> I feel you. I stopped eating meat for 40 years for the same reason. But... they are on the same food chain we are, and they’d eat us in a heartbeat, right?

Herbivorous ruminants like cows would never eat you, and would generally never harm you unless provoked. Breeding intelligent lifeforms in a bespoke way to murder them for cash — whatever the reason or creature involved — is diabolically evil. If you do this for a living, you’re a merchant of death in my book.

I absolutely respect your choices and your opinion, but I don't understand them. Is the wolf diabolically evil? No cash involved of course. Is that the issue? What if I hunt the animal and kill it and then consume it, like the lion, the tiger, the hawk, and the dolphin? Is the hunter morally superior to the farmer who raises a steer, providing clean water, well grassed pasture, and then kills in a humane manner for personal consumption? Is that diabolically evil? What about the middle man who makes some cash bringing the meat product to someone else who can use it. Is that where the evilness enters the picture?

I am asking the fundamental question. I will agree completely that large scale food production has some real problems with animal treatment. I'm not defending or commenting on that. I'm just trying to understand the moral judgements associated with consuming another animal, as is done at just about all levels of the food chain in the natural world. Our digestive systems, our teeth, our nutritional requirements are all tuned to omnivorous consumption. Why is it wrong to exercise our natural nutritional choices, plant and animal, that have resulted from millions of years of evolution?

I'm not even 100% vegetarian myself but looking at how animals are treated repulses me, watch this video and tell me what you think about good and evil again (nsfw): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O15Owo7jGtU

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I think you missed the entire point of the comment you're replying to. It specifically mentions breeding and slaughtering animals, this has nothing to do with wolves or hunters

> Is the wolf diabolically evil?

Do wolves have a sense of good and evil ?

Do wolves talk about the ethical and moral implications of breeding and slaughtering millions of animals every single day ?

> Our digestive systems, our teeth, our nutritional requirements are all tuned to omnivorous consumption. Why is it wrong to exercise our natural nutritional choices, plant and animal, that have resulted from millions of years of evolution?

A lot of people in the west eat meat two or three times a day, sometimes from multiple animals during the same meal, we didn't evolve to do that at all. We didn't evolve to sit all day in front of a computer, but here I am. We didn't evolve to use cars but we almost all do. Using evolution as an argument for anything usually is a very poor choice....

I personally have no issue with the idea of killing to eat, the problem is everything else in the process. We don't have to treat amimals like we do, we don't have to eat so much meat every single day

But killing is not humane if the individual does not want to die.

Humans give themselves incredible characteristics compared to other animals, it's like they are miles ahead of every animal when it comes to self awareness, emotion, rational thought, it's like evolution in their case made a giant leap and not an incremental step like it is for everyone.

Why are then humans comparing themselves to obligate carnivores like lions, tigers to justify their actions? Why are they looking at their natural bodies to justify the actions? How come when it comes to taking a life of another animal for sustenance, sustenance that can be achieved without the kill, they do not want to lift themselves up and draw a line between nature and themselves?

There are many things that come naturally yet we do not want to mimic that.

> Humans give themselves incredible characteristics compared to other animals, it's like they are miles ahead of every animal when it comes to self awareness, emotion, rational thought, it's like evolution in their case made a giant leap and not an incremental step like it is for everyone.

Didn't that leap in evolution come from being able to control our food supply to the point where we were able to consume energy at such an efficient rate that we evolved emotion, rational thought, society, etc?

It could be argued that now we've achieved that we should be looking at the next stage of evolution, which may be mulch made into fake meat loaded with salt and preservatives, or even growing laboratory meat; but surely the reason we're here and having this discussion at all is because of our domestication and consumption of animals. It seems a circular argument to say that's immoral.

Are we really evolved enough to move past that? We are certainly domesticating ourselves as every generation goes by, we see that from the massive decline in human-to-human violence over many millennia, and so a reduction in violence toward animals could also be seen in that evolutionary sense. I'm not convinced we're at a point where we're ready to 100% wean ourselves off animals for food. It certainly comes with its own set of problems.

> Is the wolf diabolically evil? ... What if I hunt the animal and kill it and then consume it, like the lion, the tiger, the hawk, and the dolphin?

As much as I respect the intelligence of those animals, what a remarkably low bar to measure ourselves against. May as well justify manslaughter and rape as while we're at it. Drawing a line that arbitrarily suits certain primal desires and justifying it by pointing at animals is how we move backward, not forward.

This is such a good point to make. Us humans should definitely strive to hold ourselves to a higher standard than that.

Also, it's a hell of a difference between the wolf, who has to kill in order to survive, and the man, who just has to choose something else to eat in the supermarket or restaurant. Justifying ones choice by comparing oneself to a wolf is incredibly flawed. No one here would bat an eye if, for whatever reason, people have to hunt and kill in order to sustain themselves, like some tribes probably still do. We wouldn't call them evil for it. What can be called evil on the other hand, is the systematic raising, torturing, and killing of billions of animals every year. Because it's needless. We could easily survive without it, but we choose not to, because bacon. I get it, it's delicious. But at some point it becomes very questionable, and I'm even setting aside the sustainability aspect.

Who is us on that regard? Who decides the standard?

Sorry, that is my personal expectation that I would hope the majority of the world would agree with, but I'm not trying to decide that standard for you. You do you.

It's cheesy, but the with great power comes great responsibility quote kind of holds up the way I see it. We pretty much dominate every other species, but we shouldn't pick and choose traits of other species in order to win arguments. We aren't wolves, we aren't dolphins. We have the capabilities to make the choice and don't kill and still survive. All it takes is changing ones habits a bit. We also have the capabilities to understand and decide that rape is wrong, and most people don't do it. Can you imagine what it would sound like if an accused rapist would point to dolphins as defense?

I'm not trying to set a standard for you. All I want to say is that pointing at other animals to justify our behavior is flawed and something we should be above as a species as a whole.

It's always very strange for me to hear this argument made. It seems you've elevated yourself above the other animals, and I gather, plants as well. Why do you believe that you are anything but another mammal, intricately woven into the biosphere and the food chain? Life eats life. This is the reality. You are an animal. You eat life. The plants that vegetarians and vegans are eating, also ate life. The microbes and fungus that fed the plants, also ate life. To pretend plants have no feelings, emotions, and capability to communicate intelligently (especially plants much much older than humans) is a common mistake, and one made out of lack of observation, and human hubris.

animals do not have a concept of good and evil so why would we apply it to them?

I think looking at how things in the animal kingdom work and using that as a justification for our actions is a very low bar. We have the cognitive and emotional ability to understand that things like murder/rape/etc. are wrong do we not? If you just take a small step from that and recognize the sentience of animals, it doesn't seem too unreasonable to afford them the same respect.

PS: I think the idea of good/evil is pretty reductionist to begin with, but I understand it's a common way of looking at things

They don't have words for it but if you've met shelter dogs or animals that have suffered abuse, they definitely understand the concept of evil. I have a rescue pig that I adore but he doesn't trust men because he lived a life of abuse. I can only assume that he sees men as evil, even if he can't make that statement. Some things are just natural. Humans seem to think we have a superior understanding of all things but some things are immutable truths and natural law. They don't require calculus to understand, just to describe.

Your example of evil just seems like the animals having a sense of danger to me. Animals usually instinctively will try to avoid danger. This doesn't require them to have a concept of evil.

What's your definition of evil? If an animal finds a specific set of traits to be characteristic of something that's dangerous and/or likely to inflict harm, is that not the definition of evil?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/evil

We wrote these things down so that we describe them to each other. The concepts already existed. We didn't invent evil, we defined it but it was already there. We've also used arguments like this to separate ourselves from what consider be lesser, to distance us from our actions. This is mental gymnastics though.

Whatever you have to do to feel ok about eating a chicken is fine but pretending we have some better sense of self than anything else feels like hubris. If our position in the world is truly better because we can articulate out feelings and we're smarter, why don't we eat dogs and mutes and the mentally handicapped?

good and evil is a moral concept. Unless you believe in moral realism (which you would have a hard time proving) then yes, we did invent evil. You could probably snag yourself a Nobel Prize if you could prove morality is objective and that animals have an awareness of it.

> why don't we eat dogs and mutes and the mentally handicapped?

This is exactly the kind of point you would have to bite the bullet on if you were to be logically consistent and made arguments for meat eating being ok because you believe animals are intellectually/morally inferior. If you believe a cow is ok to eat because they are not as smart then you would have to be ok (being logically consistent) with eating anything that is not as smart as you such as the mentally handicapped.

This comment is a fantastic example demonstrating why everyone hates vegans[1]. I'm all for everyone being more aware of where and how their food is made. If you come out of it choosing not to consume certain categories, that's fantastic. But the moment you start demonizing others for not making the same choices as you, you become an anti-social and dislikable person, and one that's not conducive to building a better society that moves forward positively. (This applies to politics and the woke movement too)

[1]: generalizing obviously

The dislikable and anti-social part is, in the end, just because they make feel the rest of us guilty. Very few people would say with a straight face "Yeah, I like that humans farm and kill animals so I can enjoy a juicier dish". All of us omnivores do that, but only few ones will face that reality happily. The rest of us will just blame the messenger.

>The dislikable and anti-social part is, in the end, just because they make feel the rest of us guilty.

Speak for yourself. When I hear vegans try to act like I'm a horrible person on par with people that murder humans like someone did elsewhere in this thread, I don't feel guilty. I simply thing its a ridiculous thing for them to say.

I'm going to leave it at that because unlike that person I don't feel the need to say inflammatory things to someone that has made different choices about what they want to eat.

I'm all for ensuring that animals are treated as well as possible and for regulating the industry to ensure that happens. When I hear about people doing abusive things to livestock I get as mad as any vegan. It should be severely punished.

I can also get behind the idea that we should eat less meat. Its healthier and I can easily see the point that eating a large amount of meat for every single meal like a lot of Americans do it needlessly gratuitous.

Some of my favorite meals are vegetarian meals, but I mean like chickpea or lentil curry and stuff like that. Fake/simulated/lab grown/artificial food is going to be a hard pass for me until it gets good enough to be indistinguishable from the real thing.

Actually, most people throughout human history have done just that. Being squeamish about seeing animals getting killed is a pretty modern development, at least outside nobility.

And even today, most people in the world likely still participate occasionally in the slaughter of animals, as this is still routine in all rural areas of the world, even in the US and Europe.

Yeah, I perfectly know. But at the same time we used to beat children (and in some places and some persons still do) to educate them and now this is not welcomed anymore. So, society changes, morality changes over time, things we didn't do, now we do. Things we didn't have the tech to do, now we do have and that can lead to further changes in our morality.

On the contrary, a lot of people are fine with it. That's why most people don't think about it much.

I don't have any real data to prove my point but I think that many people would not like to watch how a cow is killed and transformed into steak. But nobody has problem watching as someone picks apples from a tree, or how a press creates olive oil.

As long as it's not one of those halal killings, I don't see a problem. Bullet to the head, done. I've rotated spit roast as a child and didn't find it creepy.

This is not at all how it’s done. I encourage you to watch footage of how cows are killed in factory farms.

It often takes several attempts to kill the cow, even with a bullet to the head. Their throats are often slit while they are alive. There is pleeenty of footage of exactly this in Dominion. I suggest you watch it.

Well that sucks, not how we did it when I was a kid.

I'm a vegan and I try to be respectful to non-vegans and their choices but moral decisions implicitly contain moral judgements. If I think eating animals is wrong and you eat animals there is no way around me thinking that you are doing something wrong. I don't need to harangue you about it, which in any case is not at all effective as a method of persuasion, but usually I don't need to for people not to like it. I expect most of the anger towards vegans is because of that implicit (and to be fair in the case of some vegans explicit) moral judgement.

Opposition to an assertion--and make no mistake, it's purely an assertion--of moral superiority isn't anger. Reaction to haranguing born of that same assertion can be anger, but that's a different matter.

I think if the 'campaigning vegan' spent more time trying to espouse the virtues of reducing meat intake than the, frankly, bullying approach I often see, I suspect they'd have a larger impact on the issues they feel are important.

A statement like:

   "Have you thought of eating meat one day less per week?"

Followed by:

   "benefits the climate because..."

or:

    "Have you thought of buying your meat from <insert local farm with good animal welfare>"

followed by:

    "benefits the animal because..."

Is a lot more likely to have a positive impact over:

    "you're the same as a murderer"

Perhaps, just perhaps, the meatatarian would realise that the non-meaty food they have one day per week is pretty good, and worth expanding to more days. Even these small changes could have a positive impact on animal welfare and climate if enough of us did it.

People don't hate vegans. They hate preachy jerks. Hyper bacon eaters are just as annoying. Nobody wants to talk about your religion, no matter what it is.

serious question to consider it from the other side: if a/the holocaust was occurring in your country and people turned a blind eye to it, would you softly ask those propping it up to discontinue or would you be more empassioned about it? This is the view that some vegans have with respect to the current treatment of animals. Whether you choose to acknowledge it that way or not, I can completely understand why some people adopt "bullying" tactics, conciously or not, especially when some people palm them off as "hippies" or the like

Well... look up things like “cow eating chicken” or “deer eating bird” on YouTube. Not saying it’s common, but “never” is perhaps too strong a word. And of course I really meant it in a larger sense, not the direct ruminant/person relationship.

I've seen a cow eating the carcass of another cow before. Kind of fascinating and morbid at the same time.

Why morbid? Even cute and fluffy little critters like rabbits will happily go specifically after flowers with bugs in them if given the chance.

The circle of life is far more complicated than herbivores/carnivores and many animals will happily grab a meaty snack if opportunity arises.

Oh because it was in the middle of a drought, and it was pretty clear that the only reason that it was eating meat was due to a severe lacking of anything else to eat

Droughts are horrifying. Animals will simply do what they need to in order to stay alive.

The scary part is that droughts are getting more common.

Those are exceptions, should not change view based on that. No animal can harm humans like we do others.

There are animals that harm humans (and other animals) in much worse ways, most notably parasites.

This is such an untenable moral ground... The death we offer animals is orders of magnitude better than nature subjects them to, almost without exception.

If we could offer them a better life as well, as we once did, I would have 0 moral qualms about our meat eating.

I don't necessarily agree with the earlier poster but how we slaughter the animals isn't really the issue they have. If aliens came and promised to provide for you for your whole life but on your 30th birthday they would kill you painlessly would you take that deal? What gives us the right to impose that kind of deal on other living beings?

Cows are opportunistic omnivorous and will eat meat if its small enough to be swallowed whole. They don't have much of an instinct to hunt, they not have the teeth to cut large animals into parts, nor do they have the stomach acid or immune system to eat partially rotten meat. There is nothing however to stop them from eating small amount of fresh meat, such as the very young of other animals and insects.

Farmers raising livestock are diabolically evil merchants of death? I usually reserve that level of vitriol for the military industrial complex, global arms dealers, etc... not a family with some cows...

I've been feeling more conflicted about consuming meat lately, but it's blanket assertions like this that trigger my inner libertarian hard, and I come out swinging. There is considerable evidence suggesting meat consumption contributed significantly to our cerebral expansion (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/701477?mob...). Unlike most great apes today, whose diet is primarily plant based, we can thank the incredible nutrient density in meat and our incredible hunting and tool creating ability for prefrontal cortex development. Humans are alpha predators, more so than any other animal in the world. We were pack hunters, forging tools and strategies capable of taking down mammoths. Call it 'diabolicaly evil' if you want, but this is simply nature and survival. Eat solely plants without supplementation and you will become deficient in B12 and iron (amongst other things, contributing to early age mortality). I don't personally believe highly processed plant alternatives such as Beyond meat are a long term option if you're even vaguely interested in your own health. So call me evil, I see myself as a pragmatist, more in touch with nature than you are. I recognize the alpha predator in myself. I lift weights, consume lean, well sourced and organic meat. I've hunted and eaten what I've killed as my forebears. I'm resilient and healthy. If that makes me diabolical I'll take it.

Human evolution is poorly understood, and the assumption that any choice $X supposedly made by early humans led to our forefathers’ anamolously rapid brain development is flatly speculative.

> Unlike most great apes today, whose diet is primarily plant based, we can thank the incredible nutrient density in meat and our incredible hunting and tool creating ability for prefrontal cortex development.

Complete and utter speculation.

> We were pack hunters, forging tools and strategies capable of taking down mammoths. Call it 'diabolicaly evil' if you want, but this is simply nature and survival.

Subsistence hunting amongst early human tribes is not comparable to modern day factory farming in any conceivable way.

B12 doesn’t come from eating plants OR animals: it comes from bacteria, and ironically that bacteria is in such short supply on factory farms that the animals need to be injected with synthetic B12.

> I don't personally believe highly processed plant alternatives such as Beyond meat are a long term option if you're even vaguely interested in your own health.

I eat raw soybeans, legumes, grains, nuts and seeds. I’d recommend watching the documentary Forks Over Knives [1] if you care about your personal health, and the documentary Dominion [2], if you’d like to see what really happens on factory farms.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtnlwqEii2I

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko

Whether that specifically is speculation or not, it is a fact that we have adapted to live off of both meat and plants, and are some of the best known generalists (in terms of adaptation), among large land-dwelling animals. Other apes are much better at specific things that help them do what they do (specialists). We're just different, and we gradually became to be that way. There are specially adapted humans as well, less-speculatively as a result of rare rich protein sources like fish, milk. By extension, it's also probably inarguable that certain groups of people would have disappeared completely had it not been for the capability of them to adapt, bioculturally, to a changing world or simply changing circumstances. By saying their claim about meat and big brains is "Complete and utter speculation", you're at least implying that there's very little substance to the claim, and that you have a better explanation with more than a documentary to point to. But why is it that we're not competing with other apes at this moment? Why are we well-adapted to eat animals? Do you have a more substantial proposition?

Zero speculation regarding the diets of chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas (well studied and documented) [1].

[2] B12 sources up until it was possible to synthesize in the 60s were exclusively from animal products. Also, if you're even vaguely predisposed to anemia, you will likely struggle getting enough hema-available iron from plant sources without supplementation.

Glad you are able to live off of entirely soybeans, legumes, grains, nuts and seeds. For a lot of people, this isn't sustainable. Would love to see your bloods, discuss athletic performance and energy.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/diet-and-primate-....

[2] https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminB12-HealthProfessio....

Actually, there are top of the line athletes with a vegan diet. It's not very popular, but that is probably because being vegan is not popular. The B12 source argument has recently been solved as well. Most animals source their B12 from micro-organisms in the soil. If humans stop washing their food excessively, this would fix the B12 intake problem.

I am pretty certain GP was objecting to the meat-based diet being responsible for

> prefrontal cortex development

Raw soybeans are pretty toxic

I don't have a problem with eating meat.

I think hunting might be one of the most ethical ways consume meat.

I have a problem with factory farming because I feel like the amount of suffering involved is disproportionately high compared to other methods.

I also have a problem with the negative environmental externalities of big agriculture.

Alternatively it has been suggested that harnessing fire to cook our food was the breakthrough that allowed that cerebral expansion. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cooking-up-bigger...

Colon cancer risk is increased by 28% due to excessive consumption of red meat.

> Herbivorous ruminants like cows would never eat you

You can find YouTube videos of cows eating chickens.

Good point except we are the woke moral and intelligent beings?

That’s a pretty compelling argument of course.

The nature argument falls apart quicker because we're mainly talking about the massive animal breeding complex we have built where we force breed billions of animals specifically to kill them. If a cow could kill you (in self defense), they would, but most of these cows are never given the chance.