Quote Originally Posted by Lemur View Post
Louis, of course I couldn't. That one is too young and has too little meat on his bones; complete waste of time.

I think this is where we diverge; I don't think eating meat is immoral, rather, I think there is a moral dimension to eating meat. You're asking for another creature to die so you can have a tasty snack. How can that not be a moral choice? Likewise, we can all survive quite nicely without meat, and meat requires greater resources to produce. So as a meat-eater, I feel that I need to be okay with all dimenions of my choice.

You compare meat-eating with theft (twice), as though a morally wrong choice is comparable to a morally ambiguous choice like eating meat. I think this is where we part company.
If you think it might be wrong, you shouldn't do it...if that's what you mean by ambiguous. If you don't then I'm not clear on what you mean. I also used a choice that wasn't immoral (using a toilet).

The theft example works for how I am using it. If someone was able to steal without feeling that it was wrong, that wouldn't mean that it was right to steal. Just like the fact that someone is able to kill an animal without feeling that it is immoral doesn't mean it isn't. Those both work in reverse too. People in general often feel that something is immoral that isn't (like those gay yet anti-gay activist people). And people often feel that something is moral that isn't.

I think the basic reason behind "if I'm willing to eat it, I should be willing to kill it" is fine. But it works better hypothetically speaking. If I knew nothing about the animal from which the meat came, I couldn't judge whether it was wrong to eat it. You should be ok in principle with the animal being killed. But that doesn't lead to the conclusion that you should try and show something by killing it yourself. I mean, I could argue that it is wrong to buy clothes that come from a factor I wouldn't work in myself, but if I know about the factor my clothes came from it isn't necessary for me to go and work their myself.

This is all tangential to your OP though. Since you are killing the rabbits so that you can eat them. I think the vegetarian debate is an interesting microcosm though, I apologize if I took your thread off topic arguing about the "if you eat it, you should be willing to kill it" argument.