'll have said something worth saying.

Really? This belongs in Null.

I invite you to read my above posts. I have asked only one thing, for Az to back up his assertion as to the majority/minority opinions of people. That is all. This has nothing to do with me in the slightest. So it's ad hom.

I have fully articulated my ideas. If you would care to explain the redundancy in my response, by all means do so, though it may require that we move to a different forum, as such an explanation would begin to separate from the idea of empathy and how it relates to the ethicality of killing and eating animals.

They're disputing a statement not a logical argument. Azrael made a claim and Oh_Man is asking him for evidence of such a statement.

Whether or not Oh_Man can empathize is irrelevant.

Hello, rabid vegetarian animal rights activist here. I don't have any ill will towards those who eat meat, but this entire competition is just a tad ridiculous. It's definitely something to bitch about on how vegetarians can be outspoken and self - righteous at times (I.E me) but you know, Trying to argue that eating meat is ethical when you consider the slaughter, the horrible practices, and even the crap they put into these things (Once I saw a report on how women were getting boobs at a smaller age due to factory farms injecting their chickens. Now, there's nothing wrong with boobs, but we probably should stop doing this shit before we find out this stuff also makes our dicks smaller.) the notion that it being 'ethical' becomes rather ridiculous.

Now, it makes me want to stab my self in the eyes for saying this but there's nothing wrong with meat. It's the cruelty that's involved which is worth bitching about. And I think animals not being treated horribly is something we can all universally agree. Trying to make up this nonsense about eating meat somehow 'being ethical' as if to implicate it's a morally righteous over vegetarianism is ridiculous. The entire notion its self just undermines animal rights in general. If you want to eat meat there's nothing wrong with that, but there is, however, something inherently wrong with being dishonest. This entire competition is probably just a few butt hurt guys that got annoyed from a few self - righteous vegetarians telling them that eating meat is bad and they decided to respond by trying to argue that indulging in eating meat - which requires no fucking sacrifice - is somehow more ethical. It's not. But you know, why do they do this just to piss off vegetarians when not all of them are like that? I mean, I can be self - righteous and outspoken, but I don't go around telling people that they shouldn't eat meat. I keep that shit to my self. In fact - here's the killer - I've been told that I should try eating meat and give it a shot. So - literally - there's not just vegetarians that go around preaching to others not to eat meat, but people who eat meat who preach about how wonderful it is.

If vegetarians get annoying with telling people what they can and can't eat than they should just be the better people. You know, as opposed to trying to argue that 'eating meat is ethical'. Seriously, this is a battle they're going to lose - badly. Vegetarians change their entire diets and certain aspects of their life as to not support an industry that unethically slaughters animals. Meanwhile we look at these people who try to argue that 'meat is ethical'. Lets see, they eat whatever they like without sacrifice, they don't need to change anything about their life to continue eating meat, and they promote an industry that performs unethical practices.

Gee, that didn't take too long. But the reason this particular gets to me is because becoming a vegetarian wasn't easy for me. Eating meat isn't ethical, it's relevant. For the time being there's nothing wrong with eating meat, because asking the world to not eat meat is just too much for now. It's for the greater good that we instead try to take one step at a time in making sure these animals are treated better and not making fragile justifications that eating meat is somehow ethical.

With all my rambling, I wish to finish off with saying that meat eaters: Don't be a dick about it, same goes for vegetarians. And please, do whatever you can to ease suffering of other creatures.

Here is a good video which people may find interesting it is a discussion between Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins about these issues.


OK, I actually think eating meat is unethical or at the very least should be avoided if possible but there my main problems I have to stop me from doing this are:
1. I enjoy the taste of meat so much!!
2. Meat especially the protein in it is important for my diet specifically for building muscle mass.
3. I have no idea how to structure a proper vegetarian diet and I would probably end up dying from some sort of nutrient deficiency.

If there was an easy way to fix these things I would probably stop eating meat. But now to my next questions...

What is it about eating meat that is immoral? I mean why are we so special, as humans? Basically all of the animal kingdom relies on eating meat. The carnivores are parasites on the herbivores and the herbivores are parasites on the plants, which get their energy from the sun and from dead animals in the ground. So really it seems all of the natural world is perfectly fine with eating each other - are we so arrogant that we think ourselves above this natural order?

And where are you drawing this line? I mean sure its OK to eat plants but not animals? But how are you drawing this line? For most I understand it to be the capacity to feel pain. But there are several animals that some argue don't even have the capacity to feel pain: eg. oysters. Is it OK to eat oysters then? What if you give animals painless deaths? Is it then OK to eat them because they don't feel pain? It seems to me that the line being drawn is arbitrary and not very well defined.

But at the end of the day we are killing SOME form of life in order to survive, whether it be plant or animal. Sure maybe one day we can bioengineer ourselves to be able to photosynthesise and thus not rely on killing lifeforms for survival, but in the mean-time we don't have much choice, and should just try and minimise the suffering of the lifeforms that we do have to kill to survive.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Oct 18 2012, 8:02 am by Oh_Man.

I vote we also execute self - absorbed douchebags like Lindsay Lohan, Palin, and other undesirables. Thereby making our lives better while simultaneously lowering the demand for meat. Uh, this insane comment is allowed in lite discussion, right?

There are so many other things that I could respond to, which I've already specified my position in regards to which, but this particular argument I've seen far too many times, and it just bugs me:
There are two reasonable answers I see.
a) we are above this "natural order". The moment we developed the ability to distinguish between "this is what instincts tell me to do" and "this is what is rationality deems the right thing to do", the moment we were able to recognize it at all. Because it is an entirely artificial construct; it is a behaviour which tends to emerge from our system, not one which should guide our system. From an ethical perspective, it is entirely arbitrary and meaningless, and ethics, by definition, define what we should do. (Of course, there's nothing stopping someone from defining a "natural is good" ethical theory, and I'm sure plenty of people have, but that brings up the question of "how do you define "natural"?", and in my experience, the answer to that question is going to be unsatisfying at best)
b) deliberate omnivorous vegetarianism is not, in fact, a defiance of the natural order - it is simply how the natural order manifests when something with a human-like psychology pops up in this environment.

Kinda an insane extremist tangent...its because conversations like this come up in while others are discussing eating a burger that I think that vegans/vegetarians get such a bad reputation.

I thought it was because of stereotypical vegetarians/vegans bitching about eating burgers that they were given a bad reputation. I always figured an insane extremist bitching about executing people kind of made them a lot more like a Vegan Magneto. A Vegneto if you will. I also thought that this was a creation of my own twisted mind, as opposed to a standard in vegetarian/vegan behaviour. At the absolute worst they slap paint on people - that's leagues beneath the awful dread of Vegneto.

"Vegneto"

No it isn't something all vegans believe, but I think vegans have a reputation to take things too far, and executing people based on a difference of lifestyle perpetuates that myth.

Kinda like the pokemon game or the mario game PETA released to show kids how games brainwash us into abusing animals, or really 90% of the copy PETA puts out.