Why I'm becoming a vegetarian

[Subotan]

How so?

Why on earth should it be bad to kill an animal? As I said, they are food first and foremost. They exist primarily to fill my stomach.

I asked for an argument, not a restatement of your conclusion.

So... what made you come to this decision Subotan?

A combination of two things, the influence of a friend, C. , and a course in philosophy, particularly utilitarianism and logic. I had a drunken rant at C. about animals (As C. feels very strongly about animal welfare, vegetarianism and such), and in the apologising process afterwards, C. gave me some arguments which I hadn't heard before in favour of vegetarianism, that I found myself surprisingly sympathetic to. Meanwhile, this was whilst doing a degree in philosophy which introduced me to both utilitarianism, which I'm strongly in favour of (Despite its problems), which in turn introduced me to the idea that we should apply the same principles which we apply to humans to animals - although my original reaction was along the lines of this, combined with what C. had said, I found myself pretty convinced. Finally, logic has changed the way I think (No, it has actually has - it's almost creepy how it has), and one of the consequences was a brand new dislike for contradiction. I agreed that eating meat was an ethically dodgy area, and yet I continued to eat it anyway, until I made a commitment to phase it out.

Plants are stupid. Really stupid. No, seriously, however stupid someone may think animals are, plants are stupider. We are clearly superior to plants, and this imbalance is why I want to stop eating plants. When an antelope kills some grass for food, it isn't thinking about the lives it is cutting short, or any alternative ways it could feed itself without resorting to killing - all it's thinking about is the tasty grass. It can't think about the ethics of eating plants, because it's an antelope, and antelopes are stupid.

Clever. It's not applicable though, for several different reasons:

1. You used the analogy incorrectly. The focus of the original analogy wasn't the antelope, but the tiger, to make a point about the behaviour of animals. In your analogy, the focus is on the antelope, but you're trying to make a point about the behaviour of plants.

2. Plants aren't sentient. They're certainly not conscious, and it's not clear that they feel pain.

3. The technology does not exist for me to survive without harming over living things. Is it a big deal? Not really. I explicitly stated that I was opposed to killing for pleasure - for necessity is a different story, and why I don't care if the Inuits kill whales or whatever. Besides, it's foolish to scorn the good for want of the perfect, especially when you consider that the perfect will necessitate saving the lives of millions of bloody nematodes.

In contrast, we can. Perhaps the thought that killing for food is wrong should give us pause?

That's a misrepresentation of my position. If I'd said that, then you could derive that pretty much anything was wrong. I said that as the very capabilities which separate us from animals also give us the abilities to create ethics in the first place and thereby consider that eating animals might be wrong, eating animals is arguably irrational.

I AM NIBBLING ON THE FRONT PAWS OF A CUTESY LITTLE WABBIT RIGHT NOW

Please Louis, surely you don't think I'm moved in the slightest by cuteness?

Nonsense mushrooms are enlightened beings when I eat them they make me smart then I come here and debate politics

Well, there's a difference between debating politics (Or any other controversial issues that shake the very foundations of its members' worldviews) in the pseudo-intellectual nature of the circlejerk that is the backroom, and debating politics where it actually matters in the real world...

But I digress, far too much for my own good.

And yet despite all this there is no proof that intelligence will allow us to outlast the inevitable...

Which is why we have to make the best out of the hand we've been dealt in the here and now.