Vegetarianism

I know that we could argue for ever on this subject, from a abasis of philosophy, ecology, anthropology, science, biology, etc.

Perhaps it's simpler just to work on two premises.

#1. Bentham's idea of suffering. ..... Bentham argued that the ability to suffer, not the ability to reason, must be the benchmark of how we treat other beings........It may one day come to be recognised that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate.

What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? the question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?


#2. The idea of necessity. Regardless of your biological, ethical, philosophical, naturalistic stance; you can keep whatever argument you like and still opt for a policy based on necessity.


Given the two premises above; that of suffering and necessity, I think it reasonable for humans, who overwhelmingly acknowledge that animals can suffer and understand that there is no necessity to eat them, that we should refrain from then doing so.

P1. Animals Suffer.
P2. It is unnecessary to eat them.
C1. Eating animals causes suffering and is unnecessary.
C2. Eating animals is wrong.

Cheers

Very strange occurrence... I was going to Online-literature, and there was one site above it, which was Omniglot.com, specifically, http://www.omniglot.com/writing/sanskrit.htm - and then I saw this post by you, Omniglot, did a mental double take, went back and saw it was the same as the site... haha, but to be on topic,

Thank you for your post, it's quite well-written! :)

I wish everyone could read Jeremy Benthams words, and give them a few hours of quiet contemplation. A living being's life has value, it has its right to life; even if it doesn't speak our language or know our art, religion, math, language.

Yes that is basically my understanding... And I don't see that it has yet been addressed adequately. For someone like Eugenie, it may be necessary, I do not know. For myself I am much healthier as I am now. So that is really an individual question I suppose. But I think this is a very vital question to raise. Is it morally okay? I haven't found reasons even slightly convincing that it is.

I was discussing with my boss and he said he tried to be a vegetarian one time but it made him sick. He said, both he and his sister had done this different times. He said, even being educated on what was needed to be eaten, he still became sick and he said, "I was dying." Now, this is very serious indeed! But I don't understand it at all. I wondered briefly and this may be unfair of me, if it was not psychological to some degree. Anyway my foreignness to this is because it is so strange to my own self. For me even if I did not get as much protein on a vegetarian diet - which I do - it wouldn't make me sick but just weak.

Christian monks have lived on bread and water for very long stretches of times. In fact humans have lived on very weird diets for long periods of time. Of course it is not healthy to have an unbalanced diet like bread and water, but it's a gradual thing, not an immediate one. So it doesn't make sense to me that it would do this to him, make him immediately sick. The only reason I can think that it would do this is that his body had just become so used to it and relied on it that it needed it? And yet this doesn't really make sense too much. Because it doesn't work that way with any other food, does it? So the second thought, is that perhaps his body was addicted to chemicals within the food? This is a scary thought. Now I know those aren't all the options, there could be many other reasons.

And yet at this point I simply must give another good reason for vegetarianism. There are places in the world where the whole city is vegetarian... Mayapur for example. Children are raised vegetarian and if you know these people, you would see that they are the best humanity has to offer. Healthy, strong, intelligent, living disciplined, spiritual, very happy lives... just my thoughts.

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Originally Posted by NikolaiI

Is it morally okay? I haven't found reasons even slightly convincing that it is.

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Morals are based off one's own experiences and one's own reasoning. I have noticed a significant difference in attitude towards everything in in general between vegetarians and non-vegetarians. I believe that is because of our different moral basis. My morals are based off what my father and grandfather taught me through hunting. Even though to me it is not morally wrong to take a life, that does not mean I lack the understanding of life's value. If anything, I am given a greater appreciation for the value of life. Nikolai, you believe it is morally wrong to take a life. This is based off your personal reflection of your experiences. The way I see it, neither of us is wrong, and neither of us is right. We're just different in our thinking.

Did that make any sense at all? If not, disregard it! I'm trying to think of the reasons why we all have such different opinions here, which is a relatively new thing for me to do.

When I deliver a lamb, when it splutters and gasps its first breath in my bloodied hands, I still get a rush of joy at new life. After 30 years its still not stale. It never will be. And I know these same hands will look after it and care for it, and deliver it to slaughter.

I write this so you can appreciate the intimate relationship I have with my animals, in their lives and in their deaths.

So when I choose to eat meat, when I make that moral choice, its through knowledge rather than ignorance.

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

So when I choose to eat meat, when I make that moral choice, its through knowledge rather than ignorance.

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As it should be. :thumbs_up

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Originally Posted by skib

Morals are based off one's own experiences and one's own reasoning. I have noticed a significant difference in attitude towards everything in in general between vegetarians and non-vegetarians. I believe that is because of our different moral basis. My morals are based off what my father and grandfather taught me through hunting. Even though to me it is not morally wrong to take a life, that does not mean I lack the understanding of life's value. If anything, I am given a greater appreciation for the value of life. Nikolai, you believe it is morally wrong to take a life. This is based off your personal reflection of your experiences. The way I see it, neither of us is wrong, and neither of us is right. We're just different in our thinking.

Did that make any sense at all? If not, disregard it! I'm trying to think of the reasons why we all have such different opinions here, which is a relatively new thing for me to do.

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

When I deliver a lamb, when it splutters and gasps its first breath in my bloodied hands, I still get a rush of joy at new life. After 30 years its still not stale. It never will be. And I know these same hands will look after it and care for it, and deliver it to slaughter.

I write this so you can appreciate the intimate relationship I have with my animals, in their lives and in their deaths.

So when I choose to eat meat, when I make that moral choice, its through knowledge rather than ignorance.

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Perhaps my main point should be it's infinitely better to do this yourself, to hunt animals in their own habitat or to raise your self. If you raise them yourself, if you have a relationship with them, as you say you do, prendel, then you care about them. This means you won't let them suffer in their lives. This is a big difference to me, for in factory farms, I can't imagine by any stretch that the animals are cared for; in fact they are treated quite badly and they suffer.

And I hope you won't think I'm judging you. I was a vegetarian most of my life, but there were times when I was off/and/on. So it would be hypocritical of me to judge. Even if I was a vegetarian all my life it would be hypocritical just by the nature of judging. I wouldn't want to go down that way.

But I still disagree with your idea that it's okay, even if you raise it yourself. To me the animal has an inalieable right to life, as much as any other animal. Even if you love the animal, the animal still doesn't want to die. Even if the animal can't understand our language, religion, reason, art, math, etc., the animal still has consciousness and a beating heart, etc. The heart bit means a lot to me.

Sometimes people have said that animals don't have souls. Sometimes they still do say this. But animals have the same number of appendages as we do; mammals are warmblooded. Animals have ears, eyes, a nose, a mouth, a mind, blood, muscles, and a heart. All these similarities. And so what is the reason again they do not have a soul? I know nobody said that but I also know there are many who think that way.

Skib, my father, brother, mother, and most of the people I know are not vegetarian. But I do disagree with what they do, I disagree rather strongly. To have a relationship, I don't bring it up on my own. But anyway.

I am religious, and I know there are atheists who are also vegetarians, but religion is one reason I am a vegetarian. In my religion it's a great sin to eat meat, worse than intoxication, which is also a sin. :lol: I do not drink and I know alcohol is important to you, Skib, so it is another way we are very different. But that's not reallly a problem for me, diversity is good. :lol:

I just hope you'll consider it.

And... Omniglot posted as well as I can think of, and I agree with how he said, that it is simplest to look at it in that way, to look at it simply.

1. do they suffer?
2. is it necessary?

If we all agreed on everything, we would not be able to have these quite interesting conversations! :nod:

Animals can suffer pain.

But they have no self pity.

I have lived with and worked with animals all of my life, and this is my observation.

OK here's a question;

Last night after a long struggle, I managed to deliver a lamb that would have died, along with its mother, but for my intervention. Was I right to do this? the lamb is a male, destined for slaughter. It will have a summer of existence, is this worse than non existence? Does the end unjustify the beginning?

Excusez-moi if I am arriving late and have not read this discussion in its entirety, however:

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

When I deliver a lamb, when it splutters and gasps its first breath in my bloodied hands, I still get a rush of joy at new life. After 30 years its still not stale. It never will be. And I know these same hands will look after it and care for it, and deliver it to slaughter.

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You express a sense of satisfaction when delivering life; I’m simply curious as to what the emotional corollary happens to be, for you, whilst systematically taking life away.

I feel sadness, but not regret.


Satisfaction is not quite right. Lambs just seem to burst into life when they come free of their mother. Every time I'm amazed anew.

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

Animals can suffer pain.

But they have no self pity.

I have lived with and worked with animals all of my life, and this is my observation.

OK here's a question;

Last night after a long struggle, I managed to deliver a lamb that would have died, along with its mother, but for my intervention. Was I right to do this? the lamb is a male, destined for slaughter. It will have a summer of existence, is this worse than non existence? Does the end unjustify the beginning?

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This doesn't have much to do with the answer for me.

I have a question. Why is it necessary to have a human population of 6.7-6.8 billion, the majority of whom are supported to some extent from animals from factory farms?

We do this because we are able, because it is habit, and because of the forces such as money involved. But those who actually work in slaughterhouses take a terrible toll.

The question is, why is it necessary for death and suffering to support life? Those animals have a life, hearts, minds; they have a voice we have just silenced it.

As I did say before, the way you are living is infinitely better to buying meat at a restaurant or grocery store, which comes from a factory farm.

And yet and I are probably coming from opposite sides of the issue and will never meet.

I rode the bus to school this morning. I am always observing people. Just on the bus, I am simply thinking about the way we interact with each other.

People are very self-aware. No one likes to be touched by a stranger. In line to get on the bus, we are aware of personal space. We may not even touch each other, because that is how storngly our social structure supports our right to self-space and comfort, etc., etc.

And yet the animals has no such rights. The animal doesn't even have the right to be safe from being killed.

Also, besides the codes of conduct of interaction in say a bus or a subway; people are also generally very demanding about certain things. They must have things their way, otherwise they are quite upset. All of this selfishness. And they cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, consider an animal, which cannot reason or talk or appreciate writing, has an individual existence.

Why are the codes of conduct in place about human interaction? Because, when you touch a human, when you hurt a human, the human reacts!

Now, the same is true of animals, if you try to push an animal around, it will react negatively. Only, if you get the better of it and shoot it, you win.

So the main thing is, is it necessary? It is not.

Prendel, this wasn't directed at you personally. I hope you're not upset by what I've said. I must reiterate the way you live is so much, so much better than buying meat at a restaurant which came from a factory farm. I find virtually no fault with the way you do this, because the animal does not suffer in its life. In factory farms pigs are put in things called gestation chambers, where they cannot move. I am assuming the lamb is not put in a 4x4 cage, or whatever. But factory farms are a horror for me, and I have shed many tears over this. I do not anymore because it doesn't help. But killing animals I consider to be as bad as killing humans.

So far I've tried to keep my posts in the realm of my personal experience. I didn't really want to go beyond that, but in the intrest of debate, here are some more philosophical thoughts on your post

The population of the world isnt a necessity. But it IS an unavoidable fact.

In the natural world the survival of one animal often depends on the death of another.
Whatever cruelties Man can contrive Mother Nature can top. No wild animal has ever died of old age, that so called privilege goes to Man alone.

There is a growing trend to wrongly credit animals with human traits and emotions. For instance your observations from the bus was of humans, Yet you made the assumption that animals have the same social mores.

You seem to imply that meat comes exclusively from "factory farms"(whatever they are.) It doesn't, there are fields full of cattle and sheep.

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

The population of the world isnt a necessity. But it IS an unavoidable fact.

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Easily remedied by, say, an outbreak of human cannibalism, among other brutal, though, admittedly, far less amusing prospects. :cool: Besides, if the implication there is that meat-eating is somehow fundamentally unavoidable, I would ask in what sense? For much of the developed world at least, the consumption of meat is by no means compulsory; we can, -being the benevolent, rational beings we all claim to be :brow:- subsist, and quite swimmingly at that, on a diet that does not necessitate the rather inelegant, systematized, snuffing of life.

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

In the natural world the survival of one animal often depends on the death of another.
Whatever cruelties Man can contrive Mother Nature can top. No wild animal has ever died of old age, that so called privilege goes to Man alone.

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I’m not under the impression that mother nature is much of a reflexive kinda gal. ;) True, many non-human animals may not possess an impressive degree of human-grade ‘intellectualism’ in most cases, (I mean, naturally, a tiger isn’t considering the possibility that, instead of de-throating that sprightly antelope it could just as easily run down to the corner store and whip up a batch of pancakes :rolleyes:), buuuut, let’s get real, it ain’t like mankind is exactly the pinnacle of evolutionary advancement here either...yet we can utilize whatever rational faculties we flatter ourselves into believing we have to choose to be just a bit, oh, nicer. :D

EDIT- if anybody read what I just deleted, disregard it, and I apologize ahead of time for it appearing that you responded to something somebody didn't say.

Thing is, I don't like the thought of killing. I was vegetarian, twice, for about a year at a time. I just got sick because I have another condition which means I can't eat certain foods anyway. Sounds cruel, but our bodies are designed to eat both plants and animals.

I don't agree with the way we kill them, we should go back to times when we didn't have the so called useful technology for these things. We should kill animals in a natural way if we are going to do it.

I respect vegetarians, I just don't think that being a vegetarian is going to save the animals. It's sad, but it's true. If i could change our biological make up, so we only needed plants of course I would. I hate killing too, but meat is what our bodies want.