Animal cruelty

Pete:

In this case I think that the purpose in question isn't necessarily what we may think... I think that the eating of meat isn't necessarily for survival, health, or even taste, but more as an affirmation of a particular way of life. Is the preservation of a person's way of life a moral purpose? I don't know... but I do know that many people think it is.
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But most people also say they believe that the killing of innocent beings without just cause is not permissible. Is preservation of a way of life sufficient cause to kill other human beings who are not threatening you? Few would say it is, I think. And yet, non-human animals are treated differently. Why? What justifies that?

Am I right, James, that you would consider raising and killing a sentient animal to be immoral, even if that animal never suffered in any way?
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My argument is that raising a sentient animal simply in order to kill it for your own pleasure is immoral. The animal suffers by having its life ended.

Would it be permissible for me to "farm" human babies, raising them in such a way that all their needs were provided for, but with the proviso that I could kill them when they were, say, 15 years old? Suppose they led happy and healthy lives until the age of 15.

(It's worth mentioning here that the great majority of food animals are NOT raised in such comfort, but are raised in conditions that most people, if they knew about them, would deem as cruel and akin to torture.)

Together with the aforementioned purpose, I think that the morality of the act is determined by the value placed on non-human sentience; ie sentience and non-humanity are the key determinants, right?
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I am arguing that the line between human and non-human is ethically insignificant. At least, it ought to be. If no good reason can be given for treating different species differently in regard to a particular act, then they should not be treated differently.

We all agree that raising and killing plants for food is moral, because plants aren't sentient. We also agree that killing sentient humans is generally immoral.
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Correct.

Is setting a mousetrap in a grain barn a moral act? What about laying poison baits?
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It depends. Are the mice competing directly with humans, so as potentially to deprive humans of needed food? If so, it may be permissible, or even necessary, to kill them. If, on the other hand, they are harming nobody, then there would seem to be no justification for poisoning them.
 
In a book I'm reading right now by Arthur C. Clarke, called Childhood's End, an extremely advanced race of aliens comes to earth and turns earth into an almost paradise for a while. One of the few rules they impose on Earth men and women, under their enlightened rule, is that no man or woman is allowed to be cruel to any beast. No bull fights. No hunting, unless in self-defense or to provide sustenance for humans. No cruelty to animals. And they enforce this law. They are less adamant about human-on-human cruelty.

This, to me, is an interesting insight into the mind of one my favorite authors. I wonder if he was thinking that it is more detestable to be cruel to a less intelligent creature than it is to be to one of equal intelligence. "What you do unto the least of mine, so you do unto me." --paraphrasing some verse of the bible that I hardly remember. Is that even close? Anyway, I like Clarke's opinion, even though I have a checkered past in this area.
 
James R said:
So, essentially, you are speciesist.
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Kinda.

Essentially, you are no different from a racist. A racist says that, for example, white people are "higher" and fundamentally different from black people in important ways, and so should be given more privileges and treated as special. Moreover, white people are entitled to treat black people as "lower", and less worthy of moral consideration. Basically, they only exist to serve white people's interests.
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Ah, but black people are not chickens. They are people. Humans. Big difference.

The extreme of racism is, of course, slavery, in which black people were treated as the property of whites, to do with as they wished.

Your speciesism is no different. You condone the treatment of non-human animals as the property of humans, to do with as they wish. You accord animals no (or few) basic rights, in exactly the same way that slave owners accorded their slaves no (or few) basic rights.
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Again, there is a difference. Racism is a form intraspecies conflict, which I do not condone. Also, I am not condoning the extremes of speciesism. Now, just because I say we can kill and eat animals doesn't mean we should wipe them out. That goes into genocide, which is wrong on any level of taxonomy. I don't we should make animals of various species go extinct. We can treat them horribly, but we don't have to. Other species are deserving of a type of respect, and in that way, I do agree with you. However, there are some animals that taste good, and eating them can be to our benefit, just as how a bear (which is, like us, an omnivore) can benefit from deer, salmon, or other prey.
 
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beats me, but intersexual selection is between males and females, while intrasexual selection is between the same sex. I'm following the same logic for saying interspecies conflict would be between two different species :p
also "Intra-species recognition is recognition by a member of a species of another member of the same species. "
although wiki also says inter is a prefix meaning "within", "between"...
*shrugs*
 
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Hapsburg:

I was drawing a parallel between racism and speciesism for you, but obviously it went over your head. The point is this: racists think (for example) black people are "lower" than white people for exactly comparable reasons that you think animals are "lower" than human beings. The attempt to justify ill-treatment on the grounds of illusory differences is useless, from an ethical point of view.

Now, just because I say we can kill and eat animals doesn't mean we should wipe them out. That goes into genocide, which is wrong on any level of taxonomy.
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So, killing a billion chickens a year in the US alone is fine, because there are billions more?

Other species are deserving of a type of respect, and in that way, I do agree with you.
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You say that, but you don't mean it. What you actually mean is: "I won't hurt an animal unless it gives me pleasure to do so. If I enjoy the end result from hurting or killing an animal (for food, entertainment or whatever), then I have no problem with it."

Your just self-centred.
 
Yeah...no. I never said that we should make chickens extinct. Nor did I say that I take pleasure in killing animals. Truth is, I'd never have the stomach to do it. I've never been hunting, I've killed an animal bigger than a bug in my life.
The simple fact of the matter is, ethics take a backseat to health. Protein is a vital part of the human diet, and meat can provide that protein moreso than other things can.
 
For the 100000000th time, you don't need to eat meat to be perfectly healthy. Ultimately, the ONLY reason why people eat animals (in the modern world) is out of convenience and pleasure. People do not NEED to eat animals, therefore those two are the only other reasons they do it.
I agree ethics take a backseat to health. I'd probably be one of the first ones to want to eat another human if we were stranded out in the middle of some mountain range or something with no food. But the point of the matter is, when there is no health issue to worry about, ethics DOES take the... front seat...!!!! (lol)
OK, you want links? here:
According to the American Dietetic Association (ADA), American Heart Association, National Institutes of Health, British Medical Association and the Mayo Clinic, vegetarian diets offer a number of health benefits compared to non-vegetarian diets.
As an example, vegetarians tend to have lower body mass indices, lower levels of cholesterol, lower blood pressure, and less incidence of heart disease, hypertension, some forms of cancer, type 2 diabetes, renal disease, osteoporosis, dementias such as Alzheimer’s Disease and other disorders that may be diet-related.
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The typical vegetarian and vegan gets adequate protein if caloric intake is adequate and a variety of foods are eaten. However, a typical vegetarian gets less protein than the typical non-vegetarian. This is generally considered a benefit for two main reasons:

Due to excess protein intake, people in affluent societies commonly lose about 30 percent of their kidney function by the time they reach their 80s (J Gerentol 31:155, 1976). The amount of protein typically consumed in the American diet, 12% to 15% protein, is probably a partial cause of this (New Eng Jrnl Med 307:652, 1982); by contrast, some high-protein diets, such as the Atkins diet recommend a 30% intake.
Excessive protein intake — particularly sulfurous amino acids which predominate in animal proteins — causes systemic acidity. To counter this acidity the body then leaches calcium from bones, potentially causing osteoporosis.
Sources: Feskanich D, Willett WC, Stampfer MJ, Colditz GA. Milk, Dietary calcium, and bone fractures in women: a 12-year prospective study. Amer Jrnl Public Health 1997;87:992-7. See also follow-up in February, 2003 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Vol. 77, No. 2, 504-511), which includes 72,000+ people and 18 years of data. Cumming RG, Klineberg RJ. Case-control study of risk factors for hip fractures in the elderly. Amer Jrnl Epidemiology 1994;139:493-503. Studies suggest that the Rural Chinese Diet - low-protein, no milk, and nearly vegan - results in less osteoporosis than the average Westerner's diet, as well as other health benefits similar to vegetarianism [1].

Protein is essential to both the structure and function of all living cells. Some soy-based meat analogues contain more protein per pound than beef (eg soy concentrate, which is similar to TVP). Sea vegetables also can provide even more protein per pound than beef. Wheat, rice, beans and nuts are also recommended sources of protein.
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Sources suggest that even vegans who do not eat foods such as soy do not need to plan for 'complementary proteins' so long as their diet remains diverse [2]. It is recommended that all diets, from veganism to meat-eating, should contain such diversity.
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Dr Per-Olaf Astrand conducted an informal study of diet and endurance using nine highly-trained athletes, changing their diet every three days. At the end of every diet change, each athlete would pedal a bicycle until exhaustion.

Those with a high protein and high fat meat (carnivore) diet averaged 57 minutes. Those that consumed a mixed (omnivore) diet, lower in meat, fat and protein averaged 1 hour 54 minutes, twice the endurance of the meat and fat eaters.

The vegetarian, high carbohydrate diet athletes lasted 2 hours and 47 minutes, triple the endurance of the high-protein group (source: Astrand, Per-Olaf, Nutrition Today 3:no2, 9-11, 1968 [6])
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Ok, I don't want to post the whole damn article here. I figured i'd only post the best stuff about it, but surprise surprise! wikipedia amazes me again and pretty much everything is important and something i'd want you to see. So here is the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarian_nutrition

your health point- DEBUNKED!!!! Vegetarianism and even vaganism is healthier than eating meat.
 
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Then you're admitting that you DO condone killing purely for your own pleasure.
We never said they didn't taste good, we're saying that ethics should come before our own selfishness and therefore we should not condone pain and suffering of other organisms purely for 15 minutes of pleasure (or however long it takes you to eat).
 
Then you're selfish and that's that.
There's no reason for you to keep arguing FOR eating animals, since all your coverup points have been blown away. We all know the only reason you eat meat is because you like the taste.
I don't know why you were arguing.
 
TheAlphaWolf said:
I don't know why you were arguing.
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Because I think it's stupid for people to tell me what the fuck I can and what the fuck I cannot eat. My food.
leopold99 said:
just nuke the whales and be done with it
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No, because that would be genocidal, and I think that all endangered species should be protected and able to flourish, to an extent.
 
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