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> Killing animals may still be acceptable in western society, but it's wrong. It's wrong just as slavery in the United States in the 18th and 19th century was o

> Killing animals may still be acceptable in western society, but it's wrong. It's wrong just as slavery in the United States in the 18th and 19th century was once acceptable but wrong. Just as hanging, drawing and quartering to an audience of thousands in Europe was acceptable but wrong. Wow, wait until you watch an animal kingdom video. Your mind is about to be blown but the amount of animal on animal violence you'll see. I mean blue whales will eat litterally 10 of thousands of shrimp in one meal. Lions will attack and pick on the weakest of the gazelles. nature must have really gotten it wrong. Look, you just can't come out and state that eating meat is wrong without providing some sort of rational around it. Just claiming its morally wrong doesn't really make an impressive argument at all. The biggest problem you make is to lump together the poor treatment of animals and the eating of meat. Many farms treat animals in ways that are considered by the vast majority of people to be fair and proper. Many people who eat meat have educated themselves and consider you to be wrong about the ethics of eating meat. TD/DR, you just can't take your own beliefs, state them as fact and then state that they are the correct moral thing to do and any one who dares disagree with your narrow beliefs is just wrong.

asciimo 13y ago
For some animals, killing is necessary for survival. For humans, it is optional. Arguably recreational.
swombat 13y ago
Nature is not morally right. In fact, nature is amoral. Pointing to nature and saying "nature does it so it's ok" is a bit like pointing at a landslide and saying "nature does it so it's ok to build my house like this". It's meaningless. Unlike most animals (as far as we know) we are in the unique position of being moral creatures. We created this morality idea, which was not present in nature before us. Killing any kind of sentient creature whose death could have been avoided is immoral (whether legal or not). That some countries still apply the barbarous death penalty doesn't make it less immoral. We don't know exactly the level of sentience of the animals we kill and eat, but they are at the very least self-conscious to some extent. Pigs, squids, dolphins, dogs, cats, etc, are all clearly human-like in some ways. Killing such animals is not that far off from killing sentient beings. I think it's a fair statement to say that killing animals is wrong. That being said... The issue is complex. There is a lot of historical baggage that we have to deal with here. And it could be argued that many of those species only exist because we eat them (or at least that most of their numbers exist only because we eat them). Endless such arguments can be contrived. None of them make it right, but they explain why this is not a simple "X is wrong, let's stop doing X" situation. I say all this above as a meat eater, btw. I eat (a lot of) meat. That I do so while knowing that it's morally wrong is, I guess, just one of those "contradictions" that we humans get to live with.
- chollida1 13y ago
  > Nature is not morally right. In fact, nature is amoral. Pointing to nature and saying "nature does it so it's ok" is a bit like pointing at a landslide and saying "nature does it so it's ok to build my house like this". It's meaningless. Completely agree here, luckily I never made that argument:) I basically made a tongue in check throw away remark > Killing any kind of sentient creature whose death could have been avoided is immoral (whether legal or not) Here we disagree if by sentient creature you included animals, which I'm assuming you do or you'd just say humans:) Look I recognize your name on this site now and I respect a lot of what you say but you just can't make this statement and assume its a fact that isn't debatable. Because its very much debatable. Look we just disagree on this point, which is fine as its all opinion based and no right or wrong here.
  - swombat 13y ago
    Everything's debatable! But there are pretty strong arguments for "killing sentient beings is wrong". Most morality stems from the Golden Rule (treat others as you'd want to be treated). If we take that as a given (a reasonable non-controversial starting point imho), then we can easily agree that breeding and killing other humans for food is immoral. The Golden Rule is generally applied to a small subset of sentient beings, of course. However, one thing is observable throughout history, which is that the group of beings included in the Golden Rule has generally gone up with time. It used to be only a subset of humans, and has progressively grown to include most (and yet still not all) humans in most (still not all) cases. But it continues to grow. And already some types of treatment are considered abhorrent even when applied to non-humans. For example, we may debate eating pigs, but we would presumably all agree that deliberately torturing a pig for your own personal satisfaction is immoral (hence all the laws against cruelty to animals). This progress of history seems pretty constant - it may be the only progress we can measure as far as the question "are we getting more civilised" goes. Our measure of progress is, how many more groups do we include under the shield of this Golden Rule. It's pretty reasonable to predict that, unless things go very badly for humanity, eventually many animals that we currently breed and kill for food will come join us on the safe side of the Golden Rule. We may start with the more inspiring or cuddly ones like Dolphins or Whales, but can you doubt that humanity from 500 years in the future will consider eating a dolphin as abhorrent as we would consider, say, eating someone's pet labrador? Did eating someone's pet become less moral over time, or has it always been immoral, but before it was tolerated? What about eating other humans? What about other applications of the Golden Rule? Obviously you can respond that morality is a moving target... and you're right. But then you're still agreeing that the topic we're discussing is something that could easily be conceived as immoral in the future (unlike, say, petting a cat or painting a nice painting, which are unlikely to ever be considered immoral as far as we can predict without resorting to extreme scenarios). I take the view that something which will be immoral in 500 years is already immoral, we're just too undeveloped to realise it yet, much in the same way that I'd say that death penalty or torture were always immoral, but people weren't civilised enough to realise it in the past.
elif 13y ago
So your counterpoint logic is verbatim the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy Cruelty to animals for survival might have some moral justification. However, as vegans prove every day, survival is no-longer a reasonable justification. Therefore what we're left with is the willful choice to cause suffering for our own pleasure. Please explain to me how that is morally justifiable.
dharmach 13y ago
There are things animals do and you don't and there are things you do and animals don't. Does not make much sense to say you would do something because animals are doing so.
dyadic 13y ago
Contextual's point is that there is less difference between humans and other animals than most people like to think. It's a difficult sell, not least because humans are omnivores and by that it is natural to eat meat. But our higher level thinking allows us to reason and determine our own morals, if killing / eating other humans is wrong and animals are not that different from humans then how can killing and eating animals be right? I sympathise with this view, but still enjoy eating meat, it's a situation that's becoming more uncomfortable all of the time.
worldsayshi 13y ago
He provided argument, if we think that people should be treated humanely we should treat animals humanely because animals are people. You on the other hand are providing an appeal to nature fallacy.

asciimo 13y ago

For some animals, killing is necessary for survival. For humans, it is optional. Arguably recreational.

swombat 13y ago

Nature is not morally right. In fact, nature is amoral. Pointing to nature and saying "nature does it so it's ok" is a bit like pointing at a landslide and saying "nature does it so it's ok to build my house like this". It's meaningless. Unlike most animals (as far as we know) we are in the unique position of being moral creatures. We created this morality idea, which was not present in nature before us. Killing any kind of sentient creature whose death could have been avoided is immoral (whether legal or not). That some countries still apply the barbarous death penalty doesn't make it less immoral. We don't know exactly the level of sentience of the animals we kill and eat, but they are at the very least self-conscious to some extent. Pigs, squids, dolphins, dogs, cats, etc, are all clearly human-like in some ways. Killing such animals is not that far off from killing sentient beings. I think it's a fair statement to say that killing animals is wrong. That being said... The issue is complex. There is a lot of historical baggage that we have to deal with here. And it could be argued that many of those species only exist because we eat them (or at least that most of their numbers exist only because we eat them). Endless such arguments can be contrived. None of them make it right, but they explain why this is not a simple "X is wrong, let's stop doing X" situation. I say all this above as a meat eater, btw. I eat (a lot of) meat. That I do so while knowing that it's morally wrong is, I guess, just one of those "contradictions" that we humans get to live with.

chollida1 13y ago
> Nature is not morally right. In fact, nature is amoral. Pointing to nature and saying "nature does it so it's ok" is a bit like pointing at a landslide and saying "nature does it so it's ok to build my house like this". It's meaningless. Completely agree here, luckily I never made that argument:) I basically made a tongue in check throw away remark > Killing any kind of sentient creature whose death could have been avoided is immoral (whether legal or not) Here we disagree if by sentient creature you included animals, which I'm assuming you do or you'd just say humans:) Look I recognize your name on this site now and I respect a lot of what you say but you just can't make this statement and assume its a fact that isn't debatable. Because its very much debatable. Look we just disagree on this point, which is fine as its all opinion based and no right or wrong here.
- swombat 13y ago
  Everything's debatable! But there are pretty strong arguments for "killing sentient beings is wrong". Most morality stems from the Golden Rule (treat others as you'd want to be treated). If we take that as a given (a reasonable non-controversial starting point imho), then we can easily agree that breeding and killing other humans for food is immoral. The Golden Rule is generally applied to a small subset of sentient beings, of course. However, one thing is observable throughout history, which is that the group of beings included in the Golden Rule has generally gone up with time. It used to be only a subset of humans, and has progressively grown to include most (and yet still not all) humans in most (still not all) cases. But it continues to grow. And already some types of treatment are considered abhorrent even when applied to non-humans. For example, we may debate eating pigs, but we would presumably all agree that deliberately torturing a pig for your own personal satisfaction is immoral (hence all the laws against cruelty to animals). This progress of history seems pretty constant - it may be the only progress we can measure as far as the question "are we getting more civilised" goes. Our measure of progress is, how many more groups do we include under the shield of this Golden Rule. It's pretty reasonable to predict that, unless things go very badly for humanity, eventually many animals that we currently breed and kill for food will come join us on the safe side of the Golden Rule. We may start with the more inspiring or cuddly ones like Dolphins or Whales, but can you doubt that humanity from 500 years in the future will consider eating a dolphin as abhorrent as we would consider, say, eating someone's pet labrador? Did eating someone's pet become less moral over time, or has it always been immoral, but before it was tolerated? What about eating other humans? What about other applications of the Golden Rule? Obviously you can respond that morality is a moving target... and you're right. But then you're still agreeing that the topic we're discussing is something that could easily be conceived as immoral in the future (unlike, say, petting a cat or painting a nice painting, which are unlikely to ever be considered immoral as far as we can predict without resorting to extreme scenarios). I take the view that something which will be immoral in 500 years is already immoral, we're just too undeveloped to realise it yet, much in the same way that I'd say that death penalty or torture were always immoral, but people weren't civilised enough to realise it in the past.

elif 13y ago

So your counterpoint logic is verbatim the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy Cruelty to animals for survival might have some moral justification. However, as vegans prove every day, survival is no-longer a reasonable justification. Therefore what we're left with is the willful choice to cause suffering for our own pleasure. Please explain to me how that is morally justifiable.

dharmach 13y ago

There are things animals do and you don't and there are things you do and animals don't. Does not make much sense to say you would do something because animals are doing so.

dyadic 13y ago

Contextual's point is that there is less difference between humans and other animals than most people like to think. It's a difficult sell, not least because humans are omnivores and by that it is natural to eat meat. But our higher level thinking allows us to reason and determine our own morals, if killing / eating other humans is wrong and animals are not that different from humans then how can killing and eating animals be right? I sympathise with this view, but still enjoy eating meat, it's a situation that's becoming more uncomfortable all of the time.

worldsayshi 13y ago

He provided argument, if we think that people should be treated humanely we should treat animals humanely because animals are people. You on the other hand are providing an appeal to nature fallacy.