A Vegan Proposal

[Raistlin]

He wasn't using "right and wrong" as factuals, but as morally right and wrong - and in that sense, he's right. There's no definitive morals - morals change based on an individual's values.

Certain animals eat meat because that's what they have to do to survive. We don't have to. That's fact. Animals that do eat meat kill for survival: whether that's protection or for food. We don't have to kill animals. That's also a fact.

Now, you say we are "different" from animals. How does that difference justify the unnecessary death of millions of animals?

Anyway, as I've already said, I eat meat. I don't look down on vegetarians nor do I consider myself high-and-mighty. I value animal life, but I just don't care enough not to eat meat. Just like I don't like pollution, but I drive my car. I don't like a wasting natual resources, but I'll leave the TV on while I'm on the computer. I just don't care enough to change my lifestyle.

However, Redneck, the difference between you and me is that I recognize and accept my depravity, while you try and justify it.

[The Redneck]

Certain animals eat meat because that's what they have to do to survive. We don't have to.

And other omnivores? After all, if any animal that could live without meat did so, there wouldn't be such a thing as an omnivore....

Animals that do eat meat kill for survival: whether that's protection or for food.

I'm afraid that's completely false. Simple observation of a housecat with a mouse will show you that animals do indeed kill without needing to to survive--they kill for food when they already have plenty; they kill for practice; or they kill for simple entertainment. (BTW, I read somewhere that housecats actually "play" with caught prey because not having lived in the wild they don't know how to deliver a "deathblow", be that cutting the throat, cutting off oxygen (like leapords do, for example) or whatever. Myself, I've seen a cat that had been running wild before my folks had it 'play' with prey as cheerfully as any cat from the pet shop (in fact, the dang thing was declawed--she catch mice, bring them to my room to 'play' with them, and then since she was declawed, then unless I was there to take the mouse, tell her what a good girl she was, and flush it down the toilet (it was probably very, very wrong of me to holler "surf's up!" while I did so...), she would basically catch mice elsewhere in the house and relocate them to my bedroom) but anybody got more info on this?) Like I said earlier, my own introduction into just how cruel nature can be came at about 12 when a mink got into my pa's chicken house. Killed one, ate its fill, then killed 8 more--and we caught it in a Hav-a-Hart trap the second night when it was going back for more.

I value animal life too--but humans come first.

[Raistlin]

And other omnivores? After all, if any animal that could live without meat did so, there wouldn't be such a thing as an omnivore....

You said yourself that humans are different than animals. We have the capacity to make moral decisions. If all the bears jumped off a bridge, would you do so too?

I value animal life too--but humans come first.

Humans could survive quite easily on a non-animal diet - so that argument doesn't make sense.

[The Redneck]

You said yourself that humans are different than animals. We have the capacity to make moral decisions. If all the bears jumped off a bridge, would you do so too?

Like I said, the fact that animals do it is different from the reason we do it--I just wanted to take a moment to shoot down the idea that without humans animals somehow live in peaceful harmony with each other. So no, I wouldn't jump--but I'd dang sure be at the bottom with a skinning-knife....

Humans could survive quite easily on a non-animal diet - so that argument doesn't make sense.

If they wanted to spend their lives eating mostly tasteless food and taking vitamins to provide the nutrients they can't get on a non-animal diet. I didn't say that humans need animal meat to survive, but thanks anyway for pointing out the fallacy of that argument--just in case I might make it in the future.

[jrgen]

Jrgen--
Wrong. Completely false. If you say that the sky is green when it's really blue, then you're wrong--it's not green for you and blue for me, it's blue and you're wrong. Likewise, if you say that, for the most common example, murder is not wrong, then it's not fine for you and wrong for me--it's wrong, and you're incorrect. It may be people in certain "surroundings" don't see something as right or wrong, but reality is what it is, not what people would like it to be or claim it is.

Actually, the sky is colorless, just like everything in this world except light itself. The names of colors are only personal as you have no way of knowing in which way I interpret the colors I see and I have no way of describing it. Your blue could very well be identical to my green and what we call the colors only explain what the listener of the description would see if he saw the item being described with a certain color himself. What or who could possibly be the judge of what is right and wrong? Every action imaginable, including murder, is beneficial to some and adverse to others.

[War Angel]

Humans could survive quite easily on a non-animal diet

No, they couldn't. Without the help of modern medicine and industry, providing self-inflicted-malnutritionists (I hope I got that one right) with most of the meat-substitutes they need, vegeterians and most certainly vegans wouldn't be able to survive for very long.

Vegeterians don't eat meat, so they eat more of other things. They get enough calcium, protein, vitamins and even iron (with the help of modern food industry). They wouldn't be very active or producive in a wild setting, but they'd live, if they have the physical protection they need from the stronger, all-eating-fully-nutritioned humans.

Vegans however, not eating meat or dairy products, would perish very quickly in a rural setting. Without tofu, soya and artificial vitamins ( a very pricey and difficult to manufacture product, by the way, and one of the reasons the only living vegans are from a high socio-economical setting), vegans wouldn't live for very long.

It's quite simple, really - modern society has many illnesses... it mistreats humans and animals alike. Vegans want to change that... however, they fail to see that without the help of the same modern setting and enviorment they live in, their deaths would be inevitable. "Don't kill the cute animals, but please keep on producing all these wonderful vitamins that I rely on to live!"

[The Redneck]

Actually, the sky is colorless, just like everything in this world except light itself.

And how do we know the cat is on the mat and the mat is not on the cat? I would debate this at length, but I don't get this philosophical unless I'm very, very drunk--and then, most likely, nobody would be able to understand my typing anyway.

Your blue could very well be identical to my green and what we call the colors only explain what the listener of the description would see if he saw the item being described with a certain color himself.

Uh, no. Blue is not green, it is blue. If you look at something blue and you see green, then the problem isn't my lack of open-mindedness, it's your eyesight.

...

Not, before anyone brings it up, that I do not lack in open-mindedness, just that it isn't a problem. Asche proved that 25% of the population is closed-minded and intolerant, and I'm rather proud to be in that 1/4.

[sephiroth JR]

i could never be a vegan im chewing on a cow as we speak

[Gnostic Yevon]

Your blue could very well be identical to my green and what we call the colors only explain what the listener of the description would see if he saw the item being described with a certain color himself.

Uh, no. Blue is not green, it is blue. If you look at something blue and you see green, then the problem isn't my lack of open-mindedness, it's your eyesight.

But what if you are both looking at teal?
The world isn't set up in clear black and white all the time. in most arguments both sides have a point. There are a few cases where there is one side that is 100% wrong, but most of the time it's not the case.

[Mercen-X]

if you're so wrapped up in this thing that killing is wrong, when you eat lettuce you're eating a "murdered" plant.
all this said i go back to my original point. you eat what you like and i'll eat what i like

Have you ever heard the origin story that God told us to live in harmony with the animals and to devour the plants and fruit?

I'm not a vegan, in fact, I'm not really a vegetarian. I'll eat whatever the hell fills my stomach when I hungry. If it came down to my survival, I'd cut off my own right hand (it's the cleanest one) and cook it. If it came down to the survival of someone I cared about, I'd cut off my own right hand and cook it and force feed it to them. No one deserves to starve to death.
To all vegans though: animals get eaten in plenty worse ways than by being killed with a sleep pill and getting lopped up. I consider the "humane" animal murder to be more merciful in that aspect. Although, I will say it's a shame we breed certain animals just to be eaten. As long as we don't do anything to frak up the balance of nature, whatever!
(FRAK: from Battlestar Galactica, the stupidest word to replace profanity, ever)

[Ko Ko]

I'm a vegan, but merely because sometimes I get wrapped up in the reality of eating once living things. Or unborn babies, for that matter.
I know of all this hoity toity nutritional value and substancial needs of eating meats. But I've seen people go thier whole lives perfectly healthy without eating any form of animal bi-product.
In the end, if I'm chewing on a cow, I start thinking about cows and cows' pathetic lives and stepping in thier own dungs. Some people say they aren't intelligent enough to notice, and somehow I agree, but to think that at one time they were even MOVING by themselves makes me sick to my stomach.
To the post about plants 'living', sure, they are living. But they have no will of thier own and do not feel pain. Thier structures aren't really capable of that. But animals do feel pain.
At the moment I have no idea why I'm a vegan (despite eggs). Cows actually WANT to be milked. It pains them to no ends if they are not milked and we're just helping them out a little. But I suspect that is only attributed to free range cows... :skull2: Oh, nevermind.

[The Redneck]

Two notes...

First, anyone with a delicate stomach may wish to look away....

Eggs are not unborn animals. fertilized eggs are unborn animals, so if you raise your own chickens or (possibly, I ain't sure) if you eat free-range eggs, then you may be eating unborn animals. Otherwise, the process in chickens is just like in human women--the egg (as in that first cell) comes out of the ovaries, isn't fertilized, doesn't implant in the uterine wall (nevermind that in chickens it wouldn't anyway), and is eventually ejected along with other stuff.

And that's as detailed as I'm gonna get about what unfertilized eggs are.

Likewise, while cows (again, like human women) feel a great deal of pain if the milk isn't drawn out of their udders (most often, women who don't want to breastfeed take some kind of hormone that will stop the milk production--otherwise, if they don't nurse they'll be hurtin'...), milk cows are often fed hormones so that, basically, their body thinks they're pregnant or just-calved, and keeps producing milk.

ave you ever heard the origin story that God told us to live in harmony with the animals and to devour the plants and fruit?

To which I refer you to Genesis, Chapter 9, in which God allows us to eat animals--although blood is still not allowable. Other restrictions were later placed on which animals can and can't be eaten, but until then people were allowed to eat anything from cow to (theoretically) tiger.

[Ko Ko]

Albeit THAT, Free range eggs are not made by a load of chickens cramped in a dark room. It's just not safe to eat them anyway.

[The Redneck]

Albeit THAT, Free range eggs are not made by a load of chickens cramped in a dark room. It's just not safe to eat them anyway.

Actually, the best way to do it is to give them plenty of light--basically, chickens lay eggs in summer, so you extend the day with artificial light so that the chickens still think it's summertime and keep laying eggs even when it's "out of season".

[Mercen-X]

ave you ever heard the origin story that God told us to live in harmony with the animals and to devour the plants and fruit?

To which I refer you to Genesis, Chapter 9, in which God allows us to eat animals--although blood is still not allowable. Other restrictions were later placed on which animals can and can't be eaten, but until then people were allowed to eat anything from cow to (theoretically) tiger.

I was merely pointing out that eating plants could never equal eating animals because it was our first intended food source. I wouldn't eat meat at all if I didn't think it was allowed by God.

Also, when we eat eggs (this may sound disgusting) we're actually eating chicken placenta. There are actually some countries that consider human placenta to be a delicacy. *shudders at that thought*