There's sooo many fallacies this whole "you're just a missionary" statement could fall under... suffice to say that it would be pure stubbornness on your part to look at this entire discussion and claim that the entire vegan position (even if you don't agree with it) lacks any merit whatsoever and that anyone trying to defend it is just being a missionary.
That goes against a core principle of philosophy--the principle of charity. — NKBJ
And persuasion seems to be the goal at that point. — Moliere
I don't see any difference here than people insisting on being right in other threads here. Unless you'd claim that all threads here eventually devolve into mere persuasion? But then again, the art of rhetoric is the art of persuasion, so perhaps that's a big part of what all discussions are about? — NKBJ
For what it's worth, I have not for a moment thought that anyone would change their minds due to this thread. I've mainly seen it as a useful vehicle for helping me better clarify and articulate my own position.
You're missing the point. — Pseudonym
The use of wild or grass fed animals to supply protein kills just one animal, to grow the equivalent quantity of legumes requires the deaths of hundreds, not to mention the destruction of the habitat of thousands more. — Pseudonym
1. The Forestry commission already kill the 30,000 deer for the good of the forest, so my comparison is not with an already established crop, but the cost of destroying the natural landscape currently occupied by large herbivores to make way for lentils, which I can guarantee wiil cause more than your 15/hectare deaths. — Pseudonym
Do I trust your 'they' who've apparently measured all deaths from arable farming and come to a figure of 15/ha? — Pseudonym
Carnivores eating herbivores is a natural process, I'm not about to advise playing God and re-arranging the ecosystems of the world on the reckoning of a few scientists who've done a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the total number of animals killed in either scenario. — Pseudonym
This is what I was responding to:
The use of wild or grass fed animals to supply protein kills just one animal, to grow the equivalent quantity of legumes requires the deaths of hundreds, not to mention the destruction of the habitat of thousands more. — Pseudonym
I very directly addressed and refuted your point. Sorry, not sorry — NKBJ
I don't even understand what this means. I should care to not kill the plant because it has a life, just as I have a life? I specifically stated that we should take more consideration for sentient life, because sentient life can experience pain and suffering, while plants cannot. — chatterbears
Can you not conceive of the idea that in a few month's time an article might be published showing how Middleton has actually made an error in his calculations and in fact the total number of deaths turns out to be higher in arable afterall? Then another article showing how that critique missed a key point and Middleton was right afterall, and so on ... — Pseudonym
Assessment suggests that on average the complete life cycle environmental impact of nonvegetarian meals may be roughly a factor 1.5–2 higher than the effect of vegetarian meals in which meat has been replaced by vegetable protein. Although on average vegetarian diets may well have an environmental advantage, exceptions may also occur. Long-distance air transport, deep-freezing, and some horticultural practices may lead to environmental burdens for vegetarian foods exceeding those for locally produced organic meat.
As a consequence, independently from the perspective
selected, the ‘normal’ diet based on products from chemical–
conventional agriculture and conventional farming (NORMINT)
turns out to have the greatest environmental impact,
whereas the vegan diet based on organic products (VEGANBIO)
turns out to have the smallest environmental impact.
The omnivorous choice generated worse carbon, water and ecological footprints than other diets. No differences were found for the environmental impacts of ovo-lacto-vegetarians and vegans, which also had diets more adherent to the Mediterranean pattern. A high inter-individual variability was observed through principal component analysis, showing that some vegetarians and vegans have higher environmental impacts than those of some omnivores. Thus, regardless of the environmental benefits of plant-based diets, there is a need for thinking in terms of individual dietary habits.
US agriculture was modeled to determine impacts of removing farmed animals on food supply adequacy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The modeled system without animals increased total food production (23%), altered foods available for domestic consumption, and decreased agricultural US GHGs (28%), but only reduced total US GHG by 2.6 percentage units.
I'm not arguing against Veganism, I think it's a perfectly reasonable response to the situation we find ourselves in and a perfectly ethical position. What I'm arguing against (and I think I can say this for everyone who's contributed to this thread) is this overly simplistic notion that it is the only ethical position.
All other studies I have come across say he highly overestimated the numbers.... So I was actually just being conservative in your favor. — NKBJ
But since you're the one who falsely claimed both that you would need whole hectares of food to equal one deer, and that there are hundreds of deaths per hectare.... Do you have any research to back it up that you can show us here? — NKBJ
Re:2-4, as previously stated, veganism requires less land to be used for agriculture; we already have permanently changed the landscape so the best we can do is reforest a few areas; — NKBJ
have no opinion on the ethical nature of your life. — Uber
growing meat using land that could be used for arable crops is stupid
All I have argued is that there is a way to include meat in a diet which cause as little (or less) harm as the equivalent vegetables and therefore eating meat is not 'wrong' as the OP suggests.
Is it wrong to eat animals? I would say it depends on a wide array of factors, and I don't think that this position commits me entirely to moral relativism. The reason why is because some of these factors are determined by biophysical and ecological realities, hence they do not depend on social preference. I am fully supportive of the San in the Kalahari hunting gazelles or the Inuit in Canada hunting seals. These are communities that live in very forbidding ecozones, making an exclusively plant-based diet quite difficult to achieve. The San still obtained most of their calories from fruits and vegetables gathered by women, but meat was clearly an indispensable part of their diet as well.
So you are not actually interested in the philosopical ethical discussion as much as you are interested in my personal choises in the matter. Well sorry to dissappoint you, but I'm not gonna let you know. Especially not since you make unwarrented assumptions about me clearly demonstrated by your statement " I want to know why YOU have not changed your diet." — Tomseltje
No, they don't. For many people living in pain is worse than death, a short but happy life may be considered by many to be preferable to a long but miserable one. Pain and death are most certainly not sufficiently similar that an argument about one can be substituted for an argument about the other. It is perfectly legitimate, for example, to argue that the shorter but comfortable life of an humanely farmed cow is preferable to the perhaps longer but less comfortable (diseases, fear of predators, variable food supply) life of that same animal in the wild. I personally would not agree with that argument because I value autonomy and the freedom to express our natures and so I extend that value to sentient animals, but it's certainly not as cut and dried as you're making out. If your argument is to minimize net harm you could easily argue that that could be satisfied by taking an animal from the wild and rearing it for meat, giving it a shorter but much happier life. That is why, philosophically it so important to get at the distinction between death and suffering. — Pseudonym
Nonsense, in case of scavenging I can eat meat without causing any additional suffering, the animal is dead already. — Tomseltje
Again my position is that as long as humans can do it in a way it causes equal or less amount of suffering to the animal than it would suffer otherwise in nature without being farmed, it's ethical enough. — Tomseltje
We eat animals because they have a lower ability in thought, and cannot understand a deeper level of right and wrong. — Pseudonym
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.