A Challenge To Meat-Eaters

[archibald]

Also: it would be much easier for everyone in the world to have enough to eat if wealthy developed nations didn't eat as much (or any) meat. Millions of tonnes of grain are grown every year to feed livestock for wealthy people to consume. Grain that could be used to feed humans. Just sayin'.

I believe this is true. Would you change your moral view if it wasn't, and killing was the most efficient and sustainable?

Sorry to muscle in, but I think the two arguments (1. from suffering, and 2. the environment) against eating meat are both sufficient.

Above, say, feeding starving people? (I hadn't factored in saving the planet in that comment. I suppose ultimately that would trump everything).

[paddy_rice]

Above, say, feeding starving people? (I hadn't factored in saving the planet in that comment. I suppose ultimately that would trump everything).

It's another excellent argument, but a bit more obscure than the others. The planet is quite able to support everyone it currently supports, plus all the people it's currently not. The solution is logistics and political will, not vegetarianism. But yes, if it were that simple, I guess it would definitely give the other arguments a run for their money!

Also, we're forgetting the food hygiene argument, by the way. I prefer a chopping board covered in the remnants of a clove of garlic than a chicken breast.

[RuleBritannia]

paddy_rice it's obvious to me that no argument will change your mind so what's the point? You've already decided that eating meat is wrong, others agree, me and others don't.

Some vegatarians eat fish, do you? What is your stance on insects as they don't feel pain, it would be okay, right?

[paddy_rice]

paddy_rice it's obvious to me that no argument will change your mind so what's the point? You've already decided that eating meat is wrong, others agree, me and others don't.

I'll change my mind if I hear a good argument. Do you have one? As evidence of my willingness to change my mind, I can only tell you that I used to eat meat, but subsequently changed my mind.

Some vegatarians eat fish, do you?

Nope. I'm not sure if you know, but fish usually suffocate when you pull them out of the water. I say "usually", because I don't rule out the possibility of magic fish that don't suffocate when they can't breathe.

What is your stance on insects as they don't feel pain, it would be okay, right?

Some insects can feel pain. Sorry to repeat myself (as I think I've already said it on this thread), but bees can feel pain, for example.

If I knew a particular insect couldn't feel pain, then yes, of course I'd eat it. Fortunately, though, I'm unlikely to have to make that decision, so asking it is rather like asking "would you torture a baby if doing so would save the world from nuclear war".

[RuleBritannia]

I'll change my mind if I hear a good argument. Do you have one? As evidence of my willingness to change my mind, I can only tell you that I used to eat meat, but subsequently changed my mind.

I don't need one, you being a vegatarian is of no concern to me. But me being a meat-eater does seem to bother you, so the burden is on you to convince me.

[Kid A]

Okay, so there are alot of you moral relativists (or whatever you want to be called: i basically mean the people who are arguing for subjective morality) on this thread spreading your views and i've debated with a few of you. I think you've made alot of good points, some which i've agreed with and some which i've disagreed with, but i think the overall point of this thread is being stifled by these debates, so i'm going to propose something for everyone here: Lets leave aside this issue of subjective morality now and get back to the original point of this thread. Look at it this way:

Either
1) There are objective premises upon which morality can be based. Therefore we can debate the morality of eating meat.
Or
1) There are no objective premises upon which morality can be based. It is all subjective. However, it is still worth debating and hearing the justifications for why people eat meat, so we can see if these justifications are contradictary when applied to humans.


So yeah, basically if you are the 1st sort of person; let's debate.

If you are the 2nd sort of person, then this whole debate man be meaningless objectively, but if you do hold some moral rules which you live by then it may be interesting to see if they, on inspection, are contradictary towards your practise of eating meat.

if you are a 3rd sort of person and not only hold morality to be meaningless, but also live your life with no moral structure/rules whatsoever, then i say; fair enough to your view, but i think there is little point in you debating on this thread anymore. If you wish to start a new thread on the subjectivity of morality then by all means do, and if i have the time i will debate the issue further there, but i think it is meaningless to debate the matter any further here.


So, to once again state the original challenge of this thread: I am looking for moral justifications for eating meat one piece of logic at a time. (After posting this i am going to bring together an update post showing the justifications that have been made so far, and whether they have been disproven or not.)

And to all of you whose points i haven't replied to yet; i am sorry, i will try and get there. If your point was a few pages back then it may be worth reposting it again.

[Madmaili]

So, to once again state the original challenge of this thread: I am looking for moral justifications for eating meat one piece of logic at a time. (After posting this i am going to bring together an update post showing the justifications that have been made so far, and whether they have been disproven or not.)

And to all of you whose points i haven't replied to yet; i am sorry, i will try and get there. If your point was a few pages back then it may be worth reposting it again.

Looking for a justification from me is the wrong way to logically go about it , you are the one that is arguing that meat eating is wrong, therefore the burden of proof is on you. You have to tell me why it is wrong to eat meat.

[feminist freethinker]

The animal would still suffer from being farmed and eaten, whether people were empathetic to that or not. It's the animal's suffering that's important when it comes to meat-eating, not the concern of humans. Psychopaths have no remorse for their victims, they are completely without empathy - does this mean their victims don't suffer?

I think it means that if we were all psychopathic to that extent (ie. had no empathy) then it wouldn't be a moral problem because we wouldn't have knowledge that it was and we would probably just carry on, as we do eating plants now, assuming no suffering.

Saying 'it wouldn't be a moral problem' is a bit different from it not being morally wrong, which is what I was asking. The knowledge of the suffering is different from the suffering itself. There is an element of objectivity missing in your approach, I think. If we were all psychopathic, then yes we wouldn't care about any suffering we may inflict on others, but that would not mean the suffering would not exist. If a rock fell on my foot, I would be in a lot of pain - the rock would be incapable of caring about that (much like a psychopath) but my pain would still exist.

Because the moral sense of the abolitionists and their opposition to slavery in fact didn't come from the Bible (if people can both defend and attack something with the same book, it means that people really have their own ideas and are just using the book as justification). It came from their own brains, their own morality... which means they must have realised that slavery caused pain and suffering and that this was wrong.

I'm saying that many were presumably influenced by the belief that doing the right thing would get them a reward in heaven, or that it was just 'the right thing' as ordained from a higher authority. I don't necessarily think you can disengage the influences of particular religious beliefs from the ideas believers come up with and I don't think it maters if one interpretation (of the bible in this case) conflicts with another. In the end, it's a motivating influence.

I'm not sure about that. When religious people act altruistically, are they purely doing it out of a sense of duty/fear of hellfire/wish to go to heaven? Or do they have their own moral sense as well? My guess is the latter, otherwise they would also advocate stoning people for working on the Sabbath, etc etc... RD himself says that even people who say they get their morals from the Bible in fact don't. Also: there were many atheists/agnostics working for the abolition of slavery (Elizabeth Cady Stanton for one).

Also: it would be much easier for everyone in the world to have enough to eat if wealthy developed nations didn't eat as much (or any) meat. Millions of tonnes of grain are grown every year to feed livestock for wealthy people to consume. Grain that could be used to feed humans. Just sayin'.

I believe this is true. Would you change your moral view if it wasn't, and killing was the most efficient and sustainable?

Not sure. I basically want to minimise suffering, both human and animal, and do what would be best re climate change. Doing that would be more complicated in the situation you describe and I'd have to think about it!

I'm not really sure where you're coming from here. What I'm talking about is the knowledge of another being's suffering. What does it matter where this knowledge comes from? If you had the code to defuse a bomb (and there was no doubt that it was the right code), would you use it, or would you worry about where the code came from? My point is that we know for a fact that we can reduce suffering to animals by adopting a vegan diet. That's the important issue here, surely.

It’s not knowledge. I reckon we’ve always know about pain, it’s just that up until now we have considered it reasonable to kill and eat animals, that is to say it’s justifiable in relation to our desires. Someone just brought up the slightly different question about animal experiments. By and large, I would not ultimately have a problem with an animal suffering if it meant there was even a chance my daughter might be cured of something life-threatening. It’s just a question of justifying my subjective (selfish even) perspective on things.

I'm not sure I agree with you - I think humans have probably always known about their own pain, but knowledge of others' pain is a different matter. For example Descartes had a huge influence on people's perceptions of animals - he said they were nothing but automata, and this led his colleagues to experiment on conscious dogs by cutting them open to observe their circulatory systems etc. As biology has developed, and we have learned more about the similarities between ours and animals' brains and nervous systems, and as philosophers have debunked Descartes' ideas, it has become impossible to argue that animals don't feel pain.

Also - we can see that as our society has progressed and become more enlightened and knowledgeable, animal welfare has become progressively more important to us. The abolition of fox hunting and other bloodsports, for example. If people saw a bear tied up in the street being made to dance for coins they would be horrified, and people on this very forum have been getting very angry about the puppy that was kicked to death by teenagers in a park recently. As a society we are generally upset when confronted with animal cruelty. It's just that this attitude doesn't yet extend to those animals farmed for meat.

As far as experiments are concerned, firstly, a lot of animal experiments are unnecessary - cosmetics, for example. A lot of experiments are done where there is little or questionable benefit to humans. Secondly, where drugs are concerned, there are many alternatives to animal testing available, and also, results of animal tests do not always correctly predict the effects of a drug on humans. Of course, I have benefited from drugs that have probably been tested on animals - ultimately, my veganism wouldn't extend to refusing a life-saving drug. But that's a 'me or them' scenario, akin to eating an animal when starving. Like I said, it's not a fundamentalist position, more about minimising suffering.

Now this is a different argument entirely. To hark back to my earlier analogy... is a person's choice not to steal just a 'personal preference'? And if so, is the preference to steal just as acceptable? My point is that we don't generally see morality as a preference.

The stealing analogy is different, IMO. I said it was non-arbitrary because it isn’t personal preference, it’s society preference.

It may not matter to you why you feel certain things to be just 'self-evident', but for me it's very important. I can't discout theincentive component because it makes so much senswe. And it doesn't really matter to my cat if I know I'm stroking it to give myself pleasure, because it's a mutual win-win scenario, with fewer delusions on my part.

Animals' capacity to suffer is not self-evident, it's evidenced by research and reason. It's not a faith position - read Peter Singer's 'Animal Liberation' for a clear summary of the evidence that animals feel pain. What you're asking is not whether animals suffer (because this has been proved beyond reasonable doubt), but 'why should we care?' Which is a question irrelevant to whether the suffering actually happens. I don't know why you're analysing 'the incentive component' so much, it seems irrelevant to me (no offence).

I'm not vegan for my own benefit - I have to go to specialist shops rather than the supermarket, I have to plan meals more carefully, I have to cook everything from scratch, it's practically impossible to get a good meal out, I have less choice in what to eat, meat-eaters make fun of me - however these concerns seem very petty to me (and are mainly the fault of our meat-eating society, not veganism itself) when I consider the suffering that an animal feels when farmed/killed, and the fact that I can still eat delicious food and get all the nutrients I need on a vegan diet. For me it's not about incentive (i.e. what's in it for me), it's simply about reducing suffering that I know would happen if I behaved otherwise.

I don't know how I can put it much clearer than that!

[GoodListener]

I believe there is an implicit need to define morality, since any argument is pointless unless a definition of morality and moral responsibility is provided. I will try to provide an adequate definition of moral responsibility and morality and then present my thesis on the morality or not of meat-eating but I have to say that my rationale will conclude finally that it is not actually a yes or no question! Personally I enjoy eating meat because it is tasteful and provides proteins, but I don't use this as an argument concerning the morality of my actions (people actually enjoy doing immoral things too). And now lets get to the point through a previous post by Paddy_rice...

Paddy_rice wrote:

But to answer your question, people have the right to do whatever society assigns them rights to do. As it stands, there is no country in the world in which eating meat is forbidden, so in that sense it is "within someone's rights to eat meat if they want to".

So that's the issue of whether it's legally right to eat meat. The issue of whether it's morally right, well, just read the rest of the thread if you want to know what I think. It's not rocket science. The point is that the two don't necessarily coincide, although they do overlap sometimes, of course.

So the law is really straightforward, you just have to learn the rights and obligations that your nation (society is a bit vague) has constituted and act within the limitations they provide. On the other hand moral responsibility is not so straightforward (and of course everybody agree that it doesn't coincide with legal responsibility). But have you wondered why? I believe it is because in reality every individual is a member of a greater number of groups each of which has its own (written or unwritten) rules and provides benefits for its members. Thus you have moral obligation to your family, to your friends, to religion groups (if you belong), to your nation (too), to humanity etc. At this point even though it is strongly implied I have to explicitly define moral obligation as the obligation a member of a group has to follow the rules engaged by the group it belongs. This definition strips moral responsibility from any sense of nobility and ideology and focuses only on viewing this concept as part of a mechanism allowing groups to exist. In this context morality is the result of hierarching one's responsibilities to the groups he/she belongs and constitute his/her rules of behavior.
Therefore if one asks himself "Is it moral to eat meat? " the answer depends on his/her idea of the groups he/she belongs and the rules he assumes they engage. Does he/she feel a member of a group where he and other animals have mutual interests and act using certain rules? And if so what are these rules? I can understand people that feel like they belong to the wide group called nature where other animals belong too and I can also understand that they may believe that because (in the current state of mankind) we have extreme power and we can set a lot of the rules in such a group that we are free to set if we like a rule stating that "we don't eat other animals, since it is in our mutual interest to avoid suffering". As a result they feel the moral responsibility not to eat meat (of course there can be other groups and other rules justifying the immorality of eating meat and I am curious to hear yours). Personally I believe that the approach presented above is problematic in the sense that the group considered is not a valid group because there isn't an agreement among its members about the rules (and i don't mean a verbal agreement, but a behavioral agreement, i.e. the animals will act based on their own agenda that does not comfort to such rule). In conclusion I think that the majority of people have a very confused sense of morality based mainly on the moral rules applied in the groups that are subsets of human society and then naively try to generalize these rules to other cases too. However I don't exclude the possibility that somebody has a solid rationale about why it is immoral (under the definition of morality I have provided) to eat meat. One also can challenge the definition I provided, but if you do so please provide an alternative definition and arguments why you think it is more suitable.

[Kid A]

Alright, returning to the OP of this thread, i'm going to take this opportunity to look at the justifications that have been used so far, and the ones that i think i have proven to be wrong (or at least not compatiable with people's morality when it comes to humans). Remember that the point of this thread is to look at arguments one piece of logic at a time, just to see if the rules that people use for eating meat can be universalised. (And please, if you disagree with why a Justification has been proven wrong, look at my original post on the subject which i will link under each point, before replying yourself.) Anyway, here goes:



Justification 1:Animals eat other animals. Therefore it is morally justifiable to eat meat.
(as used by: well mainly me in the OP, but also a few people throughout the thread)

Proven wrong because:If we extended this rule to humans, we could argue that it is okay to eat humans as they eat animals.
(To see original reply; see my first 2 posts on page 1: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=97941)


Justification 2:Eating meat is morally justifiable, because animals do not possess the higher intelligence that we humans possess (with the sub-points of 'They do not know what is going to happen to them' and 'They may not miss their families/their families may not miss them'.)
(as used by: Animavore)

Proven wrong because:This rule could easily be extended to orphan babies or severely mentally handicapped people
(To see my original reply; see my 1st post on page 3: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=97941&start=50)


Justification 3: Humans are omnivores. Therefore we are justified in eating meat
(Mycernius, romansh, and a few others i think)

Proven wrong because:All it means to say we are omnivores is that that we possess the ability to do something (eat meat), and historically and generally have done so. If we extend that logic to something else (like say slavery) we could say (a few hundred years ago) that seen as we possess the ability to enslave, and historically and generally have done so, we are justified in continuing to do so.
(To see my original reply; see my 2nd post on page 3: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=97941&start=50)


Justification 4: It is immoral to eat plants. Therefore it is morally justifyable to eat meat
(seemingly most people here)

Proven wrong because:Even if it were proven to be immoral to eat plants (something i for one have not been convinced of), this fact would do nothing to morally justify eating meat (no more then proving eating meat to be immoral would justify eating a human). The best possible outcome of the argument would still be: 'Eating meat is immoral, as is eating plants.' which fails the Thread Challenge of 'morally justifying eating meat'.
(To see my original reply; again see 2nd post on page 3: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=97941&start=50. Or for a more in depth reply see my 1 post on page 5: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=97941&start=100)


Justification 5: It is morally justifyable to eat an animal, if 1) it has been allowed to live a long and happy life life and 2) has been killed close to the end of it's life in a quick and humane way (with, i think, the necessary sub-point of 'They do not know what is going to happen to them' This may seem self-evident, but it's useful for me to state this for my reply.) (i also ackowledge that this justification is made up of 2 points, but they are sort of 2 parts of a greater point, so i still think it fits in this thread)
(as used by: AuntNancy. I feel a bit bad putting this here as i haven't responded to all you points yet. This is just about the main one though and i will try and get to the others soon.)

NOT PROVEN TO BE FALSE:It was proven that this argument is not yet a reality, but as to if it were one; It may well be a justification for eating meat. I think it is worth mentioning though that the logic suggested could be extended to humans quite easily; that if a human has: 1) been allowed to live a long and happy life life and 2) has been killed close to the end of it's life in a quick and humane way, with the added sub-point of; 3) They do not know what is going to happen to them; it follows from the proposed logic that it would be permitable to eat humans. (for this example we are assuming that among other things; people want to eat human-meat and that there are no social complications in eating human-meat.)
(To see my original reply: see my 2nd post on page 5: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=97941&start=100)

So yeah, those are the first bunch of justifications that have been proposed. I know many others have been brought up, and i will try and get to them as quick as i can. Remember though that the best way to get a reply is to keep your justifications as near to the original challenge of this thread as you can. Also, if you think that in fact it is not the justifications that i have brought up here that are wrong, but my replies to them, then by all means reply in turn to me, and i will either argue why you are wrong, or ammend the justification to in fact be correct.

I think i will try and post this every few pages as we go, so we can keep an update on all the challenges that have been made so far. If you think other Justifications have been made then please post them (if you can try and post them in the form that i have used above, that would be great) and i will try and reply to them, unless they have already been replied to and proven wrong, in which case add them to this post.

[prospero811]

Alright, i'm gonna throwdown a bit of a challenge here. I've been in quite a few debates on this subject, and i have come to hold the view that it is impossible to come up with a decent moral justification for eating meat, and that the only honest excuses one could come up with are along the lines of "I prefer the taste of meat" or "i don't care about animal suffering".

Of course, i do think there are some situations where eating meat can be justified morally, but i think these are extremely rare and do not apply to around 99% of our society.

My desire here is to debate this topic one point at a time. I find that often in these sorts of discussions (and most sorts in general) there is the problem that people will make a point, you will disprove the given point, and then they will just make a completely different point in reply, so you end up in a sort circular argument.
i.e:
PERSON A "Eating meat is okay because animals eat other animals!"
PERSON B "So would you say it is okay to eat humans seen as they eat other animals?"
PERSON A "Yeah, but humans have family that will miss them if you eat them so it's wrong"

person A's reply here may or may not be true, but the fact is that it is a very different point to the one he was making first of all.

So yeah, lets see how this goes. My challenge is this: "Give your moral justifications for eating meat ONE POINT AT A TIME, and i will try and test the logic of these justifications."

1. Eating meat is morally justified because there is no moral imperative conclusively demonstrating that meat eating is immoral. In other words, it's up to you to prove that meat eating is "immoral," rather than for me to prove it's moral.

2. Even if you were to demonstrate that meat eating is immoral, its immorality is not a reason to prohibit it or even to stop doing it. Lots of people think lots of things are immoral (porn, premarital sex, adultery, boxing, not inviting women to play basketball, cursing, drinking to excess, smoking marijuana). Many immoral things are still permissible, and we leave the morality assessments up to the individual. I.e. whether it's immoral or moral in your or anyone else's opinion is largely irrelevant.

3. Moderate meat intake is healthy for humans. Meat is not only one of the very oldest foods for humans, but is also one the most biologically valuable. This fact is mainly due to its high protein content. In addition, however, a part of the human requirement for vitamins and iron is also covered by eating meat. Meat protein supplies the body with the necessary amino acids in almost the ratio that it needs. It is therefore of particularly high value. The fat that is present in meat not only represents a high-quality source of energy, but is also an important quality factor. The juiciness and the aroma of meat and meat products is largely determined by the fat content. In addition, the fat from the meat from the muscle contains fatty acids that are indispensable for humans, and therefore has a very high nutritional physiological value. Meat exhibits a wide spectrum of various trace elements in a balanced composition. A special importance is hereby placed on iron, which is present in meat in a form that can be utilised particularly well by humans. A significant proportion of the iron requirement of humans is covered by meat. Meat also plays an important role in the supply of zinc. The water-soluble vitamins of the B-complex from meat and certain entrails make an important contribution to a human being’s vitamin supply. Humans are particularly dependent on foodstuffs from animal sources for the supply of Vitamin B12. With 100 g of muscle meat, the need for individual B-vitamins can be covered to between 20 % and 100 %. The liver takes a special position with regard to vitamin content, which, in addition to the B-vitamins, also has a high Vitamin A content.

4. If we were all vegetarians, there would be little to no fertilizer. If we only consumed plants, all the farmland now used to raise livestock would have to be used to raise edible plants (because human plant intake would have to go through the roof to replace the meat calories lost from our diets), which could mean no livestock (since there would be no reason for farmers and ranchers to keep millions of animals around) and in turn, no fertilizer from that livestock. In the long term, this would mean no plants. Plants could be raised on artificially produced fertilizers, which would also mean polluted waters and the incessant bleating of those self-same vegetarians who wanted us to stop eating meat in the first place telling us that we can't use synthetic fertilizers to grow food and must only go "organic" (with real poop as fertilizer). What then do we do? Raise millions of cows for the sole purpose of crapping fertilizer?

5. Humans, among most other species without rumens, cannot digest grass. In the case of cows that are grass-fed, they are eating biomass from which we cannot glean food calories, which means that when we eat those cows we are not losing the energy that we otherwise could have gotten directly from the plants (since we can't digest grass anyway). Thus, if one takes care to limit one's diet to the grass fed cows, then the argument about the wasted biomass energy often advanced by vegetarians goes out the window. And, the energy to grow the grass comes from the sun, which means cows are, in essence, converting the sun’s energy, through the venue of grass, into food energy that we can consume.

6. Historically and prehistorically, humans have eaten meat to survive because it is a very efficient way to deliver good nutrition to our bodies. We have always been omnivorous, and our bodies evolved to be omnivorous. Similarly, some biologists are advancing the notion that we wouldn't even have evolved to be human without meat eating because meat eating facilitated brain growth over evolutionary time. We are, in short, evolved to be meat eaters.

7. Vegetarians can sometimes be pious and self-righteous, and annoying.

[Kenster]

I eat meat because im not keen on vegetables. I enjoy every type of meat, but not most vegetables, I eat what I enjoy. I love the smell, texture, sound of sizzling and the varied ways of cooking meat. My favourite dish is lamb madras with minced meat stuffed naan bread. I do not consider moral justifications. I have my meat and eat it. I dont think that makes me a bad person, even though others may judge me so. I would want to think animals were slaughtered in the most painless way possible.

If others dont want to eat meat, fair enough, i'm not going go preach to you, life is too short. But, just savour a steak and ale pie with a deep flakey pastry washed down with a pint of guinness. Sheer pleasure.

[piratemeg]

My name is PirateMEG. I am a girl. I am called piratemeg because I am a female pirate called Megan.

I have no problems plundering, and because I am already immoral then why not eat meat? (can this be changed to :meatygrin: rather than : cheesygrin :? lol)

[prospero811]

Alright, returning to the OP of this thread, i'm going to take this opportunity to look at the justifications that have been used so far, and the ones that i think i have proven to be wrong (or at least not compatiable with people's morality when it comes to humans). Remember that the point of this thread is to look at arguments one piece of logic at a time, just to see if the rules that people use for eating meat can be universalised. (And please, if you disagree with why a Justification has been proven wrong, look at my original post on the subject which i will link under each point, before replying yourself.) Anyway, here goes:



Justification 1:Animals eat other animals. Therefore it is morally justifiable to eat meat.
(as used by: well mainly me in the OP, but also a few people throughout the thread)

Proven wrong because:If we extended this rule to humans, we could argue that it is okay to eat humans as they eat animals.
(To see original reply; see my first 2 posts on page 1: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=97941)

You could extend the rule to humans, but we don't have to. In many respects animals are treated differently than humans because of our different abilities to think, reason, etc. We have pets that are animals, but we don't have pets that are human.

Further, it's not inherently immoral to eat human flesh. I think the idea of not eating human flesh is justifiably prohibited for the same reason we don't allow people to traffic in human organs. We don't want there to be a market for harvesting humans. We don't want that because people have an equal right to life and we don't want them to be forced to be food sources for other humans, or organ sources involuntarily. Now, people are allowed to voluntarily give away their organs for someone else to use, and presumably I'm allowed to hack off a chunk of my thigh and let you fry it up. Whether either of those things is immoral is subject to differing opinions.

In addition, there are relatively few animals that typically eat their own. Generally, evolution has of necessity (for species survival) caused animals to generally prefer eating other kinds of animals. Humans being primates - primates generally don't eat others of their own kind. So, by eating other animals, and not our own species, we are behaving in a manner consistent with other primates. It's natural.

Justification 2:Eating meat is morally justifiable, because animals do not possess the higher intelligence that we humans possess (with the sub-points of 'They do not know what is going to happen to them' and 'They may not miss their families/their families may not miss them'.)
(as used by: Animavore)

Proven wrong because:This rule could easily be extended to orphan babies or severely mentally handicapped people
(To see my original reply; see my 1st post on page 3: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=97941&start=50)

That doesn't prove the original thesis wrong. Generally, animals are less intelligent and less sentient than mentally handicapped folks, and to the extent that we have comatose or humans we include them with other humans to avoid any unnecessary arguments over a person is sufficiently lacking in intelligence of sentience to render them equivalent to edible animals. In many areas of the law we have bright line rules - many 14 year olds are better drivers than many 40 year olds, but we make everyone wait until they are 16 or 17 to drive because it's a rule that covers most circumstances and is much easier to enforce. We don't have to take everything on a case by case basis.

Justification 3: Humans are omnivores. Therefore we are justified in eating meat
(Mycernius, romansh, and a few others i think)

Proven wrong because:All it means to say we are omnivores is that that we possess the ability to do something (eat meat), and historically and generally have done so. If we extend that logic to something else (like say slavery) we could say (a few hundred years ago) that seen as we possess the ability to enslave, and historically and generally have done so, we are justified in continuing to do so.
(To see my original reply; see my 2nd post on page 3: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=97941&start=50)

Humans are biologically omnivorous. We are not biologically slave owners. Omnivorousness involves our digestive systems, teeth etc., and refers to how we evolved. Slavery is more like playing baseball. We can play baseball, but we aren't baseballivores, or slaveryvores, we are humans. We are omnivores because we evolved to eat meat.

Justification 4: It is immoral to eat plants. Therefore it is morally justifyable to eat meat
(seemingly most people here)

Proven wrong because:Even if it were proven to be immoral to eat plants (something i for one have not been convinced of), this fact would do nothing to morally justify eating meat (no more then proving eating meat to be immoral would justify eating a human). The best possible outcome of the argument would still be: 'Eating meat is immoral, as is eating plants.' which fails the Thread Challenge of 'morally justifying eating meat'.
(To see my original reply; again see 2nd post on page 3: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=97941&start=50. Or for a more in depth reply see my 1 post on page 5: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=97941&start=100)

I think the idea with this argument is that whether you think it's immoral or not is largely irrelevant. Many things are immoral to some people - porn, adultery, dancing, drinking, smoking, drugs, premarital sex, whatever - just because they are immoral to some people doesn't mean we take seriously those people's arguments that their concepts of morality should be foisted on everyone else.

JUst as you have not been convinced of the immorality of vegetarianism, some others have not been convinced of the immorality of omnivorousness. Further, why is the burden on meat eaters to justify their behavior? Why is the burden not on vegetarians to justify theirs? Thus, following your logic - even if meat eating is immoral, that doesn't make vegetarianism moral. You still need to justify your behavior, just as you've asked meat eaters to justify theirs.

Justification 5: It is morally justifyable to eat an animal, if 1) it has been allowed to live a long and happy life life and 2) has been killed close to the end of it's life in a quick and humane way (with, i think, the necessary sub-point of 'They do not know what is going to happen to them' This may seem self-evident, but it's useful for me to state this for my reply.) (i also ackowledge that this justification is made up of 2 points, but they are sort of 2 parts of a greater point, so i still think it fits in this thread)
(as used by: AuntNancy. I feel a bit bad putting this here as i haven't responded to all you points yet. This is just about the main one though and i will try and get to the others soon.)

NOT PROVEN TO BE FALSE:It was proven that this argument is not yet a reality, but as to if it were one; It may well be a justification for eating meat. I think it is worth mentioning though that the logic suggested could be extended to humans quite easily; that if a human has: 1) been allowed to live a long and happy life life and 2) has been killed close to the end of it's life in a quick and humane way, with the added sub-point of; 3) They do not know what is going to happen to them; it follows from the proposed logic that it would be permitable to eat humans. (for this example we are assuming that among other things; people want to eat human-meat and that there are no social complications in eating human-meat.)
(To see my original reply: see my 2nd post on page 5: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=97941&start=100)

Extending it to humans doesn't make it immoral. As long as humans were only killed after a natural or voluntary death, why would it be "immoral" to eat the meat? Soylent Green, if you will. The problem with eating human flesh really is the risk that humans would be involuntarily eaten or farmed.

When that soccer team crashed in the Andies mountains in the 1970s, they ate some of the meat from their comrades. I see nothing immoral in that. The comrades had died. The survivors needed to eat.

So yeah, those are the first bunch of justifications that have been proposed. I know many others have been brought up, and i will try and get to them as quick as i can. Remember though that the best way to get a reply is to keep your justifications as near to the original challenge of this thread as you can.

I'm not sure I get what that means You mean itemized in points?

Also, if you think that in fact it is not the justifications that i have brought up here that are wrong, but my replies to them, then by all means reply in turn to me, and i will either argue why you are wrong, or ammend the justification to in fact be correct.

I think i will try and post this every few pages as we go, so we can keep an update on all the challenges that have been made so far. If you think other Justifications have been made then please post them (if you can try and post them in the form that i have used above, that would be great) and i will try and reply to them, unless they have already been replied to and proven wrong, in which case add them to this post.

I don't think you've proven anything wrong. You certainly may have presented a reasoned argument in support of your position that they are wrong. However, that does not mean that you've proved anything conclusively.

[Samma-El]

At this point I'll bow out. I don't consider morality to be objective, nor do I consider dinner to be a moral issue. I appreciate some do consider it a moral issue, but the onus is on them to prove it is. As far as I can see they have failed to do so. Morality is inconsistant and to claim some moral superiority that others have inconsistant morality when they themselves have inconsistant morality means that there can be no meaningful communication, only endless back and forth arguing.

Bon Appetit!

[RuleBritannia]

To prove that eating meat is immoral, you have to prove that morals are objective - good luck with that.

[Kid A]

Justification 1:Animals eat other animals. Therefore it is morally justifiable to eat meat.
(as used by: well mainly me in the OP, but also a few people throughout the thread)

Proven wrong because:If we extended this rule to humans, we could argue that it is okay to eat humans as they eat animals.
(To see original reply; see my first 2 posts on page 1: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=97941)

You could extend the rule to humans, but we don't have to. In many respects animals are treated differently than humans because of our different abilities to think, reason, etc. We have pets that are animals, but we don't have pets that are human.

Okay you've made an intelligent reponse here, but as i have stated at the OP and in many other posts, this thread is looking at justifications one piece of logic at a time. The proposed logic was: 'Animals eat other animals. Therefore it is morally justifiable to eat meat.'. I proposed an argument which i believe proved this point illogical. You've responded with another point that may well be a valid point for eating meat, but the fact is that it has nothing to do with the idea that we can eat animals because they eat other animals. It does nothing to back up that logic. You can still make that point, but as a seperate point entirely, and not as an argument against this one.


So before we proceed, can you either come up with another argument for why the logic: 'Animals eat other animals. Therefore it is morally justifiable to eat meat' is a valid justification, or acknowledge that it is in fact, not a valid justification.

[RuleBritannia]

So before we proceed, can you either come up with another argument for why the logic: 'Animals eat other animals. Therefore it is morally justifiable to eat meat' is a valid justification, or acknowledge that it is in fact, not a valid justification.

Animals eat other animals, therefore it it justifiable to eat meat. No morals needed.

[Kid A]

Looking for a justification from me is the wrong way to logically go about it , you are the one that is arguing that meat eating is wrong, therefore the burden of proof is on you. You have to tell me why it is wrong to eat meat.

Well no, i don't actually. As has been clearly stated; the simple challenge of this thread is: 'Give your moral justifications for eating meat'. If you don't think a moral justification is even necessary, then that's up to you. I'm not forcing you to post here. You've read the OP of this thread, and have still decided to post here. There are plenty of other meat-eaters here who think a moral justification is necessary for eating meat and are keen to share theirs with me, so i'm in turn going to repond to them.

If you want to give one, i'll respond to it. If not, then fair enough. If you want to make a thread challenging Vegetarian/vegans to explain moral reasons why they think eating meat to be bad, then do so and maybe i will post there. But in the meantime don't complain when the purpose of this thread has been clearly stated to you many times.

[Kid A]

Animals eat other animals, therefore it it justifiable to eat meat. No morals needed.

To prove that eating meat is immoral, you have to prove that morals are objective - good luck with that.

RuleBritannia, please read my first post on this page (page 10), and stop making these sorts of statments here, as they are pointless.

[Dragon83uk]

You will never hear a good argument for eating meat. D'ya know why? Because you don't want to eat meat (don't get me wrong this works both ways, you aren't going to sway me or others because we just love eating meat so damn much). You are adjudicating these arguments by your own standards, by your own subjective moral viewpoint. This is no different to all the creationist fundies that come here arguing about their viewpoints, none of them leave here thinking they've lost. I'd assume that most of them go away believing that not one argument against them was in the remotest bit valid.

Hows this. You leave our dinner plates alone and we'll extend you the same courtesy.

[RuleBritannia]

Animals eat other animals, therefore it it justifiable to eat meat. No morals needed.

To prove that eating meat is immoral, you have to prove that morals are objective - good luck with that.

RuleBritannia, please read my first post on this page (page 10), and stop making these sorts of statments here, as they are pointless.

No, this thread is pointless, you seem to think that everyone else has to justify their actions to you, but you don't have to justify your actions to us. You've already subjectively decided that eating met is immoral and I believe nothing anybody says will ever change your mind, no matter what 'logical' reply anyone gives, you will have an answer for it. You'll just go round in circles until you end up back at the start. If you think that morality is objective, then prove it. if you think that morality is subjective then the burden is on you to show that eating meat is immoral, because that is only way you can get people on your side.

[keypad5]

The point is that we build relationships with other humans (and even some animals). I don't build those kinds of relationships, or anticipate building those relationships, with animals that I eat.

So, presumably, you are only extend moral consideration to your friends, family and colleagues/clients?

EDIT: Fixed quote.

No, because I understand that my friends and colleagues have family relationships, like I do, and their family have collegial relationships with people who have family relationships etc. etc.. Six degrees of separation, really.

As for the OP, I think I'll leave y'all to it. I don't think it has been shown that meat eating is objectively immoral, so there doesn't seem to be any need to morally justify it.

[Warren Dew]

has been killed close to the end of it's life

I could be wrong but it seems to me that this requirement would be pretty easy to meet. Indeed, I'm rather surprised if the current meat industry manages to extend the lives of many animals much past the time they are killed.

[keypad5]

has been killed close to the end of it's life

I could be wrong but it seems to me that this requirement would be pretty easy to meet. Indeed, I'm rather surprised if the current meat industry manages to extend the lives of many animals much past the time they are killed.