Animal cruelty

TW Scott:

Of course it should. How could I believe otherwise? You think your warped moral code should run the universe, too. Don't pretend you don't.

Not at all. I simply tell them what I believe is right or wrong. It is then up to them to either act morally or not. Ultimately, it's your conscience you have to answer to - if you have one.

On the contrary, I have given you many good reasons for not eating meat. (Want some more?) But you haven't managed to come up with one defensible reason in favour of it, other than your own selfish whims.

Why don't you deal with the real world? You can set up as many of these moral conundrums as you like, and never actually face up to the real world you actually live in. Stop running away, TW Scott.

Again, you are completely wrong. I have never equated the eating of chicken to the murdering of people. I have never said a chicken is as valuable as a human being. But you assume that because a chicken is not equal to a human being, it deserves no ethical consideration or rights at all. I disagree wholeheartedly with you. I say we have a duty to protect the weak and defenseless. It is how we treat those whom we have power over that marks us as moral or immoral beings.

This is a straw man. You have invented a position which you imagine I hold. If only it was that simple. If only I wasn't so reasonable.

This is new. Now you think self-awareness is the key to whether a creature deserves to live or die. But you require a strict kind of self-awareness: self-awareness "like we are". Basically, this is just speciesism - the preference of your own species over all others for no morally defensible reason.

Spoken like another person who has never lived on a farm or spent any time watching cows or sheep or any of the other animals you eat. Again, life would be much simpler if a cow was simply a grass-eating automaton, with no feelings, no desires, no will to live, no thought. Your assumption that that is all a cow is says much more about you than it says about the cow.

The fact is, you're just more familiar with dogs and cats than you are with cows. You've spent enough time observing dogs and cats, probably. And you probably saw on TV or read in a book about the intelligence of dolphins and whales. And monkeys ... well, they're a bit like you, and you're self-aware, so...

Of course, I disagree even that your argument based on self-awareness is the best basis on which to make a decision to eat or not to eat. I prefer to look first at the ability of an animal to suffer. If it can suffer by being bred up for food, treated appallingly and then killed arbitrarily, that in itself should be enough to make a moral choice, regardless of self-awareness.

But at least I've got you thinking a little bit.

 

Hapsburg:

Then you wouldn't mind if your family was kidnapped and tortured, I guess. You wouldn't care that a person doing that had no morals. Morals are for pussies. I suppose you'd be happy to throw away all criminal laws, too, since they are based on ethical principles.

Why don't you kill your dog and eat it?

 

TW Scott:

I found your last post particularly amusing and enlightening.

Partially correct. Notice that this thread is in the "Ethics, morality and Justice" forum. That means that we discuss - you guessed it - questions of ethics, morality and justice here.

I have given you good ethical reasons not to eat meat. They include:

1. Killing innocent beings purely for your own pleasure is wrong.
2. The meat industry is, by its very nature, cruel in its practices towards animals, and it is not ethical to support the wrongdoing of others.
3. Bringing animals into existence for the sole purpose of killing them for pleasure is wrong.
4. It is good to protect those over whom you have power, and wrong to exploit them.
5. Sentient creatures ought not to be treated as property. We abolished the slave trade, and the farming of meat animals is, in essence, no different to slavery.

Apart from that, there are other reasons:

6. Less land would be needed for agriculture if we didn't farm animals for food, which would help preserve the environment and biodiversity - generally considered a worthy aim by thinking people.
7. A vegetarian diet is probably healthier in the long run than a meat-based diet. (This is a separate debate, so I haven't really mentioned it up to this point. Also, it isn't an ethical argument, but a health-based one.

And the list goes on...

On your side of the argument, on the other hand, we've had no ethical arguments. You made a stab at "what is natural is always good", but I've shown you that argument doesn't hold water. You also tried "we have no alternative but to eat meat, or we'll die", but that one didn't wash, either. Then there's the old "I'm human, so I'm special, and therefore I can do what I want with animals" argument, which requires some kind of justification - a justification which nobody has managed to provide yet.

And that's about it, I think. Did I miss anything?

Just for you, TW, I will respond to your question in a separate post below. It's irrelevant to the main argument, of course.

This is hardly worth responding to. But if you want to play "find the quote", TW Scott, go ahead. Quote me where I said the eating of animals was the same as murdering people - if you can.

Since your comprehension level is obviously way beyond fifth grade, I'm sure you will have no problem distinguishing between "equating" and "comparing". For that matter, I'm not sure I even directly compared the two, but I could be wrong about that.

A factor in what?

Interesting! Sounds like you have a vested interest. That might explain why you're so strident in your defense of meat eating.

Are you in the meat industry? Do you farm animals to sell for meat? If so, should anybody be surprised you'd be keen to defend your livelihood. They can hardly expect you to be objective, can they?

Tell me, TW Scott - in your extensive experience of rearing animals, have you ever spent any time just watching the animals in a close-to-natural setting? Do you keep your animals in small pens, or do they live in fields? Are they allowed to mix with other animals, or are they kept separate?

I have now asked you many times to explain your moral position. Here, you once again assert that your actions are moral. Do you think that, this time, you can actually back up that assertion?

On what basis is the killing and eating of animals morally justifiable?

When I first asked you this, the best you could come up with was to stick your fingers in your ears and say "I don't have to tell you if I don't want to." Now you've had a couple more days to think about a better answer. So...?

This is blatant misrepresentation, which again makes me wonder about your vested interests. Take one example:

About 4 billion chickens are killed every year in the United States. By far the majority of these are raised in tiny individual cages which are too small to allow the chicken to turn around in. These chickens virtually swim in their own excrement. They are fed hormones to fatten them up faster, which produce many deformities. Their legs often become too weak to hold them up - not that they ever get to use them anyway. These chickens never see sunlight. They live their entire, brief lives locked in those individual cages, before being killed by a machine built specifically for the purpose, but which nevertheless often does not do the job painlessly.

We're not talking "a few ranches" which treat chickens this way. The vast majority are treated this way.

You mention veal. What is veal? Baby calf, as you so helpfully pointed out before. At what age are these calves killed, TW? For what reason are they bred? What are their lives like during their brief lifespans? Do you know, or care? Or do you only care about the taste?

Reforested land, in general, has a fraction of the biodiversity of the old-growth forest it is meant to replace. But that's a different argument.

You mention the media. Tell me, TW Scott, how much does the meat industry spend each year promoting meat? Now tell me how much animal rights groups spend. Compare and contrast. Whose message is louder? Or is it that you only notice those pesky animal rights people?

Yes. Everybody is introduced to ideas at some stage.

Yes, and unbiased ones too. And I've read a number of books on the topic. I've read articles from both "sides" of this debate.

How much "fact checking" have you done? Not much, judging from the incorrect information you have posted.

As it happens, yes it does.

Again, I point out the simple fact that I keep giving you good moral reasons not to eat meat, but you are yet to dig up even one defensible reason to eat it. Enough said, really.

I make no apologies for not being a moral relativist. I do not believe "everybody is entitled to his own individual moral code". On the contrary, I believe that some moral positions are logical and defensible, while others clearly are not. Some actions really are evil - it isn't just a matter of perception.

As for compromise, what would that involve here? You continue on as usual, and I give up trying to convince you to change? That is not a compromise - it would be an acknowledgement that your position had some validity - which it does not.

The "group dynamic" you say? I've already pointed out that safety in numbers is a poor argument. The mob has been wrong in the past, and on this issue it is wrong now, too. I urge you to break free of the mob and start doing some independent thinking.

 

artistmosi:

Nice post. Obviously, I agree with you completely.

 

TW Scott:

Since I hate to leave a moral conundrum hanging, here's an answer for you:

This is unrealistic, of course. As I understand it, the facts are these (correct me if I am wrong):

1. There are an unspecified number of vegetarian herd animals on the island.
2. A small family of bobcats lives on the island, which will surely kill me unless I kill them first.
3. I could grow crops from the seeds which would feed me.
4. (Not sure about this one) Growing the crops would be detrimental to the herd animals (and/or the bobcats)?
5. Presumably, I don't have the option to leave the island.

First, it appears I have no choice but to kill the bobcats before they kill me. I have no particular qualms about that. If it comes to them or me, then I choose me. But if they don't bother me, I won't bother them. As to the manner of their death, I would try to kill them quickly and painlessly, rather than, say, starving them out by growing crops. I'd say the herd animals will probably thank me for eliminating a predator, too...

Now I need food. Options: grow the crops or kill the herd animals for food. There is, of course, one other potential food source. Assuming I kill the bobcats, I suppose I could live on bobcat for a while, though it depends whether I've killed them all at once or one at a time, and that would depend on necessity (whether they would kill me). Would I eat the bobcats? Depends on what net harm I would cause by using another food source.

Would growing the crops cause the herd animals to die? Or would it mean more food for them, too? If the latter, then it's win win, and I grow the crops. If the former, then assuming I have to kill the bobcats, I would probably eat the bobcats while they were available, in order to avoid harming the herd animals unnecessarily. Once that food source was exhausted, I would have to choose between growing crops or eating the herd animals.

The crops make a lot more sense. Raising herd animals for food would require growing food for them, too, which means I would need approximately 10 times as much crop to eat herd animals as if I ate the crops myself. Assuming that taking over some land to grow crops for myself would result in the deaths of some herd animals, it's still the lesser of two evils, since eating the herd animals themselves would involve a higher death rate.

I think that about covers it.

Your turn, TW Scott. What would you do on the same island?

 

Fair enough.

 

TW Scott:

You constantly amuse me. I write a long, detailed, on-topic response to you, and you completely ignore it. Instead, you choose to pursue your irrelevant diversion. Why are you avoiding the issues?

And so...?

This might, of course, upset the ecological balance on the island. Presumably, before I got there, the bobcats ate the herd animals. In a more realistic example, the bobcats would probably quite happily keep eating the herd animals rather than attacking me.

Humans don't need to eat meat.

No. We breed herd animals specifically so we can eat them. We do not kill them to keep numbers down. On the contrary, we breed more animals to keep numbers up, so there is always a ready supply of meat available for the selfish pleasure of youself and others like you. And, in doing this, we use approximately 3 times the farmland that we would need if we lived on a vegetarian diet.

Still wallowing in your depravity?

 

Hapsburg:

That's exactly what it means. A sense of right and wrong is what morality is.

Saying you don't like morals is the same as saying there is no right and wrong. Which means, anything goes.

Why is killing something which is capable of abstract thought worse than killing something which can feel pain, but may not be able to think abstractly? Why do you draw the line at abstract thought?

But not dogs? And not cows, or sheep, or goats, or presumably any of the animals you like to eat. How convenient it is for you that it is exactly the animals you love to eat the most that are also incapable of abstract thought. If it's true, that is.