The Best Speech Ever Made

Let's play reductio ad absurdam. Other animals' males often will kill the young of the females of the same species. Would it be ok for humans to do this, since after all, other animals can be found to do it, and humans are just animals. Why does moral reasoning pertain to one domain of human action but not another? What is your criterion for making a distinction like this? Is it that you don't believe animals are moral agents, therefore they don't need to be a part of your moral reasoning?

Dudebro,

That higher consciousness you are speaking on, that one that allows us to empathize with those poor animals we kill for food, was only gotten by eating animals. The prefrontal cortex and all of our higher cognitive function were the direct result of our movement toward eating animal products, first as scavengers and then as hunters/fishers after our discovery of tools. Think about it, we relied on consuming animals and the epigenetic changes this brought on to develop higher thinking, and then with that higher thinking we say to ourselves, man that's awful, we really shouldn't have done that, hmmm something is wrong there. Its a blatant contradiction. And just because we are capable of thinking in a meta sense about the thoughts and feelings of these animals doesn't negate anything that has to do with our evolution. Although humorous, the lion example is still befitting. The method by which is a lion kills a gazelle is sure to cause pain. Why is it we don't look at a lion with contempt for causing pain to that poor animal? We are animals, the capacity to empathize doesn't change this, we also evolved that capacity for social reasons, not to feel remorse about what we eat. And again, let's focus not on all animals in general, but on those that we actually raise for consumption. The evolutionary pressure placed on these animals if they were undomesticated would be too great for their survival. The domestication process is all that is perpetuating them into the future. Frankly, its a good arrangement.

Schpiloch,
There is a reason why we can't simply just eat what our prey eats. This is basic biological science. Hell, according to that logic, why shouldn't we have just evolved the ability to photosynthesize, I mean that would have been the most direct route right. Why doesn't a bird just go ahead and eat the dirt a worm eats, more direct right? Are you starting to see why this doesn't make sense?

The reason there is a food chain is because each step in the food chain transforms what they eat, according to their specific physiology, into different chemicals and strucutral constituents that form their body. That is the definition of metabolism. One animal metabolizes a food in order to feed its own body. Another animal eats that animal because its unique physiology requires those new components formed when that animal ate the first one. Its a metabolic chain of events and it is all concurrent on what a species is capable of digesting and assimilating. Why would you go around the food that you were more adapted to absorb and assimilate, just to get to the food it eats and is better at metabolizing than you.

A cow eats vegetation because it is uniquely adapted to doing so and reaps all of the benefits of that food and has mechanisms for attenuating the negative attributes of that food. We do not. This is why we don't eat grass. The cow can convert that grass into every bioactive component it requires. We can metabolize the cow into everything we require (other than sufficient carbohydrate). Its that simple. We are adapted to consuming fruits and vegetables, but our species has seen an immense benefit evolutionarily from consuming other animals. Fuck know these are long winded, apologies.

LoT,

Morality is completely relative. Ask yourself why we developed the notion that murder is wrong. For the animal, that decision to kill other's young makes all of the evolutionary sense in the world. Why have we developed the notion it is wrong? Our social constructs have also had a dramatic impact on our evolution, adaptations that made you more survivable as a result of your social behavior were favored. The development of a moral code of ethics is a logical result of this, as it maintains social order. The deep rooted feeling that killing another person is wrong is the result of evolutionary pressure to socialize, and the behaviors that maintained social order were thus selected for because the organism had a higher chance of survival as part of a functioning community.

There is also a religious component to this that we shouldn't touch on because that is an entirely different debate. But we do need to make the distinction between morality as a product of religion (what is good, what is a sin) and morality as code of ethics. But we are animals, there is no doubt about it with all of the same urges. The only difference is that society has in place a system of laws for punishing certain behaviors to maintain order. Lesser animals have no such system protecting them. Imagine a situation, like an impending disaster, where our social order broke down. You'd see quickly that humans are animals. Survival of the fittest.

I may not have gone out into a field and eaten a cow raw, but I have spent a large part of my life in the rural north where I my family ate the food we grew, caught, and killed with our hands. Its one thing to gain biological morality and understanding from examples such as science articles and discovery channel documentaries, but it doesn't compare to actually living in the woods like a dirty, smelly preidunstrialized human, you spend the day doing the tasks required for you to take care of yourself, shelter, family, clothing, and at the end of that day in the elements, the question of whether to eat meat or not becomes irrelevant.

I actually grew up in a similar situation. I'm from a farming community and although I've done a great deal to try to change the circumstances I was raised in, I have to completely agree with A > R, its funny that these debates don't even occur to a person in that situation. I guess its a sign of the times that we even have these debates. It takes people in an environment where there is too much to eat to be able to hold debates as to what the best thing to eat is.

A>r do not all animals have to deal with that problem, herbivores and carnivores alike?

Do they not have to care for their young also feed and protect them and so on?

I'm not sure what your stance on this from your post, I'd like to know more.

Also it really has nothing to do with the fact that we can chose what to eat, this is about what we should and were meant to eat. Why didn't the poor tired elephant say fuck it, let's eat meat tonight, there so much choice and a big old buffalo would feed my two babies, fuck eating leaves?

Humans, like elephants or buffalo or kangaroos do not have a natural urge to eat meat, if they did toddlers would catch birds in the garden and get constantly told off by their disappointed mothers...

all these activists should rethink their approaches. you create where you put your attention on. so if you look aroudn to look for animal suffering, actually you are creating it.

my opinion is that veganism is just as 'morally wrong' as meat eating.

life feeds on life. if were not killing animals were killing plants, i see no difference.

Let me spell it out for you The really clear difference comes about when you look at environmental or ecological impact / or environmental loading. The meat based diets are more taxing to ecologies on numerous measures than the plant diets, whether it's pollution by products, resource consumption, amount of acres of land required, or any other measure. This is rooted at the most basic level in the laws of thermodynamics. As you move higher along the trophic layers or up the food chain as one organism transforms or utilizes the matter / energy from another there is more and more waste energy and by products produced. So plants are more efficient at converting nutrients in the soil, water, and sunlight into their metabolic byproducts, than a cow is at converting grass into its required metabolic biproducts. It's often looked at on resource input and undesired biproducts per gram of protein or per kilocalorie generated. It tends to be the larger the animals the more undesired byproduct per unit protein or per calorie of the final product being worse than smaller animals, which are still worse the equivalent plant product.

interesting. so ur against meat eating because of the toll on the environment in general rather than the toll on the individual animal. And i can certainly agree with ur point of view.

i was addressing more the moral agrument vegans have when that say 'meat is murder'.

I know for a fact the farming of cattle has a negative effect on the carbon dioxide and therefore global warming, but im not entirely convinced global warming is a result of human interference with the planet, and not part of a bigger cycle of warming and cooling, but i guess even scientists cant agree on this either. so wat hope do we have of figuring it out.

Anxious1 wrote:interesting. so ur against meat eating because of the toll on the environment in general rather than the toll on the individual animal. And i can certainly agree with ur point of view.

i was addressing more the moral agrument vegans have when that say 'meat is murder'.

I know for a fact the farming of cattle has a negative effect on the carbon dioxide and therefore global warming, but im not entirely convinced global warming is a result of human interference with the planet, and not part of a bigger cycle of warming and cooling, but i guess even scientists cant agree on this either. so wat hope do we have of figuring it out.

Throw the global warming stuff out the window, worry about pollution, but humans have very little influence if any over the temperature of the planet...

I don't think the emphasis for restoring the environment should be put on raising plants or animals. Both types of farming have the potential to do good for the environment. Manure is a huge tool for restoring soil, probably better than any other material for this purpose, in terms of restoring bacterial cultures and nutrients to overused soil. Then there are examples of certain plants, like some kinds of beans, that are good for restoring nitrogen content to the soil.

And there are an equal number of examples of poor farming practices on either side that are detrimental to the ecosystem at large. Overfarming, overplowing, pesticide use all deplete soil and lead to topsoil erosion/contamination, which will eventually contaminate the water table. We know that poor farming of animals also has contamination issues, let alone the disrespectful and awful treatment of animals on SOME farms.

But my point again isn't to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because some animals are raised in poor conditions, doesn't mean consuming animals is inherently wrong or unnatural. Just because megafarms are using disgusting amounts of pesticides on their vegetables doesn't make eating vegetables inherently wrong. We need to be focusing on the practices and trying to emphasize organic farming methods. Its certainly possible to farm in sustainable ways that enrich the soil instead of deplete it, and put back what we take while also treating livestock with due respect.

Its just that this system is at odds with a capitalist economy. Our economy has nothing built into it to protect the envrionemnt it relies upon. It values and provides incentive for operating at the highest volume with the lowest cost. By definition, the recipe for competitive success in this system means taking the most you can from the environment while putting the least back, as anything that raises costs undermine your competitive advantage. It is a largely unregulated (in terms of envrionmental impact) economy that is the primary mover in all of these poor practices being discussed.

And the farming of cows contributing to global warming? No, this is like saying human beings are contributing to global warming by breathing. I see it now: graduated breathing taxes.

Since I started this forum have seen this argument surface and resurface.

So for what it's worth some basic points.

Harvesting of grain foods kills more small animals than all the slaughtering of larger animals.

I am sure that all sides would agree that the industrial style of animal feed until slaughter
would be substantially improved if they were all fed real food (grass), not grains and therefore
sanitary conditions and land would also be improved as a result.

I sincerely believe based on thousands of blood tests that no one is designed to eat the same
food. During the "dark ages of nutrition," I made attempts to go vegan twice, and each time
fell into poor health (the first time was primarily vegetable juicing). Others can thrive on it--simply depends on metabolic type.

I agree with anthonyspencer54 point on the environment. Hopefully most of us are aware that man has no real control
over the 'global warming' factor, since the data used to "prove" that climate change is caused by CO2 (a lagging indicator) and other info were interpreted with bias, now it has become a political thing and no longer a science issue.

Also, I've heard the vegan argument about the digestive system and they are so full of holes it is embarrassing. In 1994 area, I fell for all of the propaganda, not knowing enough at the time. I would provide lots of counter arguments, but that has been done to death here already in past posts.

The final point is that individual metabolism is quite different from another.

Cattle contribution to global warming comes from their methane output not their carbon dioxide output, so the analogy fails. Methane is about 20 times more potent of a green house gas than carbon dioxide.

CS was waiting to hear your take on things. I would be really interested to hear your views on the digestive system argument because I haven't really seen anything that seems to disprove it? Also from a moral and ethical stance what is your opinion?