You might be on to something.

Let's make a thought experiment: Let's assume that a similar economic boom that has happened in Asia would also happen finally in Africa. This growth would lead to the global eradication of absolute povetry and this would cause the fertility rate drop everywhere to 2 or lower. This would mean that we would be facing quite soon 'Peak population' and then the global population would start decreasing. Some estimates put this happen even in this Century as early as 2055, other estimates put it to happen in the 2100s. The peak is estimated to be from 8+ to 11 billion people. Now, once that happens an homeostasis (or I would call an economic equilibrium) is in itself an objective. We would basically need that growth strategy by other means as the global population is getting older and smaller. It's simple math: just to produce the similar amount of GDP with a decreasing population, the per capita GDP growth has to increase. A problem for our great grandchildren and later generations — ssu

Quite the irony that...

We need economic growth to sustain our current way of life because our population continues to rise... But if the population begins to shrink we also run into extra expense due to the complexities of modern infrastructure.

This is a problem best solved by AI and automation I think; they can have our jobs so long as basic income is equitable, and if we want to hold a static equilibrium between population numbers and economic productivity I think we will have to look at some form of population control (a three child limit, or something similar that would result in no significant net growth or decline).

But even when we reach such a world, with static population and static wealth, something tells me that people are going to want more anyway. Losing what we have makes us unhappy, but keeping what we do have doesn't tend to make us happy; what really makes us happy is gaining what we don't (and especially can't) have. In other words "gaining more" is built into our psychological reward system as a means to happiness and satisfaction (for evolutionary reasons).

From a long term evolutionary perspective, considering the inexorable change that eventually occurs in any complex system, if you're not growing and evolving, you're either dying or waiting to die.

For instance the agrarian revolution may have been better in terms of prosperity, but consensus among historians seems to be that the agrarian worker was worse off than the hunter gatherer in terms of quality of live. — ChatteringMonkey

Actually that is not the consensus. The objectively measurable metrics like health and lifespan improved when we made the switch to agrarianism. There was a period of time when we were still figuring agriculture out (we had nutritional deficits before we got it right) but in very short order we have surpassed hunter-gatherers in the above metrics.

"Quality of life" in terms of happiness doesn't favor hunter-gatherers either. It turns out that humans are generally happy whether they're plowing fields or climbing trees for nourishment. The main difference is that the hunter-gatherers die much younger.

Likewise it's doubtfull that technological innovations and economic growth will translate into better quality of life for the majority of people. For instance, given the current economical dynamics, chances are that technlogical innovations like AI will make more people obsolete for the economic proces, and will concentrate even more wealth in the hands of the few owners of the means of production. — ChatteringMonkey

Actually, it's entirely possible that automation and AI will create more jobs than they destroy. They will definitely be creating wealth, so regardless of what happens humans might come out wealthier than ever.

Also I think one shouldn't overestimate our ability to handle increasingly powerfull technologies. We are still only monkeys with a slightly bigger brain in the end. So either we will make mistakes and bad things will happen, or we delegate more and more to computer algorithms and AI and then we lose control over the whole thing. I don't really like any of these options — ChatteringMonkey

We've had nukes since the 40's, and we havn't managed to fuck that up yet, so I'm actually pretty confident that we can handle AI...

We're not that stupid you know...

I think this is still up for debate. We have lived for millenia as hunter gatherers not changing a whole lot in our way of live. Maybe something did change in our genome, but we might also still be as good as genetically identical. The latter would indicate that our continual expansion is more a matter of particular circumstances and revolution in ideas. — ChatteringMonkey

Actually....

Those millennia spent under the green canopy wern't unchanging. During that time human groups were growing, shrinking, dispersing, congregating, warring, making peace, discovering technology and forgetting it too; human groups were being formed and dying off in an environment of harsh selection. It's not that all human groups lived the same as ancient hunter gatherers, it's that those groups which tended not to behave like typical hunter gatherers (egalitarian nomads), tended to die out. In other words, it's not that we were unchanging, it's that the environment tended to kill off all deviation thanks to our then primitive survival strategies and infrastructure.

How do you feel about religion? — MountainDwarf

I feel exhausted by its pretense and doubly exhausted by the fact that most people cater to it on some level because of their emotions.

What do you think religion's purpose is & how does one interact with it? — MountainDwarf

Religion is an emergent set of behaviors, beliefs, or rituals that first came about in the form of entertaining and question-answering stories told by shaman of forest and jungle dwelling great apes (animism). It invariably takes the form of metaphysical assumption or a fallacy of superstition, and it has become ubiquitous because humans really like to be entertained (we tend to like emotional roller coasters), and also because humans are very curious (so when someone has no grasp of science or the cosmos, they are very vulnerable to being persuaded by any compelling answer placed before them).

Religion's purpose, as such, is to service humans. It does so by making some of us happy, by keeping some of us in line, by giving some of us answers to existential questions, and by assisting with communal organization (in the past various religions have gotten out of control, so to speak, but presumably the secular post-enlightenment governments we have today limit religion for the better).

We interact with religion by participating in it, which is also how and why it changes and evolves.

Personally I prefer not to participate in religion (to not interact with it). I've found answers elsewhere, entertainment elsewhere, and moral foundations elsewhere too.

Higher population numbers have a greater chance of surviving the next catastrophe, so no, we should not arrest economic/technological growth.

Economic growth can lead to the emergence of novel problems, but at the same time it generally solves others. It is conceivable that economic growth could create a problem so large that it exterminates all or most human life, but this is an unlikely risk.

The cost of holding ourselves in economic stasis is that when environmental changes eventually come we will have less wealth and fewer numbers capable of adapting (we will be less capable of change). Nature has caused us to always want more, which motivates us to constantly expand. This is decidedly a better strategy than seeking homeostasis because homeostatic societies are less robust in the long run. The change and adaptation that growth allows and entails (its value to our survival and prosperity) seems to outweigh the risk of creating novel problems (else I reckon greed would not be so ubiquitous of a human imperative).

I'm inclined to believe that the voices you hear are not god's. Perhaps my training to think critically limits me, or perhaps it frees me from the bull shit of others.

Who can say?

But how can you be sure?

Did god tell you?

That's just like, your opinion, man....

Why do I need religion to know what to do?

Can you give an example of a terrible thing that Sam does?

for the reasons I've already given, — All sight

You haven't given any reasons yet, at best you've alluded to reasons (spiritual/religious ones).

I've also asked for an example of Sam's terrible actions, and dissuading people from religion and religious orthodoxy isn't clearly a good one.

Not about just leaving everyone alone, and not oppressing them, or harming them, or telling them what to do! — All sight

Being the cure, and not the poison. — All sight

How your actions have consequences much more far reaching than you realize. This is why all of the power is always in your hands, to be a light unto the world, and all that. That's what morality is about, what kind of karma you generate, how your actions have consequences. — All sight

What kind of ramifications of actions are you talking about? I'm concerned with the happiness and well-being of others, but I'm not concerned with the well-being of their immortal soul, because I think such a thing is incoherent.

When you echo Jesus by saying it would be better to be killed than to lead people away from religion, I can't help but see you as advocating for the oppression, harm, and control of others.

Unless you plan on bringing god herself directly into this discussion, I don't see how you could possibly get me to realize what I'm missing. As far as I can tell it's just a load of unnecessary religious baggage.

Let's take it a step further then.

Would it be moral to silence Sam by any means necessary, given that he causes so much non-physical harm by making fun of religion and "leading people astray" (astray from what, your own personal Jesus?).

What if some people aren't necessarily confused and alone without a personal relationship with god?

Are you saying that Sam Harris is doing damage by leading millions into sin and darkness?

Can you give an example of that?

I suspect that you have this particular (fairly puritanical/spiritualistic) view about what constitutes healthy living (such as believing in god) and are convinced that anyone who tries to deviate from this is bound for self-destruction... Is that correct?

He doesn't know what his arrogance is costing. — All sight

Whose arrogance? Jesus' arrogance?

It depends on the sin doesn't it? Teaching a child to blaspheme, for example, is not nearly as bad/evil/sinful as tying a millstone around someone's neck and drowning them.

Since when was Jesus such a mafioso?

It's quite disturbing that religion oft permits doing violence to people as a means to avoid "sin/darkness", but somehow fails to realize just how dark and sinful those violent proscriptions actually are.

Seems that the cure is worse than the disease, does it not?

How harmful are you really? Is hitting people, or even killing a few brutally worse than leading a million into darkness? — All sight

Darkness never hurt anyone; if anything it forces us to improve our sight.

Brutal killing however, that harms people...

I never stated we can perfectly refrain from exploiting any form of life. We do it all the time, and it will be almost impossible to eradicate it. — chatterbears

Do we need to prey on other animals in order to survive in the same way the lions do? Absolutely not. — chatterbears

At least some people actually do need to eat meat in order to prosper (and some to survive).

Yes. When an animal has no other choice to survive, other than killing other life, I don't find it immoral to do so. We, as humans, are in a position where we do not need to factory farm in order to survive. We are not in the same position as the lions. — chatterbears

There's a spectrum of positions that individual humans and human groups occupy, and some are not unlike the position of the lion.

To kill that lion would mean that you believe it is wrong to take an innocent life, even if it is based on survival. And to do so, would mean that you surely believe factory farming is immoral and would stop contributing to it.

I do not think it is immoral for an animal to survive by killing another animal. If that the only way they know how to survive, there is nothing immoral about it. Not to mention, lions are not moral agents. They do not have the capacity to reflect on their actions in the same way we do, which is why it would be asinine to deploy human standards of morality to a lion. In the same way it would be asinine to deploy adult standards to a 3-year old. — chatterbears

But you've neglected to deny the charge (to answer the question).

You would not be opposed to the extermination of all lions (or at least your framework does not portray it as immoral and you have not objected to it).

Both the lion and the deer are innocent, but one has to die for the other to thrive. Why should I not kill the lion to spare the deer?

I have never stated that I base my moral outlook on what is natural. It is based on the unnecessary suffering of sentient creatures. A zebra does not unnecessarily suffer from a lion, because that lion's survival is dependent upon the necessity to hunt and kill. Farm animals unnecessarily suffer from humans, because a human is not dependent upon a farm animal in order to survive. — chatterbears

I'm not interested in pinning you down on a naturalistic fallacy, I'm much more interested in getting you to accept that human agriculture is not yet advanced enough to completely eschew the use of animals.

You can say that we could be capable of doing so if we were prepared to accept any cost to do so, but we're not prepared to accept any cost. Just like you're (presumably) not prepared to accept the extermination of lions to preserve the herbivores, humans aren't yet willing or prepared to risk sacrificing their ability to thrive for the sake of another species (read: we're not yet capable of logistically planning and funding an animal free national diet). The cost would be too much and at some point the stability of our prosperity would be threatened.

Make someone laugh so hard they almost have to suffocate a kitten to restore their equilibrium — BrianW

The contradiction is that you frame what humans do as apart from nature, unnatural, and therefore not absolvable in the same way, say, lions killing gazelles is. Yes we're more intelligent, yes we can hold ourselves to higher standards, but we don't have a godlike ability to absolutely refrain from exploiting life which is lower down the food chain for our own survival and prosperity.

If lions are allowed to prey on other animals in order to prosper, why are we not allowed to prey on other animals in order to prosper?

You could say that the lion doesn't know better or that it has no other choice (and these reasons apply to humans in various degrees), but the very existence and prosperity of lions and other predators necessitates that they go around exploiting other forms of sentient life. Going by the basic standards you've outlined, it would not be immoral to exterminate all lions and other predator species in order to preserve the other forms of life which are unfairly exploited by them. If I see a mountain lion trying to kill a family of deer, can I not shoot the lion in defense of the innocent deer?

If you disagree because what lions and other predators do is natural, then you've unfairly or irrationally delineated between humans and all other nature.

2. Lions do not have the same intelligence level as we do, and do not have the same moral thought process as we do. In the same way I am not going to hold a severely mentally handicapped person accountable for their wrongdoings, I don't necessarily hold the lion accountable either. On some level, they may or may not have empathy (we know some animals do display empathy, while others may not). But again, as humans, we can think and reflect on our actions on a much deeper level. We know that infanticide is immoral, unless of course the child was suffering in pain from a disease they were born with, in which it would be more moral to end their suffering than to continue it. But at that point, it probably wouldn't be labeled as infanticide anymore, as that is usually associated with an unjust killing of a young infant.

And yes, as I said before, some animals need to kill other animals in order to survive out of necessity. And if you couple that with their very limited reasoning ability to process their actions and reflect back on what they have done, I would not say a lion is immoral for killing a zebra. It is the only way that the lion knows how to survive. But on the other hand, we as humans, can survive on plants. Yet we still choose to create a system that breeds animals into torture and slaughter, just so we can have a better taste pleasure. We know of many ways to survive, while the lion does not. Yet we still choose to survive on the unnecessary exploitation of animals. — chatterbears

Infanticide among lions isn't immoral if their killing of prey isn't immoral. Cold as this reality may be, competition for survival between lions and other animals leads to a breakdown of all avenues of cooperation and leaves only direct conflict as a viable survival strategy.

To various degrees, the avenues of peaceful coexistence between humans and animals also break down and leave us more and more reliant on selfish behavior as a means of survival.

Tribal society simply cannot live vegan (and even if you can find one of the ultra-rare examples, it only works in a very particular climate and ecosystem which happens to allow it). Meat energy got us out of the forest and into the fields (farms). Since its invention agriculture has relied on animal husbandry in some form, and while today there are technological options that are newly becoming available which can help us be less reliant on animals, many are not proven or even tested on commercial scales. For any non-first world nation meat is an absolute must for nutritional self-sufficiency. In first world nations, the expense of eliminating meat entirely would be massive, which would cut directly into other important infrastructural investments in things like education and medicine. The poorest individuals who already suffer from poor nutrition would almost certainly need to pay more money to acquire the same amount of nutrients than they would in a meat-inclusive market. If we eliminated meat consumption entirely,at some point we would be trading the health and well-being of humans to avoid the slaughter of farm animals. In this sense, to a certain degree, it's either us or them. There is yet no possible world in which we can extend full moral consideration to farm animals while maintaining the same moral consideration for other humans.

Your energy would be much better placed by attacking those aspects of meat consumption which aren't actually efficient or are needlessly cruel (factory farming for instance). You could argue that eating at KFC is immoral because it is not done to save money or to acquire nutrition (it's not healthy) and is ONLY done for the taste, which requires the insanely massive industrial scale chicken farms which we all know are describable as hell for chickens. You should attack the over consumption of meat, inefficient agricultural practices used to over-produce meat, and the cruel farming practices necessary to do it.

Once we're closer to a world where nobody is overeating meat in the first place, where cruel industrial farms are unnecessary, and where the existing farms which do produce meat are ethical and efficient (e.g: free range cattle foraging rough land), then we will have a much better idea of how much it will cost to eliminate meat entirely along with our moral obligation to do so.

I want you to remember that I'm not saying we should not reduce our consumption of meat; it's clear we over-eat meat and we produce too much of it. What I'm saying is that the total and complete elimination of meat entirely is both too expensive, and ethically neutral (or worse). It's too expensive because some meat reduces the volume of food we need to consume and has a convenient mix of particular nutrients which can be hard to source elsewhere (especially without getting too much of other things) and because traditional animal husbandry is severely productive. It's ethically neutral (or worse) to eliminate the farming of animals entirely because many farm animals do lead happy lives despite eventually being intentionally killed (farm animals can lead lives that are worth living), and so ending their existence via the sanctuary-genocide you propose would plausibly be unethical.

Also Vaga. (and I welcome anyone else to critique this as well). Can you tell me if you see the same "contradictions" that SSU is seeing within my argument. Because according to him, he has never seen anybody contradict themselves more than me on this forum. (smh) — chatterbears

I do see contradictions, but I've seen bigger...

I think the main contradiction SSU is concerned with is that you treat humans as wholly separate from nature and therefore indictable by standards which apply to nothing else. I've said it before, we aren't yet fully emancipated from nature; we're still playing a survival game and the risks are still considerable. To some degree we're not yet systemically free from the need to eat meat, and I firmly believe that a national or global switch at our present level of infrastructure and understanding would court too many risks. Your attack against anyone and everyone who eats meat is misplaced; you should attack those who are economically capable of supporting meat alternatives, and also attack those who contribute to the over-production of meat (and accompanying cruelty) by supporting places like KFC.

Lions commit infanticide in nature, yet I wouldn't state that is morally acceptable (even though it is natural). — chatterbears

(ought we intervene to save the cubs?)

Is it morally acceptable for lions to slaughter animals for meat consumption?

I'm Canadian, and this must have been, oh, a good 15 years ago.

Out of respect, we committed its granulated remains to the nearest food bank, so know that he has been respectfully cannibalized laid to rest. May god save his tiny soylent soul!

I mean, it already is.

Even as a male, in grade 8 I took a "home-ec" (home economics) where I learned how to bake pies and wash dishes.

In the same year I was given a bag of sugar and told to pretend it was a baby for a week or two.

The poor thing didn't make it. Died from cranial trauma resulting from neglect :(

I think it's also worth wondering just how happy wild animals actually are...

If a domesticated animal is treated well, I cannot see their wild counterparts being happier...

Wild animals live in fear and near constant struggle (a struggle ensured by all the natural competition); starvation and predation are constant threats. A goat who is protected by a fence or gate at night, no longer has to live on the sides of mountainous cliffs for protection and has access to all the grass and shrubs it can eat. Wouldn't that make them happy?

Good farmers have always been able to reduce the amount of stress experienced by their animals.

Are you talking about our propensity to associate effects with causes (superstitiously (irrationally) or scientifically (empirically)) or our desire to gain answers in the first place?

Do you think there is really no fundamental difference between the way superstitious beliefs are formed vs the way scientific beliefs are formed?

What we are attempting to determine is not the 'belief' (these are both pedestrian and ephemeral) but rather the nature of the predicate, behind the two; as "it" is likely to be the same in both cases.

We must then ask; how and why has the same predicate produced or described two opposing subjects?

This is the point at which (I believe) the puppeteers leave the stage, and 'Philosophy' 'breaks a leg'.

M — Marcus de Brun

The reasons an atheist typically believes in a scientific description of the universe are generally quite different from the reasons a theist believes in a religious description of the universe.

This is the difference between science and superstition (note: not all atheists are rational in their beliefs about the universe, and not all theists are superstitious; I am generalizing):

• The theist is inducted into their particular world view from a young age. It is tied up with emotion, community, and forms the basis for passionate ethical and existential beliefs.
  
• The atheist demands empirical and scientific evidence to demonstrate the accuracy and consistency of claims. Instead of setting all claims in stone by tying them to emotion, community, and one's purpose in life, they're encouraged to challenge and question with dispassion.

One side makes a presumption and gets upset when that assumption is challenged, and the other side makes it their business to challenge assumptions.

Science and superstition; they're not the same.

Some other notable differences: superstitious beliefs diverge wildly while the results experimental science converge toward something consistent. Superstitious claims can be inherently normative as opposed to descriptive, scientific claims cannot (although they can come to bear on our ethical decisions, they cannot arbitrate what is ethical like superstitious beliefs can).

An important difference is that superstitious beliefs have no or little predictive power (and if they do it's indirect or concealed from its adherents. E.g: the bible tells us to have priests bless houses with black mold and if that doesn't work to burn them down (which was a useful practice but not for reasons relating to god or spirits or blessings or any other such supernatural phenomena).

Religion began when schizophrenic/schizotypal and stoned homo-sapiens started telling compelling stories to their forest-dwelling illiterate kin. Stories evolved into ritual and belief, and the whole enterprise exploded in diversity. The story of science isn't entirely dissimilar, but instead of being compelling though the mediums of emotion, ritual and spiritualism, it became compelling and spread thanks to the tangible results it delivers. But the deliverances of religion are no longer required... We have written language (for which we owe some thanks to religious thinking) and we can educate ourselves enough to expect ethical behavior without devout religious orthodoxy. We no longer need magically invent or intuit answers to our unending series of inquiries because science has been able to provide much more reliable answers to many of them

Science cannot answer everything, and if people want to believe that their god lives hidden behind whatever empirical and epistemological barriers that remain, and that's their prerogative.

As an atheist I've made it my own prerogative to eschew superstition and superstitious belief in every way I that I can.

. And as I said before, all the crops being grown to feed farm animals, could be used to feed the people who are currently malnourished — chatterbears

None of the articles you just cited focused on the elimination of meat entirely. Americans eat too much meat and there can be some health benefits statistically associated with vegan diets, but this does not show that moderated meat consumption doesn't confer the same benefits or that there may be statistical outliers who do not benefit from the elimination of animal products.

Here's a quote from one of my posts in another thread, which is related to economics (cost)

Granted, America consumes too much beef, I'm not denying that. The fact that they have to mass farm cattle feed to sustain their ultra-massive cattle farms is a waste of water at the extreme end. But it would be a waste of water not to graze animals on pastureland. The delusion that this 56 million acres suddenly start producing veg is silly to anyone who understands how farms work.

Here's an article that touches on some of the facts: http://www.cast-science.org/download.cfm?PublicationID=278268&File=1e30d1bf7a7156ce24b3154cc313b587d97bTR

a few quotes from the abstract:

• Global animal agriculture provides safe, affordable, nutrient-dense foodstuffs that support human health and well-being as part of a balanced diet in addition to manifold by-products that have significant contributions to society. These include but are not limited to edible and inedible components, medicines, lubricants, manufactured goods, and other industrial uses. By-product utilization also enhances sustainable practices while lowering the industry’s environmental footprint.
• Livestock production is important in the economic and social sustainability of developed and developing countries, and it supplies considerable draft power within smallholder operations that make up the majority of global food production.
• Large areas of land are incapable of supporting the production of human food crops. Terrain, soil type, and climate render the majority of land currently used for grazing unsuitable for cultivation for the production of vegetable-based foods for human consumption, yet forages can be sustainably converted by ruminant animals into meat and milk products.
• The gains made by “recycling” safe, yet otherwise valueless, by-products from human food and fiber production lessen competition between humans and animals for crops that can equally be used for feed or food, maximize land use efficiency, and decrease the environmental impact of food production.
• Improved communication is required between livestock production stakeholders and the consumer to further a better understanding of the economic, environmental, nutritional, and social advantages conferred by animal agriculture on a regional and global basis.

There's a reason animal husbandry is a part of our agricultural traditions, and it's not just because we like the taste of meat. Free range chickens lead happy lives eating insects and such; they give us eggs, meat, and nitrogen rich fertilizer ingredient. Free range cows lead happy lives chewing grass, and they give us quite a bit of milk and meat along with more fertilizer ingredient. Pigs basically turn waste into meat, and while I personally would not farm pigs to eat them, on certain kinds of farms they can be useful (Permaculture).

Having too many animals just for extra meat is inefficient. Having no animals is also quite inefficient though, and I don't think we can afford it.

Here is another quote examining the nutritional impact of a switch to animal free food production:

None of the discussions or studies linked in this thread address the net economic and nutritional costs of western societies such as America removing animals from agriculture overall. Studies which do examine comprehensively the ramifications of eliminating animals from agriculture find that there would not be sufficient availability of variety to provide adequate nutrition for the entire population. As I've alluded to before, there wouldn't be enough well-planned diets on the shelves; not enough kale.

Here's a study that examines the ramifications of removing animals from agriculture entirely with interest in greenhouse gas emissions and the nutritional requirements and impacts of and on populations

http://www.pnas.org/content/114/48/E10301

It considers what sorts of foods can be grown on the land currently used for animals and projects what our basic diets would look like in a plants only system compared to one which includes animals. It concludes that a plants-only agricultural system would increase deficiencies in certain nutriments while over-providing in calories and bio-mass.Nobody has presented me with any kind of economic or nutritional feasibility study such as this yet. You do claim to need scientific evidence for belief right?

Everybody talks about how great and superior the human race is, yet we are the least compassionate and most destructive — chatterbears

And somehow we're also the most compassionate and most creative...

We're a lot of things, but perfect is not yet one of them. We're not so compassionate to endure any cost to spare the other animals we compete with (sometimes this includes each-other). We'll get there one day, just not today...

Why are people deserving of living a life without exploitation, but animals are not? Also, of course the farm animals that we genetically modified into existence by altering their DNA, could not survive in the wild. Because we made them to be that way. Their specific purpose is for our consumption, not sustaining a long life. — chatterbears

It's not about who deserves what, it's about what is thermodynamically viable and necessary to sustain our existence, and the existence of farmed animals. Life exploits life, and as I have tried to explain, we're not yet fully emancipated from nature. In other words, unless we keep eating meat in the immediate and short term, some people will be malnourished and die.

Meat would get replaced by lab-grown meats, or soy based 'meats'. Farmers wouldn't go out of business. Their business would just evolve into something else. — chatterbears

Can you imagine the initial cost of switching from a cattle farm to a synthetic meat farm?

Based on what? As I said previously, the problem is our lack of effort to initiate. — chatterbears

But we are trying, and you seem to ignore that entirely. Why do you think there are so many vegans? Why do you think they're inventing lab grown meat?

Which I am sure they can do. But also, it doesn't necessarily have to be corn that we grow. It can be something else, that isn't based on torturing and slaughtering sentient beings. — chatterbears

The problem is field corn is an extraordinarily robust crop that can grow where other food-stuffs cannot. You could say that the reason we grow so much is to feed the livestock, but on the other hand the fields where livestock feed is grown aren't usable for much or anything else. At the end of the day we would need to recoup these lost calories and nutrients elsewhere which may very well cost us more money despite the existence of subsidies for meat and dairy farmers.

So is the price of an item more important than the life of an animal? It's like saying. Abolishing slavery will cost too much, because we get cheap/free labor when owning slaves. Nobody would say this, because a small price increase is worth the money if it results in abolishing slavery. Same with animals. I would pay more to end the suffering of these animals, and that shouldn't even be a question. — chatterbears

This is a question about relative wealth and security. How much extra expense can we afford incurring unacceptable losses to our security or quality of life?

If to live in balance and harmony with nature we actually needed to depopulate the planet to around half a billion, would we be obligated to do so to avoid causing the suffering of other animals?

Do you think that we might have already figured this out, if humans actually took this seriously and made it our priority? Imagine a world of all minds thinking together and trying to figure out a solution to this problem. We probably would have had this figured out decades ago already. — chatterbears

We just have bigger problems, and it's not been long since we have become enlightened enough (by and large) to actually extend moral consideration to animals where possible.

And a severely mentally handicapped person has about the same sentience as a cow. Does that mean we should group up all the mentally ill people and exploit them? Also, would you rather live as a factory farmed animal, where you're mutilated at birth, while being kept in a small confined area your entire existence, until you were eventually sent off to get your throat slit? Or would you rather not live at all. To say you would rather be a factory farmed animal, than to not live at all, is a bit dishonest. No logical and caring person would ever say this. — chatterbears

There's an interesting dilemma here I think.

How expensive is it for us to care for the severely mentally handicapped?

If it is true that farming some meat is economical, is exploiting an animal justified if it is required to care for the severely mentally handicapped?

I'm not in favor of setting them loose in the wild, that's for sure; I would rather farm animals.

I'm also curious how one should provide information to another person, regarding scientific studies. I'd love for you to provide me with some research that isn't lazy. Also, one of the studies I linked, did have a citation. — chatterbears

"Citation" is more than just a link to a study. In order to facilitate good communication, etiquette demands that you somehow process the source you're referencing and show directly how and where it makes your point. You're supposed to paraphrase or quote verbatim (with explanation ideally). Pasting links is asking me to read the entire articles and to pick out which points I think best make your argument for you (do you think asking me to surmise your argument and evidence from a haystack of links is fair, or persuasive?). This is what I meant by "it's not even a citation". It's your evidence and you need to explain the relevant bits yourself in the context of our discussion.

If you would like me to reintroduce the sources and arguments I've expressed in the other thread, I will happily do so. They will show that there would be short term nutritional deficits, even under ideal circumstances if everybody stopped eating meat in a short period of time (hence it is ethical for some people to eat meat at present) and that the engineering problems, logistics, and economic hurtles associated with such a total and rapid switch are insurmountable.

We're heading toward more ethical and animal free agriculture, but it will take time. Are you saying we're unethical because we should be there already? (should we fall on our pitch-forks?) Are you saying we're unethical because we're not presently heading there fast enough? How quickly do we need to stop eating animals for you to cease your ethical rebukes?

I imagine if the results of the Muller investigation disgrace Trump enough the votes will be there (that might be a tall order given his resiliency).

Surely there must be at least a few republican senators eager to plunge the dagger though...

I didn't realize that the dems had 24 seats up compared to only 9 republican...

What's the plausibility that some republican senators would vote to impeach?

In other news, Manafort took a plea deal from Muller...

Is that too big a swing for the fall?

I would guess that every single democratic seat would be down for impeachment, and surely a few republican senators would as well.

Counting only currently held democratic seats, we're 20 votes short.

Could the number of republican senators plausibly willing to impeach plus the number of additional senate seats gained by the dems in the fall be greater than 20?

This is a false dichotomy. When black people were enslaved, were the only two options these:

1. Live and be exploited
2. Never live at all

Absolutely not. We can allow these animals to live and die naturally, but also STOP the breeding. — chatterbears

Black people are people, they aren't farm animals. If left alone, black people can take care of themselves and survive. If left alone, farm animals cannot survive (they'll starve during the first winter or be killed by predators). There are so many farm animals that if we decided to keep feeding and caring for them without harvesting their meat then every meat farmer would go into debt.

47% of soy and 60% of corn produced in the US being is being consumed by livestock. Feed this to humans instead of livestock, and the amount can drastically decrease (or kept the same and be fed to millions of people who starve). — chatterbears

Do you know the difference between field corn and sweet corn?

This is the kind of statement that makes me think you have no sweet clue how farming works.

Which is why the public would demand plant-based products, in which I can almost guarantee you that these farmers (and the government) would figure out how to become profitable with plant-based products. They continue to profit from livestock, because there is a demand for it. And the government provides substantial subsidies for it. — chatterbears

There already is substantial demand for fruits and vegetables, which is why we import a shit ton for human consumption. Given the added cost of importing, one would think that if farmers could cheaply grow their own equivalents there would be economic incentive to do so (the price and the demand are already high, but the supply isn't magically expanding). If there was no demand for meat then everything else would suddenly become more expensive while meat farmers go out of business.

The fact is that 90% of the land used to grow field corn isn't suitable for human quality produce (unless high fructose corn syrup is healthy). It's simply not more efficient to stop farming animals.

Why is this a problem? Figuring out the technicalities is the least of our problems. Actually putting in the effort to make the change is our worst problem. — chatterbears

It's a problem because we don't have the technology science or infrastructure to make the switch yet.

Less efficient how? But even if that were the case, I am sure we could figure it out just fine. For how technologically advanced we are, you really don't think we could figure out how to change animal farms into plant farms efficiently? — chatterbears

Not unless you know some kind of alchemy that can magically fertilize fields and turn feed corn into sweet corn.

So people's taste pleasure of 5 minutes is worth more than the life of an innocent animal? Even if the food isn't as tasty right now, would you not rather eat a less tasty food, than contribute to animal torture and slaughter? — chatterbears

Even if we burned off all our taste buds it's still more expensive.

There are plant-based fertilizers already. But again, I am sure we could figure this out. You're naming a bunch of technicalities that won't matter in the long run. We, as humans, are smart enough to figure out things. It's just a matter of how bad we want it, and how selfish we are willing to be. — chatterbears

So you're going to use plant-based fertilizers to fertilize other plants? What will you use to fertilize your plant based fertilizers?

Eventually we may figure out how to adequately nourish the entire planet without the use of animals, but we havn't yet figured that out.

And white people thought the same thing about black people. People used God/Bible to condone slavery, and said things like "Black people were bred and raised to become slaves." - Basing your moral decisions on "if that's the only way it ever could have existed", is a very poor way to come to a conclusion. — chatterbears

Humans are much more sentient than farm animals, which is my first objection to this comparison. Secondly, if I was a slave who could only ever have existed if I am eventually slaughtered, I would still rather have existed than never have existed at all.

I gave you plenty of sources and real life examples (nuts / soy) that you can start with. If you actually did the research yourself, the evidence is clear. If you want to deny the evidence and demonstrable studies, that's up to you. But you might as well deny most of scientific peer reviewed study at that point. — chatterbears

You don't know me, the research I've done, or the diets I've tried. Copy/pasting the studies you find is the laziest kind of research possible (it's not even a citation, you might as well just start dropping book titles), and you have given me utterly zero reasons to take your assertions with any grains of authority.

You're presumptive in the extreme about the science of nutrition, and ignorant in the extreme about the realities of agriculture.

The simple fact is, cows, chickens and pigs have sentience. Of course they do not have the same intelligence level as us, but that is irrelevant to whether or not they do in fact have sentience. They can experience pain and pleasure, which is all you need when deciding whether or not an animal deserves moral consideration. Cows, chickens and pigs are deserving of moral consideration, at the most basic level. Which is, do they deserve to live and not be exploited? I think the clear answer here is yes. — chatterbears

As I've pointed out to you seemingly hundreds of times, we cannot afford to let chickens and cows live unless we exploit them; for them it's either live and be exploited or never live at all. Is it better to live and be exploited than to never live at all?

I think the clear answer is yes.

Farmers would be able to keep their same job and land, but replacing it with vegetables/fruits/grains/etc — chatterbears

Not in the least. The kind of forage that many free-range cattle live off is ground that no crops can be grown upon. Field corn (which is what the U.S uses to feed its numerous amount of grain fed cows and chickens) is largely grown on land that is not high enough quality to grow vegan foods like sweet corn or other veg/fruit. The economics and logistics of all-produce agriculture are radically different from what we currently have (In terms of available/suitable ground, fertilization capacities, processing and distribution infrastructure, etc...). We already import tons of fruit in North America, and many farmers with suitable land and infrastructure have already switched over to fruit and veg production for economic reasons, but if it made economic sense for every farmer to do so then they already would have. Many farmers continue to raise livestock because it makes the most economic sense for them to do so, and some farms and ranches, by their very nature, can never be profitable without livestock.

We can gradually shift away from livestock production, but we cannot increase our fruit and veg production at arbitrarily fast rates (in order to grow and store enough of our own produce to be nutritionally self-sufficient, we would need massive innovations in indoor growing and refrigerated infrastructure out the wazoo).

Aside from being much more expensive, another problem with eliminating animal husbandry entirely is that planning vegan diets (especially a nutritionally adequate national supply) is more difficult than planning diets with some meat (because you need to consume a greater volume of vegan foods to gain the same levels of nutrition, meaning you need to plan what you eat more carefully to have well rounded nutrition).

Animal free agriculture is actually much less efficient than some animal husbandry for a lot of farms, while being logistically more complex in almost every way.

A lot of people will buy whatever food stuffs have the best balance between affordability and tastiness (evidenced by present-day average diets). If super-healthy and tasty vegan diets weren't so damn expensive, more people would be vegan; demand can eventually impact supply, but increased demand doesn't always guarantee increasing supplies (in our case it guarantees increased prices because most or all of all the land suitable for fruit and veg is already being used as such). If you want to put an avocado on every plate and a juicer in every pantry you've really got a lot of work to do. For starters, where are you going to get all the fertilizer once we no longer breed cows? (you will need more fertilizer than ever but have less of the ingredients than ever before (same story for oil based synthetics)). Opening up new land to use for growing fruit and vegetables has got to be hellishly expensive. Have we been holding off on doing so because we just don't like the taste?

Agriculture and the food market are complex systems, and by that I mean they are interconnected in many complicated and messy ways which makes outcomes hard to or impossible to foresee. I mean to say that treating the entire industry/enterprise as a single and simple system which can be planned centrally from the top by one individual with a bunch of bright ideas is beyond foolish. The many autonomous parts of the industry (the insurers, the subsidizers, the seed providers, the farm owners, the farm workers, food processors, transportation/distribution agents, grocers, and buyers) who each follow their own interest and overcome the individual problems and inefficiencies they face is what allows the food industry to operate with the stability that it does. The logistic hurtles, safety concerns, and engineering problems that the food industry overcomes on a daily basis are so numerous that I strain to believe a single person can comprehend even most of them. As it stands, more people are becoming vegan, and vegan foods are already more expensive. Farmers presently have incentive to grow more produce and I reckon they are doing so at whatever rate is most efficient.

How does the national vegan diet get enacted? Gradually by consumer demand? Or by legislation?

If it's gradual and by consumer demand (assuming that's your view) you should be prepared for food to become much more expensive than it is right now, for the reasons I've mentioned, and for many more reasons which we'll never get into.

Are you ethically justified in slaughtering farm animals? — chatterbears

If the farm animal was bred and raised for slaughter, and if that's the only way it ever could have existed in the first place, then yes.

Those are just a few studies (there are many more out there), that showcase a plant-based diet having more benefits to your health. — chatterbears

What if different people benefit differently from different diets?

On average vegans might be more healthy (especially as North America is over-weight on the whole) but I don't see evidence that vegan diets would benefit me. (I'm worried about losing weight, which is what I fear a vegan diet would cause).

Agreed. So if we acknowledge that a pig, cow and chicken has similar sentience to us and dogs, why do we slaughter them by the billions every year? — chatterbears

I don't acknowledge that at all.

Niether cows, nor chickens nor dogs are similar to us in term of sentience. Other great apes, dolphins, elephants, and perhaps many others have high degrees of sentience and intelligence, but they are still not on the level of homo-sapiens.

Or we could stop breeding them into existence and let them die off naturally, since the farm animals we bred do not even exist in the wild. — chatterbears

We can't even afford to let them die off naturally as if we're to go vegan we need all available resources to ensure the success of that endeavor. (setting them loose would be much more cruel than euthanasia)

You are taking "right" in a too literal sense, as if there's a contract or document that comes with it. I can rephrase this simply to mean, does every sentient being deserve to live in a state of comfort, rather than a state of fear? Of course this isn't possible for every sentient being, because even some humans are born into slavery in some countries. But generally speaking, if we had the choice, as Humans, to strike fear or provide comfort, should we not provide comfort instead? — chatterbears

Yes, unless we have sufficient cause not to, such as self-defense.

Striking fear into farm animals is counter-productive though, and is not the same moral question as whether or not we're ethically justified to slaughter them.

What are you basing this on? The amount of people that need to rely on meat to survive, is incredibly trivial. But also, these questions are directed at you as well, but you seemed to have answered for the group, instead of for yourself. Do you, Vagabond, need to eat meat to survive? — chatterbears

I suspect that I need to eat meat to have optimum health (and not because I like the taste). I am very tall (6'4) and thin, and for whatever reason despite the large (and well rounded) volume of food that I consume I have a very difficult time gaining weight (I've only ever managed to gain weight by over-eating meat). The fact is that I already eat a lot, and if I stop eating meat I'm going to have to increase the volume even higher as non-meat alternatives are not as protein/fat dense.

I don't need to eat meat to survive, just to maintain adequate health.

Why are some Animals worthy of love and affection, while others are sent to slaughterhouses for our consumption? — chatterbears

Just because an animal is worthy of love and affection doesn't necessarily stop us from sending it to a slaughterhouse with "ethical" justifications in tow. We send young men to die in wars quite frequently (veritable slaughter-houses) and sometimes we deem it moral to slaughter one-another outside of war theatres (eg: self-defense).

The reason why people send animals to slaughterhouses for their consumption is because it is beneficial to their survival and happiness. I reckon many-a-farmer has had to slaughter an animal that they cared for (maybe even loved) in order to feed themselves and their families.

2. Do you think that all Animals should have equal moral value, in the way we treat them and care for them? — chatterbears

Not possible. By building dwellings we displace and destroy multitudes of critters and creatures. Our roads disrupt, our fires and excrement pollutes; we cause harm and it's just a matter of choosing who or what will pay the price for our existence.

However, if there is a spectrum of sentience (that is to say, if a beetle feels less than a dolphin) then given the choice to save only one of them, I would certainly choose the dolphin barring extraneous circumstances. The more sentient (and perhaps by extension, intelligent) a thing is, the more I tend to extend moral consideration toward that thing.

Does every Animal deserve the basic right to life and freedoms that we desire for ourselves? (Such as freedom from slavery, fear, etc. — chatterbears

Rights are given or agreed upon; they are not inherent (though want itself seems to be). Earth's natural environment actually is the most terrible kind of place to hope that every creature might have a right to freedom from subservience, fear, suffering, or unjust death. By its own evolution it has come to be a place filled with competition, consumption, opposition, selection and death. Almost ironically, the very thing which gives life its relative stability is the massive payment in blood made to it by all the non-ancestors of a given thing, which by unhappy circumstance were not capable of producing a next generation (i.e: suffered and died).

Modern civilization has allowed us to stabilize the average life-cycle of humans beyond anything else in nature (no other animals are as free from unpredictable death as modern humans) and from our very comfortable pedestal it makes sense to extend our own security and comforts to other animals (if through empathy alone) but we simply cannot afford it. The farm animals we raise would need to be euthanized because we cannot afford to raise and care for them if they do not contribute to our own survival needs. The rest of nature finds balances that emerge naturally out of chaotic forces, and interference there is too costly and would likely cause more harm than it prevents (though we do have many small scale initiatives which seek to do so, for example, culling deer can actually be in the interest of many animal species, including deer themselves).

No animal, human or otherwise, has the right to be free from fear. The one-way contract that farm animals have with us is the only thing that causes farm animals to even exist in the first place, and so it becomes a decision between annihilation (and never having existed) vs living for a time and eventually being slaughtered.

It is not clear that inevitably being slaughtered makes a life not worth living.

Do you think Animal cruelty is wrong? — chatterbears

Yes.

Do you think we need to eat animals to survive? — chatterbears

Yep. The world cannot go vegan (at least not yet). In other words, some people must eat meat to survive.

We're not yet fully emancipated apes, and even among first world nations there may still be some individuals whose health will suffer on the available meat-free diet. When we have the agricultural and logistic capacity to provide adequate nutrition to all humans with animal-free practices, then we will be morally obligated to do so

Trump is having a pretty rough couple of weeks, even by his standard.

I still think he will be impeached, or more likely resign in lieu of impeachment. If the republicans lose the House in the midterms then it seems all but assured.

I have used this statement in another thread as a reply to a theist on the subject of morality. However I think it is deserving of some analysis. So lets begin as such:

Q: What is a theism?

A: A personal theology.

Q: What is theology?

A:The study of the nature of God and religious belief. (google-dictionary)

Q What is religion or religious belief?

A: A pursuit or interest followed with great devotion. (google dictionary)

Q: Do atheists have beliefs about the self and the universe which they follow with great devotion?

A: Yes all atheists must have such beliefs and follow those beliefs with great devotion.

Q: Do Atheists have religious beliefs?

A: Yes if they are to continue to live, they must have beliefs, and those beliefs must be followed 'with great and particular devotion'.

Q What becomes of an atheist who does not follow the beliefs essential to his/her/it's continued existence?

A: The atheist becomes a dead atheist!


Ergo: The only real Atheist is a DEAD atheist.

M — Marcus de Brun

This is just a string of equivocations amounting to nonsense.

By your "logic", any devotion toward anything whatsoever constitutes a form of theism.

A bird devoted to building a nest is a theist and a dog devoted to ass sniffing is a theist.

Don't you think you've broadened the definition of theism too much to actually be useful?

If everyone is a theist because being alive means you are devoted to something, then it's no longer a useful term.

Theism and atheism refer to beliefs concerning god, not any old belief. Theists are emotionally devoted to their belief systems, but that emotional devotion (with which you wish to paint (read: sully) all atheists) isn't what makes theists "theists".

Theism and atheism is about god belief, which is not the same as having "beliefs about the self and the universe" or following beliefs with great devotion.

What's the point of this thread? If you're trying to show atheism to be incoherent, you're better off deleting this thread because all it really does is render theism nonsensical.

My only point is that if God knows before he creates you, that you will make choices that necessitate being sent to hell, why would he create you? Why even bother to create a being that will spend eternity in hell? I can't make any sense of a God like this. — Sam26

I can't make sense of it either (unless God is a sadist)...

Finally, the Christian idea of God, makes God responsible for evil. For example, if I created a robot with a free will knowing that robot would kill millions of people, then I would be responsible for the evil. This is why I think that the God of the Christians is ultimately evil, given the way they define God. It's not a loving being at all, it's a being that you should despise. I don't think such a being exists. If there is a God, then this God doesn't have the attributes Christians assign to him/her. — Sam26

:cheer:

I don't believe in any notion of god, and for the reasons you've mentioned an omniscient and omnipotent god would be downright despicable (let alone paradoxical).

Hell is one of the absolute most intellectually/morally retarded concepts mankind has ever bandied.

Knowing that some event will happen, doesn't necessitate the event. We know that from our own knowledge. — Sam26

So you're saying god can be wrong, right?

Greetings Wondering-Soul, Vagabond-Spectre here (atheist).

Why do you hang on to your God given meaning of life?

Answer that you will begin to answer why atheists have values too.

The characteristic thing about the type of argument I have described above is the implicit, almost "sneaky", assumption that theory B is right — KevinB

Classically we call such assumptions "circular reasoning" or "begging the question". When the conclusion (the truth of theory B) is assumed or taken for granted rather than made logically likely or necessary by the premises, then the argument is not strong or valid (respectively). He's starting with the premise that theory B is true and calling it a conclusion.

Circular reasoning is much easier to pull off when you combine it with other fallacious appeals (such as false dichotomies, straw-men, etc...). What bothers you so much about what you describe seems to be the fact that there is no solid argument to begin with, where premises are treated as substantiated conclusions.

It's called a false dichotomy.

A dichotomy is a set of two mutually exclusive, jointly exhaustive alternatives. Dichotomies are typically expressed with the words "either" and "or", like this: "Either the test is wrong or the program is wrong."

A false dichotomy is a dichotomy that is not jointly exhaustive (there are other alternatives), or that is not mutually exclusive (the alternatives overlap), or that is possibly neither. Note that the example given above is not mutually exclusive, since the test and the program could both be wrong. It's not jointly exhaustive either, since they could both be correct, but it could be a hardware error, a compiler error and so on.

A false dichotomy is typically used in an argument to force your opponent into an extreme position -- by making the assumption that there are only two positions.

Examples:

"If you want better public schools, you have to raise taxes. If you don't want to raise taxes, you can't have better schools." - A third alternative is that you could spend the existing tax money more efficiently.

"You're either part of the solution or part of the problem." - No room for innocent bystanders here.

"If you're not with us, you're against us." - Being neutral is not an option.

Forcing people to classify themselves as either "with us" or "against us", leads to the saying "An enemy of my enemy is my friend." While they may hate both of you.

Regarding attempting to favor one element of the dichotomy over another, other fallacies (in the form of appeals to authority, popularity, tradition, etc...) can also accompany a false dichotomy.