Is it okay to eat animals???

[gull]

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I once knew someone like this. He's gotten so nutty now he won't spend any money on personal satisfaction. You can't go to a baseball game with him. Unless you pay for him, he'll accept THAT. lol, he thinks it's selfless.

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How is this nutty? This is the course of action that logic leads you to if you accept that you should treat the lives of others as no less important than your own; i.e., you subscribe to utilitarianism.

[vhawk01]

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

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If morality didn't come from God (note I don't say "religion"), then by what authority would it be imposed or enforced?

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Or even if it did!

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So, the truth comes out. Your post is apropos, as usual.

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[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] Would "your post is mystifying as usual" be the appropriate snippy response?

I guess my question was, why does your explanation solve the problem rather than simply push it back a frame?

[Speedlimits]

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

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If morality didn't come from God (note I don't say "religion"), then by what authority would it be imposed or enforced?

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Or even if it did!

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morality came from evolution.

[Speedlimits]

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I will always be a member of People who Eat Tasty Animals, but in a PM discussion, the issue was brought up. Assuming that it's not for survival, and that one can be healthy eating other stuff, I cannot defend the fact that I eat meat (and will continue to do so!). Can anybody provide a good reason with it is morally acceptable to eat animals when it is not necessary to survival??? And overpopulation of animals doesn't count, since we breed a lot of them just to eat them.

I think I'm just going to have to admit that I am being selfish when I eat meat and accept that it is wrong.

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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.

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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Morality has it's place. But it is subjective.

[Skidoo]

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

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If morality didn't come from God (note I don't say "religion"), then by what authority would it be imposed or enforced?

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Or even if it did!

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So, the truth comes out. Your post is apropos, as usual.

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[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] Would "your post is mystifying as usual" be the appropriate snippy response?

I guess my question was, why does your explanation solve the problem rather than simply push it back a frame?

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For the record, if I ever give a "snippy" response, it is in an obviously humorous mode and not in the context of the serious and scholarly exchange for which SMP is justly renown.

As to your question, my post does not attempt a resolution. Insofar as you concede that the issue falls under the jurisdiction of a higher authority, it is there that I must refer you. Between our two sides alone, the dispute cannot be resolved.

[Speedlimits]

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I think I'm just going to have to admit that I am being selfish when I eat meat and accept that it is wrong.

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I think I am in the same boat as you.

I would likely not eat meat if I had to kill the animals myself. Yet I love a good cheeseburger and can't see myself giving them up. I suck.

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This sentiment always feels odd to me precisely because I spent the period of my life from ages 8ish-16 on a farm. Some true stories:

-We owned cattle. On a few occasions a cow would die giving birth (or from injuries related to giving birth). In every case we, and by "we" I mean every member of my family participated including my younger sisters, bottle-fed the calf until it was old enough to butcher. They had names and we could simply walk up and pet them, and then we ate them and didn't care.

-We always had at least one family dog that lived indoors with us. They were members of the family, they slept in our beds more often than not, and my sisters would cry for days when they died. Once we saw a segment on a news show about how in China or somewhere dogs were being raised for fur coats, and how animal activists were crying that they could be using coyote fur or something instead of "betraying" these pets. We were all rolling our eyes and agreeing that if the dogs were raised explicitly for fur, activist groups should just kindly shut up. This despite the fact that dogs are pets, and coyotes are common pests that sometimes attack livestock and pets, and almost always made a lot of noise during the night.

-We also had outdoor cats. Outdoor cats that would never live more than 5ish years because of forest predators. We tried to prevent this; on several occasions my father would throw open a door and start shooting from inside the house while the rest of us watched TV. Yet, if one of the cats caught a mouse, we wouldn't try to stop it from eating it.

-Rattlesnakes decide to nest near children's playing area, so my father protects his children by killing the rattlesnakes. Children play near wasps nest, wasp stings children to protect its young, father kills the wasps.

My point in all of this is that anyone who is actually exposed to these animals is going to become desensitized pretty quickly to the idea of animals dying, simply because there's no way to care about it without being maddenly inconsistent or making living almost impossible. That doesn't mean that we approve of things like cruelty to animals, only that I won't argue with what you eat even if it's your own poodle.

(BTW, I don't buy the argument something is automatically moral because animals do it. Male cats will kill the kittens of a female they haven't mated with; that's genocide in my book)

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The male cat kills the kittens because the kittens drink milk from the female, during this time the female cannot go into heat. So evolution dictates the kittens must die.

[arahant]

Not eating meat may turn you into a pussy