Why I'd argue meat-eating in and of itself isn't immoral

[Jacksnyte]

Hi P2bg

Not really comparing them, linking them. My posts are a product of garbled rants. Hunting I particularly detest as I live in England and was brought up going to Hunt Balls. We have a fox family that lives in our garden why would anyone set a pack of dogs loose on them. But I can imagine they would set a pack of dogs loose on me too and the unemployed and homeless, old and disabled if they could still get away with it. These are people who join the army from school. Love boxing and shooting. And no meal is complete without some blood soaked meat. I put up with them as they protect me from gang violence and invasions. But if we were all a bit more peaceable it wouldn't hurt. It begins by stopping the daily holocaust of innocent souls estimated at around several billion a day. Quite appalling and completely unnecessary as far as our survival is concerned. Vegetarianism is one of the main answers to Global Warming and World Famine but like wind power is not acceptable to the ones who decide who to award nuclear contracts to and who should have enough money to eat.

Hunting for sport is a waste all the way around IMO! I despise trophy-hunters! The only type of hunting that should be practiced is hunting for food and other things that can be made from the thing hunted, and this done only when there is an overabundance of the animal being hunted.

 

[Jacksnyte]

Why stop at particular meats? You could eat each other when you die, and rats and cats when they die. Why kill them? they will die sometime - eat them then like the carrion you are. Or open your eyes to what you are really eating. It is not a nice lamb chop. it is the rib of a terrified and brutally killed creature - as cruel as any concentration camp could devise ready for the oven. An enlightened person would never eat meat. Why does the Dalai Lama when he knows it is wrong (see his book on ethics for the Millenium). Answer: he is not enlightened is he as he cannot resist temptation. Eat what you like - it is true.YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT.


By the way you can grow vegetables anywhere if you have fuel (wind will do) and water. It can be organic too. They have now devised places where thousands cows will stand in a tiny box for years on a big roundabout, milked on time and seemimgly content. How wicked is man? Hunting is killing for fun (some idea of sport!). We have vegetarian ancestors, it is in our genes. We have hunters in our genes too, and mass murderers. You need to separate them out to move on.

This is as lame as the whole "if we sanction homosexuality, then what's next? People marrying dogs, iguanas or monkeys?". Simply ridiculous!

 

[Valjean]

This is true to a point, Jacksnyte. All is change and there's no absolute ahimsa. But I'd argue that there is a qualitative difference between a self-aware organism capable of pain and suffering and capable of anticipating futurity, and a plant, for instance, with no nervous system and very questionable conscious awareness.

A cow has a degree of self-interest; a turnip -- not so much.

 

[Gaura Priya]

Slaughter a bunny rabbit in front of a daycare class.

Now slaughter an apple in front of them.

 

[no-body]

How about peoples like the traditional Inuit (Eskimos), who lived in a region where agriculture was impossible and had no more dietary choices than a tiger or wolf?
Would this be an example of a "time period and culture" where carnivory was proper?

See this would be acceptable. But going like "I have to eat this baconator because if not people around me will think I'm lame" is not.

Anyways my point was not to compare meat eating to the holocaust or anything I'm just saying we should try to view things with common sense. The slippery slope arguments here from vegans/vegetarians that slide into "you might as well be eating people" are equally as ridiculous.

 

[Jacksnyte]

This is true to a point, Jacksnyte. All is change and there's no absolute ahimsa. But I'd argue that there is a qualitative difference between a self-aware organism capable of pain and suffering and capable of anticipating futurity, and a plant, for instance, with no nervous system and very questionable conscious awareness.

A cow has a degree of self-interest; a turnip -- not so much.

I would say that a turnip just can't move as quickly as a cow. And plants also react to something very similar to pain stimulus, by the way.

 

[Valjean]

See this would be acceptable. But going like "I have to eat this baconator because if not people around me will think I'm lame" is not.

Anyways my point was not to compare meat eating to the holocaust or anything I'm just saying we should try to view things with common sense. The slippery slope arguments here from vegans/vegetarians that slide into "you might as well be eating people" are equally as ridiculous.

Why is it ridiculous? What are it's logical flaws?
Just asking.....

I would say that a turnip just can't move as quickly as a cow. And plants also react to something very similar to pain stimulus, by the way.

Fair point, Jacksnyte, but plants react to a lot of things. They also communicate. But there's a strong argument that this is an unconscious, automatic mechanism. Actual consciousness and capacity to suffer, I would say, is still very speculative.

 

[Penumbra]

The bottom line here, is that in order for a physical life-form to live, it has to take sustenance from another life-form. One MUST kill to live. One MUST take the life of another being to live. If you are vegetarian, or even vegan, you still have to kill to live. It has been proven again and again that plants respond to emotion, and have a form of consciousness. There is absolutely no way to live a life of literalistic ahimsa. It simply is not possible. What truly matters is one's INTENT. My Choctaw ancestors had the (IMO) correct idea. Treat all your food with the respect and reverence that the life force and consciousness in it deserves. Eat consciously.

I would say that a turnip just can't move as quickly as a cow. And plants also react to something very similar to pain stimulus, by the way.

One must kill to live, but one doesn't generally need to kill creatures with central nervous systems that can suffer.

Many plants have an ability to react to stimuli and interact in some ways with their environment, but that does not mean that they process suffering. There's no evolutionary reason for a plant to feel pain and they do not have the physical system necessary to do so.

 

[no-body]

Why is it ridiculous? What are it's logical flaws?
Just asking.....

An animal is not a person. If you take the sort of logic that says we shouldn't eat sentient beings to it's final conclusion, then eventually we won't eat anything.

Perhaps science will get us to a point where we can just clone pieces of tissue from plants and animals and eat that?

 

[Valjean]

My argument isn't a taxanomic one, no-body.
If we take it to its logical conclusion we'd simply be vegetarians.

 

[Jacksnyte]

Slaughter a bunny rabbit in front of a daycare class.

Now slaughter an apple in front of them.

The question is: were the children raised on a farm? I was raised around a farm, and I saw chickens and rabbits and squirrels and all sorts of cutsie little creatures slaughtered. It's all conditioning. If a child is used to seeing where their food comes from, it isn't such a shock. now, granted, slaughterhouses and corporate farms are horrible, awful places where the animals are tortured, but as I said before: there is such a thing as conscious eating.

 

[Koldo]

Squirrels?!?!

You monster!!

....

 

[Gaura Priya]

The question is: were the children raised on a farm? I was raised around a farm, and I saw chickens and rabbits and squirrels and all sorts of cutsie little creatures slaughtered. It's all conditioning. If a child is used to seeing where their food comes from, it isn't such a shock. now, granted, slaughterhouses and corporate farms are horrible, awful places where the animals are tortured, but as I said before: there is such a thing as conscious eating.

Enculturation aside, when a child is not exposed to both the slaughtering of the apple and the bunny rabbit, and when such occurs, there will definitely be a reaction with the children and the bunny rabbit more than the apple.

I do agree with you that conscious eating is an important part of one's education on where this food comes from. I still advise that vegetarianism can do the world good, if each person in the world reserved one day a week for simply vegetarian meals instead of meat-based ones.

I have also heard that a meat serving per plate would be the size of a standard deck of cards. Europeans apparently eat about more proper portions of meat than your average Canadian or American, that is for sure.

 

[Jacksnyte]

Enculturation aside, when a child is not exposed to both the slaughtering of the apple and the bunny rabbit, and when such occurs, there will definitely be a reaction with the children and the bunny rabbit more than the apple.

I do agree with you that conscious eating is an important part of one's education on where this food comes from. I still advise that vegetarianism can do the world good, if each person in the world reserved one day a week for simply vegetarian meals instead of meat-based ones.

I have also heard that a meat serving per plate would be the size of a standard deck of cards. Europeans apparently eat about more proper portions of meat than your average Canadian or American, that is for sure.

I tend to eat vegetarian sporadically myself simply because the majority of meat dishes one gets in Texas, though tasty, are incredibly unhealthy!

 

[Noaidi]

I don't eat meat because of the way many food animals are reared. That's the immoral aspect of it, for me. I can only be a healthy vegetarian because I have easy access to meat-alternatives.
The eating of meat isn't, of itself, immoral - it's natural.

 

[Rainbow Mage]

Kind of unrelated- I used to be a vegetarian myself and I have been a vegetarian off and on in my life. The reason it's not easy for me to always be is that many of my friends eat meat, and it's also Buddhist ethics not to reject food or gifts, within reason of course. Also, I am very poor, so I'm not likely to pass up a free meal when they offer it.

 

[no-body]

My argument isn't a taxanomic one, no-body.
If we take it to its logical conclusion we'd simply be vegetarians.

Perhaps. Like I said at the start of the thread, necessary evil and I consider myself a hypocrite on this subject since I cannot be troubled to eat animals that where slaughtered humanely or without chemicals.

My only real point was you aren't likely to crack the social, cultural, biological etc reasons for eating meat within even a thousand years especially if you use hogwash analogies like meat is murder.

 

[Valjean]

I don't eat meat because of the way many food animals are reared. That's the immoral aspect of it, for me. I can only be a healthy vegetarian because I have easy access to meat-alternatives.
The eating of meat isn't, of itself, immoral - it's natural.

That's sort of like condemning slavery only if the slaves are mistreated.
Natural doesn't equal moral.
If morality exists at all the principles underlying it must be applied consistently, regardless of species.

Perhaps. Like I said at the start of the thread, necessary evil and I consider myself a hypocrite on this subject since I cannot be troubled to eat animals that where slaughtered humanely or without chemicals.

My only real point was you aren't likely to crack the social, cultural, biological etc reasons for eating meat within even a thousand years especially if you use hogwash analogies like meat is murder.

Do you understand the reasoning behind the slogan, or is this an argument from annoyance?

 

[no-body]

Do you understand the reasoning behind the slogan, or is this an argument from annoyance?

I understand it. But do you understand why such reasoning and slogans will more likely get hundreds to stuff 50 pieces of bacon in their mouth everyday than to reach one person to become vegan/vegetarian?

 

[Gaura Priya]

Kind of unrelated- I used to be a vegetarian myself and I have been a vegetarian off and on in my life. The reason it's not easy for me to always be is that many of my friends eat meat, and it's also Buddhist ethics not to reject food or gifts, within reason of course. Also, I am very poor, so I'm not likely to pass up a free meal when they offer it.

On a second, unrelated note, I have been vegetarian for only six years, and I am hitting the poverty line with no job, etc. with most of my friends as meat-eaters.

I still haven't eaten meat even then. It ain't hard, especially when there are lots of people who are hungry and are vegetarian for religious reasons.

I mean, unless I got kicked out and ended up living on the streets, I'll eat whatever I can... but even then, there are vegetarian options in many places.

Mmm... veggie burger. :drool: I have also been craving soy bacon for a while now.