Big Bang

Originally posted by Green Paladin

I like eating meat, I like eating plants, the fact that I don't pull the plants out of the ground to eat them or eat meat that I kill does not change that fact

Plutarch's point was not that you should actually kill the animals you eat but rather a thought experiment. (Although I do think you should [at least once] despatch an ani ...[text shortened]... at legitimise the destruction and suffering of billions of animals every year.

I'm going to have to dispute some of your claims here.

Firstly Americans aren't overweight becuase they eat too much meat, it's because they eat too many sugary refined carbohydrates. We didn't evolve to eat grain, this will explain it better than i can -

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitive-guide-grains/

Secondly i wouldn't say a vegetarian diet is considerably more healthy than a meat eating one.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
I had my mother for dinner once...

😲

Originally posted by Proper Knob
I'm going to have to dispute some of your claims here.

Firstly Americans aren't overweight becuase they eat too much meat, it's because they eat too many sugary refined carbohydrates. We didn't evolve to eat grain, this will explain it better than i can -

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitive-guide-grains/

Secondly i wouldn't say a vegetarian diet is considerably more healthy than a meat eating one.

“...i wouldn't say a vegetarian diet is considerably more healthy than a meat eating one. ...”

I would agree that one is not necessarily “ considerably” more healthy than the other.
But going vegi would make a significant reduction on the pressure on our dangerously strained limited natural resources and I would say this is really the only real rational and significant reason for rejecting meat (and nothing to to with eating meat being “immoral” because it is impossible to verify a moral proposition) -at least meat from unsustainable sources.

Originally posted by Proper Knob
I'm going to have to dispute some of your claims here.

Firstly Americans aren't overweight becuase they eat too much meat, it's because they eat too many sugary refined carbohydrates. We didn't evolve to eat grain, this will explain it better than i can -

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitive-guide-grains/

Secondly i wouldn't say a vegetarian diet is considerably more healthy than a meat eating one.

Firstly Americans aren't overweight becuase they eat too much meat, it's because they eat too many sugary refined carbohydrates.

I never said that the consumption of meat was the sole cause of obesity in America; but it seems that you are making this claim about "sugary refined carbohydrates". Is this your position? I do think that 22% of the total number of animals killed for food in the year 2000 being consumed by 4.5% of the world's population is significant.

We didn't evolve to eat grain

I never mentioned grain. There are other sources of vegetable nutrition besides grains.

Secondly i wouldn't say a vegetarian diet is considerably more healthy than a meat eating one.

Really? The American Dietetic Association disagrees with you:

"[V]egetarian diets ... if well-planned, are healthful and nutritious for adults, infants, children and adolescents and can help prevent and treat chronic diseases including heart disease, cancer, obesity and diabetes."

http://www.eatright.org/Media/content.aspx?id=1233&terms=vegetarian

"[A] new study of more than 500,000 Americans ... found that, other things being equal, the men and women who consumed the most red and processed meat were likely to die sooner, especially from one of our two leading killers, heart disease and cancer, than people who consumed much smaller amounts of these foods."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/health/28brod.html

Originally posted by Green Paladin

I've killed animals I've eaten, it just is not a common practice of mine.

Did you also rend them limb from limb with your bare hands and teeth before eating them raw? Plutarch showed that those who wish to invoke nature should follow through by eating animals as they are eaten in nature. Only in this way can your position remain consis ...[text shortened]... ory. I've already aligned myself with Bentham and Singer: "Can they suffer?"

Nope did not rend them limb to limb as I pointed out, I don't have to eat like a
lion, but I will like the lion eat what I want as I can. I like animals, some I eat
others I don't, I don't like seeing anything suffer, and when I'm eating them they
are not suffering. I'll eat what I will; you can eat as you please too.

You are warped in my opinion if you think animals are on the same level as any
human being. They are living creatures but every human no matter the sex or
the color they are worth more to me than any number of animals. You did not
answer my question, what about other life? You didn't address insects, germs,
plants, and so on, what is wrong with those life forms you don't seem to care
about those life forms as you do animals? Why are you not elevating them?
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
Nope did not rend them limb to limb as I pointed out, I don't have to eat like a
lion, but I will like the lion eat what I want as I can. I like animals, some I eat
others I don't, I don't like seeing anything suffer, and when I'm eating them they
are not suffering. I'll eat what I will; you can eat as you please too.

You are warped in my opinion if y to care
about those life forms as you do animals? Why are you not elevating them?
Kelly

Nope did not rend them limb to limb as I pointed out, I don't have to eat like a lion, but I will like the lion eat what I want as I can.

So begins a long process of disassociation and abstraction: we don't, as in nature, use our hands and teeth to slaughter animals but rocks, clubs, knives or guns; we don't eat the still-warm flesh but disguise the taste of death by cooking, and we hide it from sight and taste by covering it with sauces; we repackage it and rename it pork, veal, beef and mutton; in the present day people in urban areas have no contact with the animals that eventually make it onto their plates - the task being handed to workers who, in the poultry industry, report symptoms of depression 80% higher than their peers.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17669493 (Please note that these workers are black and female).

In western society meat is associated with social and cultural events - Christmas, Thanksgiving and Independence Day (in your country), etc. are centred around meals in which meat features prominently. Barbecues usually take place on the weekends where family and friends relax while watching sport and drinking alcohol. In this way meat becomes a symbol of family values, friendship and good times. Further abstraction occurs when we unfairly distinguish humans from nature and other animals: "the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind." Humans are animals and we are a part of nature.

Meat is further mythologised by the association of meat to masculinity: real men eat meat - lots of it! As Michael Allen Fox notes in Deep Vegetarianism, the familiar trope of "man as hunter" identifies the whole of humanity with just one half of it - men. "In the past two or three decades a new generation of anthropologists, many of whom are women, has rewritten the story of Homo Sapiens and predecessor species, arguing that our hominid ancestors were originally vegetarians who only later developed omnivorous habits as they adapted to fresh environmental challenges and opportunities." (Fox 1999:25)

When death was mechanised in Auschwitz-Birkenau the world was appalled. It is through the dangerous ability to "compartmentalise" that factory farms don't prompt similar outrage.

You are warped in my opinion if you think animals are on the same level as any human being. They are living creatures but every human no matter the sex or the color they are worth more to me than any number of animals.

We've already established that you are an unashamed speciesist. You think that not treating animals like a resource lessens the value of human life for some reason.

You did not answer my question, what about other life?

I did answer your question: "Can they suffer?"

Why are you not elevating them?

I've already explained that animals cannot be "elevated". Instead, your "mind-forged manacles" have to be removed.

Originally posted by Green Paladin

Nope did not rend them limb to limb as I pointed out, I don't have to eat like a lion, but I will like the lion eat what I want as I can.

So begins a long process of disassociation and abstraction: we don't, as in nature, use our hands and teeth to slaughter animals but rocks, clubs, knives or guns; we don't eat the still-warm flesh but ...[text shortened]... nnot be "elevated". Instead, your "mind-forged manacles" have to be removed.

Don't get me wrong; I am all for vegetarianism. But I find your reasoning for it rather over-emotional and completely over-the-top.

“...we don't eat the still-warm flesh but disguise the taste of death by cooking, and we hide it from sight and taste by covering it with sauces; ...”

The main reason for cooking meat is not to “disguise” it but to make it easier to digest.
We also cook vegetables and put sauces on it but, just like with meat, that isn't generally done to “ disguise the taste of death” and “ hide it from sight and taste”.

“...When death was mechanised in Auschwitz-Birkenau the world was appalled. It is through the dangerous ability to "compartmentalise" that factory farms don't prompt similar outrage. ...”

Oh please. How can you really compare one with the other? I don't like the idea of factory farming but: are, say, factory hens forces into slave labour while starving and then slowly suffocated in gas chambers?
And do you think that killing a chicken is as 'bad' as killing a human?
Do you think killing a fly is as 'bad' as as murdering a human?

Originally posted by KellyJay
Nope did not rend them limb to limb as I pointed out, I don't have to eat like a
lion, but I will like the lion eat what I want as I can. I like animals, some I eat
others I don't, I don't like seeing anything suffer, and when I'm eating them they
are not suffering. I'll eat what I will; you can eat as you please too.

You are warped in my opinion if y ...[text shortened]... to care
about those life forms as you do animals? Why are you not elevating them?
Kelly

You are warped in my opinion if you think animals are on the same level as any human being. They are living creatures but every human no matter the sex or the color they are worth more to me than any number of animals.

I've just had a closer look at this comment. What exactly do you mean here? You seem to be saying, "Even if you account for those characteristics that would devalue a person, such as race or gender, a human is still worth any number of animals." Is this correct?

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
Don't get me wrong; I am all for vegetarianism. But I find your reasoning for it rather over-emotional and completely over-the-top.

“...we don't eat the still-warm flesh but disguise the taste of death by cooking, and we hide it from sight and taste by covering it with sauces; ...”

The main reason for cooking meat is not to “disguise” it but to as killing a human?
Do you think killing a fly is as 'bad' as as murdering a human?

But I find your reasoning for it rather over-emotional and completely over-the-top.

I think emotion is an appropriate response to animal abuse. It's only speciesism and compartmentalisation that cause others to respond differently.

The main reason for cooking meat is not to “disguise” it but to make it easier to digest.

How do you explain the revulsion that most people feel at the idea of killing and eating an animal in the way Plutarch described? Do you attribute this to the fear of indigestion?
My aim was not to identify the "main reason" for cooking meat but to show how the end-product, meat, is systematically disassociated from the living animal.

Oh please. How can you really compare one with the other? I don't like the idea of factory farming but: are, say, factory hens forces into slave labour while starving and then slowly suffocated in gas chambers?

I said that they were similar. The point that they are analogous is the one I gave: the mechanisation of death. Incidentally, chickens are forced into slave labour: the product of which is their bodies. Chicks are culled by maceration (using a large high-speed grinder), gas, cervical dislocation and electrocution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_culling

"Nearly all animals killed for food in the U.S. are chickens and turkeys—more than nine billion each year. They're shackled upside down, paralyzed by electrified water and dragged over mechanical throat-cutting blades ... all while conscious. Millions of birds each year miss the blades and drown in tanks of scalding water.

This occurs because the U.S. Department of Agriculture exempts birds from its enforcement of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, which requires that farm animals be insensible to pain before they're shackled and killed."

http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/slaughter/

And do you think that killing a chicken is as 'bad' as killing a human?

I think that humans have a greater capacity for suffering, so no. There isn't a conflict though: we don't have to kill a chicken or a human will die, do we?. I do think that we should be committed to reducing the suffering of other animals.

Do you think killing a fly is as 'bad' as as murdering a human?

Are flies sentient?

Originally posted by Green Paladin

Nope did not rend them limb to limb as I pointed out, I don't have to eat like a lion, but I will like the lion eat what I want as I can.

So begins a long process of disassociation and abstraction: we don't, as in nature, use our hands and teeth to slaughter animals but rocks, clubs, knives or guns; we don't eat the still-warm flesh but nnot be "elevated". Instead, your "mind-forged manacles" have to be removed.

We don't use our teeth and hands like animals, we use our brains it isn't a
disassociation or abstraction. So you do only eat plants you don't use tools
either? Do you cloth yourself too, do you drive a car for travel, do you live in a
cave and only eat what you can pick or pull from the earth? Come on get
real here!

You should be living in a cave some where not using your brain for anything other
than trying to figure out where you can pick and pull plants from the earth.

Humans are by far greater than animals, if you don't feel that way, why are you
complaining still for we are all acting as humans do! So we eat what we want as
we can, we are doing what we have always done and you find this is wrong? Your
the one out of step here with the vast majority of the race you belong to.

We do not view animals like we do people, you may, you do not argue for all other
life forms, so why are you eating plants, do you brush your teeth to kill that which
lives in your mouth, do you flush your bodies waste down a toilet, do you wash
your body, do you wash your hair, do you clean your clothes? Come on life is
everywhere you walk around killing it daily!

You are of more worth than the germs, and all of those other things.
Kelly

Originally posted by Green Paladin

You are warped in my opinion if you think animals are on the same level as any human being. They are living creatures but every human no matter the sex or the color they are worth more to me than any number of animals.

I've just had a closer look at this comment. What exactly do you mean here? You seem to be saying, "Even if you account ...[text shortened]... rson, such as race or gender, a human is still worth any number of animals." Is this correct?

I'm saying people are people, race and gender do not devalue anyone we are all
part of the same race, human. Color does not devalue anyone we are all really
the same color, some of us have more of it than others.
Kelly

Originally posted by Green Paladin

But I find your reasoning for it rather over-emotional and completely over-the-top.

I think emotion is an appropriate response to animal abuse. It's only speciesism and compartmentalisation that cause others to respond differently.

The main reason for cooking meat is not to “disguise” it but to make it easier to digest.[/quot nk killing a fly is as 'bad' as as murdering a human?

Are flies sentient?

I don't like seeing anything suffer, to make one or thing suffer should be avoided
if possible. I still do not with that think an animal suffering is the same as
when another person is suffering, I don't think of animals and people the same
way. Suffering still is part of life, animals do not treat each other the way you are
suggeting that we do with them, but I agree do not make them suffer needlessly.
Animals will eat another while the other is still alive, I promise you they are
suffering! Since suffering is a natural part of life, you seem to trying to suggest
it is evil, so all life is evil if one that causes life to suffer is evil.

Cooking is healthy for us, and it adds to the taste, some food needs to be
disguised so we can eat it. Some food tastes better and for no other reason we
cook it, some food has to go through the cooking process so that is healthy for us.

We were not always a people that that were revulsed at killing and eating, but we
have been removed from having too, so the lack of exposure to that act has made
us revulsed; however, if we were forced to kill what we eat we would.

I'm all for not making an animal suffer, but in the end it is food.

I'm not sure I understood your answers on killing chickens and humans, or for
that matter killing a fly or human! Is killing a fly the same as killing a human to
you? You seem to have some idea about sentient and suffering that is getting
a little confusing while I try to apply it to other things you have said. Tell me
do you think killing a chicken, is it the same as killing a human, or a fly for that
matter?
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
We don't use our teeth and hands like animals, we use our brains it isn't a
disassociation or abstraction. So you do only eat plants you don't use tools
either? Do you cloth yourself too, do you drive a car for travel, do you live in a
cave and only eat what you can pick or pull from the earth? Come on get
real here!

You should be living in a cave so ...[text shortened]... ing it daily!

You are of more worth then the germs, and all of those other things.
Kelly

We don't use our teeth and hands like animals, we use our brains it isn't a disassociation or abstraction. So you do only eat plants you don't use tools either?Do you cloth yourself too, do you drive a car for travel, do you live in a cave and only eat what you can pick or pull from the earth? Come on get real here!

The point was not whether we use tools or not but that using tools is one of the first steps that results in the disassociation of meat from animal. Read it again.

Humans are by far greater than animals

Humans are animals, Kelly.

Your the one out of step here with the vast majority of the race you belong to.

It's attitudes like yours that would still see women and black people subjugated. Why can't we try to improve the world around us?

We do not view animals like we do people, you may, you do not argue for all other life forms, so why are you eating plants, do you brush your teeth to kill that which lives in your mouth, do you flush you bodies waste down a toilet, do you wash your body, do you wash your hair, do you clean your clothes? Come on life is everywhere you walk around killing it daily!

Do you read my posts? I, like Singer, believe that those animals that can suffer should be accorded value.

Originally posted by Green Paladin

We don't use our teeth and hands like animals, we use our brains it isn't a disassociation or abstraction. So you do only eat plants you don't use tools either?Do you cloth yourself too, do you drive a car for travel, do you live in a cave and only eat what you can pick or pull from the earth? Come on get real here!

The point was not wh ...[text shortened]... posts? I, like Singer, believe that those animals that can suffer should be accorded value.

I read it, and I think it is a meaningless point, I use a knife and fork it does not
change what I am doing. I would not eat anything I didn't want to eat simply
because I'm using a knife and fork. I can take you to different parts of the world
where people are eating all manner of creatures from insects to all manner of
animals, and they are not using knifes and forks. People eat rats, they eat bats,
they eat cats, they eat dogs, they eat cows, and so on, if your hungry enough
you'll eat what is there or die.

I do not equate humans with animals, we are living creatures, but we are more
than just an animal.

I think again you have a meaningless point, people have issues with one another
does not mean that I have to view an animal with the same level of respect and
value as I do with animals.

I'm asking for you to tell me if you view the chicken and fly just like you do a
human being! I've asked you this about three or four times now, I get that you
think life has value, I'm asking you to tell me do you view human life as you
do the fly or chicken? Can you give me an answer to this direct question? Any
life can suffer if it has any type of feeling or knowledge. So I'll ask again, do you
view the killing of a fly as you do a human, or the killing of a chicken as you
do a human, are they the same in your view?

You did not address the points about all life either, the brushing of teeth and so
on either, can I get answers from you on those questions?
Kelly

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
It is strange how this thread somehow went from the “big bang” to “vegetarianism”.

Not really, we view a lot of things one over another depending on how we think
it all started. We assign meaning behind a lot of things due to the why it is the
way it is. We value things due to the a lot of factors. The Big Bang sort of places
everything in the same bucket, and as such everything either has the same
value or lack there of if you believe in that event.
Kelly