FoodBanter.com - View Single Post - Interesting site answers meat-eater questions

wrote:

> rick wrote:
>
> wrote in message
roups.com...
>>
>>>i am referring to rick and Dutch here. Their by the book attacks
>>>and
>>>hollow ruminations seem at best spineless, pointless and soft.
>>
>>=====================
>>Really? Then refute anything we've said, killer. If you want
>>by-the-book recitations then the web-site posted isthe perfect
>>example, fool. It's a mish-mash of lys told over and over by the
>>wannabe vegan brain-dead.
>>
>
>
> Alright then here is your rather silly refutation. You seem to keep
> bringing up a rather pointless idea, namely that certain animals
> "might" get killed or displaced due to current farming practices. This
> may or may not be true, and you don't cite numbers, and for good
> reason.

No one seriously disputes the fact of collateral deaths
in agricultural. A professor at Oreon State
University, Stephen Davis, has written a paper on the
topic, suggesting that CDs might mean a "vegan" diet is
not the lowest-death diet one might follow. There used
to be a rice farmer in Texas who participated here and
posted under the name "diderot", who wrote at length
about the types and (rough) numbers of animals that
were killed in the process of cultivating and
harvesting rice.

>
> Even though some of these animal deaths might truly be avoidable, it is
> not the same as eating the flesh of an animal killed only to satisfy
> some urgent need to eat meat.

It actually is much worse, because the meat eater
doesn't pretend that by NOT eating something, he has
thereby attained some state of virtue.

This is what every "vegan" does. They all begin by
committing a classical logical fallacy: the fallacy of
Denying the Antecedent:

if I eat meat, I cause animals to suffer and die

I do not eat meat;

therefore, I do not cause animals to suffer and die

But you DO cause animals to suffer and die: the
animals who are chopped to bits in the course of
producing vegetable crops, and the animals that are
deliberately killed around food storage facilities to
prevent loss due to eating and contamination.

The problem with "veganism" is that the stupid,
****witted rule - "don't consume animal parts" - is NOT
based on any legitimate moral principle. But the rule
is the totality of "veganism", and we clearly can see
that it does not lead to a zero-death outcome.

"vegans" next back away from their demonstrably false
claim that they don't kill animals, and actually make
their moral position worse, because they then engage in
a despicable, deceitful counting game. They claim that
although they do cause animal deaths, they cause fewer
of them than meat eaters. This is deceitful, because
they have never counted, and don't ever intend to
count. It is despicable because it makes perfectly
clear that what they are about is their self-exaltation
over others whom they demonized in the first place.

First of all, virtue is NEVER shown by means of a
comparison with others; no worthwhile philosophy of
ethics, at any stage in the history of philosophy, has
ever said that you are virtuous if you do less of some
bad thing than someone else. This is because virtue
consists SOLELY in adhering to some set of moral
principles - and we have already seen that "veganism"
has NO principle at its base.

We can further see why the counting game is invalid by
conducting this little thought experiment. Suppose you
cause 50 animal deaths a week, and your meat-eating
neighbor causes 100. You strut around patting yourself
on the back because the ratio of his deaths to yours
looks pretty good for you: 2:1. Now, suppose due to
some changes in the technology of agriculture, his diet
causes 300 deaths per week, while yours increases its
death toll to 100 per week. Wow! The ratio is even
more in your favor now: 3:1! But...WHAT THE ****ING
HELL: You now are causing TWICE as many deaths as you
used to cause. The ratio has gotten decidedly better
for you, but it simply CANNOT be a morally good outcome
that you are now causing twice as many deaths as before.

Comparing yourself to others as a basis for
establishing your virtue simply cannot be a valid basis
for virtue. Virtue consists ONLY in adhering to good,
sound moral principles, and we have seen that
"veganism" has none.

>
> You are trying to paint the act of eating brown rice, other grains and
> soy products as morbid and cavalier exercises in dietary excess.

No, he isn't. He is saying you have NO basis for
declaring yourself "virtuous" with respect to your
impact on animals. He is right.

>
> You couldn't be more wrong.

Sorry; he is absolutely right.

>
> Simply stated - i'll pass. You don't seem to have the intellectual
> faculties to follow a simple argument, or parse a simple sentence. And
> if your dull attacks are any indication your derived and irrelevant
> constructions are wholly pointless and spineless, and they are, then
> there isn't much to refute.

He may not write scintillating prose, but his points
are generally right. "veganism" is morally bankrupt.