Is it okay to eat animals???

[Magic_Man]

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However, I must admit, I think is is highly immoral to serve a fine steak past medium rare [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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Serving a fine steak past medium rare is a waste of resources. Further discussion here may prove it immoral [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[ZenMusician]

The physics of my body suggest
beyond reasonable doubt that
meat consumption is required
by my species.

What exactly should I regret?

Other omnivores can eat wide
varieties of diet as well. Is it
because they don't think
bunnies are cute and smart
and worthwile beings they
are "lower" animals or
"savages"?

-ZEN

[Sephus]

question: why do people post
like this? does
anyone else
find it difficult to
read?

[chezlaw]

The selfless componant of morality is getting satisfaction (+ve or -ve) from the satisfaction of others. That requires caring about them or empathising with them.

I find it very hard to care much about or empathise with chickens or cows being eaten. So there's a negligable selfless component and yes its purely selfish.

That doesn't make it immoral.

chez

[Metric]

It's hard to imagine that doing something your body was obviously designed to do, and designed to WANT to do is inherently immoral (unless you are being actively cruel in satisfying your desires -- e.g. boning your best friend's wife).

That said, I do have a lot more respect in these discussions for pro-steak eating people (well, the males anyway) who have personally hunted, killed, and gutted their dinner before eating it at least once in their life. Pro-steak debaters SHOULD have some first-hand contact with the fact that steak isn't grown in cellophane, and truly know that they are comfortable with the implications.

[Sephus]

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That said, I do have a lot more respect in these discussions for pro-steak eating people (well, the males anyway) who have personally hunted, killed, and gutted their dinner before eating it at least once in their life. Pro-steak debaters SHOULD have some first-hand contact with the fact that steak isn't grown in cellophane, and truly know that they are comfortable with the implications.

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i personally think hunting for sport is gross (i have nothing against those who don't). for some reason i value the lives of wild animals, but not those of livestock who are bred and grown specifically for food. i will admit to occasionally eating trout, but i hate killing them.

if i had to kill my share of the cows/pigs/chickens i ate, i think i would probably eat less, but i don't think i'd stop entirely.

[Metric]

Does that mean you feel worse about eating "free-range animals" than you feel about eating something that lived its entire life in a cage?

[keith123]

i think there are some legitimate issues related to meat eating, such as the way animals are treated/kept/killed, but ending the life of an animal is not immoral**. what is the purpose of a cow's life, or that of a pig or chicken? does it matter to them if they die in a week or month or year? is anyone upset (generally speaking) that some animals have a longer lifespan than other animals? is there a reason to think that the perfect lifespan for a cow is 15 years? should we be trying to figure out how to raise that number? is there a reason to think that it is better to let a cow's body to slowly die of old age or sickness than it is to kill them respectfully and painlessly? (i know we don't do that now, but that is a separate issue) if we look to nature to determine the way cows should die, then we would see that their "natural" death is being eaten by another animal. and is it okay for animals to eat other animals? maybe we should only eat carnivores/omnivores? additionally, our bodies are definitely made to eat meat. unless you live in a naturally bean rich area, it would be tough in nature to get the proper protein intake to live a healthy life, especially for men. (arguments that we now can survive without eating meat are relevant to the larger argument but not the specific point i just made).

** while ending the life of an animal isn't immoral, it can certainly be a sign that the person doing that is sick in some way, but again, that is a seperate issue from the eating meat point.

[thylacine]

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I think it is easiest to wash away the dilemma if you simply realize that the notion of morality is as silly as religon.


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As an atheist, I completely disagree. Religion is at best totally worthless. But morality is a very important and serious topic.

Please don't let religious propaganda trick you into thinking that morality somehow comes from religion, because it doesn't.


As to the OP and eating meat: think about all the issues and make your own choice.

[Sephus]

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Does that mean you feel worse about eating "free-range animals" than you feel about eating something that lived its entire life in a cage?

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no. i think it's the wildness. also, as i think about this, i don't really care about fish but i wouldn't want people to kill whales or dolphins. i think maybe it's the mammalness.