Absolutely. And if he can offer any reasonable proof of his assertions, I’ll be glad to debate him in GD. However, I’m not going to allow such assertions to remain unchallenged in this forum.
Neither question has a factual answer. Off to IMHO.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator
I have dead broccoli in me.
I usually rid myself of negative plant energy by farting.
It brings my body to peace. 
Actually, I used to be a strict vegetarian myself, and nowadays, I eat very little meat. I find that the less meat I eat, the cleaner my conscience is, but I don’t see the need to resort to pseudo-materialistic theories like chi to explain why I feel better. I feel that the evidence for chi is so scanty that you could easily be convinced that chi doesn’t exist. It would be a shame if you gave up on vegetarianism just because you stopped believing in chi.
There are other reasons for being vegetarian that have little or nothing to do with the nature of the animal’s death. Two of them being;
- the nature of the animal’s life.
- the nature of a meat diet.
And ‘natural causes’ very much includes a sudden and violent death. So what you really mean to ask is; would you only eat an animal that had faded away in a protected old age, with a spent and sick body. There’s not much natural in that.
And I would imagine that it would taste just about the worse it can do.
Here here. I would want a quick and painless death. Not a slow and painful death. Anyway, im not eating meat after wolves have gotton to it. Have you ever seen a wolf brush its teeth or wash its paws? I certainly haven’t.
As an “ethical vegetarian” (I’m in it for reasons of ethics, as opposed to health reasons) I suppose that it would be technically OK, but really disgusting. I wouldn’t do it unless it were a life-and-death situation. To me, it’s equivalent to asking a non-vegetarian in the USA if it’s ok to eat the family dog if it died of natural causes.
Also, you’d have a tough time convincing me that it really died of natural causes, and that you didn’t just hit one of your cows over the head with a hammer. 
I don’t know if you would consider this a natural cause per se, but I’ve eaten meat from a deer a relative hit with her car. It tasted very good, probably because I think it was pretty young.
Hey! Me too! I ate roadkill once - deer a neighbour hit with his car. You know what, it was DAMN good, chi or no chi! Of course, he didn’t tell us it was roadkill until after we ate it.
So does the chi of death transfer to the bacteria that decompose the body, and the plants that feed on the resulting soil? Holy crap, this Chi of Death is everywhere!
And what does this have to do with Taoism? It was my impression from studying classical Taoist texts like the Tao Te Ching and the Chuang Tzu that meat-eating was not frowned upon by the great Taoist philosophers, as evidenced by all the descriptions of fishing, butchering, etc. I have no idea if that’s changed for religious Taoists in the two thousand-odd years since then.
If people want to be vegetarians, that’s their prerogative, but half-baked pseudoscience doesn’t help matters. After all, every other carnivorous and omnivorous animal seems to deal just fine with the chi of death. Or are humans unique in lacking certain chi-digesting enzymes?
Uh, no. That’s the weight of five pounds of beef being lifted from your colon. Fells kinda like the Chi Of Death, though.
Q.E.D., you are indeed correct. http://www.bvra.org/intelligence.html That’s the best cite I could find on short notice.
Eat More Geriatric Beef is going to be one tough sell.
The Chi of Death… not to be confused with the Feng Shui of Death
Not a vegetarian, but no, couldn’t eat meat that died of natural causes, if only because there would be too much clotted blood it in. Gross!
Ever notice that you don’t see any (or at least Hardly Any) veins in chicken? They have to be there, they’re just empty or something.
I guess if it fell off a cliff and you got to it right away, you could field dress it and it would be okay. (visualizing chicken stampede running over cliff edge) hmmm…
On the subject of veggies having feelings, or a fear of death, I think I’ve seen it myself in my garden.
Reach for a nice ripe tomato and it instincually throws itself into the dirt and tries to roll away.
The asparagus only sprouts one or two shoots at a time, not enough to pick for a meal. Its the opposite of the herding effect.
The cherry tree maintains a crew of protective ants, and each cherry that ripens is sure to have at least one little critter embedded.
The greenpeppers make sure that each fruit is twisted in some strange fashion, just enough to make you suspicious about it. :rolleyes:
Interesting.
How many animals eat meat that has died naturally?
I know about vultures, but are there any other animals that will eat a carcass of another animal that was not freshly killed?
Qadgop the Mercotan, you are my idol. Great post.
:swoon:
Define exactly what you mean by “natural causes”.
I mean, what’s so unnatural about killing and eating something?