“Sentient” has a secondary definition of “sapient.”
In some places, the primary and secondary definitions have swapped.
“Professor Leafmoore?”
“Yes, Woody?”
“I was looking at the encyclopedia entry for inhabited planets, and I noticed that one was marked “OFF LIMITS!”. Why is that, sir?”
“Well, my boy, that is the only planet in the galaxy known to have cults devoted solely to eating people like us.”
“They’re cannibals? Don’t they have anything else to eat?”
“Certainly they do, but those other things are more mobile than us, so they tend to run away or fight back. Folks like us can’t run.”
“Grandma Bean is a runner…”
“Not the same, Woody…”
I wouldn’t eat dog meat either. Thankfully it’s not a BBQ staple.
I suppose we should all engage in sustainable eating practices. Eating sentient creatures like animals and plants is not sustainable.
A recent spate of studies…is proving that plants have volition, show altruism and understand kinship much like many animal species. Could this dramatically change how we view plants and, in turn, make us care about what happens to them in the way we’re concerned about threatened, charismatic wildlife?
That leaves us with bacteria (which could eventually prove to demonstrate altruism) or better yet, breatharianism - which however runs us smack into the sustainability issue again. 
That is trivially disproven. Murder is wrong. Rape is wrong. If our moral systems were arbitrary, then we could create one where those things are acceptable. But murder is wrong at a fundamental “I would not want you to do that to me” level. Rape may even be more fundamentally wrong, since consent is involved. The fact that someone has been raped inherently makes it something the other person did not want.
I won’t quote the rest of your post to avoid post parsing. It’s easier to address the rest of what you said as a whole.
Yes, different arguments are used in these situations. Because the issues are different. For one, the issue is being asked in the positive. We’re being asked why something is acceptable, rather than why it is unacceptable. Most moral debates go the other direction.
In this situation, what is natural (or how we’ve evolved) is actually relevant, as it forms the null hypothesis. To argue something to be immoral, you have to provide some argument that is greater than that. The reciprocity principle above is a good one, but there are others.
Establishing that eating meat is the default, and that you have to provide a reason for why eating meat is immoral, is a foundation of a positive moral argument. And, since no substantial counterargument has been made, establishing that default predominates the discussion.
The mockery comes from how low stakes this is. Neither position here is wrong enough to matter. One person thinks eating meat is okay, and one person thinks it’s not. The person who thinks it’s not has no power to force the people who think it is okay to stop. And no one who wants to eat meat wants to force those who don’t to consume it.
I don’t actually see any vitriol. I don’t see anyone giving any indication they think the OP is anything more than a harmless guy with a stance they disagree with. Most moral arguments have higher stakes, and thus people get really angry at the person whose morals they disagree with. The disagreement itself is seen as harmful.
Morality isn’t arbitrary. It’s just complicated. It doesn’t have parts that can be unambiguously tested via rigorous experimentation. We can’t take this question of whether it is wrong to eat meat and make an experiment where we test it. We can only test things like what is more healthy or how difficult it is.
It is something that arises from having conscious, intelligent, sapient beings. And we don’t understand any of those three things very well, let alone what follows from them.
Because that is merely a matter of taste, and not a moral argument at all. There’s no morality being attached to whether or not you like the game.
But, in this situation, where people refuse to eat meat for moral reasons, there is an inherent moral opprobrium attached to it. The OP, in effect, is saying “Eating meat is immoral. Prove me wrong.”
Remember, he linked eating meat to cannibalism, a form of murder.
In wartime, murder might not be wrong. (I’m not going to defend rape under any circumstances.)
Morality really is arbitrary; we’re just fortunate that there are areas with extremely broad consensus. There are also areas where there isn’t a consensus, and opinions and values differ.
As this is merely a premise, you must show why this is correct before you can start demanding that others refute it. The default is that this statement is incorrect. That is not the current state of how animal cruelty is understood. Human health is not at all the only limiting factor.
No, that does not follow. Your argument above is that we should reduce animal suffering as far as possible as long as it doesn’t negatively impact human health. But human health is not even mentioned here. There is no reason why “the pain and suffering commensurate with growing plants” is the limit. The limit you created in your premise was “human health.”
It is true that it is not a refutation, but that’s simply because it’s not intended to be one. It is merely agreeing with “meat production is currently too cruel” and arguing that we are working on a solution to that problem. If it refutes anything, it’s the claim that the system can never be less cruel–a claim that is not usually made.
This I agree with (as long as “the other valid arguments” isn’t meant to limit to just those two.) However, those are the exact arguments being made in this thread, where you claimed that no moral arguments were being made. You specifically made fun of some of them.
Granted, the health claim is more limited, saying some people can’t be healthy vegetarians. And the moral agents argument is not being made in those terms. The third one, however, is the exact same argument as “meat tastes good,” which you decried.
And yet it is a common argument being made in this thread. It is you who had a problem with it. You called it “not a moral argument at all.”
No, murder in war is always wrong. The issue is that killing someone who is trying to kill you is not murder. And you just undermined your own point by saying you won’t defend rape. You just admitted that it is wrong.
There are parts of morality that are mere social constructs. But that does NOT mean all of morality is arbitrary. There are things we have discovered are always wrong. Those cultures where those things are accepted? They are wrong.
I could be in a prison where rape was a normal part of life, and not considered wrong at all. Rape would still be wrong. I can be among a group of racists, and racism would still be wrong.
Morality is a philosophical pursuit, and those can genuinely find truth. It is not, as many people think, merely people trading opinions. It is actually exploring aspects of humanity that we cannot explore through experimentation.
And, no, that does not mean I embrace any sort of supernatural. Morality is merely an emergent phenomenon to sapience and community.
Rape may be worse than murder. :dubious: It is unbelievable that someone would put rape on the same level as murder let alone state that it could be worse. This is NOT to say rape isn’t serious, either. One is permanent, the other isn’t.
The Aztecs actually built a civilization on the brutal killing of human beings and insisted on eternal war. Of course, that was sanctioned killing, unauthorized killing was still, presumably, not allowed but clearly you can build a viable system that permits or even insists on killing human beings.
What about the plants of the field that just want to be free ?
Unable to spread their seed, the basic function of life. Controlled and contained in fields and not allowed to establish roots wherever they like. Smothered with harsh chemicals that cause god knows what damage. Do these chemicals cause pain ? Brutally cut and picked, sometime either frozen or boiled. All are harvested before they are allowed to naturally live out their lives for the season. Then packed in small containers in crowded conditions.
So, do any of the veggie people have concerns for what you are promoting ?
All the world over, so easy to see
Plants of the field just wanna be free
I can’t understand it, so simple to me
Crops in the valley just got to be free
The best kind of dairy products, in my view.
Well, no. There is just so very high a consensus that it’s foolish (and even dangerous) to argue for the minority viewpoint.
It isn’t “wrong” in a “God said it from On High” sense. It isn’t “intrinsically” wrong. It’s just a very patent violation of a HUGE swath of human cultural norms.
Morality is arbitrary. Sometimes, 99.99% of us agree on it, but it is still arbitrary.
Actually, I didn’t do either of those things.
My reasoning, instead, is that I would face greater social criticism here on the SDMB if I defended rape than if I defended murder. (Especially since I include killing in war as part of “murder.”)
Cut to the chase. Pro-rape or Pro-murder?
It may seem funny (or just ugly, I dunno) but if I absolutely had to do one or the other, I’d choose to murder someone rather than rape someone.
I wouldn’t have that much trouble finding someone who deserved to die – Charles Manson comes to mind – but I honestly do not believe anyone deserves to be raped.
(I am still not declaring that one is worse than the other in any kind of objective sense!)
You don’t rape someone to prevent being raped. You might have to kill someone to prevent being killed.
From the pov of the victim, a person who has been raped has a chance to recover. Someone who is murdered has no chance of anything.
You’re still trying to wiggle out of it.
If you had to choose, would you rather be murdered or go with being raped?
Whatcha got against soy milk (gluten-free and non-GMO, of course)? 