I mean, automatic response in the sense that no conscious awareness is involved - hence it can't be pleasant or unpleasant because nobody is on the other end to be aware of it.
Anything that's alive reacts to stimuli, but then again so do even simple artificial electronic systems such as a thermostat. The philosophical question is whether they have any sort of subjective experience of it.
Just gratuitously digging up this thread to say, a propos of vegan diets being prohibitively expensive, I signed up to Animal Aid's November Vegan Challenge this year (since I was having to do it anyway!) in hopes that they'd have some useful recipes, and they sent me a recipe booklet. The booklet is titled "Feed four for under a fiver"! I thought that was rather funny...
Just gratuitously digging up this thread to say, a propos of vegan diets being prohibitively expensive, I signed up to Animal Aid's November Vegan Challenge this year (since I was having to do it anyway!) in hopes that they'd have some useful recipes, and they sent me a recipe booklet. The booklet is titled "Feed four for under a fiver"! I thought that was rather funny...
Italian Friday->ratatouille, wait what?!
BTW, as a biologist I tell you, their reasons for going vegan are TRIBBLE they made up from half truths, and as a human being I tell you the guy who wrote about the world hunger problem should go to Africa to tell those starving people they shouldn't eat meat or fish, and then get kicked in the groin ... repeatedly.
Africa is not a continent suitable for farming, only the bottom half and some of the Mediterranean countries can do decent farming and a lot of the African population relies on fishing and nomadic husbandry, specially those in the mid and top parts of Africa, if the world suddenly decides to go vegan, excluding Africa, it would do nothing to solve the starvation problem, basically because we are not taking grain from Africa to feed animals, the grain is produced in other countries.
Somalia is one of those countries hit by starvation, 40% of their GDP comes from livestock it employs 65% of their population and makes 50% of their exports income, followed by fishing and commercial agreements with Europe and Asia for fishing rights in Somalian coasts, now I want them to go to Somalia and tell the population that they shouldn't kill animals because they think it's morally wrong.
Whoa! Nobody's tried to force anybody to stop eating meat. All they've done is say something that may or may not be wrong in a leaflet. Is that any reason to kick anybody?
I've heard that argument before about some parts of the world not being suitable for growing crops. I can never quite believe it. For people to live on meat instead of growing crops, the animals must eat an amount of grass equal to many times the total calories the humans need (since only a fraction, of the calories an animal eats become meat). Is it really possible for any area to produce so much grass, and yet not be able to produce any crops that are edible by humans?
I'm surer about the position for other countries; the amount of grain one country uses must affect other countries, you know. Otherwise why was there all that fuss a few years ago about how America using grain to make biofuel was driving up the global price?
If the bit about "as a biologist" is referring to their health claims, I agree, I've thought myself Animal Aid cherry-pick a bit there. For instance I've seen them say that plants don't produce saturated fat, only animal products have that; firstly, that's not quite true even in nature (nuts have some), and secondly, they're ignoring processing - the vegan margarine they recommend has hydrogenated fat, which is vegetable oil that's been artificially made saturated, to make it solid. If they think the health argument is convincing, they should state it, and if they don't they should shut up about it, not try and dress up the facts to make it look more impressive.
Ha ha, I didn't notice about the ratatouille! Maybe I was too busy boggling at the amount of garlic they'd put in that one... not that the others were that far behind. It's as if, whatever they say, they're subconsciously convinced that vegan food is no good and must all have truckloads of garlic and chillies to liven it up!
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
I've heard that argument before about some parts of the world not being suitable for growing crops. I can never quite believe it. For people to live on meat instead of growing crops, the animals must eat an amount of grass equal to many times the total calories the humans need (since only a fraction, of the calories an animal eats become meat). Is it really possible for any area to produce so much grass, and yet not be able to produce any crops that are edible by humans?
That's one thing many people don't understand, animals are not fed entirely by fully edible grain, since grain is expensive, vegetable and animal remains not fit for human consumption are used to feed animals as well, uneaten semi-rotting fruits, some hard parts from vegetables we cannot digest, logging byproducs (leaves, green twigs, etc.), non-edible parts from corn and other cereals (leaves, stem, roots), grinded bones, entrails, sinew (for protein an calcium) from animal remains we don't eat.
In underdeveloped countries, and specially on Africa (they have enormous plains, perfect for pastures), they practice nomadic and semi-nomadic husbandry, meaning they just move the herd around the country, animals eat from pastures, once a pasture is exhausted they move to the next one and then the next one and so on, with time the first one grows back, rinse and repeat.
No all pastures can turn to perfect farming land, I live in the Northern region of my country, near the coast we have farms, but near the mountains we have pastures, you can't farm there (commercial farming), the soil is too alkaline and too steep, so we have cows, lots and lots of cows, they feed from the pastures.
In the center of my country there is a massive plain in a plateau, it's called a dehesa, there a lot of people practice commercial husbandry, but animals roam free and eat grass and acorns (that produces an special and very expensive kind of meat), still, it produces a lot of food, honey, mushrooms (truffles and others), mostly pigs and cows, that land is not suitable for farming either.
My point is, turning 100% vegetarian doesn't make sense, you are tossing aside valuable resources and there are lots of countries that cannot do that, Mongolia for example relies a lot on nomadic husbandry as do many African and middle east countries.
There is still the question of what to do with the animals (releasing them to the wild would mean an ecological disaster) and what to do with the animal industry, millions of people are employed by it.
To answer your question, yes, it's possible to produce a lot of grass but still be unsuitable for farming, grass is composed of many types of fast growing plant species which usually require little nutrients, as opposed to crops which require a lot of nutrients, including water, so some terrains may be unsuitable for farming, mainly because of soil composition or lack of rain (or seasonal rain), but they can produce pastures and forage.
Yeah, someone once brought up a similar point in a discussion I heard a long time ago. If everyone in the US stopped eating beef, what would we do with the cows? Suddenly they would be a burden on the economy and useless. Most of them would likely get converted into fertilizer....
Somalia is one of those countries hit by starvation, 40% of their GDP comes from livestock it employs 65% of their population and makes 50% of their exports income, followed by fishing and commercial agreements with Europe and Asia for fishing rights in Somalian coasts, now I want them to go to Somalia and tell the population that they shouldn't kill animals because they think it's morally wrong.
People who seriously believe that killing animals is morally wrong would equate such an economy to a slavery-based economy, and would contend that it has no more right to continue than slavery does.
Somalia is one of those countries hit by starvation, 40% of their GDP comes from livestock it employs 65% of their population and makes 50% of their exports income, followed by fishing and commercial agreements with Europe and Asia for fishing rights in Somalian coasts, now I want them to go to Somalia and tell the population that they shouldn't kill animals because they think it's morally wrong.
People who seriously believe that killing animals is morally wrong would equate such an economy to a slavery-based economy, and would contend that it has no more right to continue than slavery does.
Yeah, and they're just as crazy as the "fur is murder" crowd.
Somalia is one of those countries hit by starvation, 40% of their GDP comes from livestock it employs 65% of their population and makes 50% of their exports income, followed by fishing and commercial agreements with Europe and Asia for fishing rights in Somalian coasts, now I want them to go to Somalia and tell the population that they shouldn't kill animals because they think it's morally wrong.
People who seriously believe that killing animals is morally wrong would equate such an economy to a slavery-based economy, and would contend that it has no more right to continue than slavery does.
And they would be wrong. Slavery is specifically the enslavement of Humans not animals.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though. JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
It is certainly true that animals can eat stuff that we can't (or wouldn't) eat. Grass is useless to us, for example. But for the "meat industry" and our consumption, we actually would often have a choice between producing plants that we can eat or producing plants that animals can eat. And the former will probably always be more efficient than the latter.
Somalia is one of those countries hit by starvation, 40% of their GDP comes from livestock it employs 65% of their population and makes 50% of their exports income, followed by fishing and commercial agreements with Europe and Asia for fishing rights in Somalian coasts, now I want them to go to Somalia and tell the population that they shouldn't kill animals because they think it's morally wrong.
People who seriously believe that killing animals is morally wrong would equate such an economy to a slavery-based economy, and would contend that it has no more right to continue than slavery does.
And they would be wrong. Slavery is specifically the enslavement of Humans not animals.
That's speciesm! Or something like that.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
If you hold to the most popular religious ideals, then man was given dominion over Earth by God.
If you are a strict Darwinist, then man has evolved to the top of the food chain.
Either way man is on top and, from that perspective, we have responsibility to maintain the herds both domestic and wild. This includes predation of the herds, without which herd animals as a species are not healthy. We also have a responsibility to avoid waste, and therefore the culled herd animals must be put to some use.
If your particular religion or belief structure holds animals in the same esteem as humans, then you must accept that man too will be preyed upon by the predators, which man cannot kill any more than he could kill a goat for dinner.
People in Northern Canada are forced to live as much off the land as possible, since bringing food up north is expensive.
What do they hunt? Caribou, seals, whales, fish. The Europeans hate us for hunting seals... but we gotta eat
Europeans who don't know what they are talking about, once someone has some understanding of ecology things change, I don't hate people for killing animals, because I understand the bigger picture, behind those deaths there are jobs, people eating and a certain degree of ecological balance if done properly (It's necessary to keep wild animal populations under control, without a predator they could collapse the local environment).
You should read "A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement"
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
People in Northern Canada are forced to live as much off the land as possible, since bringing food up north is expensive.
What do they hunt? Caribou, seals, whales, fish. The Europeans hate us for hunting seals... but we gotta eat
Europeans who don't know what they are talking about, once someone has some understanding of ecology things change, I don't hate people for killing animals, because I understand the bigger picture, behind those deaths there are jobs, people eating and a certain degree of ecological balance if done properly (It's necessary to keep wild animal populations under control, without a predator they could collapse the local environment).
Eating animals is no more wrong than eating plants, Predation is the way of nature.
When you can prove something is capable of sentient thought, then theres something to talk about.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
@gradii That's where I think we get into trouble hunting primates, cetaceans, parrots, and corvids (believe it or not crows are that smart). The most intelligent animals are the ones we need to exercise the most caution with.
For others, I think the focus should be on ensuring good conditions and a quick slaughter with as little pain as possible, and on not taking more meat than you can *realistically* eat all of. When food involves the slaughter of an animal, to me it is poor form to be throwing out too much that we could be using.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
If you hold to the most popular religious ideals, then man was given dominion over Earth by God.
If you are a strict Darwinist, then man has evolved to the top of the food chain.
There's no such thing as a 'Darwinist', strict or otherwise.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though. JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
It is certainly true that animals can eat stuff that we can't (or wouldn't) eat. Grass is useless to us, for example. But for the "meat industry" and our consumption, we actually would often have a choice between producing plants that we can eat or producing plants that animals can eat. And the former will probably always be more efficient than the latter.
Heh, how much effort does it take to grow ordinary grass? now compare that to how much us required to grow corn.
There can be NO utopia without bacon. I think that ends this discussion.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________ You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else. -Einstein
Eating animals is no more wrong than eating plants, Predation is the way of nature.
But just because something works a certain way in nature does not necessarily mean that it's right. This is known as the fallacious appeal to nature.
Nature does not function according to moral laws, but by mechanical ones like gravity does. Things are the way they are in nature because of the mechanical rules of chemistry, physics, and natural selection. You can't say that it's morally right for a rock to fall to the ground when you throw it, nor that it's morally wrong if it were to suddenly leap up and fly into space. Same with predation--you can't say that it's right for predators to hunt and kill prey, it's just the way the system works.
Consider the case of the human eye--lots of us suffer eye problems because the human eye is a terribly designed piece of biological machinery. We need glasses because our lenses get stiff and don't focus any more, we have blind spots and blood vessels passing in front of our rods and cones, etc. It's a mess, and it causes suffering. It doesn't have to be that way, squid and octopus have eyes that are built in a much more logical way. The same way, in fact, that we make mechanical eyes for cameras. If a human scientist were to build a replacement eye for blind people, and he built it with the same problems that real eyes have, people would say "no, that's wrong, you shouldn't cause suffering for no reason." Nature, however, is indifferent to criticism. It builds something that's good enough to work, and leaves it alone until there's some pressure to change.
Morality, the judgement of right and wrong, is a function of living things, creatures with the ability to choose. While nature is comprised of living things and it is often useful to imagine it as a living thing, it is not itself alive any more than gravity is, and so is useless as a source of moral guidelines.
With regard to eating meat, I think we as a species should be moving away from killing animals for food. In general, we have the means to do so, and the gains in terms of resources and ending nonhuman suffering are significant. However, I don't think eating meat doesn't make you some sort of evil monster--I eat beef and particularly seafood all the time. If you need to eat meat, then do so, but if you can move away from it, it would be good to do so.
Nothing wrong with cloned meat, though. No suffering or even potential suffering, so why not? It's just a question of technology and safety.
Of course theres the possibility of making it unnecessary to kill animals for meat. and when you don't have to, it's superior not to.
But until such a method has advanced enough to compete with meat from slaughter, it's like Gulberat said, make sure to minimize animal suffering until it can be eliminated.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
Eating animals is no more wrong than eating plants, Predation is the way of nature.
But just because something works a certain way in nature does not necessarily mean that it's right. This is known as the fallacious appeal to nature.
Nature does not function according to moral laws, but by mechanical ones like gravity does. Things are the way they are in nature because of the mechanical rules of chemistry, physics, and natural selection. You can't say that it's morally right for a rock to fall to the ground when you throw it, nor that it's morally wrong if it were to suddenly leap up and fly into space.
Well said Alexmakepeace. Thank you, you put it far better than I was going to.
Yeah, someone once brought up a similar point in a discussion I heard a long time ago. If everyone in the US stopped eating beef, what would we do with the cows? Suddenly they would be a burden on the economy and useless. Most of them would likely get converted into fertilizer....
Well, very simple answer to that one; it's not likely to happen! Even the most optimistic vegan would have to admit that the whole world is very unlikely to all give up meat at the same time, or even at all quickly - so there won't be any "suddenly" about it. It'll take so long that all that will happen is that farmers will be breeding fewer and fewer cows as demand goes down, until eventually there's no demand worth the expense of keeping cows for, and no cows.
Of course theres the possibility of making it unnecessary to kill animals for meat. and when you don't have to, it's superior not to.
But until such a method has advanced enough to compete with meat from slaughter, it's like Gulberat said, make sure to minimize animal suffering until it can be eliminated.
Well, literally speaking, it is unnecessary to kill animals for meat now, since you can eat well without eating any meat. (In the US and Europe where I assume most of the people in this thread are from, I mean - leaving aside the question of whether it is or isn't possible for Somalia and Mongolia ever to be self-sufficient without eating meat or fish, which I don't know enough about the ecology to answer.) I've been doing it all my life and I'm a greedy pig
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
there will ALWAYS be cows; they provide far more than meat
Yes but take into account technobabble-y stuff and there's no longer a NEED for things.
When there's no longer a social, economical, environmental NEEDS for farming where does that leave you? People grow plants as hobbies are people going to raise and slaughter animals to what stay connected to their roots and not feel dependent on technology?
Is it ethical to farm animals for meat when it becomes basically unnecessary? On Earth that is, colonies will vary.
Comments
My character Tsin'xing
I was asked if I was drinking
Italian Friday->ratatouille, wait what?!
BTW, as a biologist I tell you, their reasons for going vegan are TRIBBLE they made up from half truths, and as a human being I tell you the guy who wrote about the world hunger problem should go to Africa to tell those starving people they shouldn't eat meat or fish, and then get kicked in the groin ... repeatedly.
Africa is not a continent suitable for farming, only the bottom half and some of the Mediterranean countries can do decent farming and a lot of the African population relies on fishing and nomadic husbandry, specially those in the mid and top parts of Africa, if the world suddenly decides to go vegan, excluding Africa, it would do nothing to solve the starvation problem, basically because we are not taking grain from Africa to feed animals, the grain is produced in other countries.
Somalia is one of those countries hit by starvation, 40% of their GDP comes from livestock it employs 65% of their population and makes 50% of their exports income, followed by fishing and commercial agreements with Europe and Asia for fishing rights in Somalian coasts, now I want them to go to Somalia and tell the population that they shouldn't kill animals because they think it's morally wrong.
I've heard that argument before about some parts of the world not being suitable for growing crops. I can never quite believe it. For people to live on meat instead of growing crops, the animals must eat an amount of grass equal to many times the total calories the humans need (since only a fraction, of the calories an animal eats become meat). Is it really possible for any area to produce so much grass, and yet not be able to produce any crops that are edible by humans?
I'm surer about the position for other countries; the amount of grain one country uses must affect other countries, you know. Otherwise why was there all that fuss a few years ago about how America using grain to make biofuel was driving up the global price?
If the bit about "as a biologist" is referring to their health claims, I agree, I've thought myself Animal Aid cherry-pick a bit there. For instance I've seen them say that plants don't produce saturated fat, only animal products have that; firstly, that's not quite true even in nature (nuts have some), and secondly, they're ignoring processing - the vegan margarine they recommend has hydrogenated fat, which is vegetable oil that's been artificially made saturated, to make it solid. If they think the health argument is convincing, they should state it, and if they don't they should shut up about it, not try and dress up the facts to make it look more impressive.
Ha ha, I didn't notice about the ratatouille! Maybe I was too busy boggling at the amount of garlic they'd put in that one... not that the others were that far behind. It's as if, whatever they say, they're subconsciously convinced that vegan food is no good and must all have truckloads of garlic and chillies to liven it up!
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
That's one thing many people don't understand, animals are not fed entirely by fully edible grain, since grain is expensive, vegetable and animal remains not fit for human consumption are used to feed animals as well, uneaten semi-rotting fruits, some hard parts from vegetables we cannot digest, logging byproducs (leaves, green twigs, etc.), non-edible parts from corn and other cereals (leaves, stem, roots), grinded bones, entrails, sinew (for protein an calcium) from animal remains we don't eat.
In underdeveloped countries, and specially on Africa (they have enormous plains, perfect for pastures), they practice nomadic and semi-nomadic husbandry, meaning they just move the herd around the country, animals eat from pastures, once a pasture is exhausted they move to the next one and then the next one and so on, with time the first one grows back, rinse and repeat.
No all pastures can turn to perfect farming land, I live in the Northern region of my country, near the coast we have farms, but near the mountains we have pastures, you can't farm there (commercial farming), the soil is too alkaline and too steep, so we have cows, lots and lots of cows, they feed from the pastures.
In the center of my country there is a massive plain in a plateau, it's called a dehesa, there a lot of people practice commercial husbandry, but animals roam free and eat grass and acorns (that produces an special and very expensive kind of meat), still, it produces a lot of food, honey, mushrooms (truffles and others), mostly pigs and cows, that land is not suitable for farming either.
My point is, turning 100% vegetarian doesn't make sense, you are tossing aside valuable resources and there are lots of countries that cannot do that, Mongolia for example relies a lot on nomadic husbandry as do many African and middle east countries.
There is still the question of what to do with the animals (releasing them to the wild would mean an ecological disaster) and what to do with the animal industry, millions of people are employed by it.
To answer your question, yes, it's possible to produce a lot of grass but still be unsuitable for farming, grass is composed of many types of fast growing plant species which usually require little nutrients, as opposed to crops which require a lot of nutrients, including water, so some terrains may be unsuitable for farming, mainly because of soil composition or lack of rain (or seasonal rain), but they can produce pastures and forage.
My character Tsin'xing
People who seriously believe that killing animals is morally wrong would equate such an economy to a slavery-based economy, and would contend that it has no more right to continue than slavery does.
My character Tsin'xing
And they would be wrong. Slavery is specifically the enslavement of Humans not animals.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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That's speciesm! Or something like that.
If you are a strict Darwinist, then man has evolved to the top of the food chain.
Either way man is on top and, from that perspective, we have responsibility to maintain the herds both domestic and wild. This includes predation of the herds, without which herd animals as a species are not healthy. We also have a responsibility to avoid waste, and therefore the culled herd animals must be put to some use.
If your particular religion or belief structure holds animals in the same esteem as humans, then you must accept that man too will be preyed upon by the predators, which man cannot kill any more than he could kill a goat for dinner.
What do they hunt? Caribou, seals, whales, fish. The Europeans hate us for hunting seals... but we gotta eat
Europeans who don't know what they are talking about, once someone has some understanding of ecology things change, I don't hate people for killing animals, because I understand the bigger picture, behind those deaths there are jobs, people eating and a certain degree of ecological balance if done properly (It's necessary to keep wild animal populations under control, without a predator they could collapse the local environment).
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
Eating animals is no more wrong than eating plants, Predation is the way of nature.
When you can prove something is capable of sentient thought, then theres something to talk about.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
For others, I think the focus should be on ensuring good conditions and a quick slaughter with as little pain as possible, and on not taking more meat than you can *realistically* eat all of. When food involves the slaughter of an animal, to me it is poor form to be throwing out too much that we could be using.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
There's no such thing as a 'Darwinist', strict or otherwise.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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My character Tsin'xing
There can be NO utopia without bacon. I think that ends this discussion.
You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else. -Einstein
Nature does not function according to moral laws, but by mechanical ones like gravity does. Things are the way they are in nature because of the mechanical rules of chemistry, physics, and natural selection. You can't say that it's morally right for a rock to fall to the ground when you throw it, nor that it's morally wrong if it were to suddenly leap up and fly into space. Same with predation--you can't say that it's right for predators to hunt and kill prey, it's just the way the system works.
Consider the case of the human eye--lots of us suffer eye problems because the human eye is a terribly designed piece of biological machinery. We need glasses because our lenses get stiff and don't focus any more, we have blind spots and blood vessels passing in front of our rods and cones, etc. It's a mess, and it causes suffering. It doesn't have to be that way, squid and octopus have eyes that are built in a much more logical way. The same way, in fact, that we make mechanical eyes for cameras. If a human scientist were to build a replacement eye for blind people, and he built it with the same problems that real eyes have, people would say "no, that's wrong, you shouldn't cause suffering for no reason." Nature, however, is indifferent to criticism. It builds something that's good enough to work, and leaves it alone until there's some pressure to change.
Morality, the judgement of right and wrong, is a function of living things, creatures with the ability to choose. While nature is comprised of living things and it is often useful to imagine it as a living thing, it is not itself alive any more than gravity is, and so is useless as a source of moral guidelines.
With regard to eating meat, I think we as a species should be moving away from killing animals for food. In general, we have the means to do so, and the gains in terms of resources and ending nonhuman suffering are significant. However, I don't think eating meat doesn't make you some sort of evil monster--I eat beef and particularly seafood all the time. If you need to eat meat, then do so, but if you can move away from it, it would be good to do so.
Nothing wrong with cloned meat, though. No suffering or even potential suffering, so why not? It's just a question of technology and safety.
But until such a method has advanced enough to compete with meat from slaughter, it's like Gulberat said, make sure to minimize animal suffering until it can be eliminated.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
Well, very simple answer to that one; it's not likely to happen! Even the most optimistic vegan would have to admit that the whole world is very unlikely to all give up meat at the same time, or even at all quickly - so there won't be any "suddenly" about it. It'll take so long that all that will happen is that farmers will be breeding fewer and fewer cows as demand goes down, until eventually there's no demand worth the expense of keeping cows for, and no cows.
Well, literally speaking, it is unnecessary to kill animals for meat now, since you can eat well without eating any meat. (In the US and Europe where I assume most of the people in this thread are from, I mean - leaving aside the question of whether it is or isn't possible for Somalia and Mongolia ever to be self-sufficient without eating meat or fish, which I don't know enough about the ecology to answer.) I've been doing it all my life and I'm a greedy pig
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Yes but take into account technobabble-y stuff and there's no longer a NEED for things.
When there's no longer a social, economical, environmental NEEDS for farming where does that leave you? People grow plants as hobbies are people going to raise and slaughter animals to what stay connected to their roots and not feel dependent on technology?
Is it ethical to farm animals for meat when it becomes basically unnecessary? On Earth that is, colonies will vary.