No need to shout, dear. I heard you; I just didn't believe you were correct.

I've read your posts - indeed, I responded to them, point by point, 1-2-3. Just because I read your posts doesn't mean I have to agree with you - do you believe everything that you read? Disagreement is a natural part of any rational, truth-seeking process - a good thing. I'm surprised I have to explain that to a lawyer.

Quote: "I am really, realy offended by your inaccurate and careless spouting of preconceived notions about me and my 'fellow travelers.'"

The offending words in question were mostly yours. I tweaked them slightly, of course, to show you how they applied to your own position. For example, your "preconceived notion" was that "many people who like to think of themselves as kind are perfectly willing to have animals kept in crowded and inhumane conditions, then slaughtered, so that they can eat them." My reply, that plant-eaters did the same to defenseless plants, merely echoed (and parodied) your own prejudices.

Quote: "But as for telling me that I have no right to have an opinion that others might not agree with ..."

Really? Where did I say or even imply that?

I disagree with your opinions, yes, but I never said you didn't have the inalienable personal right to any errant idea you may fancy.

Quote: "I was saying that vegetarianism is consistent with an ATTEMPT -- again, did you catch that? -- ATTEMPT -- to live a less violent and cruel life. "

Yes dear, I heard. While "attempting" is admirable, actually succeeding in one's attempts is better. Claiming a feeble moral justification despite one's admitted moral failings just doesn't sound flattering to one's position, don't you think? It sounds to me like a defense of "well, yes, Your Honor, I did shoot him, but it is okay, because I really didn't like the fact that I did."

Quote: "You obviously think there are about 50 vegetarians in this world and we can all be lumped into one little group and we all think the same.."

Actually, I think there are 0 actual vegetarians, since all vegetables contain microscopic animals that one cannot avoid ingesting. Seriously, though - you had no hesitation adopting yours as a nominal vegetarian position - why are you so enraged and offended when someone else dares to question the assumptions behind it? After all, if you don't want to defend a vegetarian position you can always stop replying to my posts.

Quote: 'First, "Does this creature have the capacity to feel pain?"'

How carno-centric of you to assume that central nervous system pain is the only meaningful source of suffering. Left without water in the sun, for example, plants suffer and die. Experiments have shown that stressed plants communicate that stress with each other via chemical messengers passed back and forth between in their root systems. Hell, even non-biological legal fictions like "corporations" can suffer pain in the form of "growing pains", "economic pain", and "regulatory pain".

Quote: 'Second, "Is this pain avoidable?"'

In the case of plants - no, or at least, not yet: we don't yet know enough about botanical pain (or economic pain, for that matter) to relieve the sufferings of those mercilessly harvested for food (or corporate greed). In the case of large animals, however, we could relieve their suffering if we wanted to - anesthetic technology is easily advanced enough to curtail central nervous system pain during animal harvest. At present, most food animals have quick deaths with minimal pain - and given that I have to die, too, someday, that is how I'd want to go. (Being shot post-coitus by a 21-year-old girlfriend's jealous husband would be ideal).

Quote: 3. "If you truly wish to reduce unnecessary death of plants, then become a vegetarian..." [to avoid the additional deaths of plants fed to meat animals].

I'm not sure why you've switched from "pain" to "death" as the thing to be avoided - they are not at all the same, after all - but since you brought it up, let's take a moment to consider avoiding death instead of avoiding pain as the superior moral good. Grazing animals typically don't KILL the plants they eat - they are more like lawn mowers, trimming the leaves back without causing mortal suffering. For plants, this might be painful, but it also might be no worse than trimming hair or shedding skin cells. Most agriculture practices, by contrast, kill the plants wholesale during harvest or ingestion - the carrot dies bite-by-bite between your molars.

As an afterthought...

Here's a link to a Hare Krishna-run vegetarian website: http://society.krishna.org/Articles/2002/05/035.html . The issues raised and words used are eerily similar to yours, even if there is no actual link between them and you. As an atheist myself, I guess I'd be really disturbed and upset if some religion echoed my thoughts so closely, too.