The Debate Hall Social Thread

[~ Gheb ~]

But totally acceptable. I mean what the **** are animals here on earth for except to serve as our food? Sure there's plenty we won't eat, but if you trace food chains you'll see that just about every species is important in the chain that links all the biology on Earth. So, I guess my point is there's no sense crying over the poor cows, cause we've got a lot of people to feed, and I'd much rather we be fed by controlled livestock and produce rather than having to fend for ourselves on the open prairie.

What the **** are other humans 0n earth except to serve as our food? Sure there's plenty we won't eat, but if you trace food chains you'll see that just about every speciesis important in the chain that links all the biology on Earth. So, I guess my point is there's no sense crying over the poor humans, cause we've got a load of people to feed, and I'd much rather we be fed by controlled livestock and produce rather than having to fend for ourselves on the open prairie.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

What I said was that no one is justifying it.
I never said that we should never take a life no matter what the circumstance. In cases like those you mentioned you use a common sense utilitarian approach. If our crops are being affected by very low sentience creatures, then there's nothing wrong killing them because of their minimal capacity for suffering.


I never proposed a rigid principle system, that's exactly they type of thing I'm against. Humans, no matter what they did in their history on this planet, were always going to harm animals in some way. Whether it be hunting them directly, or outcompeting them for habitat and resources. I get that, that's why I don't believe it's 'immoral' to harm animals. I don't believe in morality anyway, but even if I did, it wouldn't be immoral because not harming animals would have always been an impossible goal.


What I don't like is that we're not attempting to minimise the amount of suffering and harm we cause. Every year we harm millions and millions of high sentience creatures that we don't need to. Honestly it's disgusting, and people will realise that in a few centuries. It's amazing what you will accept or turn a blind-eye to if your society does the same.

I see what you're talking about here and I think on a logical point of view I'm going to have to agree with you here. My family has also almost completely gone vegetarian, we're only eating meat when we eat out and have friends over and stuff. I think veganism is much more difficult though, as milk and eggs and animal products are very nutritious and hard to replace.

What would your position be on medical research involving animals then?

 

[Sucumbio]

@Gheb_01: I think you're missing the point...

It's like being mad at your foot because the fungus that grows in your toes is eating your toe jam.

Put another way think of the Earth as one single organism with each of its inhabitants being parts of the whole... our part is to utilize our natural resources to our benefit (if you believe in that sort of thing).

 

[Claire Diviner]

The fact of the matter is everything dies, and creatures kill another to feed themselves, and human beings are and were never any different; the only real change being that we had to actually work to hunt for our meat back then, while today, almost all humans merely buy meat that was raised and processed. Also, as for slaughtering animals "humanely", what exactly is the true definition of "humane"? To kill with as little pain and suffering as possible? Well, the truth is, no matter how humane one tries to kill an animal, killing is killing, and the animal in question will suffer, even if for a moment, which then causes people (myself included) to question the idea of morality and if it's even practical in life in regards to meat. I mean, if you look at lions and how they hunt, they cause major suffering, suffocating their prey to death, and for them, it's business as usual. While the argument can be made that we're by no means lions, last I checked, we - as humans - are still mammals, albeit with a higher sentience than a lion (or so some would argue), with the point being that at the end of the day, people are going to eat meat regardless of origin or how the animal died.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

It's like being mad at your foot because the fungus that grows in your toes is eating your toe jam.

Yeah.




















No.

The fact of the matter is everything dies, and creatures kill another to feed themselves, and human beings are and were never any different;

That doesn't mean it's alright for us to do it. We have the choice to not kill. Doesn't this fact alone make it plainly obvious that we shouldn't do it and that our desire for meat is not a justification? It's not like we need meat to survive - our ancestors might have but we don't. It's the same as using animals as a source of fur for coat - we murder thousands of beings on a daily basis for something that has become entirely superfluous to our lives.

If it ever came to pass that a species "superior" to humans were to roam the earth would it be alright for them to cage us, make us proliferate, fatten us, pump inhuman amounts of growth hormones into our bodies and then slaughter us a week later because they like eating our meat and are "superior" to us?

 

[Dre89]

Sucumbio- It doesn't matter what you're emotional sentiment is at the moment. Most humans don't care about animal slaughter because we've been brought up with an anthroprocentric world view and are blinded to the actual slaughter.

We don't need meat. We are perefectly capable of surviving off vegetarian and vegan diets (in fact it's argualy even optimal for us, but let's not get into that). We also don't need to cause suffering in millions of sentient creatures.
There's nothing I can really say if you're happy with such savage and barbaric practices. I'm appealing to the civilised and altruistic people to realise what we're doing is disgusting and contradicts all human progress. It's the equivalent of religion- not dropping a primitive practice that originated thousands of years ago.

 

[Sucumbio]

you two just said the same thing, basically and all I can think of is that scene from pulp fiction...

"Bacon tastes gooood. Pork chops taste gooood"

It has nothing to do with emotional sentiment, or rationale even, it's just biology. What we choose to eat is a matter of subjective taste, even if you hide the decision behind countless hours of soul searching masquerading as philosophy. Now I do recall you yourself eat at McDonald's, so... does that somehow make you or I barbaric? Seriously, if you want to talk barbarism just think of body modification. Religion? C'mon you know people need to follow -something- or they just wander around in circles colliding and self imploding. And Fast Food is just that, it's nutrients on the go that tastes "good." Or "gooood." I dunno, I like it sometimes, like right now actually... hm. QP w/cheese and a 10 piece nugget meal w/a large sweet tea pls.

 

[Claire Diviner]

@Dre.: Try convincing this to tribes of people who rely on hunting animals for food; where vegetarian/vegan diets are not an option (I mostly speak of tribes in Africa, including those that are aware of civilization outside of their circle).

You can't try to say meat-eating is barbaric when it's been a necessary practice since the time of cavemen, where meat was absolutely necessary to survive. Also, comparing religion to meat-eating is something that's simply a "no". While yes, it can be argued that both practices are thousands of years old, unlike religion, meat was needed to live, especially during the ice age, where vegetarians/vegans would starve to death.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

If I was given the ability to make the slaughtering of animals a think of the past I would, but doing so would simply be out of my personal attachment to animals and nothing more. This isn't a case of right or wrong. Asking whether what we are doing is right, or whether or not it would be right for aliens to do it to us is grossly inappropriate.

 

[Dre89]

Sucumbio- I'm a vegetarian now. Ok, now apply your arguments to humans. You still don't get it. All your arguments apply an inherent discrimination against animals. You wouldn't say the same thing about humans. Honestly white slavers could say the same thing about having slaves. "You can philosophise as much as you like, but we like having slaves and they're useful". It's basically the same argument. You use such casual reasoning because you have an inherent discrimination against animals and don't really care about them, just like the rest of society.

What's your take on cannibalism, is that ok too? I mean, it's just biology. People like the taste of human meat.



Holder- Firstly the original humans were most likely vegetarians. There are sign of early meat consumption, but even then we shouldn't use early humans as role-models for our actions because even early humans had the intelligence to defy their natural instincts.
I never said it is wrong to take a life in any instance whatsoever. You're throwing rigid principle based morality onto me. Common sense is a factor, if meat is an absolute necessity, then we should try to kill the lowest sentience creature possible.



However, we don't need meat in the developed world. We don't need to cause the inconceivable amount of suffering we do. We do it because we're desensitised to it, just like slavers were to blacks. You can believe anything is acceptable if your society does as well.
Saying that it's ok to kill animals because some cultures have to do it out of necessity is like saying that killing humans is ok because at times it's had to be done out of necessity. We should attempt to avoid causing suffering at death at all time when there is no need, that's just common sense.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

Onto you? I don't recall saying anything directly to you at all. I simply stated that this isn't a matter of right or wrong and rather it is a matter of having a personal attachment to animals.

In your reply you throw around "should"s and invoke sensus communis at a whim. We stop killing other animals because we don't absolutely need to anymore? That may appear on the face as an adequate reason, but really it isn't one unless you make assumptions about what the goal is. Your common sense is just ultimately "I love animals!~ :3" unless you provide a different reason. Personally I don't mind that, I love animals too. I'm just willing to recognize that is the motivation, and maybe the theory that it might indirectly aid in our culture towards one another, and perhaps the notion that we ourselves would be healthier.

 

[Dre89]

There is no rigid 'right and wrong' that's what I'm trying to avoid.
Take all that 'I love animals!' reasoning and now apply it to humans. I can make the same argument about caring for humans.
Care for animals comes from the same altruism that makes us care for other humans.
You don't 'have' to do anything. If someone is happy to be barbaric in the modern era and doesn't mind causing unnecessary suffering, then there are no grounds to appeal to them on. Just like how there is nothing I can say to a psychopath who wants to kill me, who lacks the altruism we have, and knows he can get away with it. It's the same thing. It's an appeal rather than a moral command.
If you can justify an inconceivable amount of unnecessary suffering, then there's nothing I can say to you. But you have no right to judge religion, slavers, or anything else like that. You're not much different.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Asking whether what we are doing is right, or whether or not it would be right for aliens to do it to us is grossly inappropriate.

Killing sentient beings entirely unecessarily is grossly inappropriate too, yet we accept and support that it happens millions of times every day.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

By grossly inappropriate I mean it doesn't mean anything in the discussion because there is no such thing.

My only point is that this "altruism" or "common sense" you speak of is assumed in a manner similarly to a sense of right. Society is created out of need/benefit. Expecting society, something made for the benefit of its humans, to refrain from killing animals without a benefit is out of personal attachment to animals (unless you assume some benefit to society). Obviously there is a "I love humans!~" in a sense in our society, but that is the society. We make it.

I'm not arguing with you guys, or fighting against your side for I don't want society to do it either, I just don't want people in a debate inappropriately discussing it.

 

[Sucumbio]

Sucumbio- I'm a vegetarian now. Ok, now apply your arguments to humans. You still don't get it. All your arguments apply an inherent discrimination against animals. You wouldn't say the same thing about humans. Honestly white slavers could say the same thing about having slaves. "You can philosophise as much as you like, but we like having slaves and they're useful". It's basically the same argument. You use such casual reasoning because you have an inherent discrimination against animals and don't really care about them, just like the rest of society.

What's your take on cannibalism, is that ok too? I mean, it's just biology. People like the taste of human meat.

Um, what? There's no equating slavery with meat eating, wtf? That's just inane. What one animal does to another member of its species is entirely on that animal. Through and through. I don't care if it's a coyote eating it's newborn to keep from starving, I don't care if it's a mother stabbing her crotch with a pitch fork it's all the same. It's all personal decisions based on perceived necessity.

Inherent discrimination? Because I believe that animals are a "lower" species and fit for my toil and my supper? Damn straight! That's not to say there isn't something higher up than me. Of course there is. Um, I dunno, Influenza, anyone? "Acts of God?" Please. I understand your personal choice to abstain from meat and meat products. I understand your desire for there to be a stop to factory butchering. It must really bother you that those animals do suffer and for nothing more than our nutrients and our convenience.

I remember watching for the first time Lobster get cooked. Man I was furious... they were being boiled alive! F sake how horrid ><

Still, damn good. Mmmmm... some melted butter and ****.

I tell you what, lets take you and all of you like you and you can go play farmville and eat rutabagas somewhere and the rest of us will continue to enjoy screaming cattle.

Oh and yes, I'm perfectly fine with the idea that someday we may be grown and harvested. Hopefully we'll fight free and rebel like in the movies but who knows? I mean, sharks eat us now, I wouldn't exactly say we're immune to the effects of mother nature, quite the opposite. We're her greatest and most terrible achievement.

And on the cannibalism note, you ever seen the movie Alive? Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. I think they'd have made it tho.. without the thigh and buttock meat of a fallen brother. But, whatever, haha! Better them than me.

But anyway, in essence you want to flip the emotional tide of the coin, but you can't. Slavery was outrageous -because- of how cruel and unusual their treatment was. They were stripped of humanity. There were as animals. That's the whole point. If you give animals the same credence as Humans, ya see? But again I lend this to your location - Americans see things differently when it comes to "race" and such.

And if you want to tit for tat we discriminate every day all the time. It's not a bad thing, you just have to decide what's okay for you. For me it's perfectly fine to eat meat. I'm about to go get some right now actually!

 

[adumbrodeus]

you're right, you can't equate eating another species with slavery. If the species is sentient, it is morally equivilent to canabalism however.



So, this place any more active now?

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

Can someone explain to me how people are arguing that human-animal relationships are analogous to human-human relationships without trolling.

 

[adumbrodeus]

Can someone explain to me how people are arguing that human-animal relationships are analogous to human-human relationships without trolling.

Well I'm arguing that the standard for anything-human relationships to be morally equivilent to human-human relationships is the species being sentient.

 

[GoldShadow]

(Don't mind me, just stickying this thread)

 

[Sucumbio]

sup adum, nah not so active as it used to be, but you can see they're trying to get debates going, it's just I think the debate topics have been done to death and so we need some fresh perspectives.

 

[Nicholas1024]

Hm, maybe I should look through some of these threads at some point, and get back into debating here...

Do we have any (good, active) new debaters since I was last around?

 

[Dre89]

Can someone explain to me how people are arguing that human-animal relationships are analogous to human-human relationships without trolling.

This probably what white people were saying about black hundreds of years ago, more or less.
I don't want to try take the high ground here, but it amazes me what lengths people, who consider themselves 'civilised' or 'good', will go to justify the unnecessary suffering and slaughter of millions of sentient creatures.

Saying it's ok to cause an inconceivable amount of suffering because something is different to us in some arbitrary way just sickesn me to be honest, especially because that's the logic behind basically all opression that has ever existed.
I'm sorry, but I don't really have the stomach to debate with people who support so much unnecessary killing.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

You may not have wanted to take the high ground, but you did with that post. My intention was to expose the root of your argument as being presumptuous and, whether you know it or not, the presumption is what you have expressed in your post just now.

Forgive me for saying something in passing, but you walking away claiming that you basically will literally feel sick to the stomach just debating with people who differ with you on this subject is a snobbish exaggeration, or am I wrong?

 

[Sucumbio]

Definitely trolling, lol

Don't get me wrong, Dre. I felt as you do when I was like, 5. But then I grew accustomed to the superiority of humans over animals, as I'm sure you're thinking "slave owners felt superior over their slaves when they owned them."

You present a false dichotomy. Beasts of burden (horses, mules, etc.) are specifically raised -by- humans in human controlled places for humans' use. Sentience by your definition is anything that is alive. To me, that's idiotic. A fish is well alive, and possess "sentience" insofar as the hairs on my arm are sentient. They flutter when they "sense" something near... as my hairs do when it gets cold (yes I realize they're nothing alike biologically - point isn't about the particulars, but about the larger themes that these processes represent).

Again you fail to understand the globe as a single biological entity upon which life behaves as it does, and each process of life is represented with the individual life form, and within each ecosystem.

Crows are nature's garbage men, for instance. They are as the mites on your skin eating dead flesh as you slumber.

Humans are nature's most innovative specimens. They take dam-building to a "whole nother lever." We don't fault the beaver for cutting down poor defenseless "sentient" trees (trust me there are lifeforms that are less sentient than a tree. No central nervous system in a tree but it still responds to negative stimuli. It still can suffer.) Nor should we fault Humans for cutting down animals that they themselves farmed! I mean really, it's not like going out into the wild and hunting every edible species to extinction, -that- would be insane. Much more practical and responsible to feed our bellies on meat that's been purposefully grown for that purpose. Just like the beaver doesn't cut down ALL the trees in the forest, just the ones closest to where he's building his damn, and really only what he needs.

I also see you coming to another conclusion. If we're so dead to the pain of killing then no wonder wars are waged.

Well, you actually have a point in that sentiment. Yes. Animals in nature are savage in some respects and humans don't get missed on that. And our intellects give us the authority to pick what we eat, and why. If your position is so enlightened then why is it so many billions of other people don't agree with you? Could it be because your enlightened position is one afforded you by circumstance? Could it be that in fact a specific set of factors need to exist in order for a human to come to the conclusions you have?

 

[Dre89]

Not going to respond to that, but just wanted to point that what I define as sentience is the ability to feel pleasure and pain. So not just anything that's living, because plants are living but aren't sentient. I find making arbitrary distinctions between 'living and non-living' and 'us and them' really stupid. I'd just prefer to do away with meaningless labels and try to minimise the amount of suffering we need to cause.

I understand that people are happy to cause unnecessary suffering, but this is one issue that I can't debate with people. I can't stand people with their 'connected to nature' bull****, but I'm an altruistic creature and seeing so much killing and pain that doesn't need to happen just hurts me too much.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

And our intellects give us the authority to pick what we eat, and why.

So once again, if the scenario came to pass where a race that's more intelligent than humans were to roam to earth would it give them the "authority" to kill and eat us? Would you think it's alright for them to do to us what we do to animals?

inb4thatsnevergonnahappen

 

[Dre89]

That was one of the things that made me realise how disgusting the practice actually is.
In that hypothetical scenario, assuming the race could communicate with humans, I would love to hear what humans would say to try weasel their way out of it. Probably some rubbish about how we're different and more intelligent or something else completely arbitrary and meaningless.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

Discussing "empathy" or "altruism" with animals is not even a debate. You can say that one side is disgusted with the other or whatever, and throw those words around, but that isn't a debate, and this is a debate hall. And once again the bizarre alien scenario is brought up... this isn't about right or wrong, or "authority". There is no such thing of either.

Bah, this is going nowhere.

 

[Dre89]

So are you saying you woudn't complain if aliens treated us the way we treat animals? You wouldn'tthink what they're doing is wrong?

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

Dre. seriously stop it. This isn't amusing.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

It's not supposed to be amusing. Why don't you just answer the question?

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

Aliens are an unproven hypothetical. It's impossible to make an educated answer because it's a situation that has yet to be accurately researched or experimented. This follows every other statement made in this thread on animal suffering. The thoughts are explorative without substantiation when there can be research cited from the central nervous system of animals. The use of slavery as an analogy is reducing the argument to absurdity. I don't really care about refuting this because the structure itself is a laughable house of unrealistic cards. I would put time into it if I thought serious thought was being dedicated to it.

 

[Dre89]

We make moral judgements on hypotheticals all the time. Me ****** a little girl is a hypothetical, because I have not and will not do it, but we don't need it to actually occur to say that it's wrong for me to do that.
If I **** that girl, what I can I say to discourage someone from ****** me if they know I'm a rapist? It sounds incredibly hypocritical.
Also, how is is slavery an absurd analogy? We enslave and kill animals, and the arguments used to justify it were the same arguments used to justify human slavery, which were basically labelling them as different in some arbitrary way.

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

We make moral judgements on hypotheticals all the time. Me ****** a little girl is a hypothetical, because I have not and will not do it, but we don't need it to actually occur to say that it's wrong for me to do that.
If I **** that girl, what I can I say to discourage someone from ****** me if they know I'm a rapist? It sounds incredibly hypocritical.
Also, how is is slavery an absurd analogy? We enslave and kill animals, and the arguments used to justify it were the same arguments used to justify human slavery, which were basically labelling them as different in some arbitrary way.

I would concede if you asked me if animals could experience PTSD. I would concede that humans also experienced PTSD, especially female **** victims. But stating that the two diagnoses of PTSD are equivalent is neurologically impossible given the different structure of the central nervous system. I couldn't find any documents if animals experience suffering at slaughter, although there is plenty of research pointing out that starvation and poor treatment will lead to animals experiencing stress. If there is a paper, then I would reconsider whether such an action such as animal consumption could be considered inhumane and egotistical. However, you aren't bothering to going through such venues in order to bolster your argument.

Instead you provided arguments by analogy, when the analogies themselves are flawed. Your slavery argument for example is your own interpretation of how slavery was justified and using that specific interpretation in a parts to whole logical flaw. There were several justifications for slavery, plenty of which were economical and among the British colonies Temple Luttrell raised the point that Britain may not be able to self-sustain if they didn't encourage slavery while their French and Dutch counterparts were already using slaves in full force. In this argumentation, slavery is considered a moral hazard, however economics is seen as being the higher standard for which slavery should be continued. Killing animals embodies neither a moral conflict or an economic conflict. If humans decide to switch to plants, then slaughter houses will close down and the markets will have to reconfigure. However even though there is no doubt that there will macroeconomic repercussions, the private sector will reconfigure to build around plant based products or synthetics such as vitamins/drug nutrients. In addition people do not consider the dimension that animal consumption is a moral evil. If people do not perceive the moral evil, then it cannot be treated as a moral issue. In addition raising it as a moral issue requires sufficient explanation of how the action itself constitutes a moral evil. This has not been adequately proven on your part, not because it is necessarily impossible. But rather because this is not your intent in introducing the topic.

Slavery, female ****, and other argument analogies are absurd. The most immediate fact is that there hasn't been sufficient information of an animal's psychology profile to really compare it to our own. This lack of knowledge or the lack of understanding, makes it impossible to gauge the outright accuracy of such statements from a scientific standpoint before we can even start tackling on this as a moral issue. This doesn't have to be a hypothetical issue, although your lack of effort in arguing this as a realistic issue confirms that you don't really feel as strongly on this as you insinuate in the thread. I am willing to concede and treat you with respect about raising this issue if I didn't think all this was is just an exercise in sophistry for you. But I find that is the only thing you really focus on since I joined this community as a debater and have avoided debating with you consequently.

Please note that I am fully aware that this would be an ad hom fallacy save for one exception. This is not a statement addressing the argument, I think that the argument itself could potentially have merit. However, I don't believe Dre. is sincere in his approach to this topic given his use of dramatic analogies such as slavery and ****. I am not in disapproval of the argument, but rather the treatment of it by the debater(s) in question. I'm here to simply state that I think Dre. is purporting this topic to vex us and I'm not terribly interested in participating in one of his many sophistry experiments where he plays devil advocate for masturbatory purposes.

I actually believe that everyone here is willing to consider this point of view. However we all agree that Dre.'s approach to this is hardly even handed or tries to come across as rational. Meh.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

So are you saying you woudn't complain if aliens treated us the way we treat animals? You wouldn'tthink what they're doing is wrong?

I don't believe in right or wrong, I don't think living creatures have this strange moral "authority". Could have sworn you wanted to avoid talk of morality, Dre., though it doesn't surprise me that you are assuming it here because you have been this entire time. If aliens were to do that, yeah I'd defend myself and/or try to create peace, but I wouldn't look up at them and say that they are morally "wrong". That doesn't really detract from my point. Nor does it detract from the point that the discussion of killing animals from an "empathy" standpoint isn't a debate. Not only in theory, but clearly in practice if you just look at what has been said and accomplished thus far. Yeah, we can band together and say we have this empathy, I too don't want to hurt animals and want them to be happy, but let's say I didn't. What would the debate be between us on that subject? Me saying, "I lack empathy!~" and you saying "I do not lack empathy!~ You disgust me!~" Doesn't seem like a debate to me.

 

[Sucumbio]

So once again, if the scenario came to pass where a race that's more intelligent than humans were to roam to earth would it give them the "authority" to kill and eat us? Would you think it's alright for them to do to us what we do to animals?

inb4thatsnevergonnahappen

Holder's got it.

"Of course." is my response to your question, Gheb. If some higher form of life decided to make us its food source, we'd have to live with that. It's not as if it'd be the first time. We used to be food way back when. But we developed weaponry and hunting technique and soon we mastered beast and made it work for us and feed us with its flesh. Kill or be killed.

Yeah it's probably not necessary now, but sometimes you just want to eat meat, and unless you know how to make it out of edible polymers or something, you just have to settle for the moo cow. Self control is moot, too cause frankly most people live life to get back to that blessed feeling of bliss they remember from childhood, and on the pathway of destruction to that end is sure to be a bunch of bloody animal carcasses.

 

[Dre89]

Acrostic-
Are you kidding me? Anyone who has studied animals knows they are very capable of experiencing pleasure and pain. Most of the more intelligent animals have a greater capacity for this than human babies, anyone who disagress with that is incredibly uninformed about the animal kingdom.
I don't give a **** about the economic benefits of meat production. It's economically benefitial to kill off the elderly, or single mothers with lots of children, or the disabled but we don't do that because we're not barbaric.

You don't think animal slaughter is not a moral issue because you don't have a problem with it. You would think something like **** is.

And how on Earth are the comparisons not worthy? They're about discriminating against something because they're different and causing unnecessary suffering.



Sucumbio- Replace animal meat in that post with cannibalism.

In certain tribes around the world, people want to get back that bliss of human flesh they enjoyed as a child.

I keep making these analogies because you keep making the same mistake, which is assuming your inherest discrimination against animals is already justified. It isn't, in the DH, you need to justify your discrimination.
All your 'I like meat' bull**** mean anything until you justify that discrimination with something other than the fact you like, because I can just as well do that with **** or cannibalism too.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

**** also isn't a moral issue. It's a societal issue. Getting rid of **** greatly increases our coexistence and our all around happiness. We also don't kill off the elderly because that we wouldn't be happy doing so, not because society thinks, "Ah, but that's barbaric, so let's let grandpa live."

And unfortunately, it's you who is assuming the lack of discrimination for animals. Or rather, you assume the "empathy" and "altruistic" principle that you use to connect animals to our "I love humans!~" society. Now, at the whim of our society we could do this, but it's just a collected emotional interest. Not sure why I'm repeating myself once more because surely that isn't going to spontaneously provide results, but again, you are assuming some quality that you yourself posses and attribute it to the ideal of society. But it's just your attachment. Which is fine. You're not alone, and the future may likely grow more empathy for animals, but it would only do so because the society has decided to have this emotional attachment. It's like a shift in "taste". Not really something fit for having a "logical" debate about.

 

[Sucumbio]

Not going to respond to that, but just wanted to point that what I define as sentience is the ability to feel pleasure and pain. So not just anything that's living, because plants are living but aren't sentient. I find making arbitrary distinctions between 'living and non-living' and 'us and them' really stupid. I'd just prefer to do away with meaningless labels and try to minimise the amount of suffering we need to cause.

I understand that people are happy to cause unnecessary suffering, but this is one issue that I can't debate with people. I can't stand people with their 'connected to nature' bull****, but I'm an altruistic creature and seeing so much killing and pain that doesn't need to happen just hurts me too much.

Wait, how are you not trolling? Do you even hear yourself? "I'm not going to respond to that, because it beats my argument." Seriously, that's so childish. And you just MADE an arbitrary distinction and they said "I don't want to make arbitrary distinctions." WTF? Which is it?

Also, what proof do you have that plants don't feel pain and pleasure? What evidence do you have that ANY lifeform anywhere experiences these things in the same way that Humans do?

Think of it like this. If you stub your toe, it hurts. It hurts a lot, actually, depending on the person. From the onset of the injury until the body has had time to "heal' from the impact, you (a human) will feel a few different sensations. Most of it is due to swelling, a natural reaction your body takes to injuries. You may feel a "pinching" sensation due to this, which in turn exacerbates the pain sensations coming from the affected area's nerves. THIS is how pain works. It's a nerve response to stimuli. Are you saying that only animals that experience pain in this fashion are sentient? What about a creature that reacts to unwanted stimuli but that does not have a central nervous system? or one that is not a mammal? or any number of other differences between humans and everything else? Don't you see what you've done? You've assigned Human values to -everything on Earth- and then worked backwards from THAT to determine what is and isn't okay for Humans to do with themselves. It doesn't work that way. We treat each other as we want to be treated, we don't treat the grass under our feet how we'd like to be treated (well not usually, but you get what I'm saying).

Then you mention pleasure! What? What on earth possessed you to believe that any animal other than Human is capable of experiencing "pleasure" in the way we do? Emotions? Real emotions are a product of intellectual interpretation. That's not to say they're not neurological, quite the opposite. It's to say that without our advanced brains, emotions as we understand them cannot be felt. So basically according to your definition, only Humans can actually feel emotions.

So, yeah, I think you need to rethink your argument as to why we shouldn't slaughter animals for food. I could actually argue against slaughtering animals better than you. You haven't even touched on the health issues related to eating meat. Instead you've focused on the absurd notions of the morality of eating. That's like crying foul because brushing your teeth is killing germs in your mouth, and the poor defenseless germs, they have a right to live in your mouth too!

Here check this out: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/03/world-meat-consumption_n_1475760.html

Interestingly enough, the US is 2nd place in consumption. Also interestingly, Pork has overtaken Beef as the favorite meat of choice. Also of note Global Warming as a result of greenhouse gas emissions is as you know on the rise, and a lot of those emissions have been linked to - cow farts. Yeah.

Make a topic Dre. that way we can stop spamming up the Social Thread with this nonsense.

edit: *rolls eyes* again cannibalism, though? Where did you hear this from? You're argument tells me you're trying to repeat someone else's argument but didn't fully understand it so now we're alll like what?

Think of it like this:

If you see someone make a bowel movement onto a plate, and then they hand to you for you to eat, what is your FIRST reaction? I'll tell you because it's the same for everyone barring damaged people.

EW!

Why? Cause eating feces is bad. Eating HUMAN feces is REALLY bad. I mean I can even understand some peoples who do in fact eat the feces of other animals. But they're own feces? No.

This same "instinct" as it'd be called, is in play when eating human flesh. not ALL animals feel this way. Some animals will in fact eat their own kind, though it may be a last resort. In Humans, it's DEFINITELY a last resort, and reserved for extreme circumstances.

So basically because it's such an extreme circumstance, and because it's biologically turned off in us to do (that's what instincts are, btw, biological dip switches), it cannot be used as an example in your argument.

 

[Dre89]

Holder- But the well-being of another tribe is of no concern to my tribe. I can simply **** or kill anyone in another tribe and it won't put my society, which is all that matters for my own survival and the survival of those that I love in jeopardy. Similarly, if everyone in my tribe adopted that attitude toward that tribe, the survival of my tribe still wouldn't be in danger. So in that scenario, there is no societal or economic issue with killing or ****** another human being. This is why animals will kill those of the same species in another tribe. It's just animalistic thinking.

Sucumbio- How am I projecting human values onto animals? We know plants don't feel pain, just like a robot which is programmed to have aversive reactions to certain stimuli doesn't actually experience any the sensation of pain.

Other animals don't feel emotions? What are you, the Pope? That is one of the most ignorant and anthropocentric things I have ever heard. There is no qualitative distinction between animals and humans. Everything humans can do has been replicated somewhere in the animals kingdom, just to a lesser degree. Lower intelligence humans such as babies or the mentally disabled have a lower capacity for emotions than many mammals yet their ability to feel pain is similar to ours, same with animals.

Also, the fact you think we're instinctively turned off cannibalism shows a complete ignorance of human history and how much your society has affected your thinking. Cannibalism has been practiced in several cultures, and is still practiced today. It's simply our culture that developed a dislike for it. Don't confuse instinct with cultural taboo.