Debate: Vegetarianism vs Non vegetarianism
Side: Vegetarianism

"I live around this..."Anecdotal evidence is unconvincing."...you need a perfect solution..."Even if perfection is infeasible, we should still try to get as close to perfection as we can. Avoiding meat altogether avoids the inevitable accidents that occur when butchering animals. It is closer to perfection from an ethical perspective."If you can't make tricky moral decisions..."I can make decisions, I just acknowledge that I am taking a best guess in some cases. The universe is too complex for us to know for sure what the best course of action is in any situation. The best we can do is make approximations and educated guesses."No, it says that you shouldn't eat past 10% for optimal health."Did you not see this sentence: "If populations are consuming less than 10%, they should not increase that level of intake." In other words, "If you're consuming 5%, don't increase." "If you're consuming 0%, don't increase." I don't see how you can read that in any other way than "Less is better."Here's another study that I believe says the same thing:"Our findings suggest that replacing saturated and trans unsaturated fats with unhydrogenated monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats is more effective in preventing coronary heart disease in women than reducing overall fat intake."http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/337/21/1491 I don't know why saturated fat causes heart disease, and I'm not sure the exact chain of causation has been conclusively proven. As this site says: "The full story about saturated fat and heart disease is very complex and much of it remains a mystery." However, the fact that we don't fully understand the process doesn't change the data: saturated fat leads to heart disease."You're forcing people to live the way you think they ought to live, when it isn't your business to do so."First, you're using hyperbolic language to make my suggestion sound more extreme than it actually is. When you use the term "force" in such a broad sense, anything that influences others to take a desired action could be seen as "forcing" them. Does that mean we do away with traffic lights? Second, I'm nudging people toward behaving ethically. Ethics are based on logical principles and have nothing to do with my personal values."government to operate as a parent or guardian, nudging everyone to conform to an increasingly long list of rules and regulations"As long as those rules serve the common good, then what's the problem? I see the value in personal liberty, but I also see value in laying down rules that promote the well being of society. There are many areas where self-interest just doesn't work. Government has an important role to play in those situations. I think the soft paternalistic approach is a good compromise."you need to learn to respect..."Your constant patronizing is getting old."It means you make allowances for all the different lifestyles and morals of people, agreeing to a common ethic."Exactly, this debate is about what that ethic should entail."For example, anger can motivate justice, jealousy can motivate self-improvement, sadness can motivate a change of lifestyle."Those all follow the same logic as pain. They are bad things who's badness is outweighed by the good to which they can lead. They are a means to an end, not the end in themselves."to extend your metaphor, if we removed fire we wouldn't have a valuable tool for life."That's not extending the metaphor, that's breaking it. I was referring to the uncontrolled inferno found in a burning house, which serves no useful purpose. Let me be more explicit: We want to have the ability to respond to negative circumstances in a productive manner; but we do not want those negative circumstances themselves."without pain we wouldn't have one of the great motivators in our lives"Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that pain is bad. Again, bad things can be desirable when they lead to a net benefit. The suffering involved in the slaughter of animals does not yield such benefits."one causes the other to become noteworthy"I think this is just wishful thinking. We try to rationalize suffering that we cannot avoid to make ourselves feel better. But in any case, given the option, I think the vast majority of people would choose to avoid suffering in all cases.