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Originally Posted by Stone Birds
let's just answer the thread's title: is meat murder? yes, because it comes from killing an animal will that stop people from eating very few
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Interestingly, Stone Birds, most people in the thread have said killing animals is
not murder, because they feel murder is a legal term and refers only to people maliciously killing other people.
I agree with you that even if people were to classify killing healthy, happy animals as "murder," most would continue to eat animals. However, if people *felt*, truly felt, that killing animals is murder, and is a loss, and is cruel, then they would be more likely to want to stop killing and eating animals.
I've been reading about the Holocaust a lot over the last several months, trying to understand how people lose the ability to have empathy for others. I think children usually have a strong sense of empathy for many other beings, both humans (including those not of their own ethnic group) and non-human animals. Then, culture teaches the children that certain beings are not worth caring about. And, most children learn these lessons very well.
Here's an interesting recent news item about a study that describes how people, taught racist beliefs, lose some of their ability to empathize with people they consider to be different from themselves:
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"Skin color affects ability to empathize with pain"
Skin color affects ability to empathize with pain - CNN.com
Humans are hardwired to feel another person's pain. But they may feel less innate empathy if the other person's skin color doesn't match their own, a new study suggests.
When people say "I feel your pain," they usually just mean that they understand what you're going through. But neuroscientists have discovered that we literally feel each other's pain (sort of).
Researchers in Italy are reporting that subtle racial bias can interfere with this process -- a finding with important implications for health care as well as social harmony.
"This is quite important, because it suggests that humans tend to empathize by default unless prejudice is at play," says Avenanti.
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My hypothesis is that meat-eating cultures teach children to view animals as worth less than humans, and so children stop feeling concern about those animals' emotions and experiences.
I think the process of teaching lack of empathy for animals is the same process that occurs when racist cultures teach children that people of certain ethnicities have less value. The result is that children end up not caring very much when animals or people of a "lesser" ethnicity are hurt or exploited.
I'm still not sure why I never lost my empathy for animals. Perhaps it is simply because when I was 4, I saw my dad caring for his pet fish, Ernest, who had a fungal infection. Every night, my dad caringly took Ernest from his bowl and gave him a medication bath. My first experience of human interactions with animals was one of kindness.