There very well may be some overlap between the reasons compelling Hare Krishnas and the reasons that other ethical vegetarians choose not to eat meat.

I really don't know and I don't care.

You're the one who brought up the Hare Krishnas, with your notion that my vegetarianism is provoked by "religious" impulses.

I would appreciate it if you would have the courtesy and honesty to admit that you were wrong about that notion.

The one relevant thing you said about the Hare Krishnas is that I don't know enough about them to dismiss them as a "fruity cult."

I agree. That was an ill-considered remark. I really do not have enough information about that group to take a position on them.

You see, I do try to acknowledge areas in which I am relatively ignorant, and I do try to admit that there are things I do not know.

I wish you would do the same.

You clearly have not read any animal rights philosophers and, just as I am in no position to debate the merits of the Hare Krishnas, you are in no position to debate ethical vegetarianism until you are better educated.

As for your analogy about "It's ok that I shot him, you honor, because I felt bad about it afterwards" --- I honestly do not see what point you're trying to make here.

It's not that I DISAGREE with your point. It's that I have utterly no idea what it is.

Thatanalogy seems to have something with my point that most nonvegetarians -- just as you do here -- try to attack vegetarianism by pointing the finger at a given vegetarian and saying "Look at this person's moral failings! Aha! See, I can dismiss vegetarianism!" (For example, your position in an earlier post was that if I am opposed to cruelty I should not scoff nastily at Hare Krishnas.)

You're probably right. I shouldn't scoff nastily at Hare Krishnas -- or at you, for that matter.

I just don't see what my moral failings have to do with vegetariansim.

Ethcal vegetariansim was the topic under discussion.

I believe that the merits or otherwise of ethical vegetarianism have very little to do with me.

Consider this: Martin Luther King Jr was an imperfect eprson. He was, for example, terrible womanizer, something many would consider a moral failing because it is likely to inflict pain on those close to the womanizer.

Yet many of his positions about civil rights were highly ethical.

It would be just plain stupid to reject civil rights on the grounds that some of its advocates were not completely kind in all their actions.

Similarly, it would be just plain stupid to reject ethical vegetarianism because some of its advocates are not completely kind in all their actions.

I don't know if this is what you were saying or thinking when you pointed out my failings, but if it was, it was not relevantto the question of the ethics of vegetarianism.

The issue is ethical vegetarianism, not me.

I certainly don't reject the idea that we should all STRIVE to be ethical and kind in all our actions.

(Was this the point you were trying to make in the "it doesn't matter that I shot him You Honor because I feel bad about it" analogy?)

Good lord. If that what you think I'm saying -- STOP! It's NOT!

Of course I am a seriously flawed person -- and so are you.

Of course, we should strive to be ethical and kind in all our actions. We will fail but we should try.

I was merely pointing out that if you are attacking ethical vegetarianism because vegetarians are not unimpeachably ethical in all their acts, you are making no sense.

Also, I am not saying that vegetarianism is the only way to be a kind person or help the planet.

Maybe you are right about free range cattle. Maybe that is a humane and ecologically sound option.

I really don't know, because I have not studied it, and do not choose to debate issues that I have not studied.

As for your position that plants "suffer." Perhaps they do. Again, I do not know because I have not seen the studies that prove this. What you say about "sending stress signals" to other plants does not sound like pain as I know it.

1. Physical pain, as I experience it, depends on a central nervous system.

2. I know that physical pain, as I experience it, can be horrible, and I know that it is wrong for others to inflict physical pain on me without my consent or any benefit to me.

3. I also know that I wish to avoid death for as long as possible. I believe that it would be wrong for another to inflict death on me without my consent.

4. I believe that most human beings share my feelings about unnecessary pain and death.

5. Therefore, I believe it is unethical to inflict unnecessary pain or death, generally speaking, on other human beings, because they usually do not consent to it.

[It would not, for example, necessarily be unethical to inflict pain on a human being who needed some medical procedure involving unavoidable pain and who consented to it; not would it necessarily be unethical to inflict pain on a person who was seeking pain for masochistic purposes and who consented to the pain. Similarly, it would not necessarily be unethical to assist in the suicide of a person who had good reasons to want to die and who consented to the activity.]

Generally speaking, however, it is unethical to inflict pain or death on human beings who wish to avoid pain and death, do not consent, and do not experience any benefit from their own pain or death.

Next,

1. I also believe that other non human beings possessed of a central nervous system have very much the same experience of pain that I do.

2. I also believe that they also seek to avoid death for as long as possible.

3. I believe that in the desire to avoid pain and death so far as possible, nonhuman animals are very similar to human animals.

4. I believe that this similarity between human and nonhuman animals is significant.

5. I believe that if it is unethical for me to inflict unnecessary physical pain or death on another human being without that person's consent, it is also unethical for me to inflict pain or death on a nonhuman animal without that animal's consent.

The reason is, there is no significant difference between the animal's basic desire to avoid pain and death and my desire to avoid pain and death.

There are many differences between human and nonhuman animals, but in this regard, the desire to avoid pain and death, I am convinced that there are no significant differences.

I have several important assumptions here:

1. Assumption number one:

I am assuming that animals do not consent to the pain or death they experience when we keep them in inhumane conditions and slaughter them.

[However, it may be ethical under some conditions to kill animals. I recently read an interesting book about an Aboriginal people who DO ask for animals' consent before eating them. This people lives in near-starvation and total poverty and truly eat barely enough to survive. They have no agriculture and simply wander. They never know where their next meal is coming from, Their way of life does not strike me as unethical, because -- whether or not the animals truly consent -- this people is wholly committed to living at peace and in harmony with their environment and each other. This is not my belief system, however. For the world in which I live, I believe that vegetarianism make more sense.

Similarly, I believe some medical and scientific research on animals may be necessary. I would hope that animal researchers would do their best to treat the animals humanely.]

2. Assumption number two:

I am assuming that if plants experience stress, it is not pain as I know it, and that the moral implications for me of plant stress are not the same as the moral implications of animal stress.

I am relatively confident that plant "stress" is not suffering as I know it because (1) plants lack a central nervous system similar to my own and (2) the pain response in human beings and animals serves an evolutionary purpose: it incites them to flee from attackers, but generally cannot serve such a purpose in plants that cannot flee predators.

If anything, plants BENEFIT from those that eat them:for many plants, being eaten is crucial to their propagation -- it's how they spread their seeds.

3. Assumption number three:

The significant differences between human and nonhuman animals do not obliterate the important similarities between their desires to avoid pain and death.

Just as the fact that the person sitting next to me may have gifts that are more valuable to the world than mine does not give that person the right to inflict unnecessary suffering or death on me,

so it is also true that my different abilities do not give me the right to inflict unnecessary suffering or death on animals.

A being's capacity to make the world a better place is not relevant to that being's basic rights to be free from unnecesary pain or death.

4. Assumption number four:

I do not believe that killing an animal is as wrong as killing a human being.

5.

Also, I am not saying that vegetarianism is the only -- or even one of the best -- ways to be a good and nonviolent person.

For example, I sometimes think that driving a car every day and living a life rich in consumer good is more violent and more morally wrong than eating meat. (If I really have enough money to go to New York for a weekend then why don't I have enough money to donate the same sumto the homeless? If I can buy season tickets to the opera why am I not supporting Oxfam? The way I am consuming a disproportionate share of this world's wealth is morally indefenisble and probably worse than eating meat.)

I'm not trying to shift the debate back to me and whether I am a good person. Rather, I'm saying, vegetarianism isn't the end of the story.

However, I am completely convinced that NOT killing beings fully as capable as ourselves of desiring life and freedom from pain is better than killing them.