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The moral hand is a metaphor of five basic ethical principles, one for each finger, summarizing a complete, coherent ethic. It is the result of my PhD-research on animal equality (http://stijnbruers.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/born-free-and-equal-on-the-ethical-consistency-of-animal-equality/), so I will apply the moral hand to the problem of the consumption of animal products. First, the five principles.

-The thumb: rule universalism. You must follow the rules that everyone (who is capable, rational and informed) must follow in all morally similar situations. You may follow only the rules that everyone (who is capable, rational and informed) may follow in all morally similar situations. Prejudicial discrimination is immoral. We should give the good example, even if others don’t. Just like we have to place the thumb against the other fingers in order to grasp an object, we have to apply the principle of universalism to the other four basic principles.

-The forefinger: justice and the value of lifetime well-being. Increase the well-being (over a complete life) of all sentient beings alive in the present and the future, whereby improvements of the worst-off positions (the worst sufferers, the beings who have the worst lives) have a strong priority. Lifetime well-being is the value you would ascribe when you would live the complete life of a sentient being, and is a function of all positive (and negative) feelings that are the result of (dis)satisfaction of preferences: of everything (not) wanted by the being.

-The middle finger: the mere means principle and the basic right to bodily autonomy. Never use the body of a sentient being as merely a means to someone else’s ends, because that violates the right to bodily autonomy. The two words “mere means” refer to two conditions, respectively: 1) if you force a sentient being to do or undergo something that the being does not want in order to reach an end that the sentient being does not share, and 2) if the body of that sentient being is necessary as a means for that end, then you violate the basic right. A sentient being is a being who has developed the capacity to want something by having positive and negative feelings, and who has not yet permanently lost this capacity. The middle finger is a bit longer than the forefinger, and so the basic right is a bit stronger than the lifetime well-being (e.g. the right to live). The basic right can only be violated when the forefinger principle of well-being is seriously threatened.

-The ring finger: naturalness and the value of biodiversity. If a behavior violates the forefinger or middle finger principles, the behavior is still allowed (but not obligatory) only if that behavior is both natural (a direct consequence of spontaneous evolution), normal (frequent) and necessary (important for the survival of sentient beings). As a consequence predators (animals who need meat in order to survive) are allowed to hunt. Just as lifetime well-being is the value of a sentient being, biodiversity is the value of an ecosystem and is a function of the variation of life forms and processes that are a direct consequence of natural evolution. The valuable biodiversity would drastically decrease if a behavior that is natural, normal and necessary would be universally prohibited (universally, because you have to put the thumb against the ring finger).

-The little finger: tolerated partiality and the value of personal relationships. Just as the little finger can deviate a little bit from the other fingers, a small level of partiality is allowed. When helping others, you are allowed to be a bit partial in favor of your loved ones, as long as you are prepared to tolerate similar levels of partiality of everyone else (everyone, because you have to put the thumb against the little finger).

The forefinger, middle finger, ring finger and little finger correspond with resp. a welfare ethic, a rights ethic, an environmental ethic and an ethic of care.

These five fingers produce five principles of equality.

-The thumb: the formal principle of impartiality and antidiscrimination. We should treat all equals equally in all equal situations. We should not look at arbitrary characteristics linked to individuals. This is a formal principle, because it does not say how we should treat someone. The other four principles are material principles of equality. They have specific content and are generated when the thumb is applied to the four fingers.

-The forefinger: prioritarian equality of lifetime well-being (the principle of priority for the worst-off). As a result of this priority, we have an egalitarian principle: if total lifetime well-being is constant between different situations, then the situation which has the most equal distribution of well-being is the best.

-The middle finger: basic right equality. All sentient beings (with equal levels of morally relevant mental capacities) get an equal claim to the basic right not to be used as merely a means to someone else’s ends.

-The ring finger: naturalistic behavioral fairness. All natural beings (who contribute equally to biodiversity) have an equal right to a behavior that is both natural, normal and necessary (i.e. a behavior that contributes to biodiversity). Natural beings are beings evolved by evolution. E.g. if a prey is allowed to eat in order to survive, a predator is allowed to do so as well (even if it means eating the prey).

-The little finger: tolerated choice equality. Everyone is allowed to be partial to an equal degree that we can tolerate. If you choose to help individual X instead of individual Y, and if you tolerate that someone else would choose to help Y instead of X, then X and Y have a tolerated choice equality (even if X is emotionally more important for you than Y).

The five moral fingers can be applied to the production and consumption of animal products (meat, fish, eggs, dairy, leather, fur,…):

-The forefinger: compared to humans, livestock animals are in the worst-off position due to suffering and early death. The loss of lifetime well-being of the livestock animals is worse than the loss of well-being that humans would experience when they are no longer allowed to consume animal products. Livestock and fisheries violate the forefinger principle of well-being.

-The middle finger: the consumption of animal products almost always involves the use of animals as merely means, hence violating the mere means principle of the middle finger.

-The ring finger: animal products are not necessary for humans, because well-planned vegan diets are not unhealthy (according to the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics). Biodiversity will not decrease when we would stop consuming animal products (on the contrary, according to UN FAO the livestock sector is likely the most important cause of biodiversity loss). Hence, the value of biodiversity cannot be invoked to justify the consumption of animal products.

-The little finger: we would never tolerate the degree of partiality that is required to justify livestock farming and fishing. Hence, tolerated partiality cannot be invoked to justify the consumption of animal products.

It follows that veganism is ethically consistent, and the production and consumption of animal products are ethically inconsistent.

-The thumb: give the good example, even when other people continue consuming animal products. From this principle, it follows that veganism is a moral duty.

i don't want to look like chinese peasant from the year 1850

My cats would be quite upset if I'd try to introduce them to vegan stuff. I can't imagine what they would say if I'd tell them that they are equal with mice and birds in the garden so let's eat fruits, seeds and welcome the rats with a big hug :).

I think guys like OP have too much food and spare time so they seceded from biology and reality... and they refer this mental state as "moral high ground".

why should that be?
I value simplicity, but we should not oversimpligy things.


I don't see why a theory should be flawed if it can't be expressed in one sentence. We don't require such a condition for a scientific theory. But perhaps the following will do:
"Do not discriminate" or
"Do not arbitrarily say that what someone wants is more important than what someone else wants."
But still, a lot of commentary is required...

my moral hand system is mostly a repackaging of some traditions in ethics, adding some refinements and clarifications. The new thing is that it is the simplest collection of principles that best fits our shared and strongest moral intuitions and values.

yes, the theory of the five principles can stand on its own without the need of a metaphor of a hand. The metaphor is rather a tool to memorize the five principles.

first of all, nowadays there exists vegan cat food that is sifficientky healthy and tasty for cats. And if such vegan cat food did not exist, the ring finger principle says that cats are allowed to hunt and eat mice. Because if a cat was not allowed to eat for survival, then no-one is, and then a lot of valuable biodiversity (at least all obligate carnivores) goes extinct.

livestock industry is a waste of food. We can feed more people with a plant-based diet.
Saying that someone who is against discriminatory rights violations (such as slavery or rape) has too much spare time, doesn't make any sense. A scientific or ethical theory doesn't become invalid or unreliable if the researcher had too much spare time.
Where did I secede from biology and reality?

this I didn't understand

I was a little confused by the use of a metaphor. You used hands because there are five points, yes?
It would have been just as useful with the points numbered, the fingers just seemed gimmicky to me.

As for veganism, if the whole world went vegan,it would be good for co2 emissions and food production levels, but it isn't going to happen. I won't stop eating meat, nor will billions of others. Eating a complete vegan diet is difficult, those who say it isn't are lying.

well, if you see some overcomplications in my system of the moral hand... At least I consciously tried to make the system as simple as possible, but it still has to match our moral intuitions and values. It's like in science: you can stick to a very simple theory of newtonian gravity, but that is an oversimplification because it does not match the empirical data. Moral intuitions in ethics are like empirical data in science. Some intuitions and some data are unreliable, but our ethical principles and scientific laws should correspond with respectively the most reliable moral intuitions and empirical data.

this I don't understand. What do you mean with spiritual things and the lower?
I started with basic moral intuitions and values, and from them I constructed a system of ethical principles. Like a scientist starts with data and constructs a system of scientific laws.

I guess the moral intuitions are non-verbal?

That's too easy to say... If you disagree, you'd better come up with an argument.

I think the moral hand is sufficiently developed to be communicated. I wanted to create a coherent ethical system because I wanted to make sure that moral rules like veganism are consistent. If there were no good arguments for veganism, it would be immoral of me to convince you to become vegan, because that would take away liberty without good reason. But know we have good reasons to take away the liberty to consume animal products. Taking away that liberty is fully justifiable because it is backed up by a coherent ethical system that best fits your moral intuitions and values.


I think my moral hand demonstrates that it can

no, just like there has never been a mathematical/geometric system that cured your optical illusions. You are still vulnerable to optical illusions such as the Muller-Lyer illusion about lengths of line segments. But that does not mean that there can be no coherent geometric system like Eiclidean geometry. In the same way you can still suffer from moral illusions such as speciesism (http://stijnbruers.wordpress.com/2011/05/29/speciesism-and-moral-illusions/), even if there exists coherent ethical systems.

so, mathematicians should stop studying euclidean geometry because geometry does not work in avoiding erroneous judgments like optical illusions?

as far as I know, all religions have incoherent ethical systems.

This guy was a vegetarian and protector of animal rights:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Adolf_Hitler-1933.jpg

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correct

well, the metaphor goes a bit further than that. The thumb (rule universalism) is an abstract principle because it does not say which situations are morally similar. To answer the question which situations count as similar, we need the other principles, the other fingers. Metaphorically speaking: with only a thumb we cannot yet grasp anything. With only the thumb principle we cannot yet grasp a moral problem.
The middle finger is longer than the forefinger, which means that the basic right is a bit stronger than well-being. For example: we should not sacrifice a person, kill him against his will and use five of his organs to save the lives of five patients in the hospital when there is a shortage of organs. So the right not to be killed and used against your will as a means to someone else's ends is at least five times stronger than the right not to die against your will. But the middle finger is not infinitely long: the basic right is not absolute.
And the little finger refers to a small deviation from the other fingers, to a small level of partiality that we should tolerate.

the more people eat vegan, the easier it becomes. The only difficulty in our societies is the group pressure from non-vegans. That is the main reason why vegans experience difficulties. Practically speaking, veganism is easier: less expensive (meat is expensive), more healthy (meat has more saturated fats and bad cholesterol), sufficiently tasty and diverse (in the supermarket and health food stores I can buy then different kinds of plant-based milk) and more hygienic. Meat is contaminated with pathogens; you don't run the risk of a food poisoning when you don't cook your vegan sausages. So, cooking vegan is in fact easier than cooking meat.

1) Hitler was not an ethical vegetarian, and not even a vegetarian.
2) He also did not protect the rights of jews, so he was not consistent in protecting animal rights. (jews belong to the species Homo sapiens, who belong to the class of mammals, who belong to the kingdom of animals)
3) It is true that some other nazi's had some sympathies with non-human animal rights, but they were not consistent either.
4) Hitler was against the rape of Arian women. So some ideas of Hitler were good, and the fact that Hitler had those ideas is not evidence that those ideas are less reliable. Rape of Arian women is wrong, even if Hitler was right on this point.   

The whole basis for this kind of thinking is flawed. The flaw lies in the fact that man is not of the animal kingdom, although people are similar to animals.

God spoke the animals into existence. God didn't make man in this simple fashion. God formed man out of the dust of the ground (chemicals of the earth) and breathed into him the breath of life. Man is different than the animals, though of similar physical structure in many ways.

At first, before there were mistakes made in this world, people were instructed to eat of the plants (except for the fruit of one particular tree, that they were instructed not to eat).

Then later, long after mistakes came into the world (the original perpetual nature of the universe was destroyed), God gave the animals to man for food along with the plants. However, after it was shown that man misused the animals in ways that were unfair, God, also, instructed people to use their animals fairly. This would include a quick, painless death for the animals that man is going to consume as food.

If you don't include the things that God has done with man, you will miss the truth.

:)

Really? I can't remember a single incident of meat eaters giving a vegetarian flack for choosing to not eat meat. I can however remember endless incidents of vegans trying to push their lifestyle onto meat eaters, and then act as if they were minding their own business when they are told to fuck off and mind their own affairs as they wag their finger at omnivores as if they occupy some kind of moral high ground. Veganism is more of a cult than a dietary choice.


I thought I was going to find at least one logical argument against eating meat in here like for example how much grain and water has to be used for every pound of meat you eat, therefore reducing the available food supply by that much more, but no. All I read was a bunch of ideological drivel. Your diet is not a question of morality, and just because you eat plants and twigs doesn't make you any better than anyone else. Hitler was an environmentalist and a vegan too. IMO this type of ideology is often just anti-humanism disguised as some new agey spiritualist bullshit. Now take your malnourished ass back out the door you came in from and find some more cult members so you can reassure each other of your moral superiority.

well, I think the whole basis for that is flawed: there is no evidence that God created man. There is plenty of evidence that humans evolved from non-human ancestors, that humans and non-human animals have common ancestors, and that no clear dividing line can be drawn between humans and non-human animals. Looking at our ancestors, all intermediates between a human and a chicken once lived. And there is a possibility of human-animal hybrids, chimaeras and genetically modified humanlike beings. In other words; there is no essence related to homo sapiens.
Basing ypu erhics on religious beliefs about creation is very dangerous, because it is very arbitrary to believe in those things and not in other religious beliefs that have the same lack of evidence. Why God and not Krishna, Tohr, Osiris, Quetzal or whatever? Why the Bible and not the Bhagavat Gita or whatever?

yes, acoording to the story, God made everyone vegan, even lions. But why did he put that particular tree in the middle of the garden of eden? Why did God ask for problems? If he didn't want humans to eat its fruits, why did he make it so tempting and easy for humans?

which is an odd move of God. Humans did something wrong and therefore God said that they are from then on allowed to harm innocents? Why did he make a vegan world in the first place? Why did God suddenly turned 180°? A bit crazy.

and God also said that we should not consume a single drop of blood. Which is impossible unless you're vegetarian.

well, the Christian God has an incoherent ethic. He is inconsistent. And he does terrible, highly immoral things. He's like the emperor in star wars who said (referring to the genocides he initiated in Jericho and other cities): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmVyUdHtxbU

do you know how group pressure works? I was refering to groupthink or conformity bias (http://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/conformity-bias), as was demonstrated in the experiments of social psychologist Solomon Asch and others

well, ethical vegans are at the moral high ground. Meat eaters are really pushing their lifestyle way too far on others, when they even kill and eat others just for taste. Not harming someone, not subjecting someone in slavery, not raping someone, not killing and eating someone are not mere lifestyle choices. And yes, the rapist responds that I should not push my anti-rape lifestyle on him. But it is he who pushes his pro rape lifestyle on his female victims.


and what is wrong with the given argument that you should not use someone else against his will as merely a means, that your body belongs to you and no-one else, and that counts equally for everyone, without any arbitrary exceptions? What about the argument that lifetime well-being is what matters and that livestock farming decreases someone's lifetime well-being? What would you prefer: not being able anymore to eat someone else, or being killed and eaten by someone else? You prefer the former, so that indicates the importance of the interests at stake.
You do agree that we are not allowed to choose our victims arbitrarily, that someone else's muscle tissue belongs to that individual and that we cannot claim his or her muscle tissue, and that we should no do something that someone else seriously dislikes.

it is, because a meat based diet harms others, and morality is about not harming others.

 
but the act of eating plants is better than the act of eating someone's muscle tissue. You do agree with that, I hope.

he was not even a vegetarian. And I have a different notion of environmentalism.
But suppose he was a vegan: do you have any idea how irrelevant that would be? It's like the rapist who responds to the anti-rape activist by saying that Hitler did not rape anyone.
Why do you give such highly irrelevant (and even incorrect, as Hitler was not vegan) statements?

 like the rapists who says that all this anti-rape talk is anti-androcentrism (anti-male)
It is not new agey spiritual bullshit, because you agree with my starting points. You agree that discrimination is wrong, that mentally disabled humans have an intrinsic right not to be used against their will as merely a means for food,...
Here is another argulentation scheme for veganism
http://stijnbruers.wordpress.com/2013/08/17/argumentation-scheme-veganism-2/
If you disagree with the moral conclusion that we should eat vegan, then you should be able to point at an assumption in the argument that you reject.

 that sounds like an ad hominem. You lose credibility if you give fallacies in a discussion.

It's still disputed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler_and_vegetarianism).

In 1931 Hitler proposed a ban to vivisection, and it was enacted when he came to power. He signed a Reichstierschutzgesetz (i.e. Reich Animal Protection Act) in 1933.

yes, and some sources claim he wasn't vegetarian http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/hitler.html
I guess we will never know the truth. Luckily, the truth doesn't matter here.

yes, the nazi's had (for those days) very progressive animal and environmental protection laws. Not really consistent with what they did to jews. But at least we learn again that not everything is black or white. Even the nazi's did some good things or abstained from doing some bad things.

seriously now: when refering to Hitler's diet, what argument did you really try to make? Can you explain the logic of your argument, and the point you wanted to make? It seems you wanted to make an argument against vegetarianism, but that would be strange, because it would be an obvious fallacy. So what were your intentions? 

First of all, I could give a shit less what your diet consists of, until you try to force me to share your beliefs (and diet) too. No one is attempting to stop you from being vegan. To be clear, let me get this right.... You are saying eating meat is equivalent to rape and slavery?  


By "someone", "individual", and  "victims", you mean an animal correct? By "arbitrary exceptions" you mean the difference between humans and animals correct?


Again, by "others" do you mean animals?

No. There are a lot of reasons eating meat in moderation is more nutritional than most vegetable matter.

This is under dispute. Your notion of environmentalism is irrelevant. The reason Hitler being a vegan is relevant is because it demonstrates that some of the most twisted antihuman reasoning and actions can be delivered under a platform of moral authority. As far as your fascination with rape, your gynocentric neo-feminist brainwashing is showing.


If you are going to use big words like "androcentrism", please learn their definitions first.
andro = male
centrism = centrally oriented

Therefore androcentrism means a male focused world view. The word you invented anti-androcentrism would therefore mean "against a male oriented central viewpoint", and I am not sure why a rapist would be arguing against a male centric viewpoint, but thats ok. This is just one of those double negative word games that disingenuous people such as yourself like to play so that no matter how one replies the response will be guaranteed to be nonsense. What is your obsession with rape by the way?

As far as your other comments, are you saying disabled humans are equivalent to animals? Who is eating disabled people?

I don't disagree with your personal choice to be vegan. I disagree with your application of moral value to your dietary choices, and your resulting grandstanding as if you hold a moral high ground because of it in a pathetic attempt to shame meat eaters into adopting your worldview while simultaneously claiming meat eaters are pressuring you to not be vegan.


Take it however you like, I find it to be a most likely accurate observation. I also am willing to bet you live somewhere in western Europe, like The Netherlands, or perhaps Sweden where this brand of brainwashing is all too common.

that's like the rapist who responds to the judge: "No one is attempting to push you to rape someone"

yes. And if I look at your basic moral intuitions and judgments, you have to come to the same conclusion. You think rape and slavery are very bad, and the very reason why they are bad, according to you, is the same reason why eating meat is bad. Rape is very bad because someone's body (someone's vagina) belongs to that individual and not to you, so you should not use someone's body in a way that she strongly dislikes. The same can be said about someone's muscle tissue.

yes. or a woman, in the case of rape.

yes

in this context: yes

vegan diets can be nutritionally adequate for all humans: http://www.eatright.org/About/Content.aspx?id=8357


it rather might have demonstrated that hitler did not do 100% bad things.
You refer to antihuman, but reference to humans is morally arbitrary. You and I are as much primate and as much mammal as we are human. So when you speak about antihuman, you could as well use antimammal or anti dry nosed primate. And if you are white, you could have said antiwhite.

what do you mean with that? My fascination with rape? Gynocentric brainwashing?



then how did you use the word antihuman?
Of course the rapist would not argue against a male centric viewpoint. I was comparing it with your claim. A meat eater says that anti meat talk is anti human. Well, than a rapist says that anti rape talk is anti male. You see the analogy? It is an analogy between two fallacious argumants.

that it is bad. But that is not an obsession. So what do you mean with an obsession, and why do you believe i'm obsessed with rape?


yes. If you disagree, than give me a morally relevant difference betwene those humans and non-human animals. But you can't give that, because from the 1000+ people i spoke with (including philosophers, slaughterhouse workers, anti-animal rights people,...) no-one could give a relevant difference.

no-one, because that is immoral.

you can hide behind words like "personal choice" or "lifestyle", but you do know that abstaining from harming (eating, raping,...) someone is not merely a matter of personal choice.

conformity bias does not mean there is an intentional, conscious or overt pressure from the group. Cfr the experiment of Asch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments The group members did not overtly or consciously pressure the subject to give the wrong answer.

including "malnourished"? That's a factual claim, and you don't even know me. You do not know what I eat and what kinds of physical activities I do. So where is your evidence that I'm malnourished?

Belgium
But why do you use the word brainwahsing? Give me some evidence that this is brainwashed. And first give a definition, what you mean with brainwashing.

Please FFS, learn to use the quoting system and don't be so lazy. I am tired of cleaning up the mess you call a reply just so I can respond point by point, but I will do it regardless out of pure spite of your willingness to push your ignorant twisted mental state upon others.


What in the hell are you on about? More rape ffs  ::)


I agree, rape and slavery are bad. I do not agree that animals and humans are equivalent, and this type of logic, BY DEFAULT is antihuman, because it automatically lowers all human beings to the status of barn animals under this dialectic. That is a good way to justify the subservience, neglect, and slaughter of humans while you cry about the rights of cows and chickens.


Again with the rape! You really don't believe this is obsessive behavior bringing rape into a discussion about veganism so many times? This is what I mean by antihuman. By making all animals equivalent with humans, suddenly all humans also become equivalent with animals, and it becomes a MUCH simpler task to justify bringing humanity to slaughter or other forms of maltreatment. Sociopaths and psychopaths are often known to be animal lovers too, not because they have a capacity to love in reality, but because they are of the belief that humans are just walking meat puppets at their disposal that deserve punishment, however an animal is innocent of human sin therefore they feel no need to hate the animal like they do other humans.


I don't think the majority of humans on Earth would find this an arbitrary distinction. If animals were equivalent to humans they would be joining in this discussion here with us. So far I haven't heard from any pigs or cattle.


Again your premise that meat based diets harms "others" is based on the premise that animals are equivalent to humans. Plants are a life form too. Why are not plants included in your generalization of "others"? Are plants not harmed when you consume them as well? Is that not also destroying life to provide yourself nutrition?


The key words you used are "can be", as in if you scoured the globe for the finest plants and cultivated your own food painstakingly, as well as eat plant matter nearly all day long, and spend the rest of your time crapping, then yes, veganism "can be" nutritionally adequate. That doesn't make it realistic for the majority of humans just because it is possible.


So you are using the glass half full argument for Hitler? Yeah your right, he may have committed genocide against millions of people, but at least he treated goats with respect. Again your argument against my use of the word antihuman depends completely upon the premise that humans are equal to animals. They are not. Additionally your attempt to muddy the discussion with neo-feminist and racial talking points is a quite disingenuous attempt to attach moral authority to your argument, as if anyone who disagrees with you is a racist, sexist, or even worse a slave owning rapist.


I mean that you packed so many talking points used by politically motivated neo-feminist groups that it is completely transparent to me that you must spend a lot of time around these types of people being continually indoctrinated to the point where you can't help but have those ideas that were driven into your head via repetitive conditioning leak out during an unrelated discussion about your dietary choices. Furthermore you clearly seem to be attempting to use it as a shaming tactic. Frankly, I feel bad for you. I assume you are male (I may be wrong), but if not then very clearly you have had your own gender identity stolen from you and replaced with politically motivated indoctrination substitute designed to bring your subservience and slavery. Even if I am wrong about this and you are in fact a female, I still feel bad for you, because you have no idea how much harm you are bringing down upon all females (and males for that matter) by repeating such divisive politically motivated ignorance.


human = homo sapiens
anti = in opposition to
antihuman = against homo sapiens

So now you are comparing me with a rapist, but me calling you malnourished is a personal attack? Your analogy ONCE AGAIN relies COMPLETELY on the premise that animals are equal to humans. I understand what you are trying to communicate with me but your premise is fallacy therefore all analogies based on it are false.



Well, you only used the word rape 15 times in a discussion about veganism... that does appear a little obsessive.



Your willful ignorance of the arguments of others counter to your world view is not evidence of lack of arguments against it. I have one simple proof. There are no non homo sapiens animals engaging in this discussion here today because they are unable. Therefor animals can not be equivalent to humans.



Well that is good to know. I still wonder why you brought it up then if it is a nonexistent problem.



Again, eating a hamburger is not equivalent to rape regardless of however you justify it in your twisted and abused mind.  Once again your analogy rests upon the fallacious premise that animals are equivalent to humans.



I am not even going to attempt to address this pathetic appeal to authority fallacy.



I don't know you personally no. I have however known several people who talk just like you and preach veganism as if it was a lost book of the bible, and none of them ever looked very healthy to me.




By brainwashing I mean you have been conditioned mentally to have beliefs counter to facts, reality, and probably some times even your own once organically held beliefs. You have become a vessel for others to use to spread their political ideology, and chances are you have no awareness of this. In your mind you are just saying what you think is the truth, but unfortunately the people who told you this is the truth are liars. My evidence is that you used the word rape 15 times in a discussion about veganism. The gynocentric neo-feminist movement is completely obsessed with using rape as a tool of shaming against all men, rapist or not as a form of trauma based control, shaming you via negative operant conditioning to speak as if all males are potential rapists.

If anyone denies this position, they are automatically defending rape. It is much like asking some one the question "So when did you stop beating your wife?". The question involves the assumed premise that the person being asked beats their wife, and if it were to be replied to directly would either appear as if he still continues to beat his wife, or that he used to beat his wife but has now stopped. In short you are placing everything under the context of rape in order to try to make any argument against your points indefensible without appearing to be defending rape. It is very disingenuous and dishonest.

That's good ^^. Hadn't thought of that one yet.

Actually, was just expressing that which I know by faith... somewhat like you, just different knowledge.



I understand. Much of the interpretation of modern science is, well, simply wrong.



You must be soooo capable because you recognize this.

:)

You are really good. There isn't even bookwork for it... God creating man, that is. Or do you have some? Bible says He made man out of the material that was available.



Wrong. There is only interpretation of a load of evidence.



Yet in all this, there are no provable links, where one form changed itself into another. That is interpretaion, wishful thinking, the stuff children's stories are made out of.



Do I have to say the evidence again?

1. There is a machine-like quality to the operation of the universe, in everything from inanimate objects to complex life. Machines have makers. The evidence for this is that man takes all his machine knowledge from the machine "knowledge" already planted in the universe... all of it. Man juggles the knowledge a bit, and comes up with some new forms of complex machinery. Complex machinery is designed by intelligence. Man hasn't come close to catching up to the complexity of the machinery in the universe. Whatever God is, He is there.

2. There is no pure randomness. Everything that we call random or probability is based on our inability to see the causes for some effects. The whole universe operates on cause and effect and always has. Even the quantum math that has been developed, which might suggest that there is pure random out there somewhere, has been designed using cause and effect thinking. The fact that we humans think the way we do - about everything including science and art - has its base in cause and effect, because something caused us to think the way we do. What is the Great First Cause that caused the chain of effects?

3. Science doesn't have a handle on soul, spirit or consciousness. It is only recently that modern science even considers that they might be real. Yet billions of people around the world using soul/spirit/consciousness/mind believe by them that God exists. Sounds like science is out-dating itself almost before it has a chance to really get started.

4. Stand the history of the various religious writings and traditions side by side. Look at them all in detail. The others are all blown away by the strength of the Bible. The history of the Bible, including the validations for it made by the nation of Israel, shows that the Bible can't exist. There are too many "things" in and about the Bible that make it impossible to exist. Yet it exists among hundreds of millions of people all around the world.



The mistakes were not in the plan. God thinks in such different ways than we that the mistakes were taken into account, automatically, without even having been though about.

God made man in the image of God so that man could recognize how good and great God is. Man could worship, praise, thank, and glorify God spontaneously. The forbidden fruit was another gift to man, so man could glorify God by obeying Him. This is what man was made for. If done correctly, this is where man would excel.



It was not God Who turned. It was man. Part of God's plan always was blessings for man. Among the blessings was freedom of choice.

Man's turning from God was so great that God had it in mind to destroy all mankind. Noah and his family were the only ones who continued to worship God. In the Flood, where God saved Noah and his family, but destroyed the rest of the world, things of the world changed. The world was no longer the healthy place that it had been. Animals were given as food to man because there are times when the kinds of plant life that are suited to man are simply not available in abundance.

This whole thing is not easy to explain.



If a person obeys the whole law of God, yet disobeys in one point, he is guilty of lawlessness = imperfection.

The whole purpose of the law is to benefit man. It isn't a thing to be picky about. The thing to be picky about is the direction in which a person goes in his life... in favor of God, or against Him. Why worry about the little imperfection of eating a few drops of blood, over against the big imperfection of attempting to fight against God?



God's seeming inconsistency is based on the inconsistency of man. God will always help the man who accepts Him, is on His side, believes in the Savior, and proves it by his actions though they are flawed at times. Things are never any other way until people turn against God, and don't turn back. God always helps the people who are sincerely on His side.

:)

of course, but you understand the analogy, I hope...

why do you assume it lowers the position of humans instead of increasing the position of animals? You seem to have a moral gravity bias https://stijnbruers.wordpress.com/2014/08/08/the-moral-gravity-bias/
Humans and animals are equivalent as long as we can't find a morally relevant difference.

being against the slaughet of cow but tolerant toward the slaughter of humans? That would still be arbitrary discrimination, a kind of speciesism, against the claim that humans and animals are morally equivalent.

no, as long as the analogy makes sense, we are allowed to make that analogy. It has nothing to do with obsessive behavior, it has to do with moral consistency and analogical reasoning. That is very important in ethics.

but you should not lower the moral status of humans, that would be immoral. You know that I want to uplift the moral status of non-human animals and that I am against lowering the position of humans, so you don't have to make such straw man fallacies.

 no thet are not. In fact, one of the early warning signs of being a psychopath is animal abuse as a child.

because the majority suffers from a moral illusion called speciesism. There was a time when the majority of whites suffered from a similar kind of moral illusion called racism. Those racists believed that the black-white distinction was not arbitrary.

no, you know that is not true. You know that mentally disabled humans are humans, right? And some of those humans are not able to join this discussion, right? So far you haven't heard from those humans. But they still have basic rights such as the right not to be used as merely a means, right?


it is rather based on the premisse that we should not arbitrarily harm someone.

I respect the basic right of plants not to be used against their will as a means to my ends. I respect their basic right not to be killed against their will. That is because plants do not have a will. No matter what I do, I respect their rights because those rights are trivial for plants. So, the basic right not to be used against your will as merely a means should be given to everyone and everything in the universe, including elektrons, planets, cars, laptops, trees, pigs,... without any arbitrary exceptions. You cannot accuse me of making arbitrary exceptions.

that is clearly not what the nutritional scientists meant with "can be". You don't have to scoure the globe etc. Eating vegan is perfectly feasible.

I don't know where you live, but I bet for you it is as realistic as it is for me. So let's consider our duties, without hiding ourselves behind "the majority of humans".

yes, Hitler was antihuman, because he placed some humans (jews) lower than some animals. So let us suppose that Hitler was like me a real animal rights activist, against all kinds of violence towards animals, against killing them, against vivisection, etc... Let us, for the sake of the argument, suppose this is true. Then, what would happen if Hilter believed that humans are equal to animals? Use your logical reasoning skills. Yes, there would be no holocaust, no war, no racism, no cruel experiments on humans. So that would be good. The problem with Hilter would than be that he did not believe that humans are equal to animals. If only he believed that...
So Hitler was clearly inconsistent: he was against vivisection of animals but pro using some humans (disabled, jews,...) against their will in cruel experiments.

anyone who disagrees is a speciesist. And yes, that is "as if" s/he is racist or sexist. Because both speciesism and racism and sexism are kinds of immoral, arbitrary discriminations that cause harm.

uhm... are you suggesting that my attitute against rape is the result of indoctrination by neo-feminists? But you are also strongly against rape, aren't you?

I am male.
And I don't see the harm I bring down upon females when I communicate my anti-rape attitude


that is similar to what I meant with anti androcentrism: against men.


you do not ahve evidence that I am malnourished, but I do have evidence that you violate someone's basic right by using someone's body against his/her will (by eating his/her muscle tissue). And that is comparable to what a rapist does: using someone's body (vagina) against her will.

As long as you can't give a morally relevant difference between humans and non-humans, we cannot arbitrarily exclude nonhumans from the moral community. The starting assumption is that everyone and everything is morally equal, until there is evidence of moral inequality, i.e. until there is evidence of a morally relevent difference. So please tell me what that difference is.

well, there are no mentally disabled humans engaging in this discussion here today because they are unable. Therefore mentally disabled humans cannot be equivalent to mentally abled humans? Therefore we can use their bodies against their will as means to our ends, for experiments or meat? Do you give basic rights to mentally disabled humans? I hope you do. But then, what is the difference with non-human animals?

necause if you believe eating those humans is immoral whereas eating non-human animals is permissible, and if you are not able to point at a morally relevant difference, then you are guilty of discrimination. And if you are allowed to choose your victims arbitrarily, then so am I and so is everyone. And you cannot want that. If you are allowed to be speciesist, then a rapist is allowed to be sexist.

again, if you don't believe they are equivalent, you have to give a reason, a criterion, a morally relevant difference. Merely making a claim is not sufficient.

authority fallacy?

perhaps this will convince you
https://stijnbruers.wordpress.com/2014/11/20/the-health-benefits-of-vegan-diets/
http://www.greatveganathletes.com/

well at least veganism is not counter to facts, reality and our originally held strongest moral beliefs.

 but no-one told me to use the rape analogy. I used it because it is a valid analogy. Rape is bad because of X (this is a moral judgment you already agree with), eating meat also satisfies X (this is a true fact, whether or not you believe it) and there eating meat is bad. That is a matter of consistency
(X= harm, rights violations, use of body against the will,...)

shaming against all men? As if all males are potential rapists? Trauma based control? What are you talking about? It seems you're making things up. Yo do know that I don't believe that all males are potential rapists.
And almost all feminists are not gynocentric, they don't believe women are more important than men.


or like asking the question "what is your obsession with rape?" The assumed premisse is that the person being asked is obsessed with rape.

it is rather a matter of consistency.

indeed, interpretations, as is always the case when looking at evidence. But in the case of evolution it is an extremely coherent interpretation.

but there are plenty of fossils of intermediate species. With the fossils that are discovered, we can rather clearly see how species evolved. We can see how our ancestors looked like. Some 60 million years ago, our great great... grandfather looked like some kind of squirrel. http://news.discovery.com/animals/zoo-animals/first-human-ancestor-squirrel-121018.htm

but then who created god? If he created our universe, he must be a very complex being...
And what about spontaneous emergence of complexity, such as we see in evolution?

some models about the origing of the universe did not have a beginning and hence were not caused (e.g. Hawking Hartle no-boundary state http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartle%E2%80%93Hawking_state)

and what is the cause of that? What caused god? What caused god to make a causal universe?

soul and spirit are like the life force (elan vital) unscientific terms. But scientists are gaining knowledge on how consciousness works.

so?

so god is not that smart? Even I am smart enough to know that planting a tree with delicious fruits in the middle of the garden of eden, guarded by a seducing talking snake, is asking for problems.

being extremely narcissistic is not my idea of being good...
It sounds silly: "oh, let's make toys that can adore me and see how great I am"


no, God turned. First he created a vegan world, so he was against unecessary suffering. And after someone ate from a forbidden fruit, everyone is allowed to kill and eat someone else and cause unnecessary harm?

then why didn't he create a free world in the first place? A world where everyone is free to kill and eat someone else?


so God killed everyone who did not worship him? That is what an extremely bad dictator does.

he's crazy, this god... Absolutely crazy. Gone mad beyond imagination.

it is easy to explain if we assume god is absolutely crazy...

but it was god who said we are not allowed to eat blood. He says it quite often, so it must be important to him: http://biblehub.com/genesis/9-4.htm

but there are a lot of believers who became victims of war, genocide, earthquakes, disease, bad luck,... So god does not always help the believers. In fact, he quite often does not help. It seems he acts a bit arbitrarily.

Well, you can consider it as a kind of mental vivisection. :)

All evolution coherence is based on "if." What I mean is, when you get down to the basis of it all, the science says "if" this and that are true, then evolution happened. There is no foundation under evolution. Indeed, there are lots of void gaps between the various steps in evolutionary process.



The thing is, nobody knows if those are intermediate species. Which ones are the intermediate ones? Are they all intermediate ones? Perhaps they were all created as individual kind-begets-kind species, and the thing we see today is entropy increasing. More and more of our current species of life are dying out without anything coming in to take their place.



Good questions. God is God. How do we know that He needed creating? We aren't far enough along in our investigations to even begin to view what He is personally like.

Can the ants in the terrarium, or the fish in the fishbowl, envision what the humans that take care and feed them are like?



Again models... filled with holes and gaps... simply because we don't know enough to determine if they are even plausible or not.



Again. We are barely getting an understanding of the way the universe works. And we are scratching the surface of this understanding. How can we understand God Who is eternal and never changes, and lives in light that is unapproachable, and with Whom there is no shadow of turning?



Perhaps I said it not so clear. I meant two things:
1. The Bible can't exist, yet it does. The history of the Bible shows this. Yet, Bibles abound around the world.
2. Non of the other religions approaches this impossibility of existing.



You missed it. God doesn't even think mistakes. God doesn't plan for failures. The failures and mistakes are automatically corrected. The corrections are built in.

The question for each of us is, Will I accept the correction, or will I push myself out of existence by not accepting the correction?



Except that, when you are as good as God, it is the only way to operate.



In the perfect world that God made, there wasn't any suffering. Such a thing as "unnecessary suffering" does not fit that world.

Cannibalism was never condoned.

Animals are not related to people in such a sense that cannibalism would apply.



The idea was to give man the opportunity to be the best that he could be, not to give him the opportunity to fail.



God doesn't want anyone to be destroyed. But, that's how great God is. If people won't do the thing that they were made for, what good are they? Yet, God in His mercy gives them many second chances. And still they won't turn and accept God.



I feel for you. Perhaps when you have the ability to create even the least bit of something, then you can call God crazy. Until then, you don't have the chance of "a nitrocelulos dog chasing an asbestos cat in hell."

Realize that it is not God that is crazy.



View the Youtube videos that show how marvelously a living cell works to see about crazy.



It IS important to Him. He doesn't allow failure in any way, even once. That's why His Son Jesus had to come as man, with the strength of God, to take the punishment for man, so that man can live. Jesus virtually nullified the effects of breaking the law, without nullifying the law itself. Look to Jesus and live.



It is true that a lot of believers get what the unbelievers should be getting in this life, and vice versa. There will come a time when Jesus will return to raise all the dead to life, and to judge everyone with regard to how much right and wrong he did while living. Those who believed in Jesus for salvation will receive eternal life in the New Heavens and the New Earth that God will create (is creating?). Then this whole universe will be destroyed as though it had never been - never remembered or brought to mind.

You are welcome to come along.

:)

there is no evidence that plants have a will (because plants lack a central nervous system...)

for babies we have some evidence that they drink milk. I've seen them doing it. For plants there is no evidence that they have a will. Having a will requires having a consciousness, and it is generally scientifically excepted that consciousness is generated by brains.


yes, it is up to science to answer questions like who has a will. But let's not run ahead of science.

for scientific progress we don't have to empty our minds. We only have to listen to the evidence and think consistently. A scientists is able to chance his beliefs, based on evidence.

That's why I eat hamburger  :)

of course there will always remain void gaps, because not all fossils of all our dead ancestors remained conserved. But evolution can predict something: that new fossil discoveries make the gaps smaller. And indeed that is what we see happening again and again. And we see the fossils in different layers in the ground corresponding with different eras in the past. And that all makes sense. The genesis flood will predict another patern of fossil deposits, and we don't see that pattern.
So yes: if (yes, of course "if") evolution is true, we expect to see X, Y and Z. If genesis is true, we expect to see A, B and C. Now, we see none of A, B nor C, but we already see X and Z. Then it is irrational to believe in genesis and not in evolution by claiming that there is a gap, that we didn't see Y yet.

we can deduce that those fossils are intermediate species (or relatives of intermediates), by first dating how old those fossils are. Then we put all the fossils next to each other, the oldest ones left, the newest ones right. Then we look at structural differences between the fossils, the shapes of the bones. And then we see some changes when we move from left to right. And those changes make sense from the point of evolution. For example we see an old fossil of an animal with arms, a newer fossil of an animal with featherlike things at his arms, a newer fossil of an animal with winglike arms, and still a newer fossil of an animal with full blown wings. And of course now there are three gaps in the fossil record. And then we find another fossil of an animal that lived between the second and third and looked a bit like the second and a bit like the third in the row. So it is an intermediate, but now there are four gaps. But the gaps are getting smaller.

here we can see a clear distinction between current science and religion. Like evolution, god is a hypothesis. But it in contrast to evolution, god is not a fruitful hypothesis. After all those millenia, christians still don't know anything about how god did it, what he is like. Whereas evolutionary biologists are moving ahead at fast speed, gaining new insights every time. I have the impression that christians are not even investigating their god hypothesis. The god hypothesis is not fruitful.

well, we have mathematics to determine whether they are plausible, in the sense of whether they are consistent and whether they predict things that corresponds with empirical data. You see scientists thinking about how the universe began, constructing and testing models. Why are christians so incapable of doing that? Why don't they construct a clear model of god and then test it against empirical data?

well, scientists (physicists) are moving ahead at great speed and understand more and more about the big bang. Whereas christians remain stuck with those basic questions.

how do you even know that an entity like that even exists?
Scientists are able to discover things (particles, dark matter,...) that are not visible...

why can't the bible exist?
If the bible can't exist, then neither can the bhagavat gita.

I guess no-one who makes something thinks about the mistakes and pplans for the failures. But the failure and mistake of eve eating from the forbidden fruit is not automatically corrected. All this suffering after the fall is not a good correction for a single person eating from a fruit. A correction would be to induce vomitting in Eve.

very strange question...

oh, sure :-)
God is sooo good, that he is allowed to be sooo narcissistic...

and then someone ate from a fruit, and god turned 180° and decided to make the world far worse than perfect. And with far worse I mean: far worse. Why would he change his mind like that? Why would he suddenly allow so much unnecessary suffering?


this doesn't make any sense to me. Giving someone an opportunity for A without giving him at the same time the opportunity for non-A? You are free to choose A but not free to choose anything else but A?

well he clearly did, with his floods and plagues and genocides and infanticides...

 I think god has to know what he wants. He can't have the cake and eat it too. Either he wants to be sure that he will be worshipped by his creatures, or he wants his creatures to be free.
But are people made for worshipping god? How egocentric and narcissistic is this god? If I would be a creator and I want to be worshipped, I can create people who worship me. But why would I make these people sentient, with their own preferences, likes and dislikes, if all I'm going to do is destroy these people (against their preferences) once they no longer worship me? Why didn't god make insentient robots that worshipped him?

and that innocent child that died from a horrible disease did not even get one chance...

well, according to your descriptions and to what I read in the bible...

ok, on the engineering part, god can be clever, but reading the bible, on the psychological-moral part he is really crazy. He is jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. (quote from Dawkins)

well I can't understand the jesus part either. God sends himself as his son to earth to be tortured for the things that someone else did wrong in order to forgive some other people? It doesn't make any sense... Perhaps god watched too many episodes of Monty Python's flying circus: "and now for something completely different"

but jesus is still not helping all those innocent victims now. Where is he waiting for? He does not even want to say when he will come to help. He still does not give us any evidence that he will come and compensate for all the unnecessary suffering. That's not good. Look at how a medic does it in the hospital. Suppose we have a patient, and a doctor can heal him instantly. But the doctor does not heal him. Instead, he goes away, does not even tell when he will be back, that he will heal the patient. And he remains absent for a long long time without giving the patient any sign of hope... That's not a good doctor.

 
but why all the unnecessary suffering? It is like a thief. Suppose we have a thief who already has enough money. Still he steals money from you. So you are stolen and poor. You won't hear anything from the thief, but then, some 50 years later, the thief comes back and gives you back your money and much much more. Ok, what the thief did in the end, giving that fortune, was very good. But that still doesn't justify him stealing your money. The thief did not need your money. Compare this thief with a second person: someone who did not steal from you, but still gave you the fortune. I think this second person did something better.

yeah, and that's why I rape women, because Hitler did not rape women. And I eat dogs and humans, because Hitler didn't.

I wonder if Hitler ate Hamburg?    :D

I personally don't see any difference between between vegans and meat eaters. I'm sorry but you're just adding insult to injury with your moral hand. People who become vegan 'out of consideration' for animal life are just self-important hypocrites, nothing more. They are always very careful not to dig too deep with the self-righteousness, the trick is to build a gloriously moral theory just strong enough to negate the pressure they feel from guilt. You'd have to go a LOT deeper in your understanding of equality for it to mean anything at all.

Saint Paul says it this way, in Romans 14:1-4, in the Bible:
:)

After seeing multiple pro/anti vegan threads on this board, I'm going to draw the conclusion that there are not many threads on the internet that will go full Godwin faster than a thread about veganism.

It is the banking system that is ruining the world. The bankers are raping the people more successfully than anyone else ever. They are "farming" the people rather than simply killing them and taking their property.

Hitler was bad. The bad parts of Nazism are extremely bad. Neither Hitler nor the Nazis are nearly as bad as the banking system.

Hitler and the Nazis never stood a chance. Their end was inevitable from the start, though they fought a ferocious fight. The one good thing that they almost did was, they almost destroyed the banking system. They set it back a few decades. But it is back, stronger than ever.

Will Bitcoin stand a chance against the banking system?

:)

“Morality,” as an adaptive mechanism, is, by extension, begotten of the arbitrary circumstances that beget its originators; therefore, it is “meaningless.”

How do you know that?

Stijn, you are so completely lacking in logic that I feel like trying to debate you point by point might actually damage my ability for critical reasoning by being exposed to such an extreme density of ignorance. Also you are too lazy to set up your quotes correctly, and I don't think I could live with myself if someone mistook your words for my own by mistake. I want you to answer this.


If it is so horrible to eat animals, why is it ok for animals to eat other animals? What is different between animals and humans that it is ok for animals to eat meat, and not ok for humans?

Humans “know better,” and can subsist without so consuming metazoa.

For me, it comes down to mind over matter:  If you don't mind, it don't matter.  But this idea of mind over matter is hugely important.  It's been repeatedly proven in case study after case study that the "sugar pill" yields actual physical affects that the user expected it would for no other reason than it would.  If this is true than veganism (not even a word yet.. give it time) could be a way towards which we evolve.  Of course that depends on all sorts of things as far as the timing... but maybe it is just a matter of time.

Organic cold fusion (http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/156393-cold-fusion-reactor-independently-verified-has-10000-times-the-energy-density-of-gas) “could be” yet another “way.”

I accept. You certainly are welcome to resist God. Your choice. However, if you have cause to change your mind in the future, God welcomes you.

Thanks for the chat.

:)

At this point in time, altcoins have only won in an overall principle sense. At the rate that Bitcoin is growing, if the fiats don't crash themselves, it will be generations before the principle of altcoins becomes an effective reality.

One of the things that is slowing altcoins down is that there are too many varieties. What we need is a method to trade all altcoins among themselves conveniently. Ripple tried, maybe is still trying.

:)

Indeed, one is welcome to deny virtue: this is one's choice; however, if one should have cause to change his or her mind in the near future, that is welcomed.

:D


P.s., I appreciate any and all engagement I have suffered here.

sorry for the quotes; I hope this is better...
(and I hope you can give counterarguments point by point insetad of merely saying that I'm lacking logic.

That is the ring finger of the moral hand. Briefly put: you and I and all primates don't need meat in order to survive. So if all beings who do not need meat stop eating meat, those populations would no go extinct and biodiversity would not decrease. But a lion needs meat. So if a lion is not allowed to hunt and eat, then no animal is (apply the thumb principle of rule universalism to the ring finger principle), and then all obligate carnivores would die from starvation and then biodiversity decreases a lot. Now we can democratically decide how much moral value biodiversity should have. I want to give it a lot of value, and therefore my ethic says that predation by obligate carnivores is permissible. 

Biodiversity (How is this existentially significant?) could still be reduced by economic activities (e.g., the destruction of habitats for the exploitation of their resources).

You didn't answer my question, you simply replied with a single example that fit your ideology. Lets try this with a more specific question.

Why is it ok for say chimpanzees (omnivores) for example to eat meat, but not humans? What is different between animals and humans that it is ok for animals to eat meat, and not ok for humans?

Knowledge is a duplication of information extrinsic to the mind: the mind, proving a subset of that information, cannot contain that superset of itself without, in some way, becoming it.

my ethical system says that it is not permissible for chimpanzees to eat meat, because they can survive without meat.

So your ethical system says that you are some how above nature and have some kind of authority to make this distinction in contradiction to nature. Your own "ethical system" contradicts itself. If humans are equal to animals, what gives you the right to stop a chimpanzee from eating meat in contradiction to its natural state? Furthermore, you didn't answer my whole question, what makes them different making this allowable?

what do you mean with being above nature? That you interfere in nature? But the chimpanzee also intervened in nature by eating some food, so in that sense the chimpanzee was above nature as well. The chimpanzee wanted to stop someone else from living, I wanted to stop the chimpanzee from killing.
You know that we should be above nature when it comes to ethics, because in nature some ugly unethical things happen. So we should not listen to nature and not condone the ugly things. Being above nature in the ethical sense is good. But first of all you should clarify what you really mean with being above nature.
Yes, humans and animals are equal, and yes humans have the right to stop chimpanzees from eating meat. Where is the contradiction? Chimpanzees also have the right to stop humans from eating meat, so there is our equality.
What do you mean with that natural state and being in contradiction to a natural state?
I don't understand your whole question. What makes whom different making what allowable?

“Want,” as you used the word, implies conscious intention. Did you intend to claim that chimpanzees act with conscious intention when acquiring meals (instead of, for instance, biological instincts)?

yes, they act with conscious intention. No instinct. (although they don't ethically reflect on their actions, whereas I do)
But with or without conscious intention is not relevant here, unless it is related to "being above nature", but I don't see how.

Are black holes ethical?

Odd I found this thread, just this afternoon was thinking...


***********
Dahan.

He had the conch shell and the big knife toss on the passenger seat.   A hard left for the SUV, then stomp on the gas.  He was late.

The fifty kilo pig in the trunk was fresh from the butcher shop.  It should have been on the fire an hour ago, or the party wouldn't be right.  That pig needed to be coming out, golden red, precisely at seven o'clock.  It'd be midnight, now.    They wanted it authentic, so he had to do the job.

Maybe it hadn't been too smart to take the shortcut through the Vegan Heaven subdivision.  After all, it had recently incorporated as a municipality with it's own ordinances, codes, police department, even a old house converted to a city hall.

Because when he saw the flashing lights behind him, he didn't even think to hide the knife.  And when he pulled over, he wasn't thinking about the laws in Vegan Heaven.  Then when the officer asked him to open the trunk, he didn't even think about protesting.

A couple of hours later, behind bars in their three room jail, he was thinking about the charges.

Misdemeanor Murder.
Speeding.
Felony possession of a deadly weapon.

Could he show true remorse in front of the judge, and expect leniency?  Hell, one thing at a time.  First he had to get out of the rathole.  It'd be four days before the judge showed back up to arraign him, so he could post bail.

Four days of eating some kind of stuff made from spoiled bean curd called vegan turkey.

they are amoral

Yet, they are merely an expression of some of the most fundamental elements of this universe (e.g., mass, momentum, gravitation, and magnetism).

(Red colorization mine.)

I debate upon the goban. In light of that, was this post a gote (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Go_terms#Gote_and_Sente) one? ;)

well, why should the chimp be allowed to enforce his values on others, on his victims, his prey? By killing a colobus monkey, a chimpanzee enforces his values in a very brutal, lethal way. Why should that be permissible? Why should the interests of the chimp count more than the interests of the monkey? When I protect the monkey by preventing that chimpanzee from hunting, I do not kill the chimp, so my enforcement is much less violent than what the chimp intended to do. What would you prefer: being enforced not to kill someone else, or being enforced to sacrifice yourself?

3 questions for you:


- Can I still use my animals as working beasts to grow my tasty veggies?

https://i.imgur.com/TqQmQL0.jpg



- Are veganism and feminism inseparable concepts?

http://veganfeminist.blogspot.com/2012/07/applying-feminism-to-veganism-why.html




- Vitamix or Blentec?

https://i.imgur.com/jJIbRDT.jpg

What about the rape of non Aryan women?

probably not; it is too close to slavery

both can be derived from the moral hand. There are strong analogies between using someone's muscle tissue against his will and using someone's vagina against her will, between thinking that someone else (a pig) has less moral status and thinking that someone else (a woman) has less moral status, between antispeciesist veganism and antisexist feminism

dammit, tough one... How many seconds do I have left?






[/quote]

Hitler condoned the rape of jews in concentration camps (although there were antimiscegenation laws, so you had to kill the jewish girl afterwards)

but you evaded the question. You could not choose to remove the enforcer. In the case of the chimp, there is always enforcement: either the chimp enforces the monkey to sacrifice himself, or either I enforce the chimp to stop hunting the monkey. Removing the chimp means that the problem does not even pose itself. Removing me would not remove the enforcement of the monkey.

yes, everyone would 'enforce' that baby in the sense that everyone will interfere in such a way that the baby does not throw up on the carpet. We enforce our values on the natural behavior of the baby.

in the case of the chimp we were talking about killing someone for food that was not necessary for survival. If it was necessary for survival, to avoid death, then we have to use the ring finger which says that the animal is allowed to eat whatever is necessary for survival. Then we have the situation of the lion eating the zebra.

that sounds obvious. But it is not merely about convincing someone. We did not convince the baby not to throw up on the carpet. Yet, we interfered in its behavior with the goal that the baby doesn't throw up on the carpet.

In which case, you have known it only as a game (i.e., too well).

changing his behavior might be more difficult than changing his position away from the carpet. In any way, my behavior towards the baby is different when a carpet is present: I can move the baby away, or the carpet. And when instead of a baby we have an older child, I can try to directly change its behavior.

if everyone fails at survival, then how come there still is biodiversity? Look at the ring finger principle: it is about the conservation of biodiversity. So with survival I meant that biodiversity does not get lost. Or you can say: it is survival of a population instead of an individual.
Yes, the chimp has his own path in life, and yes we should respect his path. But we should do it consistently! We should respect everyone's path, without arbitrary exceptions. You forgot someone: the hunted colobus monkey. Why did you not say that this monkey has his own path in life? Why is the chimp allowed to kill the monkey? With hunting and killing the monkey, the lifepath of the monkey is very drastically changed, you agree? But with preventing the chimp from hunting the monkey, the lifepath of the chimp is changed only a little bit.
You are saying you have some superior path that justifies making the chimps path much more superior than the monkey's path.

Again, if you interfered in the babies behavior blindly, by force, you did nothing good.[/quote]
my sister has a baby, and she puts the baby in a chair at the table so that he cannot throw up on the carpet. My sister used force to lift the baby up and put him in the chair. I don't know what you mean with interfering blindly. But are you suggesting that this interference did nothing good?

 good idea :-)
we can go as far as a teacher or policeman go when they see a child attacking another child. Perhaps in the kindergarten they are interested in this shock collar that zaps a child when the brain part associated with agression lights up. And yes, let's arm the other children. Cool :-)

Why must one’s survival mechanisms be construed as anything but? (How is it that one can debate something so arbitrary as ethics?)

:'(

Disregarding the preferences of sentient beings is my definition of sociopathy. It may not be a clinical label but rather a collective failing in empathy towards the weaker groups in our society.

Do you have a plan to defend your values against those that think you are nuts, and a perfect slave for their flock? Do you rule out the usage of violence against your enemies in defense and in preemptive way? just asking, I didn't read it, for disclaimer... but in short are you like the sheep ready to be fleeced, or more like a nasty continually mutating resistant virus whose enemy are gonna die in utter suffering meanwhile being used to further the spread?

V

Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't quite follow that tangent. I'm not really sure anyone does.

Your condemnation of “sociopathy” satisfies my definition of “morality” (i.e., it is conducive of unreasoned [perhaps, even, unreasonable] “self-preservation” [i.e., the preservation of some self]).

(Red colorization mine.)

Where there is heterarchy, there is reason. Where there is hierarchy, there is treason.

Not to contradict, nor to argue, but rather to question, what about this.

Say there is a land without government, and with reasonable people. The land is not populous, but it is fertile. The people are farmers, with their own families. They are friendly with each other. Now and again they work together on projects, like helping their grown children or neighbor's children to put up a barn, a small group working together. Perhaps they do the harvesting in groups, friends, offering a helping hand.

Among these farmers are the 5% that are a little prone to laziness and fraud on their neighbors in whatever ways they can get away with. A few of these are downright thieves. The thieves literally break into their neighbor's barns and steal produce. They rustle cattle and sheep, animals that the owners have not set aside for community purposes; after all, don't we get to keep a little of what we work for for ourselves without giving all of it over to community?

Some of the thieves get killed breaking and entering. They become afraid. So they form a loose government, a gang, for mutual protection. The good folk form a government to protect themselves from the gang.

The smarter thieves and "crooks" weasel their way into the government and start directing it so that they can covertly do their thieving from a supposedly moral ground. Soon the government is worse than the gang, which the government workers hire to help with their covert thieving.

This is the way it happens. Sometimes sneaky crooks go into lands simply to start such a government among the people, so that they can eventually rape and plunder from a "good" standpoint.

The governments of the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and others have built into them the way for the common people to overcome the government on individual grounds. That is, the individual person can by government, defeat just about every government action in court that is against the people. The only reason this isn't done is because the people have forgotten (been trained out of) how to do it.

We need government. Even if we don't, there will always be people who think that we do. As far as the countries I listed above, learn what you have been missing at http://1215.org/ and http://www.youtube.com/user/765736/videos?view=0&live_view=500&flow=grid&sort=da.

What does anyone think (yes, this should be in the government thread, but it seemed an appropriate response for this post)?

:)

Within the context of this small, agricultural town, the farmers of the town would farm a singular, massive, highly-efficient farm (or, perhaps, for redundancy, two large farms). As well, “thieves” do not exist without ownership to condemn them, and would merely be some people that came to utilize the resources of the farm.

Now, one may wonder why it is that the farmers would not ban together to augment their own wealth via ownership and the subsequent implementation of money and state. That humanity has already “been there” and “done that” should affirm to them that such a path is ill-advised and prevent its wholesale (and, thus, successful) pursuit, for, ultimately, ownership may only be enforced to one’s benefit if others are willing to enforce it (something that becomes more difficult as fewer retain ownership [that is, remain owners]). (In the instance one enforces ownership oneself, one forgoes an equal measure of production. [The same is true of the enforcement of money to a greater degree and of the enforcement of state to a yet greater one.])

Additionally, not all government constitutes non-optional hierarchy. For example, Great Empire of Earth (https://rgeo5wj7gniedzh3.onion.lt) is an imperial anarchist despotism, which means that there is one endowed with all powers of government (in this case, by the “G.E. Emperor” [G.E. doesn’t have a constitution]) wherewith one may not comply (i.e., compliance with “the Despot” is optional). The optional-ness of compliance with the government is not codified in law, for it is the wish of the G.E. Emperor that it would always be implied (and, therefore, that one could not transgress it for a lack of positive limitations thereupon).

I'm ready to bet these things are connected somehow. Howbeit I could be wrong of course.

Both pursue a “correction” of nature for motivations wholly subordinate thereto.

Both are happily populated by control freaks.

Both concern demographics that used to be seen as inferior beings to be used as a commodity.

We keep adding layers to our ethical awareness. We keep adding minorities. Black people, women, different sexual orientations, different abilities, different social classes, mental deviations and well, there we go, other species. 

Apparently it takes time. We only abolished slavery fairly recently. We're still struggling to curb racism and give equal opportunity to these minorities. Women only just won their right to vote and we're finally starting to see that gay people aren't sick.   
 
These groups are entitled to their rights and considerations.

Every generation ever thought that they were the pinnacle of morality. How arrogant would it be to join their ranks by believing that everything is already settled? Especially considering how abundantly obvious it is that we're directly inflicting a life of torment on billions and billions of animals?

Small, beneficial govenments often become large harmful monsters.

"Love your enemies." Where is the point that we should love our friends? When the gang of thieves steals from us, are they not harming those that we love more than our enemies... the people who are our friends and families? Take a look at King David. He was call a man after God's own heart, two places in the Old Testament; and the only person to be so called. Yet, to look at his actions, he seemed to be one of the most blood thirsty people ever. Yet, when you look in detail at him, you see that he did everything honorably to the extreme.

"Love your enemies" doesn't mean love them more than your family and friends. Why do you people constantly try to make God and His Word look bad?

:)

https://rgeo5wj7gneidzh3.onion.lt/img/imperium.png
1. If the Empire (https://rgeo5wj7gniedzh3.onion.lt) should become any larger, I should not have known what “large” is.

2,3. God is that one who keepeth.

There is a difference between wrath and determination and vengeance, and self and family protection. Often the Lord uses your actions to "keep" those that He wants kept.

:)

In that same way Jesus did not resist his crucifixion, a Christian (i.e., “Christ followers”) is not to resist transgression against him or her; instead, they are, as Jesus did, to yield the matter “unto the Father” to resolve in that way He sees fit (i.e., the right way).

Exactly! And when the Father answers - by circumstances, or through His Word in the Bible - then pick up that answer and fight. The spiritual powers and authorities of this world express themselves in the physical. Jesus fought them in the physical, on the cross. Why did He give Himself up to the cross? Because He was fighting in a specific way on behalf of all people. What He did is done. You and I can't do it that way. The future begins now.

Check the future in the Revelation. Check chapter 19 for the Rider on the white horse. Stand up for your own and your family's defense. Don't aggress, but defend. Consider King David of the past. See that it is the aggressors who want Christianity to fail, who are attempting to teach the people of God's Church to lie down and roll over so that they can walk all over you. Yet, in your battles, trust God and be just.

:)

EDIT: I guess I am more like Saint Paul where he says to the Corinthian Church in 2 Corinthians 11:19-21...
I commend all of you who don't use a numbing agent on your gums when the dentist is drilling. In the same way, you endure the torture of the ungodly without flinching. I am too weak for that. I fight.

Good. So let's not eat meat in front of Stijn, because he/she just might be a weaker brother/sister who might fall if he sees us eating meat.

:)