Vegetarian Thread

[Ma Uai: Ua Nemti]

If God didnt want us to eat them, he wouldnt have made them out of meat.

[Coney]

Originally posted by Ma Uai: Ua Nemti
If God didnt want us to eat them, he wouldnt have made them out of meat.

There's a joke in their about a vicar and a nun......but as this place is PG-13, I'll refrian

[Legolas_Frodo_Aragorn]

Originally posted by Ma Uai: Ua Nemti
If God didnt want us to eat them, he wouldnt have made them out of meat.

first of all..i think thats really stupid...just because g-d gave us the knowledge to make guns..doesnt mean we should kill people
2nd..they are not made out of meat..they are made if bones, muscles, fat and all that other stuff
3rd..your made our of "meat" so eat yourself!

on the other hand it tastes really good...and i get cravings for chicken wings sometimes

[Draken]

Ironic humour not your strong point then, Legolas_Frodo_Aragorn ?

[Elven Archer]

Originally posted by Legolas_Frodo_Aragorn
first of all..i think thats really stupid...just because g-d gave us the knowledge to make guns..doesnt mean we should kill people
2nd..they are not made out of meat..they are made if bones, muscles, fat and all that other stuff
3rd..your made our of "meat" so eat yourself!

on the other hand it tastes really good...and i get cravings for chicken wings sometimes

Guns weren't invented to kill people. maybe in war,but mostly for killing animals so people wouldn't starve. there are people who eat other people by the way.

what do you think a horse is for? it has a body designed for riding. an ox has a body perfect for helping people with farm chores and all the other stuff people use/used them for. when you think about it,cows,chickens,and pigs are perfect for what we use them for. eggs,dairy products,and meat.

[Epona of Rohan]

Aha! A subject I actually know enough about to discuss!

I didn't read the whole thread (yes I'm lazy, sorry), so maybe you all did something like this before... but I thought it would be fun anway. (Obviously these questions don't apply to those people coming in here telling us how stupid we are for not slaughtering animals)

1) How long have you been a vegetarian? - 6 years

2) How far do you take it? (no red meat, no animals, no animal products at all?) - no animals. I considered going vegan but I was afraid I would starve (not much into supplements like soy, bleah)

3) Why did you become a vegetarian? - I have had as many as 12 cats at once, and one day I just decided it didn't make sense to eat cows and chickens if I would never be able to eat my cats. That's just the reason I started though. After that there were more and more reasons. Any non-veg's here should check out the Humane society's magazine, Animal Guardian, and see if you still have an appetite.

And hey, I'm noticing this argument of *God made animals for us to eat*... Well, I don't really consider myself to be religious anyway, but if I remember correctly, God supposedly made us to watch over them. No eating was implied. And they came first.

[Amandil]

Eating is killing. It's not like plants aren't alive.

The lettuces, still, in their own way, take a dim view of having to cease being lettuces; as they can, they fight it.

(R. F. Capon, The Third Peacock: The Goodness of God and The Badness of the World, [Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1972], p. 19 or 20[haven't got the original on me].)

(Little known secret: I decided to stop eating plants when I noticed that I don't eat any of the ferns in my living room, and thought it would be inconsistent then if I continued on eating other plants.)

The world is a rough place, boys and girls.

Everything eats everything else, not only to the annoyance of those who get eated, but to their agony, death and destruction. The rabbit himself does in the lettuce, the lettuce impoverishes the soil, the big fish eat the little fish, the little fish eat the shrimp, the shrimp eat the plankton, the rivers eat the mountains and the sun eats the rivers. And man is no exception. Modern children probably think he is: for them, turkeys are not killed and bled, they are mined from freezer cases in supermarkets. In fact, however, man has, even at his best, more than a lion's share of the world's blood on his hands. (ibid., pp.18-19.)

Vegitarianism just avoids the bigger issue: suffering, death and decay are built right into life itself. Herbivory doesn't avoid any of that.

The issue isn't "should I eat things with central nervous systems," it's "should I eat anything?" If it's bad to eat things with central nervous systems, then your cats are bad because that's what their genome tells them to do: eat other things with central nervous systems. Feeding your cat grain does violence to its genome.

So why shouldn't we humans be herbivores, and leave the carnivory to the cats and the omnivory to the bears? Cuz omnivory is in our genome. Had our ancestors not eaten meat, we would never have had enough protein intake to evolve the brains we actually have. We would have been cattle, ladies and gentlemen.

There are many biological achievements in muscle, power, sentience, and intelligence that could only have evolved, at least inlife as we know it on Earth, with predation.

(Holmes Rolston, III. "Does Nature Need to Be Redeemed?" Zygon 29, no. 2 [June 1994]: 213)

I hunt.

There, that's enough blatant assertions for a while. Anyone want to beat the bejeezus out of me?

[Erawyn]

It's not eating meat that I object to, but the conditions the animals are kept under, and the hormones injected into them are unnessecary evils, that I don't want to take part in in any way.

[BeardofPants]

My boyfriend used to work in a chicken hatchery. One in every 10 chickens were grossly mutated beyond belief because of all the hormones, and had to be killed. Ick. And people eat this stuff?!

[Amandil]

In these cases, vegitarianism isn't the answer, but rather organic meat eating and/or hunting. The same goes for plants too: eat organic plants and/or go gather your food from the wild. The trick is to eat what "nature" intended the way "nature" intended.

What "nature intended" us to eat is both animal and plant flesh, and the way "nature intended" our friends the animals and plants to be eaten is toxin-free (ironically, our toxin-laced food is usually due to our own asinine practices), at least!

This is why I eat what I hunt and kill, why I shop at an organic food store, and why I buy what meat I need (when I can't hunt, which is all the time now, because I'm in Europe) from a hormone-free butcher (there's no other organic butcher around, I'm afraid). If there was some wild land nearby (there isn't), I'd even try to gather some of the native foodstuffs around and eat that too.

Vegitarianism, veganism, fruitarianism (etc.) are over-reactions at best.

Love,

[BeardofPants]

I agree with every thing you said, barring the last bit. Organic IS the best way to go, and there is an increasing market for organic produce. Geez, about 10 years ago, nobody would have even been concerned with this type of stuff even though people were getting really sick from pesticides!

However, I beg to differ on Vegetarianism, etc, being over-reactions. It's a lifestyle choice. I choose not to eat meat because I don't want to, not because I have this silly idea that by reducing my meat content, it's gonna somehow stop the meat-market!

[Amandil]

A choice based on what? Is it arbitrary, being a vegitarian etc.? People have grounded vegetarianism etc. on things like cruelty (which I tried to rebut earlier) and pesticide reduction (which I tried to rebut immediately above), so now what is it grounded on? Nothing? Just curious!

[Epona of Rohan]

This is of course my personal opinion, but I tend to think animals have souls and plants do not. As to other animals eating each other, why does that mean that we should too? Aren't we of 'superior intelligence'? We don't NEED to eat meat to survive anymore. Its been awhile since we had to go out and hunt for food. And even then, the animals we ate had their own lives before we got to them. Now they are bred, and their whole life's purpose is to be slaughtered when they're fat and drugged enough.

The whole thing is a matter of opinion, and so I never really argue it with people. Its like the abortion issue - its all about personal beliefs, and you can't change those, so debating becomes a little repetitive and fruitless.

But as I said, all that was just the reason I stopped eating meat to begin with. Since then I have come across a lot of more compelling reasons. Even doctors now say that most meat is bad for you. Then there is all the stuff they do to the animals - but I won't go into that. And a little known fact: I read that beef cattle consume something like 80% of the corn grown in this country. Is it me or does that seem a little wasteful?

BeardofPants - I read somewhere that when they hatch chickens for laying, all the males are stuffed immediately in sacks where they suffocate or starve.

[Legolas_Frodo_Aragorn]

yea...cows also produce alot of methane..which is eating into our ozone layer..

OMG a gross fact...to keep the cheese on doritos, cheetos, and other cheese things, they use guano or guanolyte..which is bat poop!

[Hanza]

that is digusting! i dont think i'll ever eat wotsits again.

[Legolas_Frodo_Aragorn]

mr grace told us alot of other things like that...like that honey is bee puke....

[Hanza]

delightful! *puts down honey and jam sandwich at the speed of light*

[Elven Archer]

mr grace told us alot of other things like that...like that honey is bee puke....

don't the bees collect the nector by eating it and then puke it out and then stir it with their tongue thing?

[Legolas_Frodo_Aragorn]

Originally posted by Elven Archer
don't the bees collect the nector by eating it and then puke it out and then stir it with their tongue thing?

i guess......but thats what honey is

[Amandil]

...but thats what honey is

Wise words, Master Three-Character Moniker. The analogy "Bees = honey as People = vomit" isn't quite right. People vomit when they're sick; bees make honey when they're healthy. It's good that bees expectorate (?) honey; it's bad when people throw up. This is a relevant difference, I think, that should allow Hanza (and others) to pick up that sandwich and start eating again, don't you think?

The whole thing is a matter of opinion, and so I never really argue it with people. Its like the abortion issue - its all about personal beliefs, and you can't change those, so debating becomes a little repetitive and fruitless.

How to kill a conversation! As unlikely as it is that any one of us is going to change our mind because of this thread, it is the furthest thing from repetitive or fruitless to discuss such matters. At the very least, in a thread like this we have the opportunity of explaining why we believe such-and-such, so that people might respect our opinions as being based on something. If we haven't got any reasons for our opinions, we are rightly deserving of ridicule. But of course, giving your reasons for an opinion puts those reasons under automatic scrutiny. And this can be a tad unsettling, especially when someone points out that your reasons suck. But the fact that you actually have reasons (even if they turn out to be bad reasons) is grounds for someone to respect your opinion no matter what. And making one's beliefs worthy of respect rather than ridicule is, I think, not at all repetitive or fruitless.

This is of course my personal opinion, but I tend to think animals have souls and plants do not.

I, for one, would like to know why you, Epona of Rohan, think that animals have souls while plants do not. You might be interested to know that the Ancient Hebrews thought this very thing. Animals had a nephesh, while plants did not. That's why in Genesis chapter one, it says that God created plants on the same day as "dry land" (which typically isn't alive). (But that's not your reason, is it?)

As to other animals eating each other, why does that mean that we should too? Aren't we of 'superior intelligence'? We don't NEED to eat meat to survive anymore. Its been awhile since we had to go out and hunt for food.

Are you sure that human beings only hunted, killed, and ate other animals because they had to in order to survive? If that's the case, they probably hated every minute of their existence (something like the first 20,000 years of human history). I gotta say that's doubtful. For that entire time, humans hunting, killing and eating other animals was qualitiatively identical with other animals hunting, killing and eating each other. Which means that meat eating by humans was as "natural" then as meat eating by other animals still is. Carnivores and omnivores eat meat because they are supposed to; "Mother Nature" made them that way. Same deal for us people, too, at least for the first 20,000 years of our existence as a species. So then either it is still "natural" for us to hunt and eat wild meat, or else our natural makeup (our "genome") was changed for the better roughly 10,000 years ago when we learned how to domesticate plants and animals and build cities. The fact is, our genome has not changed for 30,000 years. Therefore, human beings are still omnivores whether they like it or not. The only way out of this for the vegitarian that I can see, is to say that it's bad that we follow the instructions given to us by "Mother Nature." And quite frankly, that's pretty much what our race has done. Why do you think we have such horrendous environmental problems? Little known fact: we've been causing our own environmental problems ever since we domesticated the goat...

And even then, the animals we ate had their own lives before we got to them. Now they are bred, and their whole life's purpose is to be slaughtered when they're fat and drugged enough.

Sure, but this brings us back to a point I made two posts earlier: cruelty to animals requires proper treatment of animals, not an avoidance of animal consumption whatsoever. Poor treatment of animals is a bad reason to be a vegitarian. This is why I said earlier that "vegitarianism [etc.] is an overreaction..." (okay, time for another post -- this one is too long.)