> You are trying to be clever, yes?
I want to know whether we are discussing eating meat, or something else. Both you and Chris seemed to go back and forth between the topic of eating meat and the topic of causing suffering, with little more than some hand-waving in between.
> Well, in many instances these killings are justifiable (except when
> they are not: like the people in New Jersey who want yet another
> cookie-cutter mansion "overlooking the woods" but don't want to have
> to deal with the danger of bears, so there is a bear hunt organised
> each year).
You are describing my question, not answering it. If it is unethical for me to eat the free-range chicken I bought Saturday at the market, why is it ethical to bulldoze a family of groundhogs to erect a building? The death of the chicken was swift and deliberately done to minimize its suffering; the family of groundhogs faces a worse fate.
> Also the animals tortured and killed for eating is not
> small. It runs into the billions each year.
This is the hand-waving I referred to. "Tortured and killed". Who here specifically favors torturing animals?
> These are not arbitrary. They are justified at multiple levels: (1)
> need vs choice: you need to kill a mosquito else it will kill you
> (unintentionally). We find people (other than little boys) who torture
> insects, especially without reason (reason = say medical research),
> problematic.
Another hand-wave here from "killing" to "torture". This is why I said based on what I am reading about what "vegetarian" is said to mean, the opposite of it ought to be "psychopath".
> (2) extension of reasoning: awareness and avoidance of
> suffering, etc.
This does not help me sort animal killing into your justified and not-justified categories.
> >I would also not lump vegetarianism together with advocacy for animal
> >welfare. In fact, doing so distracts from the goal of ensuring
> >that animals raised for food are treated as humanely as possible. The
> >former is viewed as an extreme movement with the appearance of a
> >secular religion, while the latter reduces animal suffering and
> >improves the health of the humans who consume them.
>
> Viewed as?
s/viewed as// :)
This is my concluding, and most important, point. And if I may mock you, **revealing** that you did not directly address it.
When you promote vegetarianism - the practice of not eating meat - as the morally superior diet, you should expect people to respond defensively to your judgement. Specifically, stop equivocating not being a vegetarian to torturing animals.
There are sound arguments for replacing the factory farming of animals with a humane system. Since, like you, most humans see killing animals as often justifable, discussing the killing practice instead of the eating practice allows us to focus on ensuring that when killing is justified, it is done in the most sustainable, humane way possible.
Matt
-- GnuPG Key ID: 0xC33BD882 aim: beyondzero123 yahoo msg: beyondzero123
Puritanism: the haunting fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having a good time.
-H.L. Mencken