Vegans/Vegetarians thread

[black coffee]

Whatever people do or refrain from doing, others will view it as an acknowledgment that they make better decisions anyways.
Be it drinking alcohol or not, buying food from organic farming or not, buying food / clothes from fair trade companies or not, and of course eating meat or not eating meat.

[fireflyry]

you're trying to convince someone to have a certain opinion

Nope.

Never did that sorry.

I was responding to a request for proof on opinion and subjective scientific fact, which we both agree is silly.

Anyway the other reason why I asked for a source is because telling someone to "Google it" isn't going to move the debate forward and isn't a contribution to this thread whatsoever.

Neither is asking me to validate my opinion and subjective knowledge by having to post easily found research.

It's pretty much closing any argument that could be posted in this thread. At least with a source, people can start to form opinions or at least gain insight. It's not a cop out to ask for a link or any other source. It's actually pretty valid and logical.

The difference is I never asked for proof on any point anyone made in this thread.

Why should I have to post a factual source as conversely I could make exactly the same demand?

It's just silly.

Why argue in the first place about it? You either choose to not eat meat or you don't.  Pretty simple.  Choose your side and move on.  Arguing about this is retarded.  It's like me saying I like peanut butter and you don't and we're trying to argue who is right.  No one is right.  It's just a choice.  

Agreed.

[Jizzlobber]

Where does the protein come from?  I mean come on.  Bacon tastes good. Pork chops taste good.

The major reason why I became a vegetarian was because I didn't eat meat a lot and didn't really like the taste of it.

yeah i HATE the smell of meat...its pretty rank..and the consideration that the animal was killed inhumanly and left lying in its own sghit or something puts me off...

so i pretty much only eat small amounts of chicken, and im a big fish eater for protein..

i found when i was a full time vegetarian, i lost a lot of muscle mass :/..and i like to maintain my rugged frame :p so i included chicken and fish again...but only on 3 days of the week.

[blixa]

we stepped away from evolution as soon as civilisation came to be. if you do not participate in rape because it is morally wrong, you are sacrificing the opportunity for something pleasurable but not necessary. yes, others will be raped probably until the end of time, but at least you are not contributing to the problem. if you do not eat meat, yes other animals will be killed, but not because of you and not for you, and that many less animals will be killed when it is not necessary. and i'm not associating rape with pleasure here. just an analogy to make a point. the parallel was to be found in sacrificing pleasure for the ethical choice of respecting the rights of others (including the rights of animals and other humans who suffer from the pollution caused by meat farms) over temporary unneccessary pleasure of self.

we have to believe in the power of reason to solve problems. one of the problems humans have created, and therefore have the responsibility to solve, is how to a) protect all the other species on this planet from destruction from our excesses, and b) how to feed our bloated population in a humane manner.

evolution isn't a value system. to say humans are more "evolved" than most animals isn't saying other animals are inferior. besides, honey bees are at the top of their evolutionary chain; in terms of evolutionary adaptation, they are precisely as "evolved" as humans are.

it's quite possible that lions do have the ability to reason morally; it's certain that other animals, such as dolphins and chimpanzees, do. however, humans are the only creature who use the ability to reason to adapt the environment, rather than adapting to the environment. so we have to face questions which dolphins, chimps, and lions don't. if a lion refuses its ethical responsibility to examine its actions, it's not going to wipe out other species or cause the suffering of billions of other feeling beings. an intellectually lazy human does just that.

You have got to be kidding me.  Number one, we were talking about sociobiology.  That it's instinctual for people to like meat.  It's the same reason people like salt, sugar, or anything else.  Things taste good because they were so scarce in primitive society, it's a defense mechanism to get people to crave what their body needs.

The ethics is a whole different discussion.  But you're absolutely insane to label people as intellectually lazy because they see the difference between animal and human rights, and for equating animal and human reason.

our instinct to eat meat is cultural, not natural. if i was to look at it from a philosophical point of view, it would be irrelevant if it was instinctual or not. i come from the peter singer school of thought on this - there is a powerful logical argument at the core of animal rights groups: animals should be treated much the same way humans are - their lives should be respected, their pain minimised, etc. make this one simple change to your system of morality and everything else falls into place.

the difference between you and i is that i believe animals don't need to be like me to have rights, they merely have to exist to have rights. if they have life, they have the right to that life. just because i have a different life doesn't mean mine is better, or that i have jurisdiction over their lives. the whole discussion about rights is mind boggling at times because what can we say about the extremely mentally handicapped? it opens up a really large discussion about rights that becomes divorced from this discussion but if we need to have that discussion then we should.

i don't know if i've said this but i stress it a lot and that is if every american were to remove one serving of meat a week from their diet, it would be environmentally the equivalent of taking 5 million cars off the road. that's a very radical statistic and that should be persuasive enough for every one of your countrymen and women to do. i understand that eating less meat for some people is difficult but for someone to say that they can't remove one serving of meat a week from their diet is not just intellectually lazy but unethical. the 'what makes you happy' and 'eat what tastes good' is not always the best qualifier for a standard of ethics. if someone can be content eating horribly abused factory farmed animals, then we should fully realise that the standard of happiness has no place in the ethical realm.

[alvarezbassist17]

Ok, I know this has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation, but LOL

In a 2001 review of Midas Dekker's Dearest Pet: On Bestiality, Singer argues that sexual activities between humans and animals that result in harm to the animal should remain illegal, but that "sex with animals does not always involve cruelty" and that "mutually satisfying activities" of a sexual nature may sometimes occur between humans and animals, and that writer Otto Soyka would condone such activities.[26]  The position was countered by fellow philosopher Tom Regan, who writes that the same argument could be used to justify having sex with children. Regan writes that Singer's position is a consequence of his adapting a utilitarian, or consequentialist, approach to animal rights, rather than a strictly rights-based one, and argues that the rights-based position distances itself from non-consensual sex.[27]  The Humane Society of the United States takes the position that all sexual molestation of animals by humans is abusive, whether it involves physical injury or not.[28]

Commenting on Singer's article "Heavy Petting,"[29] in which he argues that zoosexual activity need not be abusive, and that relationships could form which were mutually enjoyed, Ingrid Newkirk, president of the animal rights group PETA, argued that, "If a girl gets sexual pleasure from riding a horse, does the horse suffer? If not, who cares? If you French kiss your dog and he or she thinks it's great, is it wrong? We believe all exploitation and abuse is wrong. If it isn't exploitation and abuse, [then] it may not be wrong." A few years later, Newkirk clarified in a letter to the Canada Free Press that she was strongly opposed to any exploitation of, and all sexual activity with, animals.[30]

Singer believes that although sex between species is not normal or natural,[31] it does not constitute a transgression of our status as human beings, because human beings are animals or, more specifically, "we are great apes".



P.S. Plz cite your very radical statistic.  And these people you're citing really seem like crazies to me.  This Peter Singer dude is, um, a bit on the extreme side.  So he thinks you can kill newborns because they don't yet have the ability of rational thought?  Is that what you're implying with the mentally handicapped thing?  I get the feeling like you're almost holding back and have a lot more radical things to say than you're leading on.