Debate: Vegetarianism vs Non vegetarianism
Side: Non vegetarianism

If you don't understand why I'm reluctant to accept unsourced claims from an anonymous stranger, then I'm afraid that says more about you than it does about me.I've had to continuously correct you on minor points concerning basic farming and butchering practices. It's clear that I know what I'm talking about because I even referenced a translated article. My corrections were not audacious or incredible in their nature, but reflect something you could learn if you bothered to live amongst the people who are at the centre of your controversy. Your hyper-scepticism is a cover for not wishing to concede fault. It's the same as demanding sources when a botanist tells you to bring your Avacado tree indoors on cold (freezing) nights.I am not arguing that avoiding meat is perfect, just that it is better.That's not what a perfect solution fallacy is. A perfect solution fallacy is abandoning meat because a butchering method cannot be found that is painless every time, under all circumstances.It doesn't matter where the rationale comes from so long as that rationale is logically founded.Of course it does. If your rationale comes from an emotional choice, then it means that any logic that follows is based upon a conclusion rather than being agnostic until a conclusion is reached. It means that your logic and reasoning is an attempt to cover for your emotional decision.It's not a personal preference. I would prefer to eat meat. Mostly because it's easier to follow the crowd than to think for oneself. Seriously, do you think I enjoy taking shit from sneering mobs with a near religious commitment to the consumption of meat? I don't. I avoid meat simply because in my judgment it is the logically consistent thing to do.Now you're projecting your inadequacies upon your adversaries. If you chose to eat a vegetable and grain based diet, that is your preference. You felt it was better somehow. You then proceeded to justify it afterwards with health reasons, and of course the moral decision of pain. It didn't have to happen in that order. Maybe you saw an animal butchered and felt empathy, and everything else followed from that. Maybe you are getting older, and decided on a new years resolution that you would eat healthier, and it followed from what you read in pop health magazines that vegetarian living is easier to build a healthy lifestyle upon. The point is, you have a preference, and now you must justify that preference to yourself. That you seem motivated to push this choice upon others by suggesting and supporting the idea of food taxes makes me think that you need laws like these as a form of approval from society for your dietary choice.This entire debate has shown that vegetarianism is far from a logically consistent choice. For two main reasons, the first and most obvious being that animals die painfully in the fields where your grains, cereals and vegetables are harvested which undermines the argument of least pain; the second is that logic rests upon premises in order to be sound, and those premises can change to reflect perspectives, for example leading to a perfectly logical conclusion that eating meat, and indeed suffering is the order of life, one could also lead to a logical conclusion that minimising pain is about placating your conscience and so any thoughts about the animals which die in the process of harvesting are best left forgotten because there are no alternatives that can compete on the same level of productivity.Ok, yes, when you break it down enough all food is simply combinations of molecules... but do you not agree that these particular arrangements of molecules have been shown to lead to heart disease (even if we don't know how exactly)? I never said that they didn't. I said that there are different metabolisms which cope better with this problem. I also forgot to point out that plants have saturated fats, particularly nuts, but also certain fruits. It is also the case that certain meats have less of these fats than others, turkey for example has none when you eat the breast.Right, but do you agree that a causative relationship between saturated fat and heart disease is at least a reasonable possibility?I did not say that that it was an unreasonable possibility, I said that we don't know enough yet to work out the exact causal relationship, which I think is important, because there could be a genetic disposition which makes a segment of the population vulnerable, for example.Reductio ad absurdum is not a fallacy. I'm asking you to draw a line. When do you think force is appropriate? Why? If you want to fast-forward a bit, whatever your answer is, I'm going to continue asking 'why?', until you're left with the basic principles of utilitarianism. From that foundation I will assert the utility of democratic government and coercive laws.Your usage of it is fallacious. It's the same as when a person complains "That law against criticising the government is unfair!" and your usage of the reductio ad absurdum argument would be "Would you rather it didn't exist? What next, people can start praising other governments? Then people can start to choose whether to follow their government. Then anarchy. Where does it end?"In other words, your usage of reductio ad absurdum is a form of distraction from the actual point being debated. I'm not debating about utilitarianism, nor am I debating about government and its coercive laws. I'm debating your need to penalise others financially because they don't have a diet like yours. I'm debating the lack of respect that your behaviour shows for other people's freedom of choice by trying to force them into what you approve of as a diet, with refusal to comply leading to wasted money. A free society is based upon compromises, one of the important compromises is that no one ideology or person's lifestyle is the government standard, instead people are expected to lend respect to each other's different lifestyles insofar as not making it their mission to stomp it out, illegalise it, or threaten it. Respect doesn't mean you must approve of how your neighbour lives, it just means you accept that they have as much right to live the way they want as you do, without entitlement.You absolutely can. You simply pass laws which disincent people from immoral behavior.Please re-read the argument. I didn't say you couldn't force people to follow regulations. I said that you cannot force people to be moral through law, nor can you make people act good towards animals. Good denotes a characterisation of empathy. You can't make people empathise and concern themselves with the welfare of animals, using law.It's shaped by both. When one is tempted to commit murder, both the cultural values and legal incentives will factor into whether or not they actually go through with it.Which underscores your inability to separate the two. Government serves to enforce laws which are agreed upon by the culture, and serve to compromise in contentious issues. Government serves as an uninvested mediator through courts. Government can provide a safety net for its citizens.Culture shapes people's values, mores, traditions, music, and so on. Culture provides the soul to a community. Government provides the boundaries.When people decide to commit a crime, they are concerned about the consequences that will befall them in their community. They also consider how to evade government consequences.More anecdotes. Come back to this point with a proper rebuttal.It seems to be a common means of avoiding the need to admit wrongness on your part. You find it easier to bluff being sceptical than admitting error or conceding a point.But not all of those ideas are logically founded.You really don't know what logic is, do you? Logic is simply a means of arriving at a sound conclusion based upon assumed premises. There can be a thousand proposed ways of aiming for the common good, all logical, but also all wrong, because each has a wrong premise.For example, Islam's means of achieving the common good is building a society ruled by a caliphate, and sharia law. Their idea is completely logical, if god exists and if Muhammad was the final prophet.However this is besides the point. In our society a person's viewpoint isn't measured by logic or rationality, it's simply allowed to exist as an opinion with everyone else's. Your viewpoint is not the most logical, it's not even the most rational, it is simply one of many, and you somehow expect entitlement.And we should attempt to select the best one.Which isn't how society works. Ideas aren't mandated by government, they win support for their persuasive power or merit, among people who listen, of their own consent.Again, it's not about my personal view, it's about the logically inescapable fact that sentient beings have evolved to experience certain things in positive ways and certain things in negative ways.Of course it's about your personal view. You are the one who has it. You obviously don't think it will win by merit alone, that's why you're advertising a desire to force it upon people. Everything else is "fluff" including your ad hoc justification you just gave, because it's only one perspective that is logically inescapable. To put it bluntly, your viewpoint and its "logic" is just one of many equally valid and equally inescapable perspectives on how we should live our lives. You need to learn to acknowledge this and work from it.And I'm saying everyone should be able to agree on this value. Because it is founded on clear logical principles.So is meat-eating. So is cannibalism. All sorts of values can be justified logically. That's why logic isn't the only standard upon which we measure values.Not all pain and hardship are necessary. I'm arguing that the suffering we inflict upon animals, for instance, is unnecessary.You just now reached the conclusion which I suggested several conversations back:Pain is an inescapable (and in some cases necessary) part of life, so we should try to eliminate unnecessary pain that is inflicted upon animals, like abuse and beatings.