Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
If killing animals is immoral or not shouldn't be talked about in this topic, but since you asked me especifically, let me talk a bit about it.
First of all, to me morality and religion go hand in hand, therefore I think morality is a very personal thing. It is based on what you think is right and wrong, and that is the function of religion to me.
Back on eating meat: I think the ease of eating meat today has nothing to do with it. It is immoral to eat meat because, like kuwaga said, we really don't have to eat meat at all. We can quite effortlessly eat anything else, so killing an animal becomes superfluous. It is not necessary to kill animals to survive, and it is not necessary to kill animals to evolve our species anymore. So why do we raise and kill young animals by the billions? To satisfy a pleasure. The pleasure of taste. That is why, to me, eating meat is immoral.
I do not want to convince everyone else to stop eating meat, that would be insane. I am just not killing anymore, (not intentionally and not unecessarily). Sure, we kill bugs to raise crops, we kill cockroaches, rats, animals that attack us, etc. I just don't want to kill for pleasure.
Also, I don't put animals and humans side by side. Animals are inferior (again, some people think they aren't, it's just me). Just as much as plants are inferior to animals. So if there are no plants to eat in an extremely unliquely situation, I would eat an animal so I wouldn't die of starvation, of course.
What bugs me about eating meat isn't so much that we're killing animals for it as that we're factory farming to get enough animals to satisfy demand. Factory farms are nasty, nasty places. While a free-range animal has a comparatively decent life up until they snuff it (especially given that they've been domesticated and wouldn't survive in the wild anyway), factory-farm animals basically live in boxes, continually surrounded by filth (and therefore receiving massive antibiotic doses on a regular basis, which undermines those antibiotics' effectiveness when used on humans due to bacterial resistance), unable to move, and given rather nasty feed. It's the profit motive applied to life and the results are not pleasant.
I'd be all for the abolition of factory farms, but there's no way it'd happen without there being some reasonable alternative to fill the gap. Currently it looks like vat-grown meat is the best contender for that, which is why I'm so enthusiastic about the concept.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Joined: 5/13/2009
Posts: 700
Location: suffern, ny
Allow me to lay some light on this. With the increasing modernization of the world, Breakfast on the go has become part of peoples lives, more now than ever. My dad explained this to me, People would brush their teeth before they left for work. Then while they were taking public transportation, or sitting in traffic, they would eat breakfast. Some 15-20 minutes after they had brused their teeth. This became such a part of their routines that they just got used to it I guess.
[19:16] <scrimpy> silly portuguese
[19:16] <scrimpy> it's like spanish, only less cool
That's definitely not the case here. Back in USSR we were encouraged to brush our teeth as a part of morning/evening hygienic procedures; breakfast on the go, however, didn't even exist here until the last 1.5 decades or so.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 5/13/2009
Posts: 700
Location: suffern, ny
The same here too, but In the 1950's my grandfather would put his breakfast in a container and take it to work, that was kinda what i meant. I did not really mean stuff like Dunkin Doughnuts, or anyother breakfast on the go sorta thing.
[19:16] <scrimpy> silly portuguese
[19:16] <scrimpy> it's like spanish, only less cool
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
funnyhair wrote:
The same here too, but In the 1950's my grandfather would put his breakfast in a container and take it to work, that was kinda what i meant. I did not really mean stuff like Dunkin Doughnuts, or anyother breakfast on the go sorta thing.
Gawd, in the northeast, you're never more than a couple miles from a Dunks. It's nuts. You probably know, funnyhair.
Joined: 5/13/2009
Posts: 700
Location: suffern, ny
Yup. Its kinda sad. there are THREE in my town alone, no more than a couple of miles from the next one. The worst is McDonalds. No matter where you go you are no more than 100 miles from the nearest McDonalds.
[19:16] <scrimpy> silly portuguese
[19:16] <scrimpy> it's like spanish, only less cool
100 miles? You guys are luckier than you think. According to their official site there are 93 of them in Moscow alone. Yep, that means they're within walking distance from each other.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
It's certainly immoral to kill animals. We can choose not to, but we do it anyway.
That argument makes no sense. There are tons of things that we can "choose not to", but doing it anyways doesn't automatically make it immoral.
And where do you draw the line? Is killing flies immoral? Cockroaches? Bacteria? Worms?
Killing animals is ugly and unaesthetic. We have to suppress the idea of it happening to be able to enjoy our meals properly.
To most people childbirth is ugly and unaesthetic (especially when they see it in person). Not a good measurement of what is "moral" and "immoral".
Edit: I'd like to add that "other animals do it as well, therefore it can't be that immoral" is really a very silly argument imo. Where does the presumption come from that everything animals naturally do must be morally alright?
Excuse me? Do you understand that some animals are carnivores, right? In other words, they cannot survive on anything else than other animals. How does acquiring food make it not "morally alright"?
About the survival of the fittest, I'd have to say that mankind has certainly not survived because we're the fittest on our own, we're only doing so well because we're highly intelligent social animals, and as a group we are strong.
"The fittest" does not mean "the fittest individual". It means "the fittest group of individuals". And individual does not survive. A species does.
FODA wrote:
It is immoral to eat meat because, like kuwaga said, we really don't have to eat meat at all.
We really don't have to eat carrots at all either. Does that make eating carrots immoral?
Doing something that one isn't technically forced to do is not any kind of measurement of morality.
So why do we raise and kill young animals by the billions? To satisfy a pleasure. The pleasure of taste. That is why, to me, eating meat is immoral.
That's like saying that since kitchen knives are used to kill people, we should ban kitchen knives completely. (Or substitute any tool that is used to kill people.)
It's certainly immoral to kill animals. We can choose not to, but we do it anyway.
That argument makes no sense. There are tons of things that we can "choose not to", but doing it anyways doesn't automatically make it immoral.
And where do you draw the line? Is killing flies immoral? Cockroaches? Bacteria? Worms?
It's only part of the argument. Here's the rest: Every higher life form has some certain dignity, especially social ones. They have feelings, so first of all you cause unnecessary suffering by killing them (not only to the killed animal if they are social animals). Some of them may be able to plan ahead, their lives thus having a purpose of their own. It's a moral crime to deny them that. What you are doing is degrade them into mere instruments/objects, so you can kill and eat them with a clear conscience. In dubio pro reo dictates that as long as it isn't proven they lack these capabilities, a porpuse of their own, etc (and it's reasonable to consider the possibility that they might have them), you can't just assume they haven't. Have you ever had a pet? Take a pig as a pet and prove that it doesn't have any emotions and that it isn't aware that tomorrow will be another day. I think you'd have a pretty hard time.
I personally draw the line with bacteria for now, but that's more or less arbitrary. I think it's beyond our scope for now. We aren't technologically advanced enough yet to simply let them be without some of them causing harm to us.
To most people childbirth is ugly and unaesthetic (especially when they see it in person). Not a good measurement of what is "moral" and "immoral".
It isn't. That wasn't an argument for why it's immoral. It's more like an argument for why we shouldn't kill animals regardless of whether it's morally alright.
Excuse me? Do you understand that some animals are carnivores, right? In other words, they cannot survive on anything else than other animals. How does acquiring food make it not "morally alright"?
There are animals that are forced to commit immoral acts to survive. If I'm forced to kill people to survive because, let's say somebody could just shut off my brain if I didn't, that doesn't make it morally alright. I'd still have a choice, as I'd still at all times be aware of the consequences of what I'd be doing. Those animals probably aren't, so you can make a case that they aren't "guilty". But that doesn't make the act on itself moral.
Some animals don't have the choice but to kill and eat meat, so that makes it moral for us who have the choice? I still don't get it. The act itself is immoral. Since these animals aren't capable of seeing it as such and/or aren't aware of any alternate choices, you can't blame them for it. The act itself stays inherently immoral though.
"The fittest" does not mean "the fittest individual". It means "the fittest group of individuals". And individual does not survive. A species does.
Great, we agree on that point then. Sometimes "the survival of the fittest" is interpreted differently though, advertising egoistic lines of thinking.
We really don't have to eat carrots at all either. Does that make eating carrots immoral?
Plants lack any form of a central/semi-central nervous system. They are sentient though, so it's still slightly immoral as well. That's way beyond our scope for now though. At one point in the distant future, I guess we should indeed stop eating them.
There are animals that are forced to commit immoral acts to survive.
...
Plants lack any form of a central/semi-central nervous system. They are sentient though, so it's still slightly immoral as well.
No offense intended (and I assure you I'm completely honest and serious about that), but I think I'll have to pass on commenting about the above, or this conversation way turn unproductive. (I'm also very tempted to draw a comparison to another regular visitor to this forum, but I'll pass on that as well.)
Let's just leave it at: Ok, we disagree on some points.
Maybe these are among our points of disagreement:
I think that whether an act is immoral is independant of the intention of the one committing that act. It's a property of the act itself. F.e. I think there are situations where you can act morally correct, but for the wrong (egoistic) reasons.
Maybe sentient was the wrong word to use. What I meant to say is they pick up signals and autonomously react to their environment. Some of their reactions could be interpreted as pain. I wouldn't go around telling everybody to stop eating plants because it's immoral, but since you've specifically addressed that point, I've felt the need to agree that it can't be perfectly moral either, as long as they aren't dead. That's a totally different magnitude of a moral violation though, to the point that it gets ridiculous to even talk about it. I wasn't the one to bring up that topic though, you were.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Translation:
This salad died to allow you to be vegetarian.
Have a heart? Eat stones!
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Kuwaga wrote:
Plants lack any form of a central/semi-central nervous system. They are sentient though, so it's still slightly immoral as well. That's way beyond our scope for now though. At one point in the distant future, I guess we should indeed stop eating them.
Would it still be immoral even to eat the plants that are designed to be eaten? Some fruiting trees species owe their livelihood to to the fact that the seeds are indigestible but the fruits are damn tasty (and animal dung makes good fertilizer).
Would it still be immoral even to eat the plants that are designed to be eaten? Some fruiting trees species owe their livelihood to to the fact that the seeds are indigestible but the fruits are damn tasty (and animal dung makes good fertilizer).
Probably not. It seems lots of plants rely on having parts of themselves eaten to procreate. Others don't seem to like being eaten, so they try to poison us. Or is it only a result of our always eating the least poisonous ones that some have grown to be less poisonous over time? It's a very difficult and unimportant, therefore ridiculous issue. I really think distinguishing between different plants goes a bit too far for now. We're still eating mass-produced meat and that's just one of the many problems that we have as a society atm. Worrying about certain issues too much often strikes me as some kind of escapism from other more important ones. (I say that because I know some really radical vegans who like to condemn other people for eating meat, but they have absolutely no idea of what else is going on in the world around us)
If you stop buying food that clearly comes from mass production facilities and encourage others to do the same, eat lots of vegetables and fruit and encourage others to do the same, support protests for making speculations on food commodities illegal, you're already making a big difference. If you're too extreme about it others will be more reluctant to follow your example, maybe they'd even think that the whole idea is ridiculous just because you're overdoing it. Rome wasn't built in a day and if you're trying to, you're going to look like a lunatic. Of course it's fine to go completely vegan if you want to, but I don't know if it's a good idea to expect others to do the same. Often taking an overly radical stance for a good cause can even turn out to be counterproductive.
You understand that in nature animals kill other animals for food all the time, sometimes even in the most gruesome and tortuous ways? Exactly how is that any less "immoral" than humans killing animals for food?
Mistreatment and unnecessary suffering may be seen as immoral, but considering simply eating animals as immoral is just outright hypocrisy IMO. Humans eating animals is exactly as natural as any other animal eating animals.
Killing isn't immoral for animals because they don't know that it's wrong. It's wrong for humans because we know that it causes suffering. Right and wrong (morality) have almost the same meaning as the words pleasure and pain, in case you're wondering what I mean.
And where do you draw the line? Is killing flies immoral? Cockroaches? Bacteria? Worms?
How immoral it is to kill depends essentially on the inherent consciousness of the creature that we kill. Animals are conscious of feelings and can feel pain, so it's wrong to kill them. Humans are conscious of even more things, like thoughts, so it's even more wrong to kill humans.
(I'm also very tempted to draw a comparison to another regular visitor to this forum, but I'll pass on that as well.)
I don't think there's anything wrong with eating carrots/plants though, because they aren't conscious of feelings like pain.
On a scale of 0 to 100 I'd rate the immorality of killing any human being 100, yourself 99, the average social animal 90, fish 84, the average insect 82, the average vegetable 4, the average bacteria 1 and the average mineral 0. I'm in comparission pretty radical when it comes to insects and vegetables, I guess. :)
You understand that in nature animals kill other animals for food all the time, sometimes even in the most gruesome and tortuous ways? Exactly how is that any less "immoral" than humans killing animals for food?
Mistreatment and unnecessary suffering may be seen as immoral, but considering simply eating animals as immoral is just outright hypocrisy IMO. Humans eating animals is exactly as natural as any other animal eating animals.
Killing isn't immoral for animals because they don't know that it's wrong. It's wrong for humans because we know that it causes suffering. Right and wrong (morality) have almost the same meaning as the words pleasure and pain, in case you're wondering what I mean.
And where do you draw the line? Is killing flies immoral? Cockroaches? Bacteria? Worms?
How immoral it is to kill depends essentially on the inherent consciousness of the creature that we kill. Animals are conscious of feelings and can feel pain, so it's wrong to kill them. Humans are conscious of even more things, like thoughts, so it's even more wrong to kill humans.
(I'm also very tempted to draw a comparison to another regular visitor to this forum, but I'll pass on that as well.)
I don't think there's anything wrong with eating carrots/plants though, because they aren't conscious of feelings like pain.
this is a good post, I agree
edit: no idea why the font is so big
Joined: 3/25/2006
Posts: 850
Location: stuck in Pandora's box HELLPP!!!
(The font's big due to [quote=Warp] being nested instead of [quote="Warp"])
I'd like to know how using only mouthwash compares to only brushing one's teeth; and is there ever any point in brushing without toothpaste?
