VEGANGELICA

Age, I'm glad you acknowledge that people could avoid eating other animals for sustenance, because I think many people who eat animals can't get themselves to acknowledge this.

It sounds like your philosophy is "might makes right." Yet just because an animal does something in the wild, does that mean you follow its behavior? A lion will occasionally kill a human. This probably doesn't mean you would kill a human, too...so why base *any* of your behavior choices on what other animals do?

Yes, nature is horribly brutal in many ways, and people can behave that way, also. My view is this: given how much suffering exists in the world as one animal eats another, I don't want people to add to it and make the world even worse.

Even if an animal can't learn to say or express "no," a squawk or squeal of terror works for me. Some non-human animals actually can say "no," such as parrots and their close relatives. Apes can learn sign language to say "no." This doesn't prevent some people from eating them, though The Bushmeat Trade and Parrot Pie Recipe - YumYum.com). Would you eat a parrot or a gorilla?

Yep, AwwSugar (<3 <3 =@ =@), this knowledge is also what makes me want to avoid inflicting such an experience on anyone else...just like I hope someone else will stop herself from inflicting such torture on me.

Freebase, Tore, Lucifer_Sam, and kayleigh, thanks for sharing your rationales for eating animals. It sounds like you aren't very swayed by a desire to prevent other sentient beings from avoiding early deaths at the hands of humans, although Tore, you wrote that you would rather animals didn't suffer, and the closer you identify emotionally with an animal the less likely you would be to eat it. So, there is an emotional component to your decision-making process for eating animals.

Freebase, the rest of my comments are about your answer. I went though it carefully to figure out where we agree or disagree. Golly, that was a long answer you gave! I might even call it a "Vegangelica-esque Reply" if I were to be charitable.

Here's one difference in our views: I don't see nature as "intending" anything. I just see nature as being or existing without intentions or goals. This is one reason claims that "I am an omnivore; therefore, I eat meat" have no impact on me, because just because I am biologically an omnivore doesn't mean I have to *choose* to eat other animals.

I also like broccoli, but I wouldn't eat broccoli if scientists learned it has a previously undiscovered neural system that gives it sentience (an experience and awareness of feelings, pain, pleasure, etc.).

Evolution and natural selection resulted in species that acquire energy by eating animals; this occurred without rules and so I don't expect nature or people to inherently value preventing pain in others.

People have the capacity to have empathy and sympathy for other beings (as do many other animals, I'd argue) and people have a strong ability to love...but this ability isn't consistently applied to other beings.

As an example: some captured German Nazi soldiers listening to classical music would cry with deep emotion because of the beauty of it, but had no twinge of emotion at all when hunting down and shooting Jewish people.

So, I agree with you that our values (such as avoiding killing others) aren't a universal aspect of nature. Our values are flexible and can be changed to some degree (probably the age of the person has an impact on this).

I don't feel humans "must maintain balance" in the natural world (and how do you define "balance?"), though I don't want humans and their doings to crowd out most other species. One argument against expansive meat-eating is that it does *not* maintain "balance" in ecosystems. One-third of the land mass is used for livestock grazing, reducing the population sizes of many other species. Humans are fishing tuna and other sea species to close to population collapse.

I commented above that I don't see nature as "intending" anything. I agree that consuming animals even when people understand this hurts them isn't "wrong" in a natural sense. I actually don't view the universe as having any behaviors that are intrinsically "wrong" or "right"...whereas someone who is a strong Christian probably has the view that a god feels certain behaviors are "wrong (evil)" or "right." For me as an atheist, our judgements about what are right or wrong are created solely by our human mind, and are open to debate...as you and I are doing. Just like you say, our values are a result of our intelligence and our culture.

Pigs are probably much smarter than human babies and aged or other people with diminished mental capacity, so I'd say there are situations in which non-human animals are smarter than humans. As I mentioned before, though, animals' awareness, rather than intelligence, is what determines my decision not to eat animals.

The situation in which we (in the developed world) exist is that eating animals is not necessary for survival, so I feel arguments based on the belief that "we eat animals for survival" are spurious.

I see eating animals as not being a "personal" decision, because it affects the lives of other sentient beings. I also wouldn't eat people's cats, not because the cats have meaning to the human owners, but because the cats' lives have meaning and importance to the cats themselves.

If I were a god I would change the nature of this existence immediately and make everyone a herbivore and get rid of all pain and suffering.

I understand that non-human animals have less of an ability than humans to avoid eating other animals, and I don't want carnivores like lions to die out, so I wouldn't stop them from hunting in the wild, even though I see that when a lion kills a gazelle this is good for the lion but horrible for the gazelle. I don't like how nature works but I accept it.

However, I know humans *do* have a choice about what or whom they eat, and *can* be vegetarian, and *can* stop themselves from raising and killing billions of animals each year, and so that is why I dislike it that people raise animals to kill them. Yes, animals experience awful pain and misery in the jaws and paws of other animals, but humans have added to that pain by increasing the number of animals subjected to short and brutal lives lacking basic freedoms.

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