Good Anti-Vegan arguments?

[AniThyng]

Saying rape is also "natural" or at least part of the normal order of human society seems even more relevant if you frame it in terms of "rape culture" discussions...

[Borgholio]

I'll do so as soon as you stop trying to backpedal on the point only to immediately fall back into the implication the moment it becomes convenient.

Show me where I am backpedaling or retract that statement.

No, I'd classify death as a form of suffering of its own. And if you don't agree with that, you must be ok with the prospect of possibly being shot in the back of the head and ended at any moment.

Your definition is unique and incorrect. And you just disproved it with your next statement. If you're suffering because you're afraid of being shot in the back of the head, then you haven't died yet and thus are able to suffer. Once you die, can you still be afraid of being shot?

You have yet to respond to the criticism except to repeat the statement and expound upon it.

Because repeating it is the only way I can get it through your thick skull that the idea that eating meat is immoral is a relatively new idea in our society and only arose when the factory farms did. Back when people actually free-ranged their cattle and chickens and grew their own crops, nobody gave a rat's ass about whether or not killing an animal was immoral. Nobody cared until it was realized just how much these animals were suffering and that's when the "meat is murder" idea came about. The morality changed when the methods did. Are you going to argue that cattle ranchers or chicken farmers of the 1800s were immoral for what they did? Are you going to say that they were wrong for eating meat and should have become vegans?

So it's not unhealthy at all, but you're going to claim it is because of a minimal level of awareness one needs to exercise in order to do it. Awesome. News flash, shit-for-brains, without care and a little bit of planning, you're going to have trouble from your diet no matter what you eat. That you have to take different kinds of care and plan for different things doesn't make it any more undesirable.

Knowing to eat a balanced diet is not at all the same thing as having to go to the drug store to buy a bottle of lab-created pills just so you don't fall asleep while you're driving because you became anemic from lack of B-12 you asshole. Really, if being vegan was so fucking easy, don't you think it could happen...wait for it...naturally?

Oh, so the way we do it isn't as bad as how x does it, therefore it is moral.

Read again what I wrote, stupid. I said it is BETTER. I did NOT say it's perfectly moral. You seem to have been bitten by a brain bug that says if something doesn't match your distorted worldview that it's completely immoral. I don't think you're capable of comprehending the idea that some things in life are inherently more moral and more ethical than other things while still being flawed themselves.

You said it was acceptable morally.

Damn straight I did.

You continue to imply that its necessity is the moral justification for it, even once you've stated it is not required.

So pull your head out of your ass and stop saying I've implied anything when you admit I clearly stated that it's NOT needed.

Again, and exclusively, the moral objection in question here is to unnecessary killing.

We've been over this and we're getting nowhere. Killing to eat is not unnecessary. It may not be necessary to eat meat these days with a carefully planned and lab-supported vegan diet but eating is still necessary. So if you choose to eat meat or eat plants that is your own choice, but as Broomstick pointed out not everybody has that choice.

You have yet to create a meaningful distinction

I have done so several times but you ignore it. If you can't tell the difference between hanging antlers on the wall and providing food for your family then you'll never accept any argument to the contrary.

his moral justifications for an activity are hollow

Killing to live is not hollow, you fucking idiot.

But only in the same way that lethal injection is a moral improvement over an electric chair.

In theory, it is. Your point?

[hongi]

"Meat is murder."

Well animals would kill us and eat us if they had half the chance so I'm really engaging in pre-emptive self defense.

Yes, I'm sure cows would certainly hunt, kill and eat you if they had the chance.

[Flagg]

Again, nobody is saying rape and meat-eating are equivalent, but the comparison is a lot more apt than you're willing to accept.

Both of you have basically said that meat and rape are "natural" and thus implying that they are in the same category. It would be better if you simply drop that analogy. As I said before, you NEED to eat but you don't NEED to rape.

Maybe I can get this basic idea through your thick as hell skull and holier than thou whining.

Early humans (and human ancestors) ate meat (in fact without it, there likely wouldn't be a human species and the world would be so much better off, but I digress...) due to it being a huge source of protein that made them stronger and smarter. A natural process of predation and scavenging which was and remains a completely natural behavior by every predator on the planet.

Early humans (and almost certainly human ancestors due to the shape of the human penis, which studies have been shown is effective at removing most semen ejaculated into a female. I think you could make the argument that human males are at least physically "designed" to be able to overpower and rape human females. Hell, historically rape was a crime that while illegal for men to commit, almost always resulted in the victim being judged and treated far, far, far more harshly than the perpetrator.

And it's not like it's uncommon in the animal kingdom, either. Hell, lions take it a step further and will take over a pride, kill every single cub, and then forcefully impregnate the females.

So yes, rape is 100% natural. In fact it's at 100% natural as predation and scavenging. Obviously it is also 100% immoral in human society. So what I'm getting at is: Natural doesn't equal moral and no one is claiming it does you fucking idiot so shut the fuck up about it.

[Broomstick]

Early humans (and human ancestors) ate meat (in fact without it, there likely wouldn't be a human species and the world would be so much better off, but I digress...) due to it being a huge source of protein that made them stronger and smarter.

Not just protein but also fats - back in the bad old days getting enough calories was just as much a concern as getting enough protein. Meat tends to have more calories per unit than plant based food does (with a few exceptions, like avocados, which also contain a lot of fat but then, prehistoric Africa didn't have avocados). Human vision and human brains are both energy intensive and require fueling.

Keep in mind, too, that the type of animal flesh our distant ancestors ate wasn't necessarily freshly hunted - they might have scavenged the kills of larger predators when they could, and by the seashore might have exploited sealife stranded in tidepools or things like mussels which are about as easy to pick up as digging up tubers or climbing trees for nuts and fruits.

[LaCroix]

I think the problem is one of scope - how far do you want to spread ethics.

I can see how people can come to the argument that rape is just as natural as eating meat, which I do not deny, but they still start at the assumption that moral standards we use in our society should encompass animals to the same extent, without making an argument why moral rules should apply to animals, but at the same time not to plants. That's why I brought up fruitarians - they are at least consistent in their ethics - they judge all live under the same rules. And I can fully respect that. I actually highly respect them for having a very consistent moral codex.

I simply draw a line where I feel moral values should apply fully, and have some core rules about how to treat life that doesn't fall within that category. To me, morality mostly stops at the human species border. For other than human life, I think it's not ok to cause undue harm, or to kill withour a valid reason, but killing for eating is ok to me.

Vegetarians&Vegans just draw the line a bit further away than I do, by including almost all animals in the morality zone (Flies, bugs, spiders or mosquitoes are usually not in that category - those they still kill.) But even without that exemption, they still act hypoctitical, to a degree, by declaring plant life fit to be killed.

[salm]

I see no inconsistencies if people apply moral standards to animals or creature with a brain/sentience but not to plants. Plants and clams and stuff like that don´t have that, so they can be treated differently.
Insects have less sentience so they are worth less. Therefore killing them in order to harvest plants is fine.
There is no faulty logic in such reasoning because the qulifier for value isn´t life but brain.

The logic is faulty in a lot of meat eaters, though, because they will often go all guantanamo on people who abuse their pets but have no problem eating Schnitzel from cruelly mass produced animals. The pain an abused pet goes through is literally nothing compared to a pigs life in a meat factory.

[hongi]

Vegetarians&Vegans just draw the line a bit further away than I do, by including almost all animals in the morality zone (Flies, bugs, spiders or mosquitoes are usually not in that category - those they still kill.) But even without that exemption, they still act hypoctitical, to a degree, by declaring plant life fit to be killed.

Where is the hypocrisy?

[Korto]

I see no inconsistencies if people apply moral standards to animals or creature with a brain/sentience but not to plants. Plants and clams and stuff like that don´t have that, so they can be treated differently.
Insects have less sentience so they are worth less. Therefore killing them in order to harvest plants is fine.
There is no faulty logic in such reasoning because the qulifier for value isn´t life but brain.

Yeah. I don't accept that measurement. It seems somewhat self-serving to define intelligence as the standard for measuring worth, since we're the most intelligent species on the planet.
I imagine from an outside perspective, none of us are worth jack shit. The universe doesn't give a fuck.
From a personal perspective, the most important life on the planet, the existence of most "worth", is your own. That insect is the most important creature on the planet, to itself. No other viewpoint matters.

There also seems to be a black / white fallacy regarding meat eating, where we either have to go on as we are now, or give up all meat entirely. There is middle ground. There are other animals than cows. There is other animal fodder than grain. There are other farming methods than factory. Chickens are efficient at turning feed into meat, as are pigs. Both chickens and pigs can be run "dual use", on orchards to clean up fallen fruit, forage and graze. Meat productivity would be much lower, but so are the inputs.
Meat chickens at the moment are inhumane, but I'm sure we could "regress" them somewhat to something able to live a happy, healthy life, at no great impact on their conversion rate.
George Monbiot in fact wrote a piece about veganism versus meat once, talking about the economics of meat production. I haven't checked what he's saying at all, so I'm just putting it up for discussion. In it, he says he was wrong to advance veganism as the most ethical (in way of amount of people fed) way of food production, and instead a more efficient, more thought out omnivorous diet is better.

If pigs are fed on residues and waste, and cattle on straw, stovers and grass from fallows and rangelands – food for which humans don't compete – meat becomes a very efficient means of food production. Even though it is tilted by the profligate use of grain in rich countries, the global average conversion ratio of useful plant food to useful meat is not the 5:1 or 10:1 cited by almost everyone, but less than 2:1. If we stopped feeding edible grain to animals, we could still produce around half the current global meat supply with no loss to human nutrition: in fact it's a significant net gain.

I would suggest investigating kangaroos instead of cattle, as they apparently have different gut flora which enables the animal to capture more energy from what it eats, at the "expense" of creating less methane. Or perhaps the gut flora can be transplanted.


Finally, if you believe it's murder to kill a member of a different species, then that's what you believe. Fine. But that's an ethical belief, and not one that's universally shared. The legal definition of murder is the killing of a human by another human.

[salm]

Finally, if you believe it's murder to kill a member of a different species, then that's what you believe. Fine. But that's an ethical belief, and not one that's universally shared. The legal definition of murder is the killing of a human by another human.

That is what I´ve been saying since my first post in this thread. Hence, there are no good arguments against vegans. If you believe that it is ethically wrong to kill animals the logical conclusion is to refrain from eating meat.
Someone might find that a silly belief but that is not a good argument.

[LaCroix]

I see no inconsistencies if people apply moral standards to animals or creature with a brain/sentience but not to plants. Plants and clams and stuff like that don´t have that, so they can be treated differently.
Insects have less sentience so they are worth less. Therefore killing them in order to harvest plants is fine.
There is no faulty logic in such reasoning because the qulifier for value isn´t life but brain.

The logic is faulty in a lot of meat eaters, though, because they will often go all guantanamo on people who abuse their pets but have no problem eating Schnitzel from cruelly mass produced animals. The pain an abused pet goes through is literally nothing compared to a pigs life in a meat factory.

Korto already said most what I was going to reply. Using intelligence as a measure to measure the.value of a living being is an extremely slippery slope.

I'm amazed how you handwave insects away as brainless enough to be ok to kill during foot harvest, as collateral, so to say.

This would imply that if they are fine to kill as collatoral for no gain, you must be ok to kill them for food, as well, as this would be more ethical, by default. Thus, hypocrisy.

Also, as a related question - aren't we able to grow all nutrients we would need in a vat, these days? As in, completely sythetic protein, fats or carbohydrates. If we are, then killing plants would also fall under that fallacious argument of 'you chose to do so, but you would not need to do that, these days'.

[Broomstick]

Experiments were made with entirely synthetic diets as far back as the 1960's.

Even highly motivated volunteers where unable to finish trials. Apparently it makes shit, ass, and decaying meat all seem ambrosial in comparison. Perfectly nutritious but on a practical level completely inedible. Apparently our evolution has made us biased to eat food derived from living things rather than pure chemistry to a fairly strong degree.

Wish I could locate a link to the experiments, I remember reading about them somewhere on line, just don't have an exact recollection.

[FireNexus]

Show me where I am backpedaling or retract that statement.

See below.

Your definition is unique and incorrect. And you just disproved it with your next statement. If you're suffering because you're afraid of being shot in the back of the head, then you haven't died yet and thus are able to suffer. Once you die, can you still be afraid of being shot?

No, dumb dumb. Suffering, according to oxford:

Suffering: The state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship
Hardship: Severe suffering or privation
Privation: 1. A state in which things that are essential for human well-being such as food and warmth are scarce or lacking, 2. The loss or absence of a quality or attribute that is normally present.

So unless you're willing to use that definition to claim that animals can't be deprived (experience privation) then it's pretty clear that death can be considered a form of suffering, moron.

Anyway, hypothetically, you're saying that painlessly killing without warning is not inflicting a form of suffering. I think you might be the one with a unique definition there.

Because repeating it is the only way I can get it through your thick skull that the idea that eating meat is immoral is a relatively new idea in our society and only arose when the factory farms did. Back when people actually free-ranged their cattle and chickens and grew their own crops, nobody gave a rat's ass about whether or not killing an animal was immoral. Nobody cared until it was realized just how much these animals were suffering and that's when the "meat is murder" idea came about. The morality changed when the methods did. Are you going to argue that cattle ranchers or chicken farmers of the 1800s were immoral for what they did? Are you going to say that they were wrong for eating meat and should have become vegans?

The fact that our ancestors did not consider the morality of a practice means that such considerations are invalid by default? That is the argument you're making here. The newness of the idea is not true, but even if it were it would be a stupid argument. And, more, the reason people became aware of an ethical dilemma does not invalidate their points. Your arguments, still, boil down to "it used to be necessary and we've been doing it for a long time." How do you not get that these justifications apply to a lot of things (rape was the example provided that you took such exception to) that you would not accept them as justifications for because they don't result in your pleasure.

And again, people who had to eat to survive (that is, not you) were not making an immoral choice. Why do you keep trying to compare your desire to eat meat with their requirement? Do you think that the 1 will equal 2 if you click your heels together and say "there's no place like home"?

Knowing to eat a balanced diet is not at all the same thing as having to go to the drug store to buy a bottle of lab-created pills just so you don't fall asleep while you're driving because you became anemic from lack of B-12 you asshole. Really, if being vegan was so fucking easy, don't you think it could happen...wait for it...naturally?

No, they don't fortify many common foods with B12. That couldn't be made mandatory like folate is, either. Folate's another one that requires care to get. We started fortifying flour with it by law and no more folate deficiency. It's almost as if people will naturally give their kids neural tube defects if they are uncareful about their diet, and this is an argument for mandatory fortification rather than killing. Amazing!

Once more: natural and good are not equivalent. Lots of grizzly stuff happens naturally. We've been over this. Your appeal to nature is a fallacious one unless you consider everything natural good. We've established you don't, so STOP MAKING THAT STUPID ARGUMENT.

Read again what I wrote, stupid. I said it is BETTER. I did NOT say it's perfectly moral.

You said it was acceptable morally.

Damn straight I did.

See, you're doing what you accuse me of. I'm saying that the fact that something is more moral than another thing does not make it qualify as a moral action. You then accuse me of having a standard that requires perfect morality rather than a sliding scale which rates unnecessary (which you've admitted to, so let's not get back into Borgholio's false equivalency extravaganza again) meat eating outside of the territory where it would qualify as morally correct. It is more moral to boltgun an animal than eat it alive. No disputing that. Neither action reaches the level of "morally acceptable", and your justifications are not compelling because they're fallacious and self-serving without exception.

So pull your head out of your ass and stop saying I've implied anything when you admit I clearly stated that it's NOT needed.

You can continue to use the necessity to eat to justify an action that you admit is unnecessary. Over and over again. What conclusion am I supposed to draw from that?

We've been over this and we're getting nowhere. Killing to eat is not unnecessary.

Jesus, dude. How do you define the word "necessary"?

Do you need to consume animal flesh? No. So consuming animal flesh is unnecessary by definition. By extension, killing an animal for the sole purpose of consuming its flesh is also unnecessary. This is not up for debate anymore. You can't admit an activity is unnecessary and then lump it in with necessary activities it shares a category with to provide a moral justification for it.

This is the backpedaling I keep talking about. If eating meat is unnecessary, then killing to eat meat is also unnecessary. Period. By lumping it in with eating in general you are (intentionally or just stupidly) drawing the connection to necessity that your evolutionary and "natural" arguments require. It is necessary or not, and it doesn't get to be both depending on what sentence you're responding to.

It may not be necessary to eat meat these days with a carefully planned and lab-supported vegan diet but eating is still necessary.

The necessity to eat was never in dispute. The ability to morally justify meat consumption (which you admit is unnecessary) using the necessity to eat in general is what is in dispute. It's what has earned you accusations of backpedaling and implying necessity to eat meat.

Let's apply it to something else. It is necessary to generate energy. For a long time, it was effectively necessary to burn coal to do so. Since other forms of energy without the same downsides and comparable price now exist, burning coal is no longer necessary. Continuing to burn coal, as a result, is not justified morally by the need to generate energy.

This is the same argument you have been repeatedly making about the consumption of meat. You cannot use the necessity of a broader category to justify unnecessary specific subcategories. That is what you have done continuously.

(This may be an oversimplification in the case of coal/energy, and I don't feel like side-tracking this debate. If you take the premises as given for this purpose, it is effectively the same argument. Since you have taken as given the corresponding arguments in the meat debate, you must come to the same conclusion.)

So if you choose to eat meat or eat plants that is your own choice, but as Broomstick pointed out not everybody has that choice.

And I've made it very clear that I do not consider there to be an ethical question where the choice does not exist. I am not now, nor have I been previously discussing situations where it is necessary to kill or eat animals. You just want to use those situations to justify the activity by people who have alternatives.

I have done so several times but you ignore it. If you can't tell the difference between hanging antlers on the wall and providing food for your family then you'll never accept any argument to the contrary.

There is a large difference between hanging antlers on the wall and providing food (in general) to your family. There is no difference between hanging antlers on your wall and providing meat (specifically) to your family when other sources of food can perfectly fulfill the need.

Killing to live is not hollow, you fucking idiot.

I agree. But that hasn't been what you're talking about. You're talking about killing to enjoy yourself. You don't need to eat meat to live. Killing animals to eat meat, therefore, is not killing to live. Repeatedly pretending it is despite agreeing to the premise that necessarily makes it patently false will not change the fact.

In theory, it is. Your point?

That the change does not make capital punishment ok. Lethal injection is preferable to electrocution if you're going to do it no matter what, but capital punishment is still immoral. A being more moral than B does not make A morally acceptable. it just makes it moreso than B. A and B can still both be morally unacceptable while being so to varying degrees. Nuance is hard, I know.

[salm]

Korto already said most what I was going to reply. Using intelligence as a measure to measure the.value of a living being is an extremely slippery slope.

I'm amazed how you handwave insects away as brainless enough to be ok to kill during foot harvest, as collateral, so to say.

This would imply that if they are fine to kill as collatoral for no gain, you must be ok to kill them for food, as well, as this would be more ethical, by default. Thus, hypocrisy.

Also, as a related question - aren't we able to grow all nutrients we would need in a vat, these days? As in, completely sythetic protein, fats or carbohydrates. If we are, then killing plants would also fall under that fallacious argument of 'you chose to do so, but you would not need to do that, these days'.

So you don´t like intelligence as a measure for value. Well, obviously other people like it. Now, who is going to judge who is correct?

[LaCroix]

So you don´t like intelligence as a measure for value. Well, obviously other people like it. Now, who is going to judge who is correct?

This is the very problem of the argument here - people are stretching morality to levels that most people don't. Usually, there is no way to solve that problem, for both arguments do hold merit.

Still, my point is that this is a dilemma of ethics applied too broad. Still, nobody could explain why we should expand a social construct that governs the general behavior between humans (Morality/Ethics) onto animals. If they were to be included into that system, shouldn't we also hold them to the same standards? After all, we also make (as in, force them to comply, or locking them away to keep other people safe) people with mental disabilities adhere to moral standards, even though they may not understand those, like our pets would. So why don't we force dogs and cats to eat enriched vegan food? Or lock all cats into houses at all time, because they cannot be trusted to not randomly kill animals? Most vegans I know defend the right of their kitty to go hunting vehemently, declaring it animal cruelty to not let them out.

Equality - another thing that is considered vital for an ethical system. As long as it's ok for any living thing to eat meat, it's ok for everyone to do so. There is no need to hold someone to an ultra-high standard for no reason, while that standard is continously violated all around him thousand times every second .

[Ziggy Stardust]

So unless you're willing to use that definition to claim that animals can't be deprived (experience privation) then it's pretty clear that death can be considered a form of suffering, moron.

How do you reconcile this with the universally held conceit that it is more ethical to kill something that is suffering rather than let it continue suffering? There's a reason we often refer to death as putting an "end to suffering".

Death is not a form of suffering, unless you subscribe to certain traditional Buddhist beliefs. The very dictionary definition you posted is very, very clearly inapplicable to death, without resorting to the useless tautology that "life" is essential for human well-being.

Now, the PROCESS of dying may be construed as a form of suffering. Certainly, dying often involves a fair degree of suffering in the final moments of life. But death, the actual state of being dead, is not a state of suffering. They are not compatible at that level. Hell, that's the basis for most, if not all, of our moral systems. I mean, where did you think the phrase "unnecessary suffering" came from with respect to the death penalty and such?

[Borgholio]

No, dumb dumb. Suffering, according to oxford:

Anyway, hypothetically, you're saying that painlessly killing without warning is not inflicting a form of suffering. I think you might be the one with a unique definition there.

Says the one who doesn't even know how to read a freaking dictionary. Do you not know how it works? Dictionaries rank definitions based on the most common and popular usages. If Oxford says the first definition is:

"Suffering: The state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship"

then that is the primary definition of the word. All others are either secondary or simply less common. If you have to go down to the third definition and interpret it to mean death when it doesn't even SAY death, you're pretty much grasping at straws at that point.

The necessity to eat was never in dispute. The ability to morally justify meat consumption (which you admit is unnecessary) using the necessity to eat in general is what is in dispute. It's what has earned you accusations of backpedaling and implying necessity to eat meat.

I am condensing all your previous replies to this one quote, since they are all pretty much redundant. Let's try a different approach, shall we? You say that killing animals is morally wrong and I say it's not. Others have since posted questions as to why killing animals is wrong. So let me ask you then, why do YOU think killing them is wrong? What reason do you personally give for considering it immoral? Simply because you think it's unnecessary, or because the lives of food / prey animals are valuable enough to justify the cessation of eating them?

(This may be an oversimplification in the case of coal/energy, and I don't feel like side-tracking this debate. If you take the premises as given for this purpose, it is effectively the same argument. Since you have taken as given the corresponding arguments in the meat debate, you must come to the same conclusion.)

Ok I won't side-track it any more than this next comment. The comparison to electricity is an interesting one but flawed. The reason that coal is still being burned is because it is cheaper than most other fuels. Solar, wind, nuclear...they are all plagued with high initial costs and long payback periods. Your assumption that other sources of power are cheaper is unfortunately incorrect. I wish it were true, but it's not. So in this case, had eating meat been directly comparable to using coal, it would have meant that eating meat was cheaper than eating vegetables and that in itself is a good enough justification for it. But as others have pointed out, eating meat is more expensive than greens.

That the change does not make capital punishment ok. Lethal injection is preferable to electrocution if you're going to do it no matter what, but capital punishment is still immoral.

Why is it immoral?

Note - I am not intending to start a debate on capital punishment, but there are a plethora of reasons why people can be against capital punishment and I am curious if you think it's immoral for the same reason as you think killing animals is immoral, or if there's another reason?

[LaCroix]

Something had been bugging me about the "rape is also natural" argument, and I think (feeding the horses always makes you ponder philosophy, somehow) I have found the reason why.

Now, rape does occur in nature, but it's quite rare in comparison to consensual mating.

But killing something to eat - you can go all the way back to the very beginning of life itself, and you will find organisms that eat others because they can. Even grazing animals are essentially surviving by devouring a living thing that isn't able to defend itself.
Apart from photosynthetic life, which is waaaaay down the evolutionary ladder, on the bottom rung, everything just one step above on that ladder is living by means of devouring another living organism. Some wait for them to die and eat corpses (even plants do that - humus is decayed organic matter), some are less patient and prefer fresher food.

So while rape is an oddity in procreation, killing isn't just natural, Nature itself IS killing and devouring.

Lumping them together as "natural" is technically correct, but missing the point of the argument by miles.

[FireNexus]

Says the one who doesn't even know how to read a freaking dictionary. Do you not know how it works? Dictionaries rank definitions based on the most common and popular usages. If Oxford says the first definition is:

"Suffering: The state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship"

then that is the primary definition of the word. All others are either secondary or simply less common. If you have to go down to the third definition and interpret it to mean death when it doesn't even SAY death, you're pretty much grasping at straws at that point.

I used that definition. I then defined a component word (hardship) and a component word of hardship's definition, to avoid your inevitable attempt to split hairs. Hardship is suffering, privation is hardship, and killing something counts. You're going to have some trouble getting people to agree that painless killing is not inflicting suffering. (Side note: Oxford's definitions are chronologically ordered, so the second definition is simply newer, not necessarily less correct. You are alarmingly confident in your knowledge for someone who doesn't know anything. Like everything else in this argument, even if your premises were correct your conclusions are total dog shit.)

I am condensing all your previous replies to this one quote, since they are all pretty much redundant. Let's try a different approach, shall we? You say that killing animals is morally wrong and I say it's not. Others have since posted questions as to why killing animals is wrong. So let me ask you then, why do YOU think killing them is wrong? What reason do you personally give for considering it immoral? Simply because you think it's unnecessary, or because the lives of food / prey animals are valuable enough to justify the cessation of eating them?

And finally we get to a point where you make an argument that isn't fallacious on the face. I'm not inherently correct that it is wrong, and if you opened with this argument, or tried making it any of the times I threw it out there, this would have been over very quickly. But you've already indicated that you believe killing such animals is only correct for certain purposes, specifically:

you killed me for a good reason instead of just for sport or to watch me suffer.

So you've indicated an inherent value to the life of animals, and laid out at least two instances where it is unacceptable. As I've said previously, both of those cases boil down to killing for your own pleasure. You refer to food killing as a "good reason" but you wrap that up in the historical necessity to eat meat for survival. And in each instance when I compare eating meat to killing for sport, you say I just don't get the difference, then you rephrase and repeat your original argument. So you've already admitted it's unacceptable to kill for specific purposes but failed to distinguish the purpose you consider acceptable from those you consider unacceptable.

So I still ask, why is killing for sport (to gain pleasure and enjoyment from the action and possibly social status from the ability to brag or display trophies) different from killing for meat (to gain pleasure and enjoyment from the act of consuming the meat and possibly also nutrients from digestion)? Even just killing for sadistic joy provides you with emotional benefits if that's where you get your jollies, and being happy certainly makes you at least somewhat healthier. You obviously believe that killing is wrong for certain purposes, but your justification for doing it in the case of eating meat is logically inconsistent with your denouncement of other reasons.

This goes to the heart of your whole problem here: you're sure two things aren't comparable but totally unequipped to determine it or argue the case. Your logic is bad. Appeal to nature, appeal to tradition, false equivalency, now you're ignoring your own previous contentions to attempt to sidestep those criticisms. After exhausting that, you change tactics and now have become inconsistent with yourself in an attempt to force me into a rhetorical corner. Here's the bottom line: You disliked the comparison of eating meat to rape, so you've attempted to morally justify eating meat. However, you have done absolutely nothing to show how meat eating by a modern human (without acknowledging all the historical perspectives that mean jack when determining if an action is moral when taken by you, today) can be morally justified in a way that rape cannot. Even if you ignore your prior contentions regarding the morality of killing for non-food purposes, go down the nihilism rabbit hole with meat and rape will still follow you. (Again, not to say that I believe rape and meat are moral equivalents, but any justification you've used applies equally to both except the "killing an animal isn't actually immoral" argument here.)

Ok I won't side-track it any more than this next comment. The comparison to electricity is an interesting one but flawed. The reason that coal is still being burned is because it is cheaper than most other fuels. Solar, wind, nuclear...they are all plagued with high initial costs and long payback periods. Your assumption that other sources of power are cheaper is unfortunately incorrect. I wish it were true, but it's not. So in this case, had eating meat been directly comparable to using coal, it would have meant that eating meat was cheaper than eating vegetables and that in itself is a good enough justification for it. But as others have pointed out, eating meat is more expensive than greens.

How can you be this stupid and still live? I admitted the comparison was oversimple, and if you want to talk about costs of energy sources, natural gas is by far the winner. But I didn't. It's irrelevant, and the point I was making stands.

Why is it immoral?

I'm a utilitarian. Unless there's a need (preventing equivalent suffering, and I'd grade based on level of awareness) I don't believe that it is ethical to cause any suffering. Non-consentual death is the most extreme form of suffering (deprives of all experience, any joy, even the ability to otherwise feel pain or distress). Animals are thinking and aware, so causing them suffering must have some justification in the form of preventing human suffering or a >= amount of animal suffering. I couldn't tell you the exact conversions, but the point is that animal suffering or death is of non-zero consequence, and humans getting to satisfy their desires doesn't seem a compelling ethical argument justifying their deaths. You've already indicated you agree broadly with me, you just have trouble being internally consistent.

[biostem]

There seems to be some confusion here:

1. If something is dead, it cannot, by definition, suffer. The process of dying can cause suffering, and organisms with a more developed nervous system can certainly be said to suffer, if they experience pain, disease, malnutrition, and a variety of other maladies - but they must be living in order for this to occur.

2. Using "it's natural" as a defense for eating meat is just a very poor argument. There are any number of extremely toxic/dangerous substances that are naturally occurring.

3. Our ancestors, even before humanity, ate meat to survive. This, in and of itself, is not justification to keep doing so. There are plenty of things that our ancestors did to either survive or propagate the species, but the fact that those "activities" were done does not make them right or correct in modern society.

[Borgholio]

I used that definition. I then defined a component word (hardship) and a component word of hardship's definition, to avoid your inevitable attempt to split hairs. Hardship is suffering, privation is hardship, and killing something counts. You're going to have some trouble getting people to agree that painless killing is not inflicting suffering. (Side note: Oxford's definitions are chronologically ordered, so the second definition is simply newer, not necessarily less correct. You are alarmingly confident in your knowledge for someone who doesn't know anything. Like everything else in this argument, even if your premises were correct your conclusions are total dog shit.)

You talk about splitting hairs and then you pull this convoluted reasoning out of your ear? Sorry asshole, nice try. It's not only Oxford that lists pain above loss, but it's also Merriam Webster, Cambridge, Macmillon, Collins, and practically every other fucking dictionary out there. So unless you can provide a link to Oxford's dictionary specifically stating they sort it by date and not common usage, then you will concede this point or be outed as a liar.

So I still ask, why is killing for sport (to gain pleasure and enjoyment from the action and possibly social status from the ability to brag or display trophies) different from killing for meat

You know damn well what the differences are, you're just being too fucking obtuse to actually consider them. Any reason that could potentially be used to increase the justification of eating meat is offhand discarded by you because if eating meat is "not necessary" then anything else is automatically irrelevant without consideration. So stop asking if you're just going to ignore the answer.

It's irrelevant, and the point I was making stands.

No it does not. I will concede that you are correct about coal vs gas in some markets but overall my point stands. If eating meat was cheaper than veggies, a good amount of moral outrage would simply vanish because at that point the economic benefits are taken into consideration.

and I'd grade based on level of awareness

And what is that level? At what point is it no longer immoral to kill for food if it's unnecessary for immediate survival? Any living thing with a brain? Anything with a testable IQ over a certain level? Anything with a spinal cord? Anything in the animal kingdom?

[Broomstick]

I think what it comes down to is that while it is natural for humans to eat animal flesh, because during our evolution we adapted to such items being in our diet, we are not obliged to eat any sort of animal derived items in our current diet due to technological advances.

The question then becomes is meat eating ethical in the context of current world civilization. And that's really what we're arguing about.

[Borgholio]

The question then becomes is meat eating ethical in the context of current world civilization. And that's really what we're arguing about.

Yes but how does one decide if it's ethical or not? The problem with FireNexus is that he thinks killing an animal is wrong if there's an alternative to eating it. But then again if one is eating an animal, then it's not like the death is meaningless. It's still doing it's job (providing nutrition) and still keeping you alive. So in that regard it's really no different than predation in the wild as far as actually using what you kill.

[biostem]

Another point I'd like to bring up is that none of these domestic animal species, nor the millions or billions of individuals that exist, would be there if not for us. I do want to be careful to mention that cruel conditions for raising or slaughtering animals is not good, but it is thanks to us that these entire species even exist.

[hongi]

That's a bad thing.

We've crippled these species. Without us, they wouldn't survive. We've made them entirely dependent on us.