Best not to cite Wiki as a source, Dio. They’re notoriously unreliable.
The Maasai diet has historically incorporated a number of plants.
See page 178
Inuit also gather and consume plants. Shaw Communications
Did you even read that cite?
“Meat, although an important food, is consumed irregularly and cannot be classified as a staple food. Animal fats or butter are used in cooking, primarily of porridge, maize, and beans.”
Good lord man, you really need to read your own cites.
Are beans meat? Maize? Butter? Milk? If meat is irregularly consumed, how in the world can it be said that they live on nothing but meat? If they eat beans, maize, milk, etc., how can it be that they live on nothing but meat?
Where the heck in that cite does it say the Maasai live on just meat? You…you do know that milk isn’t meat, right?
Berries, “mousefood”… Yes, the Arctic diet is probably 90% meat, but it certainly wasn’t “nothing but”. And fish is essential in such a diet.
Fish is meat.
And the Maasai diet has changed. It used to be nothing but meat, blood and milk.
No it wasn’t. Check my cite.
Lots more about saponins from plants in the Maasai diet out there in other scholarly journals too. It seems the plants they eat tend to lower cholesterol.
Gee, I wonder why?
Preachy vegetarians, probably. 
Hell, neither do yours, Mr. Grain Does Not Contain Protein. Doesn’t stop you much though, does it? However, I disagree that my post did not show knowledge.
How many times do you have to be told that not everyone who is an ethical vegetarian believes that eating animals per se is an unethical act?
Is this really going to devolve into “no it isn’t/yes it is”? I have a personal spiritual belief that dictates that it’s wrong for me. Just as Jews have ethical standards to which they only hold themselves, I have ethical standards to which I only hold myself. This is as far as you need to take the analogy and no further. When you get all nitpicky and semantic about the analogy and extend it beyond the point of comparison, of course it breaks down, as all analogies will.
Please explain the distinction if you really believe there is one.
Again, here you are, telling me what my personal agreement might be with whatever higher power I might believe in. You are wrong. You don’t know that I believe the per se act of killing and eating animals is unethical. Saying it over and over doesn’t make it so, so you can stop doing it any time you like.
You don’t know that. I wouldn’t call it a special convenant with God. I’d call it a personal code of ethics. It includes only me. Accept it and let it go.
It’s not that it’s FINE for everyone. It’s that I don’t feel the need to universalize my personal relationship with what you might call God. I don’t see how that’s disingenuous. Might be morally relativistic, but I’m OK with that.
So? You said do, not used to. And blood and milk are not meat.
No matter how many times you say it, it still never makes sense. It’s just a disingenuous weasel. There is no such thing as “only unethical for me.” The ethical value of a per se act does not depend on the specific identity of the individual who is committing it. If you don’t really think that eating factory famed animals is unethical for everyone else, then you don’t really think it’s unethical for you. You can’t have it both ways.
So you DO think it’s unethical for everyone else.
If you really think that participating in the factory farming of animals is per se cruel and unethical, then it’s unethical for everybody. How can it possibly make any ethical difference who does it? It’s not the same as keeping a kosher covenant, because you’re talking about an act which remains cuel and unethical whether the pesron committing the act believes they have a covenant or not.
Same difference in both cases.
Do and used to are the same? So your wife’s ex boyfriend is still fucking her?
Milk is meat? Really? In what universe?
You wrote the book on that, so I guess you’d know. :rolleyes:
How about this: I think it’s unethical, but it’s also none of my business. I am not going to attempt to impose my ethics on you in any way. I’m not going to bring it up, discuss it with you, ask you to change, or in any way cause my ethics to affect your life. So, in effect, my ethics will have no effect on you or your life. My ethics don’t affect my husband whatsoever. I wish he wouldn’t eat meat, but I still buy it for him because half the money for the groceries is his, and he can eat what he likes. Live and let live. He has his own conscience and it’s not for me to dictate how he interacts with it.
Everyone who lives by ethical standards has to accept that other people do not live by their standards. Jews have to live with gentiles, Christians with atheists. You go about your personal business, conducting your own relationship with others and your God. I do the same with my ethics. I don’t think that’s disingenuous or morally compromised of me, accepting that other people’s beliefs and actions are outside of my control.
Leave accusations of lying, even conditional ones, out of Greart Debates.
[ /Modding ]
This makes sense, but it’s not the same as a position that the ethics are variable.
As an analogy, I can say that I think it’s unethical to cheat on my wife, but also recognize that it’s none of my business if someone else cheats on their spouse. It’s not that I don’t think they’re behaving unethically, but that I don’t think it’s my job to police them. I can understand THIS approach to parsing the ethics, but no the position that “it’s only unethical for me.”
Indeed. The former describes the concept of moral autonomy: Autonomy in Moral and Political Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) ; the latter–moral or ethical relativism. Moral Relativism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Then we have finally reached some sort of rapproachment, though with one caveat: I acknowledge that while, to me, it would be unethical, the other person may genuinely not believe it to be so. I don’t think I have the right to impose my ethics on other sane people of basically good will because my ethics are in some way superior or universalizable. If you can accept this, then the discussion is essentially over.
If you’re not going to pull him up for blatant dishonesty, what else is there to do.
Christ, he actually posted a cite which he claims supports the assertion that the Maasai live on nothing but meat, and his own cite directly contradicts the assertion. I mean, if there was some room for interpretation of the cite, that would be different, but it precisely and unequivocally contradicts the assertion that he claims it supports.
He made a direct claim that grains contain no protein and no fat. There’s no interpretation necessary there. It’s a blatant untruth. He hasn’t even had the balls to acknowledge he’s wrong about it.
If you can’t maintain some minimum standards of honesty in GD, don’t be surprised if the quality of debate deteriorates.
You may have reached some rapprochement, but the only reason you needed to slog through the issue in the first place was that Diogenes was asserting that vegetarians try to impose their ethics on meat-eaters. He then weaseled and moved the goalposts about a mile, while continuing to whine about intolerant vegetarians. It truly was a spectacular display.