Vegetarianism Based On Animal Rights

WillNever said:
NOTE: I am not talking about food killings. I am talking about purposeful torture for the primary purpose of inflicting pain. In China, they apparently believe that torturing an animal causes its brain to secret chemicals that make the meat taste better. Not a joke. They actually believe that that bullshit.
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Source? I will read it...
 
Vegetarianism because you are against the idea that animals die for your food is not a defensable position.
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Please read the thread. You might learn something.
 
I've read the thread. I support vegetarianism for health reasons and for boycotting torture. I don't support it for the reason that eating meat is just plain wrong, though. How can you seriously support that?

I mean would you be happier if these animals were bred in numbers so huge that we could feed people only the animals that first died naturally? That way, wouldn't we be cutting their lives short? What part of eating meat is wrong to you? The killing or the keeping them behind fences? Society as we know it is built on the domestication and slaughter of animals. It may not be necessary to survival now... but for a long time it was, and we wouldn't be where we are today without it. And if it's wrong now, then it was wrong then... and therefore we should not be alive today.
 
glaucon said:
My point was that I think it's a little intellectually dishonest to call it murder. It's an obvious fact that we regularly kill animals to consume them.
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I don't see the connection between these two statements.

I agree that "murder" is an emotive term, but I'm not sure how it is dishonest. Meat eaters kill animals because they like the taste of their flesh. If they did the same to other human beings, this would be called murder.

Animals don't have the opportunity to agree or disagree on the matter.
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Which makes the moral decision all the more important, wouldn't you say?

But, since you brought it up (and I suppose it is pertinent to some people..), I don't believe that this is in any way a moral issue.
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You join Norsefire and other great forum intellects in holding that view. Perhaps you can explain to me why choosing to kill sentient creatures for your own pleasure is not a moral issue.
 
Moderator note: threads have been merged.


WillNever said:
I've read the thread. I support vegetarianism for health reasons and for boycotting torture. I don't support it for the reason that eating meat is just plain wrong, though. How can you seriously support that?

I mean would you be happier if these animals were bred in numbers so huge that we could feed people only the animals that first died naturally?
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I think that would be impractical, but I would be happier.

That way, wouldn't we be cutting their lives short? What part of eating meat is wrong to you? The killing or the keeping them behind fences?
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The unnecessary cutting short of the lives of conscious and sentient beings purely for the pleasure of selfish human beings. The wider issue is treating animals as property for exploitation, rather than as beings that are entitled to some measure of moral consideration. Witness the many people in this thread who claim that it is not even a moral issue that they kill and eat animals. They don't even recognise the issue, let alone try to justify their immoral practices.

Society as we know it is built on the domestication and slaughter of animals. It may not be necessary to survival now... but for a long time it was, and we wouldn't be where we are today without it. And if it's wrong now, then it was wrong then... and therefore we should not be alive today.
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This is faulty reasoning. The fact that something is traditional or has occurred in the past in no way justifies continuing it in the present. Take slavery, or denying women the vote, for example.

You may be able to convince me that we would not be alive today without past meat eating, but you haven't presented any evidence for that claim so far. But even if your claim is true, that in no way implies that we ought to keep on eating meat in today's world.
 
I mean would you be happier if these animals were bred in numbers so huge that we could feed people only the animals that first died naturally?
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Another thought about this:

Meat eaters currently demand not only the deaths of animals, but the deaths of baby animals. These people love the taste of lamb and veal, for example. It matters not a jot to them that these creatures barely have any span of life at all. They will not alter their lifestyle even so far as to eat only steak from slightly older cattle; they demand that baby cattle be killed for their eating pleasure. Many probably never consider the implications of "lamb", and most don't know what veal is.

I should also add that the average steak is still from a cow whose life has been reduced to about one quarter or less of its normal span. And the lives these cattle lead are also miserable as well as being short. The meat eaters demand that.
 
James R said:
you consider animals to have no [enc]intrinsic value[/enc].
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Nothing has intrinsic value. Value is a human consideration which we arbitrarily apply to stuff.

They are valuable only as a resource for human exploitation.
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That is one of many considerations in assigning value.

I find it very duplicitous of you to pretend like you actually care about cows. You are just exploiting them for your arguments. You don't have any relationship with any cows nor do you care about them as a species. You would happily and hypocritically decimate their populations as long as no one benefited from it and the means didn't make you squeamish.

Your arguments lack any real substance and are mainly cheap emotional ploys like "Do you support human slavery too?"

There's no ethical problem with "fake meat"
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well except tasting disgusting, not being very nutritious and being fake meat for fake-itarians.

You're not really this stupid, are you?
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I'm not, you seem to be though.


I don't think the cows have much of a say
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Sure they do. There are very few species which are domesticated and of those even fewer who are allies like the cow: cow and a couple related species like yak, horse and related species like ass, pig, chicken, duck, goose, turkey, dog, cat, llama, sheep, goats, and rabbits.

All of them are eaten and most are used for leather and or wool.

Elephants are not domesticated. Each elephant is caught in the wild and individually tamed and trained.

Zebras are not domesticated, wrong temperament.

Explain to me why what you eat is not a moral issue.
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Sure. Nature, natural processes, natural functions, etc. are neither good nor bad. Eating meat in and of itself isn't more or less moral than eating veggies.

Every single cow on the planet is going to died one way or another even if we don't eat a single bit of meat. We kill them. Disease kills them. Other predators kill them. Old age kills them. The inevitable end result is a dead cow.

At the moment we choose to kill them, and protect them from competition, other predators, disease and old age. We see to their food and care and when they are dead we use their bodies.

Factory farming is immoral because it is inherently cruel to and unhealthy for the animal and the people.

However, letting cattle graze and be eaten by their predators - us - is exactly how cattle and us evolved. That is just how nature works. If anything moral is happening our relationship is inherently good because it is healthy for the animal and they don't have to live in fear of life or limb.

Your plan puts the cattle back at risk in the wild again and is therefor less moral.
 
swarm said:
For those who don't bother to click links James' use of "intrinsic value" is a sneeky way to imply amimals are humans while trying not to sound stupid by actually saying it.
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I disagree. The link speaks of persons.
Animals are persons too.
 
Enmos said:
Agreed. And that makes us inherently hypocritical and biased.
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Biased, inherently, and that bias is the basis of most commerce.

But its only hypocritical if we are dishonest about it by trying to circumvent reason and just declare things off limits because of their "intrinsic" value.

Its just god talk in philosophical clothing.
 
swarm said:
The link points to something probably written by James.

An animal isn't a person. A person is an individual human.
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Or just an individual. I don't see why animals can't be persons. They are individuals and have personalities just like humans..
 
swarm said:
Biased, inherently, and that bias is the basis of most commerce.

But its only hypocritical if we are dishonest about it by trying to circumvent reason and just declare things off limits because of their "intrinsic" value.

Its just god talk in philosophical clothing.
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It's hypocritical to assign intrinsic value to people and not to animals.
 
James R said:
the deaths of baby animals.
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Not everything born lives to adulthood. And here I thought you were for eliminating the young animals?

Now if you are for humanely treating them while they live, I agree. How many places treat veal is terrible.

Many probably never consider the implications of "lamb", and most don't know what veal is.
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So you are an idiot. Are you frothing at the mouth yet?

Does it make you madddd?

Mad enough to KILLLL?

Looking for BLOOD????

Bwahahahaha!
 
Enmos said:
It's hypocritical to assign intrinsic value to people and not to animals.
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Its arbitrary, but not necessarily hypocritical since those are the traditional value assesments for people and animals.

Now extending it to animals, but not plants is more likely to be hypocritical.
 
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