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Eating Meat =/= Cannibalism

SpeaksForTheTrees

Well-Known Member
A friend of mine, tonight, said that 'eating meat is no different to cannibalism.' She's a vegan. I tried to explain that comparing the eating of meat to the eating of humans is a little drastic, and that there are several very good scientific reasons why the comparison is a false one.

Has anyone else encountered this somewhat extreme view?
We eat creatures that are nearly equal to ourselves , even the victims of the holocaust entered the chambers in an orderly fashion . Eating living flesh was a conssesion , but not without consequence , God made man not to eat meat I wonder why the bible advises not to eat meat .
Just walk the streets of the city look at the people now all look and think like cow and bull . mooo
 

Flankerl

Well-Known Member
I think that the view merely makes the conceited assumption that human beings are somehow above nature, and not a part of it. We eat meat, so do other animals. We are all part of nature.

Sure we are all part of nature.

But if you drive it to the scientific extreme you, me, animals, vegetables, fruits, stones........... are all the product of what happened inside a star.
So please don't eat anything, ever.


15 years ago the Vegetarians were the weirdos but became moderate. Now the Vegans are the weirdos.
 

roger1440

I do stuff
A friend of mine, tonight, said that 'eating meat is no different to cannibalism.' She's a vegan. I tried to explain that comparing the eating of meat to the eating of humans is a little drastic, and that there are several very good scientific reasons why the comparison is a false one.

Has anyone else encountered this somewhat extreme view?
She is right. Just the other day I had an "old friend for dinner".
 

SpeaksForTheTrees

Well-Known Member
If was just me and you on a desert island.
After few nights you would bash my head while I sleep and eat my brains.
We only don't eat each other as is more palatable stuff on the menu
 

Erebus

Well-Known Member
A friend of mine, tonight, said that 'eating meat is no different to cannibalism.' She's a vegan. I tried to explain that comparing the eating of meat to the eating of humans is a little drastic, and that there are several very good scientific reasons why the comparison is a false one.

Has anyone else encountered this somewhat extreme view?

Some people have a way of making cannibalism seem much more attractive.
 

Quintessence

Consults with Trees
Staff member
Premium Member
Well the first begins with molecular biology. We are not pigs, cows, chickens, etc. We are humans. So only eating other humans counts as cannibalism. :D

The trouble with this line of thinking is that language doesn't have to be taken literally, and frequently isn't intended to be taken literally. As an example, we call things "wars" that are simply not wars - a war is an armed conflict between two nations, yet we poetically refer to things like a "war" on Christmas. Use of language is often poetic, and in cases like this, conveys values. Although humans are not the same species as other animals, rhetorically declaring eating the flesh of animals to be akin to cannibalism is an expression of our kinship with them, as well as strongly valuing our non-human relations. While I don't favor the rhetoric here myself most days, invoking Science!™ doesn't really prove it false given it's rhetorical, not literal.
 

Mycroft

Ministry of Serendipity
The trouble with this line of thinking is that language doesn't have to be taken literally, and frequently isn't intended to be taken literally. As an example, we call things "wars" that are simply not wars - a war is an armed conflict between two nations, yet we poetically refer to things like a "war" on Christmas. Use of language is often poetic, and in cases like this, conveys values. Although humans are not the same species as other animals, rhetorically declaring eating the flesh of animals to be akin to cannibalism is an expression of our kinship with them, as well as strongly valuing our non-human relations. While I don't favor the rhetoric here myself most days, invoking Science!™ doesn't really prove it false given it's rhetorical, not literal.


You do realise I wasn't being all that serious about it, right? :p

But I suppose if you consider all creatures upon the earth 'Earthlings' then yeah. But that's just Semantic Word Magic (As Korzybski would call it).
 

Mycroft

Ministry of Serendipity
I figured. :D

It's probably what the comment from those people merits... not taking it too seriously. :sweat:


My usual (joking to wind them up) response is that meat eaters are doing their bit for the environment. Without us, we'd be overrun with cows, and all that poopy methane will have a runaway effect on greenhouse gases!

Poopy Methane™
It comes out of your bum.
 
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