From: stoesser@i31s21.ira.uka.de (Achim Stoesser)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,rec.food.veg
Subject: Re: Recovering Cathaholic wants New! Improved! Ten Commandments
Date: 22 Jul 1992 11:26:37 GMT
Organization: University of Karlsruhe, FRG
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: i31s21.ira.uka.de
Keywords: Ten_Commandments

In article <7435@public.BTR.COM>, rem@btr.BTR.COM (Robert E. Maas  rem@btr.com) writes:
|> stoesser@i31s22.ira.uka.de (Achim Stoesser) posted some arguments which
|> were supposed to be in favor of vegitarianism, among which:
|> 
|> > Reason IV: Ethics
|> > 1) Animals are killed to produce meat (F2).
|> I don't accept this argument. Plants are killed or maimed to produce
|> fruit and vegetables. Fungi are killed to provide our mushrooms.
|> Bacteria and fungi are exterminated to protect our fruit and vegetables
|> from being eaten by the bacteria and fungi. If it's immoral to kill
|> animals, it's equally immoral to kill plants or fungi or bacteria. So

Equally? You mean it's the same to chop a cat and to chop a carrot? Why do you
think that there are laws against animal cruelty but no laws (as far as I know)
against plant cruelty?

|> how does being a vegitarian make somebody less immoral?? If one eats
|> fewer animals, one must eat more plants and/or fungi, so the total
|> amount if immorality is the same as before. 

No. Even if it were the same to kill a cow and to kill a cabbage the total
amount of "entities" being killed to nourish a meat-eater is much larger than
the amount necessary for a vegetarian, because the animals you eat did eat
lots of plants and other animals (rule of thumb: 7 vegetable Joules are necessary
to produce one animal Joule).

|> I suggest you delete this
|> section of your reasons from any future posting of your arguments for
|> vegitarianism to avoid looking like some idiot who can't do simple
|> arithmetic.

I sure won't delete this main reason for ethical vegetarianism but I must admit
that I can't do simple arithmetic (that's why I use computers ;-) ).

|> > 2) Animals are tortured during raising, transport, slaughtering, etc.
|> This argument is pretty flakey too. There is no way to know how another
|> creature really feels, or even IF it feels at all. If you speculate
|> that animals might feel pain, how about all those plants might feel
|> when we casually prune their branches just because we think they are
|> getting too large, and we tear their fruit right off them without even
|> using a sharp knife, and we pull plants out by the roots leaving them
|> to die a slow death of dehydration or starvation. I can speculate about
|> how much pain we cause to plants just as much as you can about animals.

_My_ feelings are entirely in my brain (not in my heart or liver). Hence, it
is more likely that a lion feels pain (because it has a brain) while a
dandelion doesen't (because it has nothing that could serve as a brain).
Even if an acorn tree has feelings there is still the fact that more plants 
are killed to feed meat-eaters (see above).

|> So what basis do you have for your claim that shifting from eating
|> animals to eating plants will be of any net virture?

1) Less animals are killed.
2) Less plants are killed.
3) Animals probably do suffer.
4) Plants probably don't suffer.

|> (By the way, who started this thread on alt.athiests? 

I'm afraid it was me. Someone asked for 10 improved commandments (see subject
line). One of my sugestions was, "don't eat animals." Someone asked, "why?"
I answered.

|> It's ok by me if
|> we move it to a more appropriate newsgroup.)

I added rec.fod.veg. If there are any followups, a.a should be removed.

 							        Achim
_____________________________________________________________________

I'm an anarchist, atheist, pacifist, and vegetarian.  This does _not_
mean that I'd bomb kings, worship Satan, let soldiers bleed to death,
or eat fish.


Xref: sparky alt.atheism:14081 sci.skeptic:12986