# "Don't eat meat," says Pope. Is he right? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 19, 2015, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847 "2015-09-19T21:57:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/101 "2015-09-23T06:02:20Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > . . . There’s a problem with kosher slaughter in the US. The problem is neither the kosher rules nor the USDA rules, each of which are reasonably humane on their own. The problem is that they interact badly. The USDA rules required the animal to be suspended before slaughter for hygiene. This isn’t usually a problem, as the animal is stunned, first. But for kosher kills, the animal is suspended alert, and I’m sure that’s terrifying. In a normal kosher slaugher without those rules, the butcher just walks up to the animal and quickly slits the throat, and the animal dies with little pain and little fear. But not if it was commercially slaughtered in the US. Ouch! Two rights make a wrong! ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/102 "2015-09-23T15:28:31Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Really? You’re trying for a ‘don’t hurt sentient beings unless necessary for survival’-morality, and then come up with this? :dubious: That was clearly not meant to be taken literally. Taken literally it would say that animal life is worth more than human life. It was a hyperbolic allusion to lack of empathy – I suggest that religious nutjobs who formulate codes of morality should spend more time looking in the mirror. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > We really don’t know how sentient plants are, or how capable of suffering they are. I don’t think there’s any scientific basis for plant sentience. > [@Blake](#): > > Are you suggesting that vegetarians have a more in depth knowledge of the number and ways in which rats and birds are killed to produce their vegetable food? > > Because if you are you will need to provide a cite for that claim. In my experience exactly the opposite is true. While all omnivores are aware that animals are slaughtered to produce their food and the basic way that it is done, very few vegetarians can tell you how rats or groundhogs are killed to protect corn fields. My direct allusion was that there was nothing abhorrent or negative inherent in growing one’s own vegetables. There may indeed be such negatives in large-scale commercial farming, though the really bad ones may be avoidable. There’s probably no human venture that isn’t capable of being harmful if conducted irresponsibly. The only farming venture I even remotely have any experience with is visiting vineyards, where one often hears [bird bangers](http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/engineer/facts/10-053.htm) off in the distance. These are apparently used with other types of crops, too. There’s nothing evil about simply keeping pests away from crops. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/103 "2015-09-23T18:55:30Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > In 3rd world countries, meat is grown on terrain that won’t support anything else (even hemp, the wonder-crop). If they don’t grow meat, the poor grow nothing, have nothing, and starve. Probably not what he’s going for, here. > > [New Study Shows the Major Environmental Impact of Meat Production | TIME.com](http://science.time.com/2013/12/16/the-triple-whopper-environmental-impact-of-global-meat-production/) True, and also meat animals can be fed silage and waste. Not to mention feed corn yields about ten times what sweet corn yields. An expert agronomist wrote a book about this, the figure is that if we cut meat consumption to about 1/3 of current, it’d be a perfect balance. So, eating _less_ meat is good for the environment. Eating _No_ meat is not. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/104 "2015-09-23T22:39:43Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > My direct allusion was that there was nothing abhorrent or negative inherent in growing one’s own vegetables. Yes there is. You are removing that ground from productive use by other animals for much less gain than broad acre vegetables would accomplish. That is a major negative. As others have pointed out, the gain from such tiny agriculture is pitiful, and if everyone tried it the result would be either the total conversion of all arable land to farmland or mass famine. As someone said, what is wrong for all is wrong for one. Your little home garden is probably responsible for no more animal deaths than your use of the internet, but in no sense is it responsible for no deaths. Ask yourself two simple questions: If everyone elected to live in high rises and \*not \*to have a home garden, would we have more wilderness areas, or less? Do animals die when wilderness areas are converted to housing developments. In addition there are the carbon emissions, the inefficient water use etc. > [@](#): > > There may indeed be such negatives in large-scale commercial farming, though the really bad ones may be avoidable. No, they are not avoidable if you want to feed 7 billion people. And I would consider allowing at least 5 billion people to starve to death to be a negative effect in itself. > [@](#): > > The only farming venture I even remotely have any experience with is visiting vineyards, where one often hears [bird bangers](http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/engineer/facts/10-053.htm) off in the distance. These are apparently used with other types of crops, too. There’s nothing evil about simply keeping pests away from crops. Ahh, yeah, there is. Firstly, do you think it would be evil if I prevented a child from eating by running at them with screaming with a knife every time they tried to get food? So why do you think it’s not evil to do exactly the same thing to a bird? What do you think happened to all the animals that used to live on that land that are now so frightened that they can no longer feed there? Do you think the vineyard puts out feed for them so they don’t starve to death? What do you think happened to all the animals that need to shelter in the trees and undergrowth that were cleared for that vineyard? All the burrowing animals? What do you think happens to all the animals living in the vines when the vines are pruned? The simple act of clearing land for a vineyard kills large numbers of animals, and maintaining it in that stae kills the same number every year as colonists from adjoining areas starve to death or die of exposure for lack of suitable habitat. Secondly, do you really think that a vineyard frightens away caterpillars and gophers? No, they [kill them](https://www.audubon.org/magazine/january-february-2013/poisons-used-kill-rodents-have-safer). Isn’t that causing suffering? You visited a vineyard, presumably on a tour. You seem to have limited experience on how vineyards actually operate. Nobody is going to be out shooting and poisoning birds and mammals when a tour group visits. but they sure do it when you aren’t there. All this illustrates my point perfectly. You enjoy fruit, but you have almost no ideas about its origins because you find the information about how anti-coagulants kill gophers to be distasteful and repulsive. At the very least omnivores are aware that animals die to produce there meat, and most are aware of at least the broad outlines of how that is done. In contrast, most vegetarians have absolutely no idea how many gophers, deer or birds died or how they suffered to produce that vegetable food. Call it cognitive dissonance or call it hypocrisy, but it doesn’t hang together as a moral philosophy. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/105 "2015-09-23T22:45:21Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Yes there is. > > . Excellent points, Sir! ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/106 "2015-09-23T23:27:20Z")
Saying you can’t come up with a moral reason to eat meat is like saying you can’t prove there is no God. The null hypothesis is that, if I want to do something, I can. It’s up to you to show me why it’s wrong. I have only to show that eating meat is not inherently immoral. And the easiest way for me to do so is to argue against what you say. You bring up animal suffering, I bring up that animals don’t have to suffer to be killed. You bring up calorie efficiency, I point out that our main meat animals can eat food that we cannot. You bring up carbon dioxide levels, I bring up desertification, which herding animals actually prevent. I also bring up killing animals for conservationist reasons. I bring up wasted material and calories. There are just a lot of things that show that eating meat is not inherently immoral. And, thus, it is perfectly moral for me to eat meat. ---
**Author:** ![Memnon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@Memnon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Memnon)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/107 "2015-09-24T06:07:20Z")
I’ve got a lot of people to respond to so I’ll try to be brief. > [@sleestak](#): > > It is rather easy to make a case for humans eating meat being moral. As John Mace pointed out, it depends on your premises. > > Please lay out all the premises required to prove eating meat is immoral. I suspect that your case will have one or more premises that can be refuted. 1. Eating meat is a luxury, not a dietary necessity. Though there may be some small percentage of people who do _need_ to eat meat for health reasons, they are in a minority, and I wouldn’t call them immoral for eating meat. For everyone else, the existence of millions of healthy vegetarians around the world proves that we don’t need to eat meat. 2. Animals have the ability to suffer. Don’t believe me? Kick a dog. See what happens. 3. We shouldn’t cause suffering unnecessarily. 4. Since eating meat is a luxury we can easily do without (1), it follows that the suffering we cause to indulge in this luxury is unnecessary, therefore it is immoral. There are, of course, degrees here. Shooting a deer in the head for its meat is less immoral than buying meat taken from a cow raised on an industrial farm, because in the first case the animal suffers less. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > It is the nature of being an animal that we have to kill other life to survive. In some sense, the only truly moral way to live is to survive on fruit, which is produced to be eaten. If I grant this, it would follow that you ought to believe that eating fruit exclusively is more moral than eating meat. In that case, your position is closer to mine than to that of the average American carnivore. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > Eating a root or a leaf or a seed it killing, just as eating meat and eggs is. There’s killing, and then there’s killing, though, isn’t there? There’s a difference between killing something sentient, which can experience fear, pain, grief, and happiness, than killing a seed, which is just a seed. Even if there wasn’t, it wouldn’t refute my position. I’ve already stated that I don’t consider eating meat to be immoral if it is done for health reasons. Therefore, I don’t consider eating vegetables and seeds to be immoral for the same reason, even if doing so involves “killing” them. I’ve seen no evidence that it is possible to live healthily on a diet of fruit alone. Indeed, there are plenty of people who are allergic to lots of different types of fruit. I, myself, am allergic to bananas, for instance. If it is necessary for one’s health to augment one’s diet with nuts, seeds, and vegetables, then I don’t consider it immoral. For that matter, I don’t even consider _all_ animal products to be immoral. There’s nothing immoral about drinking milk or eating cheese, for instance, so long as it is collected under humane conditions. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > It is not obvious that plants “behave” because they do so very slowly from the perspective of an animal, but plants pull away from things that hurt them, warn other plants of dangers, call certain animals to their aid, and otherwise act as if they suffer pain. Plants are too primitive to feel pain in the way animals and humans do. Their defensive reactions are merely the product of mindless chemical reactions. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > I do believe that we should try to minimize the suffering we cause. But careful slaughtering does not cause all that much suffering. I try to eat meat that was humanely reared and slaughtered quickly. For what it’s worth, I think that’s far more ethical than eating meat from industrial farms, which is what I did until recently. And while I agree that careful slaughtering doesn’t cause much suffering, it _does_ still shorten the animal’s life. Animals have a vested interest in not being killed, and I don’t believe we have the right to violate that to provide what is, essentially, just a luxury for ourselves. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > But I know that I am a lot happier when I can eat meat. I could probably live without it, but I could probably live with uncomfortable clothes in a dark hut, too. And as much as we should avoid causing suffering, we should also try to create joy. I understand that impulse. Indeed, I believed it myself for years. But as a matter of principle, I don’t believe it is moral to create joy at the expense of another sentient creature. Besides, you can get a tremendous amount of joy out of vegetarian food. You just need to get the right cookbook. > [@Damuri Ajashi](#): > > Why is it morally impossible to make a moral case for eating meat? How much moral significance are you attaching to a cow, a chicken or a fish anyway? Doesn’t it all depend on how much moral significance you attach to meat animals? I attach enough moral significance to animals that I can’t justify killing one for my own enjoyment, no matter how humanely I do it. At the same time, I don’t attach equal moral significance to animals and people. That’s why I don’t consider it immoral to eat meat if it really, truly is necessary for ones health. That said, all the evidence I’ve seen indicates that very few people _need_ to eat meat. For the vast majority of us, it’s just a luxury. > [@Skald The Rhymer](#): > > Sure FOILEM is a moral case. Morality is a matter of convention. If morality is a matter of convention, then the word morality is basically meaningless. There was a time when lots of people saw nothing particularly immoral about slavery, or beating their children. I believe those things have always been immoral, but that the people who practised them were just too stupid and ignorant to realise it. Now, I want to stress that I’m _not_ saying that eating meat is as bad as slavery. Of course it isn’t. And I’m _not_ saying that people who eat meat are stupid and ignorant. Indeed, I used to eat meat until recently. All I’m trying to say with this comparison is that I reject the idea that morality is a matter of convention. Morality is about maximising the well-being of conscious creatures and minimising the suffering of those same creatures. > [@Skald The Rhymer](#): > > If you wish to persuade me that I shouldn’t hunt, kill, & eat deer, or purchase and eat chicken, you must make the case that deer and chicken have moral worth, rights that should be respected by humans, in the same sense that humans. Animals have moral worth because they are capable of happiness and suffering. Indeed, some animals are _more_ capable of happiness and suffering than some humans. A pig, for instance, is far more capable of happiness and suffering than a newborn baby, or a severely brain-damaged adult. Therefore, since we grant moral worth to people of all kinds regardless of their intellectual capabilities, we should also grant a certain measure of moral worth to animals. That said, a human being doesn’t have an obligation to sacrifice himself for the benefit of an animal, and so if a person needs to eat meat for legitimate health reasons I wouldn’t consider that immoral. > [@Skald the Rhymer](#): > > You must also make the case, I think, think, that there’s some moral difference between a wolf stalking and killing Bambi and me doing it. The difference between a wolf killing Bambi and you doing it is that the wolf _has to_ and you don’t. > [@Big T](#): > > Saying you can’t come up with a moral reason to eat meat is like saying you can’t prove there is no God. The null hypothesis is that, if I want to do something, I can. It’s up to you to show me why it’s wrong. It causes suffering and it shortens the lives of creatures who don’t want their lives to be shortened. > [@Big T](#): > > You bring up animal suffering, I bring up that animals don’t have to suffer to be killed. They do, however, have their lives shortened. And the fact of the matter is that the large majority of meat produced for the American market is taken from animals who _do_ suffer horribly in cramped and filthy conditions for much, if not all, of their lives. That’s just the way of it, and as long as there is money to be made from doing business that way then that suffering will continue. I take it you’re a meat eater. Do you go out into the woods and hunt your own game? If so, do you take the animal quickly, with one shot, and do you take care not to waste any of it so as to minimise the number of animals you kill? Failing that, do you buy your meat free range, or from ethical butchers and just swallow the extra cost? Or do you just buy it cheap from the supermarket like everyone else? If the latter, how do you justify your purchase knowing full well that you could quite easily do without the meat altogether? > [@Big T](#): > > You bring up calorie efficiency, I point out that our main meat animals can eat food that we cannot. You bring up carbon dioxide levels, I bring up desertification, which herding animals actually prevent. My argument doesn’t rely on either of those things. > [@Big T](#): > > I also bring up killing animals for conservationist reasons. I confess I don’t know enough about conservation to comment on the ethics of killing for conservationist reasons. But what is the number of animals killed for conservationist reasons as a percentage of the animals killed purely so that we can have a “real” burger instead of a veggie burger? I’d wager it is very small indeed, and certainly not enough to satisfy the public demand for meat. And, of the animals killed for conservationist reasons, how many are staples of the American diet? > [@Big T](#): > > And, thus, it is perfectly moral for me to eat meat. In response to this, I’d just like to pose you a few questions I posted earlier in the thread: 1. How would you feel if I were to open a wildly successful restaurant that only served blue whale, white rhino burgers, and bald eagle fritters? 2. How do you feel about traditional Chinese medicine? As you know, there’s high demand in China for medicine made from the parts of numerous endangered species. You and I both know this “medicine” is a load of bollocks. The customers, however, genuinely believe that they’re essential for their health. Do you think the Chinese medicine industry is morally superior or inferior to the American fast food industry? Or do you think there’s no difference? 3. When it comes to what is and what isn’t acceptable to eat, where do you draw the line? For example, if I really wanted to eat somebody, how would you dissuade me? What if the person I wanted to eat had no friends or family? What if they were so brain damaged they were less intelligent than the average pig? 4. If aliens invaded Earth and started eating people, how would you convince them not to? If, after listening to your arguments, they just said “We don’t care. You taste good.” how would you respond? And would you consider them immoral? ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/108 "2015-09-24T07:32:37Z")
> [@Tithonus](#): > > 1. Eating meat is a luxury, not a dietary necessity. Though there may be some small percentage of people who do _need_ to eat meat for health reasons, they are in a minority, and I wouldn’t call them immoral for eating meat. For everyone else, the existence of millions of healthy vegetarians around the world proves that we don’t need to eat meat. > 2. Animals have the ability to suffer. Don’t believe me? Kick a dog. See what happens. > 3. We shouldn’t cause suffering unnecessarily. > 4. Since eating meat is a luxury we can easily do without (1), it follows that the suffering we cause to indulge in this luxury is unnecessary, therefore it is immoral. 1. Eating a vegetarian diet is a luxury, not a dietary necessity. Though there may be some small percentage of people who do _need_ to eat only vegetables for health reasons, they are in a minority, and I wouldn’t call them immoral for eating only vegetables. For everyone else, the existence of millions of healthy omnivores around the world proves that we don’t need to eat a vegetarian diet. 2. Animals have the ability to suffer. 3. We shouldn’t cause suffering unnecessarily. 4. Since eating a vegetarian diet is a luxury we can easily do without (1), it follows that the suffering we cause to indulge in this luxury is unnecessary, therefore it is immoral. Tell me if you think that’s logically valid. If you think that it is utterly invalid then clearly your argument is also invalid since it is _exactly the same argument_. Of course both arguments are invalid because you are engaging in argument from assertion coupled with an undistributed middle… You are asserting that eating meat more immoral than any alternative, then arguing that since it is more immoral, eating meat must be less moral than any alternative. That is perfectly circular and ignores that fact that morality is a sliding scale, not an absolute. Any act can be both inherently immoral and simultaneously the most moral option. Just because one act can rendered unnecessary by substituting some other act does not make the first act either immoral or a luxury. Consider the following: 1. Driving a car to work leads to greenhouse gas emissions. 2. Unnecessarily increasing greenhouse gas emissions is morally wrong. 3. I can eliminate my need to drive to work each day if, instead, I walk next door once a week and steal my neighbour’s paycheck. 4. Therefore driving a car to work each day is a luxury. 5. Therefore, based on your logic, working is immoral and robbery is moral. Of course that’s a load of dingoes kidneys. While points 1-3 are all perfectly true, points 4 and 5 are a load of bollocks. Just because we have agreed that unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions are morally wrong, that does not mean that any and all acts undertaken to render emissions unnecessary is morally right. For your argument to have any legs at all you need to establish that your alternative is \*more \*moral than the status quo. And you have utterly failed to do that. That is why we can substitute “vegetables” for “meat” in to your argument and produce the opposite outcome from exactly the same inputs. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/109 "2015-09-24T07:34:30Z")
> [@](#): > > There are, of course, degrees here. Shooting a deer in the head for its meat is less immoral than buying meat taken from a cow raised on an industrial farm, because in the first case the animal suffers less. And what about shooting one deer in the head and eating if, as opposed to having to poison 300 gophers? Wouldn’t that also lead to less suffering? What if we could slaughter one whale, and eliminate the 10, 000 bird deaths associated with producing the same amount of legumes? > [@](#): > > There’s killing, and then there’s killing, though, isn’t there? There’s a difference between killing something sentient, which can experience fear, pain, grief, and happiness, than killing a seed, which is just a seed. Is there? Can you explain what you think that difference is? (Hint: Before rpelying, check to see if the reason is aesthetic.) > [@](#): > > If it is necessary for one’s health to augment one’s diet with nuts, seeds, and vegetables, then I don’t consider it immoral. Why? Why is your happiness more important than the food you consume, but the happiness of an omnivore not more important the food they consume? That seems to be a double standard. It would seem that either it is acceptable to inflict death on other entities to remain happy or it is not, yet you want to argue that it;s acceptable sometimes, but not at others. > [@](#): > > Plants are too primitive to feel pain in the way animals and humans do. Plants are no more primitive than any other organism. > [@](#): > > Their defensive reactions are merely the product of mindless chemical reactions. Establish that this is not also true of a frog. We know that we can remove a frog’s brain and it will still react defensively to painful stimuli. Doesn’t that prove that their defensive reactions are merely the product of mindless chemical reactions. Or do you believe that the mind resides outside the brain? And so on and so forth for all the rest of the arguments. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/110 "2015-09-24T08:09:55Z")
Who the hell shoots a deer in the head? Go for the chest, please. ---
**Author:** ![Memnon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@Memnon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Memnon)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/111 "2015-09-24T08:26:18Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > 1. Eating a vegetarian diet is a luxury, not a dietary necessity. Though there may be some small percentage of people who do need to eat only vegetables for health reasons, they are in a minority, and I wouldn’t call them immoral for eating only vegetables. For everyone else, the existence of millions of healthy omnivores around the world proves that we don’t need to eat a vegetarian diet. > 2. Animals have the ability to suffer. > 3. We shouldn’t cause suffering unnecessarily. > 4. Since eating a vegetarian diet is a luxury we can easily do without (1), it follows that the suffering we cause to indulge in this luxury is unnecessary, therefore it is immoral. I assume you meant to change point 2. to “_Vegetables_ have the ability to suffer.” If not, I honestly don’t know what you’re trying to say. > [@Blake](#): > > Tell me if you think that’s logically valid. If you think that it is utterly invalid then clearly your argument is also invalid since it is exactly the same argument. I think your revised version of my argument _would_ be logically valid _if_ you changed point 2 as above. It wouldn’t be logically _sound_, though. Vegetables don’t suffer. Animals do. My argument, therefore, is both valid _and_ sound while yours would merely be valid. True in theory, but not in practise. > [@Blake](#): > > Of course both arguments are invalid because you are engaging in argument from assertion coupled with an undistributed middle… You are asserting that eating meat more immoral than any alternative, then arguing that since it is more immoral, eating meat must be less moral than any alternative. That is perfectly circular and ignores that fact that morality is a sliding scale, not an absolute. You’ve conveniently left out the basis for my assertion that eating meat is less moral than vegetarianism: Eating meat causes suffering to sentient creatures. The only assertion that I’m making is that causing suffering to sentient creatures unnecessarily is bad. Would you argue otherwise? That’s just Consequentialism 101. For eating meat to be a moral act (or even morally neutral) you need to demonstrate that the benefits (a nice meal) outweigh the harm (months, and in many cases _years_, of animal suffering). Since, thanks to vegetarianism, it’s perfectly possible to have the benefit (nice meal) without the harm (animal suffering), it follows that the benefit doesn’t _outweigh_ the harm. Therefore, it’s immoral. > [@Blake](#): > > For your argument to have any legs at all you need to establish that your alternative is more moral than the status quo. And you have utterly failed to do that. That is why we can substitute “vegetables” for “meat” in to your argument and produce the opposite outcome from exactly the same inputs. The way I see it, for _your_ argument to have any legs you need to prove that an intensively reared pig is no more capable of suffering than a potato. > [@Blake](#): > > And what about shooting one deer in the head and eating it, as opposed to having to poison 300 gophers? Wouldn’t that also lead to less suffering? > > What if we could slaughter one whale, and eliminate the 10, 000 bird deaths associated with producing the same amount of legumes? While it’s true that intensive crop farming also results in numerous animal deaths, I see that as largely a symptom of our society’s general disdain for animal life. A society which was committed to reducing the suffering of animals as a moral imperative simply wouldn’t allow for large numbers of animals to die. > [@Blake](#): > > Is there? Can you explain what you think that difference is? (Hint: Before replying, check to see if the reason is aesthetic.) Plants don’t suffer. They don’t experience positive and negative emotions. That’s the only germane difference. > [@Blake](#): > > Why is your happiness more important than the food you consume, but the happiness of an omnivore not more important the food they consume? The food I consume isn’t _capable_ of happiness. > [@Blake](#): > > That seems to be a double standard. It would seem that either it is acceptable to inflict death on other entities to remain happy or it is not, yet you want to argue that it’s acceptable sometimes, but not at others. The entities in question aren’t equivalent. Plants don’t have brains or central nervous systems. They don’t experience emotions. > [@Blake](#): > > Plants are no more primitive than any other organism. How are you defining “primitive” here? > [@Blake](#): > > Establish [that a plant’s defensive reactions are merely the product of mindless chemical reactions] is not also true of a frog. We know that we can remove a frog’s brain and it will still react defensively to painful stimuli. Doesn’t that prove that their defensive reactions are merely the product of mindless chemical reactions. I know absolutely nothing about frogs so I couldn’t possibly answer this question. Could it be muscle memory, perhaps? I haven’t got a clue. Can you prove that the frog’s defensive reactions are mindless chemical reactions when we _don’t_ take its brain out? It seems to me that your rebuttal really hinges on this supposition that plants are every bit as capable of suffering as pigs and cows. Until I see some rock solid evidence that this is definitely the case, I’m not going to accept that premise. Also, I hate to be a stickler, but I asked you some questions back on page one. Would you mind having a crack at them? 1. How would you feel if I were to open a wildly successful restaurant that only served blue whale, white rhino burgers, and bald eagle fritters? 2. How do you feel about traditional Chinese medicine? As you know, there’s high demand in China for medicine made from the parts of numerous endangered species. You and I both know this “medicine” is a load of bollocks. The customers, however, genuinely believe that they’re essential for their health. Do you think the Chinese medicine industry is morally superior or inferior to the American fast food industry? Or do you think there’s no difference? 3. When it comes to what is and what isn’t acceptable to eat, where do you draw the line? For example, if I really wanted to eat somebody, how would you dissuade me? What if the person I wanted to eat had no friends or family? What if they were so brain damaged they were less intelligent than the average pig? 4. If aliens invaded Earth and started eating people, how would you convince them not to? If, after listening to your arguments, they just said “We don’t care. You taste good.” how would you respond? And would you consider them immoral? ---
**Author:** ![mascaroni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dc4da7/32.png) [@mascaroni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mascaroni)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/112 "2015-09-24T09:11:13Z")
> [@Tithonus](#): > > …Also, I hate to be a stickler, but I asked you some questions back on page one. Would you mind having a crack at them?.. There’s a difference between snipers and machine gunners. Just a thought… ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/113 "2015-09-24T09:26:37Z")
> [@Tithonus](#): > > I assume you meant to change point 2. to “_Vegetables_ have the ability to suffer.” If not, I honestly don’t know what you’re trying to say. No I did not mean to change that. I meant exactly what I posted. And I am trying to say exactly what you were trying to say when you made \*\*exactly the same argument. \*\* Do you believe that my argument is correct? If not then tell us all where you think the flaw in the reasoning is? > [@](#): > > I think your revised version of my argument _would_ be logically valid _if_ you changed point 2 as above. It wouldn’t be logically _sound_, though. Vegetables don’t suffer. Animals do. My argument, therefore, is both valid _and_ sound while yours would merely be valid. True in theory, but not in practise. Nice strawman. Now see if you can respond to my actual argument, rather than one you constructed for me. :rolleyes: > [@](#): > > You’ve conveniently left out the basis for my assertion that eating meat is less moral than vegetarianism: Eating meat causes suffering to sentient creatures. Eating plants also causes suffering to sentient creatures. Now would you care to address the argument I actually made rather than your strawman? > [@](#): > > The only assertion that I’m making is that causing suffering to sentient creatures unnecessarily is bad. Which of the following points do you disagree with 1. Using the SDMB servers leads to increased greenhouse gas emissions 2. Using the SDMB servers is unnecessary. 3. Increased greenhouse gas emissions causes suffering to sentient creatures. 4. Causing suffering to sentient creatures unnecessarily is bad. 5. Therefore using the SDMB servers is inherently bad. Do you agree with that argument. If not tell use what point you think is invalid. > [@](#): > > For eating meat to be a moral act (or even morally neutral) you need to demonstrate that the benefits (a nice meal) outweigh the harm (months, and in many cases _years_, of animal suffering). No I wouldn’t. You have made the assertion, the burden of proof is on you \*You \*need to demonstrate that the harm it causes is greater than the harm caused by any alternative that \*you \*propose. And so far you have failed abjectly to do this. > [@](#): > > Since, thanks to vegetarianism, it’s perfectly possible to have the benefit (nice meal) without the harm (animal suffering), it follows that the benefit doesn’t _outweigh_ the harm. That is the same non-sequitur you posted above. I claim that, since, thanks to an omnivorous diet, it’s perfectly possible to have the benefit (nice meal) without the harm (animal suffering) that is caused by vegetarianism, it follows that the benefit of vegetarianism doesn’t doesn’t _outweigh_ the harm. Therefore vergetarianism is immoral. Both arguments are total non-sequiters without a shred of evidence or reasoning to support them. > [@](#): > > The way I see it, for _your_ argument to have any legs you need to prove that an intensively reared pig is no more capable of suffering than a potato. No, I just have to prove that one pig feels no more pain than ten gophers that are poisoned to produce a potato. Do you really want to argue that ten gophers poisoned with warfarin feel less pain than one pig that is shot in the wild? If not then your argument has been demolished right here. The moral thing to do is eat the pig and not poison the gophers. > [@](#): > > While it’s true that intensive crop farming also results in numerous animal deaths, I see that as largely a symptom of our society’s general disdain for animal life. A society which was committed to reducing the suffering of animals as a moral imperative simply wouldn’t allow for large numbers of animals to die. 1. That’s objectively not true. We can not possibly feed 7 billion humans without agriculture, and the simple act of clearing a patch of forest kills animals., it doesn’t matter what mindset people have, we need to farm to feed 7 billion people, and animals need to die if we clear farmland. Nobody in the world believes we can feed 7 billion people from the wilderness. 2. Even if that were true, it’s not the reality. The reality is that 1 gophers is poisoned to produce a kilogram of soybeans and a dozen other animals do die of starvation and exposure when the farmland is cleared. \*That \*is the reality. So in the real world, where your food \*does \*come from intensive crop farming, it is more moral to eat kilogram of pork from a wild shot pig than to eat one kilogram of soybeans. You haven’t been arguing about morality in some hypothetical world where we can feed 7 billion from the wilderness. you have been arguing about morality in this world, where producing 1 kg of soybean requires clearing 100m^2 of rainforest and poisoning any birds or rodents that try to eat the crop. In this world. In the real world. Is it more moral to eat one wild shot pig from the rainforest, or clear the rainforest and poison 10 rats to produce 1kg of soybeans? > [@](#): > > Plants don’t suffer. They don’t experience positive and negative emotions. That’s the only germane difference. That’s an assertion with no evidence or reasoning to support it. It also doesn’t answer the question I put to you. > [@](#): > > The food I consume isn’t _capable_ of happiness. More baseless assertions. Provide evidence that a carrot isn’t capable of happiness The provide equivalent evidence that a frog is capable of happiness. > [@](#): > > The entities in question aren’t equivalent. Plants don’t have brains or central nervous systems. They don’t experience emotions. All you have done is re-asserted that a carrot can’t react to pain because it lacks a brain. Since we have already proven that an organism without a brain can react to pain, your argument remains invalid. I asked the question to give you the chance to actually respond to the evidence that an organism without a brain can react to pain. All you have done is repeated the same assertion and ignored the evidence. Your argument has been refuted. > [@](#): > > How are you defining “primitive” here? The way all scientists do. > [@](#): > > I know absolutely nothing about frogs so I couldn’t possibly answer this question. Could it be muscle memory, perhaps? I haven’t got a clue. Your entire argument hinges on your assertion that a carrot’s reaction to pain is mindless, whereas the reaction of an animal must be mindful because the animal has a brain. Saying that you are utterly ignorant of the fact that animals without a brain do react to pain doesn’t make you argument any less invalid. Your argument has been invalidated by the evidence. The fact that you lack the knowledge required to defend your own argument doesn’t change the fact that your argument is contradicted by 150 years of evidence and supported by nothing but assertion. > [@](#): > > Can you prove that the frog’s defensive reactions are mindless chemical reactions when we _don’t_ take its brain out? I don’t need to. I just have to point out the fact that animals react to pain without a brain. That falsifies your assertion that any pain reaction in an animal must be mindful. Since your argument hinges on the acceptance that any pain reaction in an animal must be mindful, your argument has been refuted. > [@](#): > > It seems to me that your rebuttal really hinges on this supposition that plants are every bit as capable of suffering as pigs and cows. Nope. That’s just another excluded middle from you. My argument just requires that there is even a possibility that a billion plants that are uprooted and left to dehydrate can experience a negative sensation equivalent to a single deer that is shot through the brain by a concealed hunter that it was totally unaware of Once we have established that possibility, then your entire argument collapses. Your argument doesn’t hinge on the supposition that jellyfish are every bit as capable of suffering as apes, does it? > [@](#): > > Until I see some rock solid evidence that this is definitely the case, I’m not going to accept that premise. And until I see your evidence that carrots don’t suffer, I will adopt the same stance. So once again, your argument is refuted. > [@](#): > > Also, I hate to be a stickler, but I asked you some questions back on page one. Would you mind having a crack at them? Sure, if you will answer mine form page one, and this page. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/114 "2015-09-24T09:48:22Z")
Actually, just to cut through the crap. Tell us whether you dispute any of the following points: 1. [Typical production methods for annual crops such as wheat or soybeans results in the death of multiple wild animals wild animals.](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/000632079390060E) 2. The deaths of wild animals from exposure and predators is often painful and/or stressful. 3. Shooting a wild deer results in the death of one deer. 4. A deer shot through the brain, from a hide, suffers no stress and no/minimal pain. 5. Therefore there will be less pain and suffering involved in the production of _this specific carcasse_ of of wild venison than in the production of an equivalent quantity of protein and fat from typical, store-bought plant foods. 6. Therefore it is more moral to eat \*this specific carcasse \*of venison than typical store-bought plant foods. Does anybody disagree with any of this? If not then the argument is finished. The blanket assertion that eating meat is less moral is proven to be false. In at least some cases it is more moral to eat meat. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/115 "2015-09-24T10:53:35Z")
I don’t think one can support a blanket assertion against eating meat. But I think you can make a good case against factory-farm meat. Those animals live in unnatural and often unpleasant conditions (more so for veal, pork, and chicken than for beef and lamb) and are fed crops raised on land that could produce more calories for human if used directly to grow vegetable-based foods than the resulting calories of the meat. So more gophers are killed per calorie to produce pork than to produce pasta. But any argument that says, “and the vegetarian diet is just as good” is false. Yes, if you happen to like vegetables, that might be true for you. But the vast majority of people prefer to eat some meat. They aren’t buying meat because it is cheaper or easier to obtain, they are buying it because they like it more. So if you don’t acknowledge that you are trading away some human happiness, your argument fails. I love to eat meat. My friends also joke about how I have carnivorous instincts. And while fruit is yummy, I mostly eat vegetables because they are supposedly good for me. But I am troubled by some of the implications of my diet. Personally, I’ve stopped eating US-produced veal and cut way back on factory pork. And I eat more humanely reared meat when it is available. (Which includes wild hunted meat, which I feel no qualms about eating.) We each need to make our own decisions. I suspect that on average, the vegetarians make more moral food choices than us carnivores. Even if they ignore the suffering of plants and gophers. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/116 "2015-09-24T10:56:49Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I suspect that on average, the vegetarians make more moral food choices than us carnivores. Even if they ignore the suffering of plants and gophers. How can a choice be more moral if it causes more suffering? ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/117 "2015-09-24T11:55:04Z")
Because in general, their choices cause less suffering. We carnivores kill those gophers and plants, too, to feed our livestock. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/118 "2015-09-24T13:02:04Z")
I’m too pooped to Pope. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/119 "2015-09-24T13:33:24Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > I’m too pooped to Pope. Are you named for the clemetis? ---
**Author:** ![Memnon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@Memnon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Memnon)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2015, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847/120 "2015-09-24T14:56:21Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > No I did not mean to change that. I meant exactly what I posted. > > And I am trying to say exactly what you were trying to say when you made exactly the same argument. > > Do you believe that my argument is correct? If not then tell us all where you think the flaw in the reasoning is? Ah, I see what you mean now. I misunderstood. You were referring to animals killed as a byproduct of crop farming. Now what you’re saying makes more sense. Okay, I think we’re on the same page now. > [@Blake](#): > > Nice strawman. Now see if you can respond to my actual argument, rather than one you constructed for me. Suspicious little fellow, aren’t you? I didn’t _strawman_ your argument, I _misunderstood_ it. And frankly, the reason I misunderstood it was that _you_ did a lousy job of presenting it. But still, I get where you’re coming from now, so we can proceed. > [@Blake](#): > > Eating plants also causes suffering to sentient creatures. > > Now would you care to address the argument I actually made rather than your straw man? See, this is why I misunderstood what you were saying. You’re arguing two things simultaneously; that crop farming kills animals by destroying their habitats _and_ that we can’t prove plants don’t suffer. At the start of your previous post, I thought you were making the second argument (hence my suggested “correction”), when actually you were making the first one. So, anyway, to address the argument you were making. The growing of crops and legumes does, of course, cause suffering to sentient creatures. Hedgehogs get caught in tractors, field mice are more exposed to predators, etc… You persistently fail to take on board two salient points. The first is that all this suffering is happening already right now just to grow the grain we’re feeding our livestock! We’re killing animals to grow the crops to feed other animals that we breed to kill. The second point, which also addresses this “concern” of yours, was one that I _did_ actually make in my previous post but which you obviously skirted over in your desperate frenzy to misrepresent a simple misunderstanding as an act of straw-manning. I can’t possibly make it any simpler than I made it last time, so I’ll just re-quote myself: _“While it’s true that intensive crop farming also results in numerous animal deaths, I see that as largely a symptom of our society’s general disdain for animal life. A society which was committed to reducing the suffering of animals as a moral imperative simply wouldn’t allow for large numbers of animals to die.”_ > [@Blake](#): > > Which of the following points do you disagree with > > 1. Using the SDMB servers leads to increased greenhouse gas emissions > 2. Using the SDMB servers is unnecessary. > 3. Increased greenhouse gas emissions causes suffering to sentient creatures. > 4. Causing suffering to sentient creatures unnecessarily is bad. > 5. Therefore using the SDMB servers is inherently bad. Please quantify the actual level of harm caused by my personal use of the SDMB server. You can do it in parts per millilitre, or in square footage of scorched earth, whatever you like. _Prove_ to me that the harm I’m causing is actually…y’know, _harm._ And, once you’ve done that, please correct for the number of animal lives my impassioned plea for vegetarianism is inevitably going to save. For all you know, I’ve just started a new green revolution! You see, when you eat a chicken burger, I can actually _point_ to the harm you’ve caused. I can take a photo of it and stick it on Instagram. When I use the SDMB server, what do you point to? 'Cos at the moment, it seems like you’re pointing at absolutely nothing. This, again, by the way, is a point that I have _already addressed_ (your sniffy protestations to the contrary notwithstanding) in my previous post. I quote myself **again** : \*"The internet already exists, and is responsible for tremendous good throughout the world. I don’t see how my using it to procrastinate on the Dope actually increases harm, either directly or indirectly. I concede that creating the internet has caused some amount of harm, but now that it’s here, what difference does it make if I use it or not? Besides, what I personally do doesn’t really matter, does it? I mean, I could be the biggest hypocrite imaginable; I could be sitting here in snakeskin shoes and leather pants wearing a fleece made out of hamster skins and shovelling Siberian tiger steaks in my mouth with one hand while punching kittens in the face with the other, and it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to my actual argument. All it would prove is that I wasn’t living up to it. That’s an indictment of me, certainly, but not my argument itself."\* > [@Blake](#): > > No I wouldn’t. You have made the assertion, the burden of proof is on you > > You need to demonstrate that the harm it causes is greater than the harm caused by any alternative that you propose. > > And so far you have failed abjectly to do this. Okay, let’s have a look at some of the harm caused by the intensive farming practises used in America today: 1. According to the [Humane Society](http://tinyurl.com/nllrd6v), in 2014 the U.S. meat industry killed: [ul] [li] 9,970,000 cows.[/li][li] 2,817,740,000 chickens.[/li][li] 8,491,000 ducks.[/li][li] 35,990,000 hogs.[/li][li] 760,000 lambs.[/li][li] And finally, 72,814,000 turkeys.[/ul][/li] Giving us a total of two billion, nine hundred and forty five million, seven hundred and sixty five thousand animals killed for our simple enjoyment, give or take, _just in 2014 alone._ These animals all eat grain. The number of animals killed in the farming of that grain is simply impossible to calculate. The animals we eat are pumped full of antibiotics. This is one of the main driving forces behind the vastly accelerated antibiotic resistance we are seeing today. According to the [CDC](http://tinyurl.com/nzlfcjt), MRSA alone kills about 11,000 people a year. The cows, chickens, hogs, lambs, ducks, and turkeys generally live in appalling conditions. Cows are forced to spend much of their lives knee deep in their own filth with virtually no room to move. In order to keep costs down, they are also fed a diet of corn which they have not evolved to eat. This encourages an acidic environment within the cows digestive system which, in turn, encourages the growth of e-coli, and antibiotic resistant e-coli at that. Because, as I’ve said, the cows spend long periods in confined conditions standing around in their own excrement, the e-coli spreads rapidly, leading to occasionally fatal e-coli outbreaks when the tainted meat inevitably gets into the supermarkets. Chickens are packed so tightly together they develop osteoporosis, go mad, and occasionally resort to eating each other. Turkeys typically go through a painful process called “debeaking” (which is exactly what it sounds like) and are stuffed together wing-to-wing in extremely bright and noisy environments, basically so that they’re forced to stay awake and eat round the clock. Their weight increases so quickly that their bones can’t support it and, like the chickens, they develop osteoporosis and broken bones. All of these animals produce an unconscionable amount of filth. 61 million tons each year, according to the [USDA](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1240832/pdf/ehp0110-000445.pdf). This waste has polluted the groundwater in 17 states and is, according to the [EPA](http://www.epa.gov/region9/animalwaste/problem.html), the biggest water pollution problem in the U.S. So that’s _some_ of the harm. Should a wholesale adoption of vegetarianism ever take place in the United States, a tremendous amount of that harm would be averted. While it would likely result in an increase in the amount of field animals killed during crop farming, it is unlikely that this increase would outweigh all of the above, especially since millions of field animals are already being killed today just to feed our pigs and cows. > [@Blake](#): > > No, I just have to prove that one pig feels no more pain than ten gophers that are poisoned to produce a potato. > > Do you really want to argue that ten gophers poisoned with warfarin feel less pain than one pig that is shot in the wild? > > If not then your argument has been demolished right here. The moral thing to do is eat the pig and not poison the gophers. The vast majority of pigs reared for slaughter _aren’t_ shot in the wild. They’re force-fed and kept in their own excrement under highly unnatural conditions until the farmers decide they’re fat enough to kill. 36 million of them a year. And, as I’ve already mentioned, the fact that gophers are poisoned with warfarin is merely another symptom of our culture’s disdain for animal life. A wholesale switch to vegetarianism would require a change in mindset that would necessarily disincentivise farmers from using such inhumane methods of pest control. > [@Blake](#): > > That’s objectively not true. We can not possibly feed 7 billion humans without agriculture, and the simple act of clearing a patch of forest kills animals., it doesn’t matter what mindset people have, we need to farm to feed 7 billion people, and animals need to die if we clear farmland. Nobody in the world believes we can feed 7 billion people from the wilderness. Luckily, America doesn’t need to feed the world. It just needs to feed America. > [@Blake](#): > > Even if that were true, it’s not the reality. The reality is that 1 gophers is poisoned to produce a kilogram of soybeans and a dozen other animals do die of starvation and exposure when the farmland is cleared. _Is_ that a reality, though? Do you have a cite? I looked at the one (and only) reference you provided and it doesn’t mention anything whatsoever about gophers. It’s true that other animals die of starvation and exposure when farmland is cleared, but, again, that’s only because we’ve trained ourselves not to care about animals. I refuse to accept that, in this age of Higgs particles and comet probes, we don’t have the ingenuity to work out a way to minimise the harm caused by clearing farmland. We just have to _want_ to do it. > [@Blake](#): > > You haven’t been arguing about morality in some hypothetical world where we can feed 7 billion from the wilderness. you have been arguing about morality in this world, where producing 1 kg of soybean requires clearing 100m^2 of rainforest and poisoning any birds or rodents that try to eat the crop. Where does this 7 billion keep coming from? The population of America is 310 million. I’ve never suggested that the whole world adopt vegetarianism. Frankly, your insinuation is a far bigger straw man than the one you accused me of setting up. I hope you didn’t kill any gophers when you built it. > [@Blake](#): > > In this world. In the real world. Is it more moral to eat one wild shot pig from the rainforest, or clear the rainforest and poison 10 rats to produce 1kg of soybeans? You’re not describing the real world! In the _real_ world, the vast majority of meat produced for the American market comes from industrial farms. Or do you think Ronald McDonald is out there with a duck whistle bringing it all in personally? > [@Blake](#): > > More baseless assertions. > Provide evidence that a carrot isn’t capable of happiness No. _You_ provide evidence that it _is_ capable. > [@Blake](#): > > All you have done is re-asserted that a carrot can’t react to pain because it lacks a brain. Since we have already proven that an organism without a brain can react to pain, your argument remains invalid. Do you have a cite for this frog experiment? I’d be interested to see the study for myself, if you have it to hand. Besides, even if the findings are exactly as you report them, what’s true for one organism isn’t necessarily true for any other. > [@Blake](#): > > The way all scientists do. Thanks. That’s real helpful :rolleyes: How are you, as a scientist, defining it? > [@Blake](#): > > Your argument has been invalidated by the evidence. The fact that you lack the knowledge required to defend your own argument doesn’t change the fact that your argument is contradicted by 150 years of evidence and supported by nothing but assertion. Well maybe next time you can bring some to the table, because right now the only person running on bald assertions here is you. > [@Blake](#): > > I don’t need to. I just have to point out the fact that animals react to pain without a brain. That falsifies your assertion that any pain reaction in an animal must be mindful. What? _What?!?_ Even if I grant your point (which I’m still skeptical about) what difference does that make to the suffering animals are going through today? The pain reactions we witness in factory farms _are_ mindful because, guess what…they have their minds! > [@Blake](#): > > And until I see your evidence that carrots don’t suffer, I will adopt the same stance. So, in the same post where you repeatedly accuse me of shoddy logic, you round everything off by asking me to prove a negative. Nice. No. _You’re_ the one saying they _do_ feel pain. _You_ can prove it. > [@Blake](#): > > Sure, if you will answer mine form page one, and this page. Right, well I’ve given it my best shot. I’m not going to answer any more of your questions until you tackle mine. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-eat-meat-says-pope-is-he-right/731847.md?page=7)