Vegetarianism. How do you look at it ?

[SeekerOnThePath]

I loooove Indian food and luckily there are some great restaurants here as well!

Same, when I can afford it, I try to get some Indian at least once a week. A good curry is always tasty.

 

[Secret Chief]

atheistic arguments with no consequences in the afterlife for doing something most people in the world do can be justified.

Could you rephrase? (I nearly said "unpack" but then I'd have to kill myself).

 

[Valjean]

Yes, that was my point - vitamin D insufficiency, even if you eat meat, because of the latitude.
As to supplements, so many things are fortified it's not difficult to get everything you need without supplements. I would also say that, when balanced against all the horrendous negatives of the meat industry, for a vegetarian of any hue, taking a supplement is a tiny trivial matter.

The usual arguments for vegetarianism are religious, environmental or moral, not nutritional.

 

[Secret Chief]

The usual arguments for vegetarianism are religious, environmental or moral, not nutritional.

My experience is religion has played no part (hardly surprising considering the heathens I associate with) - people of my generation chose it for moral and nutritional reasons, and recent increases in awareness of the global consequences has added another reason, championed by younger vegetarians. YMMV.

 

[Vinayaka]

white flour, white sugar, white rice, and often too high of a proportion of it in the diet. It was an economic reason mostly, just as poor people use cheap pasta to get their kids to feel full. No whole wheat or healthier rice alternatives. Jaggery or honey has some nutritional value.

 

[stvdv]

Interesting though they may be, these aren't facts. They're religious doctrine.

There are many, many facts even within the religious doctrine

 

[Milton Platt]

Feel like sharing this video on vegetarianism.

Question: who out of three speakers in the video gave the most logical fact ?

Although I am not currently vegetarian, I see definite benefits if done correctly. There is also the bothersome issue of modern farming and animal husbandry.
However, I would point out that vegetarianism is not entirely harmless. Animal habitat is destroyed in order to farm those tasty veggies.

 

[Valjean]

Hmm... this seems to be at odds with many sources I can find on the subject with a few simple internet searches.

From one of the top returns searching "digestion of meat easier than vegetation":

Not sure how legitimate the site is/was (Purple Carrot) I looked a little further. In an article on everydayhealth.com, supposedly "debunking" digestion myths, they had this to say:
Which, quite honestly, seemed a little suspect if fat can slow the digestive process. Perhaps it isn't always the case? I am not quite sure.

I've seen those sources, too, but they leave out a lot, and get a lot wrong.

Animal protein is easily digested. Animal cell membranes are easily pierced. They have no cell walls.
Lipids are slower to digest, but not a problem if you have a functioning liver, biliary system and duodenum -- and keep in mind that plants produce lipids, as well.

Plant cells are encased in cellulose, which is essentially indigestable by human digestive systems. To overcome this we mechanically process our food. We crush or grind it manually, we repeat this dentally, and then we break any remaining cell walls by cooking -- a pre-digestive process that also pre-digests meat, making it easier, more efficient and quicker to digest.

Vegetarian animals don't cook, but have a variety of behavioral and anatomic tricks we lack, to process their food. Obligate carnivores don't need any of these tricks. They don't even have to chew their food

So, least contradictory to your point, at least one of these sites states the idea that meats and vegetation take the same amount of time to move through the system.

It's not so much a matter of transit speed, as of extractive efficiency vs metabolic cost.

Food processing strategies vary.Horses and cows eat the same thing, but cows have a complex alimentary system and are way more extractively efficient. Their metabolic cost is higher, eg: they use more calories to digest a given amount of grass, but the greater extractive efficiency -- how much actual nutrition they can get from a given amount of food per calorie expended -- is so much greater that the energy extracted makes the greater processing energy worth it.

We, of course, leave the cows in in the dust, with our manual processing and cooking, so we can get away with a short, carnivore -style alimentary canal even if we're veggies.

In the end, I am not even sure which moves "faster" through the system. Though this is hardly even relevant to the original point I made - which is the idea that it is probably best not to have meat lying around in your system for long periods of time, and that it is very likely less of a problem to have vegetation sitting for that SAME amount of time. Meat and vegetation could move through your digestive system at the exact same rate, but it wouldn't affect the relative levels of toxicity that either produces during a particular portion of time.

Food does not tarry in your system. There is no residual food sitting around in you rotting. If there is, you're in trouble. If you fast for a couple of days your system will be completely empty.

The short digestive tract of carnivores, and long, complicated digestive tract(s) of herbivores is a physical adaptation. And with the amount of time taken for both meat and vegetation to get through the system being what appears to be more or less equal, that would point to the impetus toward survival-supporting adaptations being for a different reason entirely than that "meat is easier to digest."

Transit times vary. Different animals use different behavioral and digestive strategies in food processing, it can get complicated, but the fact remains that animal cells are easier to break into, and usually more calorically dense than than plant cells.
Carniovores can get away with short, simple alimentary systems and lots of free time not eating.

 

[Valjean]

Yeah, life is short, why not enjoy it, what is the threat or harm or difference made overall by eating meat or not eating meat?

Carnivory has massive environmental effects.
Just off the top of my head: It's a major emitter of greenhouse gas, it utilizes a lot of land, compared to plant agriculture -- most of which, in the US, goes to feed animals anyway. It causes a lot of pollution -- a pig farm can produce as much sewage as a small city -- all unprocessed and prone to leaching/flowing into water tables and rivers. Outbreaks food poisoning in plants/veggies are often traced to source contamination from nearby animal farms. In the US, most antibiotics are used in animal agriculture, the residue in meat is a major cause of antibiotic resistance in pathogens. Raising food for animals takes a lot of space. It causes habitat loss, erosion, eutrification of waterways from fertilizers and pollution from pesticides. It drains water tables from irrigation.

 

[Valjean]

I wonder, and look forward to seeing more from all sides on the topic, most interesting to me would be people with spiritual arguments, since I can't fully grasp how atheistic arguments with no consequences in the afterlife for doing something most people in the world do can be justified.

OK. I'm an atheistic Hindu. Some spiritual/moral arguments, then:
Premise: Causing unnecessary pain or suffering to those capable of those emotions is immoral.

Moral development mirrors the extent of moral consideration to others.
Our natural, hard-wired moral universe extends only to our own "family," band, tribe, Dunbar group or status community. This was hard wired into our brains over millions of years living in small bands and competing with other hunter-gatherers. This is our innate psychological default.

Morality as an extension of moral consideration to outsiders, is a recent anthropological development, born of our recent settlement into permanent towns, population growth and need to interact with strangers without everybody killing each other.This morality is an artificial, learned morality.

Moral consideration of family and friends is the natural default. Extension to larger communities of Others -- neighbors; racial / linguistic / ethnic / religious outsiders; states, mankind, sentient-kind -- represent steps of increasing moral development.

It was once considered proper to exterminate, invade or enslave The Other. As we've become more cosmopolitan we've advanced morally. We've learned to extend moral consideration to outsiders. Highly developed people realize that moral consideration entails not causing harm, pain, fear or suffering to anyone capable of these -- regardless of ethnicity, nationality -- or species.

Racism was once considered acceptable. Now it's not.
Nationalism is currently considered OK, but this is becoming controversial.
Species-ism is the next obstacle to our moral development.

 

[Valjean]

There are many, many facts even within the religious doctrine

And much of what they said was not empirical fact.

 

[blü 2]

Question: who out of three speakers in the video gave the most logical fact ?

First, my dad was a country boy, and he grew up knowing as perfect truth that if the plate had no meat on it, that wasn't a meal. So he (and we) ate meat three times a day. When he had his first and major stroke, that changed a lot of things.

Second, the purported science in the video doesn't accord with what we know from research. We're carnivores and we can eat meat (though as the old Greeks taught, and my dad didn't notice in a timely way, avoid extremes). The personality of the chicken is not ingested with the omelette, nor the duck with the foie gras, nor the bull with the sirloin; those claims seem to be a psychological pitch.

Third, my daughter is a vegetarian. She's very intelligent, very successful, and knows her way round the cookbook. She doesn't advocate or argue about it. The just about universal reward for self-denial is an evolved instinctive sense of self-worth, and this may be another example of it, but I have no intention of raising the subject with her.

Fourth, cruelty to animals is wrong, but slaughter-house procedures in the first world have steadily improved. No escaping from the fact that killing is innate in eating meat, including chicken, though.

So I don't distinguish between the three speakers.

 

[DagonVarunaMitraApolloZan]

Could you rephrase? (I nearly said "unpack" but then I'd have to kill myself).

Yeah, that was confusing totally, what the hell was I saying? I think what I was trying to say was that most people in the world and throughout history have been meat eaters with no objection to eating meat, and for an atheist or non-religious person who believes there is nothing after this life (not that all atheists or non-religious people believe such, but many do) there should be no spiritual concerns about anything bad happening to them after they die from having eaten meat or killing animals to eat them. So basically, the concerns about eating meat for people who don't believe in any spiritual or metaphysical consequences for it are just the health issues for themselves, and the environmental issues for their own lives and future live (which also maybe shouldn't matter so much, though I think most non-religious people seem more concerned about the future of the environment and humanity than the very destructive religious people who seem to be ok burning everything and dying out, that is possibly because they believe that it doesn't matter, everything is going to be destroyed anyway, and that they will have another future existence or world to escape to). I am such a religious person, which (maybe surprisingly) makes people more nihilistic and uncaring than may be expected, and so the strongest arguments to convince a wack job religious nut like myself would be those that convince me of spiritual consequences, since I don't expect to live forever here in this Earth or to return to it, so it can be hard to convince me to be concerned about the long term picture, the future of humanity (who I also don't care much about), or really anything (nihilistically).

So what I was saying was: People have been eating meat (and doing other horrible things) since humans have been around, and those people are all gone and dead and according to maybe most atheists in general they have nothing to answer for their eating meat and it doesn't matter and also the animals suffering and dying doesn't even matter much because they just die too. As a religious person, I believe they will be back, but as a non-religious person I wouldn't believe they will be back and so who cares if they die or are killed or even suffer, because death is probably better than life for many animals anyway, it doesn't matter much if they wouldn't want it it even.

So the only arguments that can be made authentically from a non-religious perspective might be those which have to do with health issues and environmental issues which make a person concerned about their own life, the lives of other people they may care about, and the future of humanity (which doesn't seem to matter to me much once you're dead and not coming back).

The arguments from the spiritual point of view would be to threaten people that some bad spiritual effect or result will happen due to the killing of animals or eating the killed animals.

None of the arguments seem to work on certain religious people because they believe God has given them the right to kill and eat animals, that there is no negative spiritual consequence, that all their ancestors seemed to be doing it and all the world seemed to be doing it, that they don't expect to live forever so that the health benefits don't seem very important or even the environmental benefits which may seem so far away and difficult to see within our lifetime that it seems our sacrifice will contribute possibly nothing for no apparent reward except deprivation from something "everyone else is doing and has done" largely.

Religious people are destructive possibly because they are only constrained or inhibited if they have a genuine concern about some sort of after-death experience or state or return, and otherwise don't care, and only care about rewards or punishments. When their God has basically authorized something in their minds for them and their predecessors and mostly all across the world everyone is allowing at least some degree of killing animals and eating meat, it just seems unreasonable to them to deprive themselves of such with no apparent reward in sight or benefit for doing such (except maybe the admiration and approval of people they probably wouldn't like much anyway, vegetarians and vegans).

Also, I wonder what it is about the usually one family member out of many who refuses to eat, since they are causing difficulties by doing such by being different than the rest of the people in the household.

Is there any way to make a religious person, who expects to abandon this Earth and existence (and escape the consequences of at least some of their actions which may leave pollution on the Earth), believe that they should not eat meat?

 

[DagonVarunaMitraApolloZan]

OK. I'm an atheistic Hindu. Some spiritual/moral arguments, then:
Premise: Causing unnecessary pain or suffering to those capable of those emotions is immoral.

Moral development mirrors the extent of moral consideration to others.
Our natural, hard-wired moral universe extends only to our own "family," band, tribe, Dunbar group or status community. This was hard wired into our brains over millions of years living in small bands and competing with other hunter-gatherers. This is our innate psychological default.

Morality as an extension of moral consideration to outsiders, is a recent anthropological development, born of our recent settlement into permanent towns, population growth and need to interact with strangers without everybody killing each other.This morality is an artificial, learned morality.

Moral consideration of family and friends is the natural default. Extension to larger communities of Others -- neighbors; racial / linguistic / ethnic / religious outsiders; states, mankind, sentient-kind -- represent steps of increasing moral development.

It was once considered proper to exterminate, invade or enslave The Other. As we've become more cosmopolitan we've advanced morally. We've learned to extend moral consideration to outsiders. Highly developed people realize that moral consideration entails not causing harm, pain, fear or suffering to anyone capable of these -- regardless of ethnicity, nationality -- or species.

Racism was once considered acceptable. Now it's not.
Nationalism is currently considered OK, but this is becoming controversial.
Species-ism is the next obstacle to our moral development.

You are the second "Atheistic Hindu" I've heard of on this website, what is that exactly? Is it someone who believes in the Hindu writings in a scientific way which eliminates any theistic elements somehow or believes it is only talking symbolically about natural things which have no independent intelligence or power? Do you believe in any sort of life, reincarnation, consciousness or experience again after your death or the deaths of other things like animals? The vegetarianism in India or among Hindus seems to have come later on and was not even so complete until ultimately somewhat recently for many people, and people in India were eating meat, killing animals, for generations upon generations, and they are all dead now along with the animals they killed, what do you think has happened to them and what does it matter or what were the consequences for them in your opinion?

I think maybe someday there will be no more killing of animals, maybe we'll move on to cloned meat, and perfecting it after it might cause some problems somehow or something but get fixed.

 

[Valjean]

You are the second "Atheistic Hindu" I've heard of on this website, what is that exactly?

It's a movement. We're taking over -- but keep it under your hat....

Is it someone who believes in the Hindu writings in a scientific way which eliminates any theistic elements somehow or believes it is only talking symbolically about natural things which have no independent intelligence or power?

Both, I'd say.

Do you believe in any sort of life, reincarnation, consciousness or experience again after your death or the deaths of other things like animals?

Good question. Ultimately, or at some other level of reality?
"Life is but a dream" pretty much sums it up.

At an ultimate level I'm an Advaitin, a non-dualist -- a sort of pantheist or monist. I base this on a mystical experience and theoretical physics.
I'm of the metaphysical opinion that there exists a single, universal consciousness, tapped into by innumerable, but ultimately illusory, beings -- including animals -- and that the 'material world' -- objects, change, time &c, are illusions. Thus, "after" becomes problematic.

Think of waking-state life as a strip of film, on which we're currently only able to move in only one direction and experience one frame at a time.
At another level, though, there is no time or direction, no reason not to experience the whole strip at once, nor any reason we couldn't run the loop again, or that others couldn't be running it, too.

The vegetarianism in India or among Hindus seems to have come later on and was not even so complete until ultimately somewhat recently for many people, and people in India were eating meat, killing animals, for generations upon generations, and they are all dead now along with the animals they killed, what do you think has happened to them and what does it matter or what were the consequences for them in your opinion?

Yeah, those old guys loved their burgers, but popular Hinduism likes to pretend that nothing's changed, culturally.

Consequences?
You are them. I am them, and they're still and always will be living those lives; running those loops. Special relativity's real.
Re-incarnation is not life-after-life, it's a single, timeless consciousness/experience.

I think maybe someday there will be no more killing of animals, maybe we'll move on to cloned meat, and perfecting it after it might cause some problems somehow or something but get fixed.

One can only hope.

And now that I've thoroughly confused everyone but my co-conspiritor Aupmanyav....

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Torah certainly teaches kindness towards animals, but it also allows for the slaughter and eating of meat (including the eating of sacrifices).

Quite simply, we are evolved to be omnivores. Animal products are not our only source of nutrition (and really we need to be eating a lot more fruits and vegetables), but they are certainly part of our natural diet.

In addition, while there are some who can handle a vegetarian lifestyles, it doesn't work for everyone. Not everyone has the same kind of body -- there are actually several types of bodies that need very different diets.

Out of compassion, I have tried to be vegetarian twice in my life, and both times ended up being diabetic. My body just doesn't do well with rice and grains and legumes -- I don't process carbs well. I am one of those people that need a high protein, low carb diet. Again, I'm not saying everyone needs that diet. Just some people do. And you really can't have a high protein diet without animal products.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

Out of compassion, I have tried to be vegetarian twice in my life, and both times ended up being diabetic. My body just doesn't do well with rice and grains and legumes -- I don't process carbs well. I am one of those people that need a high protein, low carb diet. Again, I'm not saying everyone needs that diet. Just some people do. And you really can't have a high protein diet without animal products.

If you ever decide to try again, check out vegetarian keto. You don't need to follow strict ketosis guidelines but it gives you a lot of recipes for high protein, low carb vegetarian foods. There is also eco-Atkins which functions similarly too. You can still get all the protein your body needs from plant, egg and dairy sources without relying on high carb foods.

 

[Altfish]

But it is. Farrowing cages are necessary in factory farms, and factory farms are necessary, given our numbers and dietary habits.
Also immoral and environmental hazards -- but let's not talk about inconvenient truths....

I'm very happy to talk about them.
We buy our meat from a local butchers, his food is locally sourced, from ethical farms. We buy free range eggs.
OK we are middle class and can afford such premium items.

 

[Secret Chief]

Although I am not currently vegetarian, I see definite benefits if done correctly. There is also the bothersome issue of modern farming and animal husbandry.
However, I would point out that vegetarianism is not entirely harmless. Animal habitat is destroyed in order to farm those tasty veggies.

What is needed is less of us.

 

[Secret Chief]

Yeah, that was confusing totally, what the hell was I saying? I think what I was trying to say was that most people in the world and throughout history have been meat eaters with no objection to eating meat, and for an atheist or non-religious person who believes there is nothing after this life (not that all atheists or non-religious people believe such, but many do) there should be no spiritual concerns about anything bad happening to them after they die from having eaten meat or killing animals to eat them. So basically, the concerns about eating meat for people who don't believe in any spiritual or metaphysical consequences for it are just the health issues for themselves, and the environmental issues for their own lives and future live (which also maybe shouldn't matter so much, though I think most non-religious people seem more concerned about the future of the environment and humanity than the very destructive religious people who seem to be ok burning everything and dying out, that is possibly because they believe that it doesn't matter, everything is going to be destroyed anyway, and that they will have another future existence or world to escape to). I am such a religious person, which (maybe surprisingly) makes people more nihilistic and uncaring than may be expected, and so the strongest arguments to convince a wack job religious nut like myself would be those that convince me of spiritual consequences, since I don't expect to live forever here in this Earth or to return to it, so it can be hard to convince me to be concerned about the long term picture, the future of humanity (who I also don't care much about), or really anything (nihilistically).

So what I was saying was: People have been eating meat (and doing other horrible things) since humans have been around, and those people are all gone and dead and according to maybe most atheists in general they have nothing to answer for their eating meat and it doesn't matter and also the animals suffering and dying doesn't even matter much because they just die too. As a religious person, I believe they will be back, but as a non-religious person I wouldn't believe they will be back and so who cares if they die or are killed or even suffer, because death is probably better than life for many animals anyway, it doesn't matter much if they wouldn't want it it even.

So the only arguments that can be made authentically from a non-religious perspective might be those which have to do with health issues and environmental issues which make a person concerned about their own life, the lives of other people they may care about, and the future of humanity (which doesn't seem to matter to me much once you're dead and not coming back).

The arguments from the spiritual point of view would be to threaten people that some bad spiritual effect or result will happen due to the killing of animals or eating the killed animals.

None of the arguments seem to work on certain religious people because they believe God has given them the right to kill and eat animals, that there is no negative spiritual consequence, that all their ancestors seemed to be doing it and all the world seemed to be doing it, that they don't expect to live forever so that the health benefits don't seem very important or even the environmental benefits which may seem so far away and difficult to see within our lifetime that it seems our sacrifice will contribute possibly nothing for no apparent reward except deprivation from something "everyone else is doing and has done" largely.

Religious people are destructive possibly because they are only constrained or inhibited if they have a genuine concern about some sort of after-death experience or state or return, and otherwise don't care, and only care about rewards or punishments. When their God has basically authorized something in their minds for them and their predecessors and mostly all across the world everyone is allowing at least some degree of killing animals and eating meat, it just seems unreasonable to them to deprive themselves of such with no apparent reward in sight or benefit for doing such (except maybe the admiration and approval of people they probably wouldn't like much anyway, vegetarians and vegans).

Also, I wonder what it is about the usually one family member out of many who refuses to eat, since they are causing difficulties by doing such by being different than the rest of the people in the household.

Is there any way to make a religious person, who expects to abandon this Earth and existence (and escape the consequences of at least some of their actions which may leave pollution on the Earth), believe that they should not eat meat?

For me, it has nothing to do with anything following on from my death. It is simply this: I do not need to eat meat from a nutritional point of view, meat eating is a major driver of massive global problems and the animals killed are sentient beings.