Yet another "Meat Is Bad" story.

[Dreadful Nonsense]

Why is it when we watch a lion kill and eat a baby zebra, ethics never comes into the picture.
I am a carnivore.As i munchy wunch on a thick juicy rare steak ethics has nothing to do with it.

To some,even non believers, His Holines the Dali Lama is a barometre of ethical behaivour. If He can eat meat and not fear the ethical dilemma, It's pretty safe to say it's ok....Now on the other hand when ever He is in said subject of eating he always points out that we should have the attitude that to thank the plants and animals we eat and pledge we shall try to further the common good with the energy they provide.
And as for meat he suggests moderation.

Now before someone ,if any, wishes to fluff off the Dali Lama as an ethical barometre i ask you. If the world needs such a person, who not better.
I'm sure He is cringing ...lol!He views Himself as a simple monk.

 

[Twila]

Doc, your not a carnivore. Your an omnivore. Cats are carnivores. You'd soon die if all you ate was meat.
But I get your point. Although I have no problem with a lion eating a zebra, evolution dictates that's what it eats. Meat and only meat. Evolution has given us the ability to eat both. Evolution has given us the ability to eat only plants is we choose. Some have a ethical dilema in the treatment of livestock. Can't blame them. I don't support the torture of animals inorder to bring me a lovely curry chicken. I prefer the animal to have enjoyed it's life while it had it.

 

[Zzarchov]

Actually cats can also eat only plant derived food too. They also aren't pure carnivores.

 

[Twila]

Actually cats can also eat only plant derived food too. They also aren't pure carnivores.

That's force fed cats. Cats would choose meat. Evolution has made them carnivores. Just because you can feed them something doesn't mean it's good for them. They'll drink milk but they can't digest calcium...gives them a stomach ache. Nice eh?

I think putting a cat on a vegetarian diet will get you the same results as feeding cows meat....disease.

 

[Dreadful Nonsense]

Doc, your not a carnivore. Your an omnivore. Cats are carnivores. You'd soon die if all you ate was meat.
But I get your point. Although I have no problem with a lion eating a zebra, evolution dictates that's what it eats. Meat and only meat. Evolution has given us the ability to eat both. Evolution has given us the ability to eat only plants is we choose. Some have a ethical dilema in the treatment of livestock. Can't blame them. I don't support the torture of animals inorder to bring me a lovely curry chicken. I prefer the animal to have enjoyed it's life while it had it.

yer whole post became meaningless to me once you mentioned curried chicken...YUMMYDO....ok gets hold of ones self....
I'm an omnivore? thats not some guy addicted to that now defunct magazine...
AND!!!! what if it was your zebra8O


On a more serious note...I think I brought this up already....

Halal meat is produced by hanging the live animal upside down slitting it's throat and allowing the heart to continue to pump out the blood......
Huge industry in Canada......

CBC radio had a whole show the other night, all i caught was them talking about humane ways of slaughtering pigs....i think they only talked about pigs..did not catch the whole show..which no moslem will eat anyway.


add on: i used it to describe the animal being killied
me bad in a Twila related post

 

[Pangloss]

It is a necessary kill to allow me to eat my meat.

IRBS:

Just because there is a precondition (a "necessary step") to executing a choice, that does not make the choice a necessity.

Needing to pay for a chocolate bar is not the same thing as needing a chocolate bar.

Needing to kill an animal so you can more easily obtain its flesh is not the same thing as needing its flesh. You choose to eat its flesh - big difference.

Pangloss

 

[Twila]

Halal meat is produced by hanging the live animal upside down slitting it's throat and allowing the heart to continue to pump out the blood......
Huge industry in Canada......

Yes, you did bring this up before...but maybe you missed where I posted the animal is unconcious when this slitting of the throat happens. At least in a human halal environment it would be. A good butcher doesn't hit twice.

 

[Twila]

yer whole post became meaningless to me once you mentioned curried chicken...YUMMYDO

yeah, there is nothing better then curried chicken...except for maybe curried goat...but still it really is the curry...if they'd make tofu firm enough to have a meat consistancy i'd be all for it...hmmmmm curry....makes me drool...just the thought of it...gah...now I'm hungry and it's only 9:45am

 

[Pangloss]

IRBS:

"But we are really talking about your judgements about people eating meat are we not?"

No - if I was going to make a judgment about people who eat flesh, I would write it. I meant what I wrote.

Evaluating the ethics of an action is a useful enterprise in itself - it sharpens the skills for critical self-examination, for one thing - and it does not necessarily entail condemning those who act unethically.

Pangloss

 

[Pangloss]

No methane emissions from Animals? So you are going to keep killing animals then?

If we weren't hell bent on mass producing food, there would be far more WILD animals. When you take in the amount of land required to raise cows (and their feed etc) its not less land that would be required to have an equal value of other animals.

When we farm we don't increase the amount of plant and animal life in an area, we just make sure only animal and plant life immediately useful to us exists (barring the changes in water).

So what you are talking about is lowering Methane emissions below natural levels (cooling our planet) by whiping out all animal life.

If you left wild animals roaming around, there would be the same amounts in the now fallow feed and grazing fields. Of a varied , less useful and less edible variety, but the same amount.

We do not create biomatter, we just ensure it is in a form we want.

Boy, Zzarchov, you sure do like to put words in my mouth.

You take me making an anti-killing statement and twist it into me wanting to kill all the animals on the planet.

Awesome anti-logical gymnastics, buddy.

I won't address your sophistry, as it is self-evidently foolish chatter and defeats itself.

I will admit to being kind of surprised - you are normally quite formidable on CC, but here you are tripping all over yourself. What gives?

Pangloss

 

[Pangloss]

yeah, there is nothing better then curried chicken...except for maybe curried goat...but still it really is the curry...if they'd make tofu firm enough to have a meat consistancy i'd be all for it...hmmmmm curry....makes me drool...just the thought of it...gah...now I'm hungry and it's only 9:45am

Glad you mentioned perhaps the most veg-head friendly cuisine on the planet.

I make several awesome curries (it ain't boasting if it's true) and my girlfriend makes the best chutneys. I'm learning Ethiopian curries now - so rich, mild and tasty. Yum.

Twila: do you make your own masalas?

Pangloss

 

[Twila]

Twila: do you make your own masalas?

No, I'm still waiting to be adopted by an indian family. I've had the advertisment up for like ever and yet no takers....dang it!

I have to use store bought...or go to Indian restaurants....If you know of any Indian mothers needing a very eager to learn daughter just send them my way....

 

[Dreadful Nonsense]

No, I'm still waiting to be adopted by an indian family. I've had the advertisment up for like ever and yet no takers....dang it!

I have to use store bought...or go to Indian restaurants....If you know of any Indian mothers needing a very eager to learn daughter just send them my way....

I'd adopt you in an instant

i made a curry thread for this should get the play it deserves.

 

[Zzarchov]

Boy, Zzarchov, you sure do like to put words in my mouth.

You take me making an anti-killing statement and twist it into me wanting to kill all the animals on the planet.

Awesome anti-logical gymnastics, buddy.

I won't address your sophistry, as it is self-evidently foolish chatter and defeats itself.

I will admit to being kind of surprised - you are normally quite formidable on CC, but here you are tripping all over yourself. What gives?

Pangloss

I was actually responding to Mabudon. So I do realise that is not what you were saying (and thats why I was not implying it was you). I was stating that his concept that without us farming cows there would be no gasses produced by animals is absurd unless we whipe out animal populations.

And that is fundemental to understand that farming does not increase the amount of life in a region.

If you had three fields of feed crops and one of cattle (before you get into yield boosting chemicals, which cause there own seperate issues, so we shall assume a free range farm), you would still have the same amount of life as that same area overgrown wild with plants and the same amount of animals in terms of mass (barring intervention) in the forms of predators and prey (Squirrels, birds, deer, groundhogs, extra insects, foxes, badgers etc etc) that would exist in the wild in those four fields. (there is only so much nutrients in the soil to draw from, and nature is very good at getting every last drop)

If we cut down on farm animals, then wild animals would produce the same amount (or about the same levels) of gasses.

The Biosphere is pretty stable, its changes take thousands of years (more than enough to adapt). No matter how many forests you burn (unless you whipe out all life) the smoke from them will have only short term consequences in terms of Carbon put into the air (Short term in a planetary sense) and all that rich ash will act as fertilizer, growing more plants, taking about an equal amount of carbon back out of the air.


If cows produced less methane (say whiping them out or genetically modifying them) there would be less for methanotrophs to eat, they would die off, its a population cycle, it happens.

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

IRBS:

Just because there is a precondition (a "necessary step") to executing a choice, that does not make the choice a necessity.

Needing to pay for a chocolate bar is not the same thing as needing a chocolate bar.

Needing to kill an animal so you can more easily obtain its flesh is not the same thing as needing its flesh. You choose to eat its flesh - big difference.

Pangloss

As long as I have that choice, all the better. No big deal. but who are you to make a choice for me because YOU believe that it is wrong?

 

[Pangloss]

As long as I have that choice, all the better. No big deal. but who are you to make a choice for me because YOU believe that it is wrong?

Ahh - now I understand. You think that I think I am king of the world and would ban everything I disagreed with.

IRBS - I like my life and it keeps me quite busy, thank you very much. I have no desire to live yours or anyone else's, for that matter.

People need to be able to choose, otherwise free will and leading an ethical life mean nothing. A person must be free to choose between the ethical right and the ethical wrong, because if not then the good act means nothing.

Unlike what you wrote in the above post, I posit it to be a very big deal to have that choice.

As far as beliefs go, testing the ethical balance of an activity isn't some sort of emotional enterprise that is based solely on personal opinion. Ethics can be approached coolly, rationally, and use evidence-based arguments to arrive at conclusions.

This results in positions that can be tested and upheld if they are valid, or refuted if they are not.

That is what the vast majority of this thread is about.

No, this isn't about compelling anyone to a particular course of action - but it is about the ethical examination of a set of actions.

I'll leave you to draw the obvious conclusions.

Pangloss

 

[Zzarchov]

Ethics are indeed very much defined by emotions.

Example, you say it is ethically wrong to kill without need. On what rationale do you base that, which I cannot just as logically refute?

The concept of "logic" in these matters requires a baseline or a goal you are reaching for, some kind of marker not based on subjective opinion or emotion (which is just a subjective opinion).

 

[Pangloss]

Good question Zzarchov, but the wrong answer.

First, a citation:

Branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of ultimate value and the standards by which human actions can be judged right or wrong. The term is also applied to any system or theory of moral values or principles. Ethics is traditionally subdivided into normative ethics, metaethics, and applied ethics. Normative ethics seeks to establish norms or standards of conduct; a crucial question in this field is whether actions are to be judged right or wrong based on their consequences or based on their conformity to some moral rule, such as "Do not tell a lie." Theories that adopt the former basis of judgment are called consequentialist (see consequentialism); those that adopt the latter are known as deontological (see deontological ethics). Metaethics is concerned with the nature of ethical judgments and theories. Since the beginning of the 20th century, much work in metaethics has focused on the logical and semantic aspects of moral language. Some major metaethical theories are naturalism (see naturalistic fallacy), intuitionism, emotivism, and prescriptivism. Applied ethics, as the name implies, consists of the application of normative ethical theories to practical moral problems (e.g., abortion). Among the major fields of applied ethics are bioethics, business ethics, legal ethics, and medical ethics.

As you can see Zzarchov, even this grade school definition of ethics leaves out the phrase "because I said so!"

So no, emotions play only a marginal role in the study of ethics. The "baseline, or goal" that you mention could easily be: minimize waste, or do no harm, or maximize happiness (don't jump on that word Zzarch - it's a technical term here - used to describe a range of traditionally positive things, like fairness, equality, security, liberty, etcetera).

Back to the thread now.

Pangloss

 

[Zzarchov]

But those are all based on emotionally driven moral judgements.

You can't for example, give a reason WHY doing harm is unethical, quite frankly concepts like harm are subjective issues. Its all unique to the human condition, meaning its definition is inherintly subjective and differs from person to person.
The fields of study of ethics, are just widely accepted beliefs, that does not imply and form of accuracy upon them.

Compare that to numerical logic, If A = B, and B = C then A = C. There is no subjective room in that.

Any time you define "Right" or "Wrong" or "Ethical" and "Unethical" you are entering into a completely subjective definition. Either from your view point of whats right and wrong, or someone elses viewpoint (which has no legitimate authority over the views and opinions of another.

Example: One may think it is unethical NOT to kill someone if they think them inferior. One could argue many logical reasons for this (from Eugenics, to the need to exert power) if one removes moral and emotional basis to ethics.

In this case, one starts with certain moral values, and then builds a framework of Ethics around that.

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

Ahh - now I understand. You think that I think I am king of the world and would ban everything I disagreed with.

IRBS - I like my life and it keeps me quite busy, thank you very much. I have no desire to live yours or anyone else's, for that matter.

People need to be able to choose, otherwise free will and leading an ethical life mean nothing. A person must be free to choose between the ethical right and the ethical wrong, because if not then the good act means nothing.

Unlike what you wrote in the above post, I posit it to be a very big deal to have that choice.

As far as beliefs go, testing the ethical balance of an activity isn't some sort of emotional enterprise that is based solely on personal opinion. Ethics can be approached coolly, rationally, and use evidence-based arguments to arrive at conclusions.

This results in positions that can be tested and upheld if they are valid, or refuted if they are not.

That is what the vast majority of this thread is about.

No, this isn't about compelling anyone to a particular course of action - but it is about the ethical examination of a set of actions.

I'll leave you to draw the obvious conclusions.

Pangloss

The obvious conclusion I get is that you are trying to impose your ethics on me. You are invalidating my choices because they disagree with your ethics. Pretty cut and dry.