On Fri, 30 Jul 2004 16:11:42 GMT, "rick etter" > wrote:

>No one cares if you eat meat, that's the point. The problem is the
>hypocritical religious beliefs of vegans that claim their diet is somehow
>'better', without ever being able to prove their claims. All I do is
>provide an example that blows all their ignorant beliefs out of the water.

That's what causes the cognitive dissonance, which is very
uncomfortable and they become somewhat desperate to relieve
it in any way they can...without admitting they were wrong, which
would create even more discomfort...
__________________________________________________ _______
A little more than 40 years ago, Leon Festinger published A Theory
of Cognitive Dissonance (1957). Festinger's theory of cognitive
dissonance has been one of the most influential theories in social
psychology (Jones, 1985). It has generated hundreds and hundreds of
studies, from which much has been learned about the determinants
of attitudes and beliefs, the internalization of values, the
consequences of decisions, the effects of disagreement among
persons, and other important psychological processes.

As presented by Festinger in 1957, dissonance theory began by
postulating that pairs of cognitions (elements of knowledge) can be
relevant or irrelevant to one another. If two cognitions are
relevant to one another, they are either consonant or dissonant.
Two cognitions are consonant if one follows from the other, and they
are dissonant if the obverse (opposite) of one cognition follows
from the other. The existence of dissonance, being psychologically
uncomfortable, motivates the person to reduce the dissonance and
leads to avoidance of information likely to increase the dissonance.
The greater the magnitude of the dissonance, the greater is the
pressure to reduce dissonance.

http://www.apa.org/books/4318830s.html
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