Which thought was the core of my contention. Although I didn’t explicitly say so.
Some of squeamish is simple disgust. Which is one of the most fundamental of human emotions. But IMO the higher manifestations of morality are extrapolations from disgust.
Which is a lot of why religious extremism is so extreme. A fundamentalist / hard core adherent of whichever stripe is quite literally disgusted by members of other faiths.
My moral defense is that eating meat has long been part of human culture, and it’s the cultural aspect of such a meal, how it brings people, families together, and is used as a centerpiece of that gathering, along with the added satisfaction that only a meat meal can provide that helps bond people together in clan like groups. A central meal involving meat seems to me to be a cornerstone of civilization, and an offering to others to join in some celebrations.
In that having meat in a first world nation is not just morally defensible, but the opposite (not allowing it, knowing it’s cultural influence) would be morally indefensible.
I do contend that the amount of meat and factory farming is open to your question, and I do feel respectful hunting and thankful killing would be the best way to do it, but realize in our first world society, not ever ‘clan’ would have access to a hunter of someone to mentor them in this skill. This would require another way for these non-hunting clans to also be able to hold such gathering meals.
Which is why, IMO, so many societies did or do feel so strongly about homosexuality. But that’s a tangent for another thread.
I don’t see how this makes a lick of sense. If an act is immoral, it’s equally immoral if I do it or somebody else does it.
That whole “if you kill it yourself it’s somehow moral than if you hire a hitman” thing just sounds like a contrived way for countryfolk to pretend they’re better than cityfolk.
Myself, I don’t consider killing any nonhuman animal to be immoral. There are still various other reasons why you might not want to do it yourself (it can be messy; you feel empathy towards it; it’s a nonreversible act and you want to keep your options open; your neighbor will wonder where their pet went) but morality is not a concern, no matter who does the deed. In my opinion.
Leaving the moral aspect aside, I’d say that IMO American and European cuisines, in general, are pretty awful when it comes to vegetarian dishes. It maybe partly because vegetarian diets are a new thing in the west, whereas in places like India vegetarian diets and recipes have evolved over millennia.
I am not a vegetarian and grew up in India where vegetarian recipes outnumber meat recipes vastly. And many of them are delicious and nutritious. Indian restaurants in the US, only serve like 1% of the dishes and that too in pathetic quality.
I think Chef Anthony Bourdain enjoyed the vegetarian food in India.
There is again the evolution part where only Europeans and Indians predominantly are not lactose intolerant whereas vast parts of Asia and Africa are lactose intolerant. So cheese and yogurt, although non-vegetarian are a whole different morality.
Not morally wrong or a sin. Nothing in God’s word says it’s wrong to eat meat
What makes you think “God’s word” has anything to do with morality? And which “God” are we discussing? Zeus? Ba’al?
Not that I’m a theist or anything, but isn’t this a little disingenuous? I’m pretty sure we can all guess which god they’re talking about and whether they think their god is the arbiter of morality, and I think all our guesses would be right.
Perhaps. But that level of probably unconscious culturo-religious arrogance deserves to be called out loudly and clearly whenever it occurs. Politely but firmly.
Admittedly it’s a little arrogant to assume that everyone would recognize that capital-G God refers to…pretty much the only god people refer to as just capital-G God. It’s almost as arrogant as assuming that everyone knows who Darth Vader is, or Mickey Mouse.
Of course, once everyone is on the same page understanding that you’re talking about capital-G God, it’s not out of line to assume everyone understands that that God is an arbiter of morality. After all that’s part of its character definition, the same way that Darth is defined to wear a helmet and Mickey is defined as owning Pluto.
I suppose, from the cow’s perspective, it’s better to exist and live on a nice farm than to not exist at all, but I don’t think we can justify killing the cow by pointing out that he’s only alive in the first place because we want to eat him.
We both believe that once an animal is born, it’s owed certain moral considerations. We agree that one such consideration is that it shouldn’t be made to suffer unnecessarily. In other words, the animal has the right not to be made to suffer without very good reason. But, to me, it doesn’t make sense to say that we don’t have the right to inflict cruelty on an animal, but we do have the right to (painlessly) kill it. The animal’s interest in being alive is surely greater than its interest in avoiding pain. So if we’re willing to grant the latter then, to be consistent, we should be willing to grant the former, too.
I agree with this, but only to a limited extent. Take dairy, for instance. I don’t think it’s necessarily a violation of an animal’s rights to eat dairy products, because it’s possible to collect them without causing suffering or curtailing the animal’s life. Therefore, I’m not opposed to dairy farming, provided the animals are treated well. So I’m not opposed to animal husbandry per se, and I can support it in certain limited circumstances.
However, even the most humane meat farm would, at some point, need to kill the animals raised there. For the reason I mentioned a moment ago. I don’t think this is ethically justifiable, given that meat isn’t necessary for human survival (except for those suffering certain uncommon medical conditions).
I think so. There’s evidence that a vegetarian diet can work out cheaper than an omnivorous one. Furthermore, it stands to reason that if vegetarianism becomes more popular, the price of vegetarian foods will probably decrease over time.
Could you please elaborate?
I concede that if meat farming were suddenly banned tomorrow the animals currently being farmed would likely be in an even worse position than they are now. And I’d like to stress that I’m not arguing meat farming should be banned by law or anything like that. That said, if enough people were persuaded to adopt vegetarianism over time then the demand for meat would fall gradually, reducing the total amount of animal suffering.
It is not true that in order to justify eating meat i have to go thru any hoops .
For this to be true the animal would have to understand death as an abstract concept from a first person perspective. Which is to say it can’t just recognize that things die, it has to have a conscious awareness that it, too, will end. (And the mistaken impression that that’s a bad thing.)
If this is not the case, then the animal has no vested interest in not being dead. It does have have a vested interest in not experiencing pain, because all animals understand pain, but that’s not the same thing.
So, do you think that cows and chickens abstractly understand death?
I don’t think you can sustainably collect milk without killing calves. The cow only produces milk after giving birth.
Hmm, what do they do in India, I wonder? I know that some Indian cities are full of stray cows eating garbage. Is that what they do, just let them fend for themselves?
I’m not sure I follow. If we agree that animals can suffer, and if we agree that animals shouldn’t be made to suffer unnecessarily, then it follows that eating meat is a choice one is required to justify. Otherwise, how can we know if the suffering inflicted on the animal in the process of procuring the meat is, indeed, necessary?
I don’t think animals need to have a sophisticated understanding of death in order to have a vested interest in avoiding it. All animals have a survival instinct. Rats will chew their legs off to escape a trap, and even a cow will become aggressive if it senses its calves are under threat. To me, if an animal is willing to endure pain to survive then it must, in some way that it’s probably impossible for us as people to truly understand, value its own existence.
I admit I don’t know a whole lot about dairy farming, but my understanding is that cows produce much more milk than their calves need. If that’s true, then I don’t think there’s anything wrong with collecting the excess and selling it, provided it’s done humanely.
From my perspective your error is that you’re assuming ex nihilo that harvesting meat from animals will cause them to “suffer unnecessarily”.
Let’s suppose for a moment that it’s necessary for me to enjoy my life. And that requires a hamburger. BOOM! The suffering is necessary - the suffering is necessary to get me a hamburger.
At which point you are not making an argument against killing animals for meat; you’re making an argument against killing animals in a way that is an unnecessarily cruel way of achieving the same result: a hamburger.
There is a philosophical distinction between a possibly-reflexive motivation to perpetuate your ongoing existence (because creatures that don’t have a survival instinct are heavily selected against because they don’t live to reproduce) and an awareness of what death will be like and a conscious preference for one’s current state over it.
Heck, most humans don’t have a very good idea what it’ll be like to be dead. A whole lot of making-stuff-up happens regarding that subject.
And all are figments of human imagination. And therefore have zero moral relevance in the actual world we live in.
That’s the poster’s arrogance; assuming their imaginary arbiter is anything but a fun-house mirror image of some ancients’ prejudices.
Well, to be entirely fair, everybody rolls their own morality. "My mommy told me not to do that " is technically a moral system - obedience-based morality. Religious morality if often of this type as well - “my pastor told me that my scripture told me that my god told me not to do that”.
Now I personally consider obedience-based morality to be the weakest form of morality besides “whatever I want is right”. But it is a moral system and if somebody wants to base their policies regarding hamburgers on it, it’s entirely doable. Its only weakness is that if the person you’re talking to isn’t obedient to the same things you are, your moral code justifications won’t be transferable to them.
Which is a bit of a weakness when in a discussion with other people about moral reasoning, admittedly.
Perhaps I’m hyper-sensitive on this point, but that post read to me about like this:
My God said it. I believe it. And that settles it for everyone, including you! Duh, what else could it be.
The mistake is the first sentence and the arrogance is the 3rd & 4th sentence. I’ll take the second sentence at face value.
I’m think you’re reading quite a bit into his post there…looking back at his original (and only) post, I don’t see any hint of your last two made-up sentences. (And I’m pretty damned antitheistic so I think I’d have seen it if it was there.)
Also it was the poor dude’s first post on the board, I’m inclined to give him credit for rolling in with a god-based post that doesn’t do more than say “I think this way and here’s why.”