Meat Morality and Human/Animal/Alien Rights

Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm not vegan or vegetarian, but I've had the same pang of conscience before too. I think most people when they order a burger, they aren't thinking about what it took to make it all happen.In fact my 6-year old son just recently discovered that steak and hamburgers come from cow meat and that the meat is the muscle of the cow. He looked slightly shaken by the concept, but like most people just kept on eating because it's so delicious. I think omnivores such as us justify it in the sense that the animal is "too dumb to know it's going to die." Is that right? That's a weak justification, yet I keep right on eating.I had resolved some years ago to eat kosher, not for religious reasons but for humane reasons and reasons of cleanliness. There are some companies that slit cows throats and let them bleed out in an excruciating death. Somehow it is better my conscience knowing that a bolt gun be used, because at least I know it was quick and painless.Again, is that justification? Probably not.Some people rely on a common misnomer to exempt them from eating a vegetarian diet. There is growing evidence, however, that many cultures of early man may not have been nearly the meat eater he's historically been portrayed by anthropologists. This paradigm shift comes primarily from physical evidence by examining the stomach contents of well-preserved specimens (like bog people). They mostly find grain and fruit, but some have found traces of reindeer meat. Some assert that meat was probably mostly eaten out of necessity but that they were more of gatherers than hunters, though some cultures diet seems to be almost entirely meat (Inuit and Eskimo being the most obvious because there is little else to consume out in the tundra).In any case, it is something I have wrestled with for a long time but keep procrastinating about.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

Chimp, I agree with most of what you say. I eat meat and most animal rights activists are as loopy and counterproductive as these moonbatsWow..... Be that as it may, I think Straggler brings up an interesting point that morally and sociologically needs to be examined. I would suggest that we not try and view it from a cold, clinical, and sterile point of view, because if we were to do that we could justify anything.Case in point, it's a fact that many people develop cancer. Would we coldly say, "well, scientifically everyone gets cancer. It's just a question of whether or not you die from other things first, so we should therefore not help people with cancer because it's natural?" I would hope not.Lastly, one moral question: If someone gutted a dog right in front of you, which was yelping in excruciating pain, would you be so glib about it? And if not, why not? Why doesn't that sympathy extend beyond other mammals?

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

Witty subtitle The answer is that I honestly don't know. I could not reasonably offer a demarcation for what is or is not acceptable.For me I think I view it as you do and Straggler. I agree with you when attempting to rationalize it, and yet something seems so out of place. The natural empathy we feel for its suffering and the natural desire to eat meat is intriguing to me because it seems paradoxical. Yes, I agree. Except that I think dogs, due to years of domestication, would take one leg up on the scale of primates in Western culture. Suffice it to say that most westerners would be horrified either though.I haphazardly stumbled on to a grotesque website that hosted all sorts of accidents, suicides, war footage and other macabre images. There were these sons-of-bitches who tied up a monkey (can't remember the exact subspecies) and they beat it with a hammer. You could see the look of terror and hear the screams. The once it was dead they open the skull and ate its brains. Disturbing isn't the word. It was more horrifically cruel than that. It was awful, just awful.Consequently that same website had a murder of a man somewhere in Russia. Some psychopathic Russians had kidnapped another man in the forest and beat him to death with hammers. They were laughing as this man was presumably (I don't speak Russian) pleading for his life. My visceral reaction was virtually identical, and yet I could almost empathize more for the monkey because of its perceived innocence.This is why animal activists, I believe, seem to care more about animals than they do people. There is this perception that humans can rationalize their own impending deaths or that they are guilty of something. But they view the animals as being pure and, of course, not having a malicious bone in its body. I agree completely and have pondered the same things. I think this goes back to what Straggler was saying about sentience and how it is somehow worse if the animal can maybe somehow understand its pain. Reptiles and fish have very primitive brains. Perhaps we just assume that they just don't know any better, and so we rationalise it that way. I like where one lady stated that a rock she was looking at has such life in it, even though rocks are inorganic which, by definition, means there is no life in it!

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

Agreed Probably a combination between some neurological disorder and early abuse. No one is certain on why that is even still, just a number of theories swirling about. Damn, that pisses me off because I highly doubt there is any actual benefit to tiger bones as some kind of aphrodisiac or anything along those line. It's probably all imagined in their minds, like eating your enemy gives you their energy and power. Senseless.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

Some women seem jealous that males can urinate wherever they please due to their anatomy.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

You are right to say that. In the beginning of the thread I candidly spoke about my own contention about eating, yet still eat meat.A real deal breaker for me is ethical and humane treatment of the animals. I, in a sense, go beyond mere USDA guidelines and buy eggs from range chickens as opposed to certain companies like "Perdue" which I know let their chickens sit in their own feces and atrophy. Not only is disgusting to think about actually ingesting that, but it's also disgusting to think that they would be treated that way.I will go so far in saying that this idiotic. I care about how the animal lived and the manner it was slaughtered in, yet I don't care that it was sill ultimately killed? Sounds oxymoronic, I know.But on another level I don't see it as tragic that humans are omnivores by nature. Just like every other predator, our eyes are located in the front of the skull as opposed to all prey which are located on the sides.That it can be historically identified that mankind has been hunting for millennium can't be discounted either, seems to me. To counter that you mentioned that we also lived in caves, so that is not a good determination. A fair point, but we also ate berries in the past and still do too. So it ultimately is moot either way. I fully and openly disclose that I am conflicted on the matter and have been for some time. I just need all the facts.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

That is assuming you are trying to get corn in your diet through the cow. Who does that, though? No one eats beef to retrieve the nutrients from what the cow ate. If they wanted corn, they would eat it directly. If they want protein, they'll eat the cow.The only relevance a good diet for the cow makes in relation to the consumer is a healthy cow in which to consume.Edited by Hyroglyphx, : No reason given.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston