Vegetarianism.

[curiousmind]

I'm trying out vegetarianism at the moment, mainly because it has always seemed to me that not killing for your food is a more moral way to live than killing for your food.

However, while playing a bit of devil's advocate, a friend of mine and I came up with an interesting notion:
V represents veggie, M represents meat-eater.


M: You realise that by not eating meat, you're not actually saving any animals' lives? You're merely postponing their deaths.

V: Postponing death is all I can ever do. I have postponed the death of a sufficiently large number of (eg.) chickens by a very short time, but that time adds up, and is probably eventually equivalent to saving an entire life-time for one chicken.

M: So you're saying it's the hours of life which are saved which really matter?

V: If you think about it, there's nothing else which can matter (without getting into concepts of happiness and utilitarianism for chickens), so yes.

M: In which case, surely it's better for the animals to be born and then killed, thus enjoying a maximum amount of time, as opposed to never having any time available to them at all? (which would happen should demand drop low enough for the breeding of animals for food to stop).


This has me stumped. It seems logically sound.

I'll sum it up:
Assuming we want to maximise the time lived by animals, breeding them to be killed is a morally acceptable thing to do.



I would love to hear a rebuttal of this argument, or maybe just an expansion on the topic.

Cheers everyone,
CM

 

[Doc.]

me and my friend had exactly same argument, I'm for meat

 

[obsidianavenger]

eh.... 5 years in a cage where you can't even turn around doesn't seem preferable to nonexistence....

have you seen the way those chickens are treated?

the argument is sound but only if you accept that the quantity of chicken-hours is the ultimate arbiter, that quality is irrelevant. i know thats not true for humans, so i wonder why its ok to assume that for chickens...

 

[MillionSword]

eh.... 5 years in a cage where you can't even turn around doesn't seem preferable to nonexistence....

have you seen the way those chickens are treated?

the argument is sound but only if you accept that the quantity of chicken-hours is the ultimate arbiter, that quality is irrelevant. i know thats not true for humans, so i wonder why its ok to assume that for chickens...

I agree with obsidianavenger here. It is also my opinion that any reason for being a vegetarian is stupid unless you just don't like meat.

not killing for your food is a more moral way to live than killing for your food.

Fuck that.

 

[Aught3]

M: You realise that by not eating meat, you're not actually saving any animals' lives? You're merely postponing their deaths.

V: Postponing death is all I can ever do. I have postponed the death of a sufficiently large number of (eg.) chickens by a very short time, but that time adds up, and is probably eventually equivalent to saving an entire life-time for one chicken.

M: So you're saying it's the hours of life which are saved which really matter?

V: If you think about it, there's nothing else which can matter (without getting into concepts of happiness and utilitarianism for chickens), so yes.

M: In which case, surely it's better for the animals to be born and then killed, thus enjoying a maximum amount of time, as opposed to never having any time available to them at all? (which would happen should demand drop low enough for the breeding of animals for food to stop).

Seems ass-backwards to me. Vegetarianism's not about postponing chicken deaths it's about preventing the animals from ever having to go through the farming process. Non-existence has no value, positive or negative. Factory raising the chickens for slaughter has a negative value making the overall process worth avoiding. That's how I see the argument should be phrased.

 

[curiousmind]

the argument is sound but only if you accept that the quantity of chicken-hours is the ultimate arbiter, that quality is irrelevant. i know thats not true for humans, so i wonder why its ok to assume that for chickens...

Very true. I did state it as an assumption when I wrote it, but I didn't quite consider how sweeping a statement it was...

Vegetarianism's not about postponing chicken deaths it's about preventing the animals from ever having to go through the farming process.

You both seem to be right; this argument ignores one of the biggest arguments in favour of vegetarianism- that of unnecessary suffering.

However, it does seem to destroy the argument for vegetarianism via 'We shouldn't eat meat because killing is wrong.'
Which begs the question (for me at least)- if the farming is done with a minimum of suffering (less than there would be in the wild for, for example, free-range chickens)- or even no suffering, is eating meat then morally acceptable?

There must be some other argument for vegetarianism... (ignoring global warming, world hunger- fairly large issues, I know, but they would overshadow the real question).


EDIT

Aught, rereading your comment, I think I missed your point... It also seems to provide a good argument.

 

[Aught3]

I disagree that world hunger and global warming i.e. issues of sustainability overshadow the issue of vegetarianism. I think it's actually a very compelling reason to stop eating meat.

On the other hand I don't see anything inherently wrong with the act of eating meat itself, nor with killing the animal (if done properly). It is the production of meat that is the most problematic aspect for me. To claim that killing is always wrong seems more like a religious prohibition rather than anything I've seen a proper justification for.

Oops, just saw your edit - I'll post anyway

 

[xman]

After a wonderful month with Korean Red Ginseng I realised that what one takes into their body has a profound effect on how they live their life and so, in 1993 I became a vegetarian. I went macrobiotic vegan out of the gate, but couldn't sustain that, especially in Alberta (≃Texas). So I was lacto-ovo for many years and then began including fish again. Since most people don't know what pescetarian means I usually refer to myself as a sushitarian.

The main problem I see with meat in our culture is that nobody respects the animal for sustaining them. Just look at how they're treated as has already been mentioned.

It is also my opinion that any reason for being a vegetarian is stupid unless you just don't like meat.

Red meat consumption, particularly beef has been linked to many health conditions such as high cholesterol, hypertension and even cancer. Health officials do not recommend eliminating red meat, but do caution against over consumption. Certainly, the high quality protein of meat can assist in growth and brain development and has been a part of the human diet for uncounted generations, but, over consumption eventually lead to its requirement in the neanderthal diet which may have been part of the reason for their extinction.

A modest diet filled with a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and legumes and in part supplemented by meet and dairy seems the wisest course of action, but even still, some cultures are completely vegetarian and do just fine with that.

 

[Aught3]

Love the new sig xman, made me laugh.

Btw, what kinds of fish do you eat?

 

[xman]

Love the new sig xman, made me laugh.

ty. Truthful words are not beautiful ~ Lao Tzu

Btw, what kinds of fish do you eat?

'Round here I eat salmon mostly, but nothing is off limits. Salmon was the only meat which kept nagging at me for eight years of vegetarianism.

 

[TheExylos]

ok most of us believe in evolution in some form or another. So here is my argument against Veg.


Your body was not meant to be sustained by just one kind of food, a human being is an Omnivore, not carnivore and not Vegetarian, but a combo of both, the proof of this comes because you can not get all the Vitamins that you need to fully survive from either, but from a combination of both.

For instance:

Are there any supplements I could take to increase the amount of iron in my body?

from the UK:
I find that Superdrugs own brand of Multivitamins plus Iron is really good. As well as providing 100% RDA of iron, it also provides Vitamins A, D, E, C, B1, B2, B6, B12, Niacin, Folic Acid, Biotin and Pantothenic Acid. It's only around ,£3.00 for 120 1-a-day tablets.

This is shown on a vegan website, where hey tell you that you will need to take supplement vitamins in order to stay healthy. the same problems occur when you try to at meat only, Your body has evolved to require both, not just one or the other.

Now the argument of not respecting the animal, does a tiger respect a deer, maybe but not in the way we would, not in a way that we see it as respect. This is a stupid reason to not eat a food you obviously need because someone else did not respect it, then how about not driving a car because someone did not respect the metal as they mined it from the ground. Or why live in a house because they didn't respect the trees as they cut that down.

I can understand protesting treatment of animals I can, but doing it in a way that harms you is stupid, i am sorry but it is and if you believe that the animal cares now that its dead, then you should show the respect to it and there are plenty of traditions from American Indian to European pagen that practice this.

ok thats my rant on the subject

 

[Aught3]

Okay, good stuff

First, I'm not aware of any vitamin or mineral that a vegetarian can't, in principle, obtain through their diet. It is certainly true that they have to be more careful and plan their meals to make sure all the bases are covered. However, with the epidemic of metabolic disease that we are seeing, I'm not convinced that paying more attention to what you eat is necessarily a bad thing.

Second, if you do not get enough of a particular vitamin or mineral in your diet you can take supplements - as you point out. This means that meat is not a necessary component of our diet even if it was in our evolutionary past.

Finally, I think respect for the animals really just means treating them well and making sure they don't suffer. Obviously a tiger is able to give a toss about the deer but we are able and, since we have that ability, we should probably exercise it.

 

[Giliell]

Ok, here's a fallacy:
Going lacto-ovo vegetarian and claiming that for your consumption no animal is killed is simply not true.
That's the kind of ignorant "better than thou" vegetarians I totally can't stand.
For a mammal to give milk they have to give birth regularly. Last report I read is that an average cow lives between 3 and 4 years and has 2-3 calves.
To keep the number of cows constant, 1 female calf and every thousand females or so one bull is needed. The rest is meat. After 4 years, the cow is meat, too.
More or less the same with chickens. You can visit the surplus chicklets in the zoo. Make sure you're around when they feed the snakes.

I'm all for cruelty-free life-stock farming. Give the animals free range, take them to the nearest slaughterhouse (not across the whole continent, which is even subsidised in the EU), put them to death quickly and as little painfully as possible.
And yes, eat less meat of any kind. Look back at the days of our grandparents: They hardly ever had meat during the week, traditional dishes here often include a little bacon, but that's like 200gr for 4 people. At the weekend, they had a roast or something like that. And if you only buy meat once a week instead of 4 times, you can then afford to buy the expensive free range meat which really IS much tastier.

 

[TheExylos]

Okay, good stuff

First, I'm not aware of any vitamin or mineral that a vegetarian can't, in principle, obtain through their diet. It is certainly true that they have to be more careful and plan their meals to make sure all the bases are covered. However, with the epidemic of metabolic disease that we are seeing, I'm not convinced that paying more attention to what you eat is necessarily a bad thing.

Second, if you do not get enough of a particular vitamin or mineral in your diet you can take supplements - as you point out. This means that meat is not a necessary component of our diet even if it was in our evolutionary past.

Finally, I think respect for the animals really just means treating them well and making sure they don't suffer. Obviously a tiger is able to give a toss about the deer but we are able and, since we have that ability, we should probably exercise it.

While I agree with you on some points i would like to bring up one, Desperately not trying to turn this into a circle discussion, you know the kind where we keep going back and forth and really solving nothing.

But I grew up with a combination of Irish pagen grandparents and American Indian grandparents, and both those traditions show that its a greater disrespect to not eat the animal, because it's life and Later death were meaning less. The animal lives maybe in a hard farm or box farm which ever you want to call it, or maybe its a wild deer that you have hunted, either way, its life and later its death would be meaningless if you just left it to rot, or if it lived that life and died with out a purpose. Do you have to agree with me not even remotely but that is my view of it.

On top of that back to the vitamin problems my wife was in foster care for most of her child hood, and her foster parents were vegan, they took supplements to make up for the vitamins they weren't getting from the food, and one day my wife who always felt sick passed out, she was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with Vit e, Iron and B12. The doctor said and I quote this is a problem we see in allot of Vegetarians and there are two ways to fix it and for it to never happen again.

The first is she has to take Supplements, but she had to start eating meat because the supplements alone she could not take in any safe dosage to receive what she was short. No this problem wasn't caused form being a vegetarian but it was made worse, that we are Omnivores is a fact, taking supplements is ok but why take a pill to do something that a steak could just do, and quote from the new england journal of medicine.

There are no man made supplements that can replace meat totally in a vegetarians diet, while even taking supplements people who vegetarianism can suffer from hosts of vitamin deficiencies, and the same will apply when faced with someone who eats only meat.

As i said in my last post I understand the protest against the maltreatment of animals, but to protest in a way that harms you makes no sence either in a common sence fashion or any other sence(put this in only because well got met with a fundie today who said not beleiving n god made no common sence and I stated back that his logic wasn't common sence not sure what it was but it wasn't common...lol)

To me if you want to protest against the maltreatment of animals do so, but then at least show respect to the animal for what it suffer by at least giving its life and death a meaning, by enjoying the steaks that you get from it.

 

[curiousmind]

I disagree that world hunger and global warming i.e. issues of sustainability overshadow the issue of vegetarianism. I think it's actually a very compelling reason to stop eating meat.

I agree, but the issue I was worried about overshadowing was that of the morals regarding individual animals being killed, and I was hoping to sort out my opinion on that before bringing other arguments into play.

You say that killing isn't always wrong, and again I agree, but I can't think of a situation in which the unnecessary (read 'by not doing which no creature will be harmed') killing of innocent creatures is entirely acceptable...

Your body was not meant to be sustained by just one kind of food, a human being is an Omnivore, not carnivore and not Vegetarian, but a combo of both, the proof of this comes because you can not get all the Vitamins that you need to fully survive from either, but from a combination of both.

We didn't evolve to be herbivores (although many early humans subsisted almost entirely of berries and nuts).

But then again we didn't evolve to drive cars, to make medicines, or write poetry.
On the flip-side, we also didn't evolve to start nuclear wars, or commit atrocities such as suicide bombing.
All I'm saying is, just because we didn't evolve a certain way, it doesn't mean that acting that way is definitively right or wrong. You're subscribing to the Natural=Good fallacy.

You go on to say that if we don't eat meat, we'd have to eat supplements. Presuming this is true, then if there was no meat, then no-one would be able to go vegetarian without becoming ill.
But we have supplements, which do work, we won't necessarily become ill, and it won't necessarily harm you.

We are no longer your average species. We are truly conscious of what we're doing, with a considerably more complex sense of right and wrong.

Which brings us back to whether we should be vegetarian or not.

Going lacto-ovo vegetarian and claiming that for your consumption no animal is killed is simply not true.

That's interesting, I'd never really thought about that...

I understand the protest against the maltreatment of animals

I would consider vegetarianism to be more than a form of protest- it is hitting the meat industry where it hurts, and reducing demand. As a direct consequence of vegetarianism, fewer animals are killed, and also, fewer animals are born into bad conditions.
Can you imagine how much demand would rise (in the UK) if the 3.5 million vegies started eating meat?

To me if you want to protest against the maltreatment of animals do so, but then at least show respect to the animal for what it suffer by at least giving its life and death a meaning, by enjoying the steaks that you get from it.

That is a bizarre statement... Do you honestly think animals would be killed, and steaks made if no-one was going to (pay for them and) eat them? Vegetarians aren't (indirectly causing) the suffering, as they are already showing the animals respect by reducing the number of animals it happens to in future. Thus it's meat-eaters who have to be sure to show respect, not vegetarians. Just a little thought, before every piece of meat, about how it used to be a living creature- but it's surprising how rarely people think do that.

 

[nasher168]

If it's just vegetarianism out of protest, then you can still presumably eat Quorn?
Chances are society will come to frown upon meat-eating within the next century or so, once people realise that it is very wasteful of the land and we can make meat substitutes anyway. Don't get me wrong, I love meat-in fact I'm almost carnivorous, but if they make Quorn that actually has the texture of meat then I'll eat that happily.

 

[Nogre]

(without getting into concepts of happiness and utilitarianism for chickens)

The fact that you avoid this is the whole problem. It's not necessarily happiness, but preventing suffering that's the main utilitarian argument for vegetarianism in a place where factory farming is the norm. If it was a matter of killing, you couldn't kill plants to eat, either. They're living creatures, after all. That's why your position as outlined in the OP is absurd and easily defeatable. You have to look at reducing suffering and objecting to specific farming methods in order to have a legitimate position for vegetarianism.

Which begs the question (for me at least)- if the farming is done with a minimum of suffering (less than there would be in the wild for, for example, free-range chickens)- or even no suffering, is eating meat then morally acceptable?

Yes. Which is why many who are generally vegetarians are willing to eat free range animals, fish, etc. In fact, people who avoid meat for good reasons, arguably, should actively seek out meat that's been farmed humanely to expand that as a market so that more companies will farm meat humanely. Alternatively, we could just push for legislation regulating animal treatment.

There must be some other argument for vegetarianism... (ignoring global warming, world hunger- fairly large issues, I know, but they would overshadow the real question).

Well, in answer to the first question, I would say no, there isn't another argument for vegetarianism. The other things you bring up like global warming and world hunger are reasons more for signficantly reducing the amount of meat in peoples' diets, or simply coming up with more efficient ways of creating meat. I don't know if anyone else has heard of such, but some scientists are looking into engineering cells so that they divide rapidly to become a chicken wing or steak or something instead of having to farm everything from actual living animals. But these aren't reasons to completely eliminate meat; just to reduce its effects (being innefficiency at energy transfer and causing environmental effects).

 

[curiousmind]

Well, you have me convinced.
I'm surprised at how quickly it happened.

Maybe eating ethically is better than boycotting meat altogether...

 

[Nogre]

Well, you have me convinced.
I'm surprised at how quickly it happened.

I can't speak for everyone, but it took a lot to convince me to be a vegetarian. I never viewed it as ethically important, but then I read a book by Peter Singer and the entire issue crystalized. I spent years of my life refuting argument after argument until the one I just gave you, so I would hope it's effective. :lol:

Of course, you have to not be a bigot for the argument to work. :roll: Unfortunately, most people are bigots when it comes to animals that don't have a relatively specific DNA sequence. :facepalm:

 

[TheExylos]

ok curious you quoted two separate people..lol.. because i didn't type the first one.

Because I don't agree that world hunger is a reason to stop eating meat at all, and my reasoning for that would take to long to type out at the moment.

the second quote was me so your statement after that I will address.
you said:

But then again we didn't evolve to drive cars, to make medicines, or write poetry.

Its a known fact that we did infact evolve to drive cars, make medicines and write poetry, A car is nothing more than a tool and our thumbs give us the ability, and the need to make tools and to use them, for everything from eating, to drawing. Our oldest ancestors the to use fire also used tools for skinning, for eating, everything from a bowl to a fork. As for making medicines. The job of trying to heal the sick through medicines has existed as long as we have been making tools, weather it be from praying to pagen gods, and blowing smoke on the dieing, or like in germany where the tradition of eating a piece of molding bread to keep away illness.

These come with higher intelligence and that is Arguably one of the things we have evolved over our primate breatheren, this brings us to poetry, which for all we know the cave drawings of the ancient man was, we see them as pretty pictures, but then again people who don't know would see Egyptian hieroglyphs as the same. But we know the pictures are words, and when you put them together properly they make sentences and songs, we don't know if those drawings were the same. But we do know and can tell from looking at them that at the very least it was a way of communication, something that they developed as either a way of teaching, or maybe as a way of recording the past, but its something that they developed.


You then say :
On the flip-side, we also didn't evolve to start nuclear wars, or commit atrocities such as suicide bombing.

Again i go back to the evolving to use tools, for as long as we have been using tools because of our ope sable thumbs, one of those tools has been weapons, two cave men in a fight one has his bare hands and one has a club, the one with the club kills the other easily, so now another gets a club, so now the first one who had a club, well he gets a sharp stick, and the one with club says... OHH GEee MA GA HOO and he figures out a way to attach a stone tip that is sharpened stick, and now he has a spear, so on so forth, untill we come to the nuclear bomb, do I believe this is right, no because some lines just should not be crossed, but there is an evolution to an animal instinct that we have not evolved out of. Your right in the sence we did not evolve to be that way, but we have not evolved past it,

Genocides have happened all the time, its apart of human nature and can be seen as early as when two races of human, lived on the planet at the same time, both races had their ways of living, both races had their way of doing things, they had both lived on the happily for thousands of years, but then race of human number 2 starts to spread out, and race number one is killed off or bred off to make room. Did race two go out with the intent to wipe out race 1, who knows they didn't keep really good records. But as a whole genocide has been apart of us for as long as we can tell in one form or another. The white man to the indians, the white man to enslave the black or kill him if he doesn't submit. The romans to the English, the English to the Scottish and the Irish, the Nazis to the jews, the whole of Christendom to the Muslim. Men haven't changed the just the weapons have improved with the time. Again not something we evolved to but instead have not evolved out of

you said : All I'm saying is, just because we didn't evolve a certain way, it doesn't mean that acting that way is definitively right or wrong. You're subscribing to the Natural=Good fallacy.

It's not a good fallacy to believe that living with the nature of who you are and not necessary changing it, but governing it is right. For instance I have three children, spread out from ages 15 years to 14 months, I am a human being and like all I wanted to procreate, but I am not so stupid as to not realize the world is over crowed. So i would have stopped at two, accept well luck and two failed vasectomy's had not intervened. But I know a family down the road that has a soccer team of children. I can know that though i have the weapons to kill someone should they threaten me my wife or my children, i not actually do it, unless they do threaten them at which point god help the man, woman, or god who attempts it.

To say we are no longer the average species is to be hopeful and borderline over optimistic, and sadly history has shown us, from before the jewish were even jewish, that humans have come together and formed great empires, and always on the back of slaves, or with the genocide of some other race or people, and some times it's even been the berry and nut eaters that do it. Saying that eating meat makes us more aggressive, is to easy an answer, to much like an escape, and i think it comes from the fact we are the top of food chain.

We are at the top so now we have the right to say well I don't think we should eat meat because we have supplements, but even with us at the top of the food chain, to quote one of my favorite comedians, you will never ever see a starving person in Africa turn down a steak. Be happy with what you have, because there are those with allot less, choose to not eat if you want, but know that doing that will not change anything for poor starving people in some 3rd world country. what would i have no idea, but me not eating this steak i plan on tonight is not it.


wow that got longer than i intended